Kwame Nkrumah - Politics

Politics

He generally took a non-aligned Marxist perspective on economics, and believed capitalism had malignant effects that were going to stay with Africa for a long time. Although he was clear on distancing himself from the African socialism of many of his contemporaries, Nkrumah argued that socialism was the system that would best accommodate the changes that capitalism had brought, while still respecting African values. He specifically addresses these issues and his politics in a 1967 essay entitled "African Socialism Revisited":

"We know that the traditional African society was founded on principles of egalitarianism. In its actual workings, however, it had various shortcomings. Its humanist impulse, nevertheless, is something that continues to urge us towards our all-African socialist reconstruction. We postulate each man to be an end in himself, not merely a means; and we accept the necessity of guaranteeing each man equal opportunities for his development. The implications of this for socio-political practice have to be worked out scientifically, and the necessary social and economic policies pursued with resolution. Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism. Hence, socialism. Hence, also, scientific socialism."

Paulin Hountondji has emphasized the breaks in the thinking of Nkrumah. During the early Nkrumah on the continuity of socialism in relation to, communalism 'of the' traditional Africa's insistence, an idealized image of pre-colonial Africa (draws no exploitation of man by man) and himself a disciple of Gandhi understands, sees the late Nkrumah necessity of a violent break with the neo-colonial relations, the struggle against imperialism and its African allies. In African Socialism Revisited Nkrumah therefore rejects the idea of an "African socialism" in the sense Nyerere, one of the "ideology of continuity" (Hountondji left) was arrested from.

During the early works of Nkrumah, he emphasize that in the pre-colonial Africa there is no class struggle have been made, rejects the late Nkrumah, the fetishization of pre-colonial Africa. "Nkrumah will never have imagined back Africa as a special world, but he accepted that our societies to the same laws are subject like any other country in the world, and that the African revolution, if properly understood, is inextricably linked to the world revolution."

In Africa Must Unite (1963) Nkrumah called for the immediate formation of a pan-African government. Later he sat on a unification movement that emanates from the base, while anti-imperialist governments and between the Western-backed "puppet regime" could be no common ground.

Nkrumah was also best known politically for his strong commitment to and promotion of Pan-Africanism. He was inspired by the writings of black intellectuals like Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and George Padmore, and his relationships with them. Nkrumah's biggest success in this area was his significant influence in the founding of the Organization of African Unity.