HISTORICALLY; every human society rests on an economic system which is the organisation, appropriation and distribution of the natural and material resources of the society. Social relations in societies are also essentially defined by the prevailing economic system at a given time. The world has passed through different such systems before arriving at the present epoch of the dominance of industrial capitalism. This industrial economic system has continued to thrive on the synergy of vested business interests and the captains of States in an inseparable web, and it is on the basis of this clear nexus between capital and the politics of states, that a political system cannot be separated from the economic system upon which it is rested.
“Nigeria, like other countries of the world under capitalism, is a predator empire built by internal and external conquests. Its political system is built and sustained by such mechanisms that enable the rich and the aristocrats to flourish while poverty, misery and bold peasantry remain the lot of a greater majority of the populace. This is the root of the irreconcilable and interminable violent conflicts, insecurity and deadly crimes bedevilling the fabrics of our society.”
This synergy of capital and the State is at such global scale that it has enabled capitalism to ascend to global dominance spreading with it, affluence of a very few and afflictions against multitudes across all countries and races. This inhuman and globalised economic system has engendered the necessity for its replacement by any means possible and this necessity is at the core of the struggle for socialism. It has remained a global class struggle as well as the dynamics of international politics and development across the world since the triumph of the industrial revolution in Europe.
Furthermore; socialist thinkers have popularised the view that the modern state arose out of the necessity to protect man and his society from the cupidity and atavistic brutishness of man in the state of nature where might is right. They therefore envisaged that the economy of a modern state should be socialist in orientation and shouldn’t, in any guise, have room for the enslavement of its citizens.
To this end, it is expected that citizens should be governed only by governments that are truly of, by and for the citizens. Unfortunately; this notion has been reduced to a ridiculous fantasy because in our world of today, the States have as their major pillar and cornerstone, the capitalist socio-economic system which thrives on private property, mass production driven by profit motives and the dominance of greed, as well as the superiority of market and capital in charting the direction of societal development. In fact; what is trending today among neo-liberal scholars is what they termed the market model of the State.
“Among the ideological left in Nigeria, a section seems to maintain that the only sure cure for this morass is a return of the country to a socialist State under a Workers Party and a working people’s government. This is no doubt an impressive view because it seeks to reset the state to a socio-economic system under which it could be citizens oriented in the estimation of the radical socialists. Unfortunately; those who share this aspiration are unable to reach a consensus on how their laudable desire can be achieved.”
Nigeria, like other countries of the world under capitalism, is a predator empire built by internal and external conquests. Its political system is built and sustained by such mechanisms that enable the rich and the aristocrats to flourish while poverty, misery and bold peasantry remain the lot of a greater majority of the populace. This is the root of the irreconcilable and interminable violent conflicts, insecurity and deadly crimes bedevilling the fabrics of our society.
Evidently; Nigeria is a captured State where the commonwealth of the country is the preserve of a privileged few. It will at best remain a peripheral capitalist society with the type of deep-rooted social contradictions and aberrations that will keep it neither stable nor democratic.
“What we have now is a society where the culture of rugged individualism as well as naïve and docile subservience to every form of authority have been entrenched and respected as virtues. It is a society where both the oppressors and the oppressed share the same materialistic orientation. The task of organising for social change in such a society is no doubt herculean and a system-change activist can only ignore these facts at their own peril.”
Among the ideological left in Nigeria, a section seems to maintain that the only sure cure for this morass is a return of the country to a socialist State under a Workers Party and a working people’s government. This is no doubt an impressive view because it seeks to reset the state to a socio-economic system under which it could be citizens oriented in the estimation of the radical socialists. Unfortunately; those who share this aspiration are unable to reach a consensus on how their laudable desire can be achieved. While many of them believe that a socialist state must be built upon a radical social revolution, some others believe that it is achievable through policy reforms and periodic democratic elections. This is a clear case of the conflict of the choice of means in the midst of a unanimity of the desired end.
As socialist development activists, we need not be oblivious that coming from decades of tyrannous military rule and years of corrupt, parochial and incompetent civil regimes, our society has steadily deteriorated and degenerated in many dimensions. What we have now is a society where the culture of rugged individualism as well as naïve and docile subservience to every form of authority have been entrenched and respected as virtues. It is a society where both the oppressors and the oppressed share the same materialistic orientation. The task of organising for social change in such a society is no doubt herculean and a system-change activist can only ignore these facts at their own peril.
“Every society is a manifestation of the consciousness of those who populate it and at different times, prophets and philosophers have arisen and created in their people new awakenings that brought great social impacts upon the consciousness of men. We should therefore have as our necessary first step a project to permeate and influence the minds of those to be organised. Let us therefore consider it expedient to identify social movements from where we could pick and build up cadres into coalitions with the capacity to engage in social actions.”
It is therefore apt to remember those words of Maximillian Robespierre to the Committee of Public Safety in France during the French Revolution where he posited, ‘you must entirely refashion a people whom you wish to make free, destroy its prejudices, alter it habits, limit its necessities, root up its vices and purify its desires’. To call to mind also are the words of Malcolm X that: “the greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you will get action.” He also asserted that: “I, for one believes that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program and when the people create a program, you get action.”
This was why successful social revolutions in world history were preceded by certain philosophical and ideological currents which were derived from the constructive interrogation, interpretation and exposition of the nexus between the prevailing economic order and the poor living conditions of the masses. Such currents served as the ideological compass for those revolutions.
“It must be acknowledged that a very corrupt, rentier and rogue state, with a mass of pauperised, mentally subservient and brainwashed citizens can never yield itself freely to any form of socialist transformation. Elections in such a country are sheer periodic rituals to confer legitimacy on those who have captured the state and to enable them continue their control of the commonwealth of the country at the detriment of the economically vulnerable majority.”
We must therefore set the proper context and be prepared to meet the people where and how they are. We must adjust to them and become a part of them before they will adjust to us, accept us as their partners in the struggle and therefore be disposed to follow our counsel. We can hardly win over to the struggle, the poor Nigerians who though are casualties of the prevailing order but have accepted individual material affluence, power and its associated prestige, and the other ostentatious tendencies of a decadent materialistic society as the gold standard and triumphant codes of a successful living by merely preaching socialist ideals to them.
Every society is a manifestation of the consciousness of those who populate it and at different times, prophets and philosophers have arisen and created in their people new awakenings that brought great social impacts upon the consciousness of men. We should therefore have as our necessary first step a project to permeate and influence the minds of those to be organised. Let us therefore consider it expedient to identify social movements from where we could pick and build up cadres into coalitions with the capacity to engage in social actions.
Secondly; we must reclaim the Students and Trade Unions Movements with a view to getting the people to the point where a program of action will be created with them through their self-motivation. These fundamental steps are necessary because only a mass movement of citizens awakened to a new consciousness will serve as the dependable army to win state power in order to build a socialist state.
It must be acknowledged that a very corrupt, rentier and rogue state, with a mass of pauperised, mentally subservient and brainwashed citizens can never yield itself freely to any form of socialist transformation. Elections in such a country are sheer periodic rituals to confer legitimacy on those who have captured the state and to enable them continue their control of the commonwealth of the country at the detriment of the economically vulnerable majority.
However; we must exploit such elections by being innovative enough to look out for and locate our opportunities in the intra-class conflicts which are always associated with elites struggle for state power. We must constantly engage the political space because failure to do so at any time gives the conservatives the opportunity to get further entrenched. Every such space must therefore be utilised for a strategic project of pushing forward our struggle.
The desired end cannot be achieved overnight but it must be worked upon steadily. Our resistance theories, principles and philosophies must be modified to suit our context. The desired victory won’t come from our perennial battle of ideological perceptions, it is time to move into the field of political action and at worst face the fate of Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena”.
Comrade Akaeze is a member of Socialist Labour, he writes from Asaba, Delta State.
Reactions to this article can be sent to the author via +2348035730219 or to National Record‘s email: nationalrecordng@gmail.com.
