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INTRODUCTION
In this Unit, we shall examine what Marxism is as a political and literary theory and how African writers have responded to it. Marxism is an economic and social system based upon the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. While it would take veritably volumes to explain the full implications and ramifications of the Marxist social and economic ideology, Marxism is summed up in the Encarta Reference Library as “a theory in which class struggle is a central element in the analysis of social change in Western societies.” Marxism is the antithesis of capitalism which is defined by Encarta as “an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, characterized by a free competitive market and motivation by profit.” Marxism is the system of socialism of which the dominant feature is public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange.
Under capitalism, the proletariat, the working class or “the people,” own only their capacity to work; they have the ability only to sell their own labour. According to Marx a class is defined by the relations of its members to the means of production. He proclaimed that history is the chronology of class struggles, wars, and uprisings. Under capitalism, Marx continues, the workers, in order to support their families are paid a bare minimum wage or salary. The worker is alienated because he has no control over the labour or product which he produces. The capitalists sell the products produced by the workers at a proportional value as related to the labour involved. Surplus value is the difference between what the worker is paid and the price for which the product is sold.
Armed with this philosophy aimed at assessing the state of polity in African states, African novelists have been examining the political and economic situation of their countries with the aim of correcting the anomalies. Some of the anomalies include the steady rise of the rich while the poor get poorer resulting from the imbalance in the distribution of resources. The commoners or the masses are not fairly treated and they constitute the majority in the countries and reveal high poverty level because of the ever increasing poverty.
We are going to examine Festus Iyayi’s Violence and Meja Mwangi’s Kill Me Quick in the application of this philosophy in African novels.
General Overview
Since the independence of most African nations, there have been lingering imbalances in the distribution of the resources of the countries. An increasing immiseration of the proletariat occurs as the result of economic recessions; these recessions result because the working class is unable to buy the full product of their labors and the ruling capitalists do not consume all of the surplus value. A proletariat or socialist revolution must occur, according to Marx, where the state (the means by which the ruling class forcibly maintains their rule over the other classes) is a dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism evolves from socialism out of this progression: the socialist slogan is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.” The communist slogan varies thus: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
Although the independence sought is ultimately achieved by African countries, nothing tangible has happened to the resolution of the crises of status and the economy. The economies still reflect the interest of the imperial power and the associated dominant groups. New forces and ideas come to the fore, presaging major social and economic changes. The society still reflects some characteristic social and economic structures created by colonial rule. African novelists like Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Festus Iyayi, Ayi Kwei Armah, Wole Soyinka, Maik Nwosu among others have been revealing Marxist ideals in their works. They have often examined what the elite are doing with powers left in their hands by the colonialists. They have often attacked the excesses of governance that impinges on the proper administration of the states. They have examined the various deceits, nepotism, injustice and all forms of economic sabotage in their countries. They are often seen as angry writers crying out for peace and justice in Africa.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1
Explain the basic ideals of Marxism and why African writers adopt it as away of presenting the African situation.
Marxism in Festus Iyayi's Violence
Socialist realism as exemplified in Violence questions an existing social order and articulates a revolutionary option. Capitalism is an economic system in which the factors of production are concentrated in a few hands resulting in the alienation of property from the direct producers - the workers. The means of production thus shifted, become the property of the capitalist - the movers of the bourgeois society. The direct result of this is apparently a dichotomy between two classes - the labourer (the worker) who receives his means of subsistence in exchange for his labour-power, and the capitalist who receives the worker’s labour and appropriates all the proceeds arising from it. The worker only receives an insignificant portion of the proceeds only for survival. Social crisis is therefore bound to arise as a reaction by the exploited workers who are in the majority.
In the capitalist society the worker is an exploited and alienated. He is without capital or investment or ground rent and lives entirely on his labour. He is used “just like ahorse needs only receive so as enables him work.” He is not considered for leisure as a human being and rather than fulfill himself in the work, he does deny himself. He does not develop freely a physical and mental energy but is physically exhausted and mentally debased. While at work, the worker feels homeless because the work is not his own. Since he works for someone else, he does not belong to himself but to another person (ibid., pp. 177). These conditions are the consequent creation of the capitalist society as portrayed by Iyayi’s Violence.
Idemudia, struggles with unemployment and poverty in a social background of class intolerance. Right from the cover design of the novel, Iyayi depicts clearly a class conflict; the bourgeois class is represented by a modern society, enriched with skyscrapers. The masses are depicted in a dilapidated tent in a shanty slum. Idemudia unfortunately ends his secondary education in class four when his father could no longer pay his school fees. He is alternatively thrown into the labour market unprepared. He fails to secure employment after many years. Marries and has a son, he sends the child to the village. He is forced to hang around Iyaro for hire as a common labourer - a life of agony of having to feed a loyal and determined wife who grows increasingly bitter because of their condition. Iyayi portrays Idemudia’s dilemma as not only arising from his poor education, but also lacking an opportunity to improve himself through his labour. In the Nigerian capitalism, even the educated are unsafe from exploitation. The bourgeois take the advantage of Idemudia’s unskilled labour to exploit him, so that though he works hard, he is underpaid and his condition suffers consistent degeneration. Idemudia, his wife and his three friends, (Osaro, Omoifo and Patrick) represent the Nigerian worker. Their social dilemma and deprivation is the subject of Iyayi’s criticism in Violence.
This explains the argument of Marx in his appraisal of capitalist ideals as the worker is simply exiled and dehumanized. An indebted Idemudia and his wife cannot pay their debts yet the man works hard but is paid so little – a paltry sum of N5 at the end of the month. Iyayi postulates that there is too much injustice in this system. The Nigerian employer who Queen Obofun represents is constructed as a slave driver who is insensitive of the basic needs of his worker. He is ever ready to extort and exploit especially those who lack the guts to say No! And Iyayi calls this Violence.
When a man is denied opportunity, of being educated, of getting a job, of feeding himself and his family properly, of getting medical attention cheaply, quickly and promptly, the act of violence is committed against him (ibid. pp. 193).
An overt contrast to this condition is the world of the opulent depicted by Obofun and his wife Queen, whose ill-gotten affluence places them on the apex of the society. The Obofuns whose wealth is accumulated through fraud in collusion with the government live in sheer luxury, own a fleet of cars, and own a chain of hotels. While Idemudia is so poor that he cannot even replace an old broom in his room, the wealthy Queen (his employer) throws away left-over food in her refuse bins. The employment of labourers in her construction company is to save her low-cost housing contract which the government had threatened to terminate for her delay in executing the project. At the work-site work condition is extremely unbearable. The workers are slave-driven, sacked at will, intimidated and denied the opportunity to negotiate for a higher wage. “… they worked in subdued silence like prisoners, coming and going in the intense light of the sun” (ibid. pp 246). This condition eventually forced Idemudia and his co-workers to embark on an industrial action. And Iyayi argues that physical violence is a moral option against psychological violence.
Class dichotomy in a capitalist society generates class discrimination and breeds hostility. In Violence, class intolerance affects even the running of the hospital. Idemudia’s illness and subsequent admission in the hospital reveals class consciousness in the administration of the hospital. Idemudia can only go to a lower Ogbe hospital where the general wards are so congested that patients are paired up in beds irrespective of the nature of their diseases. Unlucky patients are forced to sleep on the bare floor along the corridor in front of the wards. “Senior service” wards are for the rich and in most cases the executive wards are virtually empty, because the rich who seldom fall sick have the best hospital facilities reserved for them while the poor who are prone to frequent ailments have no hospitals. Iyayi portrays this situation as injustice against workers. Idemudia and Osaro sell their blood to a man in a Mercedes Benz car, showing that capitalism saps the last drop of blood of the common man and rapes his manhood.
In the mock-drama embedded within the plot of the novel, also titled “Violence”, the Defence Counsel puts the whole society on trial and postulates that the society lacks moral qualification to punish crimes. Iyayi through the Defence counsel argues that every form of sabotage, crime or prostitution in the society is a direct consequence of lack of opportunity propagated by irresponsible government as well as intolerant class stratification. The lack of privilege and opportunity to the worker is a greater violence than whatever reaction the aggrieved worker might project. Here again Iyayi insists that it is the social institution that makes the man and determines his level of morality. In fact, through the Defence Counsel, Iyayi calls to question the moral eligibility of judges; because individuals are no more responsible for their actions than the society conditions them. Iyayi insists that it is the poverty of Idemudia’s family, the lack of food and the lack of money to pay Idemudia’s hospital bill that drive Adisa to adultery. Adisa must convince herself that her poverty justifies her offering her body as a way of solving her material problem. Festus Iyayi sees the Nigerian capitalist society as committing various forms of violence against the masses. To him capitalism is violence, and violence should be answered with violence. He advocates for a mass revolt which hopefully would usher in a new socio-economic order.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2
Explain thoroughly how Idemudia and Adisa tried to survive the harsh economic realities in their society.
Marxism in Meja Mwangi’sKill Me Quick
In Kill Me Quick the reader encounters a new realistic fiction from Kenya. There is a concentration on the perennial dissonance among individuals, especially as this discord manifests itself in the areas of prime interest to the novelist – social classes, races, genders, religions, politics and domestics. It presents a harsh account of urban life in postcolonial Kenya. His fiction reveals that one major unfortunate problem runs through the (neo) colonial African societies – frustration or betrayal of trust. Mwangi’s novel also reveals that in African neo- colonial societies, the seeds of disharmony, mediocrity and macabre corporate distrust have been sown; corruption and rampant scarcity of personal integrity have replaced the hitherto peaceful existence. In fact, the novel has altered the traditional map of African fiction beyond recognition because of his undisguised depiction of postcolonial decadence and the harshness and abruptness of its style. The novel is a chronicle of the existential and societal realities of the neo-colonial Kenyan nation.
The theme of postcolonial decadence in the text thus becomes a metaphor for the history of neo-colonial African nations, which are encumbered with dislocation, alienation, depression and deprivation. Resonating through the novel is an echo of the painful existence of the masses in the neo-colonial society, which creates a motley array of failure and ridiculous figures. Kenya, the referent society of the text, has been enmeshed since 1963 in the crucible of deaths and births, agony, poverty, dehumanization and starvation. These, despite their differentiating phraseologies, work towards the same objective: the vitiation of human dignity. Hence, Kill Me Quick, like many other postcolonial African novels, reveals an atmosphere of fear, hate, humiliation and an aura of repression, in forms of arrest, exile and execution. It highlights the dictatorial and oppressive tendencies of the imperialists and neo-colonial rulers in African nations. This is the general visceral sentiment that forms the background of Mwangi’s fiction, as well as most postcolonial African texts. Common issues in postcolonial literary works include tyranny, corruption and other forms of oppression. There emerges from Mwangi’s handling of disillusionment and pain a virulent critique of the African past and present, and a pessimistic view of future evolution. The social injustices of neo-colonialism constitute the driving dynamic in the novel. The problem of class stratification in neo-colonial African societies is captured vividly at the beginning of the novel:
Meja sat by the ditch swinging his legs this way and that. A few people passed by engrossed in their daily problems and none of them gave the lanky youth a thought. But the searching eyes of Meja missed nothing. They scrutinized the ragged beggars who floated ghostly past him as closely as they watched the smart pot-bellied executives wrinkling their noses at the foul stench of backyards. And between these two types of beings, Meja made comparison (Kill Me Quick, 1).
Mwangi selects realistic details from ordinary life, and his novel chronicles the fate of an impotent silent majority. He has a vision of life as hell. His fiction shows him to be a humanist because human concerns like class and gender inequality remain largely foregrounded in the novel. In consequence, in Kill Me Quick, Mwangi’s thematic focus centres on the portrayal of the terrifying, the painful, and a common insistence on postcolonial disillusionment. As a naturalist, he observes the panoramic view of his society and fictionalizes it as it is. He exposes his society’s filth, decay, contradictions and conflicts with a view to presenting a true picture of it. In the novel, Mwangi gives a scathing indictment of the failure of the new state to provide opportunities for the youths.
The issues of disillusionment and pain, which are found in Mwangi’s previous novels, are shown in their contemporary fullness in Kill Me Quick, the novel in which he takes up the fact that conflict is unavoidable in human society, and shows what happens when one engages in social conflict with one's society. It takes as its thematic focus the foregrounding of the exploitation of the masses by the ruling class, betrayal of public confidence, administrative bureaucracy, highly decadent and socially stratified society that breeds and nurtures exploitation and oppression of the less privileged in society. In the main, the text dwells on the suffering endured by innocent humanity, as a result of exploitation and crises of the world. Social relationships are permanently tense in the novel, and are marked by continuous dissonance, frustration and incompatibility. As if natural calamity is not an albatross about the neck of the Kenyans, there is also the problem of class. This is an index of unfulfilled hope.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 3
Assess how Mwangi presented the living condition of Kenyans in the hands of neo-colonial elites.
Marxism and African Novels
Ayi Kwei Armah in his The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Debo Kotun in his Abiku are Marxist in outlook especially in their thematic concerns. The sense of dismay with which they confront the corruption and divisions in the new post-independence regimes in their countries are unmistakably clear in the novels. Ngugi’s early narratives - The River Between, Weep Not, Child and A Grain of Wheat – elegantly reconstruct the story of Kenyan freedom movement. The touching narratives prompt readers to take a fresh look at colonialism and freedom struggle. It examines where things had gone wrong, capturing the hope of freedom and the disillusionment that ensued. Examination of the past is one way of turning the country’s attention to the present: highlighting the oppression of the “Neo-colonialists”, which is more ruthless than the colonial predecessors. However, Ngugi’s works since 1967 -- Petals of Blood, Devil on the Cross, Matigari and recently Wizard of the Crow were more explicit and outspoken about the atrocities of the Kenyatta and Moi regimes. Through these works, he even calls for the continuation of resistance. Like many fellow African writers, Ngugi considers literature to be a weapon that brings about social and political change. His voice in these novels reveals him as a hard core Marxist fighting against all manners of economic and political slavery that his people have been subjected as a result of neo-colonial capitalism and other forms of economic ills. Aminata Sow Fall’s The Beggars Strike and Sembene Ousmene’s God’s Bits of Wood also reveal Marxist attacks on the political anomalies of African states. Many African novels, especially those examining the state of politics in post- independence Africa, have often cried out about the anomalies in their various countries with strong Marxist base.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 4
Many African novelists write to attack the imbalances in politics and economy in their countries. Using some novels explain the Marxism inherent.
CONCLUSION
Literature does not grow or even develop in a vacuum; it is given impetus, shape, direction and even area of concern by social, political and economic forces in a particular society. The relationship between creative literature and these other forces cannot be ignored, especially in Africa, where modern literature has grown against the gory background of European imperialism and its changing manifestations: slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. Our culture over the last hundred years has developed against the same stunting dwarfing background. What is true for literature, and all culture, is also true for politics. In Africa, as elsewhere, the genuine Marxist tradition has been marginalized in political discourse. Immersed in the postcolonial African milieu, Mwangi and Iyayi can only offer hints in Kill Me Quick and Violence of the international struggle necessary to achieve a democratic, egalitarian society in Kenya, Nigeria and, in fact, the rest of the world. Mwangi and Iyayi’s intelligence, integrity and passion suggest their great potential to overcome this political malady, which indeed afflicts the global progressive movement. One senses a feeling of commitment on the part of these writers as they identified the political course for overturning the ugly political and economic situations hampering the proper development of Africa. The Marxist writers are protesting against all forms of anomalies in the system, which create imbalances in the development of Africa and most independent African writers have residues of Marxism in their works.
SUMMARY
Violence is Iyayi’s intimate projection of the imbalance in Nigeria’s economic situation after independence. It protests the social and economic anomalies which could lead to violence as portrayed in the plot of the story. We have here presented an imbalanced class classification where the poor gets poorer and the rich gets richer. The novel is purely an assessment of the post colonial Nigerian situation where capitalism is criminally imposed on the helpless citizens who believe strongly in the power of the educated elite to pilot the economy of the country properly in order to give them respite and economic independence. It is actually the non-fulfillment of these hopes that leads to violence. The novel is a pure Marxist approach towards assessing the evils of neo-colonial independent Nigeria. This situation is common in most African states.
Kill Me Quick sums up Mwangi’s concern for the prevalent social anomalies in neo-colonial Kenya, and it is a graphic demonstration of Mwangi’s sympathy for the underprivileged members of his society. His choice of this vision is unique, reflecting his awareness of people's predicament even in the midst of abundant resources. The characters are presented in such a way that they signify the overwhelming disparity between the dominant, privileged exploiter-class and the exploited. The characters in the novel constitute the class of people that groans under "food crisis, deplorable mass poverty, decimating diseases and pervasive illiteracy". The novelist uses their daily experiences to harp on the helplessness of the masses in neo-colonial African societies. The common man rendered abstract and shadowy, is living in a world of anonymity. Meja and Maina are sketched out in a society in which they think they are pariahs. At the beginning of the story, they are frustrated and almost destroyed by poverty. They are entrapped in their woeful and painful world. Also, their painful conditions of living are revealed in their feeding and dressing. Actually, the old and shabby dresses they wear locate them in their social class. Unlike the socialist realist who believes in the inevitability of change, Mwangi, the naturalist, simply depicts his society in the way it is without suggesting how to change the situation. His literary agenda is to present life in all its details, free of any preconceived notions of its meaning
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