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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.newframe.com/from-the-archive-part-one-marxism-and-african-liberation/?fbclid=IwAR0yY4uRKcWPDSpeM0sHyl2TLwZLidBxDAFO9eAj5XSoxnLj4AnX2Gc7XKg">https://www.newframe.com/from-the-archive-part-one-marxism-and-african-liberation/?fbclid=IwAR0yY4uRKcWPDSpeM0sHyl2TLwZLidBxDAFO9eAj5XSoxnLj4AnX2Gc7XKg</a></font></div><div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element"><font size="1"><br></font></div><div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element"><font size="1"><b>July 30, 2020</b><br></font></div><div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Marxism and African liberation</h1><div>
By: <a class="gmail-text" href="https://www.newframe.com/writer/walter-rodney/">Walter Rodney</a>
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<p><em>In 1980, Walter Rodney was assassinated by a car bomb in Georgetown, Guyana. He gave this </em><a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/rodney-walter/works/marxismandafrica.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>speech</em></a><em> at Queen’s College, New York, in 1975. The transcript is taken from </em>Yes to Marxism!<em>, People’s Progressive Party, Georgetown, Guyana, 1986.</em></p>
<p>First of all, we must understand the background for this kind of
debate. When one is asked to speak on the relevance of Marxism to Africa
at this particular time, one is being asked to involve oneself in an
historical debate, an ongoing debate in this country, particularly among
the black population. It is a debate which has heightened over the last
year, and from my own observations, it is being waged in a large number
of places across this country.</p>
<p>Sometimes it appears in the guise of the so-called Nationalist versus
the Marxist; sometimes it appears in the guise of those who claim to
espouse a class position as opposed to those who claim to espouse a race
position. Thus it would not be possible for us in a single session to
enter into all the ramifications of that debate, but it does form the
background for our discussion.</p>
<p>It is an important debate. It is an important fact that such issues
are being debated in this country today, just as they’re being debated
in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America and in many parts of the
metropolitan world in Western Europe and in Japan. Because the
widespread nature of the debate and its intensity at this time is a
reflection of the crisis in the capitalist-imperialist mode of
production. Ideas and discussion do not just drop from the sky. There is
not simply a plot on the part of certain individuals to engage others
in a meaningless debate.</p>
<p>Whatever the outcome of the debate, whatever the posture the
different participants adopt, the very fact of the debate is
representative of the crisis in capitalism and imperialism today; and as
the crisis deepens, people find it more and more difficult to accept
the old modes of thought which rationalise the system which is
collapsing. Hence the need to search for new directions, and quite
clearly, Marxism, scientific socialism poses itself as one of the most
obvious of the available options.</p>
<p>The question is not new to Africa or to the black people as a whole –
that is perhaps essential to understand. Many of us have raised before
the question of the relevance of Marxism to this or that. Its relevance
to Europe; many European intellectuals debated its relevance to their
own society. Its relevance to Asia was debated by Asians. Its relevance
to Latin America was debated by Latin Americans. Individuals have long
debated the relevance of Marxism to their own time. Was it relevant to
the 19th century? If so, was it still relevant to the 20th century? One
can debate its relevance to a given facet of the culture of society or
to the society’s law or culture as a whole.</p>
<p>These are all issues that have been debated before and we should have
some sense of history when we approach this question today, because
with that sense of history we can ask, why is it that the question of
the relevance of Marxism to society always crops up? And, in a very
brief answer, I would suggest that what is common to the application of
the question is first of all, a condition of struggle, a condition in
which people are dissatisfied with the dominant mode of perceiving
reality.</p>
<p>At that point they ask about the relevance of Marxism.</p>
<p>More than that, the second condition is that people ask the question
because of their own bourgeois framework. One starts out located within
the dominant mode of reasoning, which is the mode of reasoning that
supports capitalism and which we will call a bourgeois framework of
perception. And because one starts out that way, it becomes necessary to
raise the question about the relevance of Marxism.</p>
<p>After one is advanced, it is probably more accurate to raise the
question of the relevance of bourgeois thought, because the shoe would
be on the other foot!</p>
<p>But initially, it is true that however much the bourgeoisie disagree,
there is one common uniting strand to all bourgeois thought: they make
common cause in questioning the relevance, the logic, and so on, of
Marxist thought. And therefore, in a sense, unfortunately, when we ask
that question we are also fitting into that framework and pattern. We
are also, in some way, still embedded to a greater or lesser extent in
the framework, of bourgeois thought, and from that framework we ask with
a great degree of hesitancy and uncertainty – what is the relevance of
Marxism?</p>
<p>It is particularly true in our part of the world, that is, the
English-speaking part of the world, because the Anglo-American tradition
is one of intense hostility, philosophically speaking, towards Marxism,
a hostility that manifests itself in a peculiar way. It manifests
itself by trying to dissociate itself even from the study of Marxism. If
you were to check on the continental tradition in Europe, you would
find it is not the same. French, German and Belgian intellectuals,
whatever their perspective, understand the importance of Marxism. They
study it, they relate to it, they understand the body of thought which
is called Marxism and they take a position vis-à-vis that body of
thought.</p>
<p>In the English tradition, which was also handed down to this part of
the world, to the Caribbean, to many parts of Africa, it is fashionable
to disavow any knowledge of Marxism. It is fashionable to glory in one’s
ignorance, to say that we are against Marxism. When pressed about it
one says – but why bother to read it? It is obviously absurd.</p>
<p>So one knows it is absurd without reading it and one doesn’t read it
because one knows it is absurd, and therefore one glories in one’s
ignorance of the position.</p>
<p>It is rather difficult to seriously address the question of the
relevance of Marxism unless one does the basic minimum of accepting that
one should attempt to enter into this full body of thought, because it
is a tremendous body of literature and analysis, and from the outside as
it were, it is extremely difficult.</p>
<p>Indeed, I would say it is pointless, strictly from the outside,
without ever having moved towards trying to grapple with what it is, to
ask what is its relevance. It is almost an unanswerable question; and I
think in all modesty, that for those of us who came from a certain
background (and we all come from that background), one of the first
things we have to do is establish a basis of familiarity with the
different intellectual traditions, and as we become familiar with them
we can then be in a better position to evaluate Marxism’s relevance or
irrelevance, as the case might be.</p>
<p>I will proceed on the assumption that what we are trying to discern
in this discussion is whether the variants of time and place are
relevant or, let me put it another way, whether the variants of time and
place make a difference to whether Marxism is relevant or not. In a
sense we would almost have to assume its validity for the place in which
it originated, Western Europe. We don’t have the time to deal with that
in detail. But we can then ask, assuming that Marxism has a relevance,
has a meaning, has an applicability to Western Europe, or had in the
19th century, to what extent does its validity extend geographically? To
what extent does its validity extend across time?</p>
<p>These are the two variables, time and place; and those can be
translated to mean historical circumstances, time and culture which
means the place, and what social and cultural conditions exist in each
particular place. For us, to make it more precise, black people, no
doubt well-meaning black people, ask the question whether an ideology
which was historically generated within the culture of Western Europe in
the 19th century is, today, in the third quarter of the 20th century,
still valid for another part of the world, namely Africa, or the
Caribbean, or black people in this country; whether it is valid to other
societies at other times. And this is the kind of formulation which I
wish to present for discussion.</p>
<h2><strong>The methodology of Marxism</strong></h2>
<p>I would suggest two basic reasons why I believe that Marxist thought,
scientific socialist thought, would exist at different levels, at
different times, in different places and retain its potential as a tool,
as a set of conceptions which people should grasp.</p>
<p>The first is to look at Marxism, as a methodology, because a
methodology would, virtually by definition, be independent of time and
place. You will use the methodology at any given time, at any given
place. You may get different results, of course, but the methodology
itself would be independent of time and place.</p>
<p>And essentially, to engage in a rather truncated presentation of
Marxism, inevitably oversimplifying, but nevertheless necessary in the
context of limited time I would suggest that, one of the real bases of
Marxist thought is that it starts from a perspective of man’s
relationship to the material world; and that Marxism, when it arose
historically, consciously dissociated itself from and pitted itself
against all other modes of perception which started with ideas, with
concepts and with words; and rooted itself in the material conditions
and in the social relations in society.</p>
<p>This is the difference with which I will start. A methodology which
begins its analysis of any society, of any situation, by seeking the
relations which arise in production between men. There are a whole
variety of things which flow from that: man’s consciousness is formed in
the intervention in nature; nature itself is humanised through its
interaction with man’s labour; and man’s labour produces a constant
stream of technology which in turn creates other social changes.</p>
<p>So this is the crux of the scientific socialist perception. A
methodology that addresses itself to man’s relationship in the process
of production on the assumption, which I think is a valid assumption,
that production is not merely the basis of man’s existence, but the
basis for defining man as a special kind of being with a certain
consciousness.</p>
<p>It is only through production that the human race differentiates itself from the rest of the primate’s and the rest of life.</p>
<p>What does Marxism pose itself against? It poses itself against a
number of hypotheses, a number of views of the world which start with
words and concepts. For those who are familiar with Marx’s own
evolution, it is well known that he started by looking first at Hegel, a
very plausible and perceptive analyst of the 19th century who was
guilty, in Marx’s own estimation, of putting forward an entirely
idealist position, one that placed ideas in the centre of the universe
and saw the material world as virtually deriving from those ideas.</p>
<p>In thinking about this, I felt that I wouldn’t go into Hegel. I would
go further than Hegel. for a classic exposition of the idealist world
view. I take it from the New Testament, the Book of John, where he
stated: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And
the Word was God.” That is the classic exposition of the idealist
position. You take every other thing from there: the Word was God!</p>
<p>But we are suggesting that the word is itself an emanation from
people’s activity as they attempt to communicate with each other, as
they develop social relations out of production, and that we shouldn’t
be mystified with words. Oh, naturally enough we will have to deal with
concepts and with the force of consciousness, which is a very powerful
force and one that even some Marxists have been tempted to
underestimate.</p>
<p>Now, Marx, taking that broad framework of methodology, tried to apply
it to Western Europe. He applied it to a range of societies in
different places and at different times; but he concentrated his
attention on Western Europe. If you examine the body of literature
produced by Marx and Engels, you will find that they speak about
slavery, about communal society, about feudalism, but by and large, they
concentrated on capitalism. They hardly even talk about socialism.</p>
<p>Marx’s great contribution was his fantastic critique of an existing
society, capitalist society. How did it come into being in a particular
part of the world? The vast majority of their literature concerns this
question.</p>
<p>But, as I said when I referred to pre-capitalist society, especially
feudalism, they talked about some other parts of the world. Occasionally
Marx mentions the Asiatic mode of production. Occasionally he came
across to look at the data concerning the United States. So he had
something of a geographical span and a long time span.</p>
<p>But it was so minimal in comparison with the bulk of his work that it
is true that a lot of people have taken Marx’s method and his
conclusions and have seen them as one and the same thing – that Marxism
is not merely a certain methodology applied to Western Europe, but is
itself an ideology about Western Europe, about capitalism in the 19th
century and cannot transcend those boundaries, when clearly Marx was
doing the job he had to do. He was looking at his own society, he was
doing it under some of the most adverse conditions, he was doing it by
mastering bourgeois knowledge and putting it to the service of change
and revolution.</p>
<p>I would suggest, then, that the method was independent of time and
place. It is implicit in Marx and it becomes explicit in post-Marxian
development, using Marxian in the literal sense of the life of Marx
himself. After Marx’s death you will get the evolution or the
development of scientific socialist thought with other individuals
recognising that the methodology can be applied, must be applied to
different times to different places.</p>
<p>Again, presenting our history in a very abbreviated form, we can look
at Lenin, at his application of Marxist theory to Russian society. That
is one of his principal contributions. The first major thesis of the
young Lenin was the development of capitalism in Russia. He had to deal
with his own society. He had to take those formulations out of the
specific cultural and historical context of Western Europe and look at
Eastern Europe, at Russia which was evolving differently, and apply them
to his own society. This he did.</p>
<p>He had at the same time to consider the time dimension that in the
19th century Marx was writing about what has now come to be called the
classic period of capitalism, the entrepreneurial version of capitalism,
and by the latter 19th century this had given way to monopoly
capitalism. It has given way to imperialism. So Lenin had to deal with
that method by applying it to a new dimension in time. So he wrote about
capitalism in its imperialist stage.</p>
<p>So those are the two variants operating: the ideology; the
methodology of it (we’ll stick to the methodology for the time being)
being applied to different societies at different times. Having made the
point for Lenin, I hope it becomes clear for a number of people: Mao
tse Tung applying it to Chinese society which was a different society
from Russian society. Understanding the inner dynamics of Chinese
society, relating to the question of the peasantry in a different and
more profound way than any previous writer because that was the nature
of Chinese society and he had addressed himself to that.</p>
<p>And finally for our purposes, the most important example, the example
of Amilcar Cabral because he was dealing with Africa. Cabral, in one of
his essays, the one titled <em>The Weapon of Theory</em>, if I recall
correctly, one of his most important essays; began by making clear that
the best he could do was to return to the basic methodology of Marx and
Engels. But it was not possible for Cabral to begin the analysis of the
history of Guinea-Bissau by saying: “I am going to look for classes,”
for example. He said, “If I say this I will be denying that my people
have any history because I do not perceive classes for a long period in
the genesis of my own people.”</p>
<p>Then he referred back to Marx’s and Engels’ classic statement that
“the history of all existing societies is the history of class
struggle”, to which Engels had appended a note saying that by “all
history”, we mean “all previously recorded history”. It so happens that
the history of the people of Guinea-Bissau hasn’t been recorded and
Cabral says, “I want to record that history. We will use the Marxian
method. We will not be tied by the concept which arose historically in
Western Europe when Marx was studying that society.”</p>
<p>Marx uses the method and he discerned the evolution of classes and of
the phenomenon of classes itself as being a major determinant, the
major determinant in Western European history at a particular point in
time. Cabral says we will begin at the beginning. We will not even
concern ourselves initially with classes. We will simply look at men in
the process of production. We will look at modes of production in the
history of Guinea, and we will see how our society evolved. So without
much of a fanfare he was showing the relevance of that methodology to
African society.</p>
<p>If, and when, in the history of Guinea-Bissau, the aspect of class
appears to have historical importance, then Cabral dealt with it. Until
such time, he simply stuck to the basis of Marxian methodology which was
to look at Guinean people in the process of production, at the various
modes of production, social formations, cultural formations which arose
historically and the direction in which the society was tending.</p>
<p>In many respects, when we ask the question today about the relevance
of Marxism to black people, we have already reached a minority position,
as it were. Many of those engaged in the debate present the debate as
though Marxism is a European phenomenon and black people responding to
it must of necessity be alienated because the alienation of race must
enter into the discussion.</p>
<p>They seem not to take into account that already that methodology and
that ideology have been utilised, internalised, domesticated in large
parts of the world that are not European.</p>
<p>That it is already the ideology of 800 million Chinese people; that
it is already the ideology which guided the Vietnamese people to
successful struggle and to the defeat of imperialism. That it is already
the ideology which allows North Korea to transform itself from a
backward, quasi-feudal, quasi-colonial terrain into an independent,
industrial power. That it is already the ideology which has been adopted
on the Latin American continent and that serves as the basis for
development in the Republic of Cuba. That it is already the ideology
which was used by Cabral, which was used by Samora Machel, which is in
use on the African continent itself to underline and underscore struggle
and the construction of a new society.</p>
<p>It cannot therefore be termed a European phenomenon; and the onus
will certainly be on those who argue that this phenomenon, which was
already universalised itself, is somehow inapplicable to some black
people. The onus will be on those individuals, I suggest, to show some
reason, perhaps genetic, why the genes of black people reject this
ideological position.</p>
<p>When we investigate and try to centralise or keep central the concept
of relevance, we must ask ourselves questions about the present. What
kind of society do we live in today? What kind of societies do black
people live in today in different parts of the world? And while, of
course, we as black people in this country, in the Caribbean and in
different parts of Africa have our own independent historical
experience, one of the central facts is that we are all in one way or
another, located within the capitalist system of production.</p>
<p>The society about which Marx wrote, through a process of outgrowth,
dominated Africa and the Americas in the era of mercantilism which was
the period that capitalism was growing to maturity. It dominated these
parts of the world. It created slave society in the Americas.</p>
<p>Subsequent to the slave era, capitalism, even more powerful, was able
to incorporate the whole world into a global network of production
which derived from Western Europe and North America, a system which had a
metropolitan centre or set of metropolitan centres, and a separate set
of peripheries, colonies and semi-colonies.</p>
<p>So that we have all, historically, been incorporated within the
capitalist system of production, and that is another dimension of the
relevance of Marxism.</p>
<p>Even without the translation in terms of time and place, it seems to
me that if we have become part of the capitalist-imperialist world, then
we owe it to ourselves to relate to, to follow, to understand and to
hopefully adopt and adapt a critique of that capitalist system because
that is essentially what Marx’s writing is about. He was critiquing that
capitalist system. He did so more effectively than any bourgeois
writer, and if we want to understand the world in which we live, which
is the world dominated by capitalism then we must understand the centre
of that system, the motor within that system, the types of exploitation
which are to be found within the capitalist mode of production. So that
is yet another factor.</p><p>
<strong>This article was first published by </strong><em><strong>New Frame</strong></em>.
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