Spark
Africa For the Africans!
January 6th, 1876
A Progressive African Policy
One cannot think of Africa in modern times without thinking also of capitalism depredations on that continent. The slave trade, the greatest crime capitalism has inflicted upon humanity, a crime whose consequences many countries still must redress today, was accomplished by the ravaging of Africa. The swallowing up of India and the pauperization of her people by British capital would be impossible without that country’s coaling stations in Africa. The same can be said of the cancer on Chinese society that is opium. The British, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese holdings on that continent are the legacy of centuries of criminal behavior.
And today, in modern capitalism, those holdings only enable further capitalist crimes against humanity. The competition for ivory, minerals, and other products of the interior can only have the following consequences. As the capitalist empires extend their reach, they will only proletarianize native labor, in the process reducing it to the same degraded state as European labor. And as capitalists compete for territory, the seeds will be sown for future wars, wars that will trample the African people and bleed out the European proletariat. Our People’s Republic, concerned not only with Germany but with the liberation of the whole of humanity, must develop an African policy to combat the African policies of the capitalist states.
As in all things, an African policy must serve the needs of the international socialist revolution. The Marxist-Leninist faction believes it has developed a policy that will do so. That policy consists of planting modern socialism in Africa, and asserting the political claim of our People’s Republic, in the name of humanity, against all the capitalist states. Our policy has been challenged within People’s Party discussions as being just another form of imperialism, of national oppression, not too different from the practices of capitalist states. Our faction answers only with the history of our People’s Republic. We abandoned the pretensions of being a German-only state before 1855. When the old Marxist faction first took power, it instituted policies that would allow all the nations of the Republic to develop their national lives, by printing government documents in French and Dutch as well as German, and by letting schools in those languages open and operate freely. Today Czechs and Poles, too, receive those national rights in our Republic. It is true that Bohemia, Flanders, and Wielkopolska are not independent states, but there is no reason that they should be, when national life is as free to develop as in our People’s Republic, accompanied too by cross-national solidarity for human aims.
The Marxist-Leninist faction looks to this tradition to informing our national policy in Africa. And indeed we have much to learn from Africans in terms of real communist spirit. There are peoples in Africa that have never experienced class society, who only know a form of communism—not modern communism with the benefits of industry, but communism nonetheless. The combination of our most spirited, most conscious youth and what the Africans have to teach of communist life can only enrich the culture of our People’s Republic. As for industry, we have made our criticisms of the way industry is managed in the Republic, and would not seek to simply transplant Cologne from the Rhine onto the Niger. Rather, Africa, untainted by capitalist practices, can model how Marxist-Leninists organize industry.
Finally, by denying Africa to the capitalists, we will hasten the revolution in Western Europe. With all the enormous profits of Africa in their pockets, the capitalists would be able to bribe their workers, aping our social security while maintaining their exploitation. Without Africa, workers in those countries would see more clearly that the only way to a better life is social revolution. Nothing can be done to reduce capitalism’s tendency towards war, but at the least our Republic’s proven soldiery would make them think twice about carrying war into lands protected by our Republic. And if they do, it will be a people’s army that meets them.
To save African communism from capitalism, to help it develop into modern forms, to enrich our cultural life, and to hasten the European revolution, vote Marxist-Leninist, ballot line 3.
-Comrade Zimmerwald