Hundred Years Ago, in October (2)

By Kwadwo Afari

The socialist revolution and the utopian society experiment died some twenty-five years ago. But to most Africans, our minds are still closed and sealed tight against any idea about the premises and conclusions of a system that has been proven to be mere wishful thinking.

It is better to be courageously humble about this, and admit frankly that socialism was a mistake. A hypothesis proven false. The idea that there could be a classless society, in which all men would be equal, is difficult to accept, even by those who still claim to be socialists.

The Lenin revolution, when remembered, should be seen for what it was, a dangerous fairy tale. The whole idea of extending freedom, justice, equality, or any other civilised value, through common ownership of the means of production, was deceptive, a con job that took over a century to be exposed.

Unfortunately, socialism found Africa, to our detriment. Two things led to the choices the leaders made. Under colonialism, Europeans treated Africans with contempt and subjected them to discrimination, and, sometimes, violence.

The natural thing to do, then, was to reject almost all vestiges of colonial institutions and system of governance to prove their independence. Secondly, during the Second World War, the Europeans adopted regimental and authoritarian production methods, where bureaucrats, not markets, distributed raw materials and essential foodstuffs, and the needs of the war effort, not consumers, determined what to produce and in what quantities.

Such vigorous actions that helped the allies to win the war appealed to an Africa emerging from colonialism and struggling to get out from the grips of imperialism.

So, from the beginning, African leaders thought, wrongly, that they could plan an economy and "socialise the means of production" by removing economics from democracy into politics. That, they thought, would give every person a chance to build a life protected by government from the greed of capitalist exploitation.

Sadly, this love affair with socialism still persists today, long after the demise of Soviet communism, in various incarnations. With governments handling all the budgets, elections are worth winning by all means possible. Instead of strengthening multi-party democracy, African leaders still cling to the hegemony of the one-party state, with its winner-takes-all imperial presidency and no property rights and no rule of law.

The phony elections in countries; the rigged ballots with 'macho-men' parading the streets; the intimidation of opponents, are not the mere tricks of cynical democrats -- they are basic to a state-planned economy.

In the name of the people, has become a glorified slogan, invented and ingeniously integrated with the masses of the population, and led to the totalitarian state which controls the 'commanding heights of the economy'. 'The winner-takes-all' imperial presidency is merely the modern form of tyranny.

It is tyranny with an up-to-date technique. And the essence of that technique is the very method Lenin ultimately relied on, and many African countries have legitimised in their constitutions, the machinery of public education."

In the name of the people, our leaders seize private lands, nationalise main industries, including minerals, electricity, water, and, to a large extent, transportation. On the flip side, the governments also establish various welfare schemes, which provide free medical and free primary education.

The schemes are extremely popular -- to a fault. Funds allocated are not enough though, and used up quickly, or, in most cases, out rightly stolen by corrupt officials. But because the programmes are so popular among the people, they are kept in place, despite the debt they incur.

These welfare schemes remain, and while the costs are draining the economy, politicians are not brave enough to change them, for fear of losing elections. The uncomfortable truth is that the Soviet-style social-democratic welfare states imposed on the people of this continent since independence, has hurt a lot of poor Africans.

Private enterprise is still being destroyed through the socialisation of the means of production, under a central economic plan where someone determines what gets produced, where, when, and for which purpose and use.

This means not only resources must be assigned a use in a particular town or village, but so must government set up factories. Hence, in this mixed economy, the state's central planning agencies still determine who would go into agriculture, or be educated for what skills, where they would be employed, and the work they would do.

Outright famine still occurs on the continent, and unfortunately, majority of the population still go to sleep hungry. Laws made are flouted with impunity by all citizens, especially, those with political power or connections.

Above all, the political class still show a marked inability to connect with the concerns of working and middle-class citizens, or to convince such citizens that their socialists policies will help improve their prospects in life. In some cases, policies have been strikingly uncreative and tone-deaf.

Meanwhile, our rent-seeking leaders still talk about redistribution of wealth, and still advocate a socialist mixed economy, where the government controls the major means of production and distribution of those goods.

They tell the poor voters that this control is necessary to eliminate greed among the people. They talk grandly about 'social justice', 'equity', 'pro-poor development' and honouring social-welfare commitments, but their actions, invariably give the lie to their lofty rhetoric.

We know this, given the historical truth that African socialists, since independence, have been speaking with forked tongues. No one can share a wealth not created, and any attempt to even share wealth created, according to 'needs', would depend on force, just as the Soviet socialists did, using force to compel people to fall in line.

It is not for nothing that almost all the successor African governments after Nkrumah have achieved scant success. The results are not encouraging, because the 'moochers' and looters still outnumber productive people.

The line? Let the poor think of themselves as so small and weak that they needed big 'daddy' government to protect them from alien and local exploitation and control of the economy. Kwame Nkrumah's dictum of "the state commanding the heights of the economy, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state," still drives political thinking and horrifyingly institutionalised by his successors. Making the private sector the driving force in the economy only lip service.

Ghana and the whole Continent of Africa remains poor and the least economically free, not because of colonialism, capitalism or free trade, but because of the lack of rule of law, accountable government, property rights, free trade, individual initiative, and freedom and liberty. Africa has failed to adopt policies that would help her to integrate into the global economy. That - and not free market capitalism - is the problem.

That much was has been acknowledged by many cool-headed wise men throughout the hundred-odd years since the idea of a "socialised" economy was broached. But Africa was in haste, and those in haste cannot be told--they have to learn by experience. The actual experience of state-run economies failing one after another in the last past years, should be enough to bring home this simple fact to the most exuberant.

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