UPC not for working class only

In his article in The Monitor of Friday, August 3, David Mafabi wrote: “On a light note, however, how can we fail to take note of the five (5) UPC programmatic “socialist” (explicitly described as such!) documents of its “Move to the Left Strategy” from 1968 to 1971? Namely: Proposals on National Service; The Common Man’s Charter; Proposals on New Methods of Election of the People’s Representatives; Communication from the Chair of the National Assembly; the Nakivubo Pronouncements! Naturally, the content was objectively national democratic - not socialist.”

In quoting this, Mr Mafabi is trying to show that, contrary to what I said that Fronasa desired to bring about a Cuban-type of revolution in Uganda, it is UPC which in The Common Man’s Charter specifically talked of socialism. There is no question that The Common Man’s Charter talked about socialism. And in saying that in Fronasa we aimed at bringing about the Cuban-type of socialism in Uganda, I am not at all trying to deny that The Common Man’s Charter ever talked about socialism.

There is a big difference between what The Common’s Man’s Charter talked about and the intention to bring about a Cuban-type of revolution in Uganda. The socialism of The Common Man’s Charter did not involve any war. The attempt to bring about the Cuban-type of revolution involved a war.

And it was a war which was predicated on wrong theory. For a revolution like the one which took place to occur, there must obtain what Lenin called a revolutionary situation. That situation, as we said in The Independent article, did not obtain in Uganda. In the absence of that revolutionary situation, Museveni’s war in Luweero has ended up being an adventure which has cost lives on both sides but resulted in no revolution. No wonder Prof. Mahmood Mamdani described the whole thing as fire which never produced any ash.

Of course, those with superficial acquaintance with Marxism will quickly find faults with UPC or Milton Obote’s use of the concept socialism. However, none other than Karl Marx and Frederic Engels in their famous Communist Manifesto made allowances for non-Marxists or non-proletarians to use the concept. I would urge Mafabi to re-read The Communist Manifesto. Further to that, I would like to bring in what an academic who lived in Uganda during the time of the promulgation of the move to the left observed:

“Much debate among Ugandans, who took an active interest in the domestic policy of Obote, cantered round its socialistic character.

In actual fact, however, Obote’s main ideological commitment was to nationalism. In his maniacal devotion to nationalism he often employed socialistic rhetoric. When towards the end of his regime, he announced the UPC’s move to the left strategy, he was really concerned with ensuring the consolidation of Uganda’s national unity; his commitment to bringing about a fairer distribution of wealth produced by Ugandan labour began to falter almost immediately after the well-known pronouncements of 1970 (especially the Nakivubo announcements) were issued.”

That is what Prof. T.V. Sathyamurthy wrote on page 466 of his encyclopaedic book, “Political Development in Uganda”. We should hasten to add that what Prof. Sathyamurthy is saying was not just true of Obote and UPC; all national-democratic liberation movements were ideologically the same in this regard. Let us give a few examples:

Just as Prof. Sathyamurthy said of UPC and Obote, a reading of the experiences of all national-democratic movements has shown that revolutionary movements arrive as socialist ideas through hatred of imperialism i.e. one form of nationalism or another. They do not arrive at the proclamation of socialism through class negation of capitalism as elaborated by Karl Marx, but rather through anti-imperialist nationalism. In this respect, they reflect the spontaneous logic of the revolutionary process in these countries.

A voice from Syria
“So the very nationalism of these elements makes them gravitate toward accepting socialism,” the long-term Secretary General of the Syrian and Lebanese Communist Party, Kahlid Bagdash, noted in an article published in “World Marxist Review” no. 8 1964 page 54, “no matter how paradoxical this fact may seem, for it contradicts all our previous criteria, it is a fact wrought by the dialectical development of our time, the time of transition from capitalism to socialism.”

No one has been as lucid as Julius Nyerere on this matter. In an interview with The Times of Zambia in Lusaka on November 24, 1979, he said: “I would describe our ideology as socialist. That is all. We are fighting against capitalism, all of us. We are trying to establish, I hope, just societies, healthy relationships between individuals. We have started from different bases. I am not a Marxist. I do accept the economics of Marxism.

“I do not accept some of the philosophies of Marxism. But even with economics I have some difficulty. Classically, Marxism is socialism of the rich. It is a socialism which starts with highly developed capitalism and highly developed proletariat. At present, it is the US, under Marxism which is really ripe for socialism.

Apart from nationalism or anti-imperialism, the other impetus for the national democrats to adorn socialism was what the masses were hearing was happening in the socialist countries. In an article, “Political development and social change,” published in 1966, the famous American sociologist Professor Shils observed that people had “...heard of speedy progress of the Soviet Union from a backward country to the status of one of the most powerful industrial nations in the world.

“What could be more harmonious with their present perceptions, their aspirations, and their background than to espouse a socialist solution to their unhappy problems? And if to this is added the fact that their countries have been held in subjection by capitalist countries and socialist countries proclaim their hostility to imperialism, the disposition toward socialism receives another impulsion.”

In this context, socialism for the revolutionary democrats, became a tool for solving the tasks of national liberation and rebirth, of deliverance from imperialism. One only needs to look at their pronouncements at the time as well as the steps they took.