The Nation Newspaper

Tag: socialism

  • Karl Marx, Socialism and Africa

    In the auspicious remembrance of the 200 year anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx (5th May 1818-May 2018), it would be pertinent to reflect on his work, its impact on the historical trajectory of mankind and re-evaluation of contradictions of the contemporary world system and even to examine the historical context of Africa’s current dilemma. One of Marx’s authoritative biographer, the Latvian-born British philosopher, Isaiah Berlin wrote of Marx’s theory as “ the most powerful among the intellectual forces which are today transforming the ways in which men act and think” .

    Marx was born in Trier, in the German Rhineland. His parents, Heinrich and Henrietta were of Jewish origin but accepted Protestantism nominally, to enable Mr Heinrich to practice law. The family was reported to be reasonably well off, but not very wealthy. Marx was admitted to study Law in University of Berlin but later switched to study Philosophy at the University of Bonn.

    Marx’s work consisted essentially in laying bare the laws in the development of society, but especially the capitalist society, which he praised for its monumental achievements in technology and social forms, but whose existential contradictions underlines its transitional nature in the society’s trajectory.

    However, after the collapse of the former USSR, the first proletarian State, founded on the authority of Marxian Socialist scientific theory, Marxism in Europe, America and even the continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America has had less political appeal. But, the contemporary wreckage of deepening  capitalist crisis, especially with its backlash of the rise of right wing extremist populism in the industrial West and deepening misery in Africa has rekindled interest in the study of Marx and the scientific theory of socialism.

    In Africa, the absence of theoretical rigour, social and historical contextualization which are dispassionate tools of scientific interrogation of facts have undermined policy outlines, rendering them hollow and inappropriate for the urgent needs of transformation and modernization of Socio-economic and political frameworks of the region. The essential contents of contemporary policy outlines in Africa is regrettably deficit in the grasp of the existential reality, which Amilcar Cabral, Africa’s most rigorous theoretician characterized as “the expression of the internal contradictions in the economic, social and historical reality of each of our countries,” and stressed his conviction “that any national or social project of change, which is not founded on adequate knowledge of this reality runs grave risks of poor results or of being doomed to failure.”

    And for those who would scorn theoretical rigour as unnecessary abstraction and distraction, Cabral was convinced that “if  it is true that a revolution or  a social change project can fail, even though it be nurtured on perfectly conceived theories, nobody has yet successfully practiced Revolution without revolutionary theory.” The tragic trajectories in Africa of poverty, misery conflicts and political exclusions are essentially derived from the theoretical lethargy of acute deficit in political and economic imaginations.

    Scientific socialism, originally contributed by Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels is even a key victim of the cascading waves of anti-intellectualism in contemporary African official political establishments, where the straitjacket of received wisdom of policy packages, sometimes handed down from outside is canonized as true gospel of redemption.

    It is the misunderstanding that Socialism was first and foremost, a political ideology and a totalitarian one for that matter, a regime type and even a strategy for class warfare that feed the popular misconception that it has failed in its birthplace of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, USSR, and therefore allegedly unsuitable and even unmentionable in the current discourse about the future of Africa and even Nigeria.

    However, Socialism or more specifically Scientific Socialism, chiefly the work of Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, elaborated further in another social context by Vladimir Lenin, was before any  other thing else, a scientific investigation of laws of social progress, exploring the forms of its evolution  and the context of existential facts and reality which interacts to produce the specific context of social relation and the means of securing the material condition of its existence that both recreate and transforms it.

    Marx and Engels did not invent these laws but discovers their trajectories across all human forms, despite of place and time. These laws which agglomerates the diverse tapestries of the existential material base, in objective terms corresponds to the forms of social relations and political organization  in specific social and historical context .

    Many people claimed that Marx envisage socialism in more advanced capitalist countries of the West than the backward Russia, where it actually occurred in 1917. However, what Marx envisaged is actually less important, than what he discovered as the laws governing the progression of society, unhindered or unaffected by the wish, preference of anyone, including himself.

    The scientific theory of socialism, extrapolates many political conclusions but its value is the rigour of it scientific interrogation of social realities, derived from general principles.

    The credibility of Marxism and its eternal universal value is laying out the critical theoretical infrastructure which illuminates the road map that constantly search for questions – calling into questions where others only see ready-made answers and vulgar evidence. Writing in the forward of first volume of Das Kapital, Professor Enerst Mandell pointed out that Marx’s principal aim was to lay bare the laws of motion which govern the origins, the rise, the development, the decline and the disappearance of a given social form of economic organization and not seeking universal laws of organization. And in fact, the essential thesis of Das Kapital is that no such law exist.

    Marxism is not a scheme of political project or economic organization of any particular place and time but basically a scientific theory to unmask and interrogate social forms in any particular state of historical development. The conclusion of each particular stage is not valid for all times and all circumstances. The profound theoretical universal insight of Marxism – Leninism bears fruit in economic and social organization, when interrogated to the specific condition of historical context and existing situation. The Communist Party of China has been particularly adroit in this synthesis and has produced an awesome economic success and social progress that the world has never seen before.

    The Communist Party of China has consistently affirmed its abiding faith in the scientific and eternal value of Marxism Leninism as its practical guide. Building Socialism with Chinese characteristics is the advanced development of Marxism-Leninism in the particular context of China’s existential reality. The Party avows that without Marxism Leninism, it would never have found the path to advance on the road of its core national priority of modernization and inclusive development.

    At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in October, last year, its general secretary, also the President of the country, Xi Jinping re-affirmed that the party “must uphold the four cardinal principles – keeping unswervingly to the path of Socialism, uphold the people’s Democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the Communist party of China and Marxism – Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.

    With China’s national aggregates reaching unprecedented height, President Xi Jinping reported to the historic congress that now “China champions the development of a community with shared future for mankind and has encouraged the evolution of a more inclusive global governance system.

    China’s confidence in strutting inclusive globalization comes against the backdrop of the retreat of the foremost capitalist and imperialist hyper-power to the shriek cry of “America first”.

    The Marxist Theory of Scientific Socialism is a vast ideological resource, open to innovation, constant development and enrichment. The intellectual depth, rigour and discipline necessary to understand and interrogate Marxism and even appreciate its theoretical and scientific ramifications is more extensive and can unravel the myth of Africa’s economic lethargy and political paralysis.

     

    • Onunaiju is director, Centre for China Studies, (CCS) Utako, Abuja.

  • Socialism and Nigeria’s conundrum

    SIR: The call for restructuring of the Nigeria federal system is now alluring as the previous political myth that  civil rule holds the key to the country socioeconomic Eldorado, without addressing the fundamentals of its economic base.

    As it has become obvious that a mere return to civil rule does not hold the key to unlocking the potential of Nigeria and guaranteeing the prosperity of her people, the viability of any political superstructure, whether true federalism, fiscal federalism or even a con-federal arrangements is most unlikely to do the trick, until and unless the economic base upon which any viable political superstructure can be erected, is addressed.

    The critical element to Nigeria socio-political atrophy is the economic base of under-developed productive forces, that render the lean available public resources a theatre of beguiled and intense conflict amongst stakeholders across ethnic and religious divide. The political conflicts across the primordial fault-lines of the ethnic and religious identities are the consequences of the underdeveloped productive forces and the blurred lines of its derivative social relation. In such instance of socioeconomic stalemate and political dead end, a socialist framework that consists of scientifically interrogating the economic fundamentals with proper focus on unfettering the productive forces is strategically relevant to overcoming the persistent conundrum

    The bandwagon effects of the loud call for political restructuring shares the same euphoria of the voluble calls for the return to civil rule as the panacea to all the country’s woes. This is not a validation or justification for military rules since both are constrained by the objective condition of underdeveloped productive forces.

    Nigeria’s politics in particular and Africa in general have thrived on the whim and disposition of the political leaders whose insight lack the scientific rigour to interrogate the fundamental dis- connect and existential conditions. To this extent, Nigeria socioeconomic and political fortunes have been anchored on the caprice of the ascendant political faction or cliques. Africa nay Nigeria governance dilemma is not that it is short of good leaders or even courageous ones, but many whose vision does not correspond to the social fact and existential reality of the society’s prevailing condition.

    The context of Nigeria forcible integration into the global capitalist economy as an out let for reserve labour and mere market for metropolitan surplus means that the local productive forces have no objective conditions to develop. The fact that national independence did not create the condition for the development of the productive forces prevented the emergence of autonomous national economic elite capable of driving a national political project, relatively independent of the corrosive influence of international finance capital. The current wishy-washy political agenda, including the advocacy for restructuring the Nigeria federal system corresponds to the historic entrapment of neo-liberal capitalist domination.

    Only socialism offers refreshing vista to scientifically examining the options relevant to interpreting our conditions. Socialist construction would decisively relieve the historical disconnect in the material base of our back ward productive forces and re-align the fresh momentum to viable opportunities and possibilities in the search for a commensurate political super-structure. Nigeria and Africa’s travails in breaking through the ceiling of sustainable socio-economic and political development have its origins in the summary arrest of our historical process through violent colonial domination. The distortion, disarticulation and disaggregation that has ensued up to this day,  created social condition in which capitalist formation is impossible and in which socialism holds the prospect to break with the false start. The recent clamor for political restructuring of the Nigeria federal system might be appealing, but its context, outside the scientific interpretation of our social reality render it a hollow slogan. The much touted recommendations of former President Jonathan’s National Conference of 2014 pales into insignificance to the Justice Cookey Political Bureau of 1991 which took direct input from all segment of the Nigeria society and arrived at the historic conclusion of Nigerians overwhelming demand for socialist reconstruction.

    • Charles Onunaiju,

    Abuja.

  • Socialism and its tangled archives of victories and defeats: for Edwin Madunagu @70

    Socialism and its tangled archives of victories and defeats: for Edwin Madunagu @70

    I am a Marxist and a socialist and have been so since 1973. I am also strongly influenced by anti-sexism, humanism and revolutionary internationalism. I have remained committed to what Karl Marx called the categorical imperative, that is the struggle to overcome all circumstances in which the human being is humiliated, enslaved, abandoned and despised… As I have said publicly on several occasions, this commitment comes before everything else, including family, ethnic group and nationality.
    Edwin Madunagu, The Nigerian Left: Introduction to History [2016, p 183]

    Thank you very much, but please let us put awaythe fears, the worriesof the faint-hearted among us that socialism is dead in our country and our world. Indeed, without being in the least complacent about the challenges ahead of us, let us rest assured that prospects for a post-capitalist era of political, economic and social justice for the vast majority of our people in Nigeria and the peoples of our planet are as good now as they were more than forty years ago when, in the Anti-Poverty Movement of Nigeria (APMON), we first became, instantly and forever, lifelong comrades in working class activism. What is this all about? Well, it is about a quiet but unshakable reaffirmation that Eddie and Bene Madunagu and I made this past Tuesday at Calabar a few hours before my departure for Lagos after a short visit to the couple.

    Of course, this undiminished belief in socialism and its bright prospects for the future of our country and the human community will strike many of the readers of this tribute as utterly fanciful. Outside of a very narrow group of what could be regarded as its diehard adherents, the visibility, not to talk of influence, of socialism in the politics of this country is at the present time near zero. More pointedly, in sharp contrast with things as they were only two decades ago, not a single one of our ruling class parties at the present time has anything in its ideology or policies vaguely reminiscent ofsocialism; without exception, they are all for neoliberalism, for privatization of all our public enterprises and unfettered deregulation.And in the world at large, the number of the nation-states of the world that are either actually socialist or socialist-inclined is countable in single, not double digits. Given this general background of national and global politics at the present time, is this faith in promising future prospects for socialism in Nigeria and the world merely an ‘audacity of hope’, as in Barack Obama’s book of the same title?

    Yes, it is; except that it is far more than the audacity of a hope that has nothing behind it other than hope itself. Beyond hope as hope, beyond a simple and uncomplicated faith that in the end things will work out for the good, what we have here is the completely rational certitude of Eddie Madunagu, the greatest materialist historian andarchivist of socialism and the Left in our country’s political history, that in the long view of things,historyis on the side of socialism, not capitalism.Madunagu arrived at this certitude not through romantic, fanciful ideas of something innate or natural in socialism and socialists but through an unwavering engagement as much with the defeats as with the victories of the past, present and future of the Left in the struggles for justice for workers and the poor in Nigeria. Indeed, of the many achievements of this comrade among comrades, it is thistotal dedication to going back again and again to the archives of where things went either wrong or right with leftists and socialists in this country that I wish to single out for discussion in this tribute to Madunagu on his 70th birthday anniversary today, Sunday, May 15, 2016. But before coming to this specific subject, it is helpful to locate Madunagu among the group of extraordinary human beings that it has been my great good fortune to have come across in the Nigerian socialist movement in the last four and half decades.

    After dedicating my first published book to my father and my maternal grandmother, my second book, The Truthful Lie, was dedicated to three comrades: Seinde Arigbede, Edwin Madunagu and Ntiem Kungwai, respectively a neuro-surgeon; a mathematician; and a political scientist.I confess that before my separate and joint encounters with these three men on Nigerian soil, it was only in the anti-war and anti-imperialist, Third World liberation support movements in the United States that I had met socialists and leftists that were not only brilliant and highly regarded in their chosen professional fields but were also deeply caring human beings with a great passion for justice, equality and dignity for all people, especially the most downtrodden. It is rather strange, both to recollect and to admit this fact now, but back then in the early to mid-70s, the socialists that I had met in Nigeria were, with few exceptions, stereotypical ‘firebrand socialists’ that were mercilessly caricatured in the daily press, in novels and plays and in the lambasting tirades of right-wing politicians like the late S.L. Akintola.

    As incredible as this assertion may seem now, especially to readers of this piece below the age of forty, at one time socialists and leftists were widely considered a very strange breed of men and women in our country and our continent. True, some of themdid strike fear and terror in the governments of this country, but only on the basis of a wildly irrational hysteria that saw a looming showdown with communism that was more imagined than real, a hysteria that was in fact manufactured and stoked by ideological proxy wars of the East-West Cold War. Arigbede, Madunagu and Kungwai were the first of the dozens of socialists and leftists that I was to meet in the course of the next two decades that nobody, no government, no rabid right-wing ideologues could easily write off as rabble-rousers, as losers who turned to socialism only because they had been unable to make it in their professions, their private lives, their lackluster forays into bourgeois politics.The list is much too long to give here in its inclusive entirety, but in the 70s and 80s, it was a life-changing experience for me and many others to meet in the socialist movements in this country women and men of the intellectual and moral caliber of people like Segun Osoba; Bala Usman; Toye Olorode; Mahmud Tukur; Dipo Fasina; Molara Ogundipe; Benedicta Madunagu; Idowu Awopetu; Ropo Sekoni; Ngozi Ojidoh; Kayode Adetugbo; Mohammed Sokoto; Dunni Arigbede; Festus Iyayi; G.G. Darah; Tony Engurube; Princewill Alozie; Asisi Asobie; Grace Osakwe; Jibo Ibrahim; Rauf Mustapha. Above all other considerations, what was particularly remarkable about these men and women was the fact that, placing their personal brilliance and professional successes at the service of a cause that was much greater than each person, they created organizations that were unparalleled in their effectiveness in the history of the left in this country, organizations like ASUU, Women in Nigeria (WIN), and NANS. This is precisely the point at which Edwin Madunagu’s almost unique contribution comes into the picture.

    At this point in time, I think it is fair for me to say that it is common knowledge in the circles of socialists and leftists in our country that Eddie Madunagu and myself are so close in our positions, our views and our interventions that we are almost inseparable. To this, I can add that we have both been very concerned, very dedicated to documenting and informing Nigerians and the world of the struggles of the Left especially against the background of the distortions and crises of capitalist underdevelopment in our country. However, I think that while a few comrades and compatriots on the Left know of Eddie’s work of careful and painstaking documentation, most people are not aware of just how very deep and wide this work is, especially with regard to the past – or rather, the many pasts – of the socialist, feminist, workers’ and mass movements in Nigeria.

    I draw the attention of the reader to the fact that, for the very first time in this tribute, I have just alluded to the diversity, the multiplicity of the many levels and strands of leftists and socialists in our country. As a matter of fact, I now in addition draw the reader’s attention to the fact that the list of dedicated socialists, feminists and radical leftists that I gave earlier in this piece is dominated by academics and intellectuals. Though he is himself an academic and a scientist, Eddie Madunagu’s sustained work as the quintessentialhistorian and archivist of the Left in Nigeria has ranged far beyond academia to a consistently ecumenical purview that takes in virtually all the major figures and key players of the past and the present, in essence demonstrating that genuine and passionate socialism did not begin with the present generation. Permit me to give a succinct elaboration of this observation.

    Among the many published works of Eddie are the following that are crucial for an understanding of the victories and defeats, the successes and reversals of the Left in this country: The Philosophy of Violence (1976); The Tragedy of the Nigerian Socialist Movement (1980); Human Progress and Its Enemies (1982); Problems of Socialism: the Nigerian Challenge (1983); The Political Economy of State Robbery (1984); The Making and Unmaking of Nigeria (2001); and Understanding Nigeria and the New Imperialism(2006).Not included in this list is the considerable number of journalistic pieces that Eddie published both while he was on the editorial board of The Guardian and later as an unattached stringer. There are also many written but as yet unpublished manuscripts in his vast output. Thus, what we confront in this immense corpus of Madunagu’s writings is an array of issues and subjects too vast to be grouped under a single theme. But even so, a careful perusal of the published and unpublished materials will readily reveal the consistency with which Eddie has been obsessed by the avoidable errors, the missed breakthroughs, the promising roads not taken. Speaking only for myself, I have been particularly awed by the passion and scrupulousness with which Eddie has approached the lives and works of what we now know as the Old Left, all in a bid to tease out what connections and legacies, positive and negative, they have with us. In the writings of no other major figure of the Nigerian Left at the present time will you find figures like Pa Curtis Joseph, Pa Michael Athokhamien Imoudu, S.G. Ikoku, Tayo Akpata, Eskor Toyo, Ola Oni and the Zikist revolutionaries of pre-independence Nigeria. And here, it is necessary for me to point out that in many cases, Eddie actually sought out and had extensive interviews with these figures before they passed on;and some of them indeed not only gave full access to our indomitable archivist but in fact donated their papers to the holdings of the Calabar International Institute for Research, Information and Documentation (CIINSTRID) that Eddie, with the cooperation of a few other comrades including this writer, founded in 1994. By the way, CIINSTRID is the only free research institution and public library of the Left on the African continent.

    The work of Eddie Madunagu has been monumental; but it is still unfinished.As I wish my friend and comrade a hearty welcome to the club of septuagenarians that I joined only five months ago, I wish to applaud the vastness of the archives that he has bequeathed to us. In those archives are the details of the many problems that socialism and socialists have faced in our country and our part of the world. What we must now do is square off those archives with the archives of the problems and challenges that socialism and socialists have faced in the world at large. It so happens that the prospects for a post-capitalist future are indeed much brighter in many other parts of the world than in our country at the present time. But we are part of the world at large, thanks in part to global capitalism. No comrade that I know understands and appreciates this contradiction better and keener than Edwin Madunagu.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo                        

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

     

  • Albert Einstein, Karl Marx and socialism

    They are two of the most towering intellects of our contemporary age. They are both Germans. One is a foremost physical scientist, the other a path-breaking social scientist. At the turn of the century in Y2000, they were adjudged the most influential intellects of the last millennium. I refer to Karl Marx and Albert Einstein. In an opinion poll conducted by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 2000, Einstein emerged as the pre-eminent intellectual of the millennium with Marx coming a close second. Yet, they belonged to two different worlds. Karl Marx demonstrated unprecedented insight into the inner workings and internal contradictions of capitalism while Einstein is noted for his revolutionary scientific findings on the nature and evolution of the universe. Karl Marx lived from 1818 to 1883 and Einstein from 1879 to 1955. In Y2000, I personally cast my lot with Marx as man of the century. His scholarship had cast a shadow on virtually every sphere of knowledge in our student days. Little did I know that there was a significant confluence between the thoughts of Marx and Einstein on the contentious of socialism.

    Einstein developed the general theory of relativity that won him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. Karl Marx was a first class philosopher, sociologist, economist and revolutionary intellectual. Yet, both thinkers were of kindred sociological and ideological affinity. I refer here to a unique article by Einstein in the very first edition of the ‘Monthly Review’, a Marxist magazine published in May 1949. By the way, Monthly Review, a unique magazine that has been associated over time with such great Marxist thinkers as Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, Leo Huberman, Harry Magdoff and Samir Amin to name a few, is still being published today. It analyses politics, society and economy from a radical Marxist perspective even if is not doctrinaire in its approach to ideology. This magazine, which can be accessed free of charge online, is surely not where one would expect to find an article by Albert Einstein. But the great physicist’s article in its maiden edition is titled ‘Why Socialism?’, it is an article in which Einstein undertakes a penetrating critique of capitalism, which even at that time was in the throes of another of the cyclical crises that have become a permanent feature of this mode of production and makes a compelling case for a planned, socialist economy. Given the current crisis in which capitalism is embroiled worldwide, the views of Einstein in this article are still of abiding relevance.

    Since he is a natural and not a social scientist, Einstein begins by asking if it is “advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism”. In other words, should economic issues be left strictly to economists who supposedly have the requisite scientific and technocratic knowledge to tackle such issues? Einstein’s answer after examining the character of economics as a scientific discipline and the inability of science to determine ethical ends like socialim is that “we should be on guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society”.

    Having settled this issue, Einstein goes on to examine the biological and social nature of man and the implication of these for the organization of society. In opposition to the assumptions of neo-classical economics that society comprises isolated, atomistic individuals each pursuing his or her selfish interest and that an invisible hand will magically regulate the free market in the collective interest, Einstein contends that the society is superior to the individual as the latter can only exist within the context of the former. In his words, “The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society – in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence – that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labour and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society”.

    Implicit in this perception of the relation between the individual and society is Einstein’s opposition to the excessive individualism characteristic of capitalism. Thus, he laments that “Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. Denouncing the ‘economic anarchy’ of capitalist society, Einstein contends that “The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depression. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labour and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before”.

    In the light of the collapse of communism and the world wide triumph of neo-liberalism, is Einstein’s advocacy for a planned, socialist not now anachronistic? Surely not. In the first place, capitalism itself remains severely in crisis plunging millions across the world into poverty and misery despite the ever increasing affluence of a tiny minority. With the technological attainments of humanity, the level of global poverty is inexcusable. Even more interestingly, Einstein with remarkable prescience had as far back as 1949 identified the problems that would confront any effort to build a socialist society and these were the very factors largely responsible for the ultimate collapse of the communist bloc decades later. In his words, “The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy assured?” The inability of the communist states to successfully solve these problems is responsible for the current global triumph of capitalism.