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Elements of Revolutionary Pan-Africanism

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Elements of Revolutionary Pan-Africanism ELEMENTS OF REVOLUTIONARY PAN-AFRICANISM DR. KWAME NKRUMAH ELEMENTS OF REVOLUTIONARY PAN-AFRICANISM Lang T.K.A. Nubuor CENTRE FOR CONSCIENCIST STUDIES AND ANALYSES (CENCSA) ELEMENTS OF REVOLUTIONARY PAN-AFRICANISM Copyright © Lang T.K.A. Nubuor 2012 Published by the Centre for Consciencist Studies and Analyses (CENCSA) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on subsequent purchaser. Dedicated to the Professional Revolutionary of the orientation of Revolutionary Pan-Africanism who diligently studies, understands and applies Marxism-Nkrumaism to liberate and unify Africa. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah The organised masses, if not armed, are helpless in a revolutionary situation. However organised the masses are, it is always by armed insurrection that counter-revolutionary regimes are overthrown. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, A letter to June Milne, dated April 29, 1967 Works by Kwame Nkrumah Africa Must Unite Axioms of Kwame Nkrumah Class Struggle in Africa Consciencism Dark Days in Ghana Ghana (Autobiography) Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare I Speak of Freedom Neo-Colonialism Revolutionary Path* Rhodesia File* The Struggle Continues* Towards Colonial Freedom Voice from Conakry Pamphlets Ghana: The Way Out What I Mean by Positive Action The Big Lie Two Myths: The Myth of the ―Third World‖ ―African Socialism‖ Revisited The Spectre of Black Power *Published Posthumously CONTENTS DEDICATION FOREWORD PREFACE INTRODUCTION FIRST ENTRY The Problem of our Borders in Africa SECOND ENTRY The Problem with Prof. Kwame Addo‘s Presentation THIRD ENTRY H.E. Mr. Lee Ocran‘s Pigeon-Hole Development Strategy FOURTH ENTRY Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom is not a Fool FIFTH ENTRY The Shivji-Prah Debate SIXTH ENTRY Sustaining the New Wave of Pan-Africanism or Sustaining the Wave of Resistance to Revolutionary Pan-Africanism? SEVENTH ENTRY On Hon. Samia Nkrumah and the African Revolution EIGTH ENTRY Spirituality and Religion in Revolutionary Pan- Africanism If Marx turns Hegel upside down and repudiates divine influence, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah restores divinity on the basis of the premises of Marx to the Marxist discourse as materialist spirituality – a spirituality that does not subsist ‗outside‘ the universe but ‗inside‘ it in accordance with African cosmogony. God is not ‗outside‘ the world but ‗inside‘ it. FOREWORD In his significant book Pan-Africanism or Neo-Colonialism, Elenga M‘buyinga asserts that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah is the only African head of state to have elaborated a coherent theory of African Unity in the face of the absence of any coherent overall conception of it. He sees that absence as the great weakness of Revolutionary Pan-Africanism1. On his part, Dr. Nkrumah does see this elaborated theory, an element in his ideological system, as one in a state of evolution conditioned by the development of the revolutionary struggle in Africa. Below here, we see that he describes that ideological system as ‗Marxism-Nkrumaism‘ or ‗Nkrumaism‘ for short. We also observe therein that he traces its origins to his 1947 publication Towards Colonial Freedom and thus shows that contrary to M‘buyinga‘s understanding the theory of African Unity predates 1963‘s publication of Africa Must Unite as it evolves from the 1947 publication. And that publication clearly flourishes on the tested ideologico-philosophical principles of Marxism. Hence, Dr. Nkrumah‘s fidelity to Marxism has never been a post-coup event. That has always been the foundation of his thought and practice system. In applying the principles of Marxism within the specific conditions of Africa, however, he faces the reality of what he describes as a universal power which he sees as the source of all power in the universe and as the sustenance of all that there is. This realization conditions what he does that both idealist and materialist philosophers never ever did – that is, he implicitly distinguishes the variants of ‗spirit‘ employed in philosophical discourse whereby the conclusions derived from the analyses of one variant are without appropriate logical procedure attributed to the other variant. This principally results from considering ‗mind‘ as ‗spirit‘. In the philosopher‘s consideration of ‗mind‘ as ‗spirit‘, be it the mind of man or of God, they mess up this so-called spirit with the ‗Spirit‘ that is perceived and conceived to be a force that exists as an independent force capable of activity beyond the control of Man. The two are not the same. The standard practice of all hitherto philosophers, including Hegel and Marx, conflates the two disparate categories. Hence, their conclusions on one are necessarily imposed on the other. So, the analyses of the characteristics of the human mind are automatically considered as the analyses of Spirit beings. Let us illustrate this with Karl Marx‘s critique of Hegelian theory. Applying his methodology of alienation-reification-inversion (ARI), Marx analyses how the idealist philosopher comes by the concept of God. He considers the statement ‗Man is good‘. The idealist first of all, through the process of alienation, dissociates ‗good‘ from the man whose attribute it is. In the next process of reification, this dissociated attribute is given a life of its own and thus converted into an independent active entity. The final process of inversion then turns upside down (inverses) the relationship between Man and his attribute wherein the attribute is now elevated and presented as the producer or the creator (God) of the Man. Good becomes God. The same procedure is at play when the statement ‗Man has mind‘ is similarly handled; in which case Mind, also called spirit, is reinvented as God or Spirit and Man as the created being. On the basis of this illogicality of the idealist philosopher, Marx dismisses the idealist‘s argument for the existence of God. In so doing, however, though the illogical operation is well appreciated, Marx himself does not develop an alternative argument for the existence of God but rejects that existence solely on the basis of the Hegelian fallacy which is an argument on Man and his relation to his own attribute but not in his relation to an external force. In his correct re- inversion of the Hegelian procedure, and thus placing Man as the producer or bearer of his own attributes which include his mind, Marx, nevertheless, remains on the turf of conflating mind and Spirit as he extends the rejection of Mind as Man‘s creator to the rejection of the external force (Spirit, God). Dr. Nkrumah has the singular distinction of dissolving that conflation. To do that, he asserts the distinction between mind as a spirit dependent on man and Spirit as an independent existence or a universal power. In his consideration of the dependence of mind, he notes how the state of the mind is dependent on the state (or health) of the brain and not vice versa. The parts of the brain have been established as centres that enable the operations of the mind. In case, for instance, that part of the brain which enables memory activity is injured in one way or the other the mind experiences difficulties. Mind difficulties are, therefore, resolved through physiological interventions in the brain. Universal power suffers no such dependence. Spirit, as that universal power, is not understood, however, as a non-material entity or, if you like, as something that is essentially different from matter. It is a material entity – once it is understood to be external to the mind of Man – with features that Dr. Nkrumah likens to ether or electricity. Indeed, in Consciencism, he asserts, what he describes as the African traditional standpoint, that matter is not dead weight but one that is alive as a complex of forces in tension. In this respect, he also asserts the African rejection of concepts of ‗outside‘ and ‗inside‘ about the universe. Such a rejection derives from the African making the two concepts continuous and thus abolishes them. The universal power is ‗within‘ the world. The significance of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah‘s restitution of universal power (which is easily seen as God) to the premises of Marxism2 consists in the recognition that Man does not exist outside the influence of the universal power. For, he asserts that there are universal laws of this power which, if broken, lead man to certain destruction. Living in harmony with such laws is the condition for human fulfilment. This philosophical position rests in harmony with the traditional African thought system which, Dr. Nkrumah argues in Consciencism, must be the basis upon which Christian, Islamic and African thought systems are harmonized into a coherent ideology. This restitution of divinity to the premises of Marxism advances Marxism out of the world of atheism into the world of materialist spirituality wherein God is asserted as a material reality. It is the distinctive contribution of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah to Marxist thought and practice. Within the African condition in particular this justifies the reference to his ideological system not simply as Nkrumaism but objectively as Marxism-Nkrumaism. For, his entire argument is nourished by dialectical materialism which is its rock foundation. In otherwise words, any successful argument against dialectical materialism amounts to a successful demolition of his thought system. It is important to observe that in the preparation of the second edition of Consciencism, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah proposes to reduce the long sub-title so that Consciencism: Ideology for Decolonisation becomes the new title of the book. He asks June Milne for her thought on that.
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