THE SUPERMARXISTS AND PAN -AFRlCANISM+ ++ Opoku Agyeman "I still feel it (Marxism) has been one of the most important phenomena in history and one of the greatest catalysts for change and transformation of society. The mistake of orthodox Marxists was to assume that the Manifesto, published in 1847, contained immutable scientific truth". 1 "I think I have said enough to make it understood that it is neither Marxism nor Communism that I renounce, but it is the use that certain people have made of Marxism and Communism of which I disapprove. What I want is Marxism and Commu- nism to be placed in the services of the black peoples and not the black peoples in the service of Marxism and Communism" . 2 Once, not so long ago, academic solicitude nodded in the.clirection of the containment of an extremism which, underlain by a determination to have no truck with socialism, sought a capitalistic camouflage in Afri- can SOcialist uniqueness. Today's burden, for those unamused by hollow and unreal formulae, is to combat another kind of excess - the fervenl emphasis on superordinate proletarianism by those seeking an escape from any kind of tangible commitment. We are reminded of Rousseau's cosmopolitans who try to "justify their love of their country by the love of the human race and make a boast of loving no one". It is a case'where a non-committal existence seeks a specious respectability in internation- alism. The article of faith of Africa's cosmopolitans is to oppose Pan- Africanism - the creation of a massive and potent African nation - in !he name of their love of the world's workers. The enterprise of cr-eat- " ~~ ing and building an African continental nation, of course, calls for assiduous dedication and creativity. I t becomes necessary for those who would rather not be a part of an ennobling but exacting- conjecture to ex- cuse themselves. Their way of doing this is to see Marxism and Pan-. Africanism in dichotomous terms as mutually exclusive polar opposites. +Adopted from "The Supermarxists and Pan-Africanism", mimeo, Univer- sity of Dar es Salaam, 1977. ++Formerly, Lecturer, Department of Political Science, UniVei-sity of Dar es Salaam. Presently at University of California. 45 It was not always like this. The proponent of the most radical school of pan-Africanism, Kwame Nkrumah, declared pan-Africanism and scienti- fic socialism to be "organically complementary". There was no pO$sibility of attaining genuine socialist objectives in Africa without the foundation of a pan-African state that was not harnessed to socialism would be self- defeating, in that, among other things, it would only smooth the way for a more effective penetration by capitalistic imperialism. A socialist pan- African state, then - in the thinking of the Osagyefo - is the credible and viable anti-imperialist strategy, as also of African resurgence, in the continent. The Marxist Jolm Saul, among other thinkers, has endorsed this view of "the necessarily continental sweep of strategic calculation in contemporary Africa", saying unity is a "prerequisite for genuine conti- nental advancement". 3 The lack of an industrialization strategy _ the root of economic impotence - must, he continues, be traced to the "difficulty of envisaging full-fledged economic transformation taking place within the African political and economic units in their present balkanized form". 4 The major strength of Nkrumah's efforts in the cause of African unity "always lay in the vision of meaningful continental planning for development which accompanied them". Saul then goes on to back this argument of imperative integration with the authority of Green and Seidman: "The gravest barrier to African economic development becomes apparent at this point. No African state is economically large enough to construct a modern econo- my alone. Africa as a whole has the resources for indus- trialization but it is split among more than forty African territories. Africa as a whole could provide markets able to support large-scale, efficient industrial complexes; no single African state nor existing sub-regional economic union can do so. African states cannot establish large- scale productive complexes stimulating demand through- out the economy as poles of rapid economic growth becau .. se their markets are far too small. Instead, the separate tiny economies willynilly plan on lines leading to the dead end of excessive dependence on raw materials exports and small scale inefficient "national factories" at high cost per unit of output. Inevitably, therefore, they fail to reduce substantially their basic dependence on foreign markets, complex manufactures and capital. "The only way to achieve the economic reconstruction and development essential to fulfil the aspiratIons, needs and demands of the peoples of Africa is through a sustained 46 shift to continental planning so as to unite increasingly the resources, markets, and capital of Africa in a single sub- stantial economic unit". 5 John Saul, like Nkrumah, is insistent that the pan-Africanism in question must be a "progressive" one, and not one aimed at easing the further penetration of the African economies by the multinational cor- porations whose profit - oriented calculations could only "further the process of growth without development which is already a foot". 6 The view here, in other words, is that in order to realize "its full prog- ressive potential", pan-Africanism must be related to "a growing rea- lization on the part of African radicals that their revolution is part and parcel of a world - wider anti- imperialist struggle". 7 Even so, Saul, like another Western Marxist, Angela Davis, is careful to stress that such a latching of Pan-Africanism to global anti-imperialism must not entail the "submergence" of Pan-Africanism - thE subordination of all the problems that relate to blacks "as a people". The African Supermarxists. This is the view of a Western Marxist - one supportive of Pan- Africanism. But then John Saul is not an African SuperMarxist. lt is the latter who has a self-appointed mission to exorcise Pan-Africanism from the continent and the world. It is strange, but Africans truly have a knack for carrying every adopted creed to a disease. lt is their way of showing that they are more Marxist Or more Christian than those with whom Marxism or Christianity is original. We have a good example of this in the Soweto of 1976. When a white pest control overseer strayed into the black township at a time Africans by the scores were being club- bed Or shot to death by the excited apartheid police, he was suffused with love and tenderness. One woman obliged him a triumphant welcome: "Come to my house. This is the house of God", and then painstakinglr sheltered him from the ho.?t of furious Africans seeking to wreak vengea- nce on him. The super-Christian protector meanwhile dubbed her charge's face in black boot polish, had him concealed in a blanket and driven to safety at nighfall. 9 That is the way of the African over- zealous devotee of Christ- ianity. It was not possible. for our Soweto woman to see that God might desire the symbolic murder of that stray white man for all the un-Chris- 47 tian atrocities committed by Apartheid against black people. No, the black woman of Soweto was capable of only one form of Christian reac- tion - one which conduced to her worst interests. So it is with Dar es Salaam's School of African Marxologists. With the morbid zeal of those with a compulsion to conform to orthodoxy, they posit a contradiction between M arxism and Pan-African nationalism (since Africans are without a nation in the real sense, this is what is at issue), proclaiming the sacred paramountcy of the former. Hence Jacques Depelchin's sneer: "What does Africa mean? The answer, if there is one, would probably be found in mataphysics" - an area far "beyond the scope" of his more immediate, more pressing interests. He goes on: "Many of the institutions that were created after indepe- ndence can be seen as simply an ideological response to colonial ideology. . . Balkanization having been identified with colonialism, the ideological opposite - Pan-Africanism - was seen as the pre-requisite step toward decolonization. The O.A.U . , was the child of this ideology. The concept of African Unity is an empty one of continued oppression. Its only,meaning has been one of continued oppression. If any Unity has been forged or furthered, it has been the unity of the ruling classes of each of the neo-colonies?"ll Is that all that can be said of Pan-Africanism? Is that all it is worth • a scant mention just for it to be dismissed? It is to be noted that Depelchin's usage of ideology hers is in the long - discarded Marxian orthodox signification of a "camouflage to mask the bare and brute facts of economic controls"; an "intellectual rationa- lization of prior economic interests"; "a cosmetic to disguise the ugly 12 facts of priviledge, exploitation and oppression". Even in Marx and Engel's own day, this reading of ideology as necessarily having no inde- pendent validity - as possessing no creative impact, no formative force of its own became anachronistic. But even if one chooses to use it in this outmoded, dogmatic sense, it is strange that one should then gloss over the economic arguments given prominent play in Nkrumah's School which John Saul, for instance, so readily acclaims. That the Organization of African "Unity (O.A.U .) falls woefully short of a progressive pan-African institution goes without saying. But to use this organization as the essence - rather than the apology - of pan- Africanism is clearly to attack a straw man. It is just not true that, at every instance, "the concept of African unity is an empty one as far as 48 the working classes and peasants of the continent are concerned". It is revealing that Depelchin does not bother either to acknowledge or to address the exertions and the achievements of the .Nkrumaist All- Mrican Trade Union Federation (AATUF) in its anti-imperialist campaign which petered out only with Nkrumah's ouster in 1966. 13 It is equally revealing that he does not see his way to suggesting a new pan-African organization of radical states like Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau. The fact of the matter is that the subject does not interest him. It is not only reactionary pan-Africanism that holds scant interest for him. He has no Use for progressive pan-Africanism either. Frankly, a SuperMarxist could not be bothered with "metaphysical" concepts like Africa. An essay by another superMarxist, G..T. Mishambi, 14 is of a piece with Depelchin's - indeed they constitute one paper with the authorship of two - in its readily visible opposition to Pan-Africanism. Mishambi takes Walter Rodney to task for advocating "integration of the markets across large areas of Africa". Rodney's advocacy is predicated on the fact that "it has become common knowledge" that one of the principal reasons why "genuine industrialization" in Africa is difficult today is that the "market for manufactured goods in any single African country is too slp.all". Mishambi is totally underwhelmed by this argument. Indeed it offends the Marxism-Leninism in him to the point where he is moved to -lament the ignorance which prevents Rodney from seeing "that industrialization can be done without a foreign market" .15 If Rodney were tutored in Leninism he would have known that Lenin once did make the point that it is only where - as in capitalist production - there is "uneven development not only between different areas of the same country, but also in different branches of industry" that industrialization becomes tied up with a "foreign marke~"; Even development could be achieved through "natio- nal planning under SOcialism" in that "each branch would find an inter- nal market for its products". This is supposed to dispose of arguments for economic - leave alone political - integration in Africa. It is another instance where an issue is not discussed in the light of reason but is summarily dis- missed by a facile reference to Marxist, or Leninist, revelation. As is so often the case with these Marxologists, every logic, every argument, is supposed to be decisively clinched by the mere citation 49 of a Marxian authority. We are not told what makes Marx's or Lenin's viewpoint ipso facto more valid than that of Nkrumah or Rodney. Is it on account of the differential colour of their skin? We must ask the Marxologists. Is colour what determines the chances of an opinion to the claim of validity? It is difficult to see where the arguments for integration connects with a "foreign market". Weare talking of an Africa that does not have a market in the first place and is seeking to create one. It is the search for indigenous, not foreign - oriented, viability. What is foreign about the prospective creation of an African Market? Lenin, Mishambi's deity, could himself hardly have been thinking of a "foreign market" in such absurd terms, having himself, in his day, enjoyed the advantages of the combined market of one massive nation compesed of twelve Socialist Republics. And yet that is how the Dar es Salaam Marxologist chose to inter- pret Lenin - all in the service of anti pan-Africanism. It is interesting, but the case of the SuperMarxists against pan-Africanism is hardly more profound than the pathetically frivolous one of the soldier Africa, one of the Coup-Makers against Nkrumah's government in 1966. It all hinged on the soldi~r s enduring memory of the glorious British breakfast during his career at Sandhurst. Against the flagrant nostalgia of this delicacy, pan-Mricanism, of whatever hue, could have no chance: "Organization of African Unity or no organization of African unity, I will claim my citizenship ... of the Commonwealth in any part of the world. 1 have been trained in the "LJnitedKingdom as a soldier, and 1 am ever prepared to fight alongside my friends in the U . K. in the same way as Canadians and Australians do ... "16 Not to be outdone, our friends the Marxologists are saying that they could not have any use for Africa when they could fight alongside the soldiery of the world rs prol~tarians. Internationalism. Let us reiterate the main points here. There is no African nation to speak of, and our Marxist purists are all for vehemently opposing the founding of one. This might be a sure way of facilitating their candidacy for membershp of a nation - less universe of stalwart proletarians. But it is also a confession of their unenthusiasm for prosecuting any anti- 50 imperialist crusade in Africa, all their voluble and vociferous protesta- tions notwithstanding. For without a unified African rally, what other developmental strategy is available that can pull o'ff Africa's break with the international capitalist system? As Nkrumah was out to emphasize, "since capitalism has come to the peak of monopoly", it is impossible for any African state singly "to avoid dealing with monopoly in some form or another". This was not an exercise in abstraction. The experiences of African states, the progressive ones included, all bear witness to this. It must also be noted that in thus advocating a nation-less univer- salism, the purists go several steps better in their Marxism than the Soviet and the Chinese Marxists, for instance, who think in terms of proletarian internationalism presupposing the firm and solid existence of viable proletarian nations. The point bears emphasis. Marxian inter- nationalism, in the minds of the Russians and the Chinese, is first and foremost realized in a national context. This is what Stalin's "Socialism in one country" was all about. In China, from the first, the Maoist component of Marxism- Leninism - Maoism was Chines e nationalism, pure and simple. The fight against international capitalism was never seen as an end in itself, but as a means to the renewal of Chinese integrity, the resurgence of the Middle Kingdom. China, and the U. S . S. R. before it, have performed as effective international actors from being geographical entities of highly visible potency. The peoples in these two important countries do not see themselves first as proletarian internati- onalists and only secondarily as Chinese and Russians. Rather, they regard themselves as Chinese and Russians first. They are not inter- national actors without firm national bases and identities. On the contrary, it is their very distinctive identities and the power associated with them which lend force and plausibililty to their international role. Overall, the conj ecture of internationalism divorced from its national fountain head is too unreal by far. But there is also the issue of the myth of internationalism as an absolute value. In the real world, as the record shows, the intentness of "Marxist" states on their nationalism has conduced in no small mea- sure to the derogation of M.arxism. During the Chinese civil war, the only Marxist state then in existence, the USSR, for a good while backed 51 the Western stooge Chiang Kai - shek against the Chinese Communists in the hope, among other things, of gaining a good chunk of Chinese territory for itself and of further weakening the Chinese nation. With the succes- sful establishment of the People's Republic of China - as of USSR before it - the question of its continuing commitment to the fight against global capitalistic imperialism became dependent on the calculus of expediency and "national interests". The armed readiness of Chinese and Russian troops across their common border is perhaps the most eloquent testi- mony of the triumph of nationalism over the dictates of socialist inter- nationalism. Then consider the disarray occasioned in the liberation movement by the feuding between the USSR and China, each determined, more often than not at the expense of the much - vaunted liberation objective itself, to eliminate each other's influence. So it is now that the world has become accustomed to seeing the improbable bedfellows - China and the USA display a common purpose in such international conflagrations as the Indo- Pakistani war over Bangladesh and The Angolan Civil War. But if the liberation movement is thereby weakened, China, for its part, could not see its way to rendering apologies to those like the Africans who refuse to raise the level of their capacity to be able to fight their own wars and impose their own solutions, preferring, instead, to trust in the willingness of other peoples to do for them what they should be doing for themselves. The Chinese, as a people, learned the virtues - and the dignity - of self-reliance long ago. Not even the visitation in 1976 of an earthquake of catastrophic proportions would persuade the proud Asian people to temper their commitment to national self-suffiCiency. In the event, they rejected all offers of assistance from external sources, both capitalist and socialist. Their mes sage: as a people they are capable of meeting their needs in both normal and crisis period~, without having to throw their nation to the mercy of any principle as dubious as internationalism. The Soviet Union has not done badly, either, in teaching the world a lesson or two on the subordination of internationalism to nationalism. Indeed, if nationalism vitiates Marxism, then no socialist nation is more subversive of Marxism than the USSR whose shifting perception of the contours of "detente" with the champion of world imperialism determines 52 whether it would support, at one time, Lumumba in the Congo or, at another, Neto in Angola. And consider how it treated the EuroCommunists on the eve of World War 11. Significantly, it was at the time of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact that Andre Malraux, "the Last Renaissance Figure", like many others turned his back on Marxism. With the signing of that paper, he recalled, "I married France". 17 It was certainly a moment of profound emotional and psychological mis- giving, as George Padmore also found out. With a career in the American Communist Party, in the columns of New York's Dail,)' Worker, at Russia's "University of Eastern Toilers" and in the Comintern, he promptly quit the Comintern and renounced his links with Russia in disgust over the softening of the Soviet's anti-colonial line following its unprincipled over- tures to Hitler's Germany. It is only then that his political thinking began to focus upon pan-Africanism" as the only hope of salvation for the black man from the depredations of both Western and Russian imperialism". 18 And, more recently, witness the embarrassing disaster of Gliana's trade and credit agreements with the Soviet Union from 1963 when Nkrv.mah's Ghana, besieged by imperialism, made recourse to the "champion" of proletarian nations. 19 So much for socialist fraternity "in this drear day", as W. E. B. du Bois put it, "when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare". 20 Global anti-imperialism is not the first order of business with any socialist state. 1£ proletarianism was the primary value of Soviet policy, the Southern African complex would not still exist. Surely, the Soviets has more than sufficient capability - military, economic, political - to demolish the racist and capitalist bastions that have for so long insulted the dignity of man in Africa. Africa has not received, and will not receive, massive infusions of aid from the Soviet Union to help the continent break its disastrous dependence on the West, because Soviet national interests cannot underwrite it. An Africa that could really bene- fit from such a "Soviet Marshall Plan" is an Africa that IIDst needs be united into one whole, planning its development on a continental s<;ale. Such a potentially powerful entity would.contain imperialist assaults in Africa, but it would also threaten the interests of the US SR in the sense of being capable of compelling a readjustment of the global balance of power. All told, a tangibly salutary internat ionalism is. an elusive dream 53 celebrated only by those Africans who refuse to acknowledge their place and identity:i.Ii the world and to do something worth while - an image re-cast job - for themselves. R ;acism and a World Socialist Government. The question that must now be asked is : Would a world Marxist government solve the problem of the black man? Would it hold within itself the vital therapy to cleanse the world of racism? Or, is there something about the black man's history - in its tragic dimensions of powerlessness, servitude and persistent subservience to others - that requires the solution of self-repair rather than the efforts of a world socialist regime, however genuinely motivated? As it is, such genuine motivation understood by a colour- blind respect for humanity has not been in generous supply even among socialists. It is significant that Marx and Engels' initial formulations on the nationalist movement in the colonized world thoroughly reflected the basic Western racist assumptions concerning non European peoples. Like most Europeans, Marx thought of nonwhites as "barbarians" and "savages" whose only salvation lay in the beneficent tutelage of Europe- an political and economic, as also of European social and cultural, systems. Thus he found it easy to "dismiss as primitive everything from the communalism of West Africa to the ancient cultural institutions of China". 21 As for Engels, he made no effort whatsoever to conceal his seething contempt for the values of nonwhites. In an article supporting the French occupation of Algeria, he gleefully observed that: "The conquest of Algeria is an important and fortunate fact f extraordinary of the most intense oppression and exploitation of the vast majority of black people". 30 Those who feel undauntedly optimistic about a non racial strategy of liberation in the apartheid state must need remind themselves of the studied aloofness of white workers from the recent struggles of Soweto blacks. It might be argued in mitigation, that in South Africa institutional segregation makes trans-racial workers' solidarity virtually impossible. But such a line of defense would entail the suggestion that an apartheid - less South Africa would achieve a black - white proletarian rally - a highly improbable, if not absurd, conjecture. For the fact is that racism is as' much a question of attitudes as instttutions. Cuba, since its Socialist Revolution, has successfully eliminated institutional causes of racism rooted in that land over three centuries. Yet the available evidence shows that "there are still SUr- viving elements of prejudice against the Afro-Cuban" - "that socialism, by itself, is an insufficient remedy for eliminating attitudinal racism". 31 This is by no means a startling revelation. Whatever the strenuous efforts of Fidel Castro, he cannot work miracles - he cannot trans- form the way the white section of his country feels and thinks about black people. That is an-attitudinal - a psycho-social-issue beyond the manipulative ingenuity of governmental apparatus. It takes the existence of just about two decades for the average. Caucasian in any part of the world to take full notice of the universal black man's underdog station in life; his political, social and economic marginality; his overall prostrate inconsequence around the globe. This our average Caucasian Youth is not interested in the woeful history that brought this about. He is only interested in the current spectacle of human wreckage which elicits from him a contempt that further compounds the difficulties of the world's marginal man. No amount of a socialist government's appeal for a change of attitude is going to make a whit of difference. His fixed opinion is that a people who could allow so much to be done to them can- 56 not but be inferior. Governmental exhortations of socialist fraternity are clearly beside the point. Only black racial resurgence - the building of power and the acquisition of all the necessary capabilities - 'can change that kind of attitude. It is to be noted that our Caucasian youth is not holding such a view of blackness on account of economic reasons. E. Ofari has shown in a study of race relations in the U •S. that the workers most vehement in their opposition to blacks are not those in the unskilled and semi- skilled positions where there is strong competition for jobs from blacks, but the relatively skilled workers in job areas where blacks have "the least chance of entering". 32 It is one more illustration that racism has attained a status independent of the economic rationality that initially gave it birth. Over the decades, continues Ofari, it "has developed a separate character and taken on new dimensions". It has assumed an au- tonomy of its own pervading the psyche of most whites to such an extent that they are not even aware of it. 33 It is pathetic that, bearing all the marks of unreasoning materialist orthodoxy, Mishambi comes in this late in the day to proclaim that at all times "what makes a per son take a line he does is not due to his colour but his economic interests. - either as an individual or a group" . 34 He might well have been living on Mars. The First Order of Business. The sum of the matter is that where a strong currency of presumeepelchin, op. cit., pp. 4, 5, 16, 17, 19; Mishambi, op. dt., pp. 14, 20, Depe1chin and Mishambi would do well to ponder the views of another Marxist, Angela Davis, on the imperative of African self discovery: "First of all, we should be absolutely clear that it is extremely important for black people to attain a self confidence and identity, some- thing which the white ruling class has attempted to take away from us for so many hundreds of year s. The history of black people in the U •S. is a history of genocide in many respects, cultural genocide, psychological genocide, and it is extremely important for us to reassert our identity, to talk about the fact that the standards of the white dominant culture are not absolute". See The African Communist, Vol. 61, 2nd Quarter, 1975, pp. 33-34.