Nkrumaism (sometimes Consciencism) is an
African socialist political ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
based on the thinking and writing of
Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah (born 21 September 190927 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, having led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957. An in ...
. Nkrumah, a
pan-Africanist
Pan-Africanism is a worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all Indigenous and diaspora peoples of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade, the movement exte ...
and
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
, served as
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
of the
Gold Coast
Gold Coast may refer to:
Places Africa
* Gold Coast (region), in West Africa, which was made up of the following colonies, before being established as the independent nation of Ghana:
** Portuguese Gold Coast (Portuguese, 1482–1642)
** Dutch G ...
(later
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
) from 1952 until 1960 and subsequently as
President of Ghana
The president of the Republic of Ghana is the elected head of state and head of government of Ghana, as well as commander-in-chief of the Ghana Armed Forces. The current president of Ghana is Nana Akufo-Addo, who won the 2020 presidential elec ...
before being deposed by the
National Liberation Council
The National Liberation Council (NLC) led the Ghanaian government from 24 February 1966 to 1 October 1969. The body emerged from a ''coup d'état'' against the Nkrumah government carried out jointly by the Ghana Police Service and Ghana Armed For ...
in 1966.
Definition
![Kwame Nkrumah (JFKWHP-AR6409-A)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Kwame_Nkrumah_%28JFKWHP-AR6409-A%29.jpg)
Nkrumaism is a pan-African
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
theory which aims to adapt Marxist–Leninist theory to the social context of the
African continent
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
. Nkrumah defined his belief system as "the ideology of a New Africa, independent and absolutely free from
imperialism
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
, organized on a continental scale, founded upon the conception of
one and united Africa, drawing its strength from modern science and technology and from the traditional African belief that the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." The
Convention People's Party
The Convention People's Party (CPP) is a Socialism, socialist political party in Ghana based on the ideas of the first President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. The CPP was formed in June 1949 after Nkrumah broke away from the United Gold Coast Conven ...
(CPP), founded by Nkrumah in 1949, writes "Nkrumaism simply means Self Reliance, African is capable of managing his own affairs. The values CPP stands for or the guiding principles of Nkrumaism today are those which have guided it throughout its existence. Social justice, Pan-Africanism, Self Determination, African Personality, Anti-Imperialism."
Nkrumaism is a
syncretic
Syncretism () is the practice of combining different beliefs and various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thu ...
ideology which blends different sources together while not necessarily borrowing their entire frameworks. In his work, Nkrumah blended different sources from within Africa, the
canon of Western philosophy, and black intellectuals in North America and Europe, like
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey Sr. (17 August 188710 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African ...
and
George Padmore
George Padmore (28 June 1903 – 23 September 1959), born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse, was a leading Pan-Africanist, journalist, and author. He left his native Trinidad in 1924 to study medicine in the United States, where he also joined the Com ...
. Particularly important in founding this ideology were his study and meetings with
C. L. R. James
Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901 – 31 May 1989),Fraser, C. Gerald, ''The New York Times'', 2 June 1989. who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J. R. Johnson, was a Trinidadian historian, journalist and Marxist. His works are in ...
,
W. E. B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in ...
and
Father Divine
Father Divine (September 10, 1965), also known as Reverend M. J. Divine, was an African-American spiritual leader from about 1907 until his death in 1965. His full self-given name was Reverend Major Jealous Divine, and he was also known as "t ...
. Aside from the Marxist–Leninist framework, this blending of ideas largely only took bits and pieces of other philosophical systems and even its use of traditional African cultural concepts were often stretched to fit into the larger theory. While a major focus of the ideology was ending colonial relationships on the African continent, many of the ideas were
utopia
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', describing a fictional ...
n, diverting the scientific nature of the
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
political analysis which it claims to support.
Beliefs
Like other African political ideologies at the time, the central focus of Nkrumaism was on
decolonization
Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on separatism, in ...
across Africa. The central contention of Nkrumaism was that African countries, united with one another, needed to adopt socialist political structures which were consistent with the traditional African values of
egalitarianism
Egalitarianism (), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all hu ...
. Nkrumah rejected the idealized view of pre-colonial African societies that were classless or non-hierarchical, but accepted that Africa had a spirit of communalism and humanism. While colonial structures had damaged these communal, egalitarian values, they had not fully supplanted them. Nkrumaism then argued that a return to these values through socialist political structures would both heal the disruption caused by colonial structures and allow further development of African societies. The pan-African aspects of Nkrumah's ideology were justified by a claim that all African societies had a community of economic life and that in contradiction to the
neocolonial
Neocolonialism is the continuation or reimposition of imperialist rule by a state (usually, a former colonial power) over another nominally independent state (usually, a former colony). Neocolonialism takes the form of economic imperialism, gl ...
structures that replaced formal colonies, only African unity would create real autonomy.
In Nkrumah's argument, four basic pillars formed the applied aspects of this theory: state ownership of the means of production, a
one-party democracy, fostering a classless economic system, and pan-African unity. While embracing much of Marxist–Leninist philosophy and Soviet political structures at the time, the ideology differed in some key respects. First, while Marxism–Leninism saw revolution as the only way to replace class structures with a socialist egalitarian system, Nkrumah saw reform as the more appropriate case for Africa. He argued that Ghana, and most of the rest of Africa, had never developed the class distinctions which
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
and
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
saw in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
and thus reform could reestablish preexisting egalitarianism suited to a post-colonial context. Nkrumah wrote that:
From the ancestral lines of communalism, the passage to socialism lies in reform, because the underlying principles are the same. But when this passage carries one through colonialism the reform is revolutionary since the passage from colonialism to genuine independence is an act of revolution. But because of the continuity of communalism with socialism, in communalistic society, socialism is not a revolutionary creed, but a restatement in contemporary idiom of the principles underlying communalism.
He would change this idea after the 1966 coup seeing revolution as increasingly necessary. Second, while Nkrumah believed in the materialism and economic determinism of Marxism, he argued that focusing on the economic system was only appropriate after achieving independence throughout Africa and that the political struggle was the first order in colonial and neocolonial contexts.
Impact
The ideology of Nkrumaism formed a key part of the
personality cult
A cult of personality, or a cult of the leader, Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal Rovira (2017) ''Populism: A Very Short Introduction''. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 63. is the result of an effort which is made to create an id ...
around Nkrumah and the party-building efforts of his political party, the CPP. This was in part achieved through Nkrumah's use of
democratic centralism
Democratic centralism is a practice in which political decisions reached by voting processes are binding upon all members of the political party. It is mainly associated with Leninism, wherein the party's political vanguard of professional revo ...
in the CPP and government. His arguments were
widely published and these had an impact within the Gold Coast colony, independent Ghana, and other parts of Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. The CPP, founded by Nkrumah in 1949, became a vocal proponent for the teaching and application of Nkrumaism. When he became president in the 1960s, his Minister for Presidential Affairs,
Tawia Adamafio
Tawia Adamafio (born Joseph Tawia Adams) was a Ghanaian minister in the Nkrumah government during the first republic of Ghana.
Politics
Adamafio was a member of the Convention People's Party and rose to become its General Secretary. In 1960, he ...
, established study groups on Nkrumahism which many civil servants joined to advance their careers. At the same time, the CPP established Ghana Young Pioneers groups for school age children where Nkrumaism was taught. While the tenets were promoted through these various party efforts, applying all aspects of the ideology proved to be difficult for Nkrumah while President of the country. Because of this, some consider Nkrumaism to be "first of all a cultural phenomenon" in Ghana with little impact on the actual politics of the country.
Criticisms
Henry Bretton argues that Nkrumaism was not a coherent ideology, but a vague framework supporting the cult of personality and the centralized rule of Nkrumah. He writes:
In contrast, Yuri Smertin criticized early works by Nkrumah from a Marxist perspective for distorting
scientific socialism
Scientific socialism is a term coined in 1840 by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his book ''What is Property?'' to mean a society ruled by a scientific government, i.e., one whose sovereignty rests upon reason, rather than sheer will: Thus, in a given ...
by combining religious and traditional elements.
See also
*''
African Review''
*
African socialism
African socialism or Afrosocialism is a belief in sharing economic resources in a traditional African way, as distinct from classical socialism. Many African politicians of the 1950s and 1960s professed their support for African socialism, althou ...
*
Black Power
*
Garveyism
Garveyism is an aspect of black nationalism that refers to the economic, racial and political policies of UNIA-ACL founder Marcus Garvey. The ideology of Garveyism centers on the unification and empowerment of African-descended men, women and ...
*
Lumumbism
Patrice Émery Lumumba (; 2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961) was a Congolese politician and independence leader who served as the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Con ...
*
Mobutism
Mobutism (french: Mobutisme) or Mobutuism (french: Mobutuisme) was the state ideology of Zaire (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) during the latter half of the 20th century, when it was under the one-party rule of the Popular Movement ...
*
Sankarism
Sankarism (also written Sankaraism) is a term sometimes applied to denote a left-wing ideological trend within the politics of Burkina Faso, a landlocked country in West Africa, as well as the policies of the military government led by Captain Tho ...
References
Bibliography
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External links
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{{Pan-Africanism
Eponymous political ideologies
Politics of Ghana
Socialism in Africa
Socialism in Ghana
Types of socialism