# Nkrumaism

Part of a series on :
Marxism :
Theoretical works
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The Condition of the Working Class in England
The German Ideology
The Communist Manifesto
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Grundrisse
Capital
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Dialectics of Nature
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
What Is to Be Done?
The Accumulation of Capital
Philosophical Notebooks
Terrorism and Communism
The State and Revolution
Essays on Marx's Theory of Value
History and Class Consciousness
Prison Notebooks
The Black Jacobins
On Practice
Theses on the Philosophy of History
Dialectic of Enlightenment
A Critique of Soviet Economics
The Long Revolution
Guerrilla Warfare
The Wretched of the Earth
Reading Capital
The Society of the Spectacle
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Ways of Seeing
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Social Justice and the City
Women, Race and Class
Marxism and the Oppression of Women
Imagined Communities
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy
The Sublime Object of Ideology
Time, Labor and Social Domination
The Age of Extremes
The Origin of Capitalism
Empire
Late Victorian Holocausts
Change the World Without Taking Power
Caliban and the Witch
An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital
Capitalist Realism
Capital in the Anthropocene
Towards Socialism or Capitalism?
The Revolution Betrayed
Literature and Revolution
The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany
Their Morals and Ours: The class foundations of moral practice :
Philosophy
Alienation
Dialectical materialism
Ideology
Philosophy of nature
Philosophy in the Soviet Union
Reification
Marxist ethics :
Critique of political economy
Capital (accumulation)
Crisis theory
Commodity
Concrete and abstract labor
Factors of production
Falling profit-rate tendency
Means of production
Mode of production
Capitalist
Socialist
Productive forces
Scientific socialism
Surplus product
Socially necessary labour time
Value-form
Wage labour :
Sociology
Base and superstructure
Bourgeoisie
Class
Class consciousness
Classless society
Commodity fetishism
Communist society
Critical theory
Cultural hegemony
Democracy
Dictatorship of the proletariat
Soviet
Radical
Democratic centralism
Exploitation
False consciousness
Human nature
Immiseration
Imperialism
Lumpenproletariat
Metabolic rift
Proletariat
Private property
Relations of production
State theory
Working class :
History
Class struggle
Historical determinism
Primitive accumulation
Proletarian revolution
World revolution
Theory of historical trajectory :
Aspects
Aesthetics
Archaeology
Criminology
Cultural analysis
Cultural Studies
Ethics
Film theory
Geography
Historiography
Literary criticism
Marxism and religion
Sociology
Philosophy :
Common variants
Structural
Autonomist
Marxism–Leninism
Guevarism
Maoism
Titoism
Trotskyism
Neo-Gramscianism
Regulation school
Third-worldist
Hegelian
Budapest School
Frankfurt School
Humanist
Neue Marx-Lektüre
Open
Political
Praxis School
Both
Black
Classical
Communization
Feminist
Leninism
Neo
Post
Western :
Other variants
Analytical
Austromarxism
Centrist
Council communism
Eurocommunism
Instrumental
Marxism–Leninism–Maoism
Nkrumaism
Orthodox
Revisionist
Situationist
Socialism with Chinese characteristics
Wertkritik :
People
Marx
Engels
Morris
Lafargue
Kautsky
Plekhanov
Du Bois
Connolly
Lenin
Luxemburg
Liebknecht
Kollontai
Bogdanov
Stalin
Trotsky
Grossman
Zinoviev
Bloch
Lukács
Korsch
Bukharin
Ho
Serge
Gramsci
Galiev
Pashukanis
Bordiga
Benjamin
Mao
Basu
Mariátegui
Horkheimer
Dutt
Brecht
Marcuse
Kalecki
Fromm
Cox
Lefebvre
James
Adorno
Padmore
Sartre
Deutscher
Hoxha
Beauvoir
Sombart
Nkrumah
Sweezy
Emmanuel
Hill
Bettelheim
Draper
Jones
Hobsbawm
Althusser
Hinton
Williams
Freire
Mandel
Sivanandan
Miliband
Cabral
Thompson
Bauman
Fanon
Kosik
Berger
Castro
Guevara
Liebman
Heller
Guattari
Mészáros
O'Connor
Wallerstein
Mies
Tronti
Debord
Amin
Hall
Nairn
Parenti
Negri
Jameson
Gonzalo
Dussel
Harvey
Laclau
Bahro
Poulantzas
Vattimo
Badiou
Harnecker
Altvater
Anderson
Löwy
Vogel
Sison
Easthope
Rancière
Berman
Przeworski
Cohen
Therborn
Losurdo
Ture
Postone
Rodney
Bannerji
Spivak
Newton
Sakai
Wood
Federici
Wolff
Balibar
Eagleton
Kurz
Hartsock
Rowbotham
Mouffe
Geras
Brenner
Davis
Massey
Cleaver
Bishop
Haraway
Panitch
Clarke
Jessop
Davis
Wright
Fraser
Burawoy
Holloway
Rose
Screpanti
Tamás
Hampton
Cano
Žižek
Berardi
Sankara
Hennessy
McDonnell
Douzinas
Roediger
Foster
West
Ghandy
Marcos
Heinrich
Prashad
Kelley
Dean
Lordon
Linera
Fisher
Li
Coulthard
Malm
Seymour
Toscano
Bhattacharya
Moufawad-Paul
Srnicek
Horvat
Hamza
Saito :
Journals
Antipode
Capital & Class
Capitalism Nature Socialism
Constellations
Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory
Historical Materialism
Mediations
Monthly Review
New Left Review
Race & Class
Rethinking Marxism
Science & Society
Socialist Register :
Related topics
21st-century communist theorists
Anarchism
Creative destruction
Conflict theory
Criticism of Marxism
Communism
Communalism
Economic determinism
History of communism
Left-wing politics
Marxian economics
New Left
Old Left
Municipalism
Political ecology
Socialism
Authoritarian
Democratic
Market
Reformist
Revolutionary
Social
Utopian
Left-wing populism
Universal class
Vulgar Marxism
Economism
Worker cooperative
Workers' council :
Outline
Communism portal
Philosophy portal
Socialism portal :
vte :
Nkrumaism (sometimes Consciencism) is an African socialist political ideology based on the thinking and writing of Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah, a pan-Africanist and socialist, served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast (later Ghana) from 1952 until 1960 and subsequently as President of Ghana before being deposed by the National Liberation Council in 1966.

## Definition

Nkrumaism is a pan-African socialist theory which aims to adapt Marxist–Leninist theory to the social context of the African continent. Nkrumah defined his belief system as "the ideology of a New Africa, independent and absolutely free from imperialism, organized on a continental scale, founded upon the conception of one and united Africa, drawing its strength from modern science and technology and from the traditional African belief that the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." The Convention People's Party (CPP), founded by Nkrumah in 1949, writes "Nkrumaism simply means Self Reliance, African is capable of managing his own affairs. The values CPP stands for or the guiding principles of Nkrumaism today are those which have guided it throughout its existence. Social justice, Pan-Africanism, Self Determination, African Personality, Anti-Imperialism."
Nkrumaism is a syncretic ideology which blends different sources together while not necessarily borrowing their entire frameworks. In his work, Nkrumah blended different sources from within Africa, the canon of Western philosophy, and black intellectuals in North America and Europe, like Marcus Garvey and George Padmore. Particularly important in founding this ideology were his study and meetings with C. L. R. James, W. E. B. Du Bois and Father Divine. Aside from the Marxist–Leninist framework, this blending of ideas largely only took bits and pieces of other philosophical systems and even its use of traditional African cultural concepts were often stretched to fit into the larger theory. While a major focus of the ideology was ending colonial relationships on the African continent, many of the ideas were utopian, diverting the scientific nature of the Marxist political analysis which it claims to support.

## Beliefs

Like other African political ideologies at the time, the central focus of Nkrumaism was on decolonization across Africa. The central contention of Nkrumaism was that African countries, united with one another, needed to adopt socialist political structures which were consistent with the traditional African values of egalitarianism. Nkrumah rejected the idealized view of pre-colonial African societies that were classless or non-hierarchical, but accepted that Africa had a spirit of communalism and humanism. While colonial structures had damaged these communal, egalitarian values, they had not fully supplanted them. Nkrumaism then argued that a return to these values through socialist political structures would both heal the disruption caused by colonial structures and allow further development of African societies. The pan-African aspects of Nkrumah's ideology were justified by a claim that all African societies had a community of economic life and that in contradiction to the neocolonial structures that replaced formal colonies, only African unity would create real autonomy.
In Nkrumah's argument, four basic pillars formed the applied aspects of this theory: state ownership of the means of production, a one-party democracy, fostering a classless economic system, and pan-African unity. While embracing much of Marxist–Leninist philosophy and Soviet political structures at the time, the ideology differed in some key respects. First, while Marxism–Leninism saw revolution as the only way to replace class structures with a socialist egalitarian system, Nkrumah saw reform as the more appropriate case for Africa. He argued that Ghana, and most of the rest of Africa, had never developed the class distinctions which Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin saw in Europe and thus reform could reestablish preexisting egalitarianism suited to a post-colonial context. Nkrumah wrote that:
   From the ancestral lines of communalism, the passage to socialism lies in reform, because the underlying principles are the same. But when this passage carries one through colonialism the reform is revolutionary since the passage from colonialism to genuine independence is an act of revolution. But because of the continuity of communalism with socialism, in communalistic society, socialism is not a revolutionary creed, but a restatement in contemporary idiom of the principles underlying communalism.
He would change this idea after the 1966 coup seeing revolution as increasingly necessary. Second, while Nkrumah believed in the materialism and economic determinism of Marxism, he argued that focusing on the economic system was only appropriate after achieving independence throughout Africa and that the political struggle was the first order in colonial and neocolonial contexts.

## Impact

The ideology of Nkrumaism formed a key part of the personality cult around Nkrumah and the party-building efforts of his political party, the CPP. This was in part achieved through Nkrumah's use of democratic centralism in the CPP and government. His arguments were widely published and these had an impact within the Gold Coast colony, independent Ghana, and other parts of Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. The CPP, founded by Nkrumah in 1949, became a vocal proponent for the teaching and application of Nkrumaism. When he became president in the 1960s, his Minister for Presidential Affairs, Tawia Adamafio, established study groups on Nkrumaism which many civil servants joined to advance their careers. At the same time, the CPP established Ghana Young Pioneers groups for school age children where Nkrumaism was taught. While the tenets were promoted through these various party efforts, applying all aspects of the ideology proved to be difficult for Nkrumah while President of the country. Because of this, some consider Nkrumaism to be "first of all a cultural phenomenon" in Ghana with little impact on the actual politics of the country.

## Criticisms

Henry Bretton argues that Nkrumaism was not a coherent ideology, but a vague framework supporting the cult of personality and the centralized rule of Nkrumah. He writes:
   Nkrumaism was a verbalization of the requirements of the personal political machine. Professional scribes and amateurs, along with the Ghanaian Left, were set to the task of providing the coherence and internal consistency required to give a semblance of philosophy to the chaotic assemblage of ideas and fantasies borrowed from all parts of the world and from all periods of history, frequently out of context.
In contrast, Yuri Smertin criticized early works by Nkrumah from a Marxist perspective for distorting scientific socialism by combining religious and traditional elements.