We should like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Philip Kobina Baidoo, Jr. for responding to our rejoinder. That aside, we should quickly add that though he made some efforts to respond to our piece, he failed abysmally to address most of the substantive issues we raised therein. We may, however, forgive him for serious intellectual lapses because, among other things, his frank admission on not reading Marx’s four-volume piece in its entirety (and other writings) we recommended for his perusal says a lot about where his intellect stands on important global issues. Thus, we shall not waste too much time on him.
How can anyone read one or two writings in a writer’s larger corpus of written works and decide to draw general conclusions? Who says the subject matter Marx discussed in his first volume is what he also discussed in his three other volumes? What sort of faulty reasoning is this? Using the same logic, however, can we read “Maps” in Nuruddin Farah’s so-called “Blood in the Sun” trilogy, and decide to draw general conclusions on “Secrets” and “Gifts” which are also in the trilogy? Can one even read a chapter or two of the same book and begin to draw general conclusions based on the book’s subject matter? Again, let us assume that Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s statement to the effect that he had only read the first volume in Marx’s four-part volume is hypothetical, nothing to be taken serious, but has it occurred to him that the summary he gave on Marx’s first volume may not be represented in the other three volumes?
Simply put, what Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s says about Marx’s first volume is not representative of Marx’s larger work. What we want to say, in effect, is that what Mr. Baidoo, Jr. attributes to Marx in his reading of the first volume is a “small” component of the larger context of Marx’s entire corpus of written works, and therefore, we cannot read too much into it. Does this not fall under fallacy of defective induction, faulty generalization, or overgeneralization? The issue we raise is analogous to reading Nkrumah’s 1967 “Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization” and then making general conclusions without also reading the revised version (1970). One word, one paragraph, one additional page, and a new introduction can make a huge difference in the general interpretation of two same books, one being a revised version of the other. Nkrumah’s revised position on the “class” nature of traditional African society, for instance, has created major divisions among scholars around the world as to what to make of the new information in the general exegesis of the two texts.
Another good example is Einstein’s forced use of “cosmological constant,” a constant he created to address a problem that did not fit the constant. Einstein, in fact, regretted inventing it and using it. What is more, he continued to use it over other mathematicians’ and physicists’ objections only to retract it later. At one time, Einstein even ignored the correct implications of his mathematical computations based on some of his ideas because, apparently, the German scientist Erwin F. Freundlich, his friend, had given him astronomical data that happened to be entirely correct about the Milky Way (See Amir D. Aczel’s “The Mystery of the Newly-Discovered Einstein Manuscript: Why Did He Come Back to Lambda?”).
Why does Mr. Baidoo, Jr. read too much into Marx’s first book and what, in his limited opinion, was Marx’s faulty reasoning with regard to some of the underlying assumptions for his theories? Of course, there is nothing wrong with aspects of Marx’s ideas being wrong. Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Babylonian, and Mesopotamian mathematics and science were not always right. Yet a revision of Ancient Egyptian calendar engendered the calendar we use today. We can say the same of mathematical pi and of hundreds of other ancient ideas. Even not every aspect of the moral philosopher Adam Smith’s ideas is relevant today. How much of today’s capitalism is owed to Adam Smith’s classical economics? How much of today’s Marxism is owed to Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ theories? How much of today’s evolution is owed to Charles Darwin (Alfred Russell Wallace and Al-Jahiz)? How does Darwin’s atheistic evolutionary theory different from Francis Collins’ theistic evolutionary theory? Did Isaac Newton, the man who gave us the Three Laws of Motion and Gravitational Theory, and Gottfried W. Leibniz, who together with Newton gave us calculus, infinitesimal calculus that is, dabble in alchemy, a now discredited science (now seen as pseudoscience; there is some evidence that point origin of infinitesimal calculus to India, which later made its way to Europe)?
Did Greek thinkers like Aristotle and Anaximander not advance the so-called spontaneous generation, generally meaning life forms originate from lifeless matter, a pseudoscience discredited by Louis Pasteur’s (and others’) germ theory? Again theories and hypotheses undergo radical changes all the time, so too are assumptions. And yet Karl Marx’s theories are not the only ones. It is why Leninism, Maoism, Stalinism, and Fidelism (Castroism) are variants of Marxism, as it were subject to the realities and dictates of circumstance, time, revisions, geography, and the like. Thus, the “infinite assumptions” which Mr. Baidoo, Jr. associated with Marx’s first volume can be found in natural science, mathematics, logic, philosophy, and other branches of social science, too. Even “labor time” is a staple of capitalism.
What are we saying? Our point is that Marxism and capitalism are merely theories and therefore not carved in stones or, alternatively, are not expected to work all the time. The Supply-Demand Curve, for instance, does not always work in practice. But it is always beautiful and workable in theory. Therefore, it is not everything that Adam Smith and Karl Marx said that should be religiously pursued to its logical conclusion in the complex praxis of human interactions (Note: “the supply-demand theory” is implied in Smiths’s “invisible hand concept”; insider trading (privileged information), incomplete information, monopolies, greed, patrimonial capitalism, time, politics, decisional irrationality, corruption, oligarchies, and geography are some of the variables that limit the operational utility of Smith’s “invisible hand theory,” the basis of free market; this is also why regulation and state intervention models are called for). If the markets are so predictable, for instance, how come Alan Greenspan and his team of world-class economists could not foresee America’s recession at the coming of the Obama Administration and putting corrective mechanisms in place to nip it in the bud?
The fact is that markets do fail all the time, and has actually been so throughout human history. This is one of the major criticisms leveled against Milton Friedman. This is where regulation, legislation, and state intervention come in. “But he slipped all too easily into claiming both that markets always work and that only markets work,” Paul Krugman writes of Milton Friedman. “It’s extremely hard to find cases in which Friedman acknowledged the possibility that markets could go wrong, or that government intervention could serve a useful purpose (See Krugman’s “Who Was Milton Friedman?”, the New York Book Review, Feb. 15, 2007). Krugman also maintains: “Friedman was wrong on some issues, and sometimes seemed less than honest with his readers, I regard him as a great economist and a great man.” Sadly, Mr. Baidoo did not inform his readers that Keynes’ economic theories had always been part of the political economy of the 20th century, that they are back in full swing in the 21st, and that Keynes’ work and ideas made the British Treasury more powerful.
It would also have enriched Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s central thesis if he had informed his readers that “Keynes was also one of the fathers of the 1944 Bretton Woods Accord, which established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and which put in place a system of fixed exchange rates (See “Keynes’ Economic Theories Re-emerge in Government Intervention Policies,” PBS NEWSHOUR, Feb. 23, 2009).
Accordingly, we advise Mr. Baidoo, Jr. to go back and read the rest of the writings in Marx’s larger corpus in order to draw more informed conclusions about Marxist thought. Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s faulty generalization (“hasty generalization”) is unacceptable. Further, we pointed out that many of the issues Marx and Engel raised about the deficits of capitalism are still with us here today. In that regard, we still recommend Kenneth Lapidides’ edited volume “Marx and Engels on Trade Unions” Let us remind Mr. Baidoo, Jr. again what the French scholar Jacques Rancière had to say: “The domination of capitalism globally depends today on the existence of a Chinese Communist Party that gives de-localized capitalist enterprises cheap labor to lower prizes and deprive workers of the rights of self-organization. Happily, it is possible to hope for a less absurd and more just than today’s (See Stuart Jeffrey’s article, ”WHY MARXISM IS ON THE RISE,’ The Guardian, July 4, 2012). How does Mr. Baidoo, Jr. account for this contradiction Prof. Rancière describes?
Moreover, we would like Mr. Baidoo, Jr. to pay more attention to this part of Jeffrey’s factual data: “That hope, perhaps, explains another improbable truth of our economically catastrophic times, THE REVIVAL IN MARX AND MARXIST THOUGHT. SALES OF DAS KAPITAL, MARX’S MASTERPIECE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, HAVE SOARED EVER SINCE 2008, AS HAVE THOSE OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO AND THE GRUNDRISSE (OR, TO GIVE IT IN ITS ENGLISH TITLE, OUTLINES OF THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY). THEIR SALES ROSE AS BRITISH WORKERS BAILED OUT BANKS TO KEEP THE DEGRADED SYSTEM GOING AND THE SNOUTS OF THE RICH FAMILY IN THEIR TROUGHS WHILE THE REST OF US STRUGGLE IN DEBT, JOB INSECURITY OR WORSE (our emphasis).”
“THERE’S EVEN A CHINESE THEATRE DIRECTOR CALLED HE NIAN WHO CAPITALIZED ON DAS KAPITAL’S RENAISSANCE TO CREATE AN ALL-SINGING, ALL-DANCING MUSICA,” Jeffrey continues, adding: “AND IN PERHAPS THE MOST LOVELY REVERSAL OF THE LUXURIANTLY BEARDED REVOLUTIONARY THEORIST’S FORTUNES, KARL MARX WAS RECENTLY CHOSEN FROM A LIST OF 10 CONTENDERS TO APPEAR ON A NEW ISSUE OF MasterCard BY CUSTOMERS OF GERMAN BANK SPARKASSE IN CHEMNITZ. IN COMMUNIST EAST GERMANY FROM 1953 TO 1990, CHEMNITZ WAS KNOWN AS KARL MARX STADT. CLEARLY, MORE THAN TWO DECADES AFTER THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL, THE FORMER EAST GERMANY HASN’T AIRBRUSHED ITS MARXIST PAST (our emphasis).”
To Mr. Baidoo, Jr., here is some statistics for you (as per Jeffrey): “IN 2008, REUTERS REPORTS, A SURVEY OF EAST GERMANY FOUND 52% BELIEVED THE FREE-MARKET ECONOMY WAS “UNSUITABLE” AND 43% SAID THEY WANTED SOCIALISM BACK. KARL MARX MAY BE DEAD AND BURIED IN HIGHGATE CEMETARY, BUT HE IS ALIVE AND WELL AMONG CREDIT-HUNGRY GERMANS. WOULD MARX HAVE APPRECIATED THE IRONY OF HIS IMAGE BEING DEPLOYED ON A CARD TO GET GERMANS DEEPER IN DEBT? YOU THINK (our emphasis).”
Jeffrey continues: “THERE HAS BEEN A GLUT OF BOOKS TRUMPETING MARXISM’S RELEVANCE. ENGLISH LITERATURE PROFESSOR TERRY EAGLETON LAST YEAR PUBLISHED A BOOK CALLED “WHY MARX WAS RIGHT.” FRENCH MAOST PHILOSOPHER ALAIN BADIOU PUBLISHED A LITTLE RED BOOK CALLED “THE COMMUNIST HYPOTHESIS…”
Readers interested in this topic may want to go ahead and read Jeffrey’s entire article for additional information. On the other hand, the statistics Jeffrey gives as regards East Germany is nothing new, particularly surprising. There are similar statistics that can be extracted from around the world (we shall leave this as homework for Mr. Baidoo, Jr). Then also, how do we jive Jeffrey’s statistics with Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s statement: “To be honest, I haven’t read all the four volumes. I only read the first one, but it is full of such claptrap, even when I was dabbling in socialism I couldn’t believe what I was reading. In reality it is a book relevant to the era that it was written, that is me being modest, but not now.” What are many in advanced capitalist countries (and around the world) seeing in Karl Marx that Mr. Baidoo, Jr. fails to see? Why are capitalist societies bringing back Marx and his works? Why do Marxist theories continue to influence capitalist societies today? And why does the larger world still warm up to Marxist thinking?
As a matter of fact, what we intend achieving with these lengthy quotes, Jeffrey’s, is to reaffirm our contention, a thesis we broached in our earlier rejoinder to Mr. Baidoo, Jr., that neither communism nor socialism is dead. We cited an example where communist parties exist as part of ruling coalitions (governments) in a number of countries around the world. We also mentioned a few such countries. On this score, Mr. Baidoo, Jr. even accepts that socialism is alive and kicking, but so is communism. Did Mr. Baidoo, Jr. find out how much the Cuban government contributes to each Cuban’s medical bill, accommodation, food, education, etc? Did Mr. Baidoo. Jr. find out Cuba’s employment and homelessness statistics by comparing them to capitalist Ghana’s? Since Mr. Baidoo, Jr. seems to get the jitters when Communist Cuba is mentioned in connection with the Human Development Index (HDI), why did he not take it upon himself to prove to his readers why Cuba should not be in the Top 50 (2014) by, among other things, disproving the data collected by experts at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)? Did we not say Cuba was “not a nirvana” in our rejoinder to Mr. Baidoo, Jr., implying that she has her own challenges as any other country on the planet, including America, the world’s richest and largest economy?
Perhaps, once again, Mr. Baidoo, Jr. could help himself by reading Cornel West’s and Tavis Smiley’s book “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto,” and watching the authors’ bus-tour documentary otherwise called “The Poverty Tour: A Call To Conscience,” across poverty-ridden America (the authors argue that close to half of America’s population, 150 million, is near or actually live in poverty). Has Mr. Baidoo, Jr. taken the time to assess Thomas Piketty’s work on wealth and income inequality and how it demolishes some of the major tenets of capitalism? What are we saying? Piketty has relied on data from the past 250 years to investigate how distortions in profit and economic growth rate, in the case where the former takes over the latter, in the long run lead to socioeconomic insecurity (See his work “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”). Accordingly, he has argued for progressive tax reforms to be undertaken on an international scale to neutralize the instability resulting from gross distortions between economic growth rates and profit generation. He has also blamed the rising tide of crony capitalism as constituting one of the major culprits behind socioeconomic inequalities around the globe.
Is it not surprising, then, that five decades of being under economic sanctions and without Ghana’s (Africa’s) vast natural wealth and the tens of billions of dollars African countries’ receive in foreign aid, Cuba still does better than capitalist Ghana, for instance, as measured by economic indices? We are even retrogressing developmentally with our oil and new-found mineral wealth! So what has Ghana been doing since Joseph Ankrah, Akwasi Afrifa, Nii Amaa Ollennu, K.A. Busia, Edward Akufo-Addo, I.K. Acheampong, Fred Akuffo, J.J. Rawlings, Hilla Limann, John Kufuor, John Atta Mills, and John D. Mahama, all capitalists? And why did the Mo Ibrahim Foundation ignore John Kufour for its prestigious “Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership” award if he did so well as Mr. Baidoo, Jr. says? Is it possible the award is reserved for Kufour in the future?
Then again, unlike the billions of dollars of foreign aid capitalist Ghana rakes in to improve her economy, has Mr. Baidoo, Jr. bothered to find out how much America’s economic embargo costs Cuba (and America IN TURN)? (See Portia Siegelbaum’s “Cuba: U.S. Embargo Causes $1 Trillion in Losses,” CBS News, Sept. 2011). The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, on the other hand, has said the embargo costs America $1.2 billion annually (and Cuba $685 million annually). What does this say about Communist Cuba and capitalist Ghana? Even Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s title is misleading. Where did we specifically use Cuban communism to support Nkrumahism? Where is Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s evidence for this titular speciousness? Did we not topically discuss the Beijing Consensus, the Nordic Consensus, the Washington Consensus (capitalism), socialism and communism, and “mixed economy,” and yet he selectively chose Cuban Communism for his groundless titular mischievousness? Is he mischievously implying that Nkrumah’s “mixed economy” is communism?
Having said that, how do we end this controversy on communism and the proven rightness of Karl Marx’s larger vision? We shall quote the late Prof. Eric Hobsbawn, a former British historian, on this: “Contradictions of a market system based on no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment,’ a system of exploitation and of ‘endless accumulation’ can never be overcome: that at some point in a series of transformations and restructurings the development of this essentially destabilizing system will lead to a state of affairs that can no longer be described as capitalism” ( See Stuart Jeffrey’s article and 2012 edition (introduction) of “The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition”).
Mr. Baidoo, Jr. also writes: “Now, to the most useless part of his diatribe against my piece, which he cobbled together the names of writers he claims I must read to keep abreast with his work of fiction… To pour out those pages of words without personal critical analysis of the facts, but constant references to other peoples work is a sure sign of inferiority complex.” What does Mr. Baidoo, Jr. mean by mentioning Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlick, Al Gore, Kenneth Galbraith, etc, without citing their works and critiquing them? Is he also implying he has inferiority complex? Does Molefi Kete Asante, Ama Mazama, Wole Soyinka, Marimba Ani, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Noam Chomsky, Kofi Kissi Dompere, and several writers around the world suffering from inferiority complex because they constantly reference other people’s works in their works? And who says we do not know these writers and their works, Carson’s, Al Gore’s, Galbraith’s, and Ehrlich’s? Do you have to be a capitalist to be an environmentalist? (like Rachel Carson; see the article “Rachel Carson’s Ecological Critique,” Monthly Review, Volume 59, Issue 9, Feb. 2008,)? Was Carson not influenced by socialist ideals? (See how left-wing/socialist ideas influenced Rachel Carson; Brett Clark and John B. Foster are the authors of the said article. Check under the ECOLOGY section)?
And was Al Gore not directly influenced by Rachel Carson too? “For me personally, Silent Spring had a profound,” writes Al Gore (See Al Gore’s presentation paper “Introduction to 25th Anniversary Edition of ‘Silent Spring’ by Rachel Spring” at Indiana University). “Silent Spring” was a book Rachel Carson authored. This book and the controversy it generated led to the creation of America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)! Let us recall that Al Gore has not been largely successful (with his environmental campaign and “An Inconvenient Truth”) in terms of originating serious international regulation/legislations to counter global warming/environmental destruction because private profit (capitalism; free market) has remained grave obstacles to his agenda.
This is what Joe Kay meant when he wrote: “A serious response to the environmental damage already sustained and the threat of truly catastrophic future damage REGUIRES A TRANSFORMATION OF A SOCIALIST CHARATER. Global warming cannot be solved within the framework of a system distinguished by the existence of rival nation-states and the subornation of all decisions to the interests of private profit (our emphasis; see Kay’s article “Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth: Political Posturing and the Democratic Party”; see also Fawzi Ibrahim’s book “Capitalism Versus Planet Earth: An Irreconcilable Conflict”). The Kyoto Protocol suffered from similar reasons (and others). Yet Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize (with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate (IPCC)) did not generate as much negative controversy as Kenyan Wangari Maathai’s? Why? Some also see Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize as a “sympathy award” after he had lost the presidency to George W. Bush, an election some claimed to have been rigged for Bush.
And by mentioning Al Gore, was Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s making reference to Al Gore’s lie that he invented the internet (Readers can read the transcript here “A Cautionary Tale for Politicians: Al Gore and the ‘Invention,’ The Washington Post, Nov. 4, 2013; CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed Al Gore in March 8, 1999 when he committed the public gaffe; the video for the interview in question is also here).
On the other hand, Al Gore’s book “The Assault on Reason” deals with everything that is wrong with American democracy and capitalism. For instance, he discusses why Congress consistently refused to pass legislation to keep a check on the tuna industry in America for ignoring high levels of mercury in tuna, while continuing to sell them to the American public (Al Gore mentioned this in his book; I have since not followed up on this controversial question if the US Congress has passed such a legislation as of this writing. I stand to be corrected, though). We also want to add that American left-wing politicians and scholars have been influenced by one socialist/communist ideal of another, as Paul R. Gregory argues in his Jan. 22, 2012 Forbes article “Is President Obama A Socialist?”
“By ‘socialist,” Paul writes, “I do not mean a Lenin, Castro, or Mao, but whether Obama falls within the mainstream of contemporary socialism as represented, for example, by Germany’s Social Democrats, French Socialists, or Spain’s socialist-workers part? BY THIS CRITERION, YES, OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST (our emphasis).” We implore readers to read the 2011 Declaration of Principles of the Party of European Socialists (PES) and see for themselves how they favorably compare with the policies of the Obama Administration. Paul concludes after closely studying PES’s 2011 Declaration and the Obama Administration’s policies: “If the Party of European Socialists were to rate Obama, he would get a near perfect score. The political views and programs that Obama is prepared to reveal to the public are consistent with those of European socialists. He is clearly a socialist in the European sense of the term.” Paul could not have been right!
Finally, Paul reminds us that “Marxism provided the intellectual foundations of the European welfare state.” But Paul need not have gone that far. Obama’s writings clearly demonstrate socialist influences on his political and intellectual development. Is it any wonder that Republicans are claiming the Obama Healthcare Act, his newly proposed “free” community college education, progressive tax policies and redistribution of wealth, etc., are socialist? Yet Obama’s state capitalism (or state intervention) saved the American economy, particularly American banks and some in the auto-industry from virtual collapse. Some have called Obama’s state intervention policies “socialist state intervention” (See “GM’s Main Street Bondholders Would Lose, Lawyer Says,” Bloomberg News, May 28, 2009. Authors: Christopher Scinta/Tiffany Kary; see also Jon Greenberg’s “Did President Obama Save the Auto Industry,” Sept. 6, 2012, Tampa Bay Times). Where is Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s take on Obama’s state capitalism and the revival of the American economy? Neither does Mr. Baidoo, Jr. inform us that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which the Obama Administration pursued and consequently deployed to revamp the American economy, bringing the American economy back to its feet in other words, is Keynesian, and that Keynes influenced the policies of John F. Kennedy, too!
How about Keynes’ work “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” and its proven predictions about Germany’s development in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles, formation of the League of Nations, precursor of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan (and the book’s prescriptive parallels with America’s recent Wall Street economic meltdown)? Could Mr. Baidoo, Jr. deliberately tell us how Keynes’ work strengthened the British Treasury? Or, how Labor Prime Minister James Callahan’s 1976 denunciation of Keynesian economics coincided with the international prominence of Milton Friedman’s economics, the same year Friedman received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, bearing in mind that Friedman probably constituted the most vocal critic of Keynes, at least in America, at the time and throughout his academic career and social life?
Lastly, Frankin D. Roosevelt’s reliance on Keynesian economics is what has made America today. Many of America’s physical infrastructures and some of America’s powerful institutions in existence today derived from his New Deal, which, in turn, relied heavily on John Maynard Keynes’ “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.” Social Security, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Federal Crop Insurance Corporation ( FCIC), Tennessee Valley Authority, 40-hour worksheet, abolition of child labor, unemployment benefits, etc., all resulted from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s deployment of Keynesian state capitalism (state intervention). As a matter of fact, Keynesian economics is still part of the Washington Consensus, the Beijing Consensus (Chinese Model, command economy) and the Nordic Model. Contrary to what other may think, it has not disappeared into thin air. In fact, Keynes did neither place complete emphasis on nor exclusively direct only governments to run their economies. He merely gave governments a prescriptive formula for specific roles they should play in reviving depressive economics.
Keynes made this clear in his influential book “The General Theory.” Indeed he recognized the role of the private sector as well. Paul Krugman, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2008), writes: “Keynes did not, despite what you may have heard, want the government to run the economy. He described his analysis in his 1936 masterwork,” The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,’ as ‘moderately conservative in its implications.’ He wanted to fix capitalism, not replace it. BUT HE DID CHALLENGE THE NOTION THAT FREE-MARKET ECONOMIES CAN FUNCTION WITHOUT A MINDER, EXPRESSING PARTICULAR CONTEMPT FOR FINANCIAL MARKETS, WHICH HE VIEWED AS BEING DOMINATED BY SHORT-TERM SPECULATION WITH LITTLE REGARD FOR FUNDAMENTALS. AND HE CALLED FOR ACTIVE GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION…TO FIGHT UNEMPLOYMENT DURING SLUMPS (our emphasis; see ”How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” the New York Times, Sept. 2, 2009).
Krugman also says that no economic model, not even the economic models developed by Joseph Schumpeter or by the classical economics, provided satisfactorily answers to address the American crisis (the Great Depression) and, as a result, American economists and politicians turned to the Keynesian model of state intervention. And it worked. Keynesian economics saved American capitalism. In other words, Krugman is implying here that Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” had no answer to the American crisis or the Great Depression that rocked the world. Is Europe probably not the biggest user of the Keynesian model in various disguises? How about Canada and New Zealand? We may want to ask again: What is wrong with having one’s theory replaced by another’s? Does this not happen all the time? Even the late influential economist Milton Friedman, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1976), and his Chicago School did everything to overthrow the Keynesian model. Today, Friedman economics is under attack where the weakness and deficits of his theories have been exposed (See Noami Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism; see Paul Krugman’s work on Milton Friedman; there are several others).
What is more, it is no wonder Friedman tried to distance himself from the Chilean murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet, under whom the former served as adviser. Why does Mr. Baidoo, Jr. incorrectly claim Keynesian economics is dead when it is not? Why does he fault Keynes and Marx but leave the classical economists alone? Why does he make too much of Marx’s faulty underlying reasons for his ideas, at least as expressed in Marx’s first volume? Does Marxism have all the answers? Does capitalism have all the answers? Henri Poincare, Hendrik Lorentz, David Gilbert, Karl Schwartzman, Albert Einstein, Marcel Grossman and others contributed to the development of Special Relativity and General Relativity, both of which significantly revised Newtonian physics. Newton, on the other hand, revised or changed Aristotelian (or classical Greek physics). Copernican (Indian physics and the physics of Kepler/Galileo) heliocentrism revised Ptolemaic geocentrism. Now, as of this writing, there is a vigorous search for an alternative theory to explain the world as neither Relativity nor Newtonian physics sufficiently explains every phenomenon of the natural world. It is why we have string theory. Finally, what is wrong citing others’ works to support one’s own?
Furthermore, there are even speculations that the recent research undertaken by CERN did produce results that invalidate Relativity but, of course, there is a consensus on a possible cover-up (We discussed this question with Dr. Chandra Kant Raju, one of the world’s leading authorities on Einstein. Dr. Raju proved one of Einstein’s major calculations wrong and developed a mathematical model to correct it, earning him the prestigious Telesio-Galileo Academy of Science Award (2010). Dr. Raju who had closely followed the CERN experiment and is of the view that Western physicists do not want to discredit Einstein. We take this as a controversial allegation, though). Neither was Charles Darwin the originator of evolution (See Ah-Jahiz and Alfred Russel Wallace). We could say the same of socialism/communism and Marx/Engels. Darwin was a member of a club that held discussions on evolution and other naturalist ideas before he embarked on the theory. Marx also belonged to socialist organizations before formally delving fully into socialist theory. Chinua Achebe got the title “Things Fall Apart” from W.B. Yeats’ poetic piece “The Second Coming.” Joseph Conrad’s “Hear of Darkness” challenged Achebe to produce a work that indicted Conrad’s novelistic work on Africa (See Achebe’s essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness”; readers can find this essay in his book “Hopes and Impediments”).
Tsitsi Dangarembga, the Zimbabwean author of the post-colonial classic “Nervous Condition,” got the title from Jean-Paul Sartre’s introduction to Fanon’s book “The Wretched of the Earth.” Shakespeare’s Othello came straight from Leo Africanus’ book “A Geographical History of Africa” and Cinthio’s 1565 book “Hecatommithi.” Molefi Kete Asante developed his Afrocentric theory by reading Kwame Nkrumah, Cheikh Anta Diop, WEB Du Bois, and others. We also know how much of the Bible comes straight from the Epic of Gilgamesh, etc. The list is endless. The central question again is: What is wrong for one to cite his/her sources to develop his subject matter? What does plagiarism do to one’s intellectual credibility? Is Einstein not being posthumously attacked and censured today for failing to list his sources when freely appropriating others’ ideas was a general practice then? What is wrong with reading to expand one’s horizon? Did Mr. Baidoo, Jr. expect us to prove critiques for all the sourced we cited in our rejoinder? How long will that take? Is he aware that many writings harbor internal critiques of their own?
Or, does Mr. Baidoo, Jr. mistakes the little and shallow summary he presented in his essays for serious critique? Nothing of the sort he did in both essays comes anywhere close to the methodology of critique! Besides, one learns to critique using facts, logical argumentation, sources, and scientific data, not sentimentalism, ad hominem tactics, and covert insults, etc., something we avoided in our first rejoinder.
Back to one of our preoccupations. Unfortunately, Obama cannot take all the credit for saving American banks, American auto industry, and the American economy from collapse. Individuals in control of drug cartels and profits from international drug trafficking deserve part of the credit, too (See Ed Vulliamy’s “How a Big US Bank Laundered Billions from Mexico’s Murderous Drug Gangs,” The Guardian, April 2, 2100; Michael Smith’s “Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal,” Bloomberg News, June 28, 2010; Avinash Tharoor’s piece “Banks Launder Billions of Illegal Cartel While Snubbing Legal Marijuana Business,” Huffington Post, Sept. 22, 2014; John Burnett’s “Awash in Cash, Drug Cartels Rely On Big Banks to Launder Profits,” National Public Radio, March 20, 2014; Angelo Young’s “Citi, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Were Channels for Sending Drug Money to Colombia, Court Filings Show,” International Business Times, Sept. 12, 2014). Did Mr. Baidoo, Jr. read Dawn Paley’s book “Drug War Capitalism” for hard evidence on the slippery relationship among capitalism, drug cartels, money laundering, and drug trafficking?
Bloomberg Markets Magazine has also reported on the roles Bank of America Corp. and Wachovia Corp., America’s biggest banks, played in financing drug trafficking through money laundering activities. It is probably public knowledge that American banks, like their Swiss counterparts, heavily rely on laundered money and money stolen stashed in their banks by kleptomaniacs! Mr. Baidoo, Jr. may want to watch, to read the transcript, or to listen to the interview between Brad Birkenfeld, an employee of Union Bank of Switzerland (UUBS), and the folks Democracy Now to understand how both Swiss and American banks train their employees to hide stolen money in their banks. The American Internal Revenue Service (IRS) awarded Birkenfeld a whopping US$104 million for exposing the banks involved in this scandal (See “Whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld Rewarded Record $104M for Exposing How UBS Helped Rich Evade Taxes,” Democracy Now, Sept. 12, 2012).
More surprisingly, it turns out American and Swiss Banks have similar secrecy laws that protect criminals. Birkenfeld’s whisleblowing alone has exposed 46,000 Americans tax evaders, thus far, thanks to free market economy and loopholes in global capitalism.
Now to Boris Yeltsin. Did Mr. Baidoo, Jr. ever try finding out how between $4.2 billion to $10 billion disappeared under Boris Yeltsin, the chronic alcoholic, ending up in the Bank of New York (See “Foreign Loans Diverted in Monster Money Laundering,” World Bank)? “The legacy of Boris Yeltsin,” writes Justin Raimondo in “The Legacy of Boris Yeltsin,” “who presided over what Paul Klebnikov described as ‘ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT REGIMES IN HISTORY,’ is, quite literary, the death agony of the Russian nation” (our emphasis).” Vladimir Volkov also writes in “The Bitter Legacy of Boris Yeltsin: “…the Yeltsin ‘generation of utter cynics’ was filled with people ‘who, without the slightest bit of embarrassment, were thoroughly corrupt and totally indifferent to the ideas that formed the foundation of the country.”
Volkov continues: “AT THE SAME TIME CRIMINALITY AND CORRUPTION FLOURISHED IN RUSSIA. ONE SCANDAL THAT OCCURRED AT THE TIME OF YELTSIN’S REELECTION CAMPAIGN IN 1996 BECAME A SYMBOL OF THIS CORRUPTION. AT THAT TIME, TWO HIGH-RANKING FUNCTIONARIES IN THE YELTSIN PREELECTION HEADQUARTERS WERE SEIZED WITH $500 MILLION OF CASH THAT THEY HAD BEEN CARRYING OUT OF GOVERNMENT BUILDING. ANOTHER SIMILAR SUCH SCANDAL, THE ‘BANK OF NEW YEAR’ AFFAIR, HAPPENED THREE YEARS LATER WHEN IT BECAME KNOWN THAT BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAD BEEN HIDDEN IN WESTERN BANK ACCOUNTS AS PART OF A MONEY LAUNDERING SCHEME TO SHELTER THE INCOMES OF RUSSIAN OLIGARCRHS UNDER THE PROTECTION OF LEADING GOVERNMENT BEREAUCRATS AND WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF WESTERN BUSINESS (our emphasis).” It was also Yeltsin who appointed Putin which, and according to Volkov: “was entirely in keeping with the logic of the restoration of capitalism.”
In fact it was Bill Clinton who, in the 1990s, would return most of the stolen money to Russia. So, what is Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s boring reference to Boris Yeltsin, a kleptomaniacal capitalist drunkard, all about, if we may ask? Boris Yeltsin was as corrupt as the 46,000 Americans who had their stolen money hidden in Swiss bank accounts. “Between 1992 and 1994, the rise in the death rate in Russia was so dramatic that Western demographers did not believe the figures,” Raymond maintains. These terrible statistics occurred under Yeltsin’s watch presidency. The question is: What were Yeltsin and his kleptomaniacal cliques doing with Russia’s money when Russians died from preventable causes? Yeltsin’s heaping praises on American capitalism, in Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s reckoning, while capitalizing on Russian capitalism to enrich himself, his family, and his friends, is shameful. Why did Mr. Baidoo, Jr. mention Yeltsin in his piece at all knowing full well that his record is probably one of the worst in Russian history? This is not how intellectuals protect his credibility. It is never done anywhere, citing incredible and questionable characters as one’s authority! In other words, Mr. Baidoo, Jr. should have read about Yeltsin before including him as a source!
That brings us to the issues of the subprime crisis, race, racism, credit crunch, and the US government (the US Justice Department). Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America paid US$36 billion for their racist treatment of minorities and other poor Americans (See “Citgroup Will Pay $7 Billion to Settle Justice Department Investigation into Subprime,” CNBC/Reuters, July 14, 2014; see also Dean Starkman’s “Wrecking an Economy Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry,” New Republic, Aug. 20, 2014). With regards to the subprime crisis and racism, New York Post writer Paul Sperry notes: “In the 1990s, convinced that the US mortgage was RACIST, the Clinton Administration launched a massive campaign of social engineering…They targeted private banks with discrimination lawsuits if they didn’t lend to enough minorities…” (our emphasis; See “Re-Inflating the Bubble,” April 2013).
Another writer David Dayen also notes: “Indeed, the subprime loans in the 2000s were either originated by or funded by our biggest banks. Coates recognizes this, pointing out that THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SUCCESSFULLY SUED NOT FLY-BY-NIGHT ORGINATORS, BUT WELLS FARGO AND BANK OF AMERICA, OVER HOUSING DISCRIMINATION. LOAN OFFICERS AT WELLS FARGO, THE LEADING ORIGINATOR OF HOME LOANS TO ETHNIC MINORITIES, REFERRED TO BLACK CUSTOMERS AS ‘MUD PEOPLE’ AND THEIR OFFERINGS AS ‘GHETTO LOANS.’ The problem in the 1960s was that black people couldn’t get loans; the problem in the present is that they can too easily (our emphasis; See ‘African-Americans Are Still Being Victimized by the Mortgage Market,” New Republic, May 27, 2014; see also Steve Dibert’s “Appraisal Fraud and the Impact of Valuation on Foreclosure Defense”). Readers can go to the US Justice Department website and read the following: “JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REACHES $335 MILLION SETTLEMENT TO RESOLVE ALLEGATIONS OF LENDING DISCRIMINATION BY COUNTRYWIDE FINANCIAL CORPORATION (our emphasis).”
The same website (Justice Department) reports: “MORE THAN 200,000 AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND HISPANIC BORROWERS WHO QUALIFIED FOR LOANS WERE CHARGED HIGHER FEES OR PLACED INTO SUBPRIME LOANS (our emphasis).” Dayen maintains elsewhere: “I CORRESPOND WITH HOMEOWNERS ABUSED BY THE SYSTEM ON AN ALMOST DAILY BASIS. THE MAJORITY ARE BLACK OR HISPANIC (our emphasis).” Where is Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s evidence that capitalism does not work alongside racism? Given that we have provided incontrovertible evidence from the US Department of Justice and from other federal bodies to support our claims of racism and capitalism, what has Mr. Baidoo, Jr. finally got to say about dishonesty and the Libor Scandal, capitalism, housing discrimination and the Subprime Crisis (which forced the US Government to make American companies pay tens of billions of dollars in fines)? Where is Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s evidence to prove the US Justice Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) wrong? Lest we are not misunderstood, we are not implying that only banks in capitalist societies are involved in corruption. We are merely pushing the idea that capitalism makes such high-profile corruption cases possible and easy of execution. Even communists and socialists who steal their countries’ money are aided by capitalist businessmen in Western societies.
Again, readers may want to read David Dayen’s full article “Bank of America Whistleblower’s Bombshell: ‘We Were Told to Lie’“ for additional surprising information and hard data. Has Mr. Baidoo, Jr. heard of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and what it responsibilities are? Has Mr. Baidoo, Jr. ever known that a number of American States threatened to secede from the Union should Obama win his second elections? Twenty states were involved in the said lawsuit (See Jake Miller’s Nov. 14, 2012 CBS News article “States Petition to Secede from Union”; see also Elizabeth Dias’s Nov. 14, 2012 Time article “Obama’s Re-Election Inspires Southern Secessionists”).
Does Mr. Baidoo, Jr. know why these states wanted to secede? Does Mr. Baidoo, Jr. know why some Americans persisted in asking Obama to prove his citizenship even when he has made that evidence available to the public? Has Mr. Baidoo, Jr. ever heard of racial profiling? Has Mr. Baidoo, Jr. seen any study that seeks to attach money to racism (See Donnell Alexander’s piece “Racism Literally Costs America $2 Trillion…Ready to Stop Payment?”)? Has Mr. Baidoo, Jr. seen the W.K. Kellog Foundation Report “The Business Cost for Racial Equity (Quantifies the Cost of Racism in the US)? Finally, regarding the Peruvian economist and his views on property rights, could Mr. Baidoo, Jr. go back and read Hernando De Soto’s work “The Mystery of Capitalism: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere” again and then come back to tell readers that the data and examples he uses are global in scope and that his Peruvian background is just one of the many examples he uses? After all, De Soto’s position on property rights and capitalism is not largely a personal opinion as Mr. Baidoo, Jr. would have us believe, given that it is based on factual data and as failures of the market shows. We have all seen how the Great Depression of the early part of the 20th century, recessions and Subprime Crisis in the 21st century, and other such examples weaken capitalism and undermine investors’ faith in free market capitalism
Did Mr. Baidoo, Jr. ever hear of ex-President Nicholas Sarkozy and other European leaders saying France (and the rest of Europe) should do more to provide opportunities for minorities in the wake of Obama’s election? Has Mr. Baidoo, Jr. ever tried to find out how much ethnocentrism (“tribalism”) and ethno-political wars have and, still continue, to cost Africa in financial terms? How much does Mr. Baidoo, Jr. know about racism in the modeling industry, for instance? Are racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, religious and cultural terrorism not real? How much has ethnocentrism contributed to Africa’s GDP and development? Is Mr. Baidoo, Jr. willing to search for answers as to why Afro-Cubans have fared relatively better under Castro’s communism than under Fulgencio Batista’s capitalism? Since Mr. Baidoo, Jr. says racism does not exist, has he bothered to read sociologist John Solomos’ “Race and Racism in Britain”?
Has Mr. Baidoo, Jr. seen the NatCen’s British Social Attitudes report on racism? And then there is the surprising statement from Mr. Baidoo’ Jr. that Noam Chomsky exhibits pathological hatred for his country, America. Where could Mr. Baidoo, Jr. possibly have got this skewed, ill-informed statement from? If Mr. Baidoo, Jr. had taken his time to read Chomsky, he would surely have noticed how much this professor painstakingly relies on declassified and congressional data, among others, to make his case! Has Chomsky not received tons of honorary degrees from some of the world’s best universities (for his scholarship)? Is Chomsky also not a respected member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences? What is Mr. Baidoo, Jr. afraid of knowing by reading Chomsky’s scholarly works? Has Justice Studies Association Chomsky Award (or “Social Activist Award”) not been named in his honor? Have Chomsky not made America and the world proud by his numerous contributions to artificial science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, logic, computer science, mathematics, music theory, programming language theory, and political science? It is sad how much Mr. Baidoo, Jr. misses out by failing to read Chomsky, a scholar whose political science theories would certainly have expanded the former’s horizon and enriched his intellectual experience!
Then also, has Chomsky not been honored with the American Psychological Association’s prestigious recognition “the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award”? Did the British Prospect magazine (2005) not rank him as the No. 1 public intellectual in the world for his global intellectual influence and activism (See also Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers)? Has Noam Chomsky not been ranked the 7th by the New Statesman (2006) in its list titled, “Heroes of Our Time-The Top 50”? Why then are American institutions honoring if he displays pathological hatred for his country? Could it not equally be said that he wants his country to become a better country, hence his righteous criticisms and censure of America’s internal and foreign policies? Who loves America more than Noam Chomsky? Could it be more prudent if Mr. Baidoo, Jr. should give us a better reason than the flimsy one he has given us? How many of Chomsky’s books had he read to make that conclusion? Could it be that Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s conclusions about Chomsky are based on the latter’s public debates, most of which he wins anyway, and public interviews? We want to know!
Now returning to other matters, is it not strange that Mr. Baidoo, Jr. will not read Adolf Hitler too? Of course Mr. Baidoo, Jr. is entitled to his position not to read Hitler. Reading one author as opposed to anther is a personal choice no one should disrespect. On this score, however, we shall not fault Mr. Baidoo, Jr. We, on the other hand, have read Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” for a number of reasons. It bears pointing out that scholars, political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, and historians from around the world have studied Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” Other scholars have also studied and researched the book as a serious inquest of political theory. Besides, transcripts from the Nuremberg Trials cannot say what Hitler could say about himself in his book. Also, the work of Yale University genocide scholar and researcher Ben Kiernan sheds light on Hutu militants’ usage of writings by Hitler (and other Nazi writings) during the Rwanda Genocide (See Kiernan’s book “Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur”).
Thus, Kiernan’s work and the question of the Hutu militants’ ideological identification with Hitler and Nazism drove us to read Hitler. For instance, we wanted to understand why Hitler hated Jews, capitalists, communists, the handicapped, the Roma (“Gypsies”), homosexuals, and others so much. The question is: Why did Hitler’s National Socialism make room for private property but, rather strangely, reject capitalism? How do we account for the source of this glaring contradiction? We should not overlook the fact that Keynes’ dire predictions in “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” and his position on the implications of the Treaty of Versailles played out in Hitler’s political development. This is not to justify the Holocaust, something we condemn in no uncertain terms. But Hitler did not invent Nazism. Neither is South Africa’s Apartheid nor America’s Jim Crow substantially different from Nazism. They share many things in common. For instance, Nazi Germany used concentration camps in South West Africa, now Namibia, before its appearance during the Holocaust. Nazi Germany also applied eugenics, human experiment, forced starvation to Namibia’s Namaqua and Hereros way before they appeared in Nazi Germany (See David Olusoga’s and Casper W. Erichsen’s book “The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism”).
In fact, the Herero and Namaqua Genocide is the first of its kind in recorded modern history (See the United Nations’ Whitaker Report (1985). Significantly, David and Casper show in their work that some of the German scientists and officials involved in the Herero and Namaqua Genocide later joined Hitler’s movement, consequently, making their Namibian Holocaust knowledge and expertise available to Nazis. That aside, there a Jewish scholars like Norman Finkelstein who says Nazi Germany appropriate the idea of “concentration camp” from the British who used it during the Boer Wars (First Anglo-Boer War and Second Anglo-Boer War) (See Finkelstein’s “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering”). The following works by some of the leading Jewish scholars and writers shed light on major controversies associated with Hitler, Nazism, capitalism, and the Holocaust:
1) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Hannah Arendt)
2) 51 Documents: Zionists Collaboration with the Nazis (Lenni Black)
3) War Against the Weak : Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (Edwin Black; Hitler and his Nazi clique appropriated many of America’s ideas on eugenics and applied them to others during the Holocaust; readers should also read Harriet A. Washington’s book “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans FROM Colonial Times to the Present”; Rebecca Skloot’s “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”; and the work of South Africa’s Apartheid-era Dr. Wouter Basson (Dr. Death); let also remember what Idi Amin, Charles Taylor, Francisco Marcias Nguema, and other African despots have done to their fellow Africans; Boko Haram, Al-Shabab, the Lord’s Resistance Army).
4) The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine (Edwin Black)
5) IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (Edwin Black)
6) Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust (Edwin Black)
What is more, Prof. Dan Silverman has shown how Hitler’s policies industrialized Germany and how he also solved Germany’s unemployment problem, with Prof. Silverman concluding that Hitler’s notable achievements include, but not limited to, bringing Germany out of the Great Depression, building massive road networks and houses across the country. He even provides data to prove how Hitler’s economic program achieved successes far beating most in the industrialized world (See Professor’s “Hitler’s Economy: Nazi Work Creation Programs, 1933-1936). Hitler’s “economic miracle” and industrialization gave the world the foundations of space technology, ballistic technology, etc. German U-boat technology contributed to improving research on modern submarine technology, and German scientists helped make Russian and American space programs possible. These notable achievements somehow parallel the solid foundations which Stalin, Nehru, and Mao built for the USSR’’s, India’s, and China’s development.
Of course, Hitler partly relied on “slave” labor to achieve his economic miracle, so too did American (and Western) capitalism build on slavery and the slaughter of millions of people. Let us not overlook the fact slavery partly contributed to Britain’s Industrial Revolution! Therefore, what is the moral basis for Mr. Baidoo, Jr. selective criticism of others who have done exactly what the capitalists have done before them?
Is it not ironic that Russian communism produced some of the world’s most influential writers, scientists, mathematicians, Nobel Laureates, etc., as opposed to capitalist African countries, including Ghana? Is it not ironic that some Russian writers under communism received the Nobel Prize in Literature while J.K. Rowling has not received one yet (We are not implying that the Nobel Prize is everything or that Rowling cannot receive one in the future)? Is it not also ironic that Mr. Baidoo, Jr. selectively mentioned Mao but failed to mention America’s Founding Fathers’ and slavocracy and slave ownership, European decimination of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines, and King Leopold’s slaughter of 10 million Congolese? Why did Mr. Baidoo, Jr. also fail to tell his readers which of our sources were socialist, and which capitalist? Since when did the US Congress that founded the Federal Reserve System become socialist? Who was the Mr. Baidoo, Jr.’s socialist that founded the Federal Reserve System? Could Mr. Baidoo, Jr. identify this socialist for us?
Were socialists behind the banking panics that prompted the creation of the Federal Reserve System? Were socialists behind the 1907 financial crisis involving the New York Stock Exchange? Again who were these socialists behind the financial crisis of 1907? If capitalist countries do not wage wars indiscriminately, what sort of wars do they engage in? Were socialists the cause of America’s recession under the Obama Administration? Are capitalists always right, socialists always wrong? Who introduced commercial or chattel slavery in the Americas, Africans, Europeans, or Native Americans? And what has mercantilism got to do with World War 1 and World War 2, as mercantilism lasted from the 16th to the 18th century? Where are the empirical data on the failure of Nkrumah’s socialism?
The other central question is: Why did Mr. Baidoo, Jr. cite others to make his case? Is it only Baidoo, Jr., not Francis Kwarteng, who can and is also obliged to cite sources for his work? And did Mr. Baidoo, Jr. come into this world with the knowledge he professes upon birth? What kind of education did Mr. Baidoo, Jr. receive or which schools did he attend in his mother’s womb before his birth? Those are not insults, if I may add. They are merely to shed light on the fact that the human brain is “tabula rasa” at the point of birth and that only time fills it up with information.
We may also encourage Mr. Baidoo, Jr. to take a long walk back to 7-10,000 or 500 years of human history or limit himself to the 20th century if he cannot agree to the first proposition. He should drown himself in the history of scholarship, history of knowledge, sociology of state formation and statecraft, history of science, history of philosophy, classical scholarship, etc. That is the only way he can advance powerful arguments. Finally, we may want to stress that we have a adopted a centrist position on the question of political economy because neither capitalism nor socialism (and communism) is the best for every society or has all the answers. The Nordic Model or Nkrumah’s “mixed economy” may hold the key to unraveling Africa’s economic success if we are willing to study the Beijing Consensus and the Nordic Model.
We shall end with a list of international recognitions given Nkrumah:
1) The World Veterans federation “World Peace Prize” (1954)
2) Man of the Millennium (BBC, 1999)
3) Gold Medal (Special Session, United Nations, 1978)
4) Millennium Excellence Award 2000 Recipient?Personality of the Century (Excellent Awards Foundation, Ghana)
5) Biennial Kwame Nkrumah International Conference (Canada’s Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Lincoln Univeristy). The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Coca-Cola Foundation, and the Office of Research and Scholarship and the Sociology Department of Kwantlen Polytechnic University have supported the conference.
6) The International Lenin Peace Prize (1962; Paul Robeson, WEB Du Bois, Pablo Neruda (Nobel Prize in Literature), Linus Pauling (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Peace Prize), and Nelson Mandela all received this Prize).
7) African Union Kwame Nkrumah Scientific Awards (African Union, 2008)
8) Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (Howard University, Nkrumah papers)
9) 100 Greatest Africans of All Time (New African Magazine, 2004)
10) The SATMA Awards (South African government, Ingwe Mabalabala, the National Heritage Council of South Africa). Mr. Enoch Ampofo who received the award on behalf of Nkrumah’s family and the Ghanaian learned this fact while in South Africa. He notes: “Gaining perspectives into how Dr. Kwame Nkrumah has affected the lives of people in South Africa, I found out that back in the days of Apartheid, the oppressed people went to school and were taught about the principles of Kwame Nkrumah or Nkrumahism.”
We shall return…
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