George Padmore: A Maoist View

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Padmore's Question: Pan-Africanism or Communism?

George Padmore was a crucial Pan-Africanist leader. He helped bring along Kwame Nkrumah as a young man and eventually served in Nkrumah's Ghana (Gold Coast) government. Richard Wright called Padmore, "the veritable ideological father of many of the nationalist movements in Black Africa."(1)

Although it is possible not to know it, depending on which book one reads of Padmore's, Padmore's thought, like W.E.B. Du Bois's, went through a number of phases. In the early 1930s, he worked in the Comintern and carried out Stalin's line. In 1934 the Comintern kicked him out/he resigned. As of his 1946 book on Russia, Padmore was still quite favorable to Stalin but somewhat critical. By the time he wrote his most famous book, Pan-Africanism or Communism? he denounced Stalin's line as using Blacks for the Soviet Union's national interests.

Most of what Padmore wrote about was on colonialism in Africa and conditions of Blacks in England, Amerika and the West Indies. These interests were one and the same as that of Pan- Africanism generally before the widespread development of anti-colonial revolutionary movements in Africa.

Padmore displayed too much Amerikan influence in that he opposed "communism" as if it were the official ideology of the Soviet Union and only that. When it came to the word "nationalism," Padmore used the word "African nationalism" and the phrase "Black Zionism," but for the word communism he did not say "African communism."

Today we have authors such as Kwadwo O. Pobi-Asamani re-interpreting W.E.B. Du Bois in light of Padmore's Amerika-friendly view of communism. Thanks to the huge scope of Du Bois's writings, it proves not difficult to find something. At the same time, introduction author Sterling Stuckey points out that Pobi-Asamani is disagreeing with Du Bois himself by taking Padmore's side.(2)

Knowing when you're free

We respect Padmore much more than 90% of the Europeans and Amerikans calling themselves "Marxist," because when he wrote his book Pan Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa Padmore did not claim to be "Marxist" while nonetheless coming close to Marxist ideology at several points. Padmore called for "libertarianism" and "democratic socialism" for Africa.

Although Padmore always spoke highly of Mao and detailed some of the conflicts in the Comintern over China,(3) he also spoke of Gandhi and Nehru in India as some kind of models--as did his colleagues of the Fifth Pan-African Congress held in Manchester in 1945. We can think of it as a kind of poor influence of England, and especially its Labour Party "socialism" prevalent throughout England's colonies and thus the Third World. Padmore knew well that this sort of socialism had a bad history, not just in World War I, but on a continuing basis on the question of colonies: "The European Communists, on the other hand, have tried to mask their own opportunism by spreading the falsehood that all Socialists are imperialists. This is untrue, for there are many British and French left-wing Socialists who are definitely opposed to Colonialism and the colour bar and give their active support to the struggles of dependent peoples for self- government and human rights. But, unfortunately, they represent a minority point of view, which has little or no influence on the official politics of their parties."(4)

Nonetheless, it is in failing to compare the outcomes of effete British-style socialism in England and its imitators in the Third World that Padmore ended up going off course. The question of the hard edge of Marxism bothered him most. He mistook the hard edge of Marxism for something less liberating than the "libertarianism" of British-style socialism, which of course, is not socialism at all.

We have to recall that India only achieved its independence in 1947, so the distinction between Nehru and Mao was yet to have many years behind it for someone like Padmore. In practice, socialism in China started behind India in the major social indicators and surpassed it under the leadership of hard-edged Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. That is why people in Nepal and India today are taking up People's War and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

Here is Padmore's explanation for the supposed failure of communism: "One must be either a Communist or an anti-Communist. This is typical white man's thinking, whether of the left or right. And it is here that the European makes his greatest psychological mistake. He fails to realize that one of the first reactions of politically awakened self-respecting coloured leaders is the desire to be mentally free from the dictation of Europeans, regardless of their ideology. . . . Few whites can envisage a world in which they are not pushing coloured folk around."(5)

This retreat into defense of psychological self-comfort is OK for anti-imperialist united fronts and in fact this view is also common to wimmin confronted with scientific socialism. However, since the book is titled Pan Africanism or Communism? we have to hold Padmore to the standard of science. When it comes to Marxism, as Padmore is well aware, it is not just pushing "coloured folk around." It's pushing everyone including the self around. The bracing and hard-edge attitude of Marxism is a philosophy of hard struggle. Anyone reading how Marx and Engels treated their European contemporaries knows that "pushing around" is not just a thing for "coloured folk" in Marxism. There is no reason Africans can not take up the same attitude. If anything, perhaps Padmore reveals an unwillingness to "push around" white folks on behalf of his own line while simultaneously complaining about what Stalin did not deliver in Europe.

In opposing hard struggle within the proletarian class, Padmore tips the scale toward Liberalism. Liberalism will always be easier as the status quo is always easier. The question is whether it delivers better results for Africa. We'd say History obviously answered that Liberalism and easy-going phony socialism is no good for Africa.

It is perhaps well known that Mao agreed with the bracing outlook of Marxism though he was not white. Perhaps less well known is that Padmore disciple Nkrumah came to agree with Mao in the last few years of his life: "I am convinced now--a lesson it took me some time to grasp, the qualities in leadership which must be strengthened are bravery, ruthlessness and bitterness. In order for a revolutionary to succeed he must be brave, bitter and ruthless, and also capable of hating his enemies. In other words, love those who love you, and hate those who hate you."(6)

Padmore died in 1959 at a time when his acknowledged leader W.E.B. Du Bois was making it clear that he was going in a communist direction after a long life of 90 years. He spelled out that there were gradations in socialism. In his book collecting up the documents of the Fifth Pan-African Congress, Padmore started with a one page biography of W.E.B. Du Bois. It was to be a great irony of the life of Padmore to start out communist while Du Bois shifted among various Liberal and radical ideas. At the end of life, it was the opposite as Du Bois became increasingly communist. While Padmore was denouncing Stalin in 1956, Du Bois was hardening in his support of Stalin.

Padmore said of a conflict in West Africa, that "Too often, however, colonial Communists behave in such an irresponsible way as to give their political opponents the impression that they are more interested in promoting the foreign policies of the Soviet Union than in advancing the national liberation of their own dependent countries."(7) In MIM's opinion, this was a low blow, because the Comintern had been disbanded for more than a decade when Padmore said it. Padmore was just reliving his own resignation from Comintern offices in the 1930s while questioning Nigerian anti-communism overly cautiously.

In that same struggle, Padmore referred to himself as a "democrat" and "socialist" to add to his "libertarian" label. History has been unkind to Padmore's re-alignment. Despite the rhetoric, today, England is the country with the most imprisonment per capita in Europe. The United $tates imprisons the most in the world and for Blacks exceeds anything even in apartheid South Africa, which relied more on the reservation system of "Bantustans."

Vantage of history

We would say that in those areas where Padmore departed from his earlier pro-Stalin line, history has been unkind to Padmore's views. If we look at the specific bases of his departure from Stalin's line, they do not stand up under scrutiny.

Padmore disagreed with Stalin on the Black-belt nation thesis (the idea that there is a nascent Black Republic in the southeastern region of the u$A), but typically Padmore did this in such a way as to start from a position of non-struggle--by accepting the prevalent opinion of Blacks. He argued that the Black press rejected the idea and hence it died an ignominious death.(8) At that time, W.E.B. Du Bois was leading the Black press and Du Bois was yet to be communist. In fact, he varied in and out of liberal and radical, integrationist and nationalist ideas himself.

We would take issue with Padmore when he said the Black-belt thesis was a flop for the Communist Party USA. In the first place, such a thesis regarding a whole nation cannot be approved or disapproved based on its recruiting effects for a party. That would be sectarian reasoning. Secondly, even on a sectarian basis, compared with the Black membership it had before the Black-belt thesis, the Communist Party USA did indeed thrive with the theory that came from the Comintern. Padmore just never mentions the situation before the Comintern intervened with the Black Belt nation thesis.

On the whole, out of Padmore's differences with Stalin, History has been most kind to Padmore on the Black-belt thesis, because the sharecropper basis for the thesis dissolved in World War II. Even so, as we have said, we do not think Padmore's given reasons for disputing Stalin on that question were very good.

Padmore made a question of principle Stalin's attack on Finland in World War II. Although he admits that a Finnish civil war had killed 30,000 communists after World War I,(9) he still wanted Stalin to call on the Finnish people above the heads of the Finnish government as if they would respond favorably to the communist regime. Of all people, first-hand observer of World War II Padmore should know that without that war, the Soviet Union would suffered much greater losses later from having an indefensible position for Leningrad. On this point we disagree with Padmore. He wanted to make nationality an inviolable principle, but we saw no progressive value in the national struggle of Finland against the USSR. The fact is that the small countries squeezed between Germany and the USSR did not have independence. Hitler guaranteed that. For Padmore to deny this is to deny the bellicosity and automatic aggression of imperialism and all this in 1956, after Hitler had proved his willingness to take over all of Europe.

It was the question of how to handle fascism that caused Padmore to break with Stalin from what we know in the public record. Padmore believed that Stalin was too timid to antagonize the old-style imperialists such as the French. At the same time, Padmore thought Stalin should have done more about Italy's attack on Ethiopia (Abyssinia). It's hard to see how Padmore's ideas could be taken to the level of principle. It seems that short of declaring constant war on all the imperialists simultaneously, there would be no way for a Stalin to avoid Padmore's criticism.

In the end, to reconcile this question, Padmore decided that Africans must love their own country first. Along these lines, he took up some demagoguery against Stalin when Padmore failed to differentiate between the party and the masses. "When Hitler invaded their country . . . [they] fought the Nazi invaders in the name of 'Holy Russia'. They even invoked the spirits of such Czarist patriots as Prince Alexander Nevsky, Prince Suvarov and Field Marshal Kutuzov, who were no more Communist than Sir Winston Churchill. . . . Until African Communists learn to love their country in the same way that their Russian comrades love Russia, they deserve to be treated with contempt."(10)

In passing we should also note that Padmore criticized Stalin for not pushing the French & Spanish communists on the question of Morocco. He says that had Morocco been free, Franco would have had no base area to operate from to crush the Spanish Revolution. Again, to MIM, this is another "balance of forces" question. It was fine for Lenin to set the Russian colonies free as Padmore did as much as anyone to show. However, Stalin had no power to accomplish that in Africa. It was a question of the British, French and Spanish governments. The USSR had no colonies in Africa when the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s was at stake. The question Padmore raised was whether in the 1936-1939 struggle Spanish Republicans could have helped liberate Africa. "We must never forget that the Spanish Fascist leader Franco organised his counter-revolution from a colonial territory--Morocco--and then, because the Republican Government made no move to declare the Moors directors of their own national life, Franco was able to bring over the regular battalions of the Spanish colonial force. . . . Since the People's Front Government of Spain was essentially an Imperialist Government dedicated to maintenance of the Spanish Colonial Empire while instituting reforms at home, its denial of liberty to its African subjects was a conscious policy."(11) The fact is that the 90% of Morocco was under French administration. When Franco attacked a few months after the Popular Front victory, Stalin's influence was weak. In fact, the government was so watery Liberal it had no support from the "Socialists" either, so we don't see concretely how Padmore goes from the situation in Morocco to criticizing Stalin.

In other words, for Padmore's words to have been true, the communists would have had to have liberated Spanish Morocco before the Spanish Civil War. As it turns out, when Spain turned over Morocco's territory in de-colonization in 1956, it managed to keep a few square miles of Morocco called Ceuta which has 74,000 people. The reason is that the people there are Spaniards who had been there since the 1500s. It was Ceuta were Franco had his military base and it was Ceuta from where he launched his attack on the Republicans. Suffice it to say that Ceuta was not going to rise up momentarily for rebellion against Spanish imperialism on behalf of Morocco's independence. We can back Morocco's claims to Ceuta and Melilla without taking up idealist notions of how Franco could have been stopped. We're sure that Padmore also realizes that even had Spanish Morocco revolted, France was not going to stand by idly, so it would have been a more widespread and complex struggle than just stopping Franco at the ports. When criticizing others it is important not to take up idealism, an approach that amounts to treating others as gods who have failed. Since Stalin had no power over the Spanish at the time of Franco's counterrevolutionary rebellion, we could just as well ask Padmore, who resigned from the Comintern in 1934, why he did not succeed in mobilizing the Moors to crush Franco and obtain independence including the crushing of the Spaniards at Ceuta--all by 1936.

For that matter, it is precisely Padmore's line that each country people should love its own the most that guarantees that Stalin would have no influence in the labor aristocracies of the imperialist countries. Where Padmore fails is in answering the question, "you are criticizing on behalf of what? What alternative?" The answer appears to be that Padmore was positioning future rulers of Africa to appeal to the u.$. imperialists to differ from the British and French and he did this by specifically playing up anti-communism in a way to catch u.$. attention: "If the Western Powers are really afraid of Communism and want to defeat it, the remedy lies in their own hands. First, it is necessary to keep one step ahead of the Communists by removing the grievances of the so-called backward peoples, which the Communists everywhere seek to exploit for their own ends. Secondly, there must be a revolutionary change in the outlook of the colonizing Powers, who must be prepared to fix a date for the complete transfer of power--as America did in the Philippines."(12) Based on this statement if Padmore says the USSR was using Blacks for its interests, we can also say that Padmore was using Blacks for u.$. imperialist interests. Again, the record is clear. Today, the united $tates leads the world in imprisonment per capita and that includes imprisonment of Blacks at a rate not seen in apartheid South Africa. An easy-going slide into u.$. imperialism's powerful grasp has had real hard-edged results.

Padmore admits that the Comintern parties in many imperialist countries were impotent.(13) No doubt this was thanks to the fact that Lenin tossed the large organizations with more labor aristocracy and chauvinist leanings. Western European "labor" organizations could be powerful, but not on behalf of progressive goals. There is nothing Padmore says that demonstrates this to be Stalin's or the USSR's fault. It's a matter of attributing reactionary evil to the right places.

As an example of "on behalf of what," Padmore even advocated unity of the Trotskyists and "Stalinists" in South Africa in the name of Africa.(14) Although he does uphold Lenin's theses on super-profits and the corruption of the Western European working class(15), in his discussion of Trotskyism, Padmore shows no inkling that Trotsky disagreed with Lenin and sees imperialism as a progressive force for the Third World. Nor does he show any awareness that Trotsky laid his hopes upon the Western workers. See also and this quote for example.

History has been unkind on this point: in all the countries of Africa and the rest of the Third World, Trotskyists played a decisive role in de-colonization in not one. This was not apparent in 1956. It is now. A case could even be made for social-fascist Brezhnev's role in de-colonizing before we could talk about Trotsky or Trotskyists who did nothing but undermine the unity of genuine liberation organizations.

In 1966, Padmore's disciple Nkrumah had this to say about Trotskyites: "You will see their romanticism. Their analysis of the Ghana coup is very dishonest. . . In our struggle for independence and socialism many problems arise and their solution must be found in the actual local, concrete, historical situation. It is fictitious not to do this."(16)

Padmore also turned out wrong on the unity of the USSR and China. "Because of their tolerance on race and colour, the Russians and the Chinese are going to get on marvellously. The West need have no illusions about that. Communist power politics apart, the Russian people are undoubtedly the least colour-conscious white folk in the world."(17)

As it turns out, as Padmore was publishing these words, Khruschev was denouncing Stalin and creating an international split in the communist movement. Later Malcolm X was to say the split with China was in fact based on color. Another 15 years later, and Brezhnev propagandists openly wrote about the "yellow peril" that Russia was saving Europe from by keeping Mao at bay.

Yet the worst aspect of Padmore's last writings is the admiration of Tito and mentioning Mao in the same breath as Tito. According to Padmore, not even Enver Hoxha deserved any consideration as an independent revolutionary--only Tito and Mao. The rest Padmore saw as lackeys of Moscow. The highest praise he offered was for an Indian comrade of his--"the most independent-minded Communist ever. A Titoist before Tito!"(18)

MIM would say that while Tito still considered himself a follower of Stalin, the various ethnicities in Yugoslavia were "pushed around" into cooperating. As Stalin's influence declined and the whole system fell apart in Eastern Europe, we see very clearly that Tito was not offering something superior to Stalin's line and it had not been a good idea to break unity with Stalin--in Yugoslavia's case. The ethnic cleansing of World War II simply resumed in Yugoslavia, because Tito put forward "local control" and independence from Stalin, a deadly bit of provincialism and nationalism respectively when what the people of the Balkans needed more than anything was internationalist unity. Today, the words "Croat" and "Serb" are synonymous with genocide and for a good reason. In conclusion, we believe it was Mao who best upheld internationalist unity and discipline of the proletarian class while simultaneously applying Marxism-Leninism to concrete conditions in a single country. Mao never broke with Stalin while Tito and many watery Third World "socialists" did. The results are plain to see.

Notes:
1. George Padmore, Pan Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (NY: Roy Publishers, 1956), p. 11.
2. Kwadwo O. Pobi-Asamani, W.E.B. Du Bois: His Contributions to Pan-Africanism (San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1994), p. 7.
3. George Padmore, Pan Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (NY: Roy Publishers, 1956), pp. 296-8.
4. Ibid., p. 321.
5. Ibid., p. 342.
6. Kwame Nkrumah, The Conakry Years: His Life and Letters (London: Panaf, 1990), p. 131.
7. George Padmore, Pan Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (NY: Roy Publishers, 1956), pp. 371.
8. George Padmore, Pan Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (NY: Roy Publishers, 1956), pp. 306-7.
9. George Padmore, How Russia Transformed Her Colonial Empire (London: Dennis Dobson Ltd., 1946), p. 40.
10. George Padmore, Pan Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (NY: Roy Publishers, 1956), pp. 372
11. George Padmore, How Russia Transformed Her Colonial Empire (London: Dennis Dobson Ltd., 1946), p. 54.
12. George Padmore, Pan Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (NY: Roy Publishers, 1956), pp. 339.
13. Ibid., p. 327.
14. George Padmore, Pan Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (NY: Roy Publishers, 1956), p. 362.
15. George Padmore, Pan Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (NY: Roy Publishers, 1956), pp. 300-1.
16. Kwame Nkrumah, The Conakry Years: His Life and Letters (London: Panaf, 1990), p. 59.
17. George Padmore, Pan Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (NY: Roy Publishers, 1956), p. 313.
18. Ibid., pp. 319, 328.