Recycled cliches and empty jargon: A rejoinder
Kodwo Mbir Bullard
Neo-Marxists should apply themselves to studying their societies and evolving concepts and strategies reflecting the. perspective concrete conditions, asserts Kwodwo Mbir Bullard in a reply to E. K. M. Yakpo's critique of his earlier article published on March 11, 1985.Mr E. K. M. Yakpo's critique in TALKING DRUMS of March 25, 1985 of my article on "The Left versus Kwesi Botchway and Rawlings" made very interesting reading. In an attempt to impress readers of his mastery of Marxism, Mr Yakpo only succeeded in exposing his ideological bigotry.
Yakpo challenges the point I made concerning Marx's contempt for peasants. Mr Yakpo must be very confused indeed. The fact that "Marx's interest in peasant communities was very intensive" and the fact that "Marx read widely on the subject" does not in any way imply that he did not hold them in contempt. Interest in a subject and contempt for the subjects are not mutually exclusive.
In the EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE written between 1851 and 1852 Marx writes
But let there be no misunderstanding. The Bonaparte dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the conservative peasant; not the peasant that strikes out beyond the condition of his social existence, the small holding, but rather the peasant who wants to consolidate it; not the country folk who want to overthrow the old order through their own energies linked up with the towns, but on the contrary those who, in stupefied bondage to this old order, want to see themselves with their small holding saved and favoured by the ghost of the empire. It represents not the enlightenment, but the super- stition of the peasant; not his judgment, but his prejudice; not his future, but his past; not his modern Cevennes', but his modern Véndee 2.
Lest Mr Yakpo denies the generality of the above sentiments by arguing that Marx was talking about a particular group of peasants at a particular point in time (a familiar line by neo-Marxists who find their backs to the wall), I shall give a few quotes from Marx on peasants in India. These are quoted from Marx's articles on the British rule in India published in the NEW YORK DAILY TRIBUNE of June 25 and August 8, 1853.
English inteference ... has dissolved these semi-barbarian semi-civilised communities, by blowing up their economical basis... We must not forget that these idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear... restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresist- ing tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. . . We must not forget that this undignified, stagnatory and vegetative life..
that these little communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they transformed self- a developing social state into never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalising worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow.
As regard the specific instance where Marx likens peasants to potatoes Marx again in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte writes (He was describing the French peasantry)
The small peasants form a vast mass. Their mode of production isolates them from one another, instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. Their field of production, the small holding, admits of no division of labour in its cultivation, no application of science and, therefore, no wealth of social relationships. The small holding, the peasant and his family; alongside them another small holding, another peasant and another family, . . . In this way, the great mass of the French nation is formed by simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sackful of potatoes.
Regarding the progressive nature of capitalism and the boon that it holds for backward countries I will give a few quotes. After Marx had described the Indian village community, he goes on to say (again the following quotations are from the New York Daily Tribune.)
"These small stereotype forms of social organism have been to the greater part dissolved, and are disappearing not so much through the brutal interference of the British tax- gatherer and the British soldier, as to the working of English steam and English Free Trade." And then also Marx pointed out that the ruling classes of Great Britain had an accidental, transitory and exceptional interest in the progress of India. "The aristocracy wanted to conquer it, the moneyocracy to plunder it, and the millocracy to undersell it. Yet the means by which the ruling classes intended to do that ie irrigation and internal communication, could not but unleash a process that would ultimately transform the entire economy", Consider this quote,
I know that the English millocracy intend to endow India with railways with the exclusive view of extracting at diminished expenses the cotton and the other raw materials for their manufacturers. But when you have once introduced machinery into the locomotion of a country, which possesses iron and coals, you are unable to withhold it from its fabrication. You cannot maintain a net of railways over an immense country without introducing all those industrial processes necessary to meet railway locomotion, and out of which there must grow the appli- cation of machinery to those branches of industry not im- mediately connected with rail- ways. The railway system will therefore become in India, truly the forerunner of modern industry .. Modern industry, resulting from the railway system, will dissolve the hereditary division of labour, upon which rest the Indian castes, those decisive impediments to Indian progress and Indian power.
Marx goes on to ask "Has the English bourgeoisie even affected a progress without dragging individuals and peoples through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation?"
Lenin makes a similar point in his for anything. debate with the Narodniks. In the DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA written between 1896 and 1899, Lenin refuted some claims made by the Narodniks concerning the process of capitalist development which was taking place in Russia at the time.
Living in America does not necessarily make one an American capitalist, any more than studying at the London School of Economics makes one a Thatcherist. To impugn one's motives on that basis is a cheap shot
According to the Narodniks, capitalism was destroying the peasantry, seizing their lands, destroying their crafts and throwing them out of business. This process was bad for Russia because it was destroying the internal market which Russian industry needed for expansion.
Lenin refuted this by arguing that what was happening, though brutalising, was beneficial not only to the individual farmers but also to the entire national economy. Lenin's argument was that capitalism was transforming low-productivity low- earning peasants into higher wage- earning workers.
The Narodniks hated the fact that with the destruction of traditional crafts and the displacement of medium and small peasants from their farms, these peasants were being forced to migrate to larger territories
Lenin writes "We have seen that they (Narodnik economists) idealise labour-service and close their eyes to the progressive nature of capitalism
'Peregrinations' mean creating mobility of the population. Peregrinations are one of the most important factors preventing the peasants from 'gathering moss'." (V.I. Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977, p.254).
As regards my advocating capital- ism, Mr Yakpo sets up a straw man only to shoot him down. This is a classic example of intellectual dishonesty that he accuses me of. Nowhere in my article did I advocate the kind of capitalism that he writes about. Neither did I ask any country to go to the International Monetary Fund
I was making a statement of fact and to refresh Mr Yakpo's memory, I will quote what I said, "The dominance of the IMF and the World Bank in international economics and especially development economics is without question. It is a SHAME that the Soviet Union has not been able to present a counterbalance in this area". Any sharp reader will detect where my sympathies are.
Regarding COMECON, I think Mr Yakpo knows very well that with the only exception of Cuba, most of the aid given by the Soviet Union goes to Eastern Europe. So far as Sub-Saharan Africa is concerned COMECON might as well not exist.
Mr Yakpo calls me anti-Socialist. Living in America does not necessarily make one an American capitalist any more than studying at the London School of Economics makes one a Thatcherist. To impugn one's motives on that basis is a cheap shot.
Productivity: Total Cereal Production in 1980 kilograms/hectare
Country kg/ha
Austria 4514 Belgium 4654 Denmark 3892 France 4853 FRG 4429 Netherlands 5688 Switzerland 4625 United Kingdom 4946 Albania 2349 Bulgaria 3702 Czechoslovakia 4181 GDR 3811 Hungary 4140 Romania 3123 The brutalities of capitalism notwithstanding, it is only the Marxist bigot like Mr Yakpo who would deny the relative efficiency of the capitalist system in the production and delivery of goods and services. The table below gives a modern example of what I am talking about.
The massive imports of grains from the United States by the Soviet Union during the past few years is well known and does not need any labouring.
The case of Cuba having no debt problems that Mr Yakpo cites is neither here nor there. The Soviet Union is prepared to pour billions of roubles into the Cuban economy every year because of Cuba's geo-political position and the advantages that this strategic position offers the Soviet Union with respect to gaining access to the United States for espionage purposes etc. Is Mr Yakpo denying the disenchantment that Sadat's Egypt and Sekou Toure's Guinea experienced in dealing with the Soviet Union?
Like the narrow-minded neo- Marxist (Mr Yakpo cannot deny that he does not know who a neo-Marxist is) that Mr Yakpo is, he lacks the vision to see anything beyond what is. For Mr Yakpo, the only capitalism there is or can be is Western European and USA capitalism. Nothing can be further from the truth.
For after all, what is capitalism? It is a system under which most means of production and distribution are privately owned and operated for profit, and also where factors of production are commodities which can be bought and sold. I mentioned the undermining of capitalism in Ghana in connection with the branding of private entrepreneurs as thieves, nation-wreckers and their being chased out of the country.
I have not taken up all the points raised by Mr Yakpo. Time and space would not permit a point by point response. I would like to conclude.
In my original article I challenged neo-Marxists to apply themselves just like Karl Marx did, to studying their own societies and evolving concepts and strategies reflecting their respective concrete conditions. I still stand by that challenge.
Third World Scholars are notorious for merely recycling what is in the books. I do not believe that we are incapable of original and conceptual thinking. When Marx entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Bonn in 1835 as a student there was no Marxism-Leninism. He started out by critiquing existing works of people like Hegel, Etienne Cabet, Bruno Bauer etc and then later on did original research and produced the massive writings that are now being studied all over the world. The process of learning and reconceptualising is very painful, and nobody is going to do this for us.
In my original article I challenged neo-Marxists to apply themselves just like Karl Marx did, to studying their own societies and evolving concepts and strategies reflecting their respective concrete conditions. I still stand by that challenge.
1. In Cevennes (Southern France, Languedoc), at the beginning of the eighteenth century, there was an uprising of peasants under the slogans, "Down with taxes! Freedom of faith!"
2. The Véndee peasantry was the most politically backward at the time of the first French Bourgeois revolution; it supported the royalist counter-revolution. The above quote is from Robert C. Tucker (ed) The Marx-Engels Reader, New York: Norton & Company, 1978, p.609.
