Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Wuyts, Marc Eric

Titel

Money and Planning For Socialist Transition: The Mozambican Experience

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

1986

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This study develops an argument about the role of money in the process of planning for socialist transformation in the concrete case of the Mozambican experience in the period 1975-1983. The context was an economy were the peasantry through its production of cash crops as well as through its supply of labour power constituted the cornerstone of the social organization of production. Hence, the nationalisations of the major means of production created a state sector which was only part of a wider economy. This study argues that, within this context, the role of money can only be understood with respect to the dynamic, but not exclusive, role of the state sector in propelling the wider transformation of the economy. The actual experience in Mozambique was characterised by a process of state centered accumulation which implied that planning boiled down to mobilising resources behind the accelerated development of the state sector. The result was the seperation as between the official and parallel economies, and the dynamics of peasant agriculture became determined by the latter. Money acquired an active function in this process inasmuch as monetary imbalances originating in the state sector fuelled the development of speculative capital in the parallel economy, and hence enhanced the social differentiation of the peasantry. As a result, the control of the state over the economy was weakened and the process of socialisation of the countryside effectively blocked. Hence, the conclusion is that money matters in the context of socialist transition, because its role is not neutral with respect to the process of transforming production.