Giovanni, Africa and Me

an affectionate dialogue

Arrighi and Africa: Farewell Thoughts by John S. Saul

From May 26 to May 29 of this year a group of us, convened by Carlos Prieto del Campo, came together in Madrid to celebrate the work of Giovanni Arrighi. The plan was that Giovanni himself, together with his wife and collaborator Beverly Silver, would also be at this workshop to actively engage in the exchange, to help us to clarify and expand points, and to generally add their stimulating presence to the event. Unfortunately, only the day before we were to assemble, Giovanni, seriously ill with cancer since last July, suffered an unexpected seizure and, it was announced, would have to spend the conference in the Intensive Care Unit of a Baltimore hospital.

Although the workshop was now to be rather like “Hamlet without the prince” those of us who were there managed to soldier on, with Beverly and to some degree Giovanni following our proceedings by skype. And enlightening the event certainly proved to be. Ideas and theories about global capitalism and its prospects echoed through our meeting chamber at the Reina Sofia complex in the centre of the city. These were ideas and theories very often inspired by Giovanni's own writings, of course, with a full range of spirited opinions being presented, some supportively enthusiastic regarding his work and its implications, some more combative and skeptical. But all were there, in Giovanni's spirit, to learn and to share. Indeed, even those of us most tempted to skulk off at various points to view Picasso's “Guernica” (housed in a nearby room) or to visit the Prado tended to stay the fascinating course of such a workshop.

Not surprisingly. Gathered together, after all, were a strong cadre of Giovanni's colleagues, former students and diverse comrades from around the world - drawn by enthusiasm and respect both for Giovanni's person and for his powerful writings. And, as noted, opinions were both enthusiastic and combative - a not too surprising juxtaposition of descriptors, perhaps, since Giovanni was both enthusiastic and combative in his own right, although also always being unfailingly warm and friendly. As it happens, and as the following paper that I presented at the workshop (“Africa in a New Global Order: A Critique of Giovanni Arrighi's Changing Perspective on Africa”) indicates, I had found myself rather surprised at the direction his writings on Africa - where our own diverse intellectual journeys had begun together almost forty-five years ago - had taken in recent years. I sought enlightenment about the precise weight and substance of our differences, writing the paper below with, I suppose, a combative enthusiasm of my own.

My intention was clear: to once again draw my old friend out on certain important issues and to debate them vigorously as we had done so often in the past (the paper, below, stands exactly as I wrote it for Madrid). I chose not to tiptoe around the issues for I knew very well that Giovanni was more than able to take care of himself intellectually and that, in any case, he would not thank any fellow debater for patronizing him or for pulling his or her punches. But of course, sadly, his riposte to my piece would not then come - and now never will. Instead, my wife and I found ourselves, a few weeks later in June, sitting a kind of post-modern form of northern Italian shiva with his wife, son and brother in Giovanni and Beverly's Baltimore home. Now, in tribute to his memory, and to our decades of on-going debate, a debate that was invariably heated but one that never became testy, I offer my Madrid contribution here.

 

* * *

 

I should, perhaps, begin by placing some of my credentials firmly on the table. I can lay claim, I think, to being one of Giovanni's oldest living friends and comrades on both the social science and the political-activism fronts. For our friendship dates back to our days, in the mid-1960s, as colleagues (and next-door neighbours) on the campus of the University of Dar es Salaam. Giovanni arrived there after a brief and genuinely heroic interlude - about which more could easily be said - in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), that being his first academic home after leaving Lever Brothers and also, at least temporarily, his native Italy behind. On the campus we formed, almost immediately, an extremely warm friendship. In fact, I love the guy, a feeling that has not changed one iota despite our having come, ultimately, to hold somewhat different views both about Africa and about the world, differences to which I will also speak further in what follows.

But for the moment, let's stay in Dar es Salaam. For there, as members of the then notorious Committee of Nine Lecturers, we worked closely with such fellow faculty members as the remarkable Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney, Catherine Hoskyns (then a leading scholar on the Congo), future Weatherman Jim Mellen, the Kenyan literateur Grant Kamenju, and in consultation with Dennis Phombeah, a senior Tanzanian bureaucrat of firmly left persuasion, and Roger Murray, then an employee of TANU, the country's dominant political party. Our intention: to articulate progressive proposals regarding the future shape of the University College and to present them vigorously at a “Conference on the Role of the University College, Dar es Salaam, in a Socialist Tanzania” convened shortly after the promulgation of that country's Arusha Declaration.

Exciting times certainly, about which much has been written. And here too more could easily be said. But I will merely pass on quickly to the fact that, during this same period, Giovanni and I managed to study, theorize and write a great deal together; indeed one of the very first books either of us published - entitled Essays on the Political Economy of Africa from Monthly Review Press - came directly out of the hot political atmosphere of the time and place: Dar es Salaam in the 1960s. Let me begin the main argument of this paper, that pertaining to the strengths and weaknesses of Giovanni's shifting position about Africa and about the Global South more generally, by reiterating the thrust of that early book - with the reason for doing so soon to become apparent.

The very introduction to that book identified “the interaction of contemporary capitalism with patterns of domestic class formation” as the main features of Africa's underdevelopment. Moreover, the first chapter of that volume was entitled “Socialism and Economic Development in Tropical Africa” in which we argued the need for a socialist development option, while the second chapter, “Nationalism and Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa,” stated crisply that “socialism is, in fact, rapidly becoming a historical necessity in order to ensure the further development of the area.” We suggested the impossibility of a newly emergent post-colonial Africa realizing either economic growth or (still less) a meaningful advance towards human development from within the then-present terms of its framing by global capitalism. Instead, we argued, "the key trend [is] towards increased subservience vis-a-vis a rationalizing international capitalism" - with development "effectively constrained by such a continental pattern" and with, in consequence, a "Latin Americanization of independent Africa...well underway.” And it was on this basis that we then suggested the "necessity" of a socialist break by Africa from the global capitalist system.

I was therefore surprised to find Arrighi, in the recent magisterial reflections on his intellectual trajectory over the years to be found in his NLR interview with David Harvey (New Left Review, March-April, 2009), stating of our period of work together:

"There was also a difference between us that I think has persisted until this day, in that I was far less upset about [the failures of African progressive regimes] than John was. For me these movements were national liberation movements; they were not in any way socialist movements, even when they embraced the rhetoric of socialism. They were populist regimes, and therefore I didn't expect much beyond national liberation, which we both saw as very important in itself. But whether there were possibilities for political development beyond this is something that John and I still quarrel about to this day, good-humoredly, whenever [including, I must add, here in Madrid!] we meet."

Well, yes and no: as Arrighi also acknowledges we actually shared a similar degree of skepticism about many if not most of the nationalist and post-liberation-struggle regimes in the making that we saw about us in Africa, often repeating in our joint work Roger Murray's own resonant warning of the time: do not confuse the historically possible with the historically necessary. Yet I never heard Giovanni state at the time - I'm sure he will correct me if I'm wrong [sic!] - that merely populist regimes were the best that Africans could hope for. Indeed, I thought we agreed that, in fact, on-going class struggle in Africa might yet produce more valuable outcomes on that continent. But I now sense, in the wake of the Harvey interview, that something more profound than any different readings we may have had about the “socialist potential” of this or that movement or regime was at stake (or at least: has now become so). For what we were actually disagreeing on, apparently, was the “socialist potential” of Africa itself. This would become clearer as Giovanni, in later writings, came to move even further from what I had thought was our shared position of the time.

Moreover - whatever the subtlety of his position about Africa in those days may have been and however much unglimpsed by me - Giovanni's more general position seemed to remain remarkably clear...and eminently consistent over many years. Thus, in his on-going analyses at the global level, the overall structure of things did seem to render socialism a necessary step in the struggle for development (even, or so I thought, in Africa). Here the key text was a seminal paper in the New Left Review (“World Income Inequalities and the Future of Socialism” in the September-October 1991 issue) where, almost a quarter century after we had first written together, he articulated clearly a sophisticated perspective on the realities of the West's oligarchic wealth and on the existence of “seemingly iron law of a global hierarchy of wealth.” In sum, he argued, “the standards of wealth enjoyed by the West correspond to what Roy Harrod once defined as “'oligarchic wealth' in opposition to 'democratic wealth,'” these two worlds being separated by an “unbridgeable gulf.”

What follows from such an analyis? In fact, his conclusions were equally clear and unequivocal. For he continued that 1991 article by arguing that only a process of global socialist emancipation could hope to permit the development game to start over with all players on the kind of equal footing that would permit the otherwise “wretched of the earth” to stand a fair chance; only then, in short, could “a process that has developed to legitimate and enforce world inequalities be turned into a means to the end of promoting greater world equality and solidarity.”

Imagine my surprise then to find Giovanni, in the 1990s, more or less rewriting that paper, now with two co-authors, a mere decade later. In fact (no surprise) the new article restates firmly, and at comparable length, much the same fine-tuned and carefully documented position as the previous one regarding the dominance of a capitalist induced, still largely geographically-defined (and western-centric) global hierarchy. However - and here's the surprise - although the basic structure, the elaboration of the problem, is more or less exactly the same, the conclusion is now absolutely different. For now there is no mention, not even one, of “socialism”, as a possible antidote to a Western capitalist stranglehold on the global South. Instead, the sole hope for shaking western economic hegemony (particularly that of the United States) and global white dominance now lies, for Giovanni and his co-authors, with the rise, on firmly capitalist foundations, of China - even though there is actually little sign, in his argument, of how the rest of the global South might benefit from the presumed rise of China [or at least the Chinese elite) within the ranks of the globally privileged!

And what about Africa as viewed within this new optic? Perhaps it is also worth noting here that at about this same time (the beginning of the present decade) Giovanni and I had actually begun to speak of returning, now some thirty years later, to our earlier work on Africa. It was immediately apparent that this would not be an simple undertaking since our positions had already diverged markedly, but we explored the idea a bit further. Ultimately, we tried to improvise a possibly innovative framework, a book that would present itself as something of a dialogue or debate, underscoring our different starting points and letting the chips fall where they may. Giovanni even began a chapter on his own views to serve as his working document for our collaboration. But I think he must have despaired of our ability to now collaborate, to any pertinent or useful effect, intellectually - and I emphasize this word for our friendship itself was never placed in jeopardy - and instead published the above-mentioned piece in New Left Review under the title “The African Crisis: World Systemic and Regional Aspects.”

There is no need to rehash the logistics of the possible alternative path NOT taken here, because the intellectual reasons for our not proceeding with any kind of collaborative project were and are readily apparent: the space between us had grown so great that it must have seemed to Giovanni, as I was also beginning to sense, unbridgeable, at least for purposes of a joint publication even of the innovative kind we had been thinking about. Not that we have stopped thinking, of course: Giovanni has produced his magnum opus, one that, amongst other things, helps draw us together here in Madrid this week and I have myself produced four books in the years since, including one on southern Africa entitled The Next Liberation Struggle: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy in Southern Africa , a title that, in and of itself, may give some idea of where I continue to come from on these questions.

Here, however, let me round off this presentation by examining the substance of Giovanni's own most recent articulation of a position on Africa as reflected in his above-mentioned article (“The African Crisis,” in NLR, #15, May-June, 2002). Let me also say, at the outset, that I found and still find his views in that article singularly depressed, and depressing, “There may be little that most [African] states can do,” he concludes, “to upgrade their economies in the global hierarchy of wealth” (as we know, elsewhere in his writing he has, of course, argued the existence of a “fixed hierarchy” and there seems little chance, from the evidence of his recent writing on the continental prospect, of Africa disrupting, in its own favour, that hierarchy - whatever may be the possibilities for China of doing so). He can suggest only that there is, nonetheless, “always something they could do to increase (or decrease) the well-being of the citizenry at any given level of poverty or wealth.”

Conceding that even in such relatively narrow terms “African ruling groups have probably done far less than was in their power to do,” Giovanni nonetheless concludes on what is apparently intended to be an upbeat note: “But it is not clear whether and to what extent they have on the whole been more deficient than the ruling groups of other countries and regions, the United States included. Indeed, if we take into account differentials in wealth and power, it seems likely that they have been comparatively less so” (pp. 35-6). But, even if this were true (and, to be clear, from my own experience I see absolutely no reason to assume this to be the case), it would still stand as pretty modest accomplishment for a destitute continent - and, in any case, Giovanni does not really discuss what strategies pressed by which agents might begin to move “African ruling groups” towards the more benign behaviour he apparently has in mind.

*****

A final comment.

Let me merely reiterate that I have spoken frankly in a way that Giovanni, I know, will appreciate: he is, as I noted at the outset, quite capable of “fighting his own corner” intellectually. And, needless to say, he is also someone whom I deeply respect. But I also speak here in a mood of some puzzlement. For I know that Giovanni and I share, up to a point, a very similar point of view: there is no question of either of us going over to the side of western capitalism and the capital logic that has done so much damage, over the years, to Africa.

True, as regards the rise of “Chinese capitalism,” I must confess that I remain profoundly skeptical about any promise it might be thought to hold - for Africa in particular. But I leave this to others better equipped than I am to discuss the novel assertions of China and their implications. Nonetheless, China apart, my basic question, to Giovanni, to you, remains what it was for us over forty years ago: what about Africa? Is the continent really so side-lined as to be forced to cast about for some deus ex machina for even the very mild version of salvation he foresees open to it?

Can we, I want to ask, really rest any hope whatsoever either in a benign Chinese presence that, beyond headlong resource extraction and support for the most suspect of regimes there, shows little sign of really wishing Africa well in some substantive way? More importantly, is a kinder, gentler elite in Africa itself any better a hope there? I've suggested my skepticism about such levers of understanding and I've argued a similar point of view elsewhere.

And yet, alternatively, is the potential in Africa, for a popular, class-based and progressive politics itself anything more than a mere will-of the-wisp, a dream, a historical impossibility however much an historical necessity, in a context of severe and pretty much unalloyed “historical backwardness”? You tell me. My choice though - until I hear something more convincing - is the need for a “next liberation struggle.” In sum, a luta continua.

* * *

Obviously, I would have greatly preferred to hear Giovanni's own response, be it in Baltimore or in Madrid, to the matters that I sought to debate with him. Was our disagreement primarily a confrontation of “pessimism of the intelligence” on the one hand and “optimism of the will” on the other? Of course, whatever may be the truth of the matter, it is the case that our “exchange,” both in Spain and in these pages of ROAPE, is now only to be the sound of one hand - my own - clapping. But my essay also shouts out full-throatedly for the man I knew and loved - one of the great thinkers of recent decades and, as well, my very dear friend. _____________

[i] Giovanni's connection with Rhodesia was important and very brave - not only was he closely involved with the ZAPU liberation movement, he was actually a activist in its underground operations, running arms and information back and forth from Zambia with John Conradie. As it happens, he was arrested at about this same time with some other lecturers and activists at the University - for what were relatively mild campus-based activities. But not for the more serious ones. Therefore, hovering over his head while in custody (for some days) was the possibility that he'd be rumbled for something far more important (as Conradie ultimately was and spent many years in jail). Despite that (as I recall Gerry Caplan, who was also arrested and deported at the same time, telling me) Giovanni refused to be immediately deported - much to the discomfiture of his fellow arrestees, who actually knew nothing of the additional jeopardy Giovanni was putting himself in by acting as he did but were merely understandably eager to get out of the country - until Basker Vashee, a Rhodesian but arrested with the expatriate university lecturers, was also freed and deported (as he soon was, to later become head of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam). Only after this did Giovanni come on to Dar to join our number there.  

[ii] Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly J. Silver and Benjamin D. Brewer, “Industrial Convergence, Globalization and the Persistence of the North-South Divide”, Studies in Comparative Industrial Development, 38, 1 (Spring, 2003).  

[iii] John S. Saul, The Next Liberation Struggle: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy in Southern Africa (Toronto, Durban, New York and London: Between the Lines, University of Kwazulu-Natal Press, Monthly Review Press, The Merlin Press, 2005)