Reflections on the Third World
Laqueur, Walter
Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of Troy, (we are told) had her ears licked by a serpent while asleep and so got her prophetic gift: forever after she was fated to foretell the evil results...
...If the old idols have been shattered, men need new ideals and new gods...
...The official model was a strong, disciplined party, with "democratic centralism" as its guiding principle of organization and leadership...
...Arnold Toynbee regards Western civilization as an apostasy of Christian civilization, the fatal plunge from faith into the barren grounds of secularism...
...But facts (as Lenin among others used to observe) are a stubborn thing...
...the next day he would call himself an Algerian socialist...
...The politics of Frantz Fanon are different again...
...Inflation under Sukarno assumed fantastic proportions, the price of rice, for instance, going up six-fold within a few months in 1965...
...While pursuing politi= cal schemes far beyond the power of his country, both in the Maghreb and all over tropical Africa, his government neglected elementary social reforms at home...
...O,n the credit side there is the fact that China is united, that the country received a great national uplift after 1949, that there are few unemployed, that China has produced the bomb...
...Those who left or gave up did so not because they were anti-socialist or procolonialist—" on the contrary, they had contributed more than their share to the real progress which Ghana has made—but they experienced conditions in which it proved increasingly difficult to work effectively...
...Nor is there much point in blaming neo-colonialism for the falling prices of raw materials on the world markets...
...The little fishing village Tema was transformed into a big modern harbor...
...others find the Soviet preoccupation with production and things material uncongenial, the emergence of a new autocracy and all-powerful bureaucracy distasteful...
...In addition to Sukarno's Indonesia there was Nasser's Egypt, Nkrumah's Ghana, Sekou Tour6's Guinea, Ben Bella's Algeria, united in the struggle against imperialism and neo-colonialism...
...one political observer has said that Nkrumah possessed more of the hysteria of Hitler and the vanity of Mussolini than of the cold genius of Lenin...
...There is Muslim socialism, Arab social ism, Neo-Destour socialism, pragmatic socialism (in Nigeria) , African socialism, and so forth...
...Given the nation-state, inequality will persist...
...The answer is by no means clear...
...if other North African countries have done better than Algeria, it is only fair to add that Algeria, regardless of its political system, faces greater problems than its neighbors...
...There is in some ways more ideological consistency in Nkrumah than in Sukarno or Ben Bella...
...It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness, the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions...
...It came as a surprise not only to the friends of Communist China, it surpassed the expectations of its worst enemies...
...Economics apart, to what extent has Egypt under Nasser advanced toward a socialist and democratic society...
...But the schemes themselves were unrealistic...
...For how could one be blind to the wave of the future personified by Mao and Sukarno, by Nasser, Nkrumah and Ben Bella...
...All the main industries and the banks were nationalized in the early 60's...
...But agriculture during the next five years will hardly increase at a faster rate than the population...
...Under Nasser, Egypt has survived...
...China's promises to give aid and its subsequent default have antagonized even such a well-disposed regime as Castro's...
...the Ghanaian stage clearly was not big enough for him...
...Since Nasser can now no longer be certain of the loyalty of the new class, he has to rule through his party—which hardly exists as an effective body—and, to an increasing degree, through the police...
...Is there anything real in Sukarno's Indonesia...
...The result has been stagnation in agriculture (with the exception of cotton production which has been boosted at very high cost) and very small advance in industry...
...The idea that a substantial part of the wealth of the West belongs by justice to the countries of Asia and Africa may have its attractions, seen from the capitals of these countries...
...they are "objective" in character—geographical and climatic...
...Can one reasonably expect labor productivity in a tropical country like India to be equal to that in a moderate climate...
...on the basis of this stolen wealth of the colonies...
...The Bravado of Algeria's Ben Bella In the 1950's and early 60's, a new political force emerged—the bloc of the national-revolutionary countries of Asia and Africa...
...Attempts are still being made to reassemble the national revolutionary regimes...
...But despondency is a mood, not a way of life...
...At the same time tremendous sums were spent on prestige projects such as Nkrumah statues, sports grounds, and conference halls for meetings with African heads of state...
...Chinese industry can only expand on the basis of "primitive accumulation...
...French observers of the Left (Rene Dumont and Charles Bettelheim) have noted the extreme disparity between the institutional superstructures and the degree of political morality: "Guineans have not been willing to bend themselves to the efforts and discipline necessary to carry out the measures they adopted even when they were advised by Communist countries (whose nationals have left Guinea quite discouraged) . . . . These are strong warnings, all the more telling, because they came from close friends and sympathizers...
...And in most other countries the elite was deficient both in number and quality...
...During the 50's there was very considerable progress...
...The rise of the regime meant in sociological terms the "eclipse of a bourgeoisie manquee by a new petty bourgeoisie of the new municipalities and local market centres" (Dennis Austin) . Nkrumahism was an "indiscriminate hotchpotch of sadly familiar concepts, usually ludicrously exaggerated and invariably unsuited to Ghanaian realities...
...But the idea that they will be able to achieve anything other than a redistribution of agricultural property is fanciful...
...Dilemmas of the Third World An interim balance sheet in 1967 of the national revolutionary regimes of the Third World shows, to put it cautiously, that the expectations of some of their prophets mentioned here have not or not yet been realized...
...Far more money is spent on administration than on productive development...
...Constant change is the one way to defeat the danger of revisionism in China, whereas the oppositestability— is the prerequisite for the economic development of the coun try...
...The odds facing Egypt in this respect are much heavier than those which the other, more primitive African countries have to overcome...
...It is hardly the dawn of a new civilization that Fanon or Sartre imagined.3 Since these developments come as a disappointment to everyone, their causes ought to be discussed frankly and dispassionately...
...If, on the other hand, the performance of China (or of Pakistan) and the relative stability of these countries is compared with the mounting crisis in India, the reason is not merely, and probably not mainly, the greater inefficiency of a democratic government...
...From Mussolini he adopted the principle of living dangerously (tahun vivere pericoloso...
...Much of the economic aid given during the last two decades has for a variety of reasons not had the intended effect...
...These regimes have been in existence only for a comparatively brief period, but long enough to draw an interim and tentative balance...
...Brahmaism taught that the world was in decline, Horace and Livius are full of dire predictions following the general relaxation of Roman discipline, and every self-respecting writer in the tenth century began his chronology: "While the world is approaching its end...
...These are sweeping claims, but do the facts bear them out...
...The population explosion continues, the cotten crop is mortgaged on arms sales for years to come...
...but since a chain cannot be stronger than its component links, these efforts are at present not very promising...
...1 hat the colonial powers did not acquire colonies for humanitarian reasons need hardly be elaborated, and that individuals and companies have greatly enriched themselves from them goes without saying...
...They read into official pronouncements and speeches hidden meanings and a sophistication that never existed...
...The antics of the "cultural revolutionaries" have made China the butt of ridicule almost everywhere outside Tirana...
...That Europe is no longer the center of the world is hardly in dispute any more...
...It was the result of theoretical confusion, of demagoguery and verbal radicalism, of a regime in which there was far more corruption than sincere will to build a new society...
...And to obtain raw materials in the modern world there are cheaper ways than the establishment of colonies...
...All kinds of strange notions are peddled in many parts of Africa as to the nature of a socialist society," a British Communist has written...
...The combination of verbal extremism in foreign affairs, political mysticism, and utter incompetence in domestic affairs which was so typical of Sukarno's rule, created a state of permanent chaos...
...Self-management was introduced in both agriculture and industry...
...The story of Nkrumah is not dissimilar to that of Ben Bella or Sukarno: a national leader of strong if confused left-wing convictions who acquired genuine respect and admiration in the struggle for the independence of his country, but whose subsequent rule had disastrous consequences...
...There have been some instances of solidarity such as Sekou Tour's assistance to Nkrumah...
...one has not heard of the party apparatchiks taking part in similar exercise...
...Guinea engaged in an ambitious socialist experiment in 1959-60, promising a rate of growth superior to the Soviet Union and China...
...The Bizarre Policies of Sukarno's Indonesia If we ignore for a moment the "cultural revolution," China has held its own during the last decade...
...Equality, after all, is one of the basic socialist aims even though historically the most neglected...
...That there is a relationship between socialism and work is not at all clear to those who believe that a revolution is like a magic table in the fairy tale...
...Facts and figures show that the industrialized countries of the West (including, of course, Eastern Europe) have forged ahead, while the distance between them and the national revolutionary regimes of Asia and Africa has widened, not lessened...
...he has shown realism anu nas learned from defeats, but there is little doubt that his ultimate ambitions have not changed over the years—to engage in a policy ut expansion...
...To some extent, a lack of knowledge can be compensated for by complete honesty and vice versa...
...Such an awakening to the winds of change by people educated in an Eurocentric tradition should only be welcomed...
...But it has happened, it cannot be explained away...
...Production in most industries fell to about one-third or one-fourth of what it had been before independence...
...Inasmuch as this second Maoist revolution has a rational purpose (and it may be wise not to overrate this aspect), it aims at the perpetuation of the revolutionary fervor of both the Chinese elite and the masses...
...Not a very brave man at the best of times, he isolated himself in his castle, became the "Redeemer" depicted together with Jesus Christ—the man who would live forever...
...But it conflicts with another basic aim of the Chinese revolution— to modernize the country, to increase industrial and agricultural production, to raise the standard of living...
...There is little doubt that some of the antics of this extraordinary movement will be revoked in coming months and years: this is the dialectic of history...
...He surrounded himself 2 The extent of the debt (and the general plight of the country) became known only after Nkrumah's fall...
...What did Hitler and even Stalin matter in a world whose history was only to begin...
...The Third World is here assigned the task of starting a new History of Man...
...The state farms turned out badly...
...It had the highest literacy rate by far...
...Some of the reasons are, for the time being, beyond human control...
...Some observers have regarded this as a retrograde step, others welcomed what they consider the "progressive character of military socialism...
...the outcome of the war with Israel, deliberately provoked by him, has shown all the weaknesses of a regime, the inner strength of which had been grossly overrated by many outside observers...
...Nkrumah comments at length on philosophical questions, on world affairs and world economics in general, and on the need for African unity...
...there are, of course, Marxist elements in Maoism, but the "utopian" element, not to mention the nationalist motivation, seems to be stronger...
...The Chinese are patriotic and exceedingly hard working...
...But if modern history has had any lessons at all, it is that socialism presupposes a fairly high level of development—social, economic, and political...
...Yet, Egypt has been, of course, all along far more developed: it never really was a colony...
...Around the turn of the century it had been the world's main exporter of raw materials...
...Within a short time Ben Bella had deposed, exiled or imprisoned his erstwhile comrades and established one-man rule...
...Since the population continues to grow at a rapid rate, the standard of living is now no higher than it was 10 years ago...
...The parentage of most items is easily recognizable...
...With further technological progress this handicap may eventually be overcome, but this may take many decades if not centuries...
...In his saner moments Nkrumah realized that without the transformation of Ghana into a strong industrialized economy and society, "socialism" would remain a slogan and all talk of socialist progress empty chatter...
...Real earnings in industry and agriculture may have slightly declined since 1958...
...At the same time Ben Bella decided (to quote his successor) simply for reasons of personal prestige to spend 15 billion fr...
...Oil production was the one exception but this was entirely in French hands...
...A land redistribution scheme in Java and Madura was passed in 1960, but it...
...Some former admirers now believe that the price that has been paid for this progress was too high...
...The cost of living has risen rapidly, much faster than productivity...
...Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of Troy, (we are told) had her ears licked by a serpent while asleep and so got her prophetic gift: forever after she was fated to foretell the evil results of successive events...
...But Russia's attraction in the West as the standard-bearer of progress has diminished in the same measure as its economy has advanced...
...Most of the national Guinean companies that had been established went bankrupt or were dissolved...
...but this is no reason at all to discontinue it...
...They had been trained in the French left-wing political school and had a clear anti-capitalist program...
...the glorification of autarchy and self-help...
...Even in China, where the peasants provided the mass basis of a revolutionary movement, it has ended, it would seem, in a military dictatorship...
...Mao's little red book may be a source of spiritual comfort to many Chinese, but it does not offer an answer to the very basic questions facing the regime...
...within a decade it had become a textbook illustration of how to ruin a country...
...The number of these prophets of doom is legion, and they have all seen the writing on the wall: Europe is a spent force, America incurably ill...
...mining and the timber industry contracted...
...They do not understand rural problems and therefore cannot help the peasants efficiently...
...Seen from this angle there are no major differences between the national-revolutionary regimes of Asia and Africa and those that do not proclaim a radical-nationalist policy...
...President Nyerere has called for hard work and austerity on the Chinese pattern, but the local elite has shown a marked lack of enthusiasm in following this appeal...
...However, to quote Dumont again, "when political leaders and particularly civil servants, address the Mali peasants, they give them orders in much the same way as the colonial administrators do...
...in 1961 fell to 10 billion fr...
...but it is grotesque to think that this police-socialism, now wholiy dependent on outside help, could or should serve as a model for any other country...
...Visions of doom have been fashionable for a long time, and their prophets sometimes address large audiences...
...the problems of backwardness are common to all of them...
...Barraclough criticized the "breath-taking oblivion to the enormous genocide involved," as well as the lack of accuracy and consistency in Toynbee's historical judgment, the wishful thinking and dubious speculations in his reflections on the prospects of Western civilization...
...Nor does one have to repeat the whole register of colonialist crimes of commission and omission...
...And he provided this answer: "This huge and heavily armed country full of sound and fury and decay ceased years ago to belong to the world of today...
...why should a country of 700 million be unduly worried about the opinions and susceptibilities of others...
...The truth is simpler: when civilian rule breaks down, the military remains as the only force capable of preventing chaos...
...And he also understood that one could not build socialism without socialists...
...Some have already been mentioned...
...They claim that the Western powers have exploited Asia and Africa all along, that modern societies in the West could only be established 3 There is little sense in discussing in this context other predictions that are manifestly absurd—such as the assumption that Asian and African society would be regenerated by a series of peasant wars, more or less on the Chinese model...
...The danger of passivity and selfcomforting illusions is obvious...
...The great leap forward ended in a fiasco...
...Nkrumah was motivated by a strange mixture of "scientific socialism" and black magic (his trust in Kankan fetishes and, to a certain extent, in witchcraft...
...Like other Asian and Atrican leaders, Nasser has tried to play a role in world politics ouc of proportion to the real strength of nis country...
...There was no inevitable logic in the retreat from rationally coping with the situation to magical incantation...
...Among the leaders of the national revolutionary camp no one enjoyed greater prestige than Ben Bella...
...So far, 80 per cent of all Indonesians make their living from agriculture, but 60 per cent of the population is mainly concentrated on the land area of Java...
...It has, above all, the effect of blinding the countries, and especially their elites, to their own responsibility for the present shortcomings and failures...
...Edusei was certainly not an exceptional case...
...Military rule which seems likely to prevail in Asia and Africa for a very long time is thus an ultima ratio...
...When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of 1 "Europe" for Fanon includes the United States: "Two centuries ago a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe...
...Professor Toynbee would disapprove of the language but likewise regards the United States as an extension of Europe...
...Henry and Brooks Adams wrote long ago about the decline of Western man and Baudelaire hated Paris ("centre et rayonnement de betise universelle") as much as do Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...
...The net agricultural revenue which had been over 100 billion fr...
...It is in the self-interest of the West to help the countries of Asia and Africa transform themselves economically and politically into viable countries...
...A year sufficed to show that "socialism" could not be introduced by decree, that the revolutionary phraseology bore no relation to reality...
...Egypt is one of the poorest countries in the world...
...What we want to do is to go forward all the time, night and day in the company of all men...
...perhaps they will be able to overcome the present convulsions in a comparatively short period...
...The first part of the formula is not true—Western capital has never been really attracted by the colonies...
...It has lost ground in the battle for influence in the Communist camp...
...China has become strongly isolationist, almost entirely preoccupied with internal affairs...
...But most of the development schemes were undertaken in the mistaken assumption that the outside world would pay for them in the end...
...Only then did it emerge how little idealism and genuine conviction there had been behind the staged mass adulation of the great leader and his invincible party, how narrow his "mass basis...
...Where will the industrial investment come from...
...but the failure was also that of a whole elite...
...He hardly ever deals with his own country's problems...
...This was a chance which no other Asian or African country had...
...on the Afro-Asian conference that was to be held in Algiers in 1965...
...Surely, Algeria faced great structural economic and social difficulties which the protracted civil war had aggravated...
...But the inner contradictions of Maoism are glaring, and, in all probability, self-defeating...
...it is too early to say whether anything may come of his schemes to unite the Arab world under his leadership...
...Much emotion is involved and it is difli,cult to separate myth from reality...
...A country of the magnitude of China will always remain a very important factor in world politics, which no one will be able to ignore...
...The problems inherited from Dutch colonialism were grave...
...But the present resettlement rate is considerably lower than the normal population increase in Java...
...Some of the setbacks can be explained by miscalculation and overambitious schemes on the part of the government, lack of enthusiasm and willingness to work on the part of the masses...
...Basically, Egypt is as poor as it was, though poverty has been spread more evenly...
...Indonesia had once been known as the country of Bandung and pancha sila, its prestige in the early 50's had been high...
...The new Afro-Asian ideology, however, is dangerous because it tries to provide the ideological justification for what is, not to mince words, a parasitical relationship, as harmful in the long run for the self-respect of the Asian and African peoples as was the colonial relationship...
...But instead of concentrating on the basic tasks, he engaged in overambitious schemes in many directions at one and the same time...
...The Asian and African elites are overwhelmingly "socialist" in political aspiration...
...It received very substantial sterling holdings...
...funds were spent on military equipment and prestige buildings the country could ill afford...
...According to the classical theory of imperialism, colonies were needed by the metropolitan countries for the export of capital and the import of raw materials...
...objective conditions such as the demographic structure of the country were, to say the least, not propitious...
...Tanzania is one of the more hopeful countries of Eastern Africa...
...Many millions were allocated to promoting Nkrumah's prestige abroad and the training of political agents to be used in other parts of Africa, in pursuance of ambitious schemes for a pan-African government...
...Instead of lessening this dangerous dependence on cocoa crop exports by diversifying agricultural production, Nkrumah's government encouraged new planting which eventually led to flooding the world market...
...In this case they clearly exaggerated not merely the depth of Mao Tse-tung's thought but the general intellectual level of Communist China...
...about seven years were needed to recover...
...with self-seeking courtiers and established a dictatorial regime that antagonized the country's technical intelligentsia...
...it either adjusts itself to historical forces stronger than itself or it is swept away...
...The country has vastly overspent, its foreign currency reserves are exhausted, and this in turn has caused stoppage of work in certain industries...
...were after all possible—very much in contrast to the domestic front...
...the official slogan of 'One leader, one Party, one Nation...
...There is a certain logic in these aspirations...
...Nkrumah was handed over by the British colonial administrators a country that, with all the ill effects of colonial rule, was the most developed in tropical Africa...
...Not only were industries nationalized, but also the trade, small hotels, and cinemas...
...From a position of a somewhat vague "Arab socialism" President Nasser has moved toward a platform of "scientific socialism...
...the egregious cult of personality...
...the abuse of Western plutocracy, the doctrine of proletarian nations" (T...
...Such a movement is unlikely to be more successful than the Luddites...
...But there is no indication at present that it will serve in the forseeable future as a model to anyone outside China, except perhaps by the industry and the dedication of its inhabitants and other such features of national character that antedate 1949...
...there existed, owing to French initiative, the basis of a modern industrial infrastructure...
...The general trend in Asia and Africa is toward military dictatorship...
...The bulk of the population, vegetating on subsistence level, totally incapable of influencing politics in Cairo, has not basically changed since Farouk—the people have no more at stake in this country than their ancestors 50 or 200 years ago...
...Yet the country is beset by the same difficulties as the other "socialist" African countries: considerable—and growing— unemployment, shortage of materials, allocation of resources to unproductive purposes, lack of trained personnel...
...area experts, however critical of their subject of study, are motivated by a certain ambivalence...
...But was the country bound to fail...
...The preconditions for development in Mali were somewhat better than in Guinea because its leaders had a better grasp of economic problems and because the peasants of Mali are among the most industrious and progressive in West Africa...
...Achievements in nuclear weaponry and the building of missiles are impressive but not matched by similar development in the national economy...
...they prospered more than ever before...
...Toynbee has been chided by (among others) Geoffrey Barraclough, a British historian now a resident of California...
...Again, it cannot be too strongly stressed that disaster was not inevitable...
...Such reasoning is not shared by many...
...As in most other African countries, enormous sums are squandered on prestige projects, expensive embassies abroad, the latest models of aircraft, etc...
...We, today, can do everything so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe...
...Something ought to be done to remedy the situation—but it is a problem likely to recur regardless of the world order...
...It is interesting that such a movement finds support, temporarily at any rate, among the very young in China...
...Nasser: Domestic Problems and Foreign Disaster Compared with Algeria, Ghana, and Guinea, Nasser's Egypt (the United Arab Republic) is, with all its weaknesses, a model of purposeful achievement...
...A symposium in Le Figaro in 1898 ("What's wrong with France...
...Egypt, in a similar way, showed concern for Ben Bella after his overthrow...
...Germain des Pres (and their colleagues in other parts of the world) to declare that the Third World is starting a new history of man...
...What Hath Nkrumah Wrought...
...The riches of London and Paris belong therefore to the damned of the earth as well as to Englishmen and Frenchmen...
...There has been a strong inclination in Asia and Africa to blame colonialism and neo-colonialtsm for most, if not all, the present misfortunes...
...It has technical experts in almost all fields needed, so much so that it exports teachers to many Arab and African countries...
...Demagogic politics, human frailty and incompetence caused the breakdown in 1965-66...
...These, at any rate, were Professor Barradough's conclusions, and he was not alone in holding them...
...There was a real attempt to industrialize the country, and achievements such as the Volta dam scheme ought to be mentioned...
...Potentially dangerous intellectuals have been sent to work in the communes...
...In one of his essays he wrote that in 1943, when Stalingrad was relieved by the Russians, he suddenly awoke to the fact that he had mis-spent his life dealing with such recondite subjects as the machinery of papal chancelleries in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries...
...Toynbee rejects Western civilization on the basis of religious-mystic convictions...
...That such Jacqueries may occur is extremely likely and they may be wholly justified...
...These estimates do not take into account the effects of the "cultural revolution," the extent of which cannot be assessed for some time to come...
...There were individuals, some of them known, others nameless and faceless, who were inspired by genuine idealism, even if their ideas all too often turned out to be mere chimeras whenever they collided with the harsh realities...
...This aim can only be achieved by frequent changes in the leadership on all levels, by combating specialization and "bureaucratization," and by preventing the emergence of a "new class," the technical intelligentsia...
...It is not too early to ask whether their progress has been encouraging, and to what extent others could benefit from the example set by them...
...Congo-Brazzaville, for instance, is extremely radical...
...Since World War II prophecies of doom have come from many quarters and on the basis of different political convictions...
...It has antagonized most of its well-wishers in Asia and Africa, despite the great sympathy for China that originally existed and the "objectively revolutionary situations" in many sections of the Third World...
...Since Egypt is unlikely to receive such huge gifts in the future, and since the war with Israel was also an economic catastrophe, its crisis has immeasurably deepened...
...Following the defeat in the war and the ouster of so many officers who had to Nerve as scapegoats, the mass basis of the regime has further narrowed...
...Nature has made Egypt much poorer than Kuwait (as long as petroleum is needed) , or than Syria and Iraq...
...they may possibly be successful in one country or another owing to local conditions...
...not predestination...
...But foreign aid made no difference in respect to the economic situation...
...A Balance Sheet on Maoist China What lesson can the outside world draw from recent events in China...
...This is not to say that the national revolutionary regimes ought to copy Sparta or the Puritans in every detail...
...The realization of this fact, however, came too abruptly for some who were led to believe that Europe was finished altogether...
...Any violation of this unwritten rule may cause their expulsion, and thus cut them off from the subject of their specialization...
...As a result, the coverage of the African and Asian scene both on the scholarly and the journalistic level is often unreliable...
...Given moderately favorable conditions, the Chinese will continue to make headway...
...Nkrumah's government built many new roads and did much to develop education in Ghana...
...one observer asked shortly before the coup—and the counter coup of 1966...
...Egypt under Nasser is a more modern state than it was under Farouk and the Pashas ^CO years ago...
...The misinformation about the real state of affairs in Ghana was to a considerable extent the fault of certain European and American residents—journalists, scholars, and others—unfortunately a recurrent phenomenon in many African and Asian countries...
...they were aware that China was economically backward, but they underrated the extent of cultural backwardness in twentieth-century China...
...But in the overall balance and from a Western point of view, colonies were a prestige operation, and an expensive one at that—most of them cost the metropolitan country more than they contributed to its wealth, especially during the last 5U years The economics of the former European colonial powers were not ruined as a result of the loss of colonies...
...That the colonial situation was an unnatural and an immoral one goes without saying...
...Cooperatives have been developed in the Egyptian village, work on the Assuan dam has made satisfactory progress...
...The rate of growth in key industries, in mining and oil production has been substantial over the last few years...
...One day he would proclaim Castro's type of socialism...
...Those who prepared the plans were not all aware what kind of effort was needed to carry them out...
...Ben Bella nevertheless declared that Algeria was an advanced country, that selfgovernment in Algerian agriculture was more progressive than in Yugoslavia...
...There was nothing specifically left-wing about this regime...
...Yet even the most sympathetic outside observers have had to admit that more often than not this is based on the assump tion that a radical socialist phraseology is sufficient to build a socialist society...
...What is the internal balance sheet...
...He began as a Christian Socialist but moved steadily toward fairly orthodox Leninism (MarxismNkrumahism) adapted by him for African conditions...
...Unless they give up their aspirations of a life of luxury, all the talk and all the literature about socialism and socialist society will remain meaningless phrasemongering...
...on other occasions a Muslim socialist...
...The return of almost a million French settlers to France and the seizure of their property enabled the Algerian government to engage almost immediately in a socialistic transformation of agriculture—not on a ba is of poverty but on a relatively highly developed level...
...generalizations along these lines are almost impossible because conditions vary so much from country to country...
...Journalists and scholars are admittedly under indirect pressure not to publish unfavorable reports about their area of study...
...Usually, these are frightening visions...
...Meanwhile "Indonesian socialism" was propagated...
...No Sinologist expected such outbursts...
...If there is a harsher dictatorship and less political freedom now than two decades ago, it is difficult to see how any semblance of parliamentary democracy could have prevailed under any effective regime...
...manic industrialization for its own sake...
...During the last decade more and more of the sympathetic attention formerly devoted to Russia has been transferred to China and Indonesia, to Ghana and Guinea, to Algeria and Egypt, and to some other countries attempting against heavy odds to carry out national revolutions on the basis of Marxist-Leninist concepts differently interpreted and applied...
...So far, industrial societies have developed only in the moderate regions of the northern hemisphere and they were not plagued by a population explosion at the time of their take-oft...
...Indonesia and Algeria have failed, but not simply as a result of their national-revolutionary and quasi-Marxist orientation...
...it has virtually cut itself off from the outside world...
...Broadly speaking, Chinese industry and agriculture are only slightly ahead of where they were eight or nine years ago...
...Culturally too Europe had had its day...
...Szamueli...
...Illusory plans were drawn up which failed within a very short time...
...In the private life of these people, revolutionary phraseology is often coupled with a horror of work and an exaggerated urge for the good things in life...
...They overrated (it now appears) the element of rationality in Communist China—and they underrated the impact of such elements as obscurantism, nationalist passions, the struggle for power between various factions...
...The political failure of Asia and Africa is therefore to a large extent the responsibility of the West...
...Others yet, while not denying the "progressive" character of the Soviet regime if seen against the background of Russian history, doubt the validity of the Russian lesson for the rest of mankind...
...Politically and economically the European age was over, and with it the predominance of European values...
...Between the two world wars fascism proclaimed the impending demise of the senescent West—and the rise of the young nations...
...While 32 big state corpora tions were established in industry, trade, and communications, all but one steadily lost substantial money...
...210.000 tons of cocoa in 1954-55 yielded Ghana about $240 million...
...Not so Indonesia...
...A meaningful socialist transformation is impossible with an intelligentsia lacking the technical know-how as well as patriotic spirit and selfless devotion to serve the country...
...By 1967 this bloc had disintegrated, not merely as the result of outside pressure, but mostly as a consequence of inner weakness...
...provided land for less than 10 per cent of the landless and moreover was inefficiently applied...
...I he unsuccessiu, attack by Britain and trance in 19b6 gave him enormous political credit, which in some ways has lasted to this day...
...What is, or was, Nkrumahism...
...But beneath its veneer of revolutionary activism (to quote a close observer of the Indonesian scene) there was a deeply conservative policy idealizing a regression toward a natural economy and the social structure of the Javanese village...
...It is one thing for the literati of St...
...Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she has shaken off all guidance and all reason and she is running headlong into the abyss...
...but a country cannot do without both...
...The cultural revolution may be a temporary aberration, a setback, from which the country will eventually recover...
...African countries, especially those which have inscribed revolutionary socialism on their banners, have learned this to their detriment...
...Social Failures in Africa Almost every African country has made socialism its declared policy and everyone agrees that boundless confusion has been created as the result of the indiscriminate and, on the whole, misplaced application of a Western term to African realities...
...Within an even shorter time an enormously inflated, grossly overpaid, and parasitic bureaucratic machine developed which for all practical purposes ran internal affairs...
...It took place, not at the beginning of the Communist era, not during a civil war, but 18 years after the establishment of Communist China...
...Nkrumah's ideas have been developed in his two most recent books Conscientism (including an attempt to describe "positive action" in mathematical formulas) and Neo Colonialism...
...Perhaps the most fatal omission was the failure of the colonialist powers in education —with the result that in the Belgian Congo or Indonesia, for instance, there was hardly a native intelligentsia at all to take over when these countries became independent...
...The cost of living rose by 30 per cent in one year, financial resources were dissipated: holdings of about $600 when the country attained independence in 1957 had turned into a debt of fantastic size when Nkrumah fell in February 1966.2 Not all this money had been squandered by mismanagement and corruption, though the famous golden bed of Mrs...
...it follows a proChinese foreign policy, but there is nothing revolutionary about the domestic policy of a government whose power is based exclusively on a palace guard of several hundred men, many of them foreigners...
...But on the whole, the state of affairs was not without promise when Ben Bella took over...
...The leaders of the FLN were a group of devoted revolutionaries, a "band of brothers...
...In its absence all talk about a socialist society is either meaningless or a perversion of the term...
...Yet Barraclough himself is the author of a recent introduction to contemporary history which could, with equal justice, be entitled "New Light on the Decline of the West...
...It is now believed that only in these countries (to quote Frantz Fanon) is there the opportunity "to do everything," to advance a step further beyond Europe, to learn from the mistakes committed elsewhere, "to bring the problem of mankind to an infinitely higher plane...
...Geographical, climatic, and historical factors are at least of equal importance...
...Like Guinea and Mali it has a one-party system and the economic sector has been gradually nationalized...
...world demand for most commodities is limited and cannot be artificially boosted...
...But the proponents of the new Afro-Asian ideology go much further...
...Among the bureaucracy and the intelligentsia there are conflicting trends: Islamic, orthodox Communist—and those favoring Marxism-Nasserism, i.e., "military socialism" which has absorbed economic and social techniques from Leninism and which in foreign affairs steers close to the Soviet camp but socially is no nearer to Soviet Communism than to France under Napoleon III or to Fascist Italy...
...In foreign affairs China has been less successful—perhaps it does not bother...
...in 1964...
...In these books Dr...
...Ghana had been the pace setter for tropical Africa before 1957, and it tried to live up to its reputation after independence...
...But unless there is some work ethos, unless these elites begin to understand that socialism is not only high-flown oratory but that it has some direct bearing on their own lives, that selfless devotion, sacrifice, and hard work are needed, they will not make any real progress...
...There are no precedents for Mao's second revolution, but it can be said on the basis of much historical experience in other parts of the world that movements with a fervent belief in the omnipotence of a great leader and that "everything is possible" often end by pursuing policies very different from, sometimes diametrically opposed to, those they originally set out to accomplish...
...Barraclough, on the other hand, is a radical, a left-wing liberal...
...Sukarno's personal responsibility was grave...
...The preconditions for an economic take-off—for primitive accumulation— existed...
...Mao's second revolution is a romantic-idealist movement, a primitive reaction against the trends inherent in a modern industrial society that make it more and more difficult to stick to the way of life established in the caves of Yenan during the 193&'s...
...Basically, Sukarno was far more interested in foreign affairs, where successes (New Guinea...
...i he attempts to establish a state party, never very energetically tackled, have not been successful: the country has been ruled by a new class, army officers (including those who were subsequently given civilian assignments), and tree secret police...
...What has been the balance sheet if we ignore the upheaval and the confusion of 1966-67...
...Output in agriculture fell, especially of wine which is so vital a product for export...
...There was no serious attempt to tackle industrial development or the country's very basic problem: agricultural resettlement...
...His country had won independence after a bitter and heroic seven-year struggle against France...
...Barradough, on the other hand, seems to consider America a case of sui generis: the positive European heritage (he wrote) has become embedded in both the Russian and American civilizations...
...But it also inherited an agriculture geared largely to monoculture and thus subject to the vagaries of world prices...
...Most of the progress was achieved owing to massive economic help (both aid and free gifts) from West and East...
...590,000 tons ten years later actually yielded Ghana less—about $210 million...
...Its foreign policy has been clumsy and arrogant...
...Nkrumahist Ghana was "an ideological state without an ideology, a one-party dictatorship without a party...
...Indonesia received considerable aid from both Russia and the West —the foreign debt is now $2.7 billion...
...unemployment in Algeria was estimated between 60 per cent (Soviet sources) and 80 per cent (Western observers) of the total labor force...
...Comparisons are always risky and often unfair...
...new peoples were arising, new energies seeking expression, a definite view of life set in conscious counterpoint to the weary disillusion of Europe...
...In this respect the African and Asian revolutionaries could no doubt learn from the Chinese example but for the fact that Peking's motivations seem not to have been altogether altruistic...
...From a Marxist point of view it is a major heresy...
...Yet despite this progress Egypt found itself in a state of permanent crisis even before Nasser tried his luck in brinkmanship...
...For two previous generations Soviet Communism was the great beacon illuminating the darkness, showing the road to a better future...
...On the other hand, mere nave been severe setbacks ui the Suuan, in tropical Africa, anu 1 eaten...
...Ben Bella set out to realize his aims in a particularly inept way...
...The most telling charge against the Western imperialist countries is not that they robbed Asia and Africa, but that they prevented indigenous economic development...
...Indonesia, after all, is potentially a rich country...
...negations of man and an avalanche of murders...
...About Ben Bella's political orientation his successor has said: "For him socialism was only a means to avenge himself on those who opposed his personal power...
...Populist ideas have their attractions but they are even less relevant now than 100 years ago...
...But in Italy the fascist bombast was spread by a regime that, however abominable, somehow functioned...
...his rejection of Europe is total.' The Wretched of the Earth ends with a passionate appeal to all the downtrodden in the ex-colonial world to leave this Europe where they are never done talking of man yet murder men everywhere they find them: The European game has finally ended...
...about 75 per cent of the exports are government controlled...
...agricultural reform, which began hesitatingly in the middle 50's, has been speeded up...
...But it can no more be doubted that what was hailed as a panacea—namely radical slogans—has, by and large, not worked better than other forms of government...
...In fact, the one-party system was simply a means to communicate commands from the top leadership to the masses—and not a very efficient and reliable means at that, as the crumbling of the party after Nkrumah's fall has shown...
...reads uncannily like a Partisan Review symposium 70 years later...
...In Indonesia these were just words that had no relation to reality...
...All civilizations have had their Cassandras, but probably none more than twentieth-century Europe...
...True, the population is treated to radical socialist speeches and ambitious plans as if these had any bearing on reality...
...Western economic aid is therefore simply a partial restitution of stolen property...
...Whether Egypt will ever be capable of acnieving tnis is nun certain...
...But would these countries be more highly developed today if there had not been Western domination...
...Western civilization, he says, exhibits authentic symptoms of breakdown and disintegration, and the only thing that can save it is a fresh religious revolution...
...The idea that Chinese man (equipped with Mao's thought) can overcome all obstacles, achieve all aims is an attractive one, but what has it in common with a political system concerned with the study of the laws governing historical and social change...
...As these lines are written the cultural revolution is still in progress...
...But by and large it was an unedifying rush by a new elite to escape austerity, to establish itself as a privileged class, materially as well as politically...
...A real resettlement program would involve the removal of substantial sections from Java to Sumatra and Borneo...
...Conor Cruise O'Brien wrote that proportionately no African country had more of such people than Ghana and none lost more...
Vol. 14 • September 1967 • No. 5
