April 22 marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilych Lenin, who lived a revolutionary life only for 54 years, dedicated to the struggles of the working people (1870-1924), and founded the first proletarian State, the Soviet Russia and later the Union of Socialist Soviet Union (USSR) except for the short-lived Paris commune (From March 18, to May 28, 1871) which Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels (founders of scientific socialism) praised and described as an example of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
V.I Lenin was a consummate political agitator, indefatigable Marxist theoretician who made everlasting contribution to the elaboration of Marxist theory both in the context of his time and profound insight to its future trajectories.
Both historical and contemporary Marxism in its exponential global dimension and scientific context are integrally espoused as Marxism-Leninism, with other contextual variants such as Maoism, Guavarism or other specific national context with implications for international revolutionary endeavours.
But Leninism earned its integration into mainstream Marxist theory from its thorough scientific premise and not only for the prodigious revolutionary practice in the then backward Russia but in the exposition of the capitalist formation and its unique trajectories and the forms of state that evolve at each particular stage of its growth. It is from the classic of Leninism, especially the pamphlet he wrote in 1916 “Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism” that gave profound insight to how Africa was heralded into the vortex of colonial domination and imperialist plunder that are critically seminal in understanding the contemporary fate of Africa. Lenin, original contribution to Marxist theory consist principally but not limited to transformation of capitalism from its original essence of competition into monopoly and the consolidation of industrial capital through the agency of the banks and financial agencies in to finance capital. This feature of capitalism is accentuated, according to Lenin, by “the increase of concentration of production and of capital to such an extent that concentration is leading and has led to monopoly”, and added that “the concentration of production; the monopolies arising therefrom; the merging or coalescence of the banks with industry-such is the history of the rise of finance capital and such is the content of that concept.” Historically engaging accumulated and consolidated capital in few western countries beyond their borders is the specific feature of capitalism at its imperialist stage where political domination of distant lands as colonial possessions was its operational credo. Lenin contended that ” imperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries”, that nurtures ” the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather a stratum of rentiers, i.e ,people who live by ‘clipping coupons”, who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness. The export of capital one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several oversea countries and colonies”.
This was obviously the concrete social,economic and political background to the rise of contemporary States in Africa which renders them objectively, both in the nature,structure and essence antagonistic to the aspirations of the broad mass of the working people in the continent. The “hollow” States in Africa remain basically isolated and disconnected from the concrete reality in which the majority of people in the continent.
Democratization, a trend of strict formalization of political process in which political life of the people is restricted to voting in election. Rentier States in Africa are strict creation of imperialism and even in post colonial stage, remain in essence the obstruction of the Africa,s historical process to recreate and reinvent itself compatible with its stages of historical evolution. With the damage of imperialist distortion and dis-articulation of Africa and as Lenin had asked , “what is to be done”? The widening net of poverty and mass deprivation despite some genuine efforts in some places, shows that capitalism and its contemporary misleading catchphrase of “free market” has no prospect of development. Even the advanced capitalist western nations have entered the phase of structural terminal crises, where Lenin correctly analysed that’ “Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations-all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism…or capitalism in transition or, more precisely, as moribund capitalism”. If capitalism is moribund in its imperialist stage, it cannot grow in Africa , let alone to flourish. Socialism is even a distant prospect in Africa but the continent can take definitive stance leading to it by the interrogation of the existential reality by which we can evolve a system with characteristics of each state in Africa.
Onunaiju is a research fellow in Abuja based Think Tank
