Right again Ken, Lenin was spot on in his analysis of imperialism as the highest stage of (finance) capitalism, compared to the old school colonialism of occupation. Nkrumah extended that analysis to neo-colonialism as the highest stage of imperialism and Patrick Wilmot extended it to apartheid as the highest stage of neo-colonialism.
I wonder why you are reluctant to read Marx on the critique of racism because Capital is full of such a critique and concluded with that formulation in volume one where he critiqued a certain theory of modern colonialism by stating: 'A Negro is a Negro. Only under certain circumstances does he become a slave'. Fanon was probably responding to that with the quip: 'The Negro is not any more than the White man is'. What? Well, the negro is not black and the white man is not white when you come to think of it although Fanon was probably pointing out the social construction of identities that white supremacy assumed to be genetically determined. Yes, Marx used the N word once in Vol. I and used Kaffir once too but this could be read in the context of the hundreds of frequent use of negro, African and slave to suggest that he was calling out the racism of the pro-slavery capitalists.
For those who are afraid of seeing ghosts of racism in Marx, let me recommend the classic essay by Stuart Hall, 'Race and Class Articulation in Societies Structured in Dominance' which was published in 1980 by UNESCO. When I was researching my doctoral dissertation on Black Women and the Criminal Justice System, I bumped into Hall on the streets of London and he invited me to his home, gave me a copy of the UNESCO book and told me to read his chapter. I did and it cleared my thoughts ever after. Of course, the theory of articulation of social relations was based on an interpretation of Capital Vol 1 as applied to the economy of apartheid South Africa by Harold Wolpe. Hall borrowed this creative reading and applied it to social relations based on a long quotation from Capital on race as a social structural factor that is not chosen by social agents as they make history under conditions that they did not choose. A feminist reading of Vol. 1 will also show how the oppression of women and children were represented as practices modeled on the enslavement of Africans which could not abate until slavery was crushed. On class, the struggle for a 40 hour week was not won until slavery was abolished! In critical race theory, this is now popularised as race-class-gender intersectionality but the road intersection or modern maths circle intersection metaphors are not as dynamic as the concept of articulation in capturing the fact that social relations are not only articulated, they are also constantly disarticulated and rearticulated under varying circumstances, according to Hall.
Rodney versus who? Versus the proprietors of Marx and Sons Ltd who carry on as if Marx inherited nothing from Africa and see his body of work as a European private inheritance, according to Derrida. However, even people of African descent have repudiated this African inheritance of Marx for fear of being called Marxists even though Marx himself was fond of protesting; 'All I know is that I am not a Marxist', a protest against a militaristic misinterpretation of his theory: So you want to make a revolution? Well form a political party (not a guerrilla army), said Marx; Lenin agreed that what was to be done was to establish a newspaper to serve as the organ of the party (not to form suicide squads); and Gramsci concurred that the only way to win the support of other oppressed groups for a workers' revolution was through intellectual and moral leadership (not by force).
Surprisingly, Engels highlighted this fact in his preface to the 1887 first English Edition of Vol 1 where he concluded his preface by stating that the major conclusion of Marx was that England was the place where a non-violent socialist revolution was most likely. Aha! There you have it, the African philosophy of non-violence is not alien to Marx. But today, some petty bourgeois intellectuals go about in parts of Africa calling for a violent revolution, forcing the Marxist analyst, Edwin Madunagu to offer the clarification that violence is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for a revolution; it all depends on whether the privileged would launch what Marx identified as a pro-slavery rebellion when the oppressed break their chains as was the case during the American Civil War in which prominent comrades of Marx fought on the side of the Union Army while Marx mobilised workers in England to oppose the call for Britain to intervene on the side of the Confederacy (See Phillip S. Foner, American Socialism and Black Americans, from Civil War to World War II)!
To conclude, I am encouraged to embark on this work of excavation given the injunction of Cheikh Anta Diop that we should not be in a haste to reject as foreign, many theoretical, scientific and technological claims of the West (not just because we embrace German and Japanese cars without qualms but) because when we look closely, we will find that Africa as the origin of civilization, laid the foundations for many such supposedly alien concepts, theories or innovations that are indeed often stolen or lost legacies of Africa.
Biko
--- On Wed, 12/29/10, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Derrida as Africa-Centered Critical Scholar-Activist
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Wednesday, December 29, 2010, 9:43 AM
hi biko this all sounds exciting, but a little beyond my strengths. my first thought is, of course, lenin on imperialism as the extension of marxist thought to africa that you are seeking. i think marx's view of advanced societies was grounded in progressivist notions of history that remains a variant of hegel, and that i have a hard time swallowing. but the side of marx that sees political commitment in the proletariat, and more broadly in the working classes, ultimately the exploited classes, resonates with a marxist reading of africa as the object of capitalist exploitation for labor and resources in the 19th century. but i would hate to look too closely into marx's views on race for fear of what i'd find lastly, the debate over the extent to which the growth of western industrial societies depended on african slave labor still continues, i believe (but again i know nothing about it). rodney and company versus who? ken On 12/28/10 12:34 PM, Biko Agozino wrote:
Bro Ken,
Thanks for your support. Your insight is right as usual that Specters of Marx is ripe for a debate by African scholars and friends of Africa. Not only was it written in response to a 'Whither Marxism' conference to which no African was invited except Derrida, the symposium on it consisting of review essays completely missed the point of Derrida's African perspective (with the exception of Terry Eagleton's polemic which recognized that it was a text about the African National Congress even while being critical of Derrida for what he called his opportunism, a charge that Derrida denied in his hilarious response, 'Marx and Sons': 1) That in African thought, the spirit remains an important part of reality that cannot be banished by crude materialism and so even after Marx set Hegel back on his feet, he did not chop off his head, for instance; 2) That Marx never denied the existence of the spiritual or ideological aspect of the struggles contrary to the views of those he dubbed the Sons of Marx who proceed as if Marxism is an inherited materialist property of theirs based on a certain reading of The German Ideology; 3) That the inheritance of Marx includes his enormous debts to Africa in the sense that the struggle against slavery and the enslavement of Africans became for him the paradigm for the struggle against wage slavery or capitalism. This hegemonic African presence in Das Kapital is yet to be acknowledged by most analysts even when the spirit of Africa haunts hundreds of pages of Capital, vol. 1. Thanks for your encouragement, Ken, maybe I should get started on this startling discovery hidden in plain sight. Eric Williams, CLR James, Du Bois and Walter Rodney already indicated that black slavery was the dominant mode of primitive accumulation of capital by the West (contrary to Weber's theory of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) but I am yet to read a text that identifies Marxism as a theory that was influenced by the struggles of Africans rather than the white-supremacist opposite assumption that African struggles were always dependent on Eurocentric Marxism for guidance. Biko --- On Thu, 12/23/10, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Derrida as Africa-Centered Critical Scholar-Activist
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Thursday, December 23, 2010, 4:29 PM
thanks to biko for a wonderful review. i would quibble about this
point or that, but the overall sense of derrida and his political
sensibilities are captured quite nicely. without burdening the list
i would recommend the discussion of marxism in derrida's Spectres of
Marx, which biko analyzes in the context of derrida's larger
political thought.
derrida was one of the great minds of our times, and thanks to biko
for capturing so much of his importance
ken
On 12/23/10 3:06 PM,
Biko Agozino wrote:
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kenneth w. harrow
distinguished professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
east lansing, mi 48824-1036
ph. 517 803 8839
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michigan state university
department of english
east lansing, mi 48824-1036
ph. 517 803 8839
harrow@msu.edu -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin. For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue- unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
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