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The resurgence of interest in the determinants of economic growth through the vehicle of endogenous growth theory has brought with it new understanding of what underlies long term economic prosperity. In particular, the role of human capital as an important driver of technological change, and hence development, has emerged as a key factor.

In 1997, the World Bank Group1 published in English one of its many country studies, entitled Vietnam: Education Financing. Its goal was to measure ‘what changes in educational policies will ensure that students who pass through the system today will acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for Vietnam to complete the transition successfully from a planned to a market economy’(World Bank 1997: xiii). Skills, knowledge, and attitude designate the successfully ‘educated’ Vietnamese national subjects for the bank. The educational ‘system’ performs, therefore, a disciplinary function by using the technologies of the nation state to cultivate productive humans—measured by technical expertise and computer and business skills—for transnational companies who do business in the region.

Globalism makes news every day, yet world trade is hardly greater today than 30 years ago; it is the movement of capital that is far greater now, thanks to technology. The irresistible force for one world is not the United Nations, ever an arena for the contest of national interests, but money, particularly the United States dollar, which is an unofficial world currency, often with more influence than U.S. foreign policy. One of the results of monetary globalism is to make national reserve and international banks all the more important.

Over and above the reasons or the wrongs of the apologists and the critics of globalisation, it seems impossible to deny the development, during these last few decades, of a global network of social connections and functional interdependences that link individuals and nations – no one is excluded. As Tony Spybey and Roland Robertson remind us, even the deepest meanings of existence, the most intimate of personal experiences and daily behaviour are involved in this radical change of cognitive and symbolic reference points: the world as a whole.1 The globalised world is the result of a series of compressions and integrations that have reduced the so-called ‘empty gaps’ in the material of human relations. As Joseph Stiglitz emphasized, the thing that has favoured the process of global compression-integration is the impressive reduction of the time and cost of transport and communication, and the demolition of artificial barriers to the international circulation of goods, services, capital, knowledge, and – even if still strongly obstructed – of people and labour.

This article argues that democracy is on life support in the United States. Throughout the social order, the forces of predatory capitalism are on the march—dismantling the welfare state, corrupting politics with outside money, defunding higher education, expanding the corporate-surveillance-military state, widening inequalities in wealth and income, and waging a war on low income and poor minorities. As market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of society, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if not altogether disappearing. As these institutions vanish—from higher education to health care centers—there is also a serious erosion of the discourses of community, justice, equality, public values, and the common good. This article argues that given this current crisis, educators, artists, intellectuals, youth, and workers need a new political and pedagogical language centered around the notion of radical democracy in order to address the changing contexts and issues facing a world in which capital draws upon an unprecedented convergence of resources—financial, cultural, political, economic, scientific, military, and technological—to exercise powerful and diverse forms of control.

Abstract

Presently certain catchphrases and hashtags have been circulating and trending in the public discourse such as ‘white monopoly capital’, ‘radical economic transformation’ and movements’ phrases such as ‘fees must fall’ and ‘Black First Land First’ formulated in response to issues around education, land and race specifically. However, Robert Sobukwe, intellectual giant of the pan-Africanist struggle, articulated very strong beliefs underpinning these burning societal questions from as early as the 1940s. His incarceration, banishment and ultimate death in 1978 left a political vacuum in South Africa and more than twenty years after democracy, the aforementioned issues Sobukwe stressed during his time need to be revisited. South African is currently experiencing a massive resurgence in the narrative and discourse regarding the need for dialogue around education transformation, land reform and race as a whole. Therefore, this article seeks to draw unpack Sobukwe’s take on these three burning issues in relation to the current discourse in South Africa today underpinned by pan-Africanist philosophy.