Class Struggle

Kwame Nkrumah Excerpts on Colonialism, Class Struggle, African Socialism

by newafrikan77Colonialism, Class Struggle, African Socialism Kwame Nkrumah

Nkrumah wrote that the political-economic situation in the world is one in which a tiny minority of the people grow "richer and richer, while the rest grow poorer and poorer." Challenge of the Congo, p. x He further elaborated that the situation required world socialism as it was the only remedy, for "as long as capitalism and imperialism go unchecked there will always be exploitation, and an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, and all the evils of imperialism and neo-colonialism which breed and sustain wars." Challenge of the Congo, preface, p. x.

He also warned against dependence on capitalist global institutions such as the United Nations Organization (UN) and the Bretton Woods institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. Of the UN he reminded us that the UN is the tool of the elite states which control the Security Council and that it was/is "just as reliable an instrument for world order and peace as the Great Powers are prepared to allow it to be." I Speak of Freedom, preface, p xii.

Which, as in the case of the Congo, the creation of the Zionist terrorist entity, the continuing disguised warfare against states such as Cuba, the more overt wars being prosecuted throughout every region of the world and everything else that plagues humanity, means absolutely no corrective action at all, indeed it means that the capitalist superpower and its allies have a free hand to create mayhem and destruction wherever it chooses.

 

 

Thus he emphasized that socialism and true African unity were and are "organic and complementary." Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, p. 28

This is his challenge to us and his legacy to us. We must embrace his call and complete the job that he and his millions of colleagues began in the latter half of the 20th century. We, the staff of Pan-African Perspective, hope that these selected quotes will be of use to you and encourage you to continue your commitment to the noble struggle of creating a socialist, united African continent and global nation. This is our only hope of finding the justice, freedom, happiness, and prosperity that is, in fact, the right of all humanity. "History has shown that where the Great Powers cannot colonize, they balkanize. This is what they did to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and this is what they have done and are doing in Africa. If we allow ourselves to be balkanized, we shall be re-colonized and be picked off one after the other...."

"By far the greatest wrong which the departing colonialists inflicted on us, and which we now continue to inflict on ourselves in our present state of disunity, was to leave us divided into economically unviable States which bear no possibility of real development...."

"...We must unite for economic viability, first of all, and then recover our mineral wealth in Southern Africa so that our vast resources and capacity for development will bring prosperity for us and additional benefits for the rest of the world. That is why I have written elsewhere that the emancipation of Africa could be the emancipation of Man." Speech OAU Summit Conference Cairo 7/19/64 can be found on pages 282-4 of Revolutionary Path

Common territory, language, and culture may, in fact, be present in a nation, but the existence of a nation does not necessarily imply the presence of all three. Common territory and language alone may form the basis of a nation. Similarly, common territory plus common culture may be the basis. In some cases, only one of the three applies. A state may exist on a multi-national basis. The community of economic life is the major feature within a nation, and it is the economy which holds together the people living in a territory. It is on this basis that the new Africans recognize themselves as potentially one nation, whose domination is the entire African continent." Class Struggle In Africa

"...I have often said, the party and the nation are one and the same, namely: the Convention People's Party in Ghana and is Ghana the Convention People's Party."

"...a very grave responsibility lies on the shoulders of us all, not only as Ghanaians, but also as members of the Convention People's Party which, no matter what may be said by our detractors, remains right in front of the struggle for the total liberation of Africa and the union of the independent African states..."

"the Convention People's Party must mobilize our total manpower for the industrial, economic, technological and scientific reconstruction of Ghana so that we can produce the necessary conditions which shall mean an abundance of every good thing for our people and the greatest welfare of the masses." The CPP Twelfth Anniversary: A Message by Osagyefo 1961 (Accra, Ghana Government Printer)

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"Party is the rallying point of our political activity. Without the Party, there would be no force through which to focus the needs and desire of the people. The Convention People's Party is this force. The Party, therefore, is the hard core of those who are so dedicated to its ideology and program, that they make their membership the most serious business of their lives. The Party is nothing but the vanguard of the people, the active organ of the people, working at all times in the service of the people." Speech at the conclusion of the Civil Service Commission Referendum, Evening News, Feb. 4, 1964

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"In the very early days of the Christian era, long before England had assumed any importance, long even before her people had united into a nation, our ancestors had attained a great empire, which lasted until the eleventh century, when it fell before the attacks of the Moors of the North. At its height, that empire stretched from Timbuktu to Bamako, and even as far as to the Atlantic. It is said that lawyers and scholars were much respected in that empire and that the inhabitants of Ghana wore garments of wool, cotton, silk, and velvet. There was a trade in copper, gold, and textile fabrics, and jewels and weapons of gold and silver were carried." Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah

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"Besides, political independence, though worthwhile in itself, is still only a means to the fuller redemption and realization of a people. When independence has been gained, positive action requires a new orientation away from the sheer destruction of colonialism and towards national reconstruction, It is indeed in this address to national reconstruction that positive action faces its gravest dangers. The cajolement, the wheedlings, the seductions and the Trojan horses of neocolonialism must be stoutly resisted, for neocolonialism is a latter-day harpy, a monster which entices its victims with sweet music. In order to be able to carry out this resistance to neo-colonialism at every point, Positive action requires to be armed with an ideology, an ideology which, vitalizing it, and operating through a mass party with a regenerative concept of the world and life, forge for it a strong continuing link with our past and offer to it an assured bond with our future. Under the searchlight of an ideology, every fact affecting the life of a people can be assessed and judged, and neo-colonialism's detrimental aspirations and sleights of hand will constantly stand. In order that this ideology should be comprehensive, in order that it should light up every aspect of the life of our people, in order that it should affect the total interest of our society, establishing a continuity with our past, it must be socialist in form and in content and be embraced by a mass party." Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonisation

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"Internally"

"The capitalist-imperialist states face serious economic and social difficulties. Rising prices, balance of payments problems, widespread and repeated strikes are only a few of the symptoms of the general malaise. In the United States, the grave domestic situation is aggravated by the massive counter-attacks of the African-American revolutionaries. Almost everywhere, behind the smoke screens, the social and economic situation is unhealthy, and particularly in the second class capitalist states. And these mounting economic crises mean heavier dependence on the exploitation of the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America."

"The need for self-critical objective diagnosis."

"If imperialists are faced with so many external and domestic difficulties, how then can they afford to step up their aggression in Africa? To answer this question, it is necessary to examine the internal factors which make our continent so vulnerable to attack, and particularly to look closely at the whole question of African unity. For this lies at the core of our problem. There are three conflicting conceptions of African unity which explain to a large extent, the present critical situation in Africa:"

"1. The mutual protection theory: that the OAU serves as a kind of insurance against any change in the status quo, membership providing a protection for heads of state and government against all forms of political action aimed at their overthrow. Since most of the leaders who adhere to this idea owe their position to imperialists and their agents, it is not surprising that this is the viewpoint which really serves the interests of imperialism. For the puppet states are being used both for short-term purposes of exploitation and as springboards of subversion against progressive African states."

"2. The functional conception: that African unity should be purely a matter of economic co-operation. Those who hold this view overlook the vital fact that African regional economic organizations will remain weak and subject to the same neo-colonialist pressures and domination, as long as they lack overall political cohesion. Without political unity, African states can never commit themselves to full economic integration, which is the only productive form of integration able to develop our great resources fully for the well-being of the African people as a whole. Furthermore, the lack of political unity places inter-African economic institutions at the mercy of powerful, foreign commercial interests, and sooner or later these will use such institutions as funnels through which to pour money for the continued exploitation of Africa."

"3. The political union conception: that a union government should be in charge of economic development, defense, and foreign policy, while other government functions would continue to be discharged by the existing states grouped, in federal fashion, within a gigantic central political organization. Clearly, this is the strongest position Africa could adopt in its struggle against modern imperialism."

"However, any sincere critical appraisal of past activities and achievements of the OAU would tend to show that, as it is now constituted, the OAU is not likely to be able to achieve the political unification of Africa.

"This is obviously why imperialists, although against the idea of political union, will do nothing to break the OAU. It serves their purpose in slowing down revolutionary progress in Africa. This state of affairs is mirrored both in the discouragement of freedom fighters in the remaining colonial territories and South Africa and in the growing perplexity amongst freedom fighters from neo-colonized territories.

"The struggle for African continental union and socialism may be hampered by the enemy WITHIN, - those who declare their support for the revolution and at the same time, by devious means, serve and promote the interests of imperialists and neo-colonialists.

"Examination of recent events in our history, and of our present condition, reveals the urgent need for a new strategy to combat imperialist aggression, and this must be devised on a continental scale.

"Either we concentrate our forces for a decisive armed struggle to achieve our objectives, or we will each fall one by one to the blows of imperialism in its present stage of open and desperate offensive." Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare

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"...when automation and cybernation aided by nuclear energy reach their highest form of development, the forces of production will have been developed to a point at which there could be the classless society which Marx predicted could come only under communism." Class Struggle In Africa

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"Africa is one continent, one people, and one nation. The notion that in order to have a nation it is necessary for there to be a common language, a common territory, and common culture has failed to stand the test of time or the scrutiny of the scientific definition of objective reality... The community of economic life is the major feature within a nation, and it is the economy which holds together the people living in a territory. It is on this basis that the new Africans recognize themselves as potentially one nation, whose dominion is the entire African continent. " Class Struggle In Africa

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"Psychological attacks are made through the agency of broadcasting stations like the BBC, Voice of Germany, and above all, Voice of America, which pursues its brainwashing mission through newsreels, interviews and other "informative" programmes at all hours of the day and night, on all wavelengths and in many languages, including special English. The war of words is supplemented by written propaganda using a wide range of political devices such as embassy bulletins, pseudo-revolutionary publications, studies on nationalism and on African socialism, the literature spread by the so-called independent and liberal publishers, cultural and civic education centers, and other imperialist subversive organizations.

"The paper war penetrates into every town and village, and into the remotest parts of the bush. It spreads in the form of free distributions of propaganda films praising the qualities of western civilization and culture. These are some of the ways in which the psychological terrain is prepared. When the target, a certain country or continent, is sufficiently softened, then the invasion of evangelist brigades begins, thus perpetuating the centuries-old tactic whereby missionaries prepare the way for guns. Peace Corps divisions stream ins and Moral Rearmament units, Jehovah witnesses, information agencies and international financial aid organizations. In this way, a territory or even an entire continent is besieged without a single marine in sight. A sprinkling of political and little-publicised murders, like that of Pio Pinto in Kenya, and Moumie in Geneva, are used to assist the process.

"A recent development in the psychological war is the campaign to convince us that we cannot govern ourselves, that we are unworthy of genuine independence, and that foreign tutelage is the only remedy for our wild, warlike and primitive ways. Imperialism has done its utmost to brainwash Africans into thinking that they need the strait-jackets of colonialism and neocolonialism if they are to be saved from their retrogressive instincts. Such is the age-old racialist justification for the economic exploitation of our continent.

"And now, the recent military coups engineered throughout Africa by foreign reactionaries are also being used to corroborate imperialism's pet theory that the Africans have shamelessly squandered the golden opportunities of independence and that they have plunged their political kingdoms into blood and barbarism. Therefore the imperialist mission: we must save them anew, and they hail the Western-trained and western-bought army puppets as saviors. The press, films, and radio are last spreading the myth of post-independence violence and chaos.

"Everywhere, the more or less covert implication is: Africa needs to be recolonized. The fact that Africa has advanced politically more quickly than any other continent in the world is ignored. In 1957 when Ghana became independent and the political renaissance began in Africa, there were only eight independent states. Now, in just over ten years, there are over forty and the final liberation of the continent is in sight. Imperialists are not content with trying to convince us that we are politically immature. They are telling us, now that we are realizing that armed revolution is the only way to defeat neocolonialism, that we are inherently incapable of fighting a successful revolutionary war. "Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare

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"Countrymen, the task ahead is great indeed, and heavy is the responsibility; and yet it is a noble and glorious challenge - a challenge which calls for the courage to dream, the courage to believe, the courage to dare, the courage to do, the courage to envision, the courage to fight, the courage to work, the courage to achieve - to achieve the highest excellencies and the fullest greatness of man. Dare we ask for more in life? " Address to the National Assembly. 12 June 1965

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"What other countries have taken three hundred years or more to achieve, a once dependent territory must try to accomplish in a generation if it is to survive. Unless it is, as it were jet-propelled it will lag behind and thus risk everything for which it has fought. Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, Preface

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"Something in the nature of an economic revolution is required. Our development has been held back for too long by the colonial-type economy. We need to reorganize entirely so that each country can specialize in producing the goods and crops for which it is best suited." Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism

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"We have the blessing of the wealth of our vast resources, the power of our talents and the potentialities of our people. Let us grasp now the opportunities before us and meet the challenge to our survival. " Address to the National Assembly. 26 March 1965

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"We shall measure our progress by the improvement in the health of our people; by the number of children in school, and by the quality of their education; by the availability of water and electricity in our towns and villages, and by the happiness which our people take in being able to manage their own affairs. The welfare of our people is our chief pride, and it is by this that my Government will ask to be judged." Broadcast to the Nation. 24 December 1957

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"The initiative of Ghanaian businessmen will not be cramped, but we must take steps to see that it is channeled towards desirable social ends and is not expended in the exploitation of the community. The Government will encourage Ghanaian businessmen to join with each other in co-operative forms of organization. In this way, Ghanaian businessmen will be able to contribute actively in broadening the vitality of our economy and cooperation and will provide a stronger form of organization that can be achieved through individual small businesses. " Speech at the launching of the Seven-Year Development Plan. 11 March 1964

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"We welcome foreign investment provided that there are no strings attached to it, and also provided that it fits in with our plans for national development and our socialist policy. And we insist that foreign investment should not interfere or meddle with the political life of our country. " Sessional Address to the National Assembly. 1 February 1966

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"It is said, of course, that we have no capital, no industrial skill, no communications, no internal markets, and that we cannot even agree among ourselves how best to utilize our resources for our own social needs.

"Yet all the stock exchanges in the world are pre-occupied with Africa's gold, diamonds, uranium, platinum, copper and iron ores. Our CAPITAL flows out in streams to irrigate the whole system of Western economy. Fifty-two percent of the gold in Fort Knox at this moment, where the USA stores its bullion, is believed to have originated from OUR shores. Africa provides more than 60 percent of the world's gold. A great deal of the uranium for nuclear power, of copper for electronics, of titanium for supersonic projectiles, of iron and steel for heavy industries, of other minerals and raw materials for lighter industries - the basic economic might of the foreign Powers - comes from OUR continent.

"Experts have estimated that the Congo Basin alone can produce enough food crops to satisfy the requirements of nearly HALF the population of the whole world and here we sit talking about regionalism, talking about gradualism, talking about step by step. Are you afraid to tackle the bull by the horn?" Address to the Conference of African Heads of State and Government, May 24, 63, can be found on page 237 of the book Revolutionary Path

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"No independent African State today by itself has a chance to follow an INDEPENDENT course of economic development, and many of us who have tried to do this have been almost ruined or have had to return to the fold of the former colonial rulers. This position will not change unless we have unified POLICY working at the CONTINENTAL LEVEL. The first step towards our cohesive economy would be a unified monetary zone, with, initially, an agreed common parity for our currencies...When we find that the arrangement of a fixed common parity is working successfully, there would seem to be NO reason for not instituting one common currency and a single bank of issue." Address to the Conference of African Heads of State and Government, May 24, 63 can be found on page 242 of the book Revolutionary Path

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"While we are assuring our stability by a COMMON DEFENCE system, and our economy is being orientated beyond foreign control by a COMMON CURRENCY, MONETARY ZONE and CENTRAL BANK OF ISSUE, we can investigate the resources of our continent. We can begin to ascertain whether, in reality, we are the richest, and not, as we have been TAUGHT to BELIEVE, the poorest among the continents. We can determine whether we possess the largest potential in hydroelectric power and whether we can harness it and other sources of energy to our OWN INDUSTRIES. We can proceed to PLAN our industrialization on a CONTINENTAL SCALE, and to build up a COMMON MARKET for nearly three hundred people."

"Common Continental Planning for the Industrial and Agricultural Development of Africa is a vital necessity."

"So many blessings flow from our unity, so many disasters must follow our continued disunity, that our failure today will not be attributed by posterity only to faulty reasoning and lack of courage, but to our CAPITULATION before the forces of neocolonialism and imperialism." "The hour of history which has brought us to this assembly is a revolutionary hour. It is an hour of decision. For the first time, the economic imperialism which menaces us is itself challenged by THE IRRESISTIBLE WILL OF OUR PEOPLE."

"The masses of the people of Africa are crying for unity."

"It is this popular determination that must move us to a Union of Independent African States." Address to the Conference of African Heads of State and Government, May 24, 63 can be found on page 243 of the book Revolutionary Path

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"The principle which I am on the other hand anxious to defend states no condition for meaningfulness, but only establishes a sufficient condition for the identity of meaning. The central idea is as follows: if there are two expressions such that precisely the same consequences follow from the conjunction of the first with any other proposition as following from the conjunction of the second with the same proposition, then the two expressions are identical in meaning." Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonisation

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"The history of a nation is, unfortunately, too easily written as the history of its dominant class. But if the history of a nation, or a people, cannot be found in the history of a class, how much less can the history of a continent be found in what is not even a part of it - Europe. Africa cannot be validly treated merely as the space in which Europe swelled up. If African history is interpreted in terms of the interests of European merchandise and capital, missionaries and administrators, it is no wonder that African nationalism is in the forms it takes regarded as a perversion and neo-colonialism as a virtue.

"In the new African renaissance, we place great emphasis on the presentation of history. Our history needs to be written as the history of our society, not as the story of European adventures. African society must be treated as enjoying its own integrity; its history must be a mirror of that society, and the European contact must find its place in this history only as an African experience, even if as a crucial one. That is to say, the European contact needs to be assessed and judged from the point of view of the principles animating African society, and from the point of view of the harmony and progress of this society.

"When history is presented in this way, it can become not an account of how those African students referred to in the introduction became more Europeanized than others; it can become a map of the growing tragedy and the final triumph of our society. In this way, African history can come to guide and direct African action. African history can thus become a pointer at the ideology which should guide and direct African reconstruction.

"This connection between an ideological standpoint and the writing of history is a perennial one. A check on the work of the great historians, including Herodotus and Thucydides, quickly exposes their passionate concern with ideology. Their irresistible moral, political and sociological comments are particular manifestations of more general ideological standpoints. "Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonisation

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"The formation of a political party linking all liberated territories and struggling parties under a common ideology will smooth the way for eventual continental unity, and will at the same time greatly assist the prosecution of the All-African people's war. To assist the process of its formation, an All-African Committee for Political Co-ordination (A-ACPC) should be established to act as a liaison among all parties that recognize the urgent necessity of conducting an organized and unified struggle against colonialism and neocolonialism This committee would be created at the level of the Central Committees of the ruling parties and struggling parties, and would constitute their integrated political consciousness."Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare

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"In Africa where so many different kinds of political, social and economic conditions exist it is not an easy task to generalize on political and socio-economic patterns. Remnants of communalism and feudalism still remain and in parts of the continent ways of life have changed very little from traditional times. In other areas, a high level of industrialization and urbanization has been achieved. Yet in spite of Africa's socioeconomic and political diversity, it is possible to discern certain common political, social and economic conditions and problems. These derive from traditional past, common aspirations, and from shared experience under imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. There is no part of the continent which has not known oppression and exploitation, and no part which remains outside the processes of the African Revolution." Class Struggle In Africa

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"In Africa, where economic development is uneven, a wide variety of highly sophisticated political systems were in existence over many centuries before the colonial period began. It is here, in the so-called developing world of Africa, and in Asia and Latin America, where the class struggle and the progress towards ending the exploitation of man by man have already entered into the stage of decisive revolutionary change.

"The political maturity of the African masses may to some extent be traced to economic and social patterns of traditional times. Under communalism, for example, all lands and means of production belong to the community. There was people's ownership. Labour was the need and habit of all. When a certain piece of land was allocated to an individual for his personal use, he was not free to do as he liked with it since it still belonged to the community. Chiefs were strictly controlled by counselors and were removable." Class Struggle In Africa

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"Class struggle is a fundamental theme of recorded history. In every non-socialist society, there are two main categories of class, the ruling class or classes, and the subject class or classes. The ruling class possesses the major instruments of economic production and distribution, and the means of establishing its political domination, while the subject class serves the interests of the ruling class, and is political, economically and socially dominated by it. There is a conflict between the ruling class and the exploited class. The nature and cause of the conflict are influenced by the development of productive forces. That is, in any given class formation, whether it be feudalism, capitalism, or any other type of society, the institutions and ideas associated with it arise from the level of productive forces and the mode of production. The moment private ownership of the means of production appears, and capitalists start exploiting workers the capitalists become a bourgeois class, the exploited workers a working class. For, in the final analysis, a class is nothing more than the sum total of individuals bound together by certain interests which as a class they try to preserve and protect." Class Struggle In Africa

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"There is a close connection between socio-political development, the struggle between social classes and the history of ideologies. In general, intellectual movements closely reflect the trends of economic development. In communal society, where there are virtually no class divisions, man's productive activities on outlook and culture are less discernible. Account must be taken of the psychology of conflicting classes." Class Struggle In Africa

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"Now, Mr. Speaker, let me turn to other problems that affect the position of the African and endanger world peace. The nuclear arms race in the Middle East is now an open secret. Instability in this area not only heightens world tension but jeopardizes the security of the African Continent. " June 21, 1963, Ratification of OAU Charter speech made to Ghana National Assembly

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"How much more effective would our efforts have been if we had spoken with the one voice of Africa's millions. With all our minerals and water power and fertile lands, is it not a cause for shame that we remain poor and content to plead for aid from the very people who have robbed us of our riches in the past? How can Egypt, strategically situated as is it, combat the imperialism and neocolonialism and solve the pressing and urgent problems of the Middle East unless it has the backing of a Union Government of Africa? Only a Union Government can assist in the solution of the problems of the Middle East, including the Palestinian question." Proposal For A Union Government of Africa speech at the July 19, 1964, OAU Summit Meeting

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"A determined attack must be made on the entrenched position of the minority reactionary elements amongst our own people. For the dramatic exposure in recent years of the nature and extent of the class struggle in Africa, through the succession of reactionary military coups and the outbreak of civil wars, particularly in West and Central Africa, has demonstrated the unity between the interests of neocolonialism and the indigenous bourgeoisie." Class Struggle In Africa

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"...the problem is how to obtain capital investment and still keep it under sufficient control to prevent exploitation; and how to preserve integrity and sovereignty without crippling economic or political ties to any country, bloc or system" Africa Must Unite

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"Capitalism is a development by refinement from feudalism, just as feudalism is development by refinement from slavery. Capitalism is but the gentlemen's method of slavery." Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonisation

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"The foreign firms who exploit our resources long ago saw the strength to be gained from acting on a Pan-African scale. By means of interlocking directorships, cross-shareholdings, and other devices, groups of apparently different companies have formed, in fact, one enormous capitalist monopoly. The only effective way to challenge this economic empire and to recover possession of our heritage is for us also to act on a Pan-African basis, through a Union Government." "No one would suggest that if all the peoples of Africa combined to establish their unity his or her decision could be revoked by the forces of neocolonialism, On the contrary, faced with a new situation, those who practice neocolonialism would adjust themselves to this new balance of world forces in exactly the same way as the capitalist world has in the past adjusted itself to any other change in the balance of power." Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism

"While a racist social structure is not inherent in the colonial situation, it is inseparable from capitalist economic development. For race is inextricably linked with class exploitation in a racist-capitalist power structure, capitalist exploitation and race oppression are complementary; the removal of one ensures the removal of the other." "In the modern world, the race struggle has become part of the class struggle. In other words, wherever there is a race problem it has become linked with the class struggle Slavery and the master-servant relationship were, therefore, the cause, rather than the result of racism. The position was crystallized and reinforced with the discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa, and the employment of cheap African labour in the mines. As time passed, it was thought necessary to justify the exploitation and oppression of African workers, the myth of racial inferiority was developed and spread.

"Each historical situation develops its own dynamics... The close links between class and race developed in Africa alongside capitalist exploitation. Slavery, the master-servant relationship, and cheap labor were basic to it. The classic example is South Africa, where Africans experienced a double exploitation - both on the grounds of colour and of class.. Similar conditions exist in the USA, the Caribbean, in Latin America, and in other parts of the world where the nature of the development of productive forces has resulted in a racist class structures. In these areas, shades of colour count - the degree of blackness being a yardstick by which social status is measured class struggle."Class Struggle In Africa

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"The conflict between the rich and the poor has now been transferred onto the international scale, but for proof of what is acknowledged to be happening it is no longer necessary to consult the classical Marxist writers. The situation is set out with the utmost clarity in the leading organs of capitalist opinion. Take for example the following extracts from The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper which perhaps best reflects United States capitalist thinking.

"In its issue of 12th May 1965, under the headline of Poor Nations' Plight, the paper first analyses which countries are considered industrial and which backward.

"There is, it explains, no rigid method of classifications. Nevertheless, it points out:

A generally used breakdown, however, has recently been maintained by the International Monetary Fund because, in the word of an IMF official, 'the economic demarcation is the world is getting increasingly apparent. The breakdown the official said is based on common sense. In the IMF's view, the industrial countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, most West European nations, Canada, and Japan. A special category called " other developed areas' includes such other European lands as Finland, Greece, and Ireland, plus Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The IMF's less developed category embraces all of Latin America and nearly all of the Middle East, non-Communist Asia, and Africa.

In other words, the backward countries are those situated in the neocolonial areas. After quoting figures to support its argument, The Wall Street Journal comments on this situation:

The industrial nations have added $2 billion to their reserve, which now approximates $52 billion. At the same time, the reserves of the less-developed group not only have stopped rising but have declined some 200 million. To analysts such as Britain's' Miss Ward, the significance of such statistics is clear the: the economic gag is rapidly widening "between a white, complacent, highly bourgeois, very wealthy, very small North Atlantic elite and everybody else, and this is not a very comfortable heritage to leave one's children."

"Everybody else" includes approximately two-thirds of the population of the earth spread through about 100 nations. This is no new problem. In the opening paragraph of his book The War on World Poverty, written in 1953, the present British Labour leader, Mr. Harold Wilson, summarized the major problem of the world as he then saw it:

"For the vast majority of mankind, the most urgent problem is not war, or communism, or the cost of living, or taxation. It is hunger. Over 15,000,00,00 people, something like two-thirds of the world's population, are living in conditions of acute hunger, defined in terms of identifiable nutritional disease. This hunger is at the same time the effect and the cause of the poverty, squalor, and misery in which they live.

"Its consequences are likewise understood. The correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, previously quote, underlines them: many diplomats and economists view the implication as overwhelmingly - and dangerously - political. Unless the present decline can be reversed, these analyst fear, the United States and other wealthy industrial powers of the West face the distinct possibility, in the words of British economist Barbara Ward, "of a sort of international class war"

Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism

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"In the era of neocolonialism, under-development is still attributed not to exploitation but to inferiority, and racial undertones remain closely interwoven with the class struggle.

"It is only the ending of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism and the attainment of world communism that can provide the conditions under which the RACE question can finally be abolished and eliminated." Class Struggle In Africa

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"...with a decisiveness and force which can no longer be concealed the spectre of Black Power has descended on the world like a thundercloud flashing its lightning. Emerging from the ghettos, swamps and cotton fields of America, it now haunts the streets, legislative assemblies, and high councils and has so shocked and horrified Americans that it is only now that they are beginning to grasp its full significance. and the fact that Black Power, in other manifestations, is in a confrontation with imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, exploitation, and aggression in many parts of the world.

"In America, the Negro problem has been a more or less polite conversation piece since the first African slaves were landed in James Town in 1619. For three hundred and fifty years, however, the subject of slave revolts has been tabooed and eliminated from textbooks. For the past thirty years, stringent efforts have been made to whitewash and obscure the real issue of the United States Civil War: whether African slavery should be continued or not."

"After the Civil War, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution did abolish African slavery and granted citizenship rights to the freedmen. Immediately, the majority of states passed laws nullifying these rights, and in general, public opinion all over the country supported their action. There were some legislators who pointed out the injustice and even dangers of this course, and in 1875 Congress passed a mild Civil Rights Bill for the freedmen. But in 1884 this Bill was repealed by the United States Supreme Court, And so, down through the years, people of African descent in the United States of America have been petitioning, pleading, going to court and demonstrating for 'rights' freely granted to every naturalized immigrant.

"As the United States grew richer, more powerful and imperialistic, as it expanded and extended its influence and control throughout Latin America and the islands of the Caribbean, its racialism, oppression, and contempt for the peoples of African descent became accepted as an American way of life."

".until the organization of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) and the Second World War, African-Americans were regularly excluded from labour organizations. The need for increased manpower during this period encouraged immigration from the South of thousands of black workers who crowded into northern cities finding jobs, but no place to live except in slums amid conditions far worse than the rural shacks they had left in the South.

"In spite of the long and untiring work in education and organization of the pioneers of Civil Rights; in spite of the painstaking effort made by African-American citizens of the United States to educate their children, and by hard work to achieve 'acceptance' in American society, African-American have remained only barely tolerated aliens in the land of their birth, the vast mass of them outside consideration of basic human justice.

"This is a fact which is now being called to the attention of all those who through the years have had in their power the means to order and fashion the world according to their interests White interests controlled the economic wealth; white interest have been able to establish the 'moral' standards by which Americans must live; white domestic imperialism made all the laws, rules and regulations. This was the modern world up to, and throughout, the first half of the twentieth century " Spectre of Black Power