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Feature Article of Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Columnist: Kwarteng, Francis

It is with great pleasure we read Philip Kobina Baidoo, Jr.s article Nkrumahs Socialism, Full of Ideas; But It Doesnt Work, a piece of work invested with elements of emotion and analytic one-sideness. On the other hand, heavy intellectual investment in political economy, history of philosophy, history of the development of capitalism and socialism, sociology and sociology of state formation, history of scholarship, history of science, history of knowledge, and history of scholarship would probably have produced a different set of conclusions within the narrow scope of Baidoo, Jr.s essay.

Unfortunately, the essay suffers from serious or sustained analysis and holistic evidentiation because of its apparent misleading assumptions, a perception probably ascribable to the writers lack of holistic focus on the politics of globalization and historicism, generally, as well as to his intellectual dereliction stemming from exclusion of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of capitalism, in his essay. We believe the following disparate views undermine the superficial potency of his essay:

The essay failed to include data from the Human Development Index (DHI), a statistical formula devised by the Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq (with major contributions from the Indian economist, Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science) to measure human development, represented by indices such as education, income distribution, and life expectancy. More importantly, the DHI is published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Why is the DHI statistics that important? For instance, Cuba, a communist country, appears on the 2014 list of top 50 countries (with wealthy capitalist countries such as the US, Germany, etc). No African free enterprise economy or capitalist country appears among the top 50 countries. In fact, how many of such African free enterprise economies or capitalist countries have appeared among the top 50 countries since the 1990 advent of the Human Development Index (DHI)? Putting that aside, Cuba has a literacy rate of 99.8% (the 10th highest in the world); her life expectancy is around 78 years (the 37th in the world); her life expectancy is the 3rd in the Americas (after Canada and Chile; Note: It beats the US); and her infant mortality rate is one of the lowest in the world.

Further, Cubas graduation rate for high school students revolves around 94%. Cuba also gives scholarships to students from around the world to pursue medical training and medical degrees. Students from America, Europe, Asia, and Africa benefit from this progressive program. Lest we are not grossly misunderstood, we want to make it clear that Cuba is not a nirvana, yet, this question pops up: How is a tiny country like Cuba without the natural endowments of any of Africas free enterprise economies countries do so well on the DHI, even the weight of decades-old economic sanctions? Another irony is that Communist Cuba knows how to compile data and perform data analysis, an art our African free enterprise economies are only beginning to learn thanks in part to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the IMF/World Bank!

Then also Communist Cuba even does better than many African countries in the Olympic Games! Can these naturally endowed capitalist African countries learn anything from Communist Cuba? How do we adequately explain the fact that Cuban communism has nearly suppressed racism, making Cubas race relations far better than Americas according to Randall Robinson, a law professor, civil rights attorney, and founder of TransAfrica, Americas oldest and largest civil rights organization (See Robinsons speeches and interviews and books), even while ethnocentrism tears Africans apart and destroy African nations? What is more, Communist Cubas signal contributions to Africas de-colonization, particularly the dismantling of Apartheid, is little known (See Mandelas and Castros books Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africas Freedom and Ours and How Far We Slaves Have Come: South Africa and Cuba in Todays World).

Further, neither has socialism nor communism completely disappeared from this planet. Socialism is integral to some of the greatest, major, or most powerful economies in the world, countries identified with the practice of social democracy or democratic socialism. Granted, how come socialist ideas have made Scandinavian, or Nordic, countries and their economies so great, so powerful, economies that count among the best anywhere in the world? How do we sufficiently explain the incomparable success of the system of mixed economy practiced by these Scandinavian economies (and other European countries like France), given that the system that Nkrumahs government implemented in Ghana during his presidency was largely a mixed economy, not socialism or communism from a technical standpoint?

More interestingly, how do we explain the fact that most Scandinavian economies, if not all, have made it on the top 50 of the Human Development Index (DHI) list since its inception in 1990? Again, how do Nordic countries count among the happiest countries on the planet, from the station of their powerful economies, as opposed to free-market economies like Americas? The most important question to ask is: And how has socialism contributed to this interesting phenomenon?

Originally posted here:
RE: Nkrumahs Socialism, Full of Ideas, But It Doesnt Work