Page 80 - CONSCIENCISM By Kwame Nkrumah_Neat

74 CONSCIENCISM
may be initiated by the necessities of preserving identical funda­
mental principles. Reform is a tactic of self-preservation.
Revolution is thus an indispensable avenue to socialism, where
the antecedent social-political structure is animated by principles
which are a negation of those of socialism, as in a
ture (and therefore also in a colonialist structure, for a cOJomanst
structure is essentially ancillary to capitalism). Indeed, I dis­ tiered society, how through its mode of explaining nature and
tinguish between two colonialisms, between a domestic one, and
an external one. Capitalism at home is domestic colonialism.
But because the spirit of communalism still exists to some
extent in societies with a communalist past, socialism and com­
munism are not in the strict sense of the word 'revolutionary'
creeds. They may be described as restatements in contemporary
idiom of the principles underlying communalism. On the other
hand, in societies with no history of communalism, the creeds of
socialism and communism are fully revolutionary, and the pas­
sage to socialism must be guided by the principles of scientific
socialism.
The nature and cause of the conflict between the ruling class
and the exploited class is influenced by the development of
productive forces, that is, changes in technology; the economic
relations which these forces condition; and the ideologies that
reflect the properties and psychology of the people living in that
society. The basis of a socialist revolution is created when the
struggle within a given society has resulted in mass consent
and mass desire for positive action to change or transform that
society. It is then that the foundation is laid for the highest form
of political action - when a revolution attains its excellence,
workers and peasants succeed in overthrowing all other classes.
I have explained how society's desire to transform nature
reflects itself in different social-political theories. I wish now to
suggest how the same desire reflects itself in philosophy. Just as
social-political theories, to the extent that they deploy forces for
the harnessing and development ofnature, fall into two lots, so do
philosophies. From this standpoint, the two real social-political
alternatives facing society are either that one section should pro-
SOCIETY AND IDEOLOGY 75
duce, and another section batten thereon, or that all sections
should produce and all sections should be fulfilled by the value
created by labour.
In the same way, there are two real philosophical alternatives.
These alternatives coincide with idealism and materialism. In the
preceding chapter, I explained how idealism was connected with a
social phenomena by reference to spirit, idealism favoured a class
structure ofa horizontal sort, in which one class sat upon the neck of
another.
I also explained there how materialism, on the other hand, was
connected with a humanist organization, how through its being
monistic, and its referring all natural processes to matter and
its laws, it inspired an egalitarian organization of society. The
unity and fundamental identity of nature suggests the unity and
fundamental identity of man in society. Idealism favours an
oligarchy, materialism favours an egalitarianism.
Individuals have both idealist and materialist tendencies in them.
So have societies both idealist and materialist streaks. But these
streaks do not exist in equipoise. They are connected by a conflict in
which now one streak predominates, now the other.
By reason of the connection with an oligarchy and
of materialism with an egalitarianism, the opposition of idealism
and materialism in the same society is paralleled by the opposition
ofconservative and progressive forces on the social level. When in
the dialectical opposition ofcapitalism to socialism, the former for a
time becomes triumphant, social progress is not thereby altogether
arrested, though it is seriously attenuated. But since it is not
arrested, it is hardly cause for wonder that the workers oftoday in
respects enjoy better circumstances oflife than even a good
many feudal lords ofthe past. To confess to this degree ofprogress
is not to say, however, that capitalism has been without its shanty
towns and slums, its captive workers languishing and finally dying
in public squares, victims ofhunger, cold and disease.
The question is not whether there has been discernible progress
under capitalism, but rather whether what progress is admitted