5 - Business Interests, Business Autonomy and the Broader Public Good

Summary

Under what condition do firms begin to develop a significant degree of relative business autonomy, not only from the state in question but also from other aspects of capital (including the subsector(s) of the economy in which they themselves function)? And when and how might business autonomy decline? This concluding chapter summarises the evidence presented by the book’s case studies and considers this against comparative cases, including a more systematic review of the emergence of business autonomy in India during the independence era. The emergence of a relatively autonomous business class in India amidst that country’s struggle for independence provides a number of parallels to the South African case. In both countries, the business community was torn between conflicting impulses and factions: those who benefitted from the status quo, and those who saw their longer-term interests as aligned instead with a nationalist struggle and hence with anticolonial interests, even if this struggle presented new and different threats from a growing radical left wing.

The comparisons highlight first, the incentives that may prompt business to develop an encompassing conception of its own interests; and second, the process by which norms and ideas can become entrenched in the practice of business by being repeatedly performed over time.