My former schoolmate at my beloved alma mater, the Augustineum High School, Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro penned a very rich opinion piece in the Windhoek Observer of 13 October 2022.
His opinion piece was, to a large extent, a response to the polemic I had with Reverend Jan Scholtz on the “center-periphery” or “metropole-satellite” relations, which had been published in New Era earlier on.
Kae was very respectful and not personal in his critique, I want to reciprocate by orbiting in the same space.
Before I go “toe to toe” with my dear friend regarding the specific issues he took me on, we need to first deconstruct the very heading of his piece, which reads: “Historical Materialism necessary to locate Namibia’s capitalist system.” The heading does not speak to the content and there is an alarming disconnect. The usage of the word “locate” in the heading, creates the impression that the author would use historical materialism to analyse the nature of the Namibian capitalism. However, apart from quoting a few statistics to show the nature of inequality in Namibia, Kae did not use historical materialism to unpack the nature of Namibia’s neo-colonial economy.
In my book, to “locate Namibia’s capitalist system” using historical materialism as a tool of social analysis would imply some analysis, which Kae did not do. He was all over the place without addressing the issue he flagged in his heading.
I expected him to explain what historical materialism was, why it was needed to “locate” the capitalist system in Namibia; and, most importantly, to analyse the system. Furthermore, he needed to explain how the economic base (substructure) related to the superstructure i.e. state institutions, ideas etc. Central to that would also be the nature of social classes in Namibia. You could not talk about using historical materialism as a tool of social analysis to “locate an economic system” without addressing these key issues.
My dear friend, Herbert Jauch, once argued that: ‘…the search for theoretical and practical alternatives to neo-liberal globalization is essential because it is this integration that is responsible, to a significant degree, for today’s misery.’ I am using this quote to hammer a point home, and that is, for what it is worth, I regard myself a socialist at heart; but most importantly, a free thinker.
Now fast-forward to the issues Kae took me on. He postulates that I “…reluctantly or hesitantly agree…” with Reverend Scholtz pertaining to the exploitative capitalist relations in Namibia. The assertion that I “reluctantly or hesitantly agree” is begging for evidence and qualification as to what my learned friend is trying to put across here.
He goes on to say that Luxemburg’s position, when she said: “…. capitalism is in crisis but no alternative seems to be in sight” does not imply that there was a total lack of confidence in the socialist ideals on the part of Luxemburg. I did qualify that by stating that Luxemburg was reacting to the “failure of communism” in Eastern in Europe. She was hugely disappointed by the implementation of the socialist project, but she did not necessarily lose confidence in the socialist ideals; and nowhere did I state anything to the contrary.
I do not need to be “granted the benefit of the doubt” by anybody regarding the failure and collapse of communism in Eastern Europe as Kae would suggest. Meriam-Webster Dictionary defines benefit of the doubt as “…the state of accepting something/someone as honest or deserving of trust even though there are doubts…” There are no doubts that communism in Eastern Europe collapsed dramatically. Historical facts about that speak for themselves, beyond any shadow of a doubt.
About three years ago I, respectfully, engaged my former lecturer, late Dr Tjiriange (may his soul rest in peace), in a debate on this issue. Here were the central tenets of my argument as to why socialism had failed in Eastern Europe:
What was supposed to be the dictatorship of the proletariat (working class) became the dictatorship of the Communist Party;
The Communist Party was the only party that was allowed and it became a monster unto itself that became alienated from the working class and other strata in society; No free trade unions were allowed and the trade unions needed to be affiliated to the Communist Party;
All print and electronic media were controlled by the state;
All of this led to the suffocation of free competition of ideas;
At the economic level, the means of production were owned and run by the state and that led to inefficiency because the state had monopoly and there was no competition; and
The socialist states never managed to resolve the National Question (in socialist thought, the National Question deals, amongst other things, with the right of nationalities and/or ethnic groups to determine their own destiny within a nation-state where they live).
The result was, without the free competition of ideas, the political system became bottle-necked and somewhere something had to give. And something did give, the system collapsed.
The bottom-line is, a free market of ideas leads to better political outcomes and a free market of commodities leads to the production of quality commodities – this does not imply that I support capitalism blindly. The failure of neo-liberal capitalism is a different debate all together.
Communist rule in Eastern Europe created a linear, one-dimensional universe and no dissenting views were brooked. That was of course until 1980, when history “propelled” the Polish Solidarity Trade Union, under the leadership of the pipe-smoking maverick Lech Wallenca, with his signature moustache, into center stage. Solidarity was the first free trade union in Eastern Europe and it caused a domino-effect that led to the collapse of communism in that part of the world.
At the theoretical level, Marxism has, for the most part, been stuck in economic determinism and the assumed primacy of social classes as their main identity. Marxists have never successfully transcended that to factor in other social identity categories like race and ethnicity in their analysis.
Germany is a good classical example to try to explain what I mean here. Germany, because of its high-industrialization rate, has been having a lot of foreign workers over many decades. However, the German working class, if there is still a working class there in the classical sense of the word, is likely to have more affinity towards the German capitalist class on the basis of national or cultural identity, rather than with migrant workers (Gastarbeiter) from other countries. That throws the Marxist notion of class solidarity based on class consciousness out of the window because the working class there would tend to be ideologically-fragmented and culturally heterogeneous.
Furthermore, the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe resulted in the disintegration of some of those states into smaller nation-states – where strong ethnic/national identity was a key factor. The former Soviet Union, former Yugoslavia and the former Czechoslovakia are all cases in point. The current Russia-Ukraine conflict is, to a large extent, a direct result of the unresolved National Question in the former Soviet Union, where both of these nations failed to co-exist.
In Africa, Marxism, as a theory, has equally never fully come to terms with the National/Ethnic Question either. On the doorstep of our northern border, the MPLA government in Angola started off on a Marxist footing. The question is, to what extent did they manage to address the National/Ethnic Question in that country? If they were successful in doing so, I am sure, the misery of the Angolan civil war could, to a certain extent, have been avoided. Ethnicity was perhaps not the only factor in the Angolan conflict, but it was certainly a major one.
Due to lack of space, I will continue with this debate in the next edition of this newspaper.