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Quote: Marx’s Theoretical Legacy in Sudan By: Eltayeb, Talaat After the downfall of the former Soviet Union, many people thought the tradition of Marxism developed in Russia by Lenin and Trotsky is coming to an end, but such expectations were proven to be only a fiction, at least for many third world countries. The Sudanese communist party’s fifth general convention which was held in Khartoum last January, revealed this fact. In that convention, the Party maintained all the traditions of the classical Marxism. The obvious absence of Lenin’s name was the only visible change, but the presence of his ideas continued in an implicit way. As a matter of fact, almost all the Leninist luggage was retained through the back door. The ideas of Karl Marx were first found their way to Sudan through Egypt when many Sudanese students there organised themselves within the Egyptian communist movements during the 1940’s. The Sudanese communist party was first established under the name “The Front against colonization” in 1946 and became to be known as the communist party, after the independence in 1956. This communist movement had gradually become influential among Sudanese intellectuals and trade unionists. It had grown strong enough to back up a military coup that seized the state power in 1969. The military cope which was known as The Revolution of May, showed differences in opinions soon after successful consolidation of power. In spit of that fact that all political parties were banned by the Revolutionary Leading Committee, the communist party was almost exempted. The communist party insisted to have an independent role and therefore, differences in opinions on how to run the country and by whom, were the issues contributed to the political tensions between the two sides. Members of the Revolutionary Committee whom are affiliated with the communist party were fired from their posts. The Sudanese communist party then organized a second military cope in July 19, 1971 which lasted for three days only, and then they failed to maintain their grip on power. May Revolutionary Committee managed to return back to power after the defeat of communists, and leaders of the communist party were executed in August 1971. May Revolutionary Committee continued to rule the country under different names until 1985, where their era ended when a popular uprising demanding democracy and freedom forced them out of the Sudanese political arena. However, in 1977 the Party had issued a statement claiming that solutions for problems of the country required liberal democracy or what he called a multiparty system of government to be established in the country. My focus concerns the issue of whether this claim is genuine or not. Documents approved by the fifth convention are posted in Ahewar.org. It showed that principles of internal organization are that of the Democratic Centralism which are used by Leninist political parties. One of the key principles of this kind of democracy says decisions of upper structures are mandatory for the lower structures, even though possibilities of such a principle can run counter to democracy where minorities must obey majorities, cannot be ruled out. The history of this particular party shows evidence supporting this trend as it’s present the leadership had been postponing the fifth general convention for forty two years. Although the party’s documents on the political vision states that the party is flexible in considering different intellectual approaches or traditions, but at the same time, it states clearly that Marxism is the prospective adopted by their organization. The party has never mentioned or identified which version of Marxism they believe can accurately interpret political and social realities. It is clear that the party is implicitly emphasised a collective belief on classical Marxism as representing the legitimate scientific aspect of Marxism, and it’s ability in revealing the internal laws of capitalist society same as the way natural sciences are, in their ability in revealing the law of nature. Contrary to what the communist party in Sudan believes in Marxism as a unified theory, Wright, the famous Analytical Marxist and many other contemporary Marxists view Marxism quite differently. In his article “what is Analytical Marxism”, Olin Wright had described the situation of contemporary Marxism by saying ‘it could simply be recognized that Marxism is not a unified theory with well – defined boundaries, but a family of theories united by a common terrain of debate and questions ‘(McQuarie, 1995, 166). Last March, Elsir Osman who is a member of the central committee, wrote an article on Sudanile.com, titled “The Prospective of Marxism on the Spot Light”. In his article Mr. Osman also viewed Marxism as one unified theory with an open end for continuous developments. He wrote that all earlier and later generations of Marxists had enriched the theory and helped eliminating Stalin rigid ideas. He considered even the reconstruction work of Habermas as part of this continuous effort to rebuild the concept of historical materialism and to get rid of the rigid Stalinism views. The whole article is attempting to defend classical Marxism and viewed the work of all later generations of Marxism theorists as elaborations of the Marxist Leninist. The article has misinterpreted the reconstruction work of Habermas and failed to identify and to recognise the critiques that had been carried out by those theorists throughout the last century in regard to the mechanical, deterministic, and materialistic nature of history. In his article” Marxism and Neo-Marxism”, Donald McQuarie explained historical materialism by arguing that the theoretical foundations of Marx’s attempt to construct his theory lay in his insight into the central role played by economic conditions in molding social life. He added “Marx especially interested in the particular form that economic or material production takes in different societies. The development of different historical forms of economic enterprise, or modes of productions, as Marx called them, leads to the development of new and different forms of religion, politics, family life, and so on, indeed, Marx argued that the very ways in which people think about themselves and their society are determined by this on going development of forces of production. A second major aspect of Marx’s theory involved the role that social conflict plays in this ongoing process of social and economic development. Social conflict for Marx is a result of exploitation of some groups in society by others. In general, the ability to exploit others in any society is a result of control over the economic resources needed to make a livelihood. McQuarie added that Marx most important achievement was to combine these two insights concerning the importance of (1) economic conditions and (2) class conflict in the determination of social life into a unified general theory of society. This general theory has come to be known as “historical materialism”. Marx’s critique of capitalism was that during the development of capitalist society, fundamental contradiction arises between the private natures of what he called the relations of production versus the increasing social nature of the forces of production. Marx considered it as unresolved central contradiction leading to the ultimate downfall of capitalism. The collapse of capitalism societies in Marx’s view is associated with two problems: an overproduction crisis, and the monopolization through concentration and centralization of wealth and industry. This deterministic version of Marxism that explained the inevitable downfall of capitalist societies is known as classical Marxism or the historical materialism, and it is the one adopted by the Sudanese communist party. Unlike this party and its leaders, cotemporary Marxists think Marxism is not about developing the classical version of Marxism, but rather about explaining the failure of socialist revolutions to materialize in the advanced capitalist societies of Western Europe and North America. Two important themes that have emerged in works attempting to account for this failure have been (1) the development of the interventionist welfare state as a “regulator” and (2) the emergence of intermediary social strata between capital and labour (McQuarie, 1995, 119). In his article “The Prospective of Marxism on the Spot light” which is written in an Arabic text, Mr. Osman used a tricky translation so that his theses about one unified Marxism theory open to endless improvement can fit in. In my opinion Mr. Osman had intentionally misinterpreted the term reconstruction when he translated an article about the work of Habermas on historical materialism. In describing the attempts or changes done by this important critical theorist to re-construct Marxism, Mr.Osman had abused the term reconstruction because he ended up depicting Habermas’s work as an elaboration and most importantly as approval to the concept of historical materialism. The conclusion that Habermas had approved or improved historical materialism has nothing to do with the reality of social science as everybody know, but it served the purpose of his party’s leaders in hiding the democratic nature of contemporary Marxism, as well as the fact that most of later Marxist theorists had dissociated themselves from the positivistic interpretations of the version of Marxism developed earlier by revolutionary intellectuals like Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Rosa Luxemburg and others. In their famous presentations to the conference held at the University of Maryland on March 11, 1988, and sponsored by the college of behavioural and social sciences, the Graduate school and the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland, Alexander and Colomy had explained the term reconstruction and what it means in social sciences when they talked about the response of social theories to critiques. Later, their presentation was collected in the article under the title”Neofuctionalism Today: Reconstructing a Theoretical Tradition”. In this presentation they argued that social science traditions define themselves by staking out theoretical cores that are highly resistant to change. The substantial areas surrounding these nuclei, however, are subject to change. Changes in peripheral areas of traditions can be conceived as proceeding a long two lines, “elaboration” and “revisions”. Elaboration and revision are lines of specification that recur periodically in a tradition’s history, not only in the period of routinization that immediately follows the charismatic founding but in the wake of the powerful reformulations that must emerge if the tradition is to remain intact. It is this later possibility that points to a third ideal-typical form of theoretical change. Insofar as cores themselves undergo substantial shifts-without abandoning their association with the overarching tradition – there occurs the theoretical activity we will call “reconstruction”. Reconstruction differs from elaboration and revision in that differences with the founder of the tradition are explicitly made. Therefore, Alexander and Colomy the term reconstruction refereed to more profound changes which may involve new ways of articulating the core of the theory that can break with the previous interpretations. These types of radical or transformative changes are referred to in these reading as reconstruction.(Study Guide, 2002. 49). In the study guide for Graduate school at University of Athabasca, Dr.Tony Simmons commented on the term grand narrative of emancipatory modernity by saying “the term materialistic grand narrative of modernity refers to the Marxian account of human history, which sees the progressive development of the forces of production, as the engine of social and historical change. For scientific Marxism which is known as historical materialists, the whole human history may be read as the material development of the forces of production, and the revolutionary changes in the class relations that this development has always generated. The progressive development of the productive forces has generally been equated by Marxists with the progressive development of human freedom. Freedom is achieved when the working class seize the state power and because of its belief on this inevitable final triumph of human freedom, Marxism is described by postmodernists as committed to a grand narrative of emancipatory modernity’.( Study Guide,1992, 96). In his article Mr.Osman clearly confused the reader between the commitment of Habermas and other critical theorists, to the materialistic concept of history which is known as historical holism and that of historical materialism. He misinterpreted the two concepts so that he can be able to justify his defence for classical Marxism and to hide its critiques. Unlike Marxist Leninist, contemporary Marxists have shown respect to democracy and in this regard Mr. Simmons wrote commenting on post-modern critiques by saying ”With the decline influence of historical materialism as a totalizing/universalizing grand narrative, new versions of Marxism were obliged to take into account new forms of social differentiation. Over the years, this had led to a proliferation of marxisms including new Leftism, Critical theory, Structuralism, Analytical Marxism, and even post-modernist version that became known as Post-Marxism. Of all the external and internal critiques of Marxism, however the post modernism critique has been the most serious.”(Study Guide, 2002. 96). In his previously mentioned article, it is clear that Mr. Osman treats historical materialism and historical holism as one concept. To show the difference between the two concepts, we can simply agree with critical theorists that the term historical holism can be explained as marxian attempt to grasp the structures and mechanisms that influence the actions of individual and collective subjects (University of Athabasac Study Guide, 1992. 96). In his article on post modernist critiques, although Antonio had agreed to dump the Marxian materialist grand narrative of modernity, he is unwilling to give up the concept of historical holism because it provides a global view to human history (Ritzer, 1990. 107). References: McQuarie, Donald, editor (1995). Readings in Contemporary Sociological Theory : From Modernity to Post-Modernity. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice- Hall Inc. Ritzer, George, editor. (1990). Frontiers of Social Theory: The New Syntheses. NY, Columbia University Press. Simmons, Tony. (1992). Deciphering our Social World: The Study Guide for the Graduates school , Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada. http://www.ahewar.org/search/Dsearch.asp?nr=2619 http://www.sudaneseonline.com/arabic/index.php?option=com_con...-42&Itemid=55[/QUOTE]