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Afro-Asian Revolutions
RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA
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$1.25
the
Afro-Asian Revolutions
RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA
Contents
I
3
10
II
15
18
19
21
22
APPENDIX I:
The New Humanism: African Socialism
APPENDIX II:
The Stream Beneath the Straws
30
33
- Marx, Grundrisse
----------
This trail to the 19805 is not any blueprint, nor was it fully
worked out for his age. It is there for us to work out for our
age. This pamphlet has laid the ground for that task. When
the capitalistic (private and state), exploitative crisis
ridden imperialistic world of 1984 threatens to u loose a
nuclear holocaust that would put an end to humanity as we
have known it, it is clear that it is the urgency of the times
which demands that this generation of revolutionaries turn
to revolutionary praxis, to philosophy as action and action
as philosophy.
Let us put an end to substitution ism and return to Marx's
philosophy of "revolution in permanence" to create non
exploitative, non-sexist, non-racist, totally new human
relations,
Feb. 15, 1984
l\
tb
Foreword
THAT politics caD be a aeativc activity, mean. whereby
man extends his own freedom, is a (ruth that is periodically
(orloUen. 10 1961 we arc still emerging (rom the political
wilderness we entered in 1914 when the old world broke down
and cha ensued. The brave and brilliant attempt of the October
Revolution to build a new world came to grief by 1923.
Mank.ind found no answer to Mussolini and Hitler save world
war. A whole inter-war gt:ncratioD failed to understand its OWD
problems. Parties that called thcnueivel Communist' rested
upon dogma and terTor.
Parties that called themselves
Socialist' rested upon the petty ambitioDs of their leaders.
Politics became a dirty word.
Introduction
African Realities and World Politics
and utters.
PETER CADOGAN
S, Acton Way,
Cambridge.
15th May, 1961.
By the year's end, light bad been sbed on the darkest comers
of white supremacist rule, not excJudina that of the quiet '
Sir Roy Welensky's
dictatoria) terror in Portuacsc Africa.
Federation was vigorously chailenged by the United National
Independence Party round Kenneth Kaunda in Northern
Rhodesia and by the Malawi Consrcss Party with Dr, Banda
in Ny.ualand .
itter
4
5
at least in
leve Ihal Russia stands for freedom,
ready 10 "_I"
.
e
0
'6f"ues.
b
t
reor
I
d
the
.
at
look
closer
a
e
tak.
Africa, ITUghi
e uUerest
U
.
1
ti
.,
very
showed
leaders
Russian
9534
1
,
Up unIJ
rlst I ge
.
in Africa aod called Kwame Nkru":lah . a nallona
.
for British imperialism," a label prevlsly reserved f or Q. Iii S
uncommitted
the
of
N b u. Russian Communism was SUSpICIOUS
o n ommuoist world, especially in Africa, if for no oer
reason thai it bad no one there. Nor was there a nyooe wuh
.
whom to create a . popular fronl.' There was neither a sub
stantial proletariat nor a significant native African bourgeoisie.
The middle class imelleclUals who led the movement were
educated 001 in Moscow, but in the West.' If these people ad
bad a dream-aod they did-it was not of Russian CommuDism
For the time being as could
but of Pan-Africanism.
sen
from the example of Ghana, the first country to 8 am Its
. .
independence, the leadership was closer to Great Bnlam thaD.
10 Russia.
.
10
Khruschev saw a new world emerging thai owed n?lhtog
Russia and showed no inclination to follow tbe RUSSian path.
He had 10 intervene lest he lose this new world. Henc the
performance at the United Nations and the allgedly nsl.tnted
support that the manifesto of the 81 CommuDlst Parues gave
the .. independent national democracies."
In 1956 Kbruscbev first declared tbat imperialist war was
.. nOI inevitable." His famous speech against stalinism at the
20th Con&ress of the Russian Communist Pary permiued him,
a stalinist, to travel henceforth under unsullie d ' colours of
He was thus able to appear as an
MarxismLeninism 'I
fore o nuies whih bad
exponent of a theory of liberation
gaioed their freedom from Western Impenaitsm by thell" own
Iweat aod blood.
be:
Raya Dunayevskaya
FACING
fronted anew
the
question of
whether
independence
would
writer the late George Pac1more who had been in the Comintern
hierarchy for a quarter of a century before he broke with it.1
His break was organisation:d rather than on essentials. His
Communist, i.e. state capitalist, mentality turned OUt to be more
deeply rooted than ever - DOW that African peoples too were
achieving sbte power.
ment, both. equally well beeled and equally trying to bind the
state power that hc looked up to. Not only had he not brokC'n
with Russian tate power, he was not 10 break with any state
Pan-Africanism
The theoretical point of departure
nationalism
called
for
Pan-Africanism would
new type of
seem
10
be
the
to Premier Nkrumah.
1919 read:
thinking intelligentsia
demand
..
oppression
with
as
that
in
Africanism
nouncement
On
to
action."
Pan-Africanism
Nkrumah
then
grafted
Gandhian
it:
As one enthusiast
.. In one of the remarkable episodes in revolutionary
outlined
a
.
programme
.2 Be that as it
L
Pa/f A./Tii:rudml or CommllPlLrm. Th CamIllI Stf1llllt lor A/rica by
George Padmorc.
Peor1e."
(oad.
Powerful as the two bi!;: maieS of world capital are, lhe new
nations ccase to be half-way hou$cS doomed forever to stay at
the cross-road of history ullce their reliance plUses from Ihe
gOI't'mmellls 10 Ihe "ummon pt'upJe of the lechn% gicu./Iy
advallct'd cQulltries. This is neither mere wishful thin kin g nor
a.
W,IT
but tx:cause the American worker has not built a Labour Party
he appears to be non-political.
Yet
..... hile
State Capitalism
It is dear that World War II ended only because the two new
c:ontenders for world power, Russia and the United States. had
had enough for the time being. A! if to prove that peace was
only an uneasy interlude between waT"!!, they put marker! 3U
.
along the road - two Gennanies, two China!, two Vtet-Nam!.
The fact that despite Ihe recession and the identification in the
popular mind of Republicanism wilh Depression , millions voted
for Eisenhower just because he promised to end the Korean
10
11
the United Slates could DOl stem at all. The Far Wi, the
Middlo East, !.he MediterranC3n, Africa - aU were eLhin&
with revolt.
"[be problem for Russia on Ihe one hand, and the United States
S.
crazy
certain PF a lIIIanillc:ent
I
plant, completely automatized, or a iet bomber,
but be Clnnot slop to rai!C tbe sundard of ivinl
l
of tbe _.. or tho
worten. He may be able to avoid tbe more ClItreme fonm of ordln."
commercial Criael, but even witbin !be community it5elf he QlUIot escape
"That wby Man;, tbroughout
tile intemal erisi of prOOlKIion . . ,
CDI1I/(JI. insis!s that either you have the f..aivity of tbe workers. the plan
0{ /rtrl, lMOciattd "'r.bour, or you have tho hierarchic s!ructu", of ",Iatiom
in the faclory and ttlc d"pOIie Ptan. T"rN' jJ 110 I,.-b"",""." p.Oft.
S
CtJpi/al. Vol. III p.468. See also Ille section calted .. The breakdown
of Capitalism : Crises, Human Frcedom and Votumc III of CapiltJl " of my
MIITJi;um rmd Frrrdr,,,. (I9n) which deals with Man's tbc:orctic::! COtleo::pI:
19ainst the bac.tarou.nd of lbo 1929 cra$h.
13
12
areat lc:ep
11 IOOD hlrned, out, however, that whatever
forward .. was made, was made on the bent bact. of the muses.
Dot for them.. What was beina established, as the result of toil
from dawn to dusk, was DOt a DeW society but sta capitalist
totalitarianism. 'Jbe anempt of Mao's China to go ODC better
than Russia, through the establishment of barrack labour,
barrack discipline and barnck family life in what the Chinese
Communist Party dared to call .. Communes," made the new
coloured nations bave accood thouahts.II
It is not that the Tibetan revolt matched the gnodcur of the
Hungarian Revolution with its Worker.' Cou.oc:ils, DOr were the
Tibetans the first to revolt in the face of bureaucratic Com
munism.. Years before. the Vietnamese peasants, unrelenting In
their struggle against Frnch imperialism, had turned away from
Ho-Chi-Minh. But times w.:rc oot then ripe for other coloured
peoples to look again at Asian Communism. Today. however,
Africa is ready to question the Chinese path to iDdustrialisation.
K
14
IS
The n
i escapable fact is that in this epoch of state. capitalism
the middJc class intellectual, as a world phenomenon, has trans
lated ' individualism ' into ' collectivism,' by which he means
nationalised property, state administration. Slate Plan.
In the post-war years this has cropped up everywhere, from the
' socialist ' trade unions of Israel (which are at the same time
the biggest owners of factories). to the young officers who fought
Israel in the name of Arab nationalism..11 It now appears in
Iraq as a native brand of Communist nationalism challenging
Nasser nationalism.
In backward land or advanced, the intellectual bureaucrat is
a finn ally of the Labour bureaucrat against the proletarian
revolution. His job is to control the peasant rev011, or any
TIle prototype and master of them all is, of course, the ruler
16
17
14
Ibid. p.2??,
Ibid, p.439,
IS
I'
20
21
Ibid. p.40S.
21
21
Marxist Humanism
Man does not live by bread alone ; but he must have bread
to live. The humane materialism of Man; hnlds both the
immediate and long.term answers 10 the present colonial revolu
tions.
Present-day Cnmmunist attacks on humanism are neither acci
dental nor are they hair-splitting points of doctrine. They
concern nothing less fundamental than whether these national
revolutionary movements, as well III working clas" movements,
shall emerge from the death.grip of state capitalism.
We need to be aware that Stalin chose to revise the Marxist
theory of value right in the midst of World War II as the heroic
by
Leon
Revolution," p.425.
T'rotsky,
Slall"
Appendi.l. 3.
2,
22
" Concepts
of the Rw.sian
Russian people were driving baek the Nazi invaders. 1943 was
cbosen as the year for a seemingly pedantic article, " Some
Questions of Teachng Political Economy,":U; because that was
the year the Russian production managers discovered ' the
Americ:m assembly line technique. It was Stalin's way of telling
the Russians not lo expect a change in the conditions of labour
after the war.
Because Marx's theory of exploitation is built on his analysis
of the law of value as the law of capitalist development, the
Russian theoreticians, up until 1943, had denied the operatioo
of that law io their country, an allegedly classless 9OCiety. A
revisioo of marxism was nece&S'lry to make it possible, at one
and the sarne time, to admit the law of vi"llue operating in Russia
and still claim that it was " a socialist land." It took the form of
asking teachers not to follow the structure of Marx's Capilai.
As [ wrote in my Marxism and Freedom: " Marxism is a
theory of liber.ltion or it is nothing. Whereas Marx was con
cerned with the freedom of humanity and the inevitable waste of
humaD life which is the abwlute general law of capitalist develop
ment, Russian " communism " rests upon the mainspring of
capitalism - paying the wnrker the minimum and extracting
from him the maximum. This they dub " the Plan." Marx
called it the Jaw of value and surplus value." (p.24).
Just as the break. of 1943 with the marxist analysis of value
meant the continued exploitation of the Russian workers, so
the 195516 attack on the humanism of marxism, n
i Hungary
particularly, meant their continued imperialist control of Eastern
Europe and their new intervention - by economic aid - in the
colonial world.27
Some there are who thiok that Russian Communist ' aid ' is
different from that of American imperialism's Point Four pro
gramme. Others, as we have seen, are so desperate to sell
Ui TIle I.nick was first published in Pod ZII(J"'II'III1'''' MamtltW (" Under
the Banner of Marxi!'m ") No. 1-8. 194). tt wu translated by me and
published in Am"lcan Eronom;c R'-/II'''' (Septem\xr. (944) with com
mentary .. A N Rnison of Manian Economi." This caused .1.
oontroveny that lasted n entire year in that iOllrnal .nd .t the end of tt
I came back with a rejnindo:-r .. Reviion or Renffinnation of Marxism"
Both thi, controversy and the one over the 19 revisions of marxiS!
humanism are dealt with .t length in my Marxis", and Frudom.
P
&e Qunl/oflj of Philosoph}' (IQ'). RVRilhle only n
i
Russian. When
the debate moved from the theoretical to the practical ficld of IIttacking
and pulling down the revolutinni in Eatcrn Europe it was wclt documented
n
i
Polish nd Jlunl(arian joumnls. Much of the materi.1 hu since been
made anil.bte in English.
2J
rts,
By the expression " forcing science " I do not mean 10 say that
.
sclen,
as at prescnt constituted in a class society . pines to do
olherwige. This, too, Marx foresaw tong ago. In 1844 he wrote :
.. To have one buis for life and another for science is a priori
a lie."
Marx foresaw the imJ1.lssc of modern science not because he
was a prophet but because he took the human being as the
24
The discerning scientist, for all his middle. cIau identity, can
It was Dr. William Pickering wbo stated tbu 00
maUCr who drops the bomb first .. we are one-half hour's distance
away from total annihilation." Since, continued Dr. Pickering,
the scientists cannot help themselves, we must find an entirely
different approach to life, .. a new unifying priDciple from the
bean and mind of mao."
Such a unifying principle can be nothina but marxist
humanism. It is the point of unity also between the masses in
the underdeveloped couotriet and the commoo people in the
advanced countries..
It is just for this reason that Russia enpaes in the atruggle
against humanism. The uoduQurent or revolt apinst the
Russian tyrants is uncompromWna and continuOUL In the
satellites it gives them no respite.
The revolt has been reftected even within the rank. o( the
195516, Imre Nagy, who bad been
i
Communists.. Thus n
expelled from the Central Committee of the Hungarian Com
munist Party, wrote a leiter in which be UlUred the Ccotral
Committee that when the masses tum to humanism it is not
because they .. want a return to capitalism . . . They want a
people'. democracy where the working people arc masten of
the country and of their own (ate, where human beiop arc
respected, and where social and political life i, connected with
the spirit of humanism."11
In the Petofi Circle, the Hungarian Communist writer, Tibor
Dery, declared on June 19th, 1956: .. We have been fighting (or
so
21
lmry Nary
Oil Commullum,
..
2S
struggle
was
tion.
'I'boM: who eannot follow the Polish publication! can find many
translation! in the mBpline East Europ.!. Jerzy Miroi's report is in
the February, 1959. issue.
30
1959,
and June,
26
1959.
The reason this struck a raw nerve among the Russian Com
munists was not, however, due to theory, deviationis! or (lther
wise, but because Tilo knows the importance of the new Afro
Asian nations. He travels widely among the neutral ' countri
and does so for the purpose of exposing Russia', role.
11
l2 This characterises not only tho Cornmunisu, but the Trotskyists too.
In tbe winter and spring is.sues of " International Socialist Review " (1959)
Ihey opened an aUlck on the philo50prucai manuscripts of the young Man:.
ntcse pretentious artide3. entitled " Sociali5m and Humanism " aUUte us
lhat humanism was a SUlgc Marx .. passed throu gb." William f. Warde,
their author. presumes 10 caU these IPUt writinp Jbe produ& of .. the
immature Marx."
27
countries.
national character.
29
itself destroyed.
APPEND[}( I.
1960.
30
Liberation, January,
R.D.
tt G. W. F.
Appendix n
in
It may soon be
Keynes?). Thus humanity today bas all the parts with wbich
to build a new world but no idea how to sct about it
con cl usion :
quendy, none of the Marxists for the past half a century have
undersood Marx 1 "
means.
33
II was
Lenin in 1 9 1 4 (for the first time)
this that Hegal destroyed.
grasped the signiJicaace of Hegel's discovery.
Dynamic qualities are in things aad in persons-not merely
operating upon tbem. Energy. atomic or buman, does not require
to be controlled. organised, mastered.' It requires rather CO be
discovered, understood, made free. Wben it is free it is creativity
itself and
its
own justification.
ROSA LUXEMBURG
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IRAN
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Dunayevskaya ,
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