The following ad supports maintaining our C.E.E.O.L.

service

KarlMarxandAfricanEmancipatoryThought:ACritiqueofMarx'sEuro
CentricMetaphysics
KarlMarxandAfricanEmancipatoryThought:ACritiqueofMarx'sEuroCentric
Metaphysics
byTsenaySerequeberhan
Source:
PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:1+2/1990,pages:161181,onwww.ceeol.com.
RETHINKING MARX: IMPERIALISM AND EURO-CENTRISM
E THOUGHT:
A CRITIQUE OF MARX'S
EURO-CENTRIC METAPHYSICS
Tsenay Serequeberhan
Tribes living exclusively on hunting or fishing are beyond the boundry line from
which real [historical] development begins.
Karl Marx, from the Introduction to a Critique of
Political Economy, 1857-58.
Then there is also the case of the conquest and brutal destruction of economic
resources, by which, in certain circumstances, a whole local or national economic
development could formerly be ruined. Nowadays [the 19th Century] such a case
usually has the opposite effect, at least among great [European] peoples: in the long
run the vanquished [the African, the Asiatic, Le., the non-European] often gains
more economically, politically and morally than the victor.
Frederick Engels, letter to Joseph Bloch, 1890
I say, listen to my words and mark them. We have fought for a year. I wish to rule
my country and protect my religion. We have both suffered considerably in battle
with one another. I have no forts, no houses. I have no cultivated fields, no silver
or gold for you to take. If the country was cultivated or contained houses or property,
it would be worth your while to fight. The country is all jungle, and that is no use
to you. If you want wood and stone you can get them in plenty. There are also many
ant-heaps. The sun is very hot. All you can get from me is war, nothing else.
Sayyid Mohamed Abdille Hassen, Somali anti-colonialist fighter
1899-1920, Open letter to the English people.
Karl Marx is the one European philosopher whose thinking has directly or
indirectly, positively or negatively, affected concrete events in the contemporary
history of Africa.
l
Most of those whose names (at some level or other) are
associated with this history and its emancipatory struggles - Nkrumah, Senghor,
Cesaire, Fanon, Nyerer, Cabral ...:. have been influenced by some form or other
of Marxist socialism. Furthermore, each of these thinkers has presented a reading
of Marxist ideas that attempts to curtail - on the level of politics - the Euro-centric
orientation of Marxist thought.
2
In this respect, Aime Cesaire's 1956 letter of
resignation from the French Communist Party addressed to Maurice Thorez, and
Amilcar Cabral' s rejection of the Marxist justification for European colonialism
are the two most lucid and concise articulations of this effort.
3
However, these efforts - including Cabral' s - have all fallen short of a systematic
and critical undoing of the Euro-centric metaphysics that structures and grounds
Marx's perspective. Thus, beyond a political critique, the metaphysical grounding
of Marx's discourse is left intact. This paper is therefore aimed at supplementing
Praxis International 10:1/2 April & July 1990
0260-8448 $2. 00
162
Praxis International
this critical lack by presenting a systematic philosophical exploration and de-struction
of Marx's perspective. In this respect then, this paper is a contribution to the
development of the negative task of African philosophy, which is aimed at the
systematic de-struction (un-masking) of the Euro-centrism on which the Western
philosophical tradition is grounded.
4
Marx like his mentor Hegel was a "child of his time" ,5 fundamentally wedded
to the Idea of European supremacy. As we shall see, in his articles on British
colonialism, Marx supported and justified European expansion. This, in itself,
is not new. In this regard what needs to be done is to hermeneutically demonstrate
that the central and foundational notions of Marx' s "materialist conception of
history"6 are intrinsically embedded in a Euro-centric metaphysics of human
existence as such.
Marx's Euro-centric orientation is not an extrinsic or accidental element of his
thought but is the heart and substance of his 'materialist conception of history'.
To that extent, a Marxist orientation on African problems and concerns is of
necessity Euro-centric precisely because it is grounded on a metaphysics that
privileges and ontologizes the European historical experience. It is only by de-
structuring the overall metaphysical casing of Marx' s thought that singular aspects
or elements of his thinking can be made available to the African emancipatory
struggle. Marx's perspective has to be disentangled or unhinged from its
metaphysical grounding in order that elements of his thought can serve an emancipa-
tory function within the African cultural and historical milieu.
The importance and necessity of such an undertaking lies in the fact that, African
emancipatory thinking - as indicated above - has felt the need to utilize Marx
and yet has failed to properly confront the inherently Euro-centric character of
his thought and its implications for African problems and concerns. The paradox
inherent in this failure lies in the fact that it risks presenting Marx - a champion
of 19th century European colonialism - as the paradigm for African liberation.
7
In other words, unwittingly colonialist/Euro-centric ways of thinking and under-
standing the African situation in the modern world are smuggled into the very
effort directed against colonialism and neo-colonialism. Thus, in exploring the
metaphysical foundation of Marx' s 'materialist conception of history', we will also
examine - taking our cue from Cesaire, Fanon and Cabral - the possibility of
African freedom beyond the confines of Euro-centric concepts and categories. In so
doing we will isolate some elements in Marx' s critique of European modernity that
can be of some use to the continuing emancipatory struggles of the African continent.
I
Commenting on Marx's knowledge of non-European histories and cultures, the
Marxist historian Eric J. Hobsbawm points out that it was "thin on pre-history,
on primitive communal societies and on pre-Colombian America, and virtually
non-existent on Africa" .8 Yet, in spite of his virtual ignorance of non-European
histories and cultures, Marx supported the colonial subjugation of the non-European
world and in so doing saw himself as a sanguine advocate of human freedom and
emancipation. This is the paradox whose Euro-centric metaphysical grounding we
need to explore and expose.
Access via CEEOL NL Germany
Praxis International 163
One of the most memorable passages of The Communist Manifesto is the passage
in which Marx celebrates the advent of the modern age, i. e., the global expansion
of Europe and the establishment of "the world-market". 9 This expansion,
draws all nations, even the most barbarian, into civilization. The cheap prices of its
commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls ... It
compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production;
it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become
bourgeois themselves. In a word, it creates a world after its own image.
lO
European expansion creates one unified world "civilization". To be sure, Marx
hesitates for a moment: the bourgeoisie compels barbarians to 'introduce what
it calls civilization'. But this is only a momentary hesitation. Earlier in the same
passage Marx points out that the bourgeoisie 'draws all nations even the most
barbarian, into civilization' , furthermore, it cannot be otherwise since the history
of human society is the "history of class struggles". 11
Capitalist subjugation or European colonialism is the avenue through which
differing non-European cultures are unified and subsumed under European civiliza-
tion, which, in this schema of things becomes the condition of the possibility of
communism or true human freedom. This is so precisely because the capitalist
mode of production reveals "what man's activity can bring about" .12 It creates
the ontologically privileged ontic-cultural context in which the human-being is
, 'compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations
with his kind".13 In its radical and unprecedented "[s]ubjugation of nature's
forces to man", capitalist society discloses the' 'productive forces slumbering in
the lap of social labour" .14
Thus, the historical necessity for the global expansion of capitalist society, is
predicated on the dominating and instrumental relation of man to nature which
it institutes. In other words, as Marx points out in a revealing comment on the
effects of British colonialism in India, the
bourgeois period of history has to create the material basis of the new world - on
the one hand the universal intercourse founded upon the mutual dependency of
mankind, and the means of that intercourse; on the other hand the development of
the productive powers of man and the transformation of material production into
a scientific domination of natural agencies.
1s
It is to be noted that the 'scientific domination of natural agencies' refers not only
to nature as such, but also to 'the productive powers of man'. Thus, for Marx,
the 'domination of natural agencies' and the simultaneous subjugation of non-
European civilizations is part of the same fundamental and necessary movement
of world history.
As Claude Lefort correctly points out, in the Manifesto as in his other writings,
Marx claims to be speaking from the point of view of History as such. In other
words, Marx is not articulating a specific position but expressing the' 'objective"
Truth of world history. 16 Thus, in regards to non-European histories and cultures,
Marx's perspective is basically the projection of European history on a global
scale.
I7
Marx ontologizes the antic eventuations of European history in privileging
capitalist society as the historical space in which the 'real conditions of life' are
164
Praxis International
disclosed. For him, world history is a singular process of humanity that has presently
found its highest concrete manifestation in European modernity, i. e., the historical
space in which the most "advanced" class struggle is taking place. The struggle,
whose consummation will be the global overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the final
and total liberation of humanity.
For Hegel, world history - from which he held Africa was excluded - is the
development of the Idea of freedom as it moves from the Orient to the accident.
For Hegel's Idea, Marx substitutes an abstract notion of humanity whose "develop-
ment" - through the class struggle - is then the objective unfolding of world history.
As we shall see, it is this speculative schema that compels Marx to support and
present an ethical-metaphysical justification for European colonialist expansion.
11
Marx explicitly recognized the destructive consequences of capitalist colonialism
on non-European societies. In discussing the subordination of distribution to
production in the context of conquest and colonial subjugation, Marx notes that
[c]onquest may lead to either of three results. The conquering nation may impose
its own mode of production upon the conquered people (this was done, for example,
by the English in Ireland during this century, and to some extent in India); or it
may refrain from interfering in the old mode of production and be content with tribune
(e.g., the Turks and Romans); or interaction may take place between the two,
giving rise to a new system as a synthesis (this occurred partly in the Germanic
conquests). 18
What is important for us here are the examples Marx uses and the relationships
he alludes to. He notes that conquest 'may lead to either of three results'. He does
not however mention that the result of conquest is basically determined by the
relative strength - hence violence - that the conquerors can call into play. But
it is clear that this is the case, because the mode of production, which for Marx
is the focus of attention in conquest, is basically the expression of the concentrated
might and strength of a given social formation. Now, in Marx' s examples, the
English (capitalists) impose their mode of production. The Turks and Romans (pre-
capitalist colonizers), on the other hand, are satisfied with tribute without interfering
in the mode of production of the conquered. And the Germanic tribes create a
synthesis between the conquering and conquered modes of production.
The mode of production of a society is the particular instantiation of the symbiosis
of man and nature, which for Marx is the fundamental ontological antecedent to
any social formation. The 'organic composition' of this symbiosis, furthermore,
is constituted and measured by the level of dominance and violence directed against
nature or the lack thereof. It is clear, therefore, that anyone of the above three
results of conquest is determined by the degree of violence against nature reflected
in the mode of production of the conquering society. The strength of the conquering
society, in other words, depends on the extent to which this society has subdued
the forces of nature - as exemplified in its mode of production.
What decisively distinguishes the British from the Turks and Romans, insofar
as the subjugated are concerned, is that the British as capitalists/modem Europeans
Praxis International 165
have achieved the highest subjugation of nature, and are thus capable of unleashing
the most concentrated and organized form of violence. This violence furthermore
is not a violence of mere destruction. Rather, it is a violence that ranks human
societies in subordination and duplicates European society in the non-European
world, thereby denying the difference that constitutes the subjugated as human. 19
The non-European is subdued and fiolded - just as a thing of nature - in the service
of "human civilization" understood in the singular, and properly speaking, as
European.
To be sure, Marxwas never particularly concerned with the plight of the
colonized. In the last chapter of Capital Vol. I, for example, he writes in great
detail of the problems of capital and its re-production in the colonies. About the
expropriation and extermination of the aboriginal populace that colonialism pre-
supposes, however, nothing is said. In the concluding section of the first part of
the German Ideology, entitled "Conquest", Marx discusses the part played by
conquest in history and its possible incompatibility with his perspective. Marx's
only concern here, as elsewhere, is to show that even if "barbarians" conquer,
ultimately they are conquered by their "civilized" victims. 20
On the other hand, the subjugation of the non-European - in the 19th century
- which Marx witnessed, is viewed by him as the positive result of the negative
encounter of Europe and the rest of the world. The violence of European conquest
is endorsed by Marx, precisely because it Europeanizes the world. It institutes
on a global scale the European relation to nature, which Marx views as the onto-
logically proper relation of humanity to nature, i.e., "civilization". Hence, the
trans-forming or "civilizing" by conquest of indigenous non-European societies
is a necessity of World History required by the ontological status of humanity as
such. European colonialist expansion is thus for Marx the fulfillment of the most
fundamental ontological possibility of human existence.
In "The Future Results of British Rule in India", written in 1853, Marx
approvingly points out that
England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating
- the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundation
of Western [properly human] society in Asia.
21
In "The British Rule in India", written around the same period, Marx also points
out that
England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan, was actuated only
by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that
is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfill its destiny without a funda-
mental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the
crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that
revolution. Then, whatever bitterness the spectacle of the crumbling of an ancient
world may have for our personal feelings, we have the right, in point of history
to exclaim with Goethe:
, 'Should this torture then torment us
Since it brings us greater pleasure?
Were not through the rule of Timur
Souls devoured without measure?"22
166
Praxis International
What has to be noted in these passages - which applies not only to India but to
the rest of the non-European world as well- is that Marx is not blind to the hypocrisy
and brutality of British rule in India. In fact he recognizes in detail, in his articles
on India, as he also does in Chapters 26 and 31 of Capital, Vol. I, the violence
upon which European expansion is based. In point of 'history' , however, and in
terms of the 'destiny' of 'mankind', the destructive violence of European conquest
and expansion are exonerated. This is so because the 'torture' of conquest makes
possible a 'fundamental revolution in the social state' of the non-European world
which promises 'greater pleasure', i.e., European modernity/human society, on
a global scale.
Marx views the violence of European conquest as a historical necessity, as being
internal to the hidden dialectic of history that is at work in colonial expansion.
The end result of this dialectic, furthermore, is not only the material transformation
- railways, roads, industry ... etc. - and thus the material Europeanization of non-
European territories, but more fundamentally, the fruit and highest achievement
of this dialectic is the westernized native, i.e., the spiritual or cultural transformation
of the colonized.
Indeed, as Marx points out, under British subordination and tutelage, "a fresh
class is springing up, endowed with the requirements for [European] government
and imbued with European science.' '23 It is in the Europeanized assimilado or
evolue that Marx places his hopes for the future possibilities of the non-European
world.
24
Strangely enough, for Marx, it is the culturally alienated, self-negating,
schizoid evolue, the 'black skin with a white mask' to use Fanon's words, who
is the hope of the non-European world. The cultural indigence - from the perspective
of the indigenous ethos - that is incarnated in this de-humanized being is something
that Marx does not even consider. In fact, it is precisely this cultural indigence
of the colonized's indigenousness which needs to be achieved if 'mankind' is to
'fulfill its destiny'. For Marx, the
Indians [the non-European world] will not reap thejruits of the new [evoluel elements
of society scattered among them by the British [European] bourgeoisie, till in Great
Britain [Europe] itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the
industrial proletariat. 25
Thus, everything remains surbordinate to Europe. The circle remains closed. Human
freedom can only come from the European proletariat and the Europeanized/
indigent evolue. In Hegel, the dialectic of history, which is internal to European
modernity, drives it to colonialist expansion, Le., the global institution and establish-
ment of the Idea of freedom.
26
With Marx we see that colonialism brings about
global Europeanization and thus plays a "positive" role in the "developmenf'
towards freedom (communism) of the non-European world. Indeed as Oliva
Blanchette points out,
Marx's claim to 'comprehend theoretically the historical movement as a whole'
through the proletariat, while being perhaps better grounded in actuality than Hegel' s
conception, is still not the kind of 'absolute knowing' that it claims to be. Even if
it were to be actualized ... it leaves out too many people in the world, and it is ready
to trample innocent bystanders that stand in the way. 27
Praxis International 167
The emancipation of the non-European is possible only as an adjunct to the struggle
of the European proletariat and will be actualized by the westernized native, the
one who, among the natives, has been assimilated into the uni-verse of European
civilization and its struggles.
The problem with Marx's position, of course, is that such natives are nowhere
to be found, since those Europeanized natives - assimilado or evolue - who join
the struggle for emancipation do so by rejecting their assimilation of indigence
and successfully indigenize themselves. The re-claiming of one's indigenousness
is in fact - for the evolue - the originative moment of the anti-colonial struggle.
It is the moment of an historical and existential decision, at which point the evolue
begins the cultural metamorphosis that will positively immerse him/her into the
indigenous historicality of the colonized. On the other hand, those natives who
are made and remain in the image of the colonizer as the incarnations of cultural
estrangement - the assimilado or the evolue on whom Marx placed his hopes -
are the embodiments of neo-colonialism. As Albert Memmi points out,
... the colonized's liberation must be carried out through a recovery of self and of
autonomous dignity. Attempts at imitating the colonizer required self-denial; the
colonizer's rejection is the indispensable prelude to self-discovery. 28
The native engages in mortal combat in order to overcome the colonial domination
that suffocates both his cultural and material existence, and not to consummate
the dialectic of European modernity in the colonies, as Marx seems to explicitly
suggest. As Frantz Fanon so vividly puts it, in
the colonial countries where a real struggle for freedom has taken place, where the
blood of the people has flowed and where the length of the period of armed warfare
has favored the backward surge ofintellectuals towards bases grounded in the people,
we can observe a genuine eradication of the superstructure bullt by these intellectuals
from the [European] bourgeois colonialist environment.
29
In other words, 'where a real struggle for freedom' has taken place, the westernized
native is absorbed back into the indigenous milieu and re-integrated into the cultural
heritage from which he had been alienated by westernization and which he now
feels as domination. This does not mean that the European values (Marxist theory
for example) infused in the person of the westernized native are discarded. Rather,
the arrogant Euro-centrism in which these values are incased is purged and European
values and technics are accepted for what they are - culturally circumscribed
products of human existence.
The achievements of European culture are recognized as the achievements of
a particular culture. In this recognition the universalized particularism of Europe
- Euro-centrism - is discarded and elements of European culture are appropriated
and become indigenized organic aspects of re-emerging African cultures. 30 It
should be noted that, in so far as Marxist theory is itself a European cultural-
historical product, it is only through this indigenizing transformation that elements
of this theory can be of use in the cultural-historical context of Africa. This trans-
formative appropriation is what Basil Davidson designates by the term "afro-
communism" .31
As Fanon puts it, commenting on the utility of Marx's thought in the context
of the colonized world, the
168
Praxis International
cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because
you are rich. This is why Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every
time we have to do with the colonial problem. 32
This 'slight stretching' has to be understood as a basic destabilization of the
Euro-centric orientation of the 'materialist conception of history' . It should be noted
that, 'slight' as this 'stretching' may be, it of necessity dislocates and rejects the
symmetry of Marx's metaphysical presuppositions, as evidenced by the basic
direction and tenor of Fanon's thought as a whole.
In like manner Cesaire points out, the Marxist "doctrine and ... movement"
must be "tailored to fit men, not men to fit the movement" .33 In other words,
from within the political constraints and possibilities of their own particular historical
context, Fanon and Cesaire suggest that aspects of Marx' s thought can be of use
in the colonial context, provided that their Euro-centric underpinnings are discarded.
Elements of Marx's thinking - namely the critique of capitalist production and
the critique of estrangement in modern society - can be utilized only by being
purged of Marx's Euro-centric metaphysics, Le., the 'materialist conception of
history' .34 Once purged of this metaphysical Euro-centric system, then Marx's
critical insights can be re-thought, indigenized and appropriated within the African
cultural and historical milieu.
It is only by renouncing Marx's thought as Marxism/the 'materialist conception
of history' - i.e., an "ism" which is a systematic privileging of European existence
- that disen1bodied elements of Marx's critique of modern society can be appro-
priated and indigenized. In this way the uni-verse of Euro-centrism is broken,
un-structured and the multi-verse of the' 'fusion"35 of various cultural historical
horizons is inaugurated in a concrete process of struggle.
As Isaias Afewerki puts it, "the aspiration for socialism [Marxism] in the Third
World is completely understandable" , since it is necessary to "transform the social
and economic formations" of these societies. 36 But this has to be understood in
the context in which
the Third World and people in this area [Africa] in particular have to come out with
a philosophy that conforms with the present situation and the future developments
that might come without the presence of the Soviet Union or the Americans in this
region. 37
Speaking out of the political concerns of his particular situation - the Eritrean
anti-colonial struggle in the Horn of Africa - Afewerki asserts the need to overcome
Euro-centrism from both the 'East' and the 'West'. In so doing he is re-asserting
what Fanon had forcefully articulated in the Wretched of the Earth.
[The] concrete problem we find ourselves up against is not that of a choice, cost
what it may, between socialism and capitalism as they have been defined by men
of other continents and other ages. 38
Let us now look more closely at the metaphysics of Euro-centrism at work in Marx's
'materialist conception of history'.
Praxis International
169
At this point we have to consider systematically what is at stake. Why is it that
Marx - inspite of his recognition of the brutality of colonialism - explicitly supports
European expansion and conquest. Our question is: What is it in the structure of
Marx's thought which leads him to support European colonialism? In what has
been said thus far I have charged Marx with a metaphysical Euro-centrism. It is
therefore necessary, at this point, to give a full and systematic substantiation of
this charge.
In the famous 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique ofPolitical Economy,
Marx proclaims as a major discovery and as a cornerstone of his thought the results
of his re-reading of Hegel in the mid 1840's. This re-examination was necessitated
by Marx's inability to adequately discuss questions touching on economic and
material interests. The concrete socio-economic question that interested Marx was
the "deliberations of the Rhenish Landtag on forest thefts" .39 At the time Marx
held the view that the state as opposed to its Idea was being transformed into a
mere tool in the hands of a section of society. As Leszek Kolakowski points out,
Marx argued that the state was being "degraded" to the status of an "instrument
of the private interests of landowners and was thus contravening the very [I]dea
of the state" .40 It is the re-examination of this question, as Marx tells us, which
leads him to a critique of his Hegelian heritage.
The Hegelian conception of the state as a manifestation of the Idea, was the
view that Marx discarded. In its stead, Marx explains that his re-examination of
Hegel in the mid 1840's led him to the crucial conclusion that,
neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by them-
selves or on the basis of a so called general development of the human mind ... on
the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life. 41
The state and the various socio-political relations that constitute it were then to
be understood in terms of the underlying 'material conditions of life' on which
they are grounded. In other words, the non-material relations of social, political,
cultural existence are reduced and devalued to the status of phenomena whose truth
is to be found in the 'material conditions of life' .
But what precisely are these 'material conditions of life'? In Marx's often quoted
words, the
general conclusion at which I ... the guiding principle of my studies can be
summarised as follows. In the social production of their existence, men inevitably
enter into definite relations which are independent of their will, namely relations
of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces
of production. The totality of these relations of production constitute the economic
structure of society. . . At a certain stage of development, the material productive
forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production ... From
forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.
Then begins an era of social revolution. 42
What is of primary interest to us in this passage is not the much belabored issue
of the base and super-structure, but rather, the fact that Marx is not making a
historical statement but is enunciating a speculative metaphysical principle.
170 Praxis Intemational
In the process of producing their 'social existence' , Marx tells us, human beings
enter into 'definite relations' which reveal a certain structure that holds true of
all societies. It is important to note that the 'general conclusion' and 'guiding
principle' which Marx is proclaiming is not restricted or qualified to a specific
culture or era. Rather, it is extended to include "Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern
bourgeois modes of production" , which are different levels in the historical develop-
ment of the productive forces of society. 43
Marx's remarks, therefore, refer not to a specific culture or historical epoch,
but to the ontological mechanism which is anterior to the antic manifestations
of specific forms of human existence. Thus by 'material conditions of life'
Marx is referring to a specific conception of the developmental and historical
dialectic of the forces and relations of production, which is anticipated by the
less "developed" societies and is instantiated in modern bourgeois social formations.
In other words, Marx basically ontologizes the antic manifestations of European
society..
In the first part of the German Ideology, Marx gives us a concise example of
what this means. The German idealogues - against whom he is polemicizing -
descend from heaven to earth, Marx on the other hand "ascend[s] from earth to
heaven' , .44 In using this metaphor Marx means to emphasize his view that it is
from concrete and empirical premises that he starts. Throughout the German
Ideology the emphasis is on the real, understood as the empirical. Marx's text
leads one to believe that what needs doing is to focus on the particular and the
specific regarding each age and culture in order to avoid speculatively distorting
history such that "later history is made the goal of earlier history" .45 As we shall
see, Marx falls prey to his own accusations.
In the German Ideology, Marx begins by infonning us that the real basis of history
are actual men in the concrete process of securing and procuring their livelihood.
The initial premise of all history is therefore the process of satisfying needs and
thus creating more needs, which is the "production of life, both of one's own
in labor and of fresh life in procreation" .46 This process of the production and
procreation of life, furthermore, develops through different consecutive "forms
of ownership" or modes of production which are correlated with specific levels
in the development of the division of labor and in the development of the forces
of production. Thus, the level of the division of labor is correlative to a specific
level in the development of the forces of production. Based on this criterion,
differing societies and cultures - Asiatic/tribal, ancient, feudal and bourgeois -
are ranked in a hierarchy of sub-ordination. In these various modes of production,
human beings enter into relations of production which are, according to Marx,
progressively more developed. Hence, the level of Asiatic/tribal society corresponds
to an "underdeveloped stage of production" precisely because the division of labor
and the corresponding development of the forces and relations of production are
still at an initial stage in contrast to modern European society. 47 As Jacques
Taminiaux observes, it
is because and insofar as the productive force is thought to have attained a universal
and wholly unrestricted development [in modern European capitalist society] that
this beginning [Asiatic/tribal society] can be qualified as restricted ... It is because
and insofar as unlimited and unshackled production is the meaning of the felos [of
Praxis International 171
history] that the arche is defined as a still restricted [inferior] production, but
nevertheless production in the true sense of the term. 48
Thus, in his 'materialist conception of history' , Marx uses as a speculative standard
certain conceptions - the division of labor, the development of the forces and
relations of production, the detachment of man from natural and communal ties
- derived from the European historical experience as the fixed standard by which
human societies as a whole are to be evaluated. In other words, he makes 'later
history' the goal of 'earlier history'.
What is inconsistent in Marx's position is that outside the European world, history
occurs not through the development and internal dynamic of the indigenous
populace, but through European intervention. As we saw, in the German Ideology,
the basic premise of Marx' s historical materialist approach is concrete men and
the conditions in which they live. It is from them and their engagements with nature
and society that Marx claims he begins, in contradistinction to German
Idealism.
49
For Marx, history is not something apart and above concrete men; it
is nothing more than the eventuations of human beings in the process of fulfilling
the objectives that they themselves establish. To be sure, this always happens within
a context of a past historical development that both hinders and simultaneously
establishes the limits of possibility at any particular moment in time.
In his writings on the non-European world, however, Marx does not seem to
begin from the same concrete engagement. He seems to have forgotten this concrete
beginning which functions as his point of departure in considering European
historical developments. In looking at non-European societies, Marx's focus is
not directed towards the concrete historical engagements of human beings in specific
and particular cultures. Rather, it is directed towards locating the avenues by which
these societies can be Europeanized. His focus is anticipatory and functions only
in terms of what European experience shows. This is so precisely because Marx
- heir to the European Enlightenment - was extremely impressed with the European
cultural heritage, which he identified with human culture as such, and to which
he opposed the nature-confined status of human life in the non-European world.
In Capital Volume I, Marx asserts that in contrast to human life in the era of
capitalist production, pre-capitalist humanity is immature. This assertion occurs
in the famous section on the fetishism of commodities and is made in a direct
comparison of bourgeois society with Asiatic and pre-capitalist societies as a whole.
As Marx puts it:
Those ancient social organisms of production. . . are founded either on the immaturity
of man as an individual, when he has not yet torn himself loose from the umbilical
cord of his natural species-connection with other men, or on direct relations of
dominance and servitude. They are conditioned by a low stage of development of
the productive powers of labour and correspondingly limited relations between men
within the process of creating and reproducing their material life, hence also limited
relations between man and nature. 50
The point of this comparison is the situation of human beings in pre-capitalist
societies. Marx begins by maintaining that these societies are based on the 'im-
maturity of man', which means that man has not yet 'torn himself loose' from
the 'umbilical cord of his natural species-connection' with his fellow man and with
172
Praxis International
nature. Pre-capitalist man has not yet, as it were, emerged from the bowels of
nature - he is still a "natural' and not a "historical" being. This immersion of
man in nature corresponds with and is 'conditioned by a low stage' in the develop-
ment of the 'productive powers of labour' . The explicit presupposition of the passage
quoted above is that the development of the forces of production will consequently
transform this limited and inferior mode of life.
The maturity of man - if we are to play out the organic metaphor Marx uses
- will be achieved through the development of the forces of production. That which
"matures" already is and only needs to ripen. In other words, what man is in
"essence", is already present in pre-capitalist society and needs only to be brought
forth by the development of the forces of production. But are not the detachment
of human beings from natural and communal ties, conceptions and ideas specific
to European history? And does Marx not utilize these conceptions and ideas as
speculative metaphysical standards by which to measure the progress of humanity
as such? Can such metaphysical standards be used to evaluate the "progress" of
human societies without surreptitiously Europeanizing humankind as a whole?
These are questions that Marx does not ask. In fact, given his global and
evolutionary conception of history, there is nothing problematic in the above
questions. As Marx points out:
Thus the ancient conception, in which man always appears ... as the aimofproduction,
seems very much more exalted than the modern world, in which production is the
aim of man and wealth the aim of production. In fact, however, when the narrow
bourgeois form has been peeled away, \vhat is wealth, if not the universality of needs,
capacities, enjoyments, productive powers, etc., of individuals, produced in universal
exchange? What, if not the full development of human control over the forces of
nature - those of his own nature as well as those of so-called "nature" ?51
In the above question - as in the preceding one - Max is universalizing and
ontologizing the experiences of a particular culture and society. The complete
'control over the forces of nature' which Marx promises will follow the peeling
away of the 'narrow bourgeois form', is a "hope" arising out of the concrete
historicality of European modernity. It is by no means an ontological propensity
latent in mankind as such. :rhis, however, is how Marx sees it.
In other words, Marx's sixth Thesis on Feuerbach, is an apt criticism of his own
fixation on European culture. Just as Feuerbach "abstracts from the historical pro-
cess" and focuses on "religious sentiment" as something' 'by itself' , in like manner,
Marx abstracts and universalizes European history. In the German Ideology, Marx
says of Feuerbach that he "stops at the abstraction 'man"', and never gets to men
in the concrete as they actually are in life. 52 In much the same way Marx never goes
beyond European humanity. For him non-European humanity has nothing original
or different to offer humankind, it basically is Europe at an under-developed stage
- slowly but surely coming along the singular and "true" path of world history.
What has to be noted, in what has been said thus far about Marx, is the
extreme Euro-centrism in which his 'materialist conception of history' is immersed.
What is clear by now, in what Marx says of India and the non-European world
is that, for him, it is only European humanity and European culture that
have the character of being properly human. Indeed, for Marx, non-European
Praxis International
173
cultures are nothing more than inferior and/or underdeveloped modes of human
life, which is itself best exemplified in European culture. Again in regards to Indian
society Marx writes that it,
... subjugated man to external circumstances ... and thus brought about a brutalizing
worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of
nature fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala
the COW.
53
The human being for Marx is the 'sovereign of nature', that is, the ruler and lord
of creation; the subject for whom, the animate and inanimate world all around
him is the object of manipulative and technical control. To be sure, this metaphor
of humanity lording it over nature is a peculiarly European Idea. It originates in
the ludeo-Christian myth of the creation of Man in the image of God.
54
Yet Marx
makes it the ultimate criterion by which to evaluate all non-European cultures.
For Marx, the ancient Greeks - to whom the West traces its origins - are the
true archaic point of origin of humanity. He writes that, there "are rude children
and precocious children. Many of the ancient peoples belong to this category. The
Greeks were normal children.' '55 Such remarks are quite revealing. Marx, a
European, judges his ancestry relative to other ancestries by the standards of
European culture and concludes that the "Greeks were normal" as opposed to
other archaic peoples who are thus judged to be abnormal.
The nonnative criteria to which the Greeks are anterior are used to make a positive
assessment of them. Marx is caught in a vicious Euro-centric circle; he fails to
recognize the hermeneutical (interpretative) character of his judgments - and is
thus caught in what one might call an interpretative or hermeneutical fallacy.56
The fallacy of positing one's own cultural pre-judgements as the "true" ontological
ground of human existence as such. He starts out by presupposing European culture
as the standard bearer of human existence and then goes on to "correctly"
recognize, in the ancient Greeks, the "true" ancestors of "true" humanity precisely
because it is Europe that traces its origins to them. As Kostas Axelos points out,
Marx projects the history of Europe both backward and forward and understands
all things historical from a European perspective. Axelos asks,
[b]ut has it always been like that, or has not Marx once again projected and generalized
the truth of the reality of one historical epoch (which is [violently] tending to become
universal) upon the whole of history? It seems that we can answer in the affirmative
to both questions.
57
As we saw earlier, modern European civilization universalizes itself by force and
violence. Marx directly justifies and legitimizes this whole process in the name
of human civilization and culture. For Marx, capitalist European civilization brings
forth that which humanity has always been in its essence. One can say that for
Marx, European modernity has an ontic-ontological supremacy as opposed to other,
pre-capitalist, non-European modes of production, because it is through it that
the fundamental and "essential determinations of humanity's social and historical
life" are brought forth into the world. As Cornelius Castoriadis further observes,
capitalism is privileged, historically [ontically] and philosophically [ontologically].
History is man - but man, essentially, is Labour, and this only becomes apparent
174 Praxis International
when, having swept away all previous 'lumber' and 'nonsense' , and all 'accidental'
factors, the identity of this Substance/Essence can finally affirm itself triumphantly
and prevail, in and through capitalist production. 58
As we saw in our explorative discussion of the German Ideology, it is precisely
because of this that Marx ranks societies in subordination. And it is for the same
reason that he supports European expansion. The establishment of the world market
which Marx celebrates in the Communist Manifesto is the violent process through
which 'accidental factors' are 'swept away' and the 'Substance/Essence', i.e., man
as the laboring-being in technical dominance of nature is historically instituted
'through capitalist production'. Thus, for Marx, in the non-European world,
colonialism introduces the truth of humanity beyond 'all previous lumber and
nonsense' , i.e., beyond the particularity and specificity of the non-European world.
In a round about way we have returned to Hegel. For Hegel, it is the "absolute
right of the Idea to step into existence in clear cut laws and objective institutions",
which basically are European.
59
With Marx, the Idea has been replaced by the
'material conditions' of modem European society, but the 'absolute right' of these
conditions is still maintained.
In defence of Marx, one could say that, historically and' 'objectively", this is
indeed what has happened in the development of world history. That European
civilization has subjugated all other civilizations is indeed a brute historical fact.
But what is at issue here is that this historical and thus contingent phenomenon
is viewed by Marx has having been "objectively" necessary and "ethically"
justified. As Fanon puts it, "objectivity is always directed against" the native. 60
In this context, "objectivity" is nothing more than a code word for the European
point of view. As Antonio Gramsci observes,
[o]bjective always means 'humanly objective'. Man knows objectively in so far as
knowledge is real for the whole human race historically unified in a single unitary
cultural system. 61
Now, for Gramsci, as long as the human race is not 'historically unified in a single
cultural system', objectivity is always relative to this or that culture or system
of norms. This is what he means by 'humanly objective'. In so far as Marx's
perspective views only European culture as properly human, all other perspectives
are de facto excluded, and the perspective of "humanity" becomes identical
"objectively" with that of Europe. Marx's perspective, then, is a perspective
wedded to a fixed "objectivity" that does not take 'humanity' in its diversity into
account.
But why is this the case? Since Plato, the project of philosophy has been the
metaphysical discourse of the 'visible and the invisible'. 62 In the tradition of
European thought what is is understood to be that which is fixed, eternal. real
(the invisible) on one side, and that which is a manifestation of the real, on the
other side. Philosophy, furthermore, is the discourse which articulates and reveals
that which arises out of this difference. In the various texts that we have examined
thus far, Marx is continuing this long tradition of thought.
As Axelos points out, Marx's thinking is interior to the "metaphysics of sub-
jectivity". Thus he continues to think within the perspective inaugurated by Plato
Praxis International 175
which functions via the "separation between the physical and the metaphysical,
reality and idea, matter and mind (spirit), practice and theory. "63 Marx under-
stands reality as "abjectness for the senses and subject to empirical grasp", in
contradistinction to which human subjectivity is viewed as that which counterposes
itself to reality and in so doing subjugates and controls it.
64
Because Marx' s
thinking is interior to the structure of metaphysics, European culture - which views
Man as the subject "sovereign" over nature - appears to him as the singularly
proper manifestation of human historicality/existence as such.
It is for this reason that Marx endorses the violence of European conquest and
supports the world wide colonialist expansion of Europe. Marx fails to see that
non-European humanity has its own differing modes of historicality or existence
and cannot be understood or merely subsumed under the label "European humanity' ,
at a lower level of development.
65
The Euro-centric metaphysics at work in Marx' s thought leads him to a deficient
understanding of the dimension of historicality in human existence. He fails to
see that non-European cultures are not inferior or underdeveloped fonns of European
culture, but constitute differing manifestations and appropriations of human
historicality. As Castoriadis puts it, the European self-centered conception that,
"in truth, there is but one history and for all that matters, this one history coincides
with our own", this view which sees European history as the transcendental Truth
of history as such, as the fundamental and "'transcendentally obligatory' meeting
point of all particular histories" ,66 this narrowly confined Euro-centric uni-verse,
is the basic presupposition on which Marx's 'materialist conception of history' rests.
As we have seen, the metaphysical grounding of this view is the belief that
European modernity's relation to nature - technological domination - is cotenninous
or isomorphic with the true ontological status of the humanity of the human in
its relation to nature. Thus, for Marx, European colonialisln is the spread of Human
Civilization and the globalization of the pre-conditions of true human freedom,
i.e., communism.
IV
From what has been said thus far it is clear that Marx's 'materialist conception
of history' serves well as a metaphysical and as an ethical justification of European
colonialism and expansion. It presents aggressors as historical benefactors and
victims as deserving of their victimization which is brought about by their own
indolent "historical" lethargy, i.e., their "backwardness". The operative and
fundamental dichotomy at work in Marx's thought is the "disparity" between
civilized and barbarian measured on a singular, sequential, evolutionary, hierarchical
and linear progression of "history". Thus, in the guise of the dialectic of this
singular metaphysical history, the mastery of the world by Europe is presented
as the "self-mastery" and "maturity" of humanity.
This metaphysical world-historical schema, as we have shown, is not founded
on an empirical exploration of the histories and cultures that constitute humanity
as a multi-verse totality. It is, rather, the retrospective-prospective de jure justifica-
tion of de facto European brutality in the manner of the' 'owl of Minerva" which
, 'spreads its wings only with the falling [or in Marx' s case in anticipation] of the
176
Praxis International
dusk".67 Thus, Marx is guilty of the charge he levels against the German Idealogues
in the German Ideology, i.e., of speculaiively distorting 'later history' such that
it appears as 'the goal of earlier history'.
For Marx - the self-proclaimed unmasker of "unimaginative fantasies" - the
"prophets of the eighteenth century, on whose shoulders Adam Smith and Ricardo
were still wholly standing," conceived the isolated individual "as the starting point
of history". The thinking of these "prophets", as Marx astutely observes, was
guided by the "anticipation of 'bourgeois society' which began to evolve in the
sixteenth century" .68 In like manner, Marx privileges the brutal spectacle of
European colonialism and elevates it to the status of ontological truth, precisely
because his thinking is formulated in anticipation of the globalization of the
instrumental and dominating relation of humanity to nature best exemplified in
European modernity.
Based on the violent obliteration of difference and the imposition of sameness,
the incipient world-historical Europeanization of the globe is presented by the
'materialist conception of history' as the ontologically sanctioned actualization of
the "destiny" of humanity. But, isn't this also "an illusion and nothing but the
aesthetic illusion of the small and big Robinsonades [Europeanades]" ?69
It is the politics of this metaphysical universalism that Aime Cesaire' s political
affirmation of the particularity and specificity of the history and culture of the
colonized African world rejects. Cesaire rejects the politics of this metaphysical
idea, of a singular history within which the multiple histories and cultures of
humanity are to be subsumed under the supposed "universality" of European
particularity.
The peculiarity of our history, laced with terrible nlisfortunes which belong to no
other history. The peculiarity of our culture, which we intend to live and make live
in an ever realler [sic.] manner.
And the consequences? what if not that our paths towards the future, all our paths,
I say, the political as well as the cultural paths, aren't ready-traced on any map;
that they remain to be discovered, and that the job [of] discovering then1 is our and
no one else's affair?70
It is also in this manner that Amilcar Cabral categorically reject the Marxist justifica-
tion of European colonialism.
There is a preconception ... that imperialism made us enter history at the moment
when it began its adventure in our countries. This preconception must be denounced:
for the left and for Marxists in particular, history obviously means the class struggle.
Our opinion is exactly the contrary. We consider that when imperialism arrived in
Guinea it made us leave history - our history. We agree that history in our country
is the result of class struggle, but we have our own class struggle in our country;
the moment imperialism arrived and colonialism arrived it made us leave our history
and enter another history. 7\
The basic starting point of Cabral's thinking on colonialism and the anti-colonial
struggle which he formulates as the' 'return to the source" is a heteronomous and
multi-valent conception of history. 72 History or culture is the actuality of
engagements, the - intellectual, artistic, spiritual, material, political, economic
- existence of a people which constitutes its temporality. In reference to the natural
Praxis International 177
environment and in the context of defmite social-historical relations differing peoples
exist within the confines of specific histories/cultures that dis-close and simul-
taneously are dis-closed by the lived actuality of a people. Thus,
[i]f we do not forget the historical perspective of the major events in the life of
humanity, if, while maintaining due respect for all philosophies, we do not forget
that the world is the creation of man himself, then colonialism can be considered
as the paralysis or deviation or even the halting of the history of one people in favour
of the acceleration of the historical development of other peoples. 73
To the extent, then, that national liberation is the overcoming of the colonialist
interruption of the history/culture of the colonized it is a process of returning 'to
the source' out of which the colonized spun their existence prior to being colonized.
But what does this mean? What is the 'source' towards which the 'return' is directed?
This 'return' is not a question of going back to some original archaic past, rather
it is a question of appropriating the cultural forms of existence that have endured
against colonialism and re-instituting them in the context of the present day actuality
of the modern world. It is a question of retrieving and re-calling "the past with
the intention of opening the future, as an invitation to action and a basis for
hope" .74 Or, in the already quoted words of Cesaire, 'our paths towards the
future, all our paths ... aren't ready-traced on any map'. Thus - the dictates of
the 'materialist conception of history' not withstanding - the destiny of Africa
is not the duplication of the European mode of life. Rather, it is the tracing-out
of its own lived historicality from within the actuality of its heritage.
The 'return to the source' is properly speaking the internal, structure and dynamic
that constitutes and realizes the possibilities opened up by the anti-colonialist
struggle. If this 'return' - in some form or other - is not instituted in the actuality
of the confrontation with colonialism then the "struggle will have failed to achieve
its objective" .75 In being a historical phenomenon, the 'return' is the liberation
of the stunted - cultural, spiritual, political, historical, economic - possibilities
of the colonized.
As Fanon puts it,
[d]ecolonization is the veritable creation of new men. But this creation owes nothing
of its legitimacy to any supernatural power; the "thing" which has been colonized
becomes man [human] during the same process by which it frees itself.
76
To 'free itself', to become human, the colonized 'thing' must retrieve for it-self
and out of it-self "that unique thing in man's [human] life that is represented by
the fact of opening up new horizons".77 The colonized 'thing' must re-institute
its cultural and historical heritage, in the context of the modern world, thereby
negating the historical "task" of European colonialism. For Marx, on the contrary,
the cultural-historical obliteration of the colonized is the "task" of European
colonialism sanctioned by the metaphysics of the 'materialist conception of history' .
Contra Marx, the colonized is not concerned with consummating the dialectic
of European history in the colonies. As Cabral points out, the history of Europe
in Africa is not the epoch of the spread of civilization, but is part of the world-
historical European 'adventure' through which the hegemony of a particular culture
was forcefully imposed on the planet as a whole, the period in which African
178 Praxis International
historical existence ossified and Africa was forced to become the negative underbelly
of European historical development.
Paradoxically Europe undertook the domination of the world and of Africa not
in the explicit and cynical recognition of its imperial interests, but in the delusion
that it was spreading civilization and humanizing the world. As we have
demonstrated in this paper, this delusion is not extrinsic to, but embedded in and
intrinsic to the very structure of Marx's 'materialist conception of history',
formulated in view of the "destiny" of humanity, Le., the technical domination
of the globe. How else could Marx think himself a sanguine advocate of human
freedom while justifying European capitalist colonialism?
Acknowledgement
I wish to thank Nuhad Jamal for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of
this paper.
Notes
1. For an interesting discussion of the influence of Marx's thought in African philosophical and
political circles see, V. Y. Mudimbe, "African Gnosis: Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge",
African Studies Review, Vol. 28, No. 2/3, June/September 1985, pp. 174-178. As Mudimbe points
out there are presently five officially Marxist regimes in Africa.
2. In other words, all of the above thinkers in spite of their differences and differing approaches,
attempt in their respective political involvements to negate the Euro-centric tendencies of Marx's
thought. In this paper I focus on Cesaire, Fanon and Cabral precisely because, in my view, they
best articulate the political effort directed against Marxist Euro-centrism. For a recent discussion
of what is at stake in Marxist Euro-centrism see, Juliet Schor, "Why I am no Longer a Progressive",
Zeta Magazine, April 1989. For a critical discussion of Marx in the context of Africal political thought
- which however fails to engage the metaphysics at work in Marx's thought - see, Ayi Kwei Armah,
"Masks and Marx: The Marxist Ethos vis-a-vis African Revolutionary Theory and Practice",
Presence Ajricaine, No. 131, 3rd Quarterly, 1984.
3. Aime Cesaire's 1956 Letter to Thorez, (Presence Africaine, 1957); and Amilcar Cabral, "Brief
Analysis of the Social Structure in Guinea", in Revolution in Guinea: Selected Texts, (Monthly Review
Press, 1969).
4. I borrow the notion of de-struction from Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, part I, section
6, (Harper & Row Pub., 1962). A de-structive reading is one that undermines the text from within
and in terms of the cardinal notions on which it is grounded and in so doing exposes the hidden
source out of which the text is articulated. In, Martin Heidegger: The Way and the Vision, (The
University Press of Hawaii, 1976), J. L. Mehta refers to this aspect of Heidegger's thought as a
"metaphysical archaeology" (pp. 96-97), that enables the interpreter to pierce through and disclose
the originative context out of which the text is articulated. For an interesting discussion of the negative
aspect of African philosophy, which takes its point of departure from Derrida' s notion of 'de-
construction' see; Lucious Outlaw, "African 'Philosophy': Deconstructive and reconstructive
challenges", in Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 5, African Philosophy, ed., Guttom Floistad,
(Martinus Nijhoff Pub., 1987).
5. Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 11.
6. As is well known, Karl Marx never used the expressions 'historical materialism' or 'dialectical
materialism'. The only formulation he used to describe his work was "the materialist conception
of history", A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (International Publishers, 1970),
trans. M. Dobb, p., 220, emphasis in the original.
7. A good example of this paradoxical perspective is the work of the African philosopher Paulin
J. Hountondji (African Philosophy: Myth and Reality, Indiana University Press, 1983). Reflecting
on the character of Kwame Nkrumah' s political thought, Hountondji remarks that it vacillates between
Praxis International
179
an 'early' Africanist phase and a 'later' Marxist-Leninist period. By presenting what he calls a
'historicist' reading of Nkrumah's texts, he argues that, the later Nkrumah endorsed the Marxist-
Leninist thesis that the struggle in Africa is nothing more than the class struggle of Western societies
extended to the international arena (pp. 135-137). Hountondji presents the above as a positive develop-
ment and thus shares in Nkrumah' s failure to grasp the specificity and particularity of the historical
in the earlier works of Nkrumah precisely because they intend - no matter how inadequately - to
think the historicality of the African situation from an Africanist perspective. The paradoxical and
contradictory character of Hountondji's position becomes clear when he writes that, " ... it must
not be forgotten that later he [Nkrumah] more and more openly declared his allegiance to scientific
socialism, that is to say Marxism-Leninism, though, of course, without in any way repudiating the
authentic African cultural tradition" (pp. 141-142). Such a statement is nothing more than a futile
attempt to 'square' the proverbial 'circle'. Since, to subscribe to Marx's thought understood as
'scientific socialism' or 'Marxism-Leninism', one necessarily subscribes to a philosophy (science?)
or history that places Africa at the bottom of an evolutionary ladder that fmds its end and consummation
in contemporary Europe. Such a perspective subordinates Africa to Europe and insists on "solving"
African problems by imposing ideas and conceptions derived from the European historical experience.
For a critical discussion of Hountondji which however shares his paradoxical perspective see,
E. Wamba-Dia-Wamba, "Philosophy in Africa: Challenges of the African Philosopher", in Mawazo,
Vol. 5, No. 2, December 1983. For critical discussions of Hountondji's work in African philosophy
see, Olabiyi Yai, "Theory and Practice in African Philosophy: The Poverty of Speculative
Philosophy", in Second Order, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1977. Wamba's paper will be part of a collection
of contemporary African philosophical texts that I am presently preparing for Paragon House
Publishers.
8. Eric J. Hobsbawm makes the above observation in his Introduction to Marx' s texts from the
Grundrisse, which pertain to pre-capitalist societies, and have been published separatively under
the title Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (International Publishers, 1975), p. 26.
9. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (International Publishers, 1988),
p. 10.
10. Ibid., p. 13.
11. Ibid., p. 9.
12. Ibid., p. 11.
13. Ibid., p. 12, emphasis added.
14. Ibid., p. 14.
15. Karl Marx, "The Future Results of British Rule in India", in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,
On Colonialism, (International Publishers, 1972), p. 87, emphasis added.
16. Claude Lefort, "Rereading The Communist Manifesto", in Democracy and Political Theory,
(University of Minnesota Press, 1988), p. 153; for a systematic critique of Marx's notion of history
by the same author see, "Marx: From one Vision of History to Another", in The Political Forms
of Modern Society, (The MIT Press Cambridge, 1986). . . .
17. Kostas Axelos, Alienation, Praxis, & Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx, (UnIverSIty of
Texas Press, 1976), passim.
18. Marx, A Contribution to a critique of Political Economy, pp. 202-203.
19. Edward Said The Question of Palestine, (Vintage Books, 1980), p. 78.
20. Karl Marx Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, (International Publishers, 1973),
pp. 89-90.
21. Marx and Engels, On Colonialism, p. 82.
22. Ibid., p. 31, emphasis added.
23. Ibid., p. 82. . .. hl
24. For assimilado see, Mario De Andrade, biographIcal notes In, UnlfJJ. and Struggle (Mont y
Review Press, 1979), p. xxiii. For evolue see, Jean-Paul Sartre, Introduction to Lumumba Speaks
(Little, Brown & Co., 1972), p. 8. .
25. Marx and Engels, On Colonialism, p. 85, emphasis. ,. . "
26. In this regard see my paper, "The Idea of ColonialIsm In Hegel s Phzlosophy of Rzght ,
forthcoming in International Philosophical Quarterly, 98? .
27. Oliva Blanchette, "The Idea of History in Karl Marx ,Studzes zn Sovzet Thought, Vol. 26,
No. 2, August 1983, p. 119, emphasis added.
180 Praxis International
28. Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, (Beacon Press, 1965), p. 128. For a concise
exploration of the cultural situation of the colonized within the colonizer's hegemonic cultural dominion
see, Thomas F. Slaughter, Jr., "Epidermalizing the World: A Basic Mode of Being Black", in
Philosophy Born of Struggle, ed., L. Harris, (Kendal Hunt Pub., 1983).
29. Franz Fanon, The Wretched o/the Earth, (Grove Press Inc., 1963), p. 46, emphasis added.
30. Amilcar Cabral, Return to the Source, (Monthly Review Press, 1973), passim; and Fanon,
"On National Culture", in The Wretched of the Earth. For discussions of African efforts at
indigenizing European cultural products, specifically Christianity, see: J. F. Ade. Ajayi, "Tradition
as a Factor in African Development", paper presented at Amhert College, April 1989; and V. Y.
Mudimbe, "African Theology as a Political Praxis: Vincent Mulago and the Catholic Theological
Discourse: 1950-1980", Presence Ajricaine, No. 145, 1st Quarterly, 1988.
31. Basil Davidson, Cross Roads in Africa, (Spokesman Press, 1980), p. 31.
32. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 40.
33. Aime Cesaire, Letter to Thorez, p. 12.
34. In this regard I would like to suggest that there are aspects of Marx' s work, specifically in
the 1844 Manuscripts, that are not framed within the metaphysical structure of the 'materialist
conception of history'. As Louis Dupre points out (" Marx' s Idea of Alienation Revisited", Man
and World, Vol. 14, No. 4, 1981, p. 393-394.), the Manuscripts are constituted by two contradictory
conceptions and lend themselves to fundamentally differing interpretatings. Marx criticizes political
economy in terms of "an ideal Gattungswessen [first conception] that, instead of being derived
from man's present condition, persistently contradicts it. This humanist ideal ... does not merge
harmoniously with the social-economic definition of man [second conception]". (p. 394, emphasis
in the original) If read along these lines indicated by the first conception, as in Michael Henry's
Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality, (Indiana University Press, 1983, chapters 2 and 3), these
texts are indeed a continuation of German Idealism. Or as Kostas Axelos points out, the "fundamental
premise that allows the transcendence of alienation namely, the essence of man (something that has
never been empirically found), is metaphysical in nature. And it is metaphysical in the traditional
sense of that term, since it goes beyond the data of experience", (Alienation, Praxis and Techne
in the Thought of Karl Marx, p. 225, emphasis in the original). These critiques insist on locating
the 1844 Manuscripts as a whole within the paradigmatic confines of the 'materialist conception
of history'. But, beyond the metaphysics of 'species being' and its realization through the stages
delineated by the 'materialist conception of history' - hidden and hampered by it - as Dupre observes
(without exploring this point further), the 1844 Manuscripts also harbor an ontological perspective
(the critique of estrangement) and an ontic analysis (the critique of capitalist production) which is
not grounded on an a-historical 'species being' and a metaphysical schema of history. It has to be
noted that the Manuscripts are inter-paradigm texts, located in-between Marx' s Hegelian period
and before the formulation of the 'materialist conception of history' in the German Ideology, and
as such, are not univocal. In my view, it is this multi-vocality of Marx's early writings that offers
itself to be explored and appropriated within the historical and cultural context of Africa.
35. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, (Crossroad Publishing Co., 1982), pp. 273-274.
I utilize this notion in the sense in which it occurs in the thinking of the later Heidegger and which
Hans-Georg Gadamer appropriates as the basic structure of the hermeneutical consciousness. In
this regard see my paper, "Heidegger and Gadamer: Thinking as 'Meditative' and as 'Effective-
Historical Consciousness''', Man and World, Vol. 20, No. 1,1987.
36. James Firebrace and Stuart Holland, interview with Isaias Afewerki, in Eritrea: Never Kneel
Down, (The Red Sea Press, 1985), p. 131.
37. Ibid., p. 133. For a more recent statement of this perspective see, Isaias Afewerki's address
to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington D. C., May 3, 1989, printed
in Adulis (monthly publication of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front Foreign Relations Bureau),
Vo!. 6, No. 6, June 1989.
38. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 99, emphasis added. In this respect see also, Steve
Biko, I Write What I Like (Harper & Row Pub., 1986), passim.
39. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 19.
40. Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, (Clarendon Press, 1978), Vol. 1, p. 122.
41. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 20, emphasis added.
42. Ibid., p. 20-21.
Praxis International
181
43. Ibid., p. 21. As Marx points out in the German Ideology, "all collisions [developments] in
history have their origin, according to our view, in the contradiction between the productive forces
and the form of intercourse [Le., relations of production]". (p. 89).
44. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 47.
45. Ibid., p. 57.
46. Ibid., p. 50.
47. Ibid., p. 44.
48. Jacques Tarniniaux, "Empiricism and Speculation in the German Ideology", in Philosophy
and Social Criticism, Vol. 6, No. 3, Fall 1979, p. 257.
49. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 42-52.
50. Karl Marx, Capital Vol. I, (Vintage Books, 1977), trans. Ben Fowkes, p. 172-173.
51. Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, p. 84, emphasis added.
52. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 64.
53. Marx and Engels, On Colonialism, p. 41, emphasis added.
54. For Heidegger this idea of man, compounded with the Greek notion of Logos, is the fundamental
and grounding perspective embodied in and unfolded by the European metaphysical tradition. Being
and Time, (Harper & Row Pub., 1962), division I, p. 74.
55. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 217.
56. For the sense in which I utilize the notion of a hermeneutical fallacy see, Heidegger, Being
and Time, section 32 "Understanding and Interpretation" and specifically, pp. 194-195.
57. Axelos, Alienation, Praxis, & Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx, p. 91.
58. Cornelius Castoriadis, Crossroads in The Labyrinth, (The MIT Press, 1984), pp. 274-275.
59. Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox, p. 219, paragraph 350.
60. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 77.
61. Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, (International Publishers, 1975), p. 445, emphasis added.
62. Plato, The Collected Dialogues, (Princeton University Press, 1980), edited by E. Hamilton
and H. Cairns, the "Phaedo", No. 79a. In all fairness to Plato it should be noted that his later
dialogues place this perspective - explicitly articulated in the middle dialogues - as a whole in question.
In this regard see the "Sophist" and especially the "Parmenides".
63. Axelos, Alienation, Praxis, & Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx, p. 146, emphasis in the
original.
64. Ibid., p. 128, see also, pp. 155-158.
65. It is interesting to note that even Heidegger - in spite of his Being-question and all that this
question makes possible - does not escape this self-aggrandizing European delusion, i.e., Euro-
centrism. Even though the basic tenor of his thought is aimed at undermining such a narrowing
of human existence as the dis-closure of Being. In this regard see, Being and Time, part I, section
11, pp. 76-77. For a more restrained suggestion of Euro-centrism in the thinking of Heidegger
see, J. L. Mehta, The Philosophy ofMartin Heidegger, (Harper and Row Pub., 1971), pp. 251-254.
66. Cornelius Castoriadis, "The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy' " Graduate Faculty
Philosophy]ounlal, Vo!. 9, No. 2, Fall 1983, p. 93.
67. Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox, p. 13.
68. Marx, A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, p. 188.
69. Ibid., p. 188.
70. Cesaire, Letter to Thorez, pp. 6-7.
71. Cabral, "Brief Analysis of the Social Structure of Guinea", in Revolution in Guinea, p. 68.
72. Amilcar Cabral, Return to the Source: Selected Speeches, (Monthly Review Press, 1973), p. 63.
73. Cabral, "The Nationalist Movements of the Portuguese Colonies", in Revolution in Guinea:
Selected Texts, p. 76.
74. Fanon, The Wretched o/the Earth, p. 232. For a very insightful development of this theme
in the context of the contemporary discussions in African philosophy see; Okonda Okolo, "Tradition
et destin: Horizons d'une hermeneutique philosophique africaine", Presence Ajricaine, no. 114,
2nd Quarterly 1980. Translated by Kango Lare-Lontone this text will be part of a collection of
contemporary African philosophical texts that I am presently preparing for Paragon House Publishers.
75. Cabral, Return to the Source: Selected Speeches, p. 56.
76. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, pp. 36-37.
77. Ibid., p. 232.