By David Jones September 2019
White and State Monopoly capital represent the 1%, and are allied to create confusion and division among the rest of society.
There are a number of terms that are thrown around in this country that people have little understanding of. One of these is White Monopoly Capitalism. What does the term refer to and why do white people see it as an implied threat?
WMC does not refer to wealth and money of the average white person, who does earn and own a lot more than the average black person. (For those who need facts and figures the Living Conditions of Households in South Africa survey, published in Bussinesstech, 20 Jan 2017 found white average household income ( +- R300 000) to be five times higher than the average of black households.(+- R69 000)) What WMC does refer to is the massive amount of wealth in the hands of a very small sector of the population ( the infamous 1% of the population who control 80 per cent of the country’s (and the world’s wealth)) and who do happen to be mostly, but not exclusively white. The average salary of the top 1% of earners in SA (according to a March 2019 Bloomberg report courtesy of Bussinesstech, 29 May) is R2.21 million. The bottom 55% of the population (that’s +- 30.4 million mostly black people) earns an average of R992 per month. ( 2015 Statics SA study reported in Quartz SA 25 August 2017). According to the same study less than 1% of white South Africans fall into this group.
Further research by Econ 3×3 reported in Inquistr May 7, 2017, found that 10 % of the population owned 90-95% of the country’s wealth while the next 40% (the middle class) owned the majority of the remaining 5-10%. The poorest 50% of the population own little or no measurable wealth.
In the private sector 70% of senior management positions are held by still held by whites, with only 13% being held by blacks. What has changed with the end of apartheid is there has been a rise of what could be called “State capital”. This comprises a group of elite (largely black) businessmen who own about 30% of the country’s capital though the State. This group, however has close ties with White capital, and forms a part of the 1% elite that controls the economy, and are allied with it with the purpose of maintaining the status quo.
The real owners of South African capital are found in the stock exchange. Of the top 100 companies listed on the JSE, 22% are white owned and 23% are black owned local companies. Foreign companies, largely European- (and white-) owned, make up around 40% of the remaining investors. (courtesy of the same Inquisitr article). In spite of post-apartheid changes the economy of the country is still largely in the hands of white people.
The real problem behind such shocking disparity, in terms of relations of peoples in the country, is not that white people earn, and own, far more than their black counterparts for doing the same job and consider themselves superior as a result. The real problem is that most people, especially the middle class, (white and black) continue to support the ongoing agenda and rule of this 1% thus alienating themselves from the majority of humanity. They do this by continuing to buy in corporate owned supermarkets, to consume corporate- made and largely useless, badly made, dangerously toxic, unnecessary products, to use fossil-fuel based forms of energy which poison the environment, to send their children to elite schools and to absorb state and privately owned mainstream media which are designed to brainwash them into accepting the disparities of wealth and the culture of consumerism with its perpetual growth and spending.
Through the cult of the celebrity, and through accident of birth which ensures they share a common skin tone, people imagine themselves to be connected to this elite class. In reality they are not and will never be part of the monopoly capital class. They are conned into believing that that this group of people (the 1 per cent) is somehow looking out for them and represents their best interest. Yet they are no more than cannon fodder to them; useful idiots who will continue to support them in their quest for world domination. We need stop identifying with and supporting the agenda of people (the true owners of monopoly capitalism, state or white) who don’t give a thought for us, but only for their own survival. Stop identifying with the agenda of supremacists and racists who represents the interests of this class. They survive only because they have succeeded in dividing the rest of humanity. These are the real enemy of humanity. They have corrupted our police forces, and set us against each other. Our governments are now headed by billionaires who have little regard for the ordinary people and care only for their own profits. They have convinced people that the drug user in the streets and the foreigner are the cause of their suffering, when they are but a scapegoat to distract us.
Their agenda is precisely to divide you and convince you that you are one of them, when you can in reality you can never be. Yet you are seen as one of them because you choose to put their interest above the interests of your fellow humans. As long as you do this you will be on the side of monopoly capital, the 1 %, and against the rest of humanity . If you are a working class or middle class white South African your true allies are other working and middle class people, no matter their colour or ethnicity, not the elite who only view you as fodder to achieve their own ends. It’s your choice and it’s time to choose.
