Africa, Imperialism and the Global Class Struggle

[XXPANTHAXX]

The continent's people will play a strategic role in the coming period

by Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor
Pan-African News Wire
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Editor's Note: The following is the text of the presentation delivered
at the national conference on "The Current Situation in the U.S. and the
World" that was held in New York city on November 15-16, 2008. The
conference was sponsored by Workers World Party.
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A major challenge of the last century has been the reconstruction of
African history and the role of the continent in the development of
world civilizations, particularly the economic and social systems that
have dominated the planet for over 500 years. Most researchers and
writers on African affairs, both bourgeois and historical materialist,
have recognized the African origins of human society. The contributions
of successive African civilizations and cultures have been well
documented in various publications.

These efforts to re-correct the distortions in the way African history
been narrated and interpreted, are important to understanding the
significance and character of political events that are occuring on the
continent today. In order for Africa to overcome the legacy of the
Atlantic slave trade, colonialism and neo-colonialism, there must be a
struggle to transform the exploitative and oppressive conditions which
have been imposed by world imperialism, with a leading role being played
by the ruling class in the United States.

Historical Materialism and the African Condition

This African struggle is taking place with greater intensity in the
first decade of the 21st century. What is taking place on the continent
is a direct result of the continuing efforts by the imperialist
countries to dominate the resources, labor and political institutions in
all of the African states.

Progressive and revolutionary thinkers and tacticians have stressed the
dialectical relationship between the economic development of western
Europe and the United States and the consequent underdevelopment of
Africa. Activists and chroniclers of African and African-American
history have maintained that the profits accrued from the exploitation
of black labor, land and resources played a central role in the rise of
world capitalism. This has been stated repeatedly for the last century
by people such as W.E.B. DuBois, Shirley Graham DuBois, Marcus Garvey,
C.L.R. James, Eric Williams, William Alpheus Hunton, Kwame Nkurmah,
George Padmore, Walter Rodney and many others.

This historical materialist approach to analyzing the past as a guide to
understanding the present and preparing for the future was discussed by
the Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin. In a political biography of Karl
Marx, that was written in 1913, Lenin states that:

"The discovery of the materalist conception of history, or rather, the
consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain of
social phenomena, removed two chief defects of earlier historical
theories. In the first place, they at best examined only the ideological
motives of the historical activity of human beings, without
investigating what produced these motives, without grasping the
objective laws governing the development of the system of social
relations, and without discerning the roots of these relations in the
degree of development of material production; in the second place, the
earlier theories did not cover the activities of the masses of the
population, whereas historical materialism made it possible for time to
study with the accuracy of the natural sciences the social conditions of
the life of the masses and the changes in these conditions." ("Karl
Marx", by V.I. Lenin, p. 15).

Beginning a historical analysis from this perspective leads us into
understanding that the underlying social forces that fuel the conflicts
that transform society are rooted in the struggle between dominant and
subjagated classes. In the same above-mentioned work, Lenin also points
out:

"That in any given society the strivings of some of its members conflict
with the strivings of others, that social life is full of
contradictions, that history discloses a struggle between nations and
societies as well as within nations and societies, and, in addition, an
alternation of periods of revolution and reaction, peace and war,
stagnation and rapid progress or decline-are facts that are generally
known.

"Marxism provided the clue which enables us to discover the laws
governing this seeming labyrinth and chaos, namely, the theory of class
struggle. Only a study of a whole complex of strivings of all the
members of a given society or group of societies can lead to a
scientific definition of the result of the strivings.

"And the source of the conflicting strivings lies in the difference in
the position and mode of life of the classes into which each society is
divided. 'The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggles,' wrote Marx in the Communist Manifesto." (except the
history of the so-called primitive communities--Engels added
subsequently). ("Karl Marx" by V.I. Lenin, pp. 16-17).

The Class Struggle in Africa

The class struggle is not limited to the so-called advanced western
capitalist countries. With the expansion of colonialism throughout
Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the South Pacific, the
Indian Ocean region and within North America itself, class and national
divisions were institutionalized by the imperialists to ensure the
domination of finance capital.

Kwame Nkurumah, the founder of Ghana's independence movement after World
War II, who later became the chief strategist of the African
revolutionary struggle that emerged during the 1950s and 1960s, applied
the theory of class struggle advanced by Marx, Engels and Lenin to
developments on the African continent.

In reference to imperialist domination in Africa, Nkrumah wrote during
1971 that:

"At the core of the problem is the class struggle. For too long, social
and political commentators have talked and written as though Africa lies
outside the main stream of world historical development--a separate
entity to which the social, economic and political patterns of the world
do not apply.

"Myths such as 'African Socialism' and 'pragmatic socialism,' implying
the existence of a brand or brands of socialism applicable to Africa
alone, have been propagated; and much of our history has been written in
terms of socio-anthropological and historical theories as though Africa
had no history prior to the colonial period. One of these distortions
has been the suggestion that the class structures which exist in other
parts of the world do not exist in Africa." (Nkrumah, "Revolutionary
Path," 1973).

In refuting these bourgeois, and even racist notions that Africa exist
outside the social processes which transform human existence, Nkrumah
continued by emphatically stating that:

"Nothing is further from the truth. A fierce class struggle has been
raging in Africa. The evidence is all around us. In essence it is, as in
the rest of the world, a struggle between the oppressors and the
oppressed.

"The African Revolution is an integral part of the world socialist
revolution, and just as the class struggle is basic to world
revolutionary processes, so also is it fundamental to the struggle of
the workers and peasants of Africa." (Nkrumah, "Revolutionary Path,"
1973).

The contributions of Workers World to the understanding of the central
role of Africa and the other former colonial and semi-colonial nations
in the global class struggle has been reviewed over the last year
through various articles that are reprinted on a weekly basis. In
studying and analyzing developments that emerged during the post World
War II period, Sam Marcy and other co-founders of the party clearly
recognized the political significance of the revolutions in China,
Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and on the African continent.

Today, Workers World covers the struggle against U.S. intervention in
various parts of Africa, including, but not limited to, the efforts to
destabilize Sudan in order to seize its oil; to isolate Zimbabwe over
the land question; to dominate Somalia for the people's refusal to
submit to a foreign imperialist financed and coordinated occupation.

The impact of the multi-national oil and other extractive industries are
noted in the ongoing struggles taking place in Nigeria, Mauritania, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and South Africa, to name a few.
Moreover, Workers World reports on every significant movement aimed at
resisting imperialist domination in Africa and views these efforts as
part and parcel of the international battle to defeat capitalist
globalization and to guarantee a socialist future in Africa and around
the world.

As anti-imperialists and proletarian internationalists, we will continue
to work in solidarity with all genuine mass movements as well as
progressive and revolutionary organizations in Africa. The role of the
Africa Command (AFRICOM) and other militarist schemes to subjugate the
continent will be defeated by the organizational weight of the African
workers and farmers in conjunction with a class conscious proletariat in
the western countries.

Africa, the Class Struggle and the African-American National Question

Finally, the understanding and appreciation of the role of the African
continent in the global class struggle also relates to the pivotal
importance of resolving the problem of racism in the United States, what
marxists call the national question. The over 40 million people of
African descent in the U.S. have always maintained recognition of the
continent as their historical homeland. Consequently, the history and
contemporary affairs of Africa are of major concern to the
African-American people.

The most progressive and revolutionary elements in the African community
in the United States have always taken great consideration of the
struggle for liberation by the peoples of the continent as an important
objective in their own efforts aimed at achieving total freedom in this
country. Workers World has always understood the Leninist principle
upholding the right to self-determination of oppressed nations under
capitalism and imperialism.

In the last year, the paper has reprinted articles from the early 1960s
when support and solidarity was expressed around the Congo crisis of
1960-61, when Patrice Lumumba was overthrown and assassinated. There was
unconditional support for the civil rights campaigns that lead to the
desegregation of public accomodations, voting rights, affirmative action
and the right to assembly and protest.

At the same time, editorials have been recovered where Sam Marcy had
written statements in support of the urban rebellions of 1967 in Newark
and other cities. Just in the last several weeks, the role of Workers
World in the campaign of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 was recounted.

This working class voice has continued in this tradition. The party has
never wavered on supporting and defending the inherent right of
African-Americans to determine the form and method of their struggle for
liberation. Even in the recent campaign of Senator Barack Obama, Workers
World analyzed the significance of the social forces that propelled the
President-Elect into electoral victory where he will become the first
African-American president of the United States. At the same time, the
newspaper defended President-Elect Obama and Michelle against every
racist attack by the right-wing and exposed the threats posed by the
character of the McCain-Palin political base.

African-Americans and other oppressed nations in the United States have
and will continue to play an essential part in the overall class
struggle against the ruling class and it surrogates.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire.