‘What is to be done?’ Rethinking socialism(s) and socialist legacies in a postcolonial world

Harry Verhoeven

Third World Quarterly, 2020, vol. 42, issue 3, 449-464

Abstract: Throughout the twentieth century, the ideas of Marx and Lenin were fervently listened to, adopted, modified and confronted in Africa and Asia – an ideational and organisational reservoir still of foremost importance today, as this volume demonstrates. What socialism has meant, and still means, in theory and in practice has always been highly heterogeneous. African and Asian movements have not simply mimicked the blueprints and dogmas of Soviet or European Marxists, but have built and contextualised their own: the postcolonial metamorphosis of class and regional order; the appropriate role – if any – of religion, culture and nationalism in their societies; the organisation of political institutions and economic control mechanisms after 1989, etc. Above all, what has set socialists in African and Asian societies apart from their comrades in Europe have been three great challenges they have had to simultaneously contend with in their articulations of liberation: how to build up empirical and juridical statehood, how to forge a nation after colonial divide-and-rule, and how to position themselves in a world order not of their making. In a postcolonial world, this then begs a key question: what can African and Asian imaginaries, institutions and practices tell us about socialism as a global phenomenon?

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2020.1867528

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