Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution

In my perhaps foolish quest to gradually read every book ever written by C.L.R. James, I finally tackled Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution. Focusing on the movement for Ghanaian independence and the relationship between the masses and leadership (as embodied in Nkrumah), the relatively short work provides an interesting avenue to consider The Black Jacobins and the role of colonial peoples in shaping world revolution. Like Toussaint Louverture, Nkrumah emerges as a leader made by the masses, absorbing the best of the West and applying it to the particular conditions of the underdeveloped colony of the Gold Coast. Moreover, Nkrumah would, like Toussaint, make some of his own mistakes once in power to protect the revolution. 

While the appendix material makes one perhaps wonder to what extent James was taken in by charismatic post-independence leaders, there is undeniably much of use to be learned from the experience of the Ghana independence movement, especially in consideration of the all-pervasive myth of African incapacity for self-government. Even the so-called backwards colonial peoples who suffer from illiteracy and allegedly primitive social organizations (tribe and chiefs in the villages) are capable of the most remarkable organization, taking advantage of new technology to demolish every argument of the West against African self-rule. This shows, like the enslaved Africans of Saint Domingue, the capacity of the masses to usher in revolutionary change and shape the course of history.

Unfortunately, the text does not fully analyze the fall of Nkrumah's administration, but it points to the larger structural impediments to the African state (especially the political economy of corruption as intimately linked to the prominence of the state in the control of the economy, unlike the West where corruption could flourish in their more developed private sectors). So, all things considered, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution is an interesting work in terms of the larger political significance of The Black Jacobins, which foresaw African independence. Now I must read what James had to say about party politics in the West Indies and more of his analysis of the Russian Revolution. 

Black Spartacus

I recently perused Sudhir Hazareesingh's Toussaint Louverture book and found it very worthwhile. It is a welcome change from some of the more reactionary and questionable interpretations of Toussaint Louverture, as Hazareesingh seems to be more aligned with C.L.R. James. Of course, like many liberals, Hazareesingh seems most comfortable when stressing the revolutionary republicanism of Toussaint, particularly its promise of a multiracial fraternity that never really or deeply materialized. To his credit, he also stresses the various African and Creole (or "Caribbean") elements in Toussaint Louverture's politics, kinship practices, spirituality, and social relations, so he cannot really be accused of overly Westernizing Toussaint. However, one could do without the unfounded claims of "Amerindian" influences on Haitian Vodou. Perhaps the growing contradiction between the masses of ex-slaves and Toussaint's emerging elite could have also been more worthy of scrutiny, even though external threats probably made it increasingly difficult for the revolutionary leadership to imagine a world of peasant proprietorship. But overall a fine synthesis of the latest scholarship on the Haitian Revolution and provocative work on the legacy of Toussaint Louverture for Haiti and the rest of humanity.