Africa was the birthplace of the first human life, and later the first of civilised life as well. But the evil colonial system tried to dehumanise Africans, rob them of their history, sever their connection with their own land. Why? The colonisers wanted to lay their hands on the produce of that land, and turn the people into cultureless slaves. But on the basis of this act of robbery, colonialism also needed an ideology. This ideology basically does three things. It firstly treats European society and history as a point of reference in imposing external definitions of other societies, so that those other societies are considered ’backward’ or ’stagnant’ if their history doesn’t contain specifically European features, like feudalism. Secondly, it obstinately deals with political economy as though the most important processes are those within or among the industrialised nations, instead of between them and the oppressed nations. It neglects the role played by colonialism and the slave trade and still today played by factors like unequal exchange as an essential and fundamental fact of the capitalist mode of production. Thirdly, this negative trend peripheralises the oppressed nations politically, treating them as so-called ’reserves’ of the revolution and subordinating their struggles to the supposed interests of the proletariat in the ’advanced’ countries. This Eurocentric trend turns its back on both the humanity and the scientific spirit which should characterise communism, and shuts its eyes to the realities, to the living essence of human history as a whole.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 18:03:28 +0000