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Soviet Marxism and African Socialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Marina Ottaway
Marina Ottaway
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Social Development, University of Zambia, Lusaka
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Extract

In the last few years, there has been a sharp upsurge in the popularity of Marxism among intellectuals in African countries. The earlier African ideologies - ujamaa, humanism, négritude – with their softer, reconciliatory attitudes, and their stress on brotherhood rather than class struggle, have lost some of their appeal for progressive or radical African intellectuals. The reasons for this decline are fairly obvious. The early progressive ideologies are all now associated with governments in power, thus with the status quo, and cannot become the motivating force for those desiring change.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , September 1978 , pp. 477 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 477 note 1 The idea of a non-capitalist road to development dates back to 1920; always somewhat disputed, it was revived and made into an official approach during the 1960s; see Ulianovksy, R., Socialism and the Newly-Independent Nations (Moscow, 1974), pp. 45 and 74.Google Scholar

page 479 note 1 Kamenov, Evgeni, ‘Problems of Non-Capitalist Development in the Developing Countries’, Research Center for Africa and Asia, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Developing Countries on the Non-Capitalist Road (Sofia, 1974), p. 23.Google Scholar

page 479 note 2 See, for example, the contention that the impact of Britain on the economy of India was rather superficial in Pavlov, V., Rastyannikov, V., and Shirokov, G., India: social and economic development (Moscow, 1975), pp. 56ff.Google Scholar

page 479 note 3 Tyagunenko (ed.), op. cit. p. 7.

page 480 note 1 Solodovnikov, V., ‘Problems of Non-Capitalist Development’, in Developing Countries on the Non-Capitalist Road, p. 14.Google Scholar

page 480 note 2 L. Rathmann, and H. Schilling, ‘The Non-Capitalist Development in Asia and Africa – Balance, Problems, Prospects’, in ibid. p. 39.

page 480 note 3 Stanis, op. cit. p. 9.

page 481 note 1 Rathmann and Schilling, loc.cit. p. 41.

page 481 note 2 Solodovnikov, loc. cit. p. 15.

page 481 note 3 Ulianovsky, op. cit. p. 21.

page 481 note 4 Solodovnikov, loc. cit. p. 18.

page 482 note 1 Stanis, op. cit p. 20.

page 482 note 2 Ibid. p. 27.

page 482 note 3 Ulianovsky. op. cit p. 48.

page 482 note 4 Kamenov, loc. cit. p. 23.

page 482 note 5 Ulianovsky, op. cit. p. 63.

page 482 note 6 Ibid. p. 64.

page 483 note 1 Bognar, Jozsef, ‘Some Internal and External Conditions of Non-Capitalist Development’, in Developing Countries on the Non-Capitalist Road, p. 65.Google Scholar

page 483 note 2 For a discussion of the different trends in the applying of Marxism to Africa, see Cohen, Robin, ‘Marxism and Africa: old, new and projected’, Working Paper No. 2, Center for Developing Area Studies, McGill University, Montreal, 1975.Google Scholar

page 484 note 1 Zardov, op. cit. pp. 81–96 and passim.

page 484 note 2 Ibid.

page 484 note 3 Among the countries cited repeatedly in all these books as being on the non-capitalist road are Algeria, Somalia, Guinea, Tanzania, and even Zambia, about whose ‘socialism’ western radicals have expressed considerable scepticism.