The Political Nature of a Ruling Class: Capital and Ideology in South Africa 1890-1933

First published in 1981, The Political Nature of a Ruling Class is a study of the role played by the ‘organic intellectuals’, who were attached to the capitalist class in South Africa, in shaping the processes of state and class formation in the crucial decades when the foundations of modern South Africa were being laid.

The book examines how the political and ideological character of the imperialist, ‘British South African’, mining bourgeoisie was formed, which revolutionised southern Afric...