Page 144 - Afrika Must Unite

BUILDING SOCIALISM IN GHANA 129
of the overwhelming majority of the people, is best able to carry
through our economic plans and build a socialist state. The
structure of the C.P.P. has been built up out of our own ex­
periences, conditions and environment. It is entirely Ghanaian
in content and African in outlook, though imbued with M arxist
socialist philosophy.
At all stages, we seek the fullest co-operation of the people and
their organizations, and in this way, and through public control
of the means of production, we hope to evolve the truest kind of
democracy within the Aristotelian meaning. By mass con­
sultation we shall associate the people with the running of the
nation’s affairs, which must then operate in the interests of the
people. Moreover, since control of the modern state is linked up
with the control of the means of production and distribution,
true democracy can only be said to exist when these have passed
into the hands of the people. For then the people exercise control
of the State through their will as expressed in the direct con­
sultation between government and them. This must surely
provide the most concrete and clearest operation of true
democracy.
To attain this democratic, socialist control, we have from
time to time to make a review of the administrative apparatus at
our disposal, remembering that it was originally bequeathed to
us by a colonial regime committed to a very different purpose.
Even though this apparatus has already been subjected to
considerable change, it still carries vestiges of inherited attitudes
and ways of thought which have been transmitted even to some
of our newer institutions. In our adaptations, because we are
embarking upon an uncharted path, we may have to proceed
pragmatically. Changes which are made today may themselves
call for further change tomorrow. But when we are endeavouring
to establish a new kind of life within a new kind of society, based
upon up-to-date modes of production, we must acknowledge the
fact that we are in a period of flux and cannot afford to be hide­
bound in our decisions and attitudes. We must accommodate our
minds and attitudes to the need for constant adaptation, never
losing sight of principle and our expressed social objective.
W ith this new approach to our economic and industrial
development, every avenue of education and information must