Essence and Empiricism in African Politics

Otwin Marenin

doi:10.1017/S0022278X00054082

Essence and Empiricism in African Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008

Otwin Marenin

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What is ‘essence’ and what is ‘appearance’ in African politics? Does class or interest-group analysis describe and explain the various realities? These questions are unanswerable without an examination of the methods by which claims to correct understanding are made. All claims to knowledge are arbitrary until the methods of enquiry and the justification for their validity are made explicit.

Type: Articles
Information: The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 1 - 30

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X00054082 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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^{page 2 note 2} Ibid. pp. 171–2.

^{page 2 note 3} Ibid. p. 173.

^{page 3 note 1} Ibid. p. 178.

^{page 3 note 2} Ibid. p. 180.

^{page 3 note 3} Ibid. p. 193.

^{page 3 note 4} Ibid. p. 195.

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^{page 10 note 3} Nicos Poulantzas, ‘The Problem of the Capitalist State’ in Blackburn (ed), op. cit. p. 241.

^{page 10 note 4} Ibid. p. 244.

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^{page 12 note 1} Ollman, ‘Marxism and Political Science’.

^{page 12 note 2} Tse-tung, Mao, Five Essays on Philosophy (Peking, 1977 edn.).Google Scholar

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^{page 13 note 2} Ossowski, op. cit. pp. 74–88.

^{page 14 note 1} Ake, Claude, Revolutionary Pressures in Africa (London, 1978), p. 59.Google Scholar

^{page 14 note 2} Poulantzas, ‘The Problem of the Capitalist State’, loc.cit. See also Miliband, Ralph, The State in Capitalist Society (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

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^{page 16 note 1} Ibid. pp. 61–2.

^{page 16 note 2} Ake, Claude, A Theory of Political Integration (Homewood, III., 1967).Google Scholar

^{page 16 note 3} Ake, Revolutionary Pressures in Africa, p. 63.

^{page 16 note 4} Ibid. pp. 97–8. Cf. Popper, Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York, 1955).Google Scholar

^{page 16 note 5} Ake, Revolutionary Pressures in Africa, p. 102.

^{page 17 note 1} Samoff, Joel, ‘Class, Class Conflict and the State: notes on the political economy of Africa’, African Studies Association, Houston, 1977, p. 9.Google Scholar

^{page 17 note 2} Ibid. p. 31, fn. 10.

^{page 17 note 3} Ibid. pp. 9–10.

^{page 17 note 4} Ibid. p. 11.

^{page 17 note 5} Ibid. p. 17.

^{page 18 note 1} Ibid. p. 18.

^{page 18 note 2} Ibid. pp. 21–2.

^{page 18 note 3} Ibid. p. 32, fn. 12.

^{page 19 note 1} Sklar, Richard, ‘Socialism at Bay: class domination in Africa’, African Studies Association, Houston, 1977,Google Scholar and ‘On the Concept of Power in Political Economy’, essay prepared for a Festschrift in honour of F. D. Wormuth, Salt Lake City, 09 1979.Google Scholar

^{page 19 note 2} Sklar, ‘Socialism at Bay’, pp. 19–20.

^{page 19 note 3} Ibid. p. 16.

^{page 19 note 4} Ibid. p. 21.

^{page 20 note 1} Sklar, ‘On the Concept of Power in Political Economy’.

^{page 20 note 2} Ibid. pp. 15–16.

^{page 20 note 3} Ibid. p. 28.

^{page 20 note 4} Sklar, ‘Socialism at Bay’, pp. 25–6.

^{page 20 note 5} Mamdani, Mahmood, ‘Class Struggles in Uganda’, African Association of Political Science, Lagos, 1976, and Politics and Class Formation in Uganda (New York and London, 1976).Google Scholar

^{page 21 note 1} Mamdani, op.cit. pp. 11; and 14. In the published earlier version of this paper, the first phrase reads ‘but acted as a single force at the level of politics’ (my emphasis). Mamdani, , ‘Class Struggles in Uganda’, in Review of African Political Economy (London), 4, 11 1975, p. 33.Google Scholar

^{page 21 note 2} MacGaffey, Wyatt, review of Mamdani, Mahmood, Politics and Class Formation in Uganda, and of Shivji, Issa G., Class Struggles in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam, 1975),Google Scholar in African Studies Association Review of Books (Waltham, Mass.), IV, 1978, p. 83.Google Scholar See also Williams, Gavin, ‘There is No Theory of Petty Bourgeois Politics’, in Review of African Political Economy, 6, 05–08 1976, pp. 84–9.Google Scholar

^{page 21 note 3} Beirne, Piers, ‘Marxism and the Sociology of Law: theory and practise’, in British Journal of Law and Society (London), 2, Summer 1975, p. 80.CrossRef Google Scholar

^{page 21 note 4} Claude Ake, ‘The Congruence of Political Economies and Ideologies in Africa’, in Gutkind and Wallterstein (eds.), op. cit. pp. 198–211, and ‘Explanatory Notes on the Political Economy of Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, XIV, 1, March 1976, pp. 1–23.

^{page 22 note 1} Gutkind, Peter C. W., ‘From the Energy of Despair to the Anger of Despair the transition from social circulation to political consciousness among the urban poor in Africa’, in Canadian Journal of African Studies (Ottawa), VII, 2, 1973, pp. 179–98,Google Scholar and ‘The View from Below: political consciousness of the urban poor in Ibadan’, in Cahiers d'études africaines (Paris), XV, 1, 1975, pp. 5–35Google Scholar; Williams, Gavin, ‘Political Consciousness among the Ibadan Poor’, in de Kadt, Emanuel and Williams, (eds.), Sociology and Development (London, 1974)Google Scholar; and Sandbrook, Richard and Cohen, Robin (eds.), The Development of an African Working Class: studies in class formation and action (London, 1975).Google Scholar

^{page 22 note 2} Ollman, ‘Toward Consciousness Next Time’; see also Bott, E., ‘Concepts of Class’, in Rose, R. (ed.), Studies in British Politics (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

^{page 22 note 3} Giddens, A., The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (New York, 1975), pp. 111–13Google Scholar; and Cohen, op. cit.

^{page 22 note 4} Osoba, S., ‘The Deepening Crises of the Nigerian National Bourgeoisie’, text of lecture at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, 02 1978, p. 19.Google Scholar

^{page 22 note 5} Wallerstein, Immanuel, ‘Social Conflict in Post–Independence Black Africa: the concepts of race and status-group reconsidered’, in Campbell, Ernest Q. (ed.), Racial Tensions and National Identity (Nashville, 1972), pp. 207–26.Google Scholar

^{page 23 note 1} Marx cited by Lipset, S. M., Revolution and Counterrevolution (Garden City, 1970 edn.), p. 199.Google Scholar

^{page 23 note 2} Marx cited by Ashcraft, op. cit. p. 21.

^{page 23 note 3} Oculi, Okello, ‘On Marx's Attitude to Colonialism’, in The African Review (Dar es Salaam), IV, 3, 1974, pp. 459–71Google Scholar; also Melotti, op. cit. pp. 54–8.

^{page 24 note 1} Mazrui, Ali A., Political Values and the Educated Class (Berkeley, 1978).Google Scholar

^{page 24 note 2} Kay, Geoffrey, Development and Underdevelopment (London, 1975).Google Scholar

^{page 24 note 3} Coquery-Vidrovitch, loc. cit. p. 104.

^{page 24 note 4} Magubane, loc. cit.

^{page 25 note 1} Amin, Samir, Accumulation on a World Scale: a critique of the theory of underdevelopment (New York, 1974).Google Scholar There is an emerging argument against this notion, though; see Swainson, Nicola, ‘The Rise of a National Bourgeoisie in Kenya’, in Review of African Political Economy (London), 8, 01–04 1977, pp. 39–55Google Scholar; Rana, Kipkorir A. A., ‘Class Formation and Social Conflict: a case study of Kenya’, in Ufahamu (Los Angeles), VII, 3, 1977, pp. 17–72Google Scholar; and Colin, Leys, Underdevelopment in Kenya: the political economy of neo-colonialism, 1964–1971 (Berkeley, 1975).Google Scholar

^{page 25 note 2} Sklar, ‘Socialism at Bay’, p. 30.

^{page 25 note 3} Ekekwe, E. N., ‘Toward the African Revolution: the peasantry, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie’, Canadian Association of African Studies, Quebec, 1977.Google Scholar

^{page 25 note 4} Wallerstein, Immanuel, ‘Class and Class Conflict in Contemporary Africa’, in Canadian Journal of African Studies, VII, 3, 1973, p. 377.Google Scholar

^{page 25 note 5} Skocpol, Theda, ‘Wallerstein's World Capitalist System: a theoretical and historical critique’, in American Journal of Sociology (Chicago), 82, 5, 03 1977, p. 1088.CrossRef Google Scholar

^{page 26 note 1} Hutchful, Eboe, ‘The Military-Bureaucratic State in Ghana’, African Association of Political Science, Rabat, 1977, p. 4.Google Scholar

^{page 26 note 2} Gutkind, Peter C. W. and Wallerstein, Immanuel, ‘Introduction’, in Gutkind, and Wallerstein, (eds.), The Political Economy of Contemporary Africa (Beverly Hills and London, 1976), p. 11.Google Scholar

^{page 26 note 3} Collins, Paul, Turner, Terisa, and Williams, Gavin, ‘Capitalism and the Coup’, in Williams, (ed), Nigeria: economy and society (London, 1976), pp. 185–92.Google Scholar

^{page 26 note 4} Ake, ‘The Congruence of Political Economies and Ideologies in Africa, loc. cit.

^{page 26 note 5} Cohen, Abner, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: a study of Hausa migrants to Yoruba towns (Berkeley, 1969)Google Scholar; Kasfir, Nelson, The Shrinking Political Arena: participation and ethnicity in African politics, with a case study of Uganda (Berkeley, 1976)Google Scholar; and Young, Crawford, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison, 1976).Google Scholar

^{page 27 note 1} Habermas, Jürgen, Theory and Practise (Boston, 1973).Google Scholar

^{page 29 note 1} Shivji. op. cit. p. 4.

^{page 29 note 2} Ossowski, op. cit. p. 193.

^{page 30 note 1} Cited in Melotti, op. cit. p. 7.

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