Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:53:35.022Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

In Lieu of Orthodoxy: the Socialist Theories of Nkrumah and Nyerere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Steven Metz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A quarter-century after its inception, the diversity within ‘African socialism’ remains astonishing. This category now includes development strategies which range from traditional capitalism with limited sectoral planning to collective forms of national autarky. Although it is generally agreed that none of the forms of African socialism incorporates an ‘orthodox’ type of Marxism, the tremendous intellectual impact which Marx and Lenin have had on all aspects of social, economic, and political thought means that it is impossible to construct a theory of socialism which is totally outside their shadows. In effect, Marxist orthodoxy inevitably serves as a tool for the evaluation of socialist theory.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 1982 , pp. 377 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 377 note 1 James, C. L. R., Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (London and Westport, 1977 edn.), p. 74.Google Scholar

page 378 note 1 Tse-Tung, Mao, ‘On Contradiction’, in Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung (Peking, 1977 edn.), p. 331.Google Scholar

page 378 note 2 Among the better works on this topic are Coulson, Andrew, African Socialism in Practice (Nottingham, 1979);Google ScholarHyden, Goran, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: underdevelopment and an uncaptured peasantry (London and Berkeley, 1980);Google ScholarMwansasu, Bismarck U. and Pratt, Cranford (eds.), Towards Socialism in Tanzania (Toronto, 1979);Google ScholarJames, , op. cit.; and Davidson, Basil, Black Star (London, 1973).Google Scholar

page 379 note 1 For instance, according to Pratt, Cranford, The Critical Phase in Tanzania, 1945–1968: Nyerere and the emergence of a socialist strategy (Cambridge, 1976), p. 63, classical liberalism and Fabianism have influenced Nyerere to a greater degree than Marxism, and in his essay on ‘Tanzania's Transition to Socialism: reflections of a democratic socialist’, in Mwansasu and Pratt (eds.), op. cit., Pratt categorises Nycrere as a democratic socialist.Google ScholarBrockway, A. Fenner, African Socialism (Chester Springs, Pa., 1963), places Nkrumah within the category of ‘African Marxists’ and Nyerere in ‘African Pragmatic Socialists’. John S. Saul refers to Nyerere' ‘incomprehension of Marxism’, in ‘African Socialism in One Country: Tanzania’,Google Scholar in Arrighi, Giovanni and Saul, , Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (New York and London, 1973), p. 237. Julius Nyerere himself considered Marxism too much the result of specifically European events to be relevant to Africa;Google Scholar see his ‘Ujamaa-the Basis of African Socialism’, reprinted in Ujamaa: essays on socialism (Oxford, 1968), pp. 1–12.Google Scholar

page 379 note 2 Luk´cs, Georg, History and Class Consciousness: studies in Marxist dialectics (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 1.Google ScholarShivji, Issa G. makes the same arguments in Class Struggles in Tanzania (New York and London, 1976 edn.), p. 13.Google Scholar

page 379 note 3 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The German Ideology (Moscow, 1976 edn.), pp. 36–7.Google Scholar

page 380 note 1 Marx, Karl, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Moscow, 1977 edn.), p. 20.Google Scholar

page 380 note 2 Karioki, James N., Tanzania's Human Revolution (University Park, Pa., 1979), p. 29.Google Scholar

page 380 note 3 Nycrere, op. cit. pp. 81–5 and 106–8. See also Nyerere, Julius K., Freedom and Socialism/Uhuru ua Ujamaa: a selection from writings and speeches, 1965–1967 (Oxford and Dar es Salaam, 1968), pp. 198–9.Google Scholar

page 380 note 4 Ibid. p. 4.

page 381 note 1 Marx and Engels, op. cit. p. 38. For an elaboration of their thinking on this subject, see Marx, Karl, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (New York, 1980 edn.),Google Scholar and Engels's, Friedrich more evolutionary and mechanistic approach in The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York, 1978 edn.).Google Scholar

page 381 note 2 Lofchie, Michael F., ‘Agrarian Socialism in the Third World: the Tanzanian case’, in Comparative Politics (New York), 8, 3 04 1976, pp. 488–9.Google Scholar

page 381 note 3 Nellis, John R., A Theory of Ideology: the Tanzanian example (Oxford, 1972), pp. 101–2. While extremely pessimistic about Nyerere's attempts to use the model of pre-colonial Africa to create a unifying ideology, this is a useful explanation of the mechanics of this process.Google Scholar

page 381 note 4 See Sorel, Georges, Reflections on Violence (New York, 1950), especially pp. 123–9.Google Scholar

page 382 note 1 Geiss, Imanuel, The Pan-African Movement (New York and London, edn.), p. 371.Google Scholar

page 382 note 2 Nkrumah, Kwame, Consciencism: philosophy and ideology for decolonization and development with particular reference to the African Revolution (New York and London, 1970 edn.), p. 68.Google Scholar

page 382 note 3 Nkrumah, Kwame, Revolutionasy Path (New York, 1972 edn.), ‘African Socialism Revisited’, pp. 441Google Scholar. This article was first published in African Forum (New York), 1, 3, 1966, pp. 3–9.Google Scholar

page 382 note 4 Ibid. p. 441.

page 382 note 5 This is the major thesis of Consciencism.

page 382 note 6 While this argument is most vividly and forcefully made by Fanon, Frantz, especially in The Wretched of the Earth (New York, 1968 edn.), it is also advanced by James, op. cit. pp. 27–40.Google Scholar

page 383 note 1 Pratt, op. cit. p. 71.

page 383 note 2 Nyerere, Julius K., Freedom and Development/ Uhuru na Maendeleo: a selection from writings and speeches, 1968–1973 (Oxford and Dar es Salam, 1973), pp. 6–7. Susanne D. Mueller has noted the striking similarities between the ujamaa programme in Tanzania and the Narodnik movement in Russia, which was founded on the belief that traditional peasant communalism, based on the mir, would form the basis of a truly Russian socialism; see ‘Retarded Capitalism in Tanzania’,Google Scholar in Miliband, Ralph and Saville, John (eds.), The Socialist Register, 1980 (London, 1980), pp. 203–26. Mueller argues that the ‘reactionary utopianism’ and economic stagnation which result from movements of this type have thwarted the transition to socialism in Tanzania.Google Scholar

page 383 note 3 Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, p. 444, extracted from Nkrumah, Kwame, Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (London, 1968).Google Scholar

page 383 note 4 See Nkrumah, Kwame, Class Struggle in Africa (New York, edn.).Google Scholar

page 384 note 1 Shivji, op. cit. For a survey of ‘left’ critiques of Nyerere's theory, see Cranford Pratt, ‘Tanzania's Transition to Socialism’, loc. cit. pp. 194–207.

page 384 note 2 Nkrumah, Class Struggle in Africa, pp. 64–74.

page 384 note 3 Nkrumah was unclear as to whether the peasantry in Africa was, in fact, part of the proletariat. For instance, in Class Struggle in Africa, p. 79, he writes that ‘The countryside is the bastion of the revolution. It is the revolutionary battlefield in which the peasantry in alliance with their natural class allies the proletariat and revolutionary intelligentsia are the driving force’ (my emphasis), while on p. 80 he refers to the proletariat as ‘comprising workers and peasants’.

page 385 note 1 See Nyerere, Ujamaa, p. 1.

page 385 note 2 Ibid.

page 385 note 3 Ibid. pp. 88–9.

page 385 note 4 This point is made by Pratt, op. cit. pp. 72–7.

page 385 note 5 Nkrumah, Consciencism, pp. 58ff.

page 386 note 1 Bernstein, Eduard, Evolutionary Socialism (London, 1909; republished, New York, 1961).Google Scholar

page 386 note 2 Nkrumah, Consciencism, pp. 73–4.

page 386 note 3 See, for example, Nyerere, Ujamaa, p. 11. Pratt notes, op. cit. p. 77, that ‘Nyerere…argued that there were no sharply differentiated economic classes in African society’. For a discussion of the issues concerning the existence or absence of classes in Africa, see Cohen, Robin, ‘Class in Africa: analytical problems and perspectives’, in Miliband, Ralph and Savile, John (eds.), The Socialist Register, 1972 (London, 1972), pp. 231–56.Google Scholar

page 386 note 4 Cf. Nkrumah, Class Struggle in Africa, p. 10, ‘A fierce class struggle has been raging in Africa’.

page 386 note 5 Bernstein first developed his ideas on reform and parliamentary socialism in a series of articles between 1896 and 1898 in Die neue Zeit. These were expanded and published in book form in 1899 under the title Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgabe der Sozialdemskratie, from which Evolutionary Socialism was drawn. For an explanation of Bernstein's arguments and the criticisms they draw, see McLellan, David, Marxism After Marx (Boston, 1979), pp. 20–41, and Sidney Hook's introduction to Evolutionary Socialism.Google Scholar

page 386 note 6 The most important and searing criticisms of Bernstein can be found in Lenin's What Is to Be Done? and Rosa Luxemburg's Social Reform or Revolution? The former has been republished, for example, in Tucker, Robert C., The Lenin Anthology (New York, 1975),Google Scholar and the latter in Howard, Dick (ed.), Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxemburg (New York and London, 1977).Google Scholar

page 386 note 7 See, for example, Nkrumah, Consciencism, p. 72.

page 387 note 1 Cf. Nkrumah, Class Struggle in Africa, p. 85, ‘But as long as violence continues to be used against the African peoples, the Party cannot achieve its objectives without the use of all forms of political struggle, including armed struggle’.

page 387 note 2 Miliband, Ralph, Marxism and Politics (Oxford, 1977), p. 166.Google Scholar

page 387 note 3 Ibid. p. 161.

page 387 note 4 Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, p. 439.

page 387 note 5 Pratt, op. Cit. p. 243.

page 388 note 1 Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, p. 466.

page 388 note 2 Nyerere, Ujamaa, p. 16.

page 388 note 3 Within Ghana this vanguard was the Convention People's Party (C.P.P.). Later Nkrumah proposed the formation of an All-African Committee for Political Co-ordination and an All-African People's Revolutionary Army to play this rôle for the continent as a whole. See Book 2, ch. 1, pt. B of Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, extracts of which appear in Revolutionary Path.

page 388 note 4 See, for instance, Nkrumah, Kwame, Africa Must Unite (London and New York, 1963).Google Scholar

page 388 note 5 Nyerere, Ujamaa, p. 1.

page 389 note 1 Ibid.

page 389 note 2 Ibid.

page 389 note 3 This reading of Marx applies, of course, more to the ‘late Marx’ than the author of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

page 389 note 4 For a discussion of the economics of forced industialisarion in Ghana, see Card, Emily, ‘The Political Economy of Ghana’, in Harris, Richard (ed.), The Political Economy of Africa (New York, 1975), pp. 49–92.Google Scholar

page 390 note 1 Two Section headings of the Arusha Declaration, which outlined Nyerere's strategy for the development of socialism in Tanzania, were entitled ‘We Have Put Too Much Emphasis on Industries’, and ‘Agriculture Is the Basis of Development’. For more on the economics of the ujamaa programme, see Jonathan Baker, ‘The Debate on Rural Socialism in Tanzania’, and Jannik Boesen, ‘Tanzania: from ujamaa to villagization’, both in Mwansasu and Pratt (eds.), op. cit.; also Temu, Peter, ‘The Ujamaa Experiment’, in Kim, Kwan S. et al. (eds.), Papers on the Political Economy of Tanzania (Nairobi, 1979), pp. 197–2Google Scholar

page 390 note 2 For example, according to Nyerere, Ujamaa, p. 92, ‘If the pursuit of wealth clashes with things like human dignity and social equality, then the latter will be given priority’. But as Lofchie argues in ‘Agrarian Socialism in the Third World’, the abysmal economic performance of the ujamaa programme has led to its de-emphasis. However, Goran Hyden, op. cit. pp. 194ff., makes a point similar to Nyerere's argument, when he notes that a socialist strategy for development cannot be evaluated on economic performance alone.

page 391 note 1 Mohan, Jitendra, ‘Nkrumah and Nkrumahism’, in Miliband and Savile (eds.), op. cit. 1967, p. 211.Google Scholar

page 391 note 2 Agot, Bethwell A., ‘Nkrumah Revisits Marx’, in East Africa Journal (Nairobi), 1, 3, 06 1964, p. 30.Google Scholar

page 391 note 3 The parallels between Nyerere and Rousseau have been noted by Pratt, op. cit. p. 73.

page 391 note 4 According to Pratt, loc. cit. p. 203, ‘Marxist socialists have come to the conclusion that Tanzania can no longer be judged to be in transition to socialism’. Examples and further discussions of these ‘left’ critiques can be found in Shivji, op. cit.; Tordoff, William and Mazrui, Ali A., ‘The Left and the Super-Left in Tanzania’ in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 10, 3, 10 1972, pp. 427–45;Google ScholarMulei, Christopher, ‘The Predicament of the Left in Tanzania’, in East Africa Journal, 9, 8, 08 1972, p. 32; Susanne D. Mueller, ‘Retarded Capitalism in Tanzania’;Google Scholar and Leys, Cohn, ‘The Overdeveloped Post-Colonial State: a reevaluation’, in Review of African Political Economy (London), 5, 01–04 1976, pp. 39–48.Google Scholar