The Class Struggle That Lurks Behind Our Politics

I am not a socialist, but the current crisis confronting our nation leaves me no option but to borrow a favorite socialist-Marxist phrase; “Class Struggle”. Nkrumah dedicated a whole book explaining the Class Struggle in Africa. How he passionately pointed out one problem leading to the other was fascinating. Hence, his critical views on situations wouldn’t be overemphasized. That is not to say the only alternate solution in a right-wing economic and social upheaval must be socialism; or in our case, Nkrumaism. However, looking at these turmoils, it all seems the socialists have won in their analysis. And indeed, Ghana’s struggle at this juncture shall be dire.

This analysis won’t glorify Nkrumaism, it is neither a critique of Pan-Africanists' views of neo-colonialism. Objectively, it is time we confront issues the way it is, not from the lenses of ideologues. Hence, my observation.

It is about how so well the center-left and the center-right have done in mortgaging and compromising our nation into the abyss of destruction. Yet, Marxism isn’t all that we have to chase, only because the Nkrumaists haven’t caught it yet. Any non-ideologue will see Nkrumah as a phenomenon, not merely a student of Karl Marx. But as an independent thinker who turned ideological credos into practical concepts and started living perfectly by them. In history, only China holds such an accolade. Nkrumah also used Marx to conceptualize his ideas; projecting long-term goals in an industrial state machine in an agrarian society. It must be emphasized that neither agrarian nor industrialization met Karl Marx with compromising terms. Hence, Marx wouldn’t have liked Nkrumah in the same way Nkrumah was obsessed with him. Nkrumah was Nkrumah and nothing more.

In our time, and in this center-right economic graves, Nkrumah should be more important than any other thinker we know. Because, the middle class we knew isn’t in the middle anymore, they are far away from the lines with abundant riches. The working class as we knew also fall below conditions that seem even unsuitable for slaves. And so, socialist credos, have to be left behind for Nkrumah’s phenomenal critiques on future African economics to take lead. It is no news that we are living in a deep neo-colonial government that wholeheartedly embraces neo-liberal economic ideals in a colonial manner. Putting their citizens in conditions worse and harsher than that of colonial times. This is the picturesque of Ghana’s economic structure today.

The mechanisms have been difficult to ascertain because trade unions (a very good friend to socialists) aren’t seeing their vanguards; the CPP and the Nkrumaists in action. Allowing both the NPP and the NDC to rally behind these enslaving neo-colonial policies for three decades. Akufo-Addo and the Akim caucus want to finalize it, and it is obvious that the NDC will do the same when they come to power. That is the only lane left for Ghana’s economic spree. It will forever be turmoil. Things can get worse than this.

The majority of those we call the working class, aren’t working for Ghana today. The Chinese, Lebanese, and other foreign companies have gained more ground here than the indigenous. The government is more interested in their dollars, they are vulnerable to huge extortions and skyrocketing taxes, and they will clandestine fishy deals; something the government like. Needless to say, the working class has no future but is rather exploited, used, taxed, enslaved, and made to live in completely abhorrent conditions. More youth are packed behind the bars of remote jobs that only fetch them bread and fish, sometimes none. Thousands of young women and men are working in foreign industries and enterprises; living on, as low as 400 cedis a month. Jobs that could be lost in seconds without compensation.

Mechanisms of private enterprise tearing between government taxes and partisan glories descend on the wager, who have to rely on them for survival. What the government has been doing to the locals trying to establish factories and businesses is literally wickedness. Huge taxes imposed, the frustrations they will go through, sabotage, and unexpected closures have killed the Ghanaians wanting to build their own nation and help reduce the unemployed rotting in homes and ghettos. In the end, it is the Chinese or the Lebanese, or the Indians who wins. For the sake of the government, foreign enterprises and businesses thrive, dominate and control the economy. That is to say, Ghanaians aren’t working for Ghana, they’re rather working to boost the international economy and the economies of countries that won’t care about the future of their children.

The taxes these foreign industries pay to the government don't materialize in the people’s lives. It is rather borrowed funds that are used to construct roads, build schools, water, and other feeble development. It turns back to the same people to work and pay those debts they rarely benefited from. IMF bailouts, inflations, and currency depreciation directly descend on the people with unprecedented miseries that shift the society in a downward direction. It is simply the conditions of slaves.

It becomes trivial, at this point, to analyze conditions from the mere middle class and working-class categories; calling the dead bodies of socialists decoys. But neocolonialism is neither socialism nor capitalism. It is simply a neo-liberal subsidy.

While some political-faithfuls get paid hundreds of thousands for doing nothing in those useless sectors and offices of the government; living and spending lavishly on luxuries. Their fellow youth on the other hand will work ceaselessly under bruising conditions and still have to beg for state security to mount strikes and demonstrations just to tell the government to pay their three months salaries not even nearer to one-third of what the party-faithfuls receive. These people aren’t living to realize their dreams, they don’t hope to become rich or build monumental legacies; they only work to survive; pay bills, rent apartments, and probably die in the same conditions.

Why call these people the working class?
As Ghanaians, we owe the world billions of dollars, but our government seems not to owe us anything. They brought us these debts but they still hunt and condescend to us when we complain. Putting politics even above the people’s survival. But it is politics of slavery because those who reduced us and are still reducing us to animal-like conditions (in Ghana, some women have to give birth on plastic chairs), still have our ears and minds. Their voices are being heard on radios/televisions every day; fuming anger with propaganda to validate their sham activities.

The economists’ ideas, grotesquely inspired by capitalism, socialism, macroeconomics, microeconomics and other disingenuous terms are alienating to the indigenous economy. Ghana hasn’t moved from an agrarian dependent economy to the industrialized society like that in the developed world that relate to such concepts. The dependency ratio in communities is still high, petty traders still hold the core part of the economy that directly affects the people. And these people are far from these class standards. The working class, as may be conferred to those depending on wager salaries isn’t working in an industrial economy in its true sense. In Ghana, people living in their own small capital are the working class, who don't meet the standards of what the conventional working-class holds.

These supposed working-class people don’t get good water, good schools, and good electricity. In reality, they live in miserable conditions, hoping that government will at least make sense to them for once. It is not only trivial for analysts to refer to these people as working-class, it is also insane. Working-class people don’t drink from the same stream with goats and cows, their children don’t sit behind trees in schools, their youth don’t deprive themselves in ghettos, their wives in labor don’t die in wheelbarrows, they don’t deprive themselves in poverty and hunger. Both the NPP and the NDC aren’t ready to embrace good governance, they are not ready to curb corruption either. And so, the Ghanaian who has to survive in destructive employment conditions has to live all his life seeing party-faithfuls living luxuriously.

In our agonies, people are still making hay. It is the adventure of the enslaving class and the political class.

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