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by Jeneric September 2023 permalinkCoups in the region 2020-2022
On 26 July 2023, Niger’s Presidential Guard arrested President Bazoum and declared the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Homeland (CNSP). On 27 July the military joined the coup in support of the new government. The coup has been denounced by the U.$., France, European Union, ECOWAS, and others. ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, is an organization of the comprador-bourgeoisie of 15 West-African states including Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and southern border of Niger. ECOWAS has threatened to invade Niger and restore the former government. Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and others have voiced support for the coup. Burkina Faso has declared that they would view an invasion of Niger as an act of war on themselves. What is to explain this web of contradictions and interests?
Since Niger’s independence in 1960 there have been a total of 4 coups. This has been viewed by bourgeois media as the inability of Niger to create a stable democracy on their own without the “aid” of the imperialist masters. This line coming from France is especially hypocritical as the one party system in Niger during 1960-1974 was in large part France’s doing, with the banning of parties such as the Mouvement Socialiste Africain-Sawaba (MSA). In reality, the independence Niger gained in 1960 is wildly exaggerated. Niger’s status as a French colony since 1922 has led many to believe that their liberation from this status represents a complete independence, as is enjoyed by the likes of France and Amerika. On the contrary, France and Amerika combined have over 2,500 troops stationed within Niger’s borders with billions invested in the construction and maintenance of military and drone bases. This is because Niger contains vast uranium reserves which are vital particularly in France’s energy supply. “Areva” was, before 2016, a state-owned French company operating in nuclear energy. Through a series of acquisitions, Areva became a major player in Niger’s uranium industry.
“AREVA’s two subsidiaries in Niger, Somaïr and Cominak, benefit from a number of tax advantages: exemptions from duties, VAT and even fuel taxes, which they use in massive amounts. A ‘provision for the reconstruction of mines’ also lets them set aside 20% of their profits which are therefore excluded from corporate taxes. In 2010, the two subsidiaries extracted a total of 114,346 metric tonnes of uranium in Niger, representing an export value of 2.3 trillion CFA francs (over 3.5 billion euros). From that sum, Niger was only paid 300 billion CFA francs (approximately 459 million euros), or 13% of the exported value.” (1)
On top of this, Niger uses the West African CFA franc which allows France significant control over the economy. This exploitation has produced revolutionary views among the people that the new government is seeking to pander to. The CNSP government gave an order for the French diplomats to leave the country and has echoed the anti-French sentiment in popular protests. We uphold the revolutionary anti-French sentiment of the people of Niger while also recognizing that this is a common tactic and method of the bourgeoisie in order to adopt and assimilate national liberation movements.
The purely economic exploitation of Niger is the form which imperialism takes that distinguishes it from colonialism. Because the market says that this trade is fair, and the market is ingrained in people’s minds as eternal, people assume that this is just the way it is and Niger will need to find some way to operate more successfully in the market. In reality, the terms of this trade benefit France at the expense of Niger; but Niger has no political-economic power to assert its own interests. The imperialist exploitation of their land and resources combined with the devastating health effects of uranium mining has produced a strong anti-imperialist movement which Amerika and France are attempting to deal with. Niger is a majority peasant country, which means that its anti-imperialist movement is of the new democratic type involving the national bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, peasantry, and proletariat, with the peasantry as the major reserve. The event of 26 July, as a coup led by pre-established powers, was a movement with the national bourgeoisie at the spearhead. If Niger is going to see liberation, the national bourgeoisie must be replaced by the proletariat at the vanguard.
The 4th Republic of France (1944-1958) retained its colonial rule over Niger. The contradictions of this rule collapsed the 4th Republic and forced colonialism into advanced imperialism. Rather than direct political rule, the 5th French Republic had to cede independence to its colonies and retain only economic control. The so-called independence of Niger is a facade. The instability in Niger and the consequently frequent shifting of power from one faction to another is the unfolding of the contradiction among the national bourgeoisie and the comprador bourgeoisie (and oftentimes factions within the two class forces as well). It will only reach its next qualitative stage through revolution: not power struggles of one section of the comprador regime by another. This is only possible through a dictatorship led by the proletariat of Niger in a new democratic united front alongside the peasantry, the progressive national-bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeoisie, and lumpen-proletarians who have decided to join the revolution.
China and Russia have made statements regarding the situation that have led some to believe they are allies of Niger, or at least not explicitly opposed to the coup. “Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia called for all sides in Niger to show restraint, and for the fastest possible return to legal order.”(2) Aljazeera reported on a supposed Wagner Group statement that was explicit in support for Niger: “What happened in Niger is nothing other than the struggle of the people of Niger with their colonizers.”(3) “The Chinese government intends to provide good offices, play a mediating role so that a political resolution to the crisis in Niger could be found with full respect to countries in the region,” the ambassador said at a meeting with Niger’s rebel-appointed prime minister, Ali Lamine Zeine. (4)
In a march called by supporters of coup leader Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani in Niamey, Niger, Sunday, July 30, 2023. The sign reads: “Down with France, long live Putin.”
Can Niger throw off Amerika and France by allying with China and Russia? Certainly the hystory of the struggle of the oppressed shows that the tactical utility of the contradictions between the oppressors is indispensable to the revolutionary struggle. But without scientific leadership these complex contradictions cannot be managed and alliance with one or another imperialist will result in a change of oppressor and not the overthrow of all oppression. We believe in the strength of the people of Niger, and the CNSP government may succeed in cutting french monopoly in the interests of the nation. This will heighten the contradiction, leading to the preconditions for war and contributing to the world conditions for another Great Inter-Imperialist World War as Niger struggles for allies. Imperialism, rotting alive for more than 100 years, is in a dubious position to survive such an event.
Greetings, To all the “Warriors”, “Soldiers”, and “Comrades”, a new day is at hand. Those that have been subjected to “colonial rule” are rising up and ousting the “puppet regimes” installed by the enemy.
The brothers and sisters over in Afrika are saying “enough is enough!”. Those Afrikans over in France are also rising up! It’s only a matter of time before the Black, Brown, Red. and Yellow souljahs here on these shores say “Down with the imperialists and their flunkies!”.
We must unite and stand with those who wish to overthrow the puppets and install a government for the people and by the people.
On 15 April 2023, a clash between two military forces broke out in the capital city of Khartoum in Sudan.(1) Two military generals, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head each of the sides involved. Out of the two military factions, the more “regular” armed troops of Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) are led by Burhan, with the militia oriented Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Dagalo.(2)
The Political-Economic Prelude to the 2023 Conflict
On 30 June 1989, Omar al-Bashir came to power in Sudan in a coup d’etat. For three decades Bashir ruled Sudan under a military dictatorship where Dagalo gained prominence as a General of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Under Bashir, the Rapid Support Forces grew out of the Janjaweed militias mostly compromising of the southern Sudanese peasantry. In the early 2000s, the RSF helped the SAF crush the rebellion in the western region of Darfur.(3)
Under the military dictatorship of Bashir, Dagalo received gold mines for his actions in the RSF. Burhan also had close ties politically with Bashir.(4) However, with the turbulent political climate that the military dictatorship of Bashir created among the civilian population, the SAF and the RSF have ousted Bashir and the military dictatorship alongside civilian protests. This coup-de-etat, birthed a short-lived civilian government that went by the name of the Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC) led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok with elections to have originally taken place in 2023. Despite Hamdok’s appeals to the people’s movement at the time, he has also had backing from the U.$. imperialists aimed to make sure the new governing force in Sudan remained friendly to the United $tates. Previously, al-Bashir had defied the Clinton regime in the U.$. by harboring Al-Qaeda’s Osama Bin-Laden during the military dictator’s reign.
In October 2021, al-Burhan along with Dagalo led a coup d’etat against Hamdok which ended the two year long civilian rule born out of the people-power revolution.
Current Situation
Most of the current fighting is being done in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. On the second day of the conflict, the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors have reported that 56 people were killed and nearly 600 were injured. The World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement on 16 April 2023:
“There are also reports of shortages of specialized medical personnel, including anesthesiologists. Water and power cuts are affecting the functionality of health facilities, and shortages of fuel for hospital generators are also being reported.”(5)
The Russian imperialists have taken a stake in this conflict with the Wagner Group’s support for Dagalo’s RSF giving the militia surface-to-air missiles and military training to the RSF.(6) On the eve of Russia’s war with Ukraine, the Sudanese military’s lapdogs of Russian imperialism granted Russia access to Sudan’s gold in exchange for military and political support.(7)
The Chinese and the U.$. imperialists (alongside many other countries such as Egypt) have taken a more reserved stance on this conflict with more focus towards evacuating their countries’ personnel. Hundreds of Amerikan and other western imperialist countries have taken part in evacuation plans.(8)
On 27 April 2023, the civilian death toll has surpassed 500 with more than 5,000 injured and still counting according to The New York Times.(9) The bourgeoisie portray Africa as a chaos-torn continent with myriads of countries filled with constant violence, but we must remember that political-economic forces and class struggle drive the violence. The beef between Dagalo and al-Burhan is between a disagreement in assimilating Dagalo’s RSF to al-Burhan’s Sudanese military proper. While bourgeois rhetoric portrays this as humanity’s woes of famine, plague, and war that are embedded within our nature, the more scientific way to look at this picture is that the comprador-bourgeoisie (both Dagalo and al-Burhan) always struggle among themselves to be the principal lapdog for foreign imperialist forces (in this case primarily Russian). This is typical of neo-colonialism where multiple imperialist forces oftentimes have stake in a single semi-feudal neo-colony. Mao understood this for his country during semi-feudal China when the Japanese invaded, the western powers won’t let go of China without a fight. This led to the birth of a strategy by the people of having two or more imperialist forces fight amongst each other while the people maintain independence. While the current fighting is between anti-people forces, the workers and peasants of Sudan and Africa overall have the historical duty of ending these wars of the imperialists and compradors with revolutionary war of the proletariat.
Notes 1. The New York Times, “Chaos in Sudan: Who Is Battling for Power, and Why It Hasn’t Stopped” April 27, 2023.
2. Ibid.
3. Elian Peltier and Abdi Latif Dahir, “Who are the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitaries fighting Sudan’s Army?” New York Times April 17, 2023
4. Ibid.
5. CNN, “Fighting between Sudan military rivals enters a second day, with dozens dead” April 17, 2023.
6. Ibid. (The Wagner Group is a Russian paramilitary organization that first appeared in Ukraine as part of Russia’s seizure of territory there.)
7. CNN, “Russia is plundering gold in Sudan to boost Putin’s war effort in Ukraine” July 29, 2022
8. Jennifer Hansler, “US has evacuated American diplomatic personnel from Sudan” CNN April 24, 2023
“We can’t afford rent and we’re sleeping outside. The youths are
jobless” -Yaw Barimah, Ghanaian taxidriver
In late June 2022, street protests erupted in Ghana’s capital city,
Accra. The above quote matches the general feel and demands of the
masses who took to the streets. Most lay persons are aware of the
current effects of inflation on the daily lives of the average people.
Many of us have not made the necessary connection that such inflation
and other tricks capitalists use to increase the amount of surplus value
extracted from the populace, are inherently apart of the internal
dynamics of capitalism itself. Our failure to understand this brings our
protests, and dissent to a screeching halt once the point of economic
reformism is reached.
In countries dominated under imperialist neo-colonialism, such as
Ghana, the weight of economic exploitation is maximized. As conditions
sharpen, the exploited classes of Ghana are beginning to stir. On July
4th four teacher’s unions went on strike in opposition to the
neo-colonial government’s refusal to pay ‘cost-of-living allowances’ of
at least 20% of their wages.
The government holds the position that due to ‘Annual inflation’ now
reaching 27.6% and the accompanied reduction in value of the Cedi(1),
they’re unable to pay this allowance. The system of imperialism works in
a way that parasitic countries like amerika hold economic hegemony over
Third World countries like Ghana. This allows for the U.$. currency, the
dollar, to dictate the value of the national currencies of Third World
countries. What this means for the Ghanaian and other Third World
workers is that because their wages are paid in money, the national
currency, the amount of their pay, although the same on paper, is
devalued along with national currency.
Month-on-Month inflation rates for the Cedi
So the exploitation of the Ghanaian worker has intensified. Their
labor is still required to be done at the same rate, same hours labored,
same amount of labor, and same wage paid. What has changed is the value
of their labor power; with inflation, the amount of cedi it takes to
maintain the worker’s needs is greater. Yet wages have not increased, or
not increased as much.
To allow the common people to overstand our common interest in
overthrowing capitalist dictatorship it is necessary to understand and
breakdown plainly, the inner-working of capitalism and how it effects
the lives of the people.
In Ghana, as described above, and many other places around the world
right now, the mechanism being used by capitalist exploiters is the
depression of wages. This generally occurs when the wages of the worker
are below the value of their labor power. Labor power here means human
work, the sum total of a person’s physical and mental effort.(2) Labor
power is the primary factor in society’s production. Uniquely however,
only in capitalist society is labor power a commodity.
The process of commodification of labor power manifests itself in two
conditions: (1) The worker is ‘free’ in that they can ‘choose’ to sell
their labor as a commodity. (2) The worker owns nothing aside from their
labor power (what the mind/body can produce). They have no means of
productions, or means of living and must sell their labor power to
live.
Therefore, what we know as ‘employment’ in the capitalist economy
consists of capitalists buying the labor power of the laborer and
converting them into hired slaves.
The exploitation of workers is examined by the advent of surplus
value. The degree of exploitation is examined by the rate of surplus
value. The capitalist devises ways to maximize this rate of surplus
value, which brings me back to depression and deduction of wages.
To comprehend wages, we must first overstand that wages are a
‘disguise’. They are a way to fool the people into thinking they’re
getting equal value for their labor.
Marx said, “wages are not what they appear to be. They are not the
value or price of labor, but a disguised form of the value or price of
labor power.”(3) Therefore the capitalists notion that they pay the
worker the price of their labor is completely fabricated.
A key in understanding political economy is to comprehend the
distinction between labor and labor power. Under capitalism what the
worker is selling isn’t labor, but is labor power, which is capable of
being commodified, while the former (labor) isn’t.
The next logical question is why? why is labor not a commodity?
Commodities exist in their final state prior to being sold, labor
doesn’t. Also commodities are exchanged for equal value, according to
the law of value. Therefore if labor was a commodity the capitalist
should pay the full value created by labor, which would eliminate
surplus value (the source of profit), which would eliminate
capitalism.
If labor was a commodity, it would have value and that value would be
determined by the amount of embodied labor. This can’t happen. How can
the value of a phenomenon be determined by the value of itself?
What labor is is the process of labor power. Therefore the wage paid
to the laborer is equal to the value of the labor power. In other words,
it is the amount required to keep the proletariat as a class alive and
working – that is the value of labor power. Whatever extra the worker’s
labor power produces above the value of labor power (the wage paid to
keep the proletariat alive) is called surplus value and
it is what is ‘exploited’ by the capitalist. The wage itself is the
chain that binds the exploiter to the exploited. The revolutionary
demand must be to abolish the wage system.
The term ‘cost of living allowance’, caused me to think of our need
to overstand where the idea of ‘cost of living’ or ‘standard of living’
has its roots.
We begin by concluding that these are two distinctive wages. In the
political economy of capitalism, there are nominal
wages and there are real wages. Nominal wages
are expressed by the wage payment of money.
In our quest to find the ‘cost of living’, we can’t use nominal wages
as representation. The cost of living will only be reflected by the
amount of means of livelihood which can be bought by the money wage
(nominal wage). What the nominal wage can purchase is the cost/standard
of living and is called real wages.
Declining value of Ghana’s cedi priced in U.$. dollars
What is taking place in Ghana is that there is a contradiction
between the nominal and real wages. The nominal wage is being held in
place, while the real wage is in a downward trend, a decline.
“When the purchasing power of money declines and the prices of the
means of livelihood go up, the same amount of the nominal wage can only
be exchanged for a smaller amount of means of livelihood. Then the real
wage falls. Sometimes even if the nominal wage goes up a bit, but less
than the increase in prices of the means of livelihood, the real wage
will still decline.”(4)
This is essentially what we observe playing out in real time in Ghana
and elsewhere. As the above quote alludes to, simple economic reforms
like increase in wage will not end this phenomenon, the elimination of
surplus value is the only solution. The bourgeoisie will always use the
tools of inflation, price increases and rent increases to increase the
contradiction between the nominal wage (money paid) and the real wage
(what can be bought) to increase the rate of surplus value accumulation
(the exploitation of the people).
In conclusion, I want to point out that while the protests organized
by Arise Ghana and the work strike by the four teacher’s unions are
significant struggles for the daily hurdles of life for the Ghanaian
people, the people must be made to distinguish between the causes and
effects of economic hardship. When a sick person has a cold and a
running nose, they don’t merely get a tissue for the nose without curing
the cold itself. The people exploited by imperialism must synthesize the
economic and political struggles.
Closing with a word from Marx,
“The working class should not forget: in this daily struggle they are
only opposing the effect, but not the cause that produces this effect;
they are only delaying the downward trend, not changing the direction of
the trend; they are only suppressing the symptom, not curing the
disease.”(5)
DOWN WITH CAPITALIST-IMPERIALISM!!!
Notes: (1) The Cedi is the national currency of
Ghana. (2) Fundamentals of Political Economy, edited by George C.
Wang,;Chapt.4,pg.59 (3)K.Marx,Critique of the Gotha Program,selected
work of Marx &Engels Vol.3 (4)Fundamentals of Political
Economy,chapt.4,pg72 (5)K.Marx, Wages,Prices and Profit, Selected
Works of Marx &Engels, Vol.2
Anti-imperialists watching the Horn of Africa have sounded the alarm
that Amerikans are scheming to further their exploitation of Ethiopia.
In May, United States Agency of International Development (USAID) Bureau
for Humanitarian Assistance head Sarah Charles spoke to the U.$.
Congress about how the Ethiopian government and other armed forces were
restricting the access of Amerikan staff and equipment in the
country.(1) Ten days before the 21 June 2021 elections in Ethiopia, the
U.$. State Department issued a statement expressing “grave” concern
about the conditions of the elections and said they were ready to “help
Ethiopia address these challenges” in order to cast doubt on election
results.(2)
Many concerned about the talk coming from the U.$. government refer
to Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria as warnings of what could happen
in Ethiopia. Amerikan troops left the infamous sprawling Bagram Airfield
in Afghanistan on 2 July 2021, allowing looters to enter the grounds the
following day.(3) In 2001, the U.$. overthrew the Taliban-ruled
government of Afghanistan. Twenty years later, the Taliban are poised to
regain control of the country following the longest war in U.$. history.
All peace-loving people have an interest in preventing another one of
these long, drawn out wars that have become the norm for U.$.
imperialism as it struggles to dominate the rest of the world.
U.$. imperialists have already begun waging warfare in the form of
economic sanctions against both Ethiopia and Eritrea. Meanwhile, they
continue to push for access by USAID and its affiliated NGOs to meddle
in African affairs. The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front(TPLF)
launched attacks on the Ethiopian armed forces back in November 2020,
which began the war that seems to have reached a stopping point this
July and has been used by the Amerikans as a reason to get involved. The
TPLF led the Ethiopian government until 2018 when the TPLF president
resigned due to popular pressure. In addition to domestic abuses, they
led Ethiopia in a war for territory against Eritrea during that time.
Eritrea has made peace with the new Ethiopian government led by Abiy
Ahmed and sided with Ethiopia in the recent war against the TPLF.
Ethiopia’s Importance
Ethiopia is the 12th most populated country in the world, and the
second most populated in Africa. In the 1970s, the Derg government led a
quick, forced nationalization of the Ethiopian economy. Current
President Abiy Ahmed has overseen the privatization and liberalizations
of the economy, which began after 1991, when Ethiopia shifted from the
Soviet Union to a U.$. client state. These moves by Abiy will increase
foreign investment and involvement in Ethiopian industry. A 2018 plan by
the Abiy-led government targeted 25% growth rates in manufacturing until
2025.(4) While falling short so far, this indicates their intentions to
become Africa’s leading manufacturing hub. In other words, the Ethiopian
masses still living in semi-feudal conditions are a potential source of
a newly proletarianized population for imperialist corporations to
extract surplus value from.
During the recent conflict, Abiy froze the assets of many TPLF
associated companies with U.$. and other foreign investments, which may
have concerned the Amerikans as well.
As part of their new plan to provide power for this growth in
industry, Ethiopia has been operationalizing the new Grand Ethiopian
Renaissance Dam (GERD). On 6 July 2021, Ethiopia began the second stage
of filling the dam. The Egyptian and Sudanese governments have been
calling for U.N. intervention for fear of the impact on their water
supplies. This will be the biggest hydroelectric project in Africa.(5)
Egypt (run by U.$.-backed dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi) has indicated
it would support intervention in Ethiopia to stop this project by saying
all options are on the table. Egypt is one of the most important U.$.
client states, historically falling in the top 3 receivers of military
aid from the imperialists. The Trump administration had supported
Egypt’s interests regarding the dam, and we expect U.$. support to
continue.
Land-locked Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea is through Eritrea or
Djibouti. Djibouti is a small country between Eritrea and Somaliland. It
is the home of AFRICOM, the United $tates military’s Africa Command, and
a number of other imperialist militaries. These military bases provide
5% of Djibouti’s GDP. China has their only foreign military base in
Djibouti, making it a potential location of conflict between the
Amerikan and Chinese imperialists. This location is also important for
access between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea including
large movements of fossil fuels.
President Abiy has formed alliances with Eritrea and Somalia,
countries the U.$. has used Ethiopia to destabilize in the past. This
show of unity in the Horn of Africa could allow for greater serving of
African interests, rather than Amerikan interests.
Strong Marxist History
National liberation struggles influenced by Marx, Lenin and Mao are
central to the recent history of Ethiopia and Eritrea. In its early
days, MIM often mentioned Eritrea as one of the locations of a
liberatory people’s war in the 1980s. Current President of Eritrea,
Isaias Afewerki, was one of the first members of the Eritrean Liberation
Forces(ELF) to train in socialist China in 1967. He was later part of
the leadership to form the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF),
which split from the ELF and combined the ELF’s strong nationalism with
an explicit Marxist-Leninist line and the strategy of People’s
War.(6)
In Ethiopia a series of Marxist-Leninist organizations emerged to
challenge the feudal system of Haile Selassie. This led to the removal
of Haile Selassie by his own military leaders in 1974, who formed the
Derg government. The Derg undertook a massive nationalization campaign,
labeling itself “Marxist-Leninist” and a socialist state in 1975. The
Derg assigned head of state to U.$.-trained Mengistu Haile Mariam, but
became an ally of the social-imperialist USSR. Their national-brougeois
ideas fit nicely with the revisionist distortions of Soviet
“Marxism-Leninism.”(7)
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front also began in the revolutionary
period of the 1960s. By the late 1970s it was waging guerilla war
against the Derg, under the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist League of
Tigray. At this time there was a split in the revolutionary movement of
Ethiopia around the question of secession, with the Eritrean People’s
Liberation Front leading the call for the right to self-determination of
Eritrea independent of Ethiopia. Others saw secessionist movements in
Ethiopia as linked to the reactionary regionalism of feudalism, and a
division of the peasant masses.(8)
In 1991, MIM Notes celebrated the overthrow of the
“social-fascist Mengistu regime” by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary
Democratic Front(EPRDF) as well as the Eritrean People’s Liberation
Front(EPLF), which abstained from the provisional government of Ethiopia
opting for independence instead. They noted, “MIM doesn’t have much
information about the”revolutionary programs” of the EPRDF, so we must
watch and let the practice of both the EPRDF and EPLF speak for
itself.”(9) Yet, MIM Notes had already quoted the New York
Times under the heading “Victories Betrayed”:
“The best insurance against another hard-line Marxist regime in
Ethiopia appears to be the presence in Ethiopia immediately after the
EPRDF’s victory, of an Amerikan, Paul B. Henze.
“Henze, the station chief of the Central Intelligence Agency at the
United States Embassy in Addis Ababa from 1969 to 1972, was invited to
the capital as a personal guest of President Meles. He spent five weeks
in Ethiopia advising Meles and was upbeat when he left. ‘Meles is
pragmatic,’ Henze says. ‘He and his colleagues are not bothering with
ideological matters. Ethiopia has a good chance of becoming a productive
country.’”(10)
Meles Zenawi was a member of the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray
before becoming the first president of Ethiopia under the EPRDF
government. As the CIA agent predicted, rather than struggling against
differences between classes and nationalities in Ethiopia, the TPLF used
its power to dominate the government at the expense of other
nationalities and regions, and it soon became a pawn of U.$. imperialism
in its maneuvering for power. As a result, by 1998, Meles(TPLF)-led
Ethiopia had invaded Isaias(EPLF)-led Eritrea. It appears that both
organizations abandoned their Marxist-Leninist lines prior to the
overthrow of the Derg and their seizing of state power as part of the
process of forming the united front against the Derg. This indicates
that there were right-opportunist, liquidationist errors within the
leadership of both movements that allowed them to put the liberation
struggle and overthrow of the Derg above and in place of the struggle
for socialism and a dictatorship of the proletariat. They did not heed
the lessons of Mao’s China on how to keep proletarian leadership within
a united front of class interests against imperialism. This led to
reactionary bourgeois nationalism to play the leading role in these
countries, despite the promising Marxist origins of this shift in power.
The result gives credence to the warnings from those Marxists who argued
against regionalism and secession and opposed the politics of the
earlier ELF and original TPLF.
The Organization for African Unity, started by leaders like Kwame
Nkrumah and Haile Selassie, also took up a line that it was against the
interests of the people of Africa to begin dismantling the states that
were amalgamations of peoples imposed by the colonial powers. History
has proven this strategy to be effective in preventing divisions among
the oppressed. Nkrumah had hoped for the OAU to become a federal
government uniting all of Africa, but that strategy did not win out.
At the same time, Maoists recognize the right to self-determination
of all nations. And the liberation movement in Eritrea held much promise
leading up to liberation. Eritrea also differed from other regions in
Ethiopia in that it was previously a separately administered state under
Italian colonial occupation. Today, Eritrea remains the only country in
Africa without AFRICOM presence, leading to much derision from the
United $tates and Europe over the years. They took pride in their
non-aligned stance in a world divided by the United $tates and the
social imperialist Soviet Union. In 1984, Isaias Afewerki also declared
they had no links or support from China. They did not take a position on
whether China was still socialist at the time. Isaias did look at Cuba
as an example of what happens when you become a client state of the
Soviet Union. Isaias claimed the Cubans disagreed with USSR policy in
Ethiopia and Eritrea, yet Cuban troops operated in Derg-ruled Ethiopia
on behalf of Soviet interests in the 1980s.(11)
While Eritrea has a history of independence and remaining politically
neutral, they have recently provided support for the U.$./Saudi war on
Yemen that has led to a massive loss of humyn life since 2015. This was
likely motivated by financial gain.(12) In the 1980s, South Yemen was in
solidarity with the Eritrean liberation struggle despite opposition by
the imperialist Soviet Union. Like Cuba, South Yemen took on the form of
“Marxist-Leninist” state years after its liberation under the influence
of the Soviet Union. Like the Cubans, they seemed to recognize the
righteousness of the Eritrean liberation struggle. Today, we cannot view
the Eritrean leadership as serving real self-determination when they are
being pitted against Yemen by the imperialists. Ultimately, it was the
abandonment of proletarian politics that led Eritrean leadership to side
with imperialism in the Middle East.
While revisionism seems to have thwarted the popular revolutionary
forces in the Horn of Africa in the late 20th century, the proletarian,
revolutionary line is no stranger to the people of the region. This is
further evidenced by President Abiy having to specifically address and
critique Marx, Lenin and Mao in his recent book.(13) It is only through
the unified struggle of all African people that the current violence,
death and starvation can be properly ended. U.$. and other imperialist
involvement will continue to pit Africans against Africans and other
oppressed people.
Our Role in the Horn of
Africa
In April 2018, Abiy Ahmed of the Oromo Democratic Party was elected
Prime Minister of the EPRDF government of Ethiopia. This marked the end
of TPLF leadership in the EPRDF, which was replaced by the Prosperity
Party coalition in November 2019, excluding TPLF. After his
confirmation, Abiy quickly established peace with Eritrea, still headed
by Isaias Afewerki. This was a historic peace agreement, returning land
to Eritrea that the TPLF had been occupying, signalling unity in the
region against the U.$.-backed TPLF. Eritrea and Ethiopia have remained
united in the war that began in November 2020 with a TPLF attack on
Ethiopian forces. Until the people of the region can mount
proletarian-led struggles for power again, the Eritrean-Ethiopian
alliance remains important for strengthening the region against further
meddling by foreign imperialism.
Our role in all of this is determined by the imperial nature of the
United $tates government. Like all people in the world, it is our duty
to build towards a dictatorship of the proletariat in our own backyard.
But we have the added duty of countering the imperial machinations of
our current government.
We should expose the imperialist nature of State Department agencies
like USAID that want to present themselves as humanitarian
organizations. While President Trump celebrated the Ethiopia and Eritrea
peace deal, the Biden administration has brought those favoring
intervention in the Horn of Africa back into the White House.
Toward the end of his presidency, Barack Obama appointed Gayle Smith
to Administer USAID. Gayle Smith was first employed by USAID in 1994.
She had lived in EPLF-run areas dating back to the 1970’s, where she was
a “journalist” working undercover for the CIA. She later spent time
embedded with the TPLF where she mentored Meles Zenawi, who would go on
to wage decades of war against the EPLF.(14) Another close confidant of
Meles was Susan Rice, who was national security advisor to Barack
Obama.(13) And as we mentioned above, Meles had open relations with
local CIA agents from the very beginning of his presidency.
In 2021, Biden has appointed Samantha Power to head USAID. Samantha
Power had succeeded Susan Rice as Obama’s ambassador to the United
Nations after being mentored by both Rice and Obama. Rice was involved
in the violent separation of South Sudan from Sudan and lied about mass
rapes to justify the invasion of Libya. Rice and Power worked with
Hillary Clinton to greenlight the invasion of that killed Muammar
Gaddafi, which Clinton later laughed about on television.
In 2013, Power led the charge within the Obama administration to bomb
Syria, which Rice came around to support. Power’s book A Problem
From Hell justifies intervention against genocide. She used this
mission statement of hers to justify bombing Syria and Libya, and now
stands behind it to intervene and defend the TPLF.(15) We oppose the
continued expansion of U.$. troops in Africa since President Bush
started AFRICOM in 2008. U.$. support for the TPLF clearly aims to
divide Africans so that they can be better controlled for the benefit of
imperialist-country corporations.
by MIM(Prisons) April 2019 permalink
Black Alliance for Peace Representatives deliver petitions to U.$.
Congress.
The campaign
to get the U.$. military operations of AFRICOM out of Africa has
been popularized in recent months. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP)
initiated a petition drive, which they extended to 4 April 2019, the
anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Comrades
in United Struggle from Within stepped up and made a substantial
contribution to this drive from within the U.$. koncentration kamps.
To add to
the
list(1) of California, Texas, Louisiana and Georgia, USW comrades
came through with petitions from Oregon, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and
Colorado. California and Texas also produced quite a few more
signatures. And some individuals from Maryland and West Virginia sent
their signatures in as well. A large number of our subscribers are in
long-term isolation and therefore collecting others’ signatures is very
difficult.
BAP submitted about
3500
signatures to the Congressional Black Congress chairperson and
co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.(2) With the additional
193 signatures we received since our last report we have submitted 423
signatures to the campaign. That is more than 10% of the total
signatures collected! United Struggle from Within made a significant
contribution to this campaign.
Of course, that is a small victory in the large task of ending U.$.
imperialism in Africa. An anti-imperialist message was brought to
sections of Congress, and the streets of Washington D.C., by BAP last
week. In solidarity, USW popularized the message behind the bars of U.$.
koncentration kamps. When doing campaigns like petition drives, the
interactions we have with the masses when collecting the signatures is
even more important than the interactions BAP leaders have with
Congress. Congress will not and can not end U.$. imperialism, only the
oppressed people of the world have the power to do that. And that is why
building unity among the oppressed around these issues is of utmost
importance to our mission.
The torture and abuse enacted on the oppressed nations within U.$.
borders is a product of the same system that is dropping bombs and
unleashing brutal violence in African countries from Somalia, to Libya,
to Nigeria. That is why MIM(Prisons) and United Struggle from Within are
dedicated to the anti-imperialist prison movement in the United $tates.
Without anti-imperialism, the prison movement is limited to treating the
symptoms and not the disease.
The struggle to get AFRICOM out of Africa continues. If you did not get
a campaign pack with info on AFRICOM, write us to get a copy. Discuss
what is going on in the Third World with those around you. Relate it to
the oppression felt here. Write articles for ULK. Our 423
signatures did not shut down AFRICOM, but the oppressed will shut down
AFRICOM some day.
Anti-imperialists got a little taste of good news from Trump last month
when ey announced plans to pull troops out of Syria. Ey later
backpedaled saying ey did not set a timeline for such a pull out. But
Trump has long made comments indicating that the new focus of U.$.
strategy will be to combat China and Russia. In other words, the war on
oppressed nations, particularly in the middle east and north Africa, and
euphemistically dubbed the “War on Terror,” will no longer be the
primary focus.
It has always been MIM line that we are in a period of World War III,
that is a low intensity war by the imperialists against the oppressed
nations. The hegemony of the United $tates allowed for this to be the
focus in the decades following World War II. That hegemony is fading,
and the emergence of a fourth world war, or a third inter-imperialist
war is bubbling to the surface.
Of course, inter-imperialist war does not mean the oppressed nations get
a reprieve from the needless brutality of capitalism, as
inter-imperialist war is always about carving up the oppressed nations
for their resources and markets. Enter “Prosper Africa”, the plan
announced by U.$. National Security Advisor John Bolton in December.
Bolton stated, “America’s vision for the region is one of independence,
self-reliance and growth, not dependency, domination and debt.”(1) This
is a hypocritical jab at China, from the country who has done more to
make Africa dependent and in debt in the last half-century than any
other. At the same time the Trump administration is calling for more
“honest” dealings with Africa, that recognize U.$. economic and
political interests more openly.
The “Prosper Africa” plan coincides with Pentagon plans to reduce U.$.
troops in Africa by 10%. Nothing close to our
demands
to shut down Africom, rather a subtle adjustment of current U.$.
strategy. The immediate focus seems to be drawing hard lines in the sand
of the African continent between those compliant with U.$. imperialism
and those who are not.
In recent years, China has joined forces with other emerging imperialist
or sub-imperialist nations with independent banking capital including
Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa (BRICS). As a group, the BRICS
countries have greatly increased trade with African countries over the
last decade. Increases in trade on the whole is a benefit to the
well-being of all peoples involved. While this trade provides outlets
and opportunities for capital from countries with growing finance
capital, the established imperialist powers (the United $tates and
France) face a reduction in their access to markets and in their ability
to strong arm the oppressed nations of the world into serving their
interests. This threatens to contribute to economic crisis in the
advanced imperialist economies, and trigger more militaristic and
desperate actions politically.
The Trump administration has hinted at pulling support from United
Nations (U.N.) “peacekeeping” missions in Africa. While opposing the
U.N. garners support from white nationalists subscribing to
isolationalism and Amerikkkan exceptionalism, the real motivation here
is likely to reduce Chinese influence in the region. More than 2,500
Chinese troops are stationed in war zones created by U.$. and French
imperialism in South Sudan, Liberia and Mali. China accounted for 1/5 of
the U.N. troops pledged to operations in Africa in 2015.(2)
China established its first military base outside of China in 2017 at
the strategic location of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. This is in
line with a shift in Chinese foreign policy over the last decade from
non-interference to “protecting our country’s over-seas interests.”(3)
The United $tates, France and Japan are among the countries with
existing bases in Djibouti, where the government depends on military
leases as an important source of income.
The U.$.-backed coup and murder of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 helped break
the continent’s resistance to Africom. Up until then Africom had to
operate out of Europe. With the pan-Africanist government in Libya out
of the way, Africom was able to operate from within Africa for the first
time. Now the United $tates has at least 46 military bases in Africa and
close military relations with 53 out of the 54 African countries. Many
countries have agreements to cede operational command of their
militaries to Africom.(4)
While the coup in Libya was a victory for U.$. imperialism, it continues
to be a disaster for Libyans, with repercussions for the whole region.
The United $tates will have a much harder time stemming the
still-expanding Chinese pole that challenges U.$. hegemony in Africa. As
this contradiction threatens the world with inter-imperialist war, it
offers opportunities for the oppressed to move independently as cracks
widen in the imperialist system.
On 13 January 2019, MIM(Prisons) sent 230 signatures on the petition to
shut down Africom to the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) who will be
presenting them to the Black Congressional Congress after the Martin
Luther King Jr. holiday. This petition calls for the disbanding of
Africom (a U.$. imperialist tool to control African militaries), the
removal of all U.$. military bases on African soil and the end to U.$.
invasions, bombings and other military operations on the continent.
So far we have received petitions from United Struggle from Within (USW)
comrades in California, Texas, Louisiana and Georgia. BAP is accepting
signatures until April 4 – the anniversary of the assassination of
Martin Luther King, Jr. We encourage people to write to us for petitions
ASAP and get your signatures in to us by April 1. And we encourage
comrades to continue to spread information on this topic to build public
opinion against U.$. imperialism in Africa.
USW comrades faced resistance in carrying out this campaign from staff
and some prisoners. One USW cell lost 2 sheets of signatures in an
altercation with a racist prisoner who opposed its work. Elsewhere in
California, prison staff were ordered to target anti-Africom fliers for
removal, and USW comrades were targeted for their leadership which
forced signature gathering to end early. We have seen increased mail
tampering and censorship with California comrades since this campaign
began. If it weren’t for repression, we would have had twice the number
of signatures to submit before the deadline.
While our numbers weren’t as high as the goal set by USW, comrades did a
good job of turning this around on relatively short notice. Our slow
lines of communication limit our ability to organize swiftly. So this
was good experience for us in improving in that realm. One thing we need
to do better next time is to have a larger list of USW members to
forward campaign materials to. If you are a member of USW and did not
get the Africom campaign packet, let us know and keep us updated on your
organizing work so that you stay on our list of active USW members.
Below are some reports we received back with the completed petitions.
A USW cell in California: Here are 54 signatures we gathered. I
hoped there’d be more but all our volunteers backed out on us at the
last minute. At least one volunteer was reluctant to participate due to
fear of repression. Besides that however it was a good campaign overall.
The fliers with the timeline really came in handy. They helped us
explain to people what the petition was about. In many instances me and
another volunteer spoke at length to people about the nature of the
campaign making it clear that our focus here was the oppressed &
exploited people of Africa. In some situations, however, we found
ourselves agitating for this campaign by talking about the fact that
even Amerikan troops’ lives were being needlessly sacrificed so that the
U.$. government could secure the free flow of natural resources out of
Africa. We did this keeping in mind how the Vietnamese National
Liberation Front established relations with just about every and any
Amerikan organization that was critical of U.$. involvement in Vietnam.
The Vietnamese were smart in the respect that they were able to
masterfully exploit every crack and division in the domestic U.$.
anti-war movement.
A great many signatories were Mexican nationals and nationals from
different Central American countries who didn’t have to listen to more
than the basics of our line before they signed. When agitating amongst
this Spanish-speaking population we also found ourselves linking the
plight of the Central American caravan to that of African refugees
stranded at sea being denied entry into Europe.
Only three people refused to give us their signatures. Two of these
people were skeptical from the gate and requested more information on
Africom, which we happily handed over, whereas one refused to believe us
and called us liars. All three were “brown proud patriots.”
In closing, we’d like to thank the Black Alliance for Peace for letting
us be a part of this campaign. While gathering signatures we found that
prisoners were empathetic to the plight of Africans at the hands of U.$.
imperialism in this new scramble for Africa. Surely the great African
masses will successfully resist U.$. oppression, exploitation and
domination, eject the colonizers and have a principal role in defeating
U.$. imperialism once and for all. We hope we’ve made a difference. In
Struggle!
Earlier these comrades had reported: We made copies of existing
fliers and put them up in different buildings beforehand in an effort to
build public opinion for the campaign. Unfortunately, we just received
word a couple days ago that all the fliers we put up were taken down by
officers on the orders of their superiors. When officers were asked why
the fliers were removed they said they didn’t know, they just received a
call explaining to them what to look for and to remove them. This is
highly suspect since our fliers were up along with a variety of other
fliers on an informational board with over 30 fliers including religious
propaganda. Yet the Africom campaign fliers were singled out and
removed. All this follows an odd run-in with security squad about a
month ago. We’ve since put the fliers back up.
A report from another USW cell in California: I have enclosed 1
sheet [30 signatures] for the petition to dissolve the Africom military
command. There are two pages of missing signatures that we worked very
hard to acquire here. The problems last week started over a rude racist
comment about “nigger politics,” which was dealt with promptly on the
spot. [Two comrades from this USW cell ended up in the hole as a result
of this conflict.]
MIM(Prisons) adds: One comrade who did not participate in the
petition drive challenged the campaign to shut down Africom, and in
particular questioned Ajamu Baraka as a former Vice Presidential
candidate with the Green Party. While MIM(Prisons) did not endorse
Baraka’s electoral campaign, we whole-heartedly support this campaign to
get U.$. imperialism out of Africa, and stand with Baraka on
revolutionary nationalist positions such as the one ey took in a recent
article responding to the Prosper Africa plan:
“Africans in the U.S. must make a choice. Malcolm said you cannot sit at
the table and not have any food in front of you and call yourself a
diner. Africans in the U.S. have been sitting at the table of U.S.
citizenship and calling themselves ‘Americans’ while our people are
murdered, confined to cages in prisons, die giving birth to our
children, die disproportionately before the age of five, live in
poverty, are disrespected and dehumanized. A choice must be made, do you
throw in with this dying system or do you align with the working class
and oppressed peoples of the world.”(1)
“The imperialists export fascism to many Third World countries via
puppet governments. And imperialist countries can turn to fascism
themselves. But it is important to note that there is no third choice
for independent fascism in the world: they are either imperialist or
imperialist-puppets. Germany, Spain, Italy and Japan had all reached the
banking stage of capitalism and had a real basis for thinking they could
take over colonies from the British and French. … The vast majority of
the world’s fascist-ruled countries have been U.$. puppets.” – MIM
Congress, “Osama Bin Laden and the Concept of ‘Theocratic Fascism’”,
2004
What MIM wrote about
Osama
Bin Laden in 2004 is just as true for the Islamic State today. Those
who call the Islamic State fascist use an unsophisticated definition of
fascism that may mean anything from “bad” to “undemocratic” to
anti-United $tates. But the idea that it is in the Third World where we
find fascism today is correct.
Much funding for the Islamic State has come from rich Saudis. For this,
and other reasons, many people have tried to put the fascist label on
the obscurantist monarchy of Saudi Arabia. Despite having almost the
same per capita GDP (PPP) as the United $tates, it is by geological luck
and not the development of imperialist finance capital that Saudis enjoy
such fortune.
A word often associated with fascism is genocide. More recently
Saudi Arabia is getting some “fascist” rhetoric thrown at it from the
Russian camp for its war on Yemen. What is currently happening in Yemen
is nothing less than genocide. A recent analysis by the Yemen Data
Project showed that more than a third of the “Saudi” bombings in that
country have targeted schools, hospitals, mosques and other civilian
infrastructure.(1) We put “Saudi” in quotes here because the war to
maintain the puppet government in Yemen is completely supplied by the
imperialists of the U.$., UK and Klanada, along with U.$. intelligence
and logistical support. The United $tates has been involved in
bombing
Yemen for over a decade, so it is a propaganda campaign by the U.$.
media to call it the “Saudi-led coalition.” In October 2016, the United
$tates bombed Yemen from U.$. warships that had long been stationed just
offshore, leaving little doubt of their role in this war. A war that has
left 370,000 children at risk of severe malnutrition, and 7 million
people “desperately in need of food,” according to UNICEF.(2)
This is another example where we see confusion around the definition of
fascism feeds anti-Islamic, rather than anti-Amerikan, lines of
thinking, despite the majority of victims in this war being proletarian
Muslims in a country where 40% of the people live on less than $2 a day.
In countries where the imperialists haven’t been able to install a
puppet government they use other regional allies to act as the bad guy,
the arm of imperialism. It is an extension of neo-colonialism that leads
to inter-proletarian conflict between countries. We see this with Uganda
and Rwanda in central Africa, where another genocide has been ongoing
for 2 decades. While Uganda and Rwanda have their own regional
interests, like Saudi Arabia, they are given the freedom to pursue them
by U.$. sponsorship. And we are not anti-Ugandan, because Uganda is a
proletarian country with an interest in throwing out imperialist
puppets. Even Saudi Arabia, which we might not be able to find much of
an indigenous proletariat in, could play a progressive role under
bourgeois nationalist leadership that allied with the rest of the Arab
world, and even with Iran.
Sometimes fascism is used as a synonym for police state. Many
in the United $tates have looked to the war on drugs, the occupation of
the ghettos, barrios and reservations, gang injunctions and the massive
criminal injustice system and talked about rising fascism. We agree that
these are some of the most fascistic elements of our society. But many
of those same people will never talk about U.$. imperialism, especially
internal imperialism. This leads to a focus on civil liberties and no
discussion of national liberation; a reformist, petty bourgeois politic.
If we look at the new president in the Philippines, we see a more
extreme form of repression against drug dealers of that country. If the
U.$. injustice system is fascist, certainly the open call for
assassinating drug dealers in the street would be. But these are just
tactics, they do not define the system. And if we look at the system in
the Philippines, the second biggest headlines (after eir notorious
anti-drug-dealer rhetoric) that President Duterte is getting is for
pushing out U.$. military bases. This would be a huge win for the
Filipino people who have been risking their lives (under real fascist
dictatorships backed by the United $tates like Marcos) to protest U.$.
military on their land. This is objectively anti-imperialist. Even if
Duterte turns towards China, as long as U.$. imperialism remains the
number one threat to peace and well-being in the world, as it has been
for over half a century, this is good for the masses of the oppressed
nations.
The importance of the united front against fascism during World War II,
which was an alliance between proletariat and imperialist forces, was to
point out the number one enemy. While we don’t echo the Black Panther
Party’s rhetoric around “fascism,” they were strategically correct to
focus their attack on the United $tates in their own United Front
Against Fascism in 1969. And it was reasonable to expect that the United
$tates might turn fascist in face of what was a very popular
anti-imperialist movement at home and abroad. What dialectics teaches us
is the importance of finding the principal contradiction, which we
should focus our energy on in order to change things. Without a major
inter-imperialist rivalry, talking about fascism in a Marxist sense is
merely to expose the atrocities of the dominant imperialist power
committed against the oppressed nations.
Rather than looking for strategic shifts in the finance capitalist
class, most people just call the bad sides of imperialism “fascism.” In
doing so they deny that imperialism has killed more people than any
other economic system, even if we exclude fascist imperialism. These
people gloss over imperialism’s very existence. But MIM(Prisons) keeps
our eye on the prize of overthrowing imperialism, principally U.$.
imperialism, to serve the interests of the oppressed people of the
world.
Marcus Garvey and Amy Jacques
In response to the call to honor freedom fighters, it is an honor and
pleasure to journal the commemoration of New Afrikan freedom fighter Amy
Jacques Garvey.
So many today dismiss the Pan-Afrikan movement and its various bodies,
both within and outside of U.$. prisons, as that of an unnecessary call
and reference to an outdated idea. In the context of the proletarian
political causes, it is often the ultra-leftist who has taken up this
position.
However, in our attempts to fast forward the most correct methods of
resolving contradictions, we acknowledge that they come in the form of
class consciousness among nationalist leaders driven by internationalist
struggles led by the proletariat. The Pan-Afrikan movement is one likely
place where we find these elements.
Many prisoners are aware of the name
Marcus
Mosiah Garvey, but very few are familiar with Amy Jacques Garvey,
the wife of Marcus Garvey and the bone and marrow of the Universal Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA). Amy Garvey was a special person in the
history of liberation struggles. Born 31 December 1895 in Kingston,
Jamaica to a middle-upper class family, Amy Garvey was ahead of her
time. Though “all identity is individual, there is no individual
identity that is not historical or, in other words, constructed within a
field of social values, norms of behavior and collective symbols.”(1)
The mother of what author Ula Yvette Taylor coined “community feminism,”
Amy Garvey pressed the issue of lower class wimmin not only in serving
their male counterparts, but also educating themselves to become
political leaders in the nation. Today, lumpen wimmin of the internal
semi-colonies still find themselves criticized for either being
home-oriented or for sex. UNIA enjoyed support across gender and
promoted equality of the sexes. Yet, in practice, this “community
feminist” approach was a means of dealing with the expectations put on
wimmin to be supporters of men while still being political leaders.
While wimmin like Amy Garvey had to take on an unequal burden compared
to their male counterparts, their actions served to break down the
expectations of gendered roles, paving the way for others.
Amy Garvey empowered wimmin to confront racism, colonialism and
imperialism, while contesting masculine dominance as well.(2) As she
wrote, wimmin should use their “intelligence in a righteous cause” as
they are needed to “fill the breach, and fight as never before, for the
masses need intelligent dedicated leadership.”(3)
Since the 1920s, Amy Jacques Garvey’s organizing activities had sought
to further the decolonization of West Afrikan nations as people of
African descent endeavored to restructure their societies. The
antecedents of these largely nationalist movements were well-established
in Pan-Afrikan struggle that came into its own during the early 1940s,
including the fifth Pan-Afrikan Congress. Meanwhile, other power shifts
were occurring such as: the rise of the Soviet Union, liberation
struggles in southeast Asia, the independence of China and the
Asian-African
Bandung Conference.(4) Indeed, within this political milieu, “West
Afrikan nationalism and various brands of Pan-Africanism, could mix with
everything from Fabian socialism to Marxism-Leninism.”(5)
While engaging in the international arena, Amy Garvey also struggled
against fellow comrades of the UNIA. She was well known for her refusal
to hold her tongue on the contradictions that arose within, even at
times writing critical positions of Marcus Garvey himself. It resembles
so many of those within the belly of the beast babylon who struggle to
liberate themselves in order to offer liberation to their people, only
to be hushed by LO leadership.
Amy Garvey was from Jamaica and considered herself an Afrikan. She drove
home the point that people of Afrikan descent in the United $tates (New
Afrikans) and elsewhere were living as second-class citizens, largely as
a result of economic oppression. Today we see the second-class
citizenship that New Afrikans and Chican@s face as the biggest targets
of social isolation by the U.$. prison system. The second class that the
oppressed nations are being bred into today is what we call the First
World lumpen class. In the imperialist countries, that is the class that
has nothing to lose from a revolution except the very chains that bind
them to a bourgeois system that doesn’t serve them. “As the lumpen
experience oppression first hand here in Amerika, we are in a position
to spearhead the revolutionary vehicle within the U.$. borders.”(6)
The 2015 release of Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán
by a MIM(Prisons) study group introduces prisoners to the reality of
their class identity with the lumpen of oppressed internal semi-colonies
in North America.
“Kwame Nkrumah in his analysis of neo-colonialism in Africa defined it
as: ‘The essence of neo-colonialism is that the state which is subject
to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of
international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its
political policy is directed from outside.’ Nkrumah stressed the
importance of dividing the oppressed into smaller groups as part of this
process of preventing effective resistance to imperialism as had already
occurred in China, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba and elsewhere.”(7)
Amy Garvey too considered the likes of Kwame Nkrumah as her comrade,
alongside of Nnamdi Azikiwe, W.E.B. DuBois and George Padmore, just to
name a few. She was a disciplined, arduous scholar whose objective was
to fold Garveyism into existing progressive organizations, thus uniting
a divergent Pan-Afrikan world.
Many of the ideas that are circulated amongst the lumpen organizations
within the belly of the beast babylon are grafted from the ideas of the
peoples parties like the UNIA, whether they admit it or not. The proof
is in the pudding. Amy Garvey showed that one could stand on two legs
and not buckle under the pressure of integrationist culture.
Amy Garvey held Marcus Garvey up while he served his prison bid in
Atlanta, and took the driver’s seat of one of the world’s most
influential Negro organizations in its time when wimmin weren’t expected
to be political. It is so similar to the anti-imperialist prisoner
movement; prisoners aren’t expected to be political souljahs.
Death to babylon-imperialism!
MIM(Prisons) adds: MIM said that Pan-Afrikanism should be a
strategic question, and is not worth splitting over.(8) They also said
that Pan-Afrikanism has historically been the most progressive of the
“pan” ideologies. Clearly that the Pan-Afrikan mission has yet to
succeed in the dire need for effective revolutionary leadership is
evident in the recent revelations that
“In 2014, the U.S. carried out 674 military activities across Africa,
nearly two missions per day, an almost 300% jump in the number of annual
operations, exercises, and military-to-military training activities
since U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) was established in 2008.”(9)
The imperialists continue to foment the tribal divisions across the
African continent to wage proxy wars that amount to inter-proletarian
killing on the ground. The overwhelming proletarian character of the
populations in Africa gives Pan-Afrikanism its strong progressive
character.
