With the Live 8 Concerts upon us and with their stated objective of addressing African poverty—a noteworthy goal—we stumbled across a very different take on African poverty while researching the issue. Readers of Independent Sources already know that we believe that the measures that Blair and company are proposing will do little since they do not address the root causes of Africa’s problems (Kleptocracies, lack of enforceable property rights, barriers to trade, etc.), and it turns out that the folks over at the U.S. Revolutionary Communist Party have their own spin on things. 

First off we were surprised to learn that there was is still a Revolutionary Communist Party in existence—let alone a U.S. chapter. Their stated manifesto is such a throwback to times before we had witnessed the fall of pretty much every communist country in the world that listening to their book of Mao quotations gives us that same warm cliche-ridden, nostalgic feeling of watching an old episode of “Three’s Company”on TV Land—it’s almost “retro-cool.” 

With regard to Africa, the Revolutionary Communist Party initially expresses some optimism:

RCP: It is true this whole system is profoundly and truly outmoded. And over the last couple centuries it has become increasingly possible, for the first time in history, to see the means and potential for actually abolishing poverty, exploitation, and the domination of whole nations. This should be a source of great hope and inspiration.

But at this point, the viewpoints of Independent Sources diverge with those held by revolutionary communist workers of the world:

RCP: And on the other hand, the murderous and worsening conditions facing billions of people cannot actually change without breaking the hold of international capital over the world’s people and wealth. It will take revolution—breaking the entrenched military and political domination of the major imperialist powers (like those meeting at the G-8 summit in Scotland). It will take the overthrow of capitalism and creating a whole new and different kind of economy on a new and socialist basis—at first country by country, and then ultimately defining social and economic life on a world scale.

And it gets worse:

RCP: It will, in short, require the most radical process in human history—creating the basis for a whole new stage of human history, for a liberated global society without classes, oppression, war or the domination of one nation by another.

So it turns out that the modern day revolutionary workers communist party is probably the most pessimistic of any group that we’ve come across on the chances for success in Africa. That’s because they believe Africa’s salvation  is dependent on a new global society, one without classes, oppression, war or domination. Since such a world does not (and will not) exist outside of Maoist fiction, one can only deduce that per the RCP, Africa is screwed.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 2nd, 2005 at 5:36 pm by Insider and is filed under Big Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.