This
piece is a memo to the Nigerian Left. In an ideal situation, on account of the
importance I attach to the subject, the document would have appeared, first, as
an internal memo to an appropriate
organ of the movement. For the same reason of importance, it would not have
stopped at the organ or leadership level. The memo would have passed to the
movement as a whole and, thereafter, to the public.
However,
because the situation is not ideal—and this is the subject of the memo—I am
moving directly to the public. The message in the memo comes at the end of the
article. It is a short and direct one. I am therefore utilizing the available
space to reflect on a related issue of general interest. The “related issue”
supplies the title of the piece. And, “for the avoidance of doubt” and “for
completeness”, I define the Nigerian Left in this historical epoch as the
aggregate of Marxists, socialists and partisans of popular democracy.
Found
in one of the “mountains” of papers, drafts and study notes left behind by Karl
Marx at his death in 1883 was a rough document carrying a series of his critical
observations on the works of the materialist philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach. The
discovery was made by Marx’s life-long friend and collaborator, Friedrich
Engels. The latter considered the note important enough to be edited, titled
and published post-humously as an article and later used for a larger
publication.
This post-humous article, written by Marx in Brussels in the first
half of 1845, and published in 1888 by Engels, has been passed to history and to
us as Theses on Feuerbach. In
Engels’ view, the “note” which later became Theses on Feuerbach was “the first document in which is deposited
the brilliant germ of a new world outlook”, that is, the Marxist theory of
history and society. That is for interested students and researchers to
examine.
It
may interest Nigerian Leftists, progressives, patriots and radical democrats to
know that I have also discovered important “theses” in the papers left behind
by a number of our departed comrades and compatriots. I have drawn the
attention of some comrades to this development. What is interesting in the latter
discoveries is that the “theses” have now shed more light on some critical
issues that were bitterly debated in the Nigerian Left some decades ago. Some of
these issues had led to seemingly irreconcilable divisions and fights; others
had led to frustrations, disillusionment, abandonment and premature retirement
from struggle.
Back
now to Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach.
There are eleven of them, or rather, in my view, Engels and latter editors
handed over Marx’s theses on Feuerbach to us in eleven segments of unequal
lengths. Historically and in broad terms, Marx can be classified, along with
Ludwig Feuerbach, as a “materialist” philosopher in contrast to “idealist”
philosophers of whom the most famous and best known in Europe of Marx’s time
was Hegel. Marx, a student of philosophy and history, started off as a radical
or Left Hegelian.
From
here he became a critic of Hegel and came under the influence of Feuerbach, a
radical anti-Hegelian. It was in the course of confronting the “inadequacies”
of Feuerbach that Marx formulated his “theses”. In these theses he called Feuerbach’s
materialism the “old materialism” or “mechanical materialism” and his own “the
new materialism”. The latter was later codified—after Marx’s death—as Marxist
theory of history and society.
I
consider three of Marx’s eleven theses on Feuerbach—the second, the third and
the eleventh—as the most lucid and direct applications of dialectics to the
study of history and society. The second thesis can be rendered as follows:
“The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is
not a question of theory. It is a practical question. In practice, a human
being must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power of his thinking. The
dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from
practice is a purely scholastic question”.
The
third thesis may be rendered like this: “The doctrine that human beings are
products of circumstances and education and that, therefore, changed human
beings are products of other circumstances and changed education forgets that the educator himself needs educating.
That doctrine as presented by old materialism or contemplative materialism necessarily
arrives at dividing society into two parts—one of which is superior to the
other. That is not so. In reality the changing of circumstances and human
activity coincide; and the coincidence can be conceived and rationally
understood only as revolutionary
practice.”
The
eleventh thesis is the most well-known and is often quoted by revolutionaries
and reactionaries alike: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in
various ways; the point, however, is to change it”. To these three theses we
may add the following line from Marx’s The
Holy Family written just before the Theses: “If a human being is formed by
his/her circumstances, then his/her circumstances must be made human.”
We
may now move to my message to the Nigerian Left—the main subject of this piece.
The message resolves into seven propositions. The first is the
“covering” proposition. It is general in nature. The other six are specific. One:
There should be initiated in the Nigerian Left a process of internal criticism,
education and correction. It should be a process that ends in an organizational
leap. The process and the leap are now demanded more than ever before in our post-Civil
War history. Two: The national
situation in our country now strongly demands that the existing political
groups, organisations and parties of the Nigerian Left—as well as unaffiliated
Leftists— should combine to form a central political platform. Three: This platform should have a dual
form: electoral and non-electoral.
The
fourth proposition is this:
Independently, Marxists within the Nigerian Left should establish an
educational-ideological centre with the capacity for minimum continuity. Five: The centre should be
appropriately allied to the political platform; and the two should support and
nourish each other. Six: The
Nigerian Left should articulate and publish a manifesto that goes beyond being
a general presentation. The manifesto should take clear and precise positions
on the burning questions of the time. Seven:
If the Nigerian Left cannot meet these elementary conditions to confront
the challenges of the present stage of our history then it has no basis to
enter electoral politics or seek electoral alliance with anybody.
In
May 1949, at the start of the anti-communist hysteria which swept America after
World War II, a number of American Marxists who were also academics and public
intellectuals came together and established an enlightenment-ideological
centre. The centre went on to establish a monthly “independent socialist
magazine” called Monthly Review.
Paul
Sweezy and Leo Huberman were the magazine’s co-founders and foundation editors.
Today, 69 years later, Monthly Review
is not only still appearing monthly and circulating all over the world, it had
long become a global institution—carrying out intellectual, academic and
ideological programmes and projects in all the continents of the world
including America, in particular. Among the articles that appeared in the
foundation issue of Monthly Review in May 1949 was one by the world-historic
physicist, Albert Einstein. The article was titled Why socialism?
In
addition to the Monthly Review magazine, there are now Monthly Review Press and
Monthly Review Foundation. The Press publishes highly valued books authored by
writers spread across the globe and also distributing important non-Monthly
Review books. In other words, Monthly Review Organisation has maintained what I
call minimum continuity through
almost seven decades—influencing Left and radical politics throughout the
world, including America, in particular.
*Edwin Madunagu,
mathematician and journalist, writes from Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria.
