CHIPS XIII

Karl Marx, the grandfather of political economists, whose damning critique of capitalism’s inadequacies has played an outsized role in world history since his death in 1883. Today, all over the world with particular allusion to Nigeria, Marx’s theory of increasing misery and the polarity of society as defined by wealth and poverty is the unblemished. Nigeria is a bourgeois democracy, where those who control the levers of power automatically control the mode of production and ensure its supremacy. The bourgeois in Nigeria therefore make laws to ensure and guarantee their perpetual dominance over the proletariat. In Nigeria today, the law enforcement agencies are in the hands of the bourgeois class and they are in the forefront of repression and cohesion over the poor. Socio-economic and political alienations are in vogue, while religious alienation is used to dupe the masses to obedience. Gross marginalization; exploitation; large scale bribery and corruption; oppression; poverty, misery, mass unemployment are very conspicuous in all spheres of the nation’s life.

Presently in Nigeria, the masses are grumbling and dissatisfied with the vagaries and vicissitudes of life. The masses are distressed by the growing incidences of general worsening of living standards that have become the order of the day. The masses are most perturbed by these unfortunate developments, as they threaten the very fabric of the stability, security, and survival of society. These events have assumed the dimension of hurricanes with devastating effects on the nation.

Fifty-Eight years after independence, Nigeria is still in dire need of genuine and selfless leadership because to date Nigeria is in the hands of political opportunists; mediocre leaders, rogues who intentionally deprive the people of healthy life through agony of hunger, poverty and subjection to misfortune inhuman treatment. The Nigerian economy needs a surgical operation and only the infusion of masses into the socio-political and economic scenes can recapture the sundry missed opportunities and regain momentum. The political system is crying for a revolution- root and branch.

This paper therefore recommends the application of Marx’s Utopia Ideal as a strategy at rescuing Nigerian society through a revolutionary praxis, which will attack all evils –alienations, the structural evils in Nigeria, dividing people into economic classes, rich and poor, pervasive exploitation and discrimination at their roots. This paper calls for equality, in a class-less society, where every Nigerian will be liberated from all the shackles of oppression, exploitation, domination, class-antagonism, class-struggle and marginalization. Finally this paper calls for a preferential option for the poor in their struggle against the entrenched capitalistic regime in which a privileged few monopolize the economy.

Within the last forty years there has been a significant academic movement to reconstruct the understanding of Barbadian labour protests in the colonial period. These researchers, overtly or otherwise, largely employed the conceptual framework of classical Marxism and located the reasons for mass protests in material deprivation, inequality and labour grievances, which in turn supported a class-based analysis and structurally-determined identities. This revisionist movement is limited to the immediate post-emancipation period, after which, many societal changes occurred, including: the nature of labour protests, a change in composition of protest agents, and the centralization and later, de-centralization of the social movement process.

This paper, firstly demonstrates the value and limits of using classical Marxism to explain contemporary mass protests in Barbados and secondly, offers new lines of inquiry and analysis through the use of post-modern Social Movement theories and Post-Colonial Political perspectives which in some cases are post-Marxist in orientation. Finally, it provides a framework for understanding the construction/re-construction of identities in the participation of mass protests. The central argument is that a politically-motivated socio-cultural transition is taking place via mass protests in the Barbadian landscape, which though rooted in inequality at some levels, is not simply class-based but transcends many different identities and creates opportunities for critical academic debates and analyses.

Caribbean intellectual C.L.R. James has made a distinct contribution to global Marxist thought through his insightful analysis of the organisational imperatives for revolutionary change beyond the Vanguard Party model offered by V.I. Lenin. In presenting his arguments, James built upon an earlier critique by Polish-German intellectual Rosa Luxemburg in which a direct link was made between the nature of revolutionary organisation, the level of development of the productive forces and the consciousness of the working class. James theorised that Lenin’s model corresponded to a definite stage of development of the working class. Similarly he held that Stalinism represented the state-capitalist stage of labour-capital relations resulting in higher expressions of exploitation of the working class. Asserting that this model of state-capitalism would result in new forms of proletarian organisation, James advanced that “free creative” activity rooted in the abolition of necessity of organisational control and direction of “backward” workers by an intellectual vanguard would be the new form of proletarian struggle. This paper examines the relevance of James’s perspective for the current expression of revolutionary struggle in the Caribbean. Specifically, it explores the question of whether James’s views on the transcendence of Leninism were meant largely for the advanced capitalist countries of Europe and hold little relevance for the Caribbean. Finally, the paper will identify specific features of contemporary political struggle which can be identified as presenting outlines of the post-Leninist and post-Stalinist models of revolutionary struggle which James was seeking to identify.

The present paper is about the use and development of Marxism in Francophone African and Caribbean literature. Since the topic is vast, I will mainly rely on some selected writers and thinkers – mainly Jacques Roumain, Léopold Sedar Senghor, Frantz Fanon, and V.Y. Mudimbe.

Jacques Roumain, in his Gouverneurs de la Rosée / Masters of the Dew, presents a hero Manuel who comes back to Haiti after spending fifteen years in Cuba where he worked in American plantations. His experience is full of Marxist statements and slogans.

Senghor wrote important reflections on Marxism and Socialism, it is interesting to characterize his social thought with respect to Marxism. He coined a concept of African Socialism, which would be based on African values and specific to the African cultural and social situation.

Frantz Fanon’s Marxism is known as praxis for the liberation of mind from the complex of inferiority. The colonized corresponds to the proletarian worker in Marxism, as the Black Man is shaped according to the White Man’s image imposed upon him. As J. Crowell states: “Marx argues that this is constituted by the conflict between the "compartments" of the capitalist and the worker, whereas the tension between the colonizer and colonized native replace this class struggle within Fanon's colonial context” (J. Crowell) Mudimbe’s Pierre Lumbi, the protagonist of Entre les eaux, is a former priest who opts for a Marxist Revolution to free his people from colonialism and all forms of injustice. His training of philosophy and theology does not empower him to address his people’s hopes; he therefore decides to join a Guerrilla group that fights against the Government.

This paper seeks to draw general reflections on the impact of Marxism in the Africa and Caribbean thoughts as shown in the novels of Roumain and Mudimbe, and the essays of Senghor and Fanon. These writers and thinkers used Marxism for the purpose of their personal activism and what can be called littérature engagée.

What can or does Marxism say about Puerto Rico, a territory that is currently experiencing exacerbated colonialism under the unelected, corporate-led PROMESA board of austerity as it is faces the brunt of shock capitalism the aftermath of Hurricane María? Does this relevance stay in Puerto Rico itself, or does it extend everywhere that Puerto Ricans have migrated as they maintain deep social and economic bonds with home? Can or must Marxism have Caribeño flavour in order to address the multiple oppressions of working-class Puerto Rican at home and, quite possibly, abroad? Is it time to revisit the Puerto Rican National Question? These are questions worth considering as the twin crises of PROMESA and María have devastated Puerto Rico and its inhabitants and, very significantly, its diaspora.

Reviving the Puerto Rican National Question is a possible point for facilitating understanding of how to address the conditions the flow from these twin crises. It is possibly a way to better answer other questions I have raised here. The timing is critical. PROMESA has become the clearest indication so far of what capitalism has brought upon Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans. The government of the United States’ response to María is in line with how the capitalist state deals with its own colonial subjects. These crises arose amid last year’s centenary of the Jones Act (1917), which imposed U.S. citizenship and weighs heavily on any discourse about Puerto Ricans at home, in migration, and in the diaspora.

I propose that a revival of the Puerto Rican National Question, as exemplified by early Puerto Rican Marxists such as Jesús Colón and Bernardo Vega, can be a way to reconsider both the colony and its people through a working class lens to make decolonization possible, Caribeñista style, that is imagining democracy and self- determination for Puerto Rico, and a democratic voice for Puerto Ricans at home and abroad, away from U.S. control and toward a society oriented toward Caribbean and global solidarity.

The 'New Sexuality Studies' (Fischer and Seidman 2016) that emerged from Foucauldian, constructionist, micro-sociological, feminist and identarian positions in the 1980's has tended to be regarded as reflecting post-Marxist or anti-Marxist orientations. Generally, there is a sense that Marxism has said little to extend critical analyses of the development of critiques of heteronormativity, hetero-patriarchy, genitocentrism and sexual pathology in hierarchical forms that privilege monogamy, sexual conservativism and naturalistic and normalising discourses of what is legitimate in respect of sexual orientations, identities, relations, practices and behaviours. At the same time, there has been a concern that Marxist analyses would crowd out subjective and queer autonomies and deconstructionism with class and capitalist determinations.

This conventional view, however, is in error in two respects. First it fails to acknowledge a strong critical tradition of Marxist analyses stretching from Engels and Bernstein (in a limited sense) and Kollontai, through the freudo-marxism of Reich and Marcuse, to Red Collective, Reimut Reiche and left contributions to the emergence of sexual politics in the 1960s, through the the present day. Reynolds (2003) has summarising the tradition and emphasises how Marxist political economy and critiques of commodification, alienation and class in sexual politics make a cohent framework for analysis.

Second, contemporary Marxist anlyses, taking seriously feminist and sexuality studies, provide leading critical engagements with sexual theory and politics, notable with Drucker (2015) and Hennessy (2000) advancing Marxist political economy, Field (1995) and Wolf (2009) advancing a Marxist sexual politics, Floyd (2009) and Lewis (2016) extending Marxist analyses into the reification of desire and the location of its politics in intersections with other radicalisms.

This paper will provide a critical survey of these terrains, and will highlight and explore the current strands of Marxist critique that offer a potent bases for addressing the impasse and contradictions of contemporary sexual politics.

Karl Marx’s Dialectical Materialism rejects G.W. Hegel’s Dialectical Idealism and claims that the dialectic of Hegel is “standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again”. He acknowledges Hegel’s system of logic as being of great service in constructing his own economic theory. He even praises Hegel as “the last word of all philosophy”. Marx’s primary critique of Hegel is Hegel’s “mysticism.”

Both Hegel and Marx use the dialectical method that was defined by Johann Fichte which understands the dialectic as a process involving the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. When the synthesis is made, it becomes a new thesis, to which there is then a new antithesis, and so on. With the Dialectical Method understood as such, Hegel’s idealism would be the thesis; Marx’s materialism would be the antitheses. The philosophy of Dialectical Incarnation is the synthesis, i.e., the triadic, methodological understanding that all of reality is comprised of the condition of the possibility of being idea, spirit and transcendence and that all of reality is comprised of the condition of the possibility of being body, matter and immanence. For Hegel and Marx, both philosophies are lopsided on either side. Consequently, a true synthesis is needed.

Dialectical Incarnation is a philosophy that identifies a unity found in the infinite and diverse Karl Marx’s Dialectical Materialism rejects G.W. Hegel’s Dialectical Idealism and claims that the dialectic of Hegel is “standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again”. He acknowledges Hegel’s system of logic as being of great service in constructing his own economic theory. He even praises Hegel as “the last word of all philosophy”. Marx’s primary critique of Hegel is Hegel’s “mysticism.”

Both Hegel and Marx use the dialectical method that was defined by Johann Fichte which understands the dialectic as a process involving the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. When the synthesis is made, it becomes a new thesis, to which there is then a new antithesis, and so on. With the Dialectical Method understood as such, Hegel’s idealism would be the thesis; Marx’s materialism would be the antitheses. The philosophy of Dialectical Incarnation is the synthesis, i.e., the triadic, methodological understanding that all of reality is comprised of the condition of the possibility of being idea, spirit and transcendence and that all of reality is comprised of the condition of the possibility of being body, matter and immanence. For Hegel and Marx, both philosophies are lopsided on either side. Consequently, a true synthesis is needed.

Dialectical Incarnation is a philosophy that identifies a unity found in the infinite and diverse particularities of both the “spiritual” and the “material” elements of the universe, i.e., the totality of reality. Dialectical Incarnation breaks down dualisms by indicating that such separation is merely an illusion and that all reality can now be understood as a synthesis of bi-polar concepts. All of reality is a single dialectical entity, and this single dialectical entity is incarnation. To state that opposing entities can be “distinct but not separate” is what Aristotle had in mind when he stated that one cannot separate matter from form and form from matter. Incarnation is parallel to Aristotelian substance which is both form and matter, distinct as conditions, as “concepts,” but never separate in reality.

The objective of Dialectical Incarnation is to identify and define the synthesis of incarnate love in its infinite expressions throughout all of reality. This constant synthesis is primarily through the human person, who is the resolution of the mind/body problem in it’s very Self. The Self is not a single individual but rather a person as a subject and object unified as one. A dialectical and incarnational perspective of reality allows all to be one, which leads to the philosophy of Ubuntu. “I am because we are.” Humanity is coming to realize that the dualism of Western philosophy is not the paradigm to which one can now adhere. This new “philosophy of the heart” must express itself in the totality of reality so that our world will find its perfection.particularities of both the “spiritual” and the “material” elements of the universe, i.e., the totality of reality. Dialectical Incarnation breaks down dualisms by indicating that such separation is merely an illusion and that all reality can now be understood as a synthesis of bi-polar concepts. All of reality is a single dialectical entity, and this single dialectical entity is incarnation. To state that opposing entities can be “distinct but not separate” is what Aristotle had in mind when he stated that one cannot separate matter from form and form from matter. Incarnation is parallel to Aristotelian substance which is both form and matter, distinct as conditions, as “concepts,” but never separate in reality.

The objective of Dialectical Incarnation is to identify and define the synthesis of incarnate love in its infinite expressions throughout all of reality. This constant synthesis is primarily through the human person, who is the resolution of the mind/body problem in it’s very Self. The Self is not a single individual but rather a person as a subject and object unified as one. A dialectical and incarnational perspective of reality allows all to be one, which leads to the philosophy of Ubuntu. “I am because we are.” Humanity is coming to realize that the dualism of Western philosophy is not the paradigm to which one can now adhere. This new “philosophy of the heart” must express itself in the totality of reality so that our world will find its perfection.

Some remarkable resonances exist between the philosophy of the Chinese Taoist thinker Zhuangzi, who was contemporaneous with Aristotle, and Marx's ideas about alienation. These ideas would appear especially relevant today, an age in which the conditions and status of blue collar workers in semi and highly industrialized nations would seem to closely reflect the various forms of alienation that Marx had warned against. These forms of alienation run directly counter to the ideals reflected in Zhuangzi's account of Ding, the happy meat carver.

Zhuangzi argued that a key to human happiness was the practice of Wuwei, which literally means "no contrived action." Wuwei is about cultivating an inner sensitivity to the natural flow of things, or not going against the grain, in terms of cultivating both sensitivity to one's inner nature and an awareness of the natural order of things.

The idea of sensitivity to one's inner nature, especially in terms of cultivating natural skills, seems to closely parallel Marx's idea of identification with one's species being. An awareness of the natural order of things is cultivated through a familiarity with the object of one's artisanship, and this parallels Marx's emphasis on the craftsman's close identification with the tools and products of a trade.

The most famous exemplar of Wuwei in the works of Zhuangzi is meat carver Ding, which is remarkable, as Ding's profession was ascribed to the lowest class of ancient Chinese society. Zhuangzi' account appears to be intentionally subversive. He is essentially holding up Ding as a "blue collar sage" worthy of emulation, in spite of the fact that, over the 2,500 years of Chinese civilization prior to Mao, the most sagely exemplars of Chinese culture came from the lofty ranks of the scholar bureaucrats, or at least were acquainted with the symbols of high culture such as poetry, music and calligraphy.

Meat carver Ding, happily and deftly chopping away at ox carcasses, would seem to provide a powerful example of someone who had not become prey to at least three forms of alienation that paradoxically seem rampant in post Mao quasi capitlist Chinese society, that is, alienation from one species being, and alienation from the tools and products of one's trade.

Marx recognized the impact of colonialist brutality for capitalist production in Capital I. However, from a decolonial perspective, traditional Marxism – from Marx to Rosa Luxemburg and onwards – can be seen as a line of critique that although it has a proven revolutionary potential, still takes part in the occidentalist cover-up of the colonial-racist-sexist paradigm established around the 16th century. With the insights from thinkers such as DuBois from the US, and Caribbean thinkers such as C.L.R. James, Eric Williams and George Padmore, things began to change; thus the revision of Marxism into a critique of capital that would not look away from anti-black racism, or what Cedric Robinson called a Black radical tradition. Yet also here there was a remarkable disregard of the thinking and experiences of black women such as Ida Wells, Claudia Jones and others. Based on this, my paper investigates the illegitimate and thus repressed pleasure that stems from the dual disavowal of race and gender in class-oriented, revised Marxist thought. What is the enjoyment produced for (and thus constitutive of) a certain class of subjects in these traditions, and how should it be understood? My analysis will move between Fanon and Mbembe to Sylvia Wynter and María Lugones as two different kinds of response to this question.

English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley may have been right when he called poets the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Whatever the fate of Marxism as a political system, diverse Anglophone Caribbean poets depict and/or denounce a plethora of continuing contemporary concerns central to Marxist thinking. Some offer a nightmarish vision of commodification distended to pandemic proportions. Some highlight the metamorphosing manifestations of imperialism and colonialism from whose clutches liberation appears impossible. Some show the haunting effect these “isms” have on consciousness and consequently creativity. They affirm too the power of modern media to manacle young minds and so stunt futures. Consistent with the Marxist perspective, an implicit goal of these artists is to open the awareness of the oppressed. Especially noteworthy are poems which claim that descendants of those history testifies were once the exploited have now become indistinguishable from the oppressors. These are incisive echoes of the end of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and its dystopian portrayal of an abortive bid for liberation.

Drawing on the power of allusion, irony, and satire, the poets evoke thought and feeling, and mix revelation and mirth. Their voices ethnicity, race, religions, ages, and appearances vary. So do the forms of their art. But these actualities deepen the significance of their warnings for they represent the cohesiveness of caring amidst the pervasiveness of problems. Like Marxism, they hold out hope that the real revolution can still come from among the people, at least in theory.

In recent decades, the widespread acceptance of neoliberal ideas gave rise to forms of market-driven governance, which have, among other measures, increasingly given corporations responsibility for central government activities like disaster management and recovery aid. While such an analysis righty laments the decline of solidarity and the creation of new classes of poverty, only little effort was devoted to rethinking central aspects of this development in terms of exploitation – a concept that has since Marx been traditionally used to critique aspects of capitalist development. In this talk, I provide an analysis of such developments in North- and South America and argue that they can be described as instances of exploitation.

The Peoples Progressive Movement (PPM) was the first Marxist political party in Barbados that contested parliamentary elections. In 1966 they ran two candidates in the General Election and in 1969 they ran a candidate in City Bye-election. The PPM candidates were only able to garner a handful of votes at polls. The PPM utilized a lot of financial and intellectual resources, and spent considerable time and effort trying to address all the disabilities facing the masses of the people. Notwithstanding the attractiveness of their Marxist oriented policies and programmes when compared to the capitalist democratic socialist programmes of the other major political parties they were not able to convince the masses to vote for then to insure electoral success or to give them some encouragement that they were making some headway. This paper seeks to explore the reasons why the PPM failed to make any significant inroads on the political landscape in Barbados. It examines the policies, programmes and strategies utilized by the PPM and the political environment locally, regionally and internationally that affected how the party Marxist philosophy was received. Finally, the paper looks at the lessons for any Marxist political party in Barbados in the future.

In this paper, alienation refers to the loss of entitlement to land or natural assets (e.g. forest) by an individual or community to the state or a third party through the instrument of state expropriation, resulting in structural displacement of the individual or community. To this end, the original owner requires legal permits or qualification to use or enjoy the expropriated land or forest while the government and its agency become the bourgeois, owning the productive natural resources or the productive forces and reserving the power to distribute the products. Biodiversity conservation in protected forest reserves in Ghana largely occurs on customary-owned or communal lands or forests which belonged to the ‘commons’. Until designated as protected areas, these forests are communal assets and rich grounds for harvesting non-timber forest products (NTFPs), including wild foods, game and medicinal plants, to support food security and livelihoods of the dependent communities. Through the compulsory acquisition law, the government of Ghana is able to expropriate lands for the purposes of resource mining or protection. While there is legal ground and a global imperative for protecting biodiversity, state expropriation of communal lands or forests for the establishment of protected forest reserves results in cost to the owners (which become fringe communities): (1) loss of land and access to forest products and services, (2) disturbance of livelihoods and food security, and (3) alteration of the traditional nature-community relationship as dependent communities are transformed into fringe communities. This paper employs Marx’s theory of alienation to advance the argument that the preponderant human-human conflict in protected forest areas in Ghana are reactionary responses to alienation and structural displacement of dispossessed communities. The paper presents and discusses a conceptual framework for understanding alienation as a source of conflicts in protected forest reserves and poverty in fringe communities in Ghana. A way out of the conflict is contemplated but the paper concludes with an open question: if the fringe communities have a duty to obey just laws, don’t they have a similar duty to disobey unjust laws?