Marxist Historiography in West Africa

Fatou Janneh

2013

Conclusions
Marxist historiography is based on class struggle and the class struggle is said to
represent the contradictions in the economic structure of the society. Although, the
emphasis which Karl Marx placed on the role of the material factor in historical
development may be faulted on certain grounds, he had certainly made a great impact
on historiography by presenting a new approach to historical explanation. It is also
examined that Marxist historiography in West Africa evolved over time as a legacy of
colonialism and anti-imperialist struggle has given Marxism popular support in this
region and the continent in general. This radical response to the paradigm was
prompted by the emergence of Marxist historians, anthropologists and political scientists
in the 1970s. From the beginning of the 1970s, African history branched into various
specializations. Marxist historiography in West Africa is also appraised. It is also
discussed that the influence of Marxist Historiography is irrefutable, whether or not one
agrees with the political and radical aspects of Marxs overall beliefs.

Full paper from:

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INTRODUCTION
The term historiography has two interrelated meanings. It refers to the method, skill or
craft of writing history. J.H Hexter uses it in this sense. He defines historiography as the means
of communicating writing what the historian thinks he knows about the past. It also means the
yields or products of the application of the historians craft 1. There are many schools of
historiography. Some of these are the African historiography, Western historiography, Colonialist
1

historiography, and Marxist historiography. This paper seeks to examine Marxist historiography,
its influence in Africa as well as West Africa historiography.
To begin with, Marxist historiography is a school of historiography influenced by
Marxism. It is based squarely on materialist philosophy that is, the idea that everything that
exists is natural and all things follow laws of nature. Based on the materialist view of reality Karl
Marx began to study history and developed the ideology of Historical Materialism, which is
basically an embracing of the idea that everything that exists is natural and that all things happen
based on a cause and effect relationship. Therefore, the present is the product of past events.
Based on this it is possible to study past events, put them in context, and better understand the
present. Based on the idea of historical materialism the relationship of events, causes and effects
can be traced back through time2. By doing this it can be proven why the world is the way it is
today.
This school of historiography was part of the proliferation of philosophical ideas
witnessed in Europe during the 19th century. Part of this development was Leopold von Ranke
who initiated the professionalization of history as a distinct discipline with its own scientific
methodology and tools of analysis3. There is also a man call Fredrick Hegel whose ideas are
encapsulated in what is called the Theory of Dialectical Idealism4. To Hegel history is a dynamic
phenomenon and its objective is freedom but the movement towards this goal is through what is
called dialectical process. It is thus explained by him: Every situation is a thesis but it has
inherited opposing forces which are anti-forces. They break down the thesis to produce a new
situation; synthesis is also fundamentally a thesis5.
The moving force behind the historical motion according to Hegel is a spirit but this spirit is
cyclical in nature. According to him, human history passed through four periods. These are
Ancient civilization, Greek civilization, Roman civilization and German civilization 6. Karl
Marxs Philosophy of history is in a way connected with that of Hegel but he added his own
originality. Among which he imbibed was Dialectics. However, while Hegel dialectics is one of
ideas and abstract thing that of Marx is dialect of materials and substance. Karl Marx also shares
Hegels view that each society has a spirit and that spirit or genius is an organic one which is
responsible for the political and ideological structure of society7. However to him that structure is
2

the economy and not metaphysical. He asserted that economic was the most important field of
historical study, because he surmised that all characteristics of a society are as a result of the
economic basis of that society. Therefore, Marx concluded that in order to change the
characteristics of a society, it was a necessity to change economic basis of that society that is,
mans relationship to the means of production8.
MARXIST HISTORIOGRAPHY
The chief tenets of Marxist historiography are the centrality of social classes and
economic constraints in determining historical outcomes 8. To gain a true appreciation for what
Marxist Historiography entails, an understanding of Karl Marx is important. He was a German
philosopher and a political theorist focusing his attention on the interactions between those who
owned the means of production and those who supplied the production through their labour. He
was motivated not by a curiosity of industry but by a critical awareness of its shadowy side, the
industrial labourers sorrow, heartbreak, sweat, and toil10. Marx was also critical of religion,
believing that it was merely a construct to control the masses. Of course his most lasting legacy
was the spread of Communism as a political ideology, but it was his contribution to
historiography that offers what was, in his time, an entirely new and unique way of analyzing the
past.
Referred to by himself as the materialist conception of history and by many of his
followers as historical materialism, this is an interpretation of history as the result, above all, of
the economic development of society, of the consequent division of society into classes, and of
the struggle of these classes against each other 11. He nowhere used the expression historical
materialism, still dialectical materialism.12 In its classical form, as enunciated by Marx in the
1859 Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marxism interprets the
general course of human history by reference to the development of productive forces. The
growth and demise of different social and economic organisations- the relations of productioncorresponds to and is to be understood in terms of increasing productive capacity of society, or
the forces of production. These forces and relations of production combine to form a mode of
production13.

The central idea of this conception is that the essential element in an understanding of
human history is the productive activity of human beings-the way they obtained their means of
subsistence by interaction with nature. Marx expounded this materialist conception of history
most fully in The German ideology (1846) in conjunction with Engels 14. Here he claimed that
human beings first distinguished themselves from animals when they began to produce their
means of subsistence and enunciated his general thesis as follows:
The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first on
the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have
to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as
being the reproduction of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it
is a definite form of activity of the individuals, a definite form of expressing
their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individual express their
life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production,
both with their production, both with what they produce and with how
they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material
conditions determining the production15.
To Engel: The economic situation is the basis, but the various element of superstructure...also
exercise their influence upon the course of... historical struggles there is an interaction of these
elements. This is the Hegelian notion of dialectic taken over by Marx though applied not to the
realm of abstract ideas like Hegel, but to that of concrete material forces- and it is fundamental
to the understanding of Marxism. This interaction is, however, not always one of harmony;
there are moments of crisis16.
At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society
come into conflict with the existing relations of production or- this merely
expresses the same thing in legal terms- with the property relations within the
framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development
of productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begin an era
of social revolution. The charges in the economic foundation led sooner or
later to the transformation of the whole superstructure17.

Conflict arises, therefore, from the internal contradiction of society, from the uneven
development between the economic and the socio-political spheres. This conflict is expressed in
the form of a class struggle between upholders and the opponents of the status quo. In the
opening words of the Communist Manifesto,18 the history [i.e. written history] of all hitherto
existing society is the history of class struggles.
In this conflict, either side may win the battle because no special order is ever destroyed
before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed and new superior
relations of production never replace old ones before the material conditions for their existence
have matured within the framework of the old society. Ultimately, therefore, when the material
conditions for change have matured, a new class will emerge on the political sense, on the
stage of history, having won the war. It is in this ultimate sense that the economic factor is the
determining element in history19. This point has been emphasized by Engels:
According to the materialist conception of history the ultimately determining
element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this
neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying
that the economic element is the only determining one he transforms the
proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase20.
Marxist materialist conception of history demonstrates the important of conflict or the class
struggle in the movement of history21. And some Marxists have seen the relations and forces of
production as together determining rather than attributing any primacy to the productive forces
as such. There has also been much dispute as to where and how to draw the line between base
and superstructure22. But essential to any Marxist interpretation of history is that the economy is,
in Engels classic formation, dominant in the last analysis.
Two central aspects to the Marxist interpretation of history follow from this. The first is the
importance attached to class struggle, of which history is said in the Communist Manifesto to
consist. Classes are the basis social groups by means of whose conflict society develops in
accordance with changes in the forces and relations of production; class membership is
determined by certain common material interests that the individual shares with others, typically
a relationship of ownership or non-ownership of the means of production. This class position is
5

also held to determine the characteristic world view or consciousness of members of that class 23.
In some version of Marxism, this rather more subjective element is built into the definition of
class: a class only exists when it is conscious of itself as such, and this always implies common
hostility to another group. But class consciousness and the fate of any particular class is
ultimately dependent on its relationship to the development of the production forces.
The second central aspect is that the legal and political institutions of society are seen as
moulded by developments in the economic basis and the concomitant class struggle. This is
encapsulated in Marxist theory of ideology as a body of ideas and practices which serves to
preserve the asymmetrical distribution of material resources and power in the society. The right
of man for example as proclaimed in the French Revolution and the constitution of United States
were not eternal truths about the nature of man which happened to be discovered at the particular
time, as those who proclaimed them imagined; their significance could be fully understood only
if view in the context of demands by new commercial groups for the end of feudal restrictions
and for free competition in economic affairs. It was this tendency of all political and cultural
arrangements to be skewed towards serving particular class interests that gave them their
ideological tinge24.
Marxs theory of historical materialism presented historians a methodological approach to
their work, as well as shedding light and emphasizing the plight of the common man. His ideas
were a different way of viewing history, this time from the bottom up, seeing the agent of change
in history from a perspective of relationships between people, and not as a series of accident. He
believed that society should depend on the division of labour, creating social classes based on
property ownership. He states that since division of labour is not equal there would be strife and
conflict and that the only means of genuine social change is through social or political upheaval.
Marx created a theory based on economic forces, a grand jury which would not only explain all
of history but also deliver the tools for eventual human redemptions from all injustice 25. With
these concepts now realized, both Marx and others contributed to the history of the working class
using empirical class analysis, social arrangements, and economics to prove their theses.
In Marxist historiography it is emphasised that it is the superstructure of each society
through which such a society develop an ideology, a set of official belief or religious doctrine

that justify and entrench the power of dominant class. The process of change is set in motion
whenever theres a development in the material mode of production and is not marched by
changes in the social mode of relations and the superstructure, a contradiction ensures. This
contradiction or anti-thesis leads to social revolution 26. In Marxist dialectical view, social change
is usually abroad and violent and therefore revolution is the norm of Marxist contradiction.
Using the Dialectical theory, Marx identified five types of historical evolution of human society.
These are the:
1. Primitive Communism;
2. Asiatic Society;
3. Ancient Slave holding society;
4. Feudal society and;
5. Capitalist society27.
Each of these societies except the primitive communism had been determined by the nature
of economic production, exchange and the consequent social classes and superstructure
emanating from them. He asserted that apart from the first, all the remaining classes had been
divided into two major classes: the property holding exploiters and property less class of
exploited workers. Change from one type of society to another come from economic base giving
rise to a new ruling class that seizes political power and became dominant. The quality and
identity of each ruling class and respective lower class depends on the stage of development of
economic base. Marx believes that because the first society is primitive communism, it had no
identifiable classes.
In Asiatic and slavery holding societies, the dominant class was the government officials
who extracted taxes from the peasants. On the slave holding society on the other hand, the slave
class was the toilers and the slave owners exploited them. The super structure here was the citystate or the ancient empire. In the feudal class, the ruling class was the nobility who exploited the
serfs within the superstructure of monarchical state and using the ideology of Christianity. Karl
7

Marx was more detailed in his explanation of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Indeed
he used Europe especially England as the model of what he considered a Universal
Phenomenon28. According to him, the change from feudalism to capitalism was due to the
commercial development in the 17th century in Europe which provided the opportunity for
primitive accumulation of capital and emergence of new capital of bourgeois which eventually
became the dominant class. He believes that historical transformation will end the establishment
of socialism. In other words, to him the goal of human history is socialism.
Marx picked out the Asiatic, ancient feudal and capitalist as successive modes of production.
The key to the course of human history lay in the succession of modes of production, often
referred to as economic basis of society, rather than in superstructural elements such as politics
and ideology. Marx and Engel insisted that it was possible for superstructural elements to react
back upon the economic basis, and even, for a time to be decisive.
Historical Materialism, therefore, has a three-part social structure: the productive forces, the
relations of production, and the political and ideological superstructure. The theory offers an
explanation as to why these three models are beneficial to each other and necessary for progress,
known as a functional explanation. An example of this approach can be found with F.W.
Walbanks work on the decline of the Roman Empire. He theorised that the failure of productive
forces were the cause of Romes decline, stating that the level of production was essentially the
same as it had been in the Greek world 16.With the ever-increasing costs of expansion and
maintenance of the Roman Empire, coupled with the stagnate levels of production, Walbank
believed that the fall of the empire was destined to occur. Another facet of Walbanks theory is
the use of slavery as a producer of materials. Since slaves were given no incentive, and thus no
reason to innovate, this induced contempt for all forms of labour amongst the propertied
thereby diminishing total demand and limiting the possibilities of economies of scale 29. In fact,
many Marxist historians stress the failure of these productive forces to develop in the ancient
world as a cause for the decline of many societies30.
MARXIST HISTORIOGRAPHY IN AFRICA
Racist views made western scholars pretend that African historiography does not exist and
that Africans have no history simply because they believed that history is the written account
8

of past events and since Africans devised no widespread form of writing their history, the general
belief is that African historiography have no place in world history.31 This gave rise to
Nationalistic Historiography and the Influence of Marxist theories.
In the past before written records, African historians depended on myth, oral tradition, song
and popular history. Though oral tradition has its short comings, its use cannot be done away
with despite the problem of chronological sequence.32 In spite of short-comings, this technique
has been employed for the purpose of collection, preservation and analysis of oral tradition. The
palace historian, who used this method, had done it very well in the past. Legend, song and
popular history had also been used to narrate the past of the people. The absurdities written by
European historians were challenged by educated African historians. The first group was
Africans in Diaspora. These include Dr. Anton Wilheielm, a Ghanaian. He wrote on the
contribution which North Africans (particularly the Moors) made to the development of Europe
through their contact with Roman Empire in 1703. Olauda Equiano known as Gustavus Vasa, an
ex-slave wrote a biography about the culture of his place of origin, the Igbo land in present day
Nigeria. The contribution of Reverend Samuel Johnson, who published a History of the Yoruba
in 1921, remains a valuable repository of Yoruba oral tradition for the contemporary historians,
no matter where they come from. 33
At the end of the Second World War in 1945, professional African historians emerged to put
to rest the propaganda that Africa had no written past or no history at all. In writing the African
past, these historians dealt with documents of the past, written and unwritten to reconstruct
African past. Prominent among these historians were K.O Dike, S.O. Biobaku, Obaro Ikime,
J.F.A Ajayi and a host of others. The publication of K.O Dikes Trade and Politics in the Nigeria
Delta, 1830-1885, marked a remarkable departure from earlier written history of African past.
The second was the establishment of Institute of African Studies and Ibadan School of
History.34There are specific culture history projects like Benin and Yoruba Historical Research
Schemes, Conferences of African History etc. The new historic tradition rejected the coloration
of African past by the European Historians. The tradition, anchored by well-bred African
historians, equipped by the validity of non-written sources of historic research, which has been
promoted through interdisciplinary approach, led to the discovery and authentication of sources
of African past.35
9

Marxs analysis of the working class has encouraged a lot of historians to begin to look into
labour history which examines the tradition of struggle in societies. It looks at the way the
working class (proletariat) has attempted to organize itself collectively. It can therefore be seen
that the ideas of Marx have made a tremendous impact on historiography. And it has been said
with some justification that Marx redrew the map of history. Marxist historiography has made
contributions not only to the history of the working class but to oppressed nationalities, and the
methodology of history from below.36 Marxist historiography therefore has made some influence
as may be attested by number of works on African past. Such works include: The Wretched of
the Earth, Black Skin White Mask, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, The dyad of
resistance and oppression [ Cooper 1994 ] inspired magisterial research on Samori Toure by Yves
Person,

Neocolonialism the Last stage of Imperialism, For The Liberation of Nigeria, The

Manipulation of Religion in Nigeria, Karl Marx and the Analyses of the Politics of
Contemporary Africa, The Relevance of Socialism in Nigeria to mention but few.
Frantz Fanon published his first book, Peau noir, masques blancs (1952; Black Skin, White
Masks, 1967)37 while still living in France. Fanon's work reflects the intellectual influences of his
years in France, where he was drawn to the group of black intellectuals associated with the
journal Prsence Africaine. He was also close to a group of French intellectuals associated with
the journal Les Temps Modernes that included Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and
Albert Camus. These two groups and the writings of German philosophers Karl Marx and Georg
Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel strongly influenced Fanon's political and philosophical orientation.
In 1959 Fanon published a psychiatric study of colonialism titled L'An V de la rvolution
algrienne (A Dying Colonialism, 1967). Fanon expressed his political philosophy most clearly
and comprehensively in his last and best-known work, Les Damns de la terre (1961; Wretched
of the Earth, 1965). After his death, a number of his articles from el Moudjahid were published
together as Pour la rvolution africaine (1964; Toward the African Revolution, 1968)38. His work
has had a major impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements and
the world. His Marxists approach in analyzing history places him among the leading
revolutionary thinkers of his time. In the United States, where Fanons works became popular
after his death, he was a guiding figure in the black liberation movement, particularly in the
formation of the Black Panther Party. Fanon has become associated with his advocacy of
10

revolutionary violence to purge colonized peoples of their colonial mindsets, often to the neglect
of his other ideas.
Walter Rodney was equally a Marxist historian. He interpreted Marxist theory within the
context of African peoples history and circumstances through historical research, analysis,
writing and teachings, Rodney sought to bring awareness and understanding to issues such as
race, class, slavery, colonialism and its impact and legacy on working class people and their
struggles for social justice and economic development. He believed that education and history
should be used as tool for social change.
Even as How Europe Underdeveloped Africa struck a chord among many academics,
students and general readership on several continents it has been subjected to several critiques
over time. One critic suggested that despite its pretensions to be Marxist analyses the text
actually fails on that account. This critic explained that How Europe underdeveloped Africa
fails because it tries to persuade an African audience of the relevance of dependency theory by
making it meshes with the simplistic version of the past already popularized by nationalist
historians. Another critic Caroline Neade, argues that Rodney identified Africa as passive
victim of European colonization. But there is a lot in the book which would render this criticism
unfair37. Rodney quite conspicuously emphasized African technological development at a given
point in history prior to European penetration is given vigorous treatment and agency in the text.
Other scholars generally sympathetic with Rodney nonetheless find fault with some of his other
arguments. Lensinekaba for example, whilst hailing the importance of the work for African
scholarship is critical of the sweeping generalization and placement of Sudanic Kingdoms as
feudal states and Rodneys description of traditional African economies as subsistence
economies.
Similarly, others have decried Rodneys 1972 book as too polemical. Yet he was the
nontraditional historian and polemic that reached a wider, popular audience was essentially his
goal. In his own words he declared that the main purpose of the text was to try to reach Africans
who wish to explore further the nature of their exploitation rather than to satisfy the standards
set by our own oppressors and their spokesmen in the academic world39. Marxist
historiographers within the region of West Africa and a most noticeable contribution to Marxist
11

social science were made by Senegalese authors. However, the most predominant themes in their
works are on post- colonial society. At the same time, pre-colonial society was becoming an
object of intense study. Less attention has been paid up to now to colonial political history.
Nevertheless, documents and periodicals of the African independence party of Senegal, as well
as scientific articles by progressive authors contain assessments of the ideological and political
climate of the colonial period.
Professor Samir Amin is an Egyptian, who is described as one of the leading Marxist writers
in the world today. He has written more than 30 books including Imperialism & Unequal
Development, Specters of Capitalism: A Critique of Current Intellectual Fashions, Obsolescent
Capitalism: Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder and The Liberal Virus.40 His memoirs
were published in October 2006. For Dependency and World Systems theory in the tradition of
Samir Amin (1975), there are four main characteristics of the peripheral societal formation: the
predominance of agrarian capitalism in the national sector, the formation of a local bourgeoisie,
which is dependent from foreign capital, especially in the trading sector, the tendency of
bureaucratization, specific and incomplete forms of proletarisation of the labor force. In partial
accordance with liberal thought, (i) and (iii) explain the tendency towards low savings; thus there
will be huge state sector deficits and, in addition, their twinand chronic current account balance
deficit In the peripheral countries. High imports of the periphery, and hence, in the long run,
capital imports, are the consequence of the already existing structural deformations of the role of
peripheries in the world system, namely by rapid urbanization, combined with an insufficient
local production of food, excessive expenditures of the local bureaucracies, changes in income
distribution to the benefit of the local elites (demonstration effects), insufficient growth of and
structural imbalances in the industrial sector and and the following reliance on foreign assistance.
The history of periphery capitalism, Amin argues, is full of short-term miracles and long-term
blocks, stagnation and even regression.41 He speaks about the implosion of contemporary
capitalism. He articulates the need for the radical left, in the North as well as the South, to be
bold in formulating its political alternative to the existing system. It is time for the left to
articulate a new socialist agenda, not merely as a repetition of the 20 century socialism, but
recreating it in light of the lessons learned from the past and the changes we are seeing in the
world today.

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MARXIST HISTORIOGRAPHY IN WEST AFRICA

With the attainment of independence in the 1960s emerged a postcolonial historiography
centred within the continent but with significant external liberal support as well. 42 This radical
response to the paradigm was prompted by the emergence of Marxist historians, anthropologists
and political scientists in the 1970s.It fore-grounded class analysts at the global and local
levels.43 Some of these shall be examined below
Amilcar Cabral was the revolutionary socialist leader of the national liberation movement that
freed Guinea-Bissau from Portuguese colonialism. And his works reflect historical materialistic
approach and this made him to be regarded by most people an important historical actor. 44His
political thought has guided the African response to Portuguese rule for more than a decade. 45
Cabral's theory of socialist revolution, true to the methodological materialism of Marxism, is
based on a thorough understanding of the real socio-economic situation of the Third World.
Cabral argues that the fundamental motive force of history is the development of the forces of
production. Each mode of production, based in certain productive technologies, results in turn in
a particular social class structure. Colonial economies and agricultural policies dramatically
changed the internal situation of the colonies through the mechanization of production and the
concentration of land ownership; that is, through altering the colony's mode of production from
one based on hand tilling of small or communal plots to mechanized agriculture on large private
holdings. Social classes became anchored in private ownership and technical knowledge. Highcost machinery and export production empower foreign capitalists, their technicians, and their
local allies who gain control over the economic direction of the country. Colonialism also
resulted in the denial of indigenous cultures and identities and the absorption of a European way
of life. Imperialism, Cabral argues, is a structure of exploitation where the imperialist power
controls the development of the forces of production in another society and thereby takes charge
of its history.46 While he was aware that imperialism had in fact changed the operative forces of
production in his country, Cabral also knew that the national proletariat was very small. He
realized that the majority of the residents of what was to become Guinea-Bissau were peasants.
The cities were characterized by the presence of a "declasse" element composed of a true lumpen
proletariat and a group of new young migrants from the countryside. The country also had a
small petty-bourgeoisie that could be subdivided into high officials and professionals and a
13

second fraction of lesser officials and farmers. The former "higher" petty-bourgeoisie tended to
adopt a pro-imperialist/colonialist politics but the "lower" petty-bourgeoisie may well participate
in a struggle for national liberation due to its education and its direct experience of colonial
discrimination and imperialist exploitation. There also might be small comprador elite. This, of
course, is a class structure common throughout much of the periphery of global capitalism.
Regardless of the theoretical dogmatism of some, peripheral societies are largely made-up of
peasants, marginalized quasi-urbanites, the petty-bourgeoisie, and a small national elite. Cabral
recognized that peripheral societies are composed mostly of peasants and that it is this class that
necessarily would be the largest physical force in any successful social revolution.47
Cabral posited that - in the age of monopoly capitalism - third-world movements against
imperialism had become the central events of history. Real social change involved winning
indigenous control over the forces of production while mere political independence would result
in the continuation of imperialism as neocolonialism. Political independence is not the end of the
liberation struggle but only a phase within it. History itself, after all, is determined by the
development of the forces of production so a people can only reclaim its history by gaining
control over their own productive technologies. Anything less is simply neocolonialism.48
Cabral's determination of the class structure of Guinea convinced him that, contrary to some
applications of Marxism to the Third World, there was no single class agent capable of successful
revolution. Cabral argues that the main social class contradiction in peripheral societies was
between internal and external supporters of imperialism and the masses as a "nation class." The
potential for revolution lies in the formation of an anti-imperialist alliance of various social
classes including the peasantry and the petty-bourgeoisie. This "class nation" may in its totality
only desire political independence, but it alone is capable of beginning the process that might end
in a social revolution led by its more radical sections. Only after independence would there
emerge a national bourgeoisie and other elites and the "lower social classes," including the lower
petty-bourgeoisie and a group of associated intellectuals-like Cabral himself--who provided the
theoretical leadership of the revolution. This latter group would be particularly important in a
situation without a majority working class with revolutionary socialist aims.

14

It should be clear that, excluding some Guinean particularities, Cabral described a social class
structure common to much of the Third World. Socialist revolutions there must be built without a
working class majority. This has been the situation of historical socialist revolutions from Russia
to Nicaragua. Third World revolutionaries "must install a working class consciousness in a
society without a working class." The majority of the population is peasants who make up the
principle "physical" force of the revolution. They may be anti-imperialists but, without ideology
and leadership, they are not likely to become socialist revolutionaries. This leadership can be
provided by a revolutionary fraction of the petty-bourgeoisie, the class most likely to have had
extensive direct contact with both imperialism and revolutionary socialist theory.
Cabral felt that a key to the possibility of successful revolutionary socialism on the periphery
lies in the post-independence role of the petty-bourgeoisie leadership of the nationalist
movement. Will they be lured by the promises of neocolonialism into being satisfied with mere
political independence? Will they merely use their political control to turn the state into a means
of ruling class formation? If so, political independence will not bring true liberation defined as
popular control of the forces of production. If the nationalist leadership simply acts on its own
narrow class interest within the context of global capitalism, the petty-bourgeois class will
preserve and reproduce itself as a privileged class, perhaps becoming a national pseudobourgeoisie. This is a strong temptation for the petty-bourgeoisie in that it allows them to retain
positions and powers of leadership after a nationalist political victory. Social revolution,
however, requires that the petty-bourgeois leadership of the independence movements commit a
kind of "class suicide."49
Class suicide by the revolutionary petty-bourgeois leadership amounts to listening to its own
revolutionary consciousness and the culture of revolution rather than acting on its immediate
material interests as a social class. It must sacrifice its class position, privileges, and power
through identification with the working masses. This unlikely event depends on the power and
material basis of the revolutionary consciousness of sections of the petty bourgeoisie. The idea of
class suicide by the revolutionary leadership is perhaps Cabral's most important message to
socialist revolutionaries today. The absence of class suicide has blunted the progressive potential
of many revolutions originally conducted under the banner of socialism. It is perhaps romantic to
expect the leaders of revolutionary struggles to "wither away" and release power during the
15

transition to socialism. It may never occur. But, it seems clear that if it does not happen socialist
revolutions tend toward a more or less authoritarian statism--whether quasi-socialist or state
capitalist--rather than true socialist democracy. The final power of capitalism as a global system
lies in the politics of the conservative fraction of the nationalist petty-bourgeoisie that chooses to
adapt to transnational capitalism because that route promotes its own class interests.50
The notion of "class suicide" by the petty-bourgeois leadership at first glance may sound
unrealistic but it is much less so than the most popular competing images of socialist revolution
in the Third World. Some suggest that "true" socialist revolutions must be the spontaneous
outburst of the masses themselves. Often this seems to imply that these events will occur without
formal political organization or a division of political roles between leadership and masses. The
argument is that socialism must be radically democratic even when it is a nongovernmental
revolutionary movement or even when it is involved in the long ardors of an armed struggle. This
image of socialist revolution as spontaneous mass democracy is much more romantic than the
idea of class suicide. No revolution can succeed without organization and leadership. To state
that socialism can only come through a spontaneous mass movement without leaders and
followers, without organization, without ideology and direction simply is to say socialism will
not come.51
The Senegalese Marxists today take an increasing interest in the countrys democratic
traditions, in particular, in the democratic, anti colonial heritage of Lamine Senghor and his
comrades in the anti imperialist struggle in the 1920s 52. This interest is quite normal. Lamine
Senghor was the first among the Senegalese democrats in the world to understand that the
worlds first socialist country is a natural and reliable ally of the national liberation movement. In
all probability there is more to Marxist historiography of the problem under review. Beginning
with the 1920s, Marxists considered the social processes and the social ideas of the region
subjects for independent study. Besides West Africa historiography was not regarded as
something self contain, the processes under way there were within the world wide historic
context, and was analyzed in close connection with the development of the world revolutionary
process.

16

Contemporary Marxists authors rely on a solid, scientific tradition, more than half a century
old. Everything studied by Marxist Africanist today (parties, trade unions, political ideology as a
whole, the contribution to anti colonial struggle made by separate ideologists, to mention but
few), is directly related to similar analysis, if not similar material by earlier Marxist researchers
of the region. It is certain that Marxist African studies today are based on a scientific foundation
laid way back in the 1920s and 1930s. back in 1927 this remarkable Senegalese democrat and
anti colonialist was discovered and introduced to the French reading public by a member of the
Central Committee of French communist Party, the then editor- in-chief of LHumanite, Paul
Vaillant-Coutourier. He wrote one more book, in which West Africa is mentioned several times
and which gives an apt political portrait of B. Diagne, one of the first in Marxist historiography.
However, the second work, which appeared three years after the first, is less known Africanist, as
it was not published in English and French. One circumstance should be noted here is that,
objective factors prevented the early Marxists scholars from clearly understanding the situation.
In the post-world war years Marxist thought enriched the historiography of West Africa with new
observations, and what is most important, with new appraisal.
Coming down to Nigeria, our immediate environment, it is good to understand that the first
set of works that attempted a systematic study of the theory and practices of Nigerian
historiography were Robert Aukers and Lidwein Kaptejeinss Ph. D Thesis: Perspectives of
Nigerian Historiography: 1875-1972: The Historians of Modern Nigeria and African
historiography written by Africans, 1955-7354. These historians have contributed to our
understanding of the trends and patterns of Nigerian historiography. Amadu Bello University,
School of Zaria is identified as Marxist or the Radical School of thought. Usman Bala Yusufs
works shall be examined as in constructing African past through Marxists approach.
The historical writings of Bala were largely informed by his view of history and the sociopolitical and intellectual climate of Nigeria of his days. He did not recognize any disciplinary
gulf separating history from other social sciences. Thus, his writings represent a hybrid of
history, sociology, economics and political science. However, the dominant view about Balas
historiographical approach is that of the Marxist tradition of historical writing. This seems to be
the view of Robert Shenton, Thomas Hodgkins, and Murray Last. Shenton, for example in his
view of Balas the Transformation of Katsina asserted that the work is that of a scholar rooted in
17

historical materialism. Murray Last pointed out that Bala was a materialist in his approach to
Katsina history and Thomas Hodgkin also argued in the same vein.
Some critics link Maishanu maintained that while Bala succeeded in establishing the
significance of material condition in historical development, this does not presuppose that his
theoretical framework was necessarily that of historical materialism. The argument of Maishanu
in respect of this debate is that, rather than class struggle, which is the central tenet of Marxist
philosophy of history, what is apparent in the transformation of Katsina is intra-class struggle
among the ruling class as they jockeyed around the power 55. It was also said that Bala was not a
slave to Marxist ideology, but had a deep understanding of the theory. He was an
extraordinarily meticulous historian and his multi dimensional approach to historiography cannot
be easily put down as Marxist. This has been confirmed by one of his postgraduate students,
Nasiru Muhammad:
Once in the course of a lecture, Dr. Bala Usman made a statement which
seems to reveal his position about Marxism with those tradition he had for
long been identified. While explaining a point, Dr. Bala said it would not
do for students to just couch their works in Marxist jargon and expect the
works to be commended as good works. He seemed to have implied that the
image of a doctrinaire Marxist scholar which was being ascribed to him
was somehow wrong56.
However, looking at some of Bala radical commentaries on contemporary issues of his time,
Bala appears to have applied a class perspective in his analysis of contemporary Nigerian
history not out of loyalty to Marxism as a methodology (for Marx himself did not provide a
blueprint pigeonhole into which all historical writing could fit in) but out of his penchant for the
scientific causes of the flight of the ordinary Nigerians. This is especially the case with his
writing such as For The Liberation of Nigeria, the Manipulation of Religion in Nigeria, Karl
Marx and the analyses of the politics of Contemporary Africa and the relevance of socialism in
Nigeria in 1990s among others.
While the first two writings mentioned above represented a class perspective of the major
issues raised, Bala explicitly advocated for the relevance of socialism in Nigeria in the latter. In
18

this way, thus, Bala could be seen to have shared a common strategy, class analysis, with the
Marxist. What he had succeeded in doing was to domesticate Marxism within the Nigerian
context in such a way that Lenin and Mao, for example, did in Russia and china respectively. The
Marxist tradition developed from the necessities of social practice and this has created a
tendency for any form of radicalism to be dubbed Marxist. One of the methodological
problems in African historiography has been associated with the conflict between theory and
practice. For example, the Marxist historians have been accused of undertaking valuable
empirical studies with results which do not fall entirely within their theoretical premise57.
The historical writings of Bala Usman are too incisive to be narrowed down to Marxism.
Although his historical writings do not fit into Marxist historiography, he deliberately framed
himself, for reasons best known to him, as writing within the Marxist tradition, which exposed
him the more so to the Marxist label. This could be illustrated by his critical exchanges with
Ibrahim Bello-Kano where the former made an overt pronouncement about his commitment to
the historical materialist conception of history thus:
As for your observations about the historical materialist approach, which we
try to use to get, through the critical assessment of all sources, as close to the
realities of history as humanly possible, which you dismiss as empiricism,
there is nothing new, or worth replying in that58
Then after referring Bello-Kano to some scholars who had earlier treated such issues in their
works, Bala ultimately submitted that:
The outcome of these exchanges only further brought out the importance of the
historical materialist insistence on the primacy of empirical evidence, to enable
us make some sense of complexities of the historical process, and of the motion
of human society, in such a way that we can exercise some influence over our
individual and collective destinies59.
Monday Y. Mangvwat has employed the Marxist concept of primitive capital accumulation
and capitalist accumulation as an explanatory tool for the creation of a Nigerian bourgeoisie who
have been the managers of the federal nation-state in operation. He has also argued that the same
process of creating the bourgeoisie was by, the internal logic of capitalist development, creating
19

the working classes which the bourgeoisie must exploit. In short, between 1914 and 2007, the
main business of the Nigerian nation-state has been the creation of a Nigerian bourgeois society
within the rubric of a federal structure. He argued, I have also argued that regardless of
anybodys ideological persuasion, the choice of the federal system by our colonial masters,
adopted and internalized by our local leaders was most appropriate and wise. 60He submitted,
But the fact that Nigeria is now a federal bourgeois society does not mean that
the millions of the exploited masses- the organized working classes, lumpen
proletariat ( e.g. Lagos Area Boys), peasants, professional associations and the
myriad of civil society groups are just folding their hands and praying for Gods
intervention. In fact, their undaunting struggle has been responsible for
moderating the excesses of the emergent bourgeoisie throughout the almost a
hundred years of our federal experiment. To their credit, they have been
responsible for resisting attempts at regime perpetuation in Nigeria in the last 22
years, 1985-2007 of this experiment.61
Professor Claude Ake is also known as a Marxist and he has made his greatest intellectual
contribution to the social science. Professor Ake's theory of Political Integration exposed many
of the difficulties confronting the new nations of the world as they emerge from their colonial
status and helped to show some of the directions that must be pursued, if these nations must
exhibit a higher degree of social and political unity in their- development. This insight in this
regard was unique and original especially as if applies to Africa. 62 One of the problems which he
identified and on which he later applied his critical and probing mind was the role of western
social science writings on third world countries. He was able to show how the concepts and
theoretical pre-dispositions in many of these writings have been manipulative and highly
instrumental, perpetuating and reinforcing the dependence syndrome in many developing
countries. It is various Publican ions in the field have provoked new and more rigorous
examination of the orientation of these writings.
In his book, A Political Economy of Africa, Professor Claude provided the salient features of
contemporary Africa, their emergence and their potential in shaping the future pattern of
development on the continent. This analysis of Africa's problem led him to attempt the design of
the correct strategies to transform the continent, that book, declared as the best social science
20

book in the United States of America in 1985 has been translated into Russian language by the
Russia Academy of Science and serves as a major reference work in many other countries of the
world.63
Many Nigerian intellectuals have persisted in their enthusiasm for a socialist revolution.
Historians, political scientists, sociologists, economists, novelists and playwrights in the
universities have presented a Marxist critique of the political economy and society, and variously
sought to provide a socialist solution to the multiple ills of their country. 64 For example, in
November 1985, Tunji Braithwaite was insisting that socialist was the way out of the political
and economic impasse besetting the notion, while Krees Imodible was claiming that the Nigerian
social ethos expressed the essential precepts of socialism.65
Intellectuals in the universities as well as in the professions have persisted in their enthusiasm for
a socialist transformation in spite of the political unpreparedness of Nigerian labour. As
explained by Ake:
This radical consciousness in indigenous social science initially tended to
take the form of a critique of western social science and its ideological
and value assumption the critique was in turn conceived as part of the
ongoing struggle against imperialism it was from such beginnings that
some radical social scientists went into a serious study of Marxist and
became also part of the movement for under development and dependency
theory.66
He and other scholars, including Falola, Thonvbere and Bade Onimode, have often presented a
Marxist analysis of the situation in Nigeria albeit with little or nothing in respect of an actual
agenda for a socialist revolution. Toyin Falola and Bade Onimode, stated in their preface our
work is located within the emerging Marxist political economy genre, and hence focuses on
class, state, class struggles, contradictions, self reliance and the strategies and tactics for the
eventual overthrow of capitalism.67
These advocates of that variety of neo-Marxist methodology used to study the dynamics of
change in underdeveloped societies known as political economy approach believe that this has
brought into clear relief the problems of the application of Marxism to the historical specifics of
21

the periphery.68 Other studies reveal that apart from being divided into various categories of
labour, Nigerian workers have neither a clear vision of an alternative order radically different to
the one is prevailing, nor a deep rooted feeling of antagonism against the managerial or
entrepreneurial classes. According to Madunagu, one of the salient causes of the failure of
socialism in Nigeria is the lack of an authentic revolutionary heritage and concrete revolutionary
experience. Acutely aware of a need for an elaborate programme of political education, as well
as of the absence of objective condition for socialist praxis, he has suggested that Nigerians
borrow Marxist and Leninism in order to generate revolutionary consciousnesses.69
There is little doubt that many writers have found emotional release in the rhetoric of socialism.
Raymond Duncan has observed that this holds a special ideological appeal, given its anticolonial and anti-imperialistic concepts that so well fit excolonial histories and political cultures
in third world arenas. It provides not only comprehensive view of the world but also a plan for
human progress and inevitable modernization.70
The multiple ills of Nigerian society can be explained away as the outcome of a capitalist
conspiracy between the comprador bourgeoisie and the imperialist metropolitan powers, while
socialism seems to augur everything that is genuinely African. As Howard Wiarda has
maintained, Marxist promises, prophesies, and visions of an ideal inexorably appeal to those
intellectuals in developing countries who feel the need build a power base for themselves. The
fact is that the writing of a number of socialist academics is highly tendentious: their subjectmatter is devoid of plausibility; their distortion of history is legitimized as creativity, and their
message puerile to say the least.
Nigerian writers of the new generation have failed to create the image of the authentic African
revolutionary caught up in the untidy world of multiple pulls and pushes generated from the
ongoing confrontation between features of the traditional indigenous culture and the modern
mainly urbanized civilization of the west. However, Garin Williams pointed out that the Nigerian
bourgeoisie kicked ideas to inspire the transformation of the existing order, while James Booth
observed that Nigeria has produced no ideologists of distinction, no significant advocate for
instance of any form of African socialism.71

22

The two progressive ideologies held by the two pioneering and at times most popular
politicians, Nnamdi Azikwe and Obafemi Awolowo, could at best describe as pragmatic. For Zik,
who had returned to West Africa in 1934 after studying and teaching history and political science
in the united sates, it was not so much capitalism as an economic system that was obnoxious, as
the life of the proletariat.72 Marxism-Leninism- though it advocates have never acquired the
power with which to implement its socialism of the orthodox Marxist-Leninist variety its
advocates in Africa. Outside areas of European settlement in Algeria and south Africa, whenever
official communist parties have organised, orthodox Marxism has found support among small
groups fracial intellectuals, students, and revolutionaries such as the exiled Felix Moulmie wing
of the union des populations Camerounaises, the Jeunesse Travailleuse cubanguenne of Central
African Republic, the Federation des Etudiants de lAfrique Noire en France, and the Parti
Africaine de lindependence (PAI ) centred in Senegal but active in guinea, Mali, and other
former French territories.73
The apotheosis of Marxist discourse in novels and dramas has been reached by a number of
writers whose works could be described as programmatic; or combat literature, including
Festus Iyayi, Tunde Fatunde, and Olu Obafemi.
Festus Iyayis message in violence (Hilarious Longman, 1979) is that having suffered from
poverty and lack of opportunity the oppressed must answer violence with violence. The hero
who provided the recipe for this violentum pharmacorum is Idemudia, one of the many casual
labourers to be found in and around the lorry parks of the Nigerian towns and cities. This hungry,
angry, and rather mean passenger tout is a proletarian to the core-his work is his god, the truck
is his church, and when he falls sick his fever- striken head feels hotter than black smiths fire.
Although Omolara Ogun dipe-Leslie correctly notes that Iyayi is a petite-bourgeois writing
about proletarian, obviously this cannot be regarded as a criticism perse, even though the dirty
struggling labourers are presented in violence as perspiring and suffering as some kind of
proletarian warriors, ready for the impending revolutionary struggle.74
Tuned Fatunde has chosen to call his pieces peoples literature, and most of his vitriol is
hurled against influential but now harmless members of defunct civilian regimes or past military
juntas. Fatundes first play in NO More Oil Boom and Blood and Sweat is set in Nigeria and
portrays, as claimed at the outset, a society that is bare naked, and thief-rulers- and anger from
23

the people and their children who are thereby condemned to eating from dustbins, from pregnant
women who are condemned to death in mortuary hospitals, and so forth. It ends with the
proletarian hero Hassans cogitation in prison over Africas wretchedness and his rather
miraculous release by some workers who have gathered together a neat sans-culotte type of
crowd outside the prison. Fatundes fantastic all Nigerian proletariat comprising factory
workers, poor peasants, students, teachers, doctors, engineers, honest christen priests and honest
imams. Represents a unique mlange of professions under a single class rubric that defies
history as well as sociology.
The second play, Blood and sweat, based on the pligh t of black workers in the white run
multinationals of south Africa, is full of fiery speeches, some of which project a rigid,
authoritarian communism according to Dunton. He feels that although the impact on a
Nigerian audience of Fatundes account of wretched living conditions in south Africa should not
under estimated, the didactic burden of the play does have to be carried, to be put across in a
way that renders it convincing and compelling, and that the bulk of blood and sweat fails to do
this:
Above all, the play fails to acknowledge the complexity-and therefore
seriousness of some of the problems it tackles for a Nigerian audience to be
palmed off with such a crass presentation of the role of capital is drastic under
evaluation of the need to understand forces that are complex and extremely
difficult to reform.75
Olu Obafemis familiar thesis, according to Dunton, is that in the contemporary Nigerian
state injustice and inequality are products of a set of power relations that can be read as
equivalents to those forged under colonial rule. Obafemis first play in Nights of a Mystical
Beast and the New Dawn begin with and the idealized and harmonized, social world of the precolonial change- a romanticized revolutionary resolution of an equally imaginary and
exaggerated social, political and cultural problem. In his second play, The New Dawn, Nigerian
intellectual and farmers dancing together, this symbolizing the unity of a massive forces ready to
leap into revolutionary praxis.76
CONCLUSION
24

Marxist historiography is based on class struggle and the class struggle is said to represent
the contradictions in the economic structure of the society. Although, the emphasis which Karl
Marx placed on the role of the material factor in historical development may be faulted on
certain grounds, he had certainly made a great impact on historiography by presenting a new
approach to historical explanation. It is also examined that Marxist historiography in West Africa
evolved over time as a legacy of colonialism and anti-imperialist struggle has given Marxism
popular support in this region and the continent in general. This radical response to the paradigm
was prompted by the emergence of Marxist historians, anthropologists and political scientists in
the 1970s. From the beginning of the 1970s, African history branched into various
specializations. Marxist historiography in West Africa is also appraised. It is also discussed that
the influence of Marxist Historiography is irrefutable, whether or not one agrees with the
political and radical aspects of Marxs overall beliefs.

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1. Chinedu N. Ubah, Islam in African Historiography. Kaduna: Baraka Press and Publishers
Ltd., 2001, p.13.
2. Internet

Archive<http://www.mrxists.org/archive/marx/work/1844/df-jahrbucher/law-

abs.htm> [accessed 13 December 2012].

25

3. Historical materialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

4. Ibid.
5. Croce, Benedetto. Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx. New York:
Russell & Russell, 1966, p. 103.
6. Karl Marx - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
7. Internet Archive< http://www.mrxists.org/archive/marx/work/1844/df-jahrbucher/lawabs.htm> [accessed 13 December 2012].
8. In Defence of Marxism
Marxist website defending the ideas of Marxism as a tool for today's labour movement,
by the International Marxist Tendency.
9. Internet Archive< http://www.mrxists.org/archive/marx/work/1844/df-jahrbucher/lawabs.htm> [accessed 13 December 2012].
10. Breisach, Ernst, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Third. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 293.
11. Chris Cook, ed., Macmillan Dictionary of Historical Terms, 2nd Edition, London: The
Macmillan Publishing Ltd., 1989, p. 271.
12. Ibid. 165.
13. --------------- Marxist Historiography as Social Science, In Tarikh Vol. 9, Atanda, J.A. ed.,
Ibadan: Longman Limited, 1991, p. 45.
14. ----------------- Macmillan Dictionary of Historical Terms, 2 nd Edition, London: The
Macmillan Publishing Ltd., 1989, p. 271.
15. Ibid. 271.

26

16. Cited in Op. Cit., p. 46.

17. ------------------ Marxist Historiography as Social Science, In: Tarikh Vol. 9, Atanda, J.A.
(ed.), Ibadan: Longman Limited, 1991, p. 46.
18. Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 21, cited in
Mojuetan, B.A., Marxist Historiography as Social Science in Tarikh Vol. 9, p. 47.
19. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, quotation
from Communist Manifesto.
20. -------------------- Marxist Historiography as Social Science in Tarikh Vol. 9, Atanda,
J.A. ed., Ibadan: Longman Limited, 1991, p. 46.
21. Friedrich Engels, Letter to Joseph Bloch, 21 Sept. 1899 in Lewis S. Feuer (ed.), Marx
and Engels: Basic Writing on Politics and Philosophy. London, 1972, p. 436, cited in
Mojuetan, B.A., Tarikh Vol. 9, p. 46.
22. ------------------- Marxist Historiography as Social Science In: Tarikh Vol. 9, Atanda,
J.A. ed., Ibadan: Longman Limited, 1991, p. 47.
23. Chris Cook, ed., Macmillan Dictionary of Historical Terms, 2nd Edition, London: The
Macmillan Publishing Ltd., 1989, p. 271.
24. Ibid. 271.
25. Ibid. 271.
26. -------------------- Macmillan Dictionary of Historical Terms, 2 nd Edition, London: The
Macmillan Publishing Ltd., 1989, p. 293.
27. Carpenter, Andrew N. "Western Philosophy." Microsoft Encarta 2009
28. Ibid.

27

29. Ibid.
30. Rigby, S.H., "Marxist Historiography," in Companion to Historiography, Michael
Bentley, London: Routlredge, 1997, p. 895.
31. T. Obenga, Sources and Specific Techniques used in African History: General outline
In: J.K Ki-zerbo, (ed.), General History of Africa: Vol. 1, Methodology and African PreHistory, 1981, p.72.
32. Vansina, J. Some Perceptions on the Writing of African History: 1948 1992, Itinerario ,
1992, p.2.
33. Falola, T. (ed.). 1993. African Historiography: Essays in Honour of Jacob Ade Ajayi.
Harlow: Longman.
34. Afigbo, A. E. Colonial Historiography. In T. Falola (ed.), African Historiography,
Harlow: Longman. 1993.
35. Ajayi, J. F. A. 1998. Samuel Johnson and Yoruba Historiography. In Paul Jenkins (ed.),
The Recovery of the West African Past. Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien. Pp. 62-63.
36. Rigby, S.H. "Marxist Historiography," in Michael Bentley. Companion to
Historiography. London: Routlredge, 1997, p. 895.
37. "Frantz Fanon." Microsoft Encarta 2009.
38. Ibid.
39. Professor R.N Egudu, (ed.), Nigeria Journal of Humanities. Benin: bended Newspaper
Corporation, p.56.
40. Ibid. 58
41. Interview: Marxist Thinker Samir Amin discusses demise of capitalism by NewsClickin,
14 May, 2012. www.youtube.com
42. Samir Amin and Socialism in the 21st Century. www.youtube.com
43. E.S. Atieno, Odhiambo. Re-introducing the People without History: African
Historiographies. Texas: Rice University.
44. Libcom.org, Amilcar Cabral's theory of class suicide and revolutionary socialism - Tom
Meisenhelder
45. Ronald H. Chilcote, The Political Thought of Amilcar Cabral, in The Journal of
Modern African Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1968), p. 373.
46. Libcom.org, Amilcar Cabral's theory of class suicide and revolutionary socialism - Tom
Meisenhelder
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
28

49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Letnev A. B., West Africa in Marxist Historiography. UNESCO, Conf. 602, 4, Paris, 9th
March 1979, p. 3.
53. Ibid. 5-6.
54. Hess, R.A. Perspectives on Nigerian Historiography: 1875-1971.Unpublished Ph.D
Thesis, Howard University, 1977.
55. Samaila Suleiman. Yusuf Bala Usman and the Marxist Philosophy of History. In: the
FAIS Journal, Kano: Dorayi Babba Commercial Press,2010,p. 113.
56. Ibid. 117.
57. Ibid. 124.
58. Ibid. 125.
59. Ibid. 126.
60. Monday Y. Manguwat. Federalism in Historical Perspective: A Curse or Blessing? in
Mike O. Odey, John G. Nengel, Okeh O. Okpeh (eds.), History Research and
Methodology in Africa: Essay in Honour of Professor Charles Creswell Jacob.Makurdi:
Aboki Publishers, 2005, p. 129.
61. Ibid. 130.
62. Citation of Professor Claude Ake, n.p
63. Ibid.
64. Address by Tunji VBraithwaite to a press Conference in the Capital, reported in the Daily
Times (Lagos), 3 November, 1985, p. 1.
65. Samuel G. Ikoku. Nigeria for Nigerians: A Study of Contemporary Nigerian Politics
from a Socialist Point of View. Takoradi, 1962, p. 65.
66. Claude, Ake. The Political Economy Approach: Historical Explanatory notes and
Marxian Legacy in Africa, in Julius Thonvbere (ed.), The Political Economy of Crisis
and Underdevelopment in Africa: Selected works of Claude Ake. Lagos: Ejad Publishers,
1989, Pp.36-37.
67. Toyin Falola and Julius Thonvbere. The Rise and Fall of Nigerias Second Republic:
1979-84. London, 1985, p. x.
68. Dr. David Kimble, (ed.). The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, p. 371.
69. Eddie Madunagu. Problems of Socialism: The Nigerian Challenge. London,
1982, pp. 109-16.
70. W. Raymond Duncan. Ideology and Nationalism in Attracting Third World
Leaders to Communism: Trends and Issues in the late Century, in World Affairs
(Washington, DC), 151, 3, 1988-9, p. 108.
71. James, Booth. Writers and Politics in Nigeria. London, 1981, p. 50.

29

72. Collin, Gonze (ed.). Africa Today, Vol. X, No. 1. London: Johnson Reprint. January 1963,
p. 383.
73. Ibid. 6.
74. Dr. David Kimble, (ed.). The Journal of Modern African Studies. Vol. 31, No. 3. 1993,
p.377.
75. Ibid. 30.
76. Ibid. 382.

30