N. Masilela, translated by Shu Wenhao: Pan-Africanism or Classical African Marxism?

In recent years, Africa has developed a system of thought known as Classical African Marxism. Historically originating from classical Marxism and finding its legitimacy within its logic, this phenomenon has fundamentally transformed the structure of African intellectual history and altered our understanding of African history itself. Although the variations and initial forms of Classical African Marxism occurred within the historical coordinates of African revolutions—primarily the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962) and the Guinea-Bissau Revolution (1961–1974)—its historical lineage runs through the entire 20th century, spanning the Black African Diaspora (South America, North America, and the Caribbean).

Consequently, the formation of Classical African Marxism indicates that from Soweto to Dakar, and from Georgetown to Havana to Atlanta, the Black world is spiritually united. That is to say, the movement of historical forces behind the formation of Classical African Marxism runs counter to imperialism, which has devastated Africa politically, culturally, and economically.

We can, therefore, trace the intellectual inspiration of Classical African Marxism to the philosophy of Pan-Africanism. However, there is no doubt that the structure of this materialist philosophy was stipulated by the inaugural research of African Marxist historians into the history of the continent. In the late 19th century, Classical Pan-Africanism, which originated in the Americas, aimed to liberate Africa from imperialist rule. Simultaneously, it sought the historical unification of the African people and the African diaspora. Thus, the emergence of Classical Pan-Africanism was a direct response to the Berlin Conference of 1885 ^[1], where the African continent was partitioned by various imperialist powers. From the moment of its birth, Classical Pan-Africanism launched an unyielding war against colonialism.

The greatest victory of Classical Pan-Africanism occurred in 1960, when nearly half of the countries on the African continent achieved political independence. This victory was the result of a century-long political and cultural struggle. Paradoxically, however, at the moment of its greatest victory, Classical Pan-Africanism suffered a fatal defeat that undermined the political legitimacy of this philosophy on the continent. This crushing defeat was the Congo Crisis of 1960–1961, which led to three outcomes: the murder of the great African patriot Patrice Lumumba; the memorialization of Lumumba by Jean-Paul Sartre in his brilliant essay on the crisis as a "Black Jacobin" ^[2] and a "revolutionary without a revolution"; and the demonstration that classical colonialism had adopted a new, more vicious form than before—namely, neocolonialism. This was the first humiliating defeat for the newly independent African states, marking the historical necessity of their political unity. From this moment on, Classical Pan-Africanism was superseded by the development of Classical African Marxism.

The Classical Pan-Africanist philosophers and politicians included C.L.R. James (Trinidad), George Padmore (Trinidad), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), and W.E.B. Du Bois (USA), whose goals were to expel European imperialism and its various forms of colonialism from the African continent. This also meant purging the European view of history (and its various national histories)—including its knowledge, thought, and culture—that had been imposed upon the history of African nations. For Classical Pan-Africanists, the fundamental issue was to advance the movement of African history at the intellectual level and reclaim the glory of its past. European imperialism and colonialism had broken the dialectical movement of African history. In other words, European colonial rule had caused African history to stagnate, and the mission of the Classical Pan-Africanists was to make African history dynamic once again. However, to achieve this intellectual task, it was necessary to engage in political struggle against colonialism on the material level of social existence. Thus, we see that the unity of theory and practice was crucial to the success of Classical Pan-Africanist philosophy.

It was within this historical context—theoretically linking the various components of African history and politically confronting the prevalence of colonialism—that Classical Pan-Africanist philosophy encountered classical Marxism. Starting from a conception of history, Classical Pan-Africanism inevitably reached a consensus with classical Marxism; after all, historical materialism is the only science of history and the only philosophy that combines theory and practice within a dialectical movement. Only historical materialism posits specific structural forces and actors or subjects—namely, the working class—and maintains that just as capitalism was defeated in the great Russian Revolution of 1917, capitalism can only be defeated by relying on the working class. In order to clarify the forms of African history and implement the means by which colonialism and imperialism could be defeated, the Classical Pan-Africanists felt it necessary to adopt the intellectual and political tools of historical materialism within classical Marxism. Thus, the Classical Pan-Africanists discovered classical Marxism, which Sartre had called thirty years prior "the philosophy of our time" or "the unsurpassable philosophy."

Following the discovery of historical materialism, all Classical Pan-Africanists accepted classical Marxism. However, at the moment they applied historical materialism, classical Marxism was deeply steeped in the complexities of European history. In the Soviet Union, Marxism had split into two dominant factions: Stalinism and Trotskyism. Among Classical Pan-Africanist thinkers and political leaders, James moved in the direction of Trotskyism, while Padmore, conversely, advanced toward Stalinism.

It was precisely at the moment of attempting to combine Classical Pan-Africanism and classical Marxism that two eminent thinkers produced two great historical works: James's The Black Jacobins and Du Bois's Black Reconstruction. In The Black Jacobins, James analyzed a successful slave revolt within the context of the history of slave uprisings from ancient times to the present. More precisely, he sought to draw lessons from the Haitian Revolution of that time to sustain the struggle against colonialism and imperialism. It should be emphasized that the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was one of the few defeats suffered by Napoleon Bonaparte before 1815. In other words, the first defeat of bourgeois France came at the hands of Black slaves. Bonapartism ^[3] was a hybrid product of bourgeois democracy and French imperialism/colonialism; at the time, all of Europe, from Spain to Russia, was in a state of terror. There is no doubt that Napoleon used the sword to spread the fruits of the French Revolution across the European continent, but he was simultaneously a defender of French colonialism. James sought to explain why the Black people in the Haitian Revolution succeeded in defeating France while Europe failed for a time. Thus, James's task was to trace the structure of African historical forms through the occasion of armed resistance against European rule and imperialism. This was a new approach to writing Marxist African history.

Du Bois's work, Black Reconstruction, is one of the monuments of American historiography. The book explicates the failure of the efforts of Black Americans to integrate into democratic institutions following the American Civil War (1861–1865 [Note: text says 1860-1965]). Without a doubt, the establishment of capitalist America was built upon the exploitation of Black labor and the trampling of Native American corpses. Du Bois attributed the persistent discrimination against Black people of African descent to the failure of unity between the African-American working class and the Euro-American working class, a failure resulting from the racism of the latter. On an international level, Du Bois emphasized the necessity for the Black American working class to unite with the Black working class in other parts of Africa, particularly South Africa. In his later book, The World and Africa, Du Bois used empirical evidence and a brilliant theoretical foundation to argue that Egyptian civilization was constructed by Black Africans, despite the attempts of European historians to incorporate it into "white civilization." There is no doubt that Egyptian civilization was a creation of African genius, and Greek civilization, which serves as the foundation of European culture, proliferated under the influence of Egyptian civilization.

The publication of these two works attempted to bring coherence to the diversity of African history. Simultaneously, at the intellectual level, Classical Pan-Africanism split into two wings: one advancing toward Stalinism and the other toward Trotskyism. Within the African context, both aimed to liberate Africa from European colonial rule. James embraced Trotskyism and sought possible forms of socialist democracy within the African scope. Padmore embraced Stalinism to utilize the power of the Comintern to represent the African people and serve their overthrow of colonialism and imperialism. Both versions of Marxism followed specific historical principles. When resigning his membership from the French Communist Party (PCF) due to disagreements over the PCF's refusal to support the Algerian Revolution, Aimé Césaire said: "Marxism should serve the historical needs of Black people, not the other way around." When both James and Padmore realized that the institutional forms of Marxism to which they had pledged allegiance no longer served the interests of the African people, they broke with these institutional forms. On one hand, Padmore conflated communism with Stalinism, which ultimately led him to abandon historical materialism. On the other hand, although James eventually rejected Trotskyism, he never abandoned Marxism.

At the same time, African historians made their first attempts to map the social geography and conceptual structure of African history. Imperialist rule had broken the structure of African history, shrouding Africa's contribution to human civilization in darkness. Therefore, the process of revealing the history of the continent in new ways became particularly urgent politically. Two great African historians—the Senegalese Marxist historian Cheikh Anta Diop and the Burkinabé historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo—scientifically revolutionized the structure of African history and intellectually enriched our understanding of it.

To understand the significance of Diop's contribution, please recall that since the Renaissance, European historians have systematically denied the fact that Egyptian civilization was an African civilization. Philosophers and historians such as Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Leopold von Ranke argued that Egyptian civilization was not African but a "white civilization." In their view, we Africans never had a concept of history but lived outside of it. In his work The African Origin of Civilization, Diop used empirical evidence gathered from the works of Aristotle, Herodotus, Euclid, and others to argue powerfully that Egyptian civilization belonged to Africa. During the era of Greek civilization, Egyptian civilization was an African civilization; it is a self-evident historical fact that Greek civilization could not have existed without Egyptian civilization. However, in the bourgeois era of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, due to the emergence of racism and modern imperialism, this fact was disputed as a denial of the contribution of African genius to human civilization. Diop powerfully reaffirmed the contribution of African genius to human history. In other words, this was a Marxist correction of the legacy of the racist bourgeoisie.

Diop's critique of the European bourgeois legacy from Hume to Hegel and Ranke was correct, a point recently confirmed by Martin Bernal in his book Black Athena. This British historian used Western academic conventions to corroborate Diop's thesis that Egyptian civilization was a "Black civilization." He systematically elucidated how Greeks like Herodotus and Aristotle accepted the fact that Egyptian civilization was an African civilization within the natural order of things; it was only with the emergence of bourgeois culture that Africans were displaced from history. Following the publication of Black Athena in London, a controversy erupted regarding the historical authenticity of its thesis.

Among the figures who produced various responses to Black Athena, the one who interests us most is the British historian Perry Anderson ^[4]. In an important review of Black Athena in The Guardian Weekly, Anderson advanced an ingenious argument. While acknowledging that the book's thesis seemed plausible—that Egyptian civilization played a role in the emergence of Greek civilization—Anderson argued that the former's contribution did not lie in those specific fields involved in the formation of Western civilization that were transmitted through the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and down to the present day. This is a euphemistic way of denying the contribution of African genius to the construction of human civilization. In other words, Anderson’s position is a continuation of the myth of the bourgeois Enlightenment, albeit with a Marxist coloring.

To understand the true implications of Anderson’s remarks, it is necessary to examine the arguments he put forward in two works: Lineages of the Absolutist State and Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. In these two monumental texts, Anderson attempts to answer the question originally posed by Max Weber: why did capitalism emerge in the West—that is, in Europe—rather than elsewhere? Anderson links this Weberian question to his sophisticated examination of Marxism. Another place where capitalism might have emerged from feudalism was Japan; however, this possibility was never realized. Anderson argues that it was precisely the combination of Greco-Roman traditions (democracy, philosophy, and law), transmitted and transformed during the Renaissance, that made the emergence of capitalism and bourgeois civilization possible. Therefore, one can conclude that in those aspects fundamental to "white civilization," "black civilization" made no contribution. The entire thrust of Anderson’s argument in this review is debatable. After all, the subsequent proof is pre-established, finding its origins in his prior argumentation. Even if these fields might not have been central within Egyptian civilization, the fact that they are today the primary legacy of Greek civilization to human culture is also essentially due, in part, to the contribution of "black civilization" to "white civilization," just as many things in Africa today are contributions of European bourgeois culture. In saying this, we are not diminishing the tragedy caused by imperialist intervention in Africa; we are merely pointing out the dual nature of the dialectics of history.

The other great African historian we mention is Joseph Ki-Zerbo. Although not a Marxist, Ki-Zerbo’s contribution to African historiography is immense. His work Die Geschichte Schwarz-Afrikas (The History of Black Africa), along with his many methodological and historical essays in the first volume of the UNESCO General History of Africa, formed a new conceptual shape for African history.

From what we have said thus far, one of the core objectives of classic African Marxism is the reconstruction of the structure of African history destroyed by European imperialism. In other words, the collapse of African history was the dialectical result of European capital accumulation, the foundation of which was the slave economies of the Caribbean and the Americas. It is estimated that during three centuries of modern slavery, approximately 70 million Africans were removed from Africa, of whom about 35 million died in one form or another. In the historical works of European scholars, and even in the works of European Marxists, this holocaust is rarely mentioned. The truth is that contemporary European bourgeois civilization is built upon the corpses of 70 million Africans; this is an indisputable historical fact. In this context, Walter Benjamin’s view that culture is a product of both barbarism and civilization possesses a profound historical truth. Those who question the veracity of what we say should refer to the work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by the Guyanese Marxist Walter Rodney. This book systematically analyzes the forms of European destruction of African civilization after the major European bourgeois powers occupied and partitioned the continent. Of course, we African Marxists still have to explain why Africa was unable to resist this European colonial incursion.

The urgent task of classical Pan-Africanism was to construct a new social geography of African history and to attempt a synthesis with classical Marxism. In 1960, with the independence of many African countries, classical Pan-Africanism achieved its greatest political goal: the elimination of classical European colonialism from the African continent. However, it would have been naive and foolish to expect European and American imperialism to accept this defeat without making a historical response. After all, imperialism is a historical process; when its classical form of colonialism was defeated, imperialism responded with a new form: neo-colonialism. As previously stated, classical Pan-Africanism was not "defeated" in an absolute sense, but its failure and demise as a philosophy of survival were brought about by its defeat at the hands of neo-imperialism during the 1960 Congo Crisis ^[5]. There is no doubt that Africa's debacle in the Congo Crisis was a disaster of incalculable proportions, the grave consequences of which persist in Africa today. One need only look at the countless neo-colonial regimes stretching from Senegal to Zambia. Kwame Nkrumah’s work Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1964) not only heralded a new stage of African history but also demonstrated the impracticality of classical Pan-Africanism in a new historical phase. Nkrumah was a vital transitional figure in the attempt to integrate classical Pan-Africanism and classical Marxism into the emergence of classic African Marxism. If the legacy of the classical form of Pan-Africanism still holds significant meaning today, it lies in the attempt to establish the spiritual unity of all Black people in the world.

Consequently, classic African Marxism emerged to counter the neo-colonialism that was then rapidly developing on the continent. In the international context of Marxist thought, classic African Marxism arose during the gradual exhaustion of the philosophical systems of Western Marxism. This intellectual tradition was the legacy of Lukács, Gramsci, Bloch, and many others, which reached its end in the "May Storm" ^[6] of 1968. In South America, Latin American Marxism, founded by the Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui, was transforming into Guevarism, aiming to liberate Latin America from the stranglehold of neo-colonialism and potentially bring about the national unity led by Simón Bolívar. In Asia, Mao Zedong Thought was gradually moving toward crisis during the "Cultural Revolution," while the Vietnamese Revolution was in the process of resisting American imperialism. In the Soviet Union, the conservatism of the Brezhnev regime had mired the Soviet Republics in a swamp of corruption and pessimism. Within the United States, the Civil Rights Movement and the student movement joined forces to strive for new democratic positions. The formation of classic African Marxism belongs to this historical convergence of political and cultural forces.

Classic African Marxism, as articulated in the works of Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral, is the product of the Algerian and Guinea-Bissau revolutions within the African scope. Taking Anderson's reflections on Western Marxism as a classic summary of that tradition, if we compare Western Marxism with classic African Marxism, we find the following contrasts: the former is a product of defeat, while the latter is a product of victory; the former primarily concerns the realm of philosophy, while the latter focuses on political dialectics; the former represents the separation of theory and practice, while the latter is an expression of the profound integration of theory and practice; the former theorized aesthetics, while the latter theorized a new historical field. In many respects, classic African Marxism is a continuation of the themes of classical Marxism rather than Western Marxism. However, it is necessary here to examine the specific concepts and distinctive features of classic African Marxism.

It was Fanon who depicted a political landscape in which classic African Marxism, by incorporating the perspective of classical Pan-Africanism, revolutionized our understanding of African history. This became the basis for political solidarity between Arabs and Africans, thereby opposing the hegemony of Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism ^[7] as separate movements. The essence of Fanon’s theoretical and political practice in the Algerian Revolution was to establish this North (Arab)–South (Black African) unity. In Fanon's view, the Algerian Revolution was the first and foremost dialectical process toward an African revolution. According to the logic of his political position, Pan-Arabists and Pan-Africanists would find their historical expression within the concept of the Third World. Thus, it was Fanon who articulated the concept of the Third World as a serious political category, imbuing it with rich historical content. Third World countries, including Africa, Asia, and Latin America, would be understood and analyzed in relation to the capitalist Western countries, which Fanon called the First World, and the Eastern socialist countries, which he called the Second World. At the time of the formation of African Marxism in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this concept of the Third World helped create a political consensus among the exploited peoples of the world.

Although Fanon's assertions and the political practice of Arab-African unity were historically correct, they lacked sociological categories and achievable geographical coordinates. On the other hand, Fanon’s critique of the intellectual mediocrity, economic bankruptcy, and lack of political literacy of the then-emerging African national bourgeoisie was extremely profound. It was the disintegration of this class and its alliance with imperialism that led Fanon to believe that socialism was the only path for the collective development of Third World peoples. But he added an important proviso: Third World countries should not define their own specific forms of socialist development according to the socialism defined by other nations, other continents, and other historical circumstances. This is the background to Fanon's argument that the application of classical Marxism in a colonial context must always be stretched and made more flexible. This should not be understood as Fanon advocating a form of "African Socialism"; for him, there was only one form of socialism—Marx's socialism—which must be prescribed according to the historical specificities of each Third World country. Without a doubt, this is an issue of great complexity.

Fanon's flexible application of classical Marxism in the colonial context led him to argue that the peasantry was the only revolutionary class, while the working class was privileged and conservative. In this sense, even within a limited historical space, Fanonism can be compared to Mao Zedong Thought. Mao also emphasized the revolutionary role of the peasantry, but the real difference between the two lies in the fact that Mao advocated the supremacy of the peasantry because, within the developing Chinese social structure, the historical weight of the proletariat was small. Fanon, however, excluded the possibility of the working class being revolutionary due to its corrupt nature within the colonial framework. Mao Zedong Thought skillfully interpreted a complex historical form, whereas Fanonism misread this intricate political space. Cabral's aim, within the historical scope of classic African Marxism, was to provide an epistemological and political correction to the historical misreading of Fanonism. It is precisely this dialectical reciprocity and exchange between Fanonism and Cabralism that constitutes the unity of classic African Marxism.

It should be remembered that Fanonism was the ideology of the Algerian Revolution; however, today, for reactionary reasons, it is being repudiated by certain elements within Algeria. This specific version of classic African Marxism is superior to Western Marxism because it insists on the unity of theory and practice—one of the fundamental tenets of classic Marxism—and the illusions of classic African Marxism as practiced by Fanon were no more debilitating than those within the traditions of Adorno, Althusser, or Gramsci. Another contribution of Fanonism is its success in triggering a political revolution against French imperialism, particularly against its classical colonial form, even though the Algerian Revolution later proved unable to escape its own contradictions. Is Leninism to be repudiated from the outset because of the severe limitations present since the beginning of the October Revolution?

Without a doubt, The Wretched of the Earth implanted a revolutionary ideology in Africa, especially in places where such ideology was absent. It possesses distinct characteristics: first, the use of revolutionary violence by the oppressed and exploited to oppose the counter-revolutionary violence of imperialism and colonialism. Second, that the Third World national bourgeoisie always remains in a historically underdeveloped cultural and economic stage, where national interests are consistently subordinated to the consciousness of imperialism and neocolonization. Third, that in the colonial context, only the peasantry is the truly revolutionary class. Fourth, that culture should become an instrument of the national liberation struggle. Fifth, that culture and politics are inseparable. Sixth, that the Third World should construct itself as a historical entity. The impact of Fanon's ideology on African history and political consciousness has been highly uneven, leaving the overall African cultural imagination largely untouched, yet it inspired Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa against white fascism in the 1970s, as well as the Muleleist ^[8] struggle against President Mobutu’s neocolonial politics.

Although Fanonism served as an extremely rich source in the formation of classic African Marxism, it must be viewed through the lens of complementarity with another branch of African materialist philosophy: Cabralism. Amílcar Cabral was undoubtedly one of the great Marxist intellectuals produced by our turbulent century. His theoretical formulations constitute the foundation of classic African Marxism, as African Marxism is a direct continuation of the classic Marxism of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. In future centuries, many intellectual breakthroughs will occur in Africa, but these can only be built upon the foundation of classic African Marxism, because this historical materialist outlook is Africa’s living philosophy today. It cannot be surpassed until the African people have completed all the historical tasks it demands.

Cabral carried out a revolution in redrawing the conceptual structure of African history and prescribing an ideology based on its specificities. Moreover, he raised fundamental questions regarding the intellectual structure of classic Marxism. Cabral posited classic African Marxism as a response to the ideological deficiencies he encountered in Africa. It is necessary to clarify that when we speak of classic African Marxism, we are focused more on its coordinates as a system of thought and a political tradition. For Cabral, during the entire historical period from World War II to the present, the African revolution has unfolded within a complex and volatile era characterized by national liberation struggles across the three continents of the Third World ^[9]. The scale of these struggles far exceeds the class struggle within late-stage capitalist countries, and even exceeds the struggle between capitalism and socialism. It is these national liberation struggles that are regarded as the primary driving force of our historical development. These struggles are emphasized because, for Cabral and Fanon, national liberation is the essential means by which the oppressed, exploited, and unfortunate of the Third World rewrite their own national histories—histories from which they were once expelled by imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism. In short, the armed revolutionary struggle is the fundamental method for re-entering and rewriting history.

In 1966, at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana celebrating the Cuban Revolution, Cabral delivered an address titled "The Weapon of Theory," in which he advocated for a new Marxist conception of history, particularly regarding concepts related to the history of the African continent. The theories Cabral proposed in "The Weapon of Theory" reflected the developmental process of the Guinean (Bissau) revolution, of which he was the primary theorist. One could say this confirmed a principle of Marxism: without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary success. Consequently, Cabral sought to generalize the essence of history within those African societies characterized by an absence of classes or class struggle. Since it is affirmed that class struggle is the motor of history, he went on to ask: does this mean that in societies lacking this motivating factor, the people live outside of history? This is a crucial question, because when imperialism infiltrated African societies, it did so under the pretext that these societies existed outside of history and civilization. Cabral argued that the imperialist invasion of Africa forced the African people to leave African history and enter the history of the European empires. In this sense, the armed struggle is a process of exiting colonial and imperial history and re-entering African history (national history) and the history of the people. He further argued that the mode of production is the motor of history, both before and after the stage of class struggle. Through this generalized new Marxist understanding of history, he sought to establish a continuity of patterns, lineages, and forms in African history from antiquity to the present. Even in the era of colonial rule, we lived and experienced our African history in specific ways.

Regarding the generalization of African historical evolution, Cabral elaborated three stages of the gradual complication of the structure of modes of production in the process of human history: the first stage is characterized by a low level of productive forces, in which there is no private appropriation and no classes. In the second stage, the means of production are privately appropriated, followed by the emergence of social and economic contradictions, leading to the appearance of classes. In the third stage, private means of appropriation are eliminated, thereby removing the concepts of classes and class struggle. The formation of social structures corresponds to these stages: moving from horizontal (absence of the state) to vertical (formation of the state) and back to horizontal (abolition of the state). Here, Cabral not only elaborated abstract concepts of social structure and history but also elucidated their actual connections within the complexity of social reality. In other words, Cabral was tracing the social determinants of history and the historical relationship between the abstract and the concrete. In an indirect sense—as it was not his central object of focus—Cabral was engaging in a polemic against the so-called "African Socialist" theorists who presupposed that there was no class formation in African history prior to the imperial invasion.

In this address, Cabral also sought to explore the process of bypassing stages of historical development: whether African societies could bypass capitalism and move directly from a feudal stage into socialism. This question is related to the role of imperialism in African history. The nature of the national liberation struggle in Guinea-Bissau, as well as the political and armed practice of the Guinean people, presented these theoretical questions to Cabral. Here, we see the unity between theory and practice at the core of classic African Marxism—a unity whose absence severely weakened Western Marxism. Examples include the collapse of the Hungarian Soviet Republic after the 1920s, the failure of the Turin factory councils under Gramsci's leadership, and the failure of the German Revolution led by Rosa Luxemburg. In Cabral's view, European imperialism successfully fulfilled its historical mission in African history: expanding class differentiation, accelerating the development of productive forces, and enriching the cultural themes of the African people. One reason for the failure of imperialism was that it did not allow the then-emerging African bourgeoisie to conduct capital accumulation.

To oppose the imperialist distortion of African history, the national liberation struggle is a necessary political tool. As Cabral wrote: "The national liberation of a people is the reclamation of that people's historical personality; it isPort their return to the historical process through the destruction of imperialist rule." In this sense, for Cabral, the national liberation struggle is not only a process of opposing neocolonialism and reviving productive forces, but also a revolution. The return of African peoples to civilized history has the potential effect of eliminating tribalism and overcoming social and cultural backwardness. Cabral agreed with Fanon on the necessity of using revolutionary violence: opposing the criminal violence of imperialist agents with the liberating violence of nationalist forces. Through the process of armed struggle, African people continuously develop and nurture a revolutionary consciousness, though this revolutionary awareness varies by class.

The essence of this revolutionary consciousness corresponds to the position of various social strata within the social structure. It was this realization that prompted Cabral to analyze the social structure of Guinea-Bissau. In 1964, at a seminar at the Frantz Fanon Center in Milan, Cabral presented the paper "Brief Analysis of the Social Structure in Guinea," which confirmed the status of classic African Marxism. He analyzed the structuring process of African social formations, with neocolonialism as the object of critique; it was precisely this historical process that prompted the emergence of African materialist philosophy.

Although this paper took the social structure of Guinea-Bissau as its empirical object, its theoretical framework has universal applicability, particularly in Africa. This empirical analysis proved that long before the imperialist invasion of the African historical domain, African societies were already in a state of class stratification.

The entire analysis covers almost the complete socio-geography of ethnic differentiation in Guinea-Bissau. He integrated the historical differences arising from this structure into a complex whole. Cabral defined the class status of the following social groups: the aristocracy, religious figures, artisans, peasants, workers, and chiefs. This definition creates a significant historical distinction between the "class" concept of the African "feudal mode of production" and the "class" concept of the capitalist mode of production. Cabral attempted to trace the transition between these two paradigms. Within the embryonic structure of the capitalist mode of production, he proposed the concept of "declassed" (堕落的人) ^[10], which was a problematic category within the feudal order. Cabral revealed the complex social structure of the capitalist colonial order: the formation of the petty bourgeoisie, the metamorphosis of officials (senior, intermediate, and junior officials), and the nature of the declassed (beggars, prostitutes, the lumpenproletariat). It is within such a complex order that imperialism intervenes and brings other complications: "the emergence and evolution of a national bourgeoisie." This pattern of relations proves beyond doubt the existence of an African history—an existence that imperial history attempted to challenge and destroy.

Cabral conducted an exhaustive analysis of the ethnic geography of Guinea-Bissau with the aim of identifying the various patterns of contradiction within which the national liberation struggle could unfold. After all, the historical logic behind Cabral's great thought was to frustrate imperial hegemony in African history and expel imperialism and neocolonialism from the African political map. Therefore, in the structure of classic African Marxism, practice lies behind theory, and practice also stands before theory. It is in this context that it is necessary to describe the morphological structure of classes in detail. Moreover, only on the basis of combining theory and practice was Cabral able to correct Fanon's assumption that during the colonial period only the peasantry was the revolutionary class, while the proletariat was a privileged class and reactionary. Cabral clearly pointed out that the role of the peasantry in the national liberation struggle is as a material force, which must be distinguished from a historical force. He argued that the peasantry is revolutionary only as a material force against colonialism, but it is not a historical force; rather, it is the working class that is the revolutionary historical force for achieving the transition from capitalism to socialism.

So far, I have emphasized the historical role of classical African Marxism in reconstructing the conceptual forms of social geography and African history, and its dialectical relationship with a revolutionary praxis seeking to defeat imperial rule. One could argue that African materialist philosophy focuses heavily on these issues. In fact, however, it is also deeply concerned with a range of other contents, from theories regarding the nature of revolutionary democracy (socialist democracy) proposed within the African context to the role of the revolutionary party among the masses. I will discuss these issues shortly, as they pertain to the future of African socialism. But for now, I wish to emphasize that classical African Marxism encapsulates the dialectical problem of culture: here I shall focus on the contributions of Cabral ^[11].

Focusing his reflections on culture and tradition, Cabral explored the revolutionary potential of African culture in his essay "National Culture and Liberation." He argued that the imperialist invasion constituted an act of suppressing the historical forms of different African peoples; likewise, on a cultural level, this invasion was a form of negating African national cultures, in the sense that European culture established hegemony over them. This cultural domination reveals the direct and dialectical relationship between economic exploitation and cultural rule. Cabral believed that culture is an expression of human history, revealing the dialectical unity of man and nature. Imperialism attempts to erase the cultural memory of a people's history. In response, various forms of cultural resistance emerge in colonized regions. Historically, the prelude to a national liberation struggle is usually an enhanced cultural expressiveness of the dominated nation. As Cabral wrote, "The value of culture as an element of resistance to foreign domination lies in the fact that culture is the vigorous manifestation on the ideological or idealist level of the physical and historical reality of the society that is dominated or to be dominated." Cabral’s radical formulation led him to believe that culture is not only an expression of history but history itself—the manifestation of the movement of productive forces. In resisting foreign or imperial cultural domination, the national liberation struggle becomes an act of creating and expanding cultural space.

In Cabral’s view, although culture is inherently popular (of the masses), it is unevenly distributed across the horizontal and vertical dimensions of social formations—and even among individuals within the same social group. It is in this sense that culture is seen not only as historical content but as an ideological process. In societies characterized by the horizontal, culture is more or less evenly distributed, whereas in those where the vertical is dominant, cultural distribution is complex and uneven. When carrying out a national liberation struggle, these historical differences must be taken into account, and not only when writing the history of national culture. Where class, race, and nation intertwine, the complexity of cultural distribution is even more profound.

Beyond revitalizing African national culture through the national liberation struggle, the heritage of African culture demonstrates that it is itself an extremely rich historical treasury. The cultural inheritance from Carthage, Giza, Zimbabwe, and Meroë to Benin, Ife, Timbuktu, and Kilwa demonstrates the continuity of African culture. In the fields of dance, music, oral and written literature, cosmology, religious systems, and philosophy, the universality of African culture should be evident. Given the influence of African cultural expression on the world—from Picasso’s creations influenced by the "African mask" to Stravinsky’s borrowing from the music of Scott Joplin—it is necessary here to quote Cabral’s useful warning:

However, in the urgent need to achieve progress, the following attitudes or behaviors are equally harmful to Africa: indiscriminate praise; systematic glorification of virtues without condemning errors; blind acceptance of cultural values without considering their current or potential regressive elements; confusing what is an expression of objective and material historical reality with what seems to be a creation of the mind or a product of a specific temperament; absurdly linking artistic creation to presumed racial characteristics, for better or worse; and finally, unscientific or pseudo-scientific critical appraisal of cultural phenomena.

As Cabral saw it, the task facing Africa today is not so much cultural glorification as it is a series of developments on the cultural front—it is precisely the combination of these cultural developments that constitutes the new cultural position of the current national liberation struggle.

In his essay "Identity and Dignity in the Context of the National Liberation Struggle," Cabral clarified the dialectical relationship between culture and tradition. He put forward a controversial but justifiable view that imperialism had not only negative effects but also positive contributions to African culture. On the one hand, the accumulation in the center of capital—plundered from the periphery through the historical system of imperialism—made possible the development of modern science and technology, and also prompted the emergence of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Here, Cabral’s argument follows the famous thesis developed by Marx: that capitalism has its positive and negative instances—the dialectic of progress and regression. Capitalism forced countries later categorized as the Third World to enter modern civilization and gradually reduced human dependence on nature; this was indeed a great historical achievement. On the other hand, because it destroyed great civilizations such as the Aztecs and made it possible for a few to appropriate the civilization of the many, capitalism should be destroyed by the forces of socialism, such as the forces of African Marxism.

On one hand, imperialism promoted the expansion of human knowledge in the fields of sociology, history, ethnology, ethnography, and culture by studying dominated countries to better exploit them. For its part, the national liberation struggle—in order to expel and defeat imperialism and neo-colonialism—requires revolutionaries to understand their own society even more deeply. It is precisely this dialectical process that has created the extraordinary brilliance of African Marxism. No work in the entire field of European scholarship can be compared with the works of Cabral, Fanon, and Nkrumah on the problems of the Third World, let alone on works related to Africa. Here, classical African Marxism is clearly a direct product of imperialism, yet it is historically destined to eliminate imperialism—it resembles the Hegelian master-slave dialectic ^[12], which is the essence of the materialist dialectic.

On the other hand, while imperialism did have a deleterious effect on the ability of the African national bourgeoisie and elites to establish their own cultural identity, it never managed to penetrate the cultural fabric of the masses of the people. In Cabral’s view, this cultural resistance of the people is one of our great victories as Africans. The cultural influence of colonialism and neo-colonialism was limited to a small number of people, but unfortunately, with the support of imperialism and its agents, these elites rule almost all neo-colonial states. The cultural crisis in Africa today is a crisis of the bourgeois elite, not a crisis of the masses, regardless of how they are dominated economically and culturally by this exhausted elite. One of the central tasks of classical African Marxism is to achieve the hegemony of a national culture, replacing the enslaved, false, and servile elite culture.

While forming cultural resistance to imperialist cultural penetration, the masses also construct individual and collective identities. During the national liberation struggle, this individual and collective identity was historically realized through material practice. Cabral made a useful distinction between an "original identity" (largely determined by biological factors) and an "actual identity" (where the primary determinant is sociological). In both forms of identification, the dialectic of race and class plays an important role. In the former, the racial factor dominates, while in the latter, the concept of class is the decisive factor. The historical mission of the national liberation movement in the struggle is to consolidate the actual identity of the masses. The forging or restoration of a people’s actual identity—especially its cultural forms—has a dialectical relationship with the restoration of non-exploitative social structures. This identity can only fully emerge on the basis of a dialectically harmonious social structure, and the purpose of the actual identity of the majority is to attain supreme dignity.

The expulsion of the aggression and penetration of imperialists and colonizers into African history cannot be fully achieved by the spontaneity ^[13] of the masses alone. Therefore, classical African Marxism had to construct a system of civilization that would become the manifestation of the people's will. It is in this context that this materialist philosophy of history theorizes the concept of the Party in the African context. Furthermore, the classical Marxism of Cabral and Fanon had to formulate and implement forms of revolutionary democracy. From Algeria, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau to Mozambique, all the different forms of African revolution were led not by parties in the Leninist sense, but by national fronts—even though these national fronts more or less later transformed into parties in the Leninist sense. Even the Ethiopian Revolution—perhaps the only revolution in 20th-century Africa in the sense of classical Marxism—was driven largely by internal class contradictions rather than direct foreign rule, yet it also found it necessary to establish a party after the victory of the revolution. The concept of the party arose when these organizations were still national fronts, just as the African National Congress (ANC) was a national front. In his speech in Havana, "The Weapon of Theory," Cabral emphasized that the concept of the party or the one-party state is specific to African historical conditions and should not be confused with European concepts of political parties.

In 1965, Cabral gave a series of nine lectures to cadres of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), widely known as "Party Principles and Political Practice," in which he elucidated certain Marxist principles of the party in the African context. First, the party must embody "unity and struggle." By unity, Cabral meant achieving specific goals through the unification of various positions. By struggle, he meant opposition to imposed hegemony and the process of acquiring knowledge to intervene in social reality. In the colonial context, this principle refers to the unity and struggle of different classes against imperial rule; in the neo-colonial context, it refers specifically to class struggle. In other words, unity and struggle together form a process of overcoming socio-historical contradictions. Second, for the sake of unity and struggle, the party must understand the fundamental nature of the social reality in which its practice intervenes. This historical reality is a unity of culture, society, economy, and politics. Third, party leadership must be composed of people who serve the interests of the masses—political leaders comparable to revolutionary intellectuals. Fourth, there must be independent thought and action within the party. Fifth, the party itself must faithfully implement these principles, which means members should reject all forms of opportunism. Finally, and most importantly, the party must establish revolutionary democracy. Cabral wrote:

As I have said, we must constantly move forward, putting power into the hands of our people, making profound changes in their lives, and even putting all means of defense into their hands, so that the people become the people who defend our revolution. This is the revolutionary democracy of our country’s tomorrow.

In short, a unique historical goal of classical African Marxism is the realization of revolutionary democracy.

In conclusion, classical African Marxism is not only a product of African revolutions but also an embodiment of the unity of theory and practice in its theoretical crystallization. This materialist philosophy has fundamentally reshaped the history of the continent; its main goal is the indomitable defeat of the neo-colonialism that rules Africa today. Classical African Marxism will only achieve complete victory when it expels the new form of imperialism—namely neo-colonialism—from Africa, just as classical Pan-Africanism achieved complete victory in expelling classical colonialism. Having fulfilled this historical mission, classical Pan-Africanism lost its historical significance and was replaced by classical African Marxism. After defeating neo-colonialism, classical African Marxism will lose its historical legitimacy. The same is true of Marxism; once it achieves victory in the labor movement and in political and economic power throughout the world, it will disappear from history. At that time, it may still be an ideology—just as Christianity is an ideology today—but not as a living philosophy.

The historical task of classical African Marxism remains unfinished: it must still provide a theoretical exposition of the series of revolutions that erupted across the African continent in the 1970s. What was their socialist orientation? What should be the contemporary forms of African socialist democracy? Considering the thorny problem of nationalism, is it possible to achieve the political and economic unification of the continent? Can this African philosophy of history grasp and withstand the coming revolutionary storm in South Africa? Due to the nature of these questions, classical African Marxism remains in its infancy and must be expanded and deepened by committed African Marxists.

(Author Profile: N. Masilela [Ntongela Masilela, 1948–2020], a renowned South African historian and Marxist, Professor Emeritus at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, USA. Translator's Affiliation: Center for African Marxist Studies, Zhejiang Normal University.)

Online Editor: Zhang Jian Source: World Philosophy (Shijie zhexue), Issue 5, 2023.