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4 PRESENCE AFRICAN
* fe + MABE
rientation dessinée par les
Cette influence a été
| Masks and Marx
spécifiques (écon
8 d'autres pays, le
dans Ja prise de consci
sens positif du passage de la revendication pro:
réclamation politique ; avec & sa téte le groupe
tocial des ittlleacls eonmme prinipal animawur de’ ce Seat,
ment.
The Marxist Ethos vis-a-vis African
Revolutionary Theory and Praxis
|. INTRODUCTION.
Mar FALL. The first is to point out the
Unters de Bardwus I
ocr en Siciogse
the search for regenerative
- best African artists are
obsessed with the philosophy and history of our people, with
our values and how we express or betray them
lives, with how we strengthen or frustrate
and sciences, Ptahnotep, Kagemni, Ani, Nefert
works were concerned with philosophy, wit
koman Dua and Balla Fasseke were planters of values. So
was Magolwane the eloquent ; that is one reason why Mazisi
values. Nyan- PRESENCE AFRI
Kuene calls his songs not simply praise poems but poems
excellence. And if, in the neo-colonial present, La Guma in
South Africa, Ngugi in East Africa and Soyinka in Wes
Africa have all known imprisonment
‘because they
the search fk
am merely doing my wor
my people's values and poi
. To enhance clarity 1 shi
the oppressed. By
, Fanon and Cabral were revol
sheory » is a coherent
of ideas compl:
drawn from empit
data generast
Marx and Engels constitute an inte
body of hy
theses, useful as probes, not theories.”
« Marxism » in this article means precisely the ideas of Mi
of naming ideas after individual
That way we would not make the mistake of assign
hole streams of ideas fo one eponymous ego. Nor wo
risk such awkward hyphenations as Marxism-Leninism.
Maoism.
. « Techology » needs no redefinition, but « teleology » dos.
If technology is
table into purposive social change — teleologid
. « Ideopraxis » is the translation of
A Critique of Soviet Economics (New York, Monty
10, « Linear philosophies of history » assume that,
ideotogy into behav |
| MASKS AND MARX. a
and life-style. Ideopraxis is the yardstick that separates revo-
Iutionary performers from phonies.
chaean thinking programmed into re
in general,
history proceeds along a straight line, viewed either as an
uninterrupted line or as a series of stages.
a
is sop! nn. That is why it is easy for a careless dialecti-
cian to slip into Manichaean conceptual traps — something
Marx does from time to time — at significant points in his
chain of reasoning.
« Cyclical philosophies » generally take account of multiple
significant factors in a situation, not just two. The arrange-
ment of these multiple factors follows a circul
significant, for the same reason t
ball may be seen as the cen
the observer's purpose whi
cyclical schema are of pre
Cyclical philosophies do not exclude dialectical philosophies
any more than the cycle of day-night, night-day excludes
dawn and dusk, noon and midnight ; ‘cyclical philosophies
embrace dialectical philosophies and include them as small
but spectacularly kinetic parts of a larger, wiser whole.
A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ON REVOLUTION AND
‘COMMUNISM.
‘The informing motif of this article is the understanding that
revolution and communism are phenomena and concepts of
universal occurence. They have been known and experienced
in different parts of the world during different periods of his-
tory. The world’s oldes
guage that is as unambiguous
ively
the expropriators ». Listen to Neferti : PRESENCE AFRICA: | MASKS AND MARX. 9
«1 show you the land in turmoil, He who did not weave for himself owns fine linen » (ibid.,
What should not be has come to pass. 156).
Men will seize weapons of warfare,
The land will live in uproar.
Men will make arrows of copper, phenomenon of
Will crave blood for bread, tury Chinese novelist, puts the theme of revolution in dia-
Will laugh aloud at distress. logue form :
« You were a clerk in a yamen », shouted General
Kuan Sheng, « how dare you rebel in this way ? ».
‘Mourning is not done today, «The Imperial affairs are in disorder >, replied Sung
‘Hearts have quite abandoned it Chiang, « and corrupt officials are in power ; loyal men
are ignored and covetous men are employed. This results in
the suffering of the people. We are the agents of Heaven,
the son as enemy, the brother as foe, and have no personal aims » (3).
‘A man slaying his father (..) » (2).
The sample could be mult
«1 show you the land in turmoil. have been numerous rev.
The weak-armed is strong-armed, insurrections in history, whether this be the
One salutes him who saluted. | Asia or the Western continents. Maji Maji, Hau Hau, Mau
I show you the undermost uppermost, ‘Mau are only the garbled names uncomprehending observers
What was turned on the back turns the belly have given to some of Africa's recent insurrectionary move-
ments, Such movements, wherever in the world they occur,
| tend "to become com
The great will rob to live. momentum they generate
The poor will eat bread, justice. Phenomenon and ideal, rev
The slaves will be exalted.
Gone from the earth is the name of On,
The birthplace of every god » (ibid., 143).
3g about revolution and
|. Hear the Admonitions of Ipuwer : ith humor, as charming
chutepah. 11 is the same kind of naive nerve that
« See now, the transformations of people, | weteenth-century European adventurers to claim to
He who did not build a hut is an owner of coffers. , waterfalls etc, to all
‘See, the judges of the land are driven from the land, — | Qo to be led by
The lobes are expelled from the royal mansions. people to whom the discoveries were old, everyday realities
‘See, noble ladies are on boards, and commonplaces. It should not be difficult to recognize in
Princes in the workinghouse, the Western attempt to place a stamp of proprietorship on
‘He who did not sleep on a box owns a bed. evolution and communism as just one more expression of
‘See, the man of wealth les thirsting. the f entury Western imperialist ethos, this
‘He who begged dregs has overflowing bowls. time disguised in intellectual, leftist phrases.
ee ee eee eee 17..Is there an alternative ? Of course. An intelligent — and
() Miriam Lichtheim : Ancient Eeyption Li A Book of Resixs |
Yoll1: The Old and Middle “Kingdon (nivesty of Cabforta Prem 9 Sa ee ae ee
‘commercial Press, 40
T
PRESENCE AFRICAINE
honest — approach would acknowledge that communism ani
revolution are universal value-systems and phenomena, uni
versal not in the obtuse liberal sense of something Westemnes
dream of imposing on the world, but in the sharp common
sense of something any unprejudiced searcher may fini
throughout the world among different peoples.
Let a water image illustrate the point
image of a central sea of ideas. Into this common sea run ti-
butary rivers from all the world’s continents, all the peoples
of the world.
communism
‘communism and
tion to commur
name of one &
not impose the
first on all that continent’
of human values. To do that would simply be to place obst
cles in the way of a rational, universel theory of revolution
and communism.
. Such a rational, universal theory is desirable for several res
|. Problem 1:
perspective of Africans, Asians and anyore
else not yoked to Eurocentric values, the alternative to com:
munism — capitalism (also known ‘as the Western way of
ife) — has had roughly five hundred years in whi
ing experiments in communist social organize
in the U.S.S.R., China, Korea and Vietnam,
African revolutionary theory and praxis.
Western hegemonism. In prin
hhegemonism is the tendency of Westerners to
ve communism the
|
|
i
MASKS. AND MARX. 41
Africa, this tendency took protean forms : in historiography,
for example, Western hegemonism created the fashion accor-
ding to which the only genuine history was the of
‘Africa; the West was supposed
gious practices
in its approach to non-Western societi
decidedly” colonialist, Western, Eurocentric and
ts do not present their philosophy as a
‘of communist theory — which would be the
rect science of liberation.
23, Problem 2: The Manichaean stigmatization of non-Western
peoples and values. This, when one comes down to
‘a fancy intellectual way of saying « white racism
Eurocent i i
along racial
world’s majority. of non-Western peoples and a pos
cchaean assumption here is that
tive, savage and barbarian and
West is civilized. This stigmatiz
ledge, on a systematic study of the world’s people
nothing to do with science ; its source is racial prejudice.
proach to the non-Western
demonstrably raci
ii
modern poetry when it respects organic units of sense and
form, but African poetry, fused with that respect from birth,
is only primitive poetry. It makes no difference to the Wes-
tern racist mind if Western artists imitate African forms and
ques. Because what makes Western art civilized and
ously illogical. PRESENCE AFRIC
‘That is partly why, for Marx and Engels, communism i
modern, civilized and serious when it appears in Europ
(even if
hhas only a spectral form).The same commu,
world, is dismissed as pri
. Problem 3 : The linear philosophy of
. Problem 4: The dogma of autotel
29.
temers, whether they are historians or lathe ope
indoctrinated to think of history as a linear progr
‘Western society at the head of the line.
ly are they at the top of
Western societies are destined to stay there and, by tt
societies progressively
bears repeating that
equate dats of poot qu
fanciful notions of assorted
aries, anthropologists, imperialist officials, soldiers ani
mercenaries.
technology. The phrase
is hyperbolic but essentially tr
Marxist tendency to
ry. Such a tendency assumes the
ies are superior to materially dispos
ancillary circles
lectual jargon.
Problem 5: The doctrine of abundance as a precondition fa
communism. ‘The assumption underlying this doctrine is tht
only a materially wealthy society can reach that level of e-
nomic, social and political democracy that is communism. tt
MASKS. AND MARX. 43
20.
part, it was this assumption that misled Marx and Engels to
rush down the unwise path of revolutionary prophecy. §
ists in nineteenth-century Europe were sure that the socialist
revolution was just around the corner and that it wou!
in Western Europe, because Western European soc
fying jargon, that unexamined assut
people can institutionalize democratic
and that people cannot presume to share power and
with others unless they first take care to accumul
overflowing piles of both.
Problem 6: The notion of proletarian
tion not only because they are real workers (unlike peasants
who are presumably the playboys of the Western world) but
also because the nature of the proletarian work process sup-
their thinking processes and_ hal
modern human beings. That high
tarians are then supposed to. rec
identities as primary and powerful enough to override secon-
dary and tertiary identities. That chain of assumptions leads
to the hope that Western pr e mature enough:
tively to the disingenuous slogan « Workers of
you have nothing to lose but your chains ».
So far, the verdict of history is that Western proletarians
know they are not workers of the world but workers of Bri-
tain, France, Germany and America — Westerners riding on
top of the world. If they are chained, they see their chains as
golden chains : so far from aspiring to lose them, they want
more. The doctrine is a good example of liberal fuzz, and
‘Marx misread the psychology of the Western industrial prole-
just as seriously as he undervalued the importance of
cultural, non-material factors in the shaping of history.
.: Problem 7 : The dogma of peasant stupidity. This is a corol-
lary of Problem 6. Marx and Engels were convinced that
peasants were stupid. There is no evidence that they knew
enough peasants at first hand to reach such a conclusion
from scientific observation. What the evidence indicates is
that they simply agreed with the prejudices current in their
Society at that time. Those prejudices were demonstrably un- 44 PRESENCE AFRICAINE
scientific and anti-human. The root of the problem
peasants as a class, and peasant-based civilizations in their
have worldviews distinctly different from those of
‘based civilizations. In some respects, peasant
values may be more democratic and human-centered than
their urban counterparts. An instructive difference in
is that between the patient, protracted
Problem & : The fable of Oriental stagnation and negativit
‘This isa child of Problems 2 and 7. Marx and Engels pers
2e Oriental society and civilization as stagnant
d negative. This is partly because they see the
Orient as the opposite of the West and they
T a -
jNASKS AND HAR 45
assumption that library and liberal rest
suitable for the making of future social revolutions,
35. Problem II: The synecdochic misnomer. This is the most
really
1. The joke is this :
frown-up people 1g ones at that) take the trou
build up a body of ideas diametrically opposed to inc
ism, At the end of their labors, they cast around for a
name for this monument to ai
they choose to name th
does not make sense, but
|. Who cares if the synec:
je and the anecdotal dis-
is not coterminous with the West, any
that in all human terms Westerners
probing reveals that neither had reliable knowledge or exper
tence, direct or vicarious, of the subject. A systematic study
of Chinese i
cult, for Marx. The fact remains that he did ‘not undertake
such a projet. In the absence or real knowledge, he and
Engels accepted and used the conventional stereotypes of that
branch of Western academic charlatanism popularly known
as « Orientalism ». The result is racist prejudice, not science.
Problem 9 . The absence of Africa. In practical terms, Aftica
33.
cannot
exist. To the extent that African reality before Western pene-
tration could be taken into account at all, it would presu-
ito the Oriental category under’ the classification
of « savagery ».
34. Problem 10: The academic fallacy. This results from the
pirating other peoy
before then, other cultural centers were leaders ;
‘West ; that in the area of human values and teleo-
logy the Western world has established no basis for hege-
mony, not even a basis for respect, because the Western
record in the non-Western majority ‘societies of the world
‘over the last five hundred years or so has been a series of
lessons in how not to be human ; that to this moment the
prime use of Western power outside the West is to fight
against democracy in other peoples’ countries.
37. As for the stigmatization of non-West
tive, barbarous, sav he intellectual sol
is a systematic study
‘and comprehensive basis. Looked at uray as an nue
curriculum design, this is not even a problem ; it is a jo siduqaey qa
emp safeuotel pmo
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