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The Lure of the Image in the Mirror: A Reading of Kwame Nkrumah’s Towards Colonial
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Britwum / Legon Journal of the Humanities (2017) 10-19DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ljh.v28i1.2
The Lure of the Image in the Mirror: A Reading of Kwame Nkrumah’s Towards Colonial
Freedom
Atta Britwum
Associate Professor, Department of French,
University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana
attabritwum@gmail.com
Submitted: May 18, 2016 / Accepted: July 2, 2016 / Published: May 31, 2017
Abstract
Nkrumah’s Towards colonial freedom is a statement on the nature of colonialism and imperialism; and
a strategy for combating them. The work, cast through a nationalist framework, carries a fixation on
the superstructure of colonial society to the exclusion of its economic base. Thus conceived, the anti-
colonial struggle, at a superficial level, fights colonialism and imperialism. At a fundamental level, it
leaves intact the structures—capitalism—that define colonialism and imperialism. Such is the
trajectory that Kwame Nkrumah, in this work, traces towards colonial freedom.
Keywords: capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, mode of production, superstructure.
Placing the Author and the Text
Towards colonial freedom is Kwame Nkrumah’s second published work, following his
autobiography, Ghana, which appeared in 1959. It was written, according to the author’s ‘Foreword’,
in 1945 and published in 1962. Nearly twenty years separate the year of composition and the year of
publication. The author affirms that his thinking on imperialism and colonialism, which the work
examines, had remained unchanged over the near-twenty-year period.
1945 is the immediate aftermath of World War II. The period saw a resurgence of liberation
struggles throughout the colonial world. Nkrumah was some two years away from his return from his
passage through the US and Britain to the Gold Coast (later to be named Ghana after independence in
1957) to join and eventually to lead the struggle for independence. Nkrumah, at the thesis phase of a
Ph.D. programme in philosophy at Lincoln University, in the US, found himself in London caught in
an irresistible pull towards anti-colonial agitation. He gave up his doctoral studies (Nkrumah, 1959) to
devote his intellectual, emotional and physical energies to the anti-colonial struggle in London and
subsequently in the Gold Coast. In 1958, in the wake of Ghana’s independence, Kwame Nkrumah,
become a bright star of Ghana, of Africa and of the world, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws
by Lincoln University, his alma mater (Nkrumah, 1959; Powell, 1984). Towards colonial Freedom,
produced during his years as a student in the US, represents clearly an effort to ready himself
intellectually for the struggle.
Nkrumah shared, at the time, a perspective that drove what Harold Wilson, then Premier of Great
Britain, famously characterised as the ‘wind of change blowing through Africa’ but that engaged the
entire colonial world. That perspective was nationalist. The nationalists variously thought the wind
they were stirring was aimed at ridding the world of colonialism and imperialism. Imperialism sought
to use that wind to reformat itself applying the formula of self-determination or independence; and
through wars aimed at maintaining the colonial status quo. The nationalist outlook was shared by
political figures such as Mahatma Ghandi and Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Sukarno of Indonesia, Ho
Chi Minh of Vietnam, Abdul Gamel Nasser of Egypt, Sékou Touré of Guinea, Modibo Kéita of Mali,
not to leave out so-called moderates of the ilk of Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal, Houphouët-
Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.1 (2017) P a g e | 10
, Britwum / Legon Journal of the Humanities (2017) 10-19
Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Kamuzu Banda of Malawi.
The nationalist perspective, as is known, is populist. It assumes the shared identity of oppressed
colonial peoples propelled against their colonising oppressors also seen as wearing a single classless
identity. The perspective targets abuses of governance; but also assorted apologies of the colonial
system generated around the supposed cultural and racial inferiority of colonised peoples. Racial
prejudice and related frameworks are, in reality, mental constructs emanating from, and protective of,
the capitalist economic base. These cannot be effectively fought without relating them to the colonial
(which is to say) capitalist economic base of which they are a reflection. Nationalism does that. It loses
sight therefore of the real nature of colonialism.
Leaders of the nationalist movements, in search of radical colouring, borrowed, every now and
then, concepts from Marxism, which they did not use in any consequent manner, combating capitalism
in favour of socialism. Towards colonial freedom functions within this nationalist colouring.
The work seeks to characterise the phenomenon of colonialism and to propose a strategy for
fighting it. We fit our reading of it within the materialist conception of history and the theory of
imperialism that Lenin develops out of it.
Theory
Frederick Engels, in a speech at the graveside of his life-long friend, political comrade and
intellectual companion, Karl Marx, affirmed: ‘mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and
clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.’ (Engels, 1962, p. 167). The position
of Engels was informed by the materialist conception of history, also known as historical materialism,
which conceives of human society as characterised by two sets of activities that engage the humans
who inhabit it. These are activities of production of the material means of life; and mental activities or
reflection or thinking. On the basis of this, the materialist conception of history conceives of human
society as having two essential components: a mode of production (of the material means of life); and
a superstructure. The superstructure is the world of mental activities, ideas and their application in
science, technology, art and social institutions. The superstructure arises out of, is conditioned by, the
mode of production. The mode of production draws its identity from, is characterised by, the mode of
ownership of means of production named also as production relations or property relations.
Means of production, the unit of production, is made up of raw materials (object of labour) and
tools/machines (instruments of labour). Qualitative changes that occur in society are identified by
changes that occur in the mode of ownership of means of production. Ownership of means of
production is either public (as in a communalist, classless society) or private (as in a class society).
Thus the qualitative change that occurred in the first human effort at constructing a society,
communalism, was marked by the passage from communal, public, ownership of means of production
to private ownership of means of production. This change gave rise to social classes, to struggles
between them and to the State as an instrument of class domination. Re-configurations of the private
mode of ownership of means of production have given rise to qualitatively different societies. These
are slave, feudal and capitalist societies. This way of conceiving of social change led Engels to assert,
in Socialism: Utopian and scientific that the history of the world since the disintegration of
communalism has been the history of class struggles leading to qualitative phases in social evolution,
marked, each one, by a reconfigured mode of appropriation of means of production (1962, p. 134).
What we retain from the foregoing is that the mode of production of the material needs of life,
also called the economic base, the material base or the basis (of society) is the primary, fundamental
component of society. The superstructure derives from it, and therefore is secondary relative to the
economic base. The superstructure, the world of ideas and social institutions, is reflective of, emanates
from, and is protective of, the distinguishing feature of the mode of production: the mode of ownership
of means of production. The mode of production, which Marx represents also as ‘the material
conditions of life’ (1971, p. 20), is primary, objective reality. The brain generates ideas out of this
primary reality. Ideas, derived from the mode of production, constitute a subjective reality, secondary
then, relative to the mode of production. Ideas, which Marx calls also social consciousness (1971, p.
Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.1 (2017) P a g e | 11
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