APQ - APPON PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

The history of socialism in Africa has been a subject of great debate since the middle of the twentieth century. The end of the Second World War ushered in the era of independence and foundational movements to overthrow European colonialism on the African continent. It is a history of material and spiritual struggles shaped by theorists like Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Obafemi Awolowo, to mention a few. Historically, most political and economic theories have roots in classical scholarship. Socialism, Communism, or Anarchism is no different. Some scholars of political science and political philosophy trace the history of socialism to pre-historic polities. Thus, the point that is illumined here is that Socialism is a universal idea for liberation that needs little particularisation, and that it is unnecessary to assign to it a racial or regional category such as prefixing it with “Black” or “Africa” just as Nkrumah argued in African Socialism Revisited.2 Consequently, an argument is going to be made for World Communism, and the discussion concludes that Socialism or Communism is feasible in Africa. However, this feasibility depends on the original theoretical foundation posited by Marx and Engels that Socialism cannot be achieved in one country and that the proletarian revolution must begin in the advanced capitalist economies. Thus, Socialism, Communism, and Anarchy will be used interchangeably to denote a classless, stateless, moneyless society. Furthermore, the term Ideology will be used in its original materialist conception as False Consciousness.3 This paper combines the qualitative methodology and the historical materialist theoretical framework to espouse our position.

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