Primary capital accumulation in colonial Tunisia

Conclusion

The general changes, social upheavals and structural modifications, resulting from the introduction of capitalism into Tunisia, culminated in the takeover of the country for the specific purpose of subjecting the entire society to the requirements of primary accumulation of capital — through the realization of an exorbitant rate of surplus value exacted from the autochthonous workers. This process led neither to homogeneous disintegrations, alterations and transformations of the preexisting modes of production, nor in the emergence of an even development of the various economic sectors and productive forces. Rather, the uneven and “extraverted” development, though stimulating the formation of economic classes, or fractions of them, was bound to bring about, by its very structural fluidity and unequally linked functional articulation, both intra- and inter-class fragmentation within the colonized society.

In contradistinction to this developing heterogeneous class structure, the social configuration of the settler population, which was fully engaged and integrated into the capitalist colonial sector governed by capitalist social relations of production, exhibited a homogeneous and fully developed class structure, congruent with the advanced level of the development of productive forces. But the subjection-integration of the endogenous productive systems, and their corresponding class configurations, into the exogenous capitalist mode of production with its concomitant settler bourgeoisie, resulted in a blocked and uneven development of the indigenous “marginalized” economy. Thus the differential degrees of incorporation of the autochthonous productive forces gave rise to a heterogeneous class structure within the colonial society. It follows that the salient contradiction of modern capitalist colonialism is, on the one hand, the settler bourgeoisie's attempt to maintain the structure, and even the functioning of the non-capitalist modes of production, and on the other, the necessity for it to reorient them to the satisfaction of the needs of primary capital accumulation; thus the non-capitalist forms came to be articulated internally and externally by the dominant capitalist mode of production. The consequences of this irreconcilable contradiction were adequately perceived by Rosa Luxemburg: “Historically, the accumulation of capital is a kind of metabolism between capitalist economy and those pre-capitalist methods of production without which it cannot go on and which, in this light, it corrodes and assimilates. Thus capitalism cannot accumulate without the aid of non-capitalist organizations, nor, on the other hand, can it tolerate their continued existence side-by-side with itself. Only the continuous and progressive disintegration of non-capitalist organizations makes accumulation of capital possible”¹.

As a direct consequence of the intensity and persistence of capital accumulation under the specific conditions of colonialism and the resultant unequal socioeconomic development, a corresponding configuration of social forces characterized by an internal structural incoherence, emerged within the dominated society. These class forces were represented by: a rural and urban national bourgeoisie relegated within the colonial system to the under-capitalized economic activities; a petty bourgeoisie whose strategic position within the colonized society predestined it to play a leading role in the struggle for national liberation; a peasantry which constituted a majority of the population; a numerically weak working class which, although it played a decisive role in the national movement of emancipation, could not ascend to its leadership; and a numerous rural and urban subproletariat constituting a capitalist “reserve army” whose sheer existence contributed to the maintenance of low wages. However, as a result of the colonial situation, the class boundaries and class consciousness of the autochthonous population were never clearcut. That is why the petty bourgeoisie as a class with social and economic links to all the others assumed a decisive ideological and political role in the colonial period, but as soon as independence was achieved, it merged with the national bourgeoisie and the two together became the dominant class in the post-independence period.