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“The Political Legacy of Colonialism

To understand this phenomenon, one must begin with colonialism and its political legacy. Colonialism in Africa was markedly different from the colonial experiences of the Americas, Europe, and Asia. To begin with, it was unusually statist, The colonial state redistributed land and determined who should produce what and how. It attended to the supply of labor, sometimes resorting to forced labor; it churned out administrative instruments and legislated taxes to induce the breakup of traditional social relations of production, the atomization of society, and the process of proletarianization. It went into the business of education to ensure that workers could do the jobs they were required to perform and would remain steadfast in the performance of their often tedious and disagreeable tasks. It built roads, railways, and ports to facilitate the collection and export of commodities as well as the import of manufactured goods. It sold commodities through commodity boards. Indeed, it controlled every aspect of the colonial economy tightly to maintain its power and domination and to realize the economic objectives of colonization.

Colonialism in Africa was markedly different from the colonial experiences of the Americas, Europe, and Asia. To begin with, it was unusually statist

Since the colonial state was called upon by the peculiar circumstances of the colonial situation to carry out so many functions -indeed to do everything-it was all powerful. It needed to be all powerful not only to carry out its mission but also to survive along with the colonial order in the face of the resentment and the hostility of the colonized, a hostility that occasionally broke out into rebellions such as the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya.

The power of the colonial state was not only absolute but arbitrary. For instance, the colonial governments made the colonies produce the commodities they needed. When the Gold Coast (now Ghana) was colonized, it did not farm cocoa. The colonial government decided that the country would be suitable ground for farming cocoa and duly introduced the crop. In 1865 the country started exporting cocoa, and by 1901 it was the leading producer of the commodity in the world. It quickly became a monocultural cocoa economy; by 1939 cocoa accounted for 80 percent of the value of its exports. In Kenya, the Coffee Plantation Registration Ordinance of 1918 forbade the growing of coffee, the country’s most profitable commodity, by Africans. The purpose was to make Africans available for wage labor by keeping them from becoming independent producers as well as to prevent them from stealing coffee from European farms by ensuring they could not legally possess coffee. Other examples of arbitrariness include the reservation of the White Highlands in Kenya for European farmers and the Marketing of Native Produce Ordinance of 1935, which restricted wholesale marketing to Europeans and barred Africans.

…the colonial governments made the colonies produce the commodities they needed. When the Gold Coast (now Ghana) was colonized, it did not farm cocoa. The colonial government decided that the country would be suitable ground for farming cocoa and duly introduced the crop. In 1865 the country started exporting cocoa, and by 1901 it was the leading producer of the commodity in the world. It quickly became a monocultural cocoa economy; by 1939 cocoa accounted for 80 percent of the value of its exports.

These two features of state power, its absolutism and its arbitrariness, framed colonial politics. As if to underscore the arbitrariness of the power of the colonial state, its officials showed hardly any interest in transforming domination into hegemony, beyond the notion that their domination was also a civilizing mission. The colonial situation was not unlike Hobbes’s prepolitical state, in which all claims are arbitrary and all rights are only powers. In the essentially military situation of imposing and maintaining colonial domination, the colonizers had no choice but to reject in principle any restrictions on their use of power. There may have been circumstances in which the use of state power was not arbitrary in practice, but it was always arbitrary in principle.

Since the colonial state was for its subjects, at any rate, an arbitrary power, it could not engender any legitimacy even though it made rules and laws profusely and propagated values. Accordingly, in struggling to advance their interests, the colonial subjects did not worry about conforming to legality or legitimacy norms. Colonial politics was thus reduced to the crude mechanics of opposing forces driven by the calculus of power. For everyone in this political arena, security lay only in the accumulation of power. The result was an unprecedented drive for power; power was made the top priority in all circumstances and sought by all means. As the rulers and subordinates extended their rights to their powers, the idea of lawful political competition became impossible, and politics was inevitably reduced to a single issue: the determination of two exclusive claims to rulership. This politics hardly encouraged moderation and compromise.

Since the colonial state was for its subjects, at any rate, an arbitrary power, it could not engender any legitimacy even though it made rules and laws profusely and propagated values. Accordingly, in struggling to advance their interests, the colonial subjects did not worry about conforming to legality or legitimacy norms.

The Postcolonial Situation

Although political independence brought some change to the composition of the state managers, the character of the state remained much as it was in the colonial era. It continued to be totalistic in scope, constituting a statist economy. It presented itself as an apparatus of violence, had a narrow social base, and relied for compliance on coercion rather than authority.

With few exceptions, the gaining of independence was not a matter of the nationalists’ marshaling forces to defeat colonial regimes. More often than not, it was a matter of the colonizers’ accepting the inevitable and orchestrating a handover of government to their chosen African successors, successors who could be trusted to share their values and be attentive to their interests. This approach did not succeed in all places where the decolonization was peaceful, much less where it was occasioned by revolutionary struggle. But on the whole, political independence in Africa was rarely the heroic achievement it was made out to be; it was often a convenience of deradicalization by accommodation, a mere racial integration of the political elite.

Although political independence brought some change to the composition of the state managers, the character of the state remained much as it was in the colonial era. It continued to be totalistic in scope, constituting a statist economy. It presented itself as an apparatus of violence, had a narrow social base, and relied for compliance on coercion rather than authority.

With few exceptions, the gaining of independence was not a matter of the nationalists’ marshaling forces to defeat colonial regimes. More often than not, it was a matter of the colonizers’ accepting the inevitable and orchestrating a handover of government to their chosen African successors … on the whole, political independence in Africa was rarely the heroic achievement it was made out to be; it was often a convenience of deradicalization by accommodation, a mere racial integration of the political elite.

The tendency to reproduce the past was reinforced by the dispositions of the dominant social forces in the postcolonial era. None of them apparently had any serious interest in transformation, and all of them were only too aware that they could not afford to broaden the social base of state power. What changed over time was the proliferation and intensification of conflict within the nationalist coalition. Class conflict became more salient with the indigenization of the political elite and matured rapidly. It was deepened by the inevitable depoliticization of the nationalist movement to contain frustrations arising from the failure to effect the societal transformation that many had hoped for and fought for. As is clear from many speeches and writings of nationalist leaders, such as Kwame Nkrumah’s “I Speak for Freedom,” A. A. Nwafor Orizu’s “Renascent Africa,” and Jomo Kenyatta’s “Facing Mount Kenya,” the language of nationalism had been radical, propounding distributive, egalitarian, and democratic values.

The nationalist movement was essentially a coalition of disparate groups united by their common grievances against colonial oppression. It was typically a network of nationalities, ethnic groups, religious organizations, syncretistic movements, secondary organizations, and professional interest groups.1 But even though they cooperated against the colonial regime, their relationship was never free from tension and conflict.

As the prospects for political independence improved, the solidarity of the movement grew weaker and competition between its component units became more intense. Although the members of the coalition fought against the colonial power, they worried about the enormous power they were trying to wrestle from it, power they could not entrust to any one of them or even share in a way that could reduce political anxiety, The normative, institutional, and ideological mechanisms that would have made this power subject to constitutional constraints and accountability did not yet exist. So while agitating to overthrow the colonial regime, the constituent elements of the coalition were also trying to block one another from appropriating it. Increasingly their attention turned from the colonial regime to one another, and eventually the competition among these groups came to dominate Political life, while the colonial power, now resigned to the demise Of colonialism, became a referee rather than the opponent.

As the prospects for political independence improved, the solidarity of the movement grew weaker and competition between its component units became more intense.

By the time independence was achieved in the early 1960s, the centrifugal tendencies had grown strong enough in many countries (for instance ,Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Uganda, Cameroon, and Zaire) threaten not Only the transition to independence but, more important, the political viability of the new governments in trying to deal with these forces of disunity, some African countries, like Nigeria, came to independence with such complex constitutions that systemic breakdown was inevitable.

But for the Purpose here, which is to understand the Postcolonial state and the politics associated with it, what is pertinent is not so much centrifugalism as the political competition arising from the mutual alienation of the coalition partners. As they Pulled apart, they placed more value on capturing Political power for themselves and grew increased fearful about what seemed to them to be the grave consequences of losing to their rivals in the competition for the control of state Power. Thus the premium on Political Power rose higher and higher and with it the intensity of political competition and its domination by efficiency norms.

The Political leaders, too, were exposed to new conflicts. The increasing competition and conflict among nationalities, ethnic groups, and communal and interest groups was reflected in their ranks. They also tended to separate along those lines; indeed, many of them had sought Power by Politicizing national, ethnic, and communal formations. Now in office, some of them manipulated ethnic and communal loyalties as a way to deradicalize their followers and contain the emerging class division of political society, which could isolate and destroy them. So they began to place emphasis on vertical solidarities across class lines. In particular, they tried to establish mutual identity and common cause by appealing to national, ethnic, communal, and even religious loyalties.

The Political leaders, too, were exposed to new conflicts. … many of them had sought Power by Politicizing national, ethnic, and communal formations. Now in office, some of them manipulated ethnic and communal loyalties as a way to deradicalize their followers and contain the emerging class division of political society, which could isolate and destroy them. So they began to place emphasis on vertical solidarities across class lines.

In doing so, they weakened the solidarity of the people, at a great cost. They created not only strong divisions within their own ranks but strong antipathies and exclusivity in society. As always, the exclusivity of the competing political formations increased the premium on Political power and the intensity of political competition.

Political intensity was further reinforced by the tendency to use state power for accumulation. This practice was associated with the weak material base of the new political leaders, who had be, economically marginalized by the discriminatory economic policies of the colonial regime. Even when they came to power, they had little experience of entrepreneurial activity and little or no capital. Invariably they were obliged to explore the one leverage they had: control of state power to strengthen their material base.

The need for a more secure material base drove the indigenous elite to increase the statism of the economy. An increasing range of economic activities was brought under the control of the state, notably by nationalization, to facilitate the appropriation of wealth by means of state power, The use of state power for accumulation, associated as it is with statism, monopoly power, and the interposition of coercion in the labor process, raised to new heights the premium on the capture of state power.

The need for a more secure material base drove the indigenous elite to increase the statism of the economy.

Finally, political intensity received additional impetus from the alienation of leaders from followers in the postcolonial era. Basically the political elite dealt with the tide of popular discontent arising from the deradicalization of the nationalist movement by enforcing political conformity through coercion. Coercion was used to constrain the political expression of the masses, now disillusioned with the performance of their leaders. Coercion was also used to impose “political unity” in the midst of considerable social pluralism, which had become very divisive for being politicized and exploited by competing elites.

The dominant faction of the political elite found itself utterly isolated, increasingly relying on violence, at war with the rest of society and with rival factions among its own ranks. Political competition now assumed the character of warfare and paved the way for the ascendancy of the specialists of violence, the military. The rash of military coups that came later essentially formalized a reality that was already firmly established. It was not the military that caused military rule in Africa by intervening in politics; rather, it was the character of politics that engendered military rule by degenerating into warfare, inevitably propelling the specialists of warfare to the lead role.

The dominant faction of the political elite found itself utterly isolated, increasingly relying on violence, at war with the rest of society and with rival factions among its own ranks. Political competition now assumed the character of warfare and paved the way for the ascendancy of the specialists of violence, the military. The rash of military coups that came later essentially formalized a reality that was already firmly established. It was not the military that caused military rule in Africa by intervening in politics; rather, it was the character of politics that engendered military rule by degenerating into warfare, inevitably propelling the specialists of warfare to the lead role.

To recapitulate, at independence the form and function of the state in Africa did not change much for most countries in Africa. State power remained essentially the same: immense, arbitrary, often violent, always threatening. Except for a few countries such as Botswana, politics remained a zero-sum game; power was sought by all means and maintained by all means. Colonial rule left most of Africa a legacy of intense and lawless political competition amidst an ideological void and a rising tide of disenchantment with the expectation of a better life.”

– Claude Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa, 1996, pages 1-6

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Image: Material by Umberto Boccioni, 1912

“Shesha (Sanskrit: Śeṣa), also known as Sheshanaga (Śeṣanāga) or Adishesha (Ādi Śeṣa), is the nagaraja or King of all Nāgas and one of the primal beings of creation. In the Puranas, Shesha is said to hold all the planets of the universe on his hoods and to constantly sing the glories of the God Vishnu from all his mouths. He is sometimes referred to as Ananta Shesha, which translates as endless-Shesha or Adishesha “first Shesha”. It is said that when Adishesa uncoils, time moves forward and creation takes place; when he coils back, the universe ceases to exist.

Vishnu is often depicted as resting on Shesha [with Lakshmi – strange and insulting that Wikipedia doesn’t mention this]. Shesha is considered a servant and a manifestation of Vishnu. […]

“Shesha” in Sanskrit texts, especially those relating to mathematical calculation, implies the “remainder”—that which remains when all else ceases to exist.”

(Wikipedia)

“In his text, ‘Where does the Mind Come from’, Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov recalls how Alexander Suvorov (a pupil at the Zagorsk Internat for the blind and deaf, 22 who later graduated from Moscow University and defended his PhD dissertation in psychology) was giving a speech before students and was asked the following question: ‘Your case contradicts the old premise of materialism, according to which all that gets into mind is necessarily developed and provided by senses. If your senses are damaged, if you can not hear or see, how could your mind develop?’ The question was transmitted to Suvorov via dactile alphabet, and he answered into the microphone: ‘and why do you think that we do not hear and see? We are not blind and deaf, we see and hear by the eyes of all our friends, all people, all humankind’. 23

We see in this example an argument for the early Marx’s idea that the human emerges only after privatisation and selfhood are surpassed in favour of generic being or Gatungswesen – which is often translated as species-being but which, in fact, implies the condition of the non-self beingproducing the potentiality for the generic. (I will return in a moment to the ways in which, I think, this category of the non-self being is connected with the speculative tools of generalisation as against formal abstraction.) Ilyenkov’s example of the deaf and blind thinker who sees, hears and even thinks via an other’s sense, brains and thinking provides an example of how in fact the gravest deficiency enables development of thought through socially-based, mutual activity: in this case, the lack in the self entails, for Ilyenkov, the necessity for the other-self, and hence establishes the principle of an other-determined non-self being that grounds the generic being.

…

“In fact, despite stating that philosophy and cybernetics have different goals of generalisation, Pushkin and Ursul nonetheless argue very strongly in favor of positing cybernetics as an epistemic part of Marxist ideology and materialist dialectics. In this respect, they make three convincing points to counter the taboo against considering algorithmic intelligence as a form of thinking reason.

First, cybernetics, along with the control and management of systems, presupposes self-development (samorazvitie) and self-regulation (samoreguljazia), becoming self-learning in computation and cybernetics. From this point of view, self-development (or self-regulation) of matter, and generally any form of self-regulated material immanence – for example, blood circulation – is already a mode of cybernetics; in as much as the autopoesis of biological organisms is considered isomorphic with the autopoesis of systems and networks. Consequently, if one assumes that development is synonymous with dialectics, then the cybernetic coding of various forms of development can also be considered dialectical. 26

Second, if consciousness is no longer a psychic category in its Marxist conceptualisation, but is determined by material processes and social environment, then cybernetics can help to undermine the principal arguments concerning the supposed impossibility of automating consciousness and of translating it into an algorithmic modeling. This is because, in the long run of evolution, consciousness has developed into a socio-neural system. Consequently, if an individual is part of the social system, then the system can regulate or model consciousness as its product. 27

Finally, cybernetics is able to undermine the main argument on the part of philosophy that mathematical logic and the hard sciences only engage an instrumental rationality (Verstand), rather than the complexity of reason (Vernunft). Pushkin argues that, in its dialectical connection with ratiocination, reason over time inevitably becomes formalised and hence developes into ratiocination; in this case ratiocination is merely a former reason; consequently, by denying ratiocination the right to count as thought we limit thought itself. 28

It is such premises that the communist arguments developed by Ilyenkov in his four texts written on machinic intelligence and philosophy – the two pamphlets ‘The Mystery of the Black Box’ (1968) and ‘The Notes of the Bezumtsev’ (1978), the didactic essay ‘Machine and the Human: Cybernetics and Philosophy’ (1966), and his seminal book Lenin’s Dialectics and Metaphysics of Positivism (1980) – are intended to counter.

First, Ilyenkov argues, it is true that all biological internalities, blood circulation and digestion are self-regulated developing systems; but they cannot be regarded as dialectical only on the grounds of self-development. This is because dialectics implies a relation with the phenomena external to self-developing systems. Interestingly, Pushkin himself acknowledges that the autonomy of systemic self-regulation, on the one hand, and Pushkin’s own emphasis on the priority of the human subject in navigating neural networks, on the other, don’t go together. If dialectics implies a constant dis-identifying junction between the self and the non-self, then self-regulated systems and their self-developing autonomous immanences cannot be regarded as dialectical.

Second, even though Pushkin acknowledges the social dimension of consciousness, he nevertheless treats it as an evolutionary development of the brain, that is, still determined by reflexes, and the source of which, despite all its social extentions, remains in the brain. By contrast, according to the Marxist interpretation of consciousness (for example, in Vygotsky’s psychology, or in Ilyenkov’s own dialectical logic), consciousness is non-individual, external and generic/general by definition, i.e., the brain has always been a secondary, applied organ, both for consciousness and language.

Third, reason and ratiocination do not form a unit guaranteeing a necessary transmission of one into another. Thinking does not necessarily entail ratiocinating formalisation, and rationalising formalisation might not necessarily lead to any new intuitive leap of a thinking mind. Consequently, even if ratiocination remains reason in its formalised variation, within this formalisation ratiocination qualitatively changes to the point where it is no longer a thought procedure and its automatic reversibility into thought is not possible.”

…

“While doubt and contradiction (or the ‘disability of philosophy’) diminish the efficiency of reason and make it powerless in post-philosophical theories of mind or of the brain, for Ilyenkov it is precisely these traits that construct thought. The mind’s ‘disability’ is inscribed into the mind’s ability. This disability is surpassed not by means of an augmented storage of knowledge or of cognised data and thought’s functionality. Rather, it is an awareness of the disability of human reason in its treatment of the contradictions of reality that is able to redeem such disability. Moreover, thought’s inevitable disability, perishability and its bond with human neoteny – that is, the retention of protective capacities for surviving in natural environments, as a condition in which the existence of the human species is grounded – does not contradict its quest for the Absolute. 34”

…

“Why, in the face of claims to displace philosophy by cybernetic research, should the necessity of dialectical method, specifically, be insisted upon, at least so far as the political ontology of communism is concerned? 38 To start with, for Ilyenkov, dialectics is a specific tool of generalisation (as against formal abstraction) that does not simply distill an invariant from the breadth of empirical reality, but has to bring together mind and body, thing and concept, the concrete and the abstract. Mind and body can exist in equivocality and parallelism – as in Spinoza – or be chained in semiologic series regardless of any topological gaps and divergences. For example, in post-structuralism and Guattarian semiology, the convergence of the conceptual and the sensual/material was implemented through providing one plane of representation for the signifier and the signified. And this was done through a mere dismissal of any semiological incongruence between them: so that the combining of a thing and a sign could take place performatively and not semantically, i.e., without their semantic fusion and overlapping. In dialectical logic, conversely, a thing has to acquire a noumenal dimension too, i.e., it must be generalised in the mode of a ‘notion’ as well; and, vice versa, the notion (noumen) should have the opportunity to be embedded and revealed in reality, activity and thinghood.

This is central to Ilyenkov’s argument: when a notion is abstracted from things, then things become abstract too. Interpenetration is indispensable therefore, simply because a thing without notion, without generalisation, without being reflected how it is reflected, has no proper being. As such, the interpenetration of concept and thing is necessary to surpass such abstraction. Interpenetration between thing and notion can only be implemented by dialectical procedure. Thus, generalisation is a mode of abstraction in which a notion is never torn from reality or thinghood, but maintains a bond with it.

The paradox of unifying mind and matter by means of dialectical procedure is to be found in the fact that only dis-identifying othering can thus lead to generalisation. One can unify and converge thing and concept not by virtue of identification of one with another, but by virtue of each identity being other than itself – the thing being other than itself in its noumenal aspect, and the notion being other than itself in its material concretisation. It is such constant self-resigning othering that entails positing both thing and concept in general terms. This is the reason why the thing and its signification cannot be codified and quantified. Such obsession with dialectical monism is in fact a sort of communist absolutism for Ilyenkov, as only (communist) non-monetised and non-privatised economics could provide the above-mentioned mode of convergence of being and thinking. Only in a non-monetised economy are both things and notions incommensurable, non-quantifiable, generalisable. Сonversely, the monetary form of commodified things entails and requires formalised, abstract and discrete quantification of things and their signifiers. Philosophy as such becomes a constant labour of non-quantifiable dialectical generalisation, as against numerical quantification and abstraction, which always remains discrete, reversible data and never transcends to an irreversible quality.

What Ilyenkov shows in his earlier (and most celebrated) book, Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete (1960), is that dialectical logic is not found in mere extraction of logic from the living sphere. Instead, this logic is only found and located within the incommensurable living sphere of activity. Yet this does not mean that the sum of real phenomena should coincide with the logical essence of those phenomena. This is because Marx’s dialectical logic is qualitative; it presupposes the irreversibility of quality in the dialectical procedure – an approach that differs from the naturalistic non-reducibility and non-compressibility of scientific and empirical data. Non-dialectical logic produces abstract identifications via metaphysical distillation. Dialectical logic abstracts and generalises, but does so by manifesting the living essence of the thing, of the phenomenon, the law of its existence.

It is in this context that Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete presents a technique of dialectical othering – showing how the being of ‘the self’ is always ‘the non-self’ being – which, for Ilyenkov, implies a non-positivist method of speculation, indispensable for communism. 39 Ilyenkov finds a number of examples of such othering in Marx’s political economy, thus demonstrating that Marx’s analysis of political economy was – contrary to the idea that Marx’s famous eleventh thesis on Feuerbach implied a simple detour away from philosophy in favour of social praxis – a model of dialectical logic and in fact itself a philosophical gnoseology. For example, as Ilyenkov emphasises, when Marx defines the logic of value, he does not do so by extracting some unifying trait from various kinds of value, or by gathering all data about value and distilling one unifying trait out of this – as an algorithmic logic would suggest. Instead, to define the logic of value (as surplus value) he dismisses the realm of value theory altogether to discover its logic in the realm that has never been an exemplary part of value theory. This ‘other’ realm not related to value theory lay in raw reality and was a non-monetised exchange of one commodity for another one – of one mode of labour with another mode of labour. This non-monetised exchange was regarded as an exception in value theory. But precisely this exception was used by Marx as the specific condition from which to generalise the logic of value. In this case, Marx proved, according to Ilyenkov, that in order to understand surplus value, one had to leave aside the characteristics and functions of value as such, and depart from other phenomena, deeply rooted in raw exchange, in reality, not yet having any articulate signification. In this case, the generalised conceptual essence of one phenomenon (value) was found in or via another phenomenon (the exchange between various modes of labour). 40 But such generalisation could have occured only precisely by searching for noumenal logic in the raw reality of trade, by discovering logic in living procedures rather than in already given abstract data about value.”

– excerpts from “The Philosophical Disability of Reason: Evald Ilyenkov’s Critique of Machinic Intelligence” by Keti Chukhrov

The philosophical disability of reason

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Image: installation view of Ramps by Park McArthur, 2010-14. A collection of the access ramps, both purchased and ad-hoc, installed at various art institutions and galleries so that she could get in the door. The wall text is the URL for the Wikipedia page on the marxist theorist of disability struggle and disablement Marta Russell.

“Zinoviev’s Bolshevization had not succeeded in eliminating Bordiga’s intransigent tendency, which remained the overwhelming majority of the party. The Comintern Executive then tried to neutralize its uncontested leader by asking Bordiga to return to the Italian Executive Committee. Given his disagreements, Bordiga refused. He also refused the post of [parliamentary] deputy that was offered him – a real insult to an abstentionist. His reply was brief, and blunt: “I will never be a deputy, and the more you carry on with your projects without me, the less time you will waste.” (letter from Bordiga to Togliatti, 2nd February 1924.)”

– The “Bordigist” Current, 1912-1952 – Italy, France, Belgium, USA by Philippe Bourrinet, pages 55-6