Searching for a Successor to Petty Bourgeois Rule in Nigeria (4) — By Albert Okwudiba Nnoli

Finally, how should the Nigerian working class go about the organization of it’s movement? If we believe in the analytical superiority of philosophical materialism to philosophical idealism, as we surely do, then we must not make the mistake of setting up and promoting an ideal organization which the Nigerian working people should attempt to achieve. It is for the rank and file of the class, in coordination with the leadership of the class political movement, to fashion an organization that responds to the realities of the moment but is capable of adapting to changes in these realities.

There is not, and cannot be, one ideal organization across the gamut of Nigerian history and a plethora of political experiences, which the Nigerian workers and their allies must embrace. The requisite organization must constantly renew and reinvent itself in response to the changes in the history and epochal political changes in the the country. For this reason, public criticism and self criticism must be an integral aspect of the leadership of the movement.

Nevertheless, there are necessary broad brush strokes that must be made on the canvas, if only to underline the basic principles that underpin the working class. First and foremost are the composition or membership of the organization, and the interests it should pursue.

With respect to its composition, there are two social categories of class: the class-in- itself, and the class-for-itself. The former refers to a group of people who play a similar role in production, are directly involved in the creation of the products of production, are far removed from decision making about what to produce, how, when where, and why, together with how and why these products are to be distributed. And they are way down the ladder of wages provided by the enterprise for production, wages that hardly reflect their sacrifices and other contributions to production.

The defining feature of this category is that its members do not share a common consciousness of their role in production and the kind of organization and policies desirable to play the role effectively the their own benefit from production. When the class-in-itself acquires this consciousness, it transforms into the class-for-itself, with a common consciousness of how the class should move forward together in labor matters of the enterprise, as well as politically, socially, economically and culturally.

Therefore, the first and primary task of the envisaged Nigerian workings class movement is to convert the Nigerian working class-in- itself to the working class-for-itself. In other words, to get the Nigerian working class to achieve a consciousness that is commensurate with or attuned to its objective interests in production as workers.

The most important of these interests is full employment. One cannot be a worker unless one is employed. Eliminating unemployment and underemployment from Nigeria is the overriding interest of the Nigerian workers. It dwarfs all other interests in the country, be they political, economic, social or cultural. It is closely associated with the security of labor or work. The worker must enjoy the security that comes from knowing that that her/his job will last from the day of employment to the day of his lawful retirement. It cannot be terminated arbitrarily or for any reason unacceptable to the workers’ movement.

This security of the job is one of the reasons for the other important interest of working class, namely participation in the decision making of the production enterprise. The other reason for this participation is that the real joy of creative production lies in the mental harvest from planning the production of a product from deciding what to produce, why, when, how and for whom, and seeing how this plan comes to fruition to the benefit of the target segment of society. In Science this is called the hurrah effect of invention. It justifies the toil and sacrifices put into labor and the productive enterprise. In petty bourgeois and bourgeois societies, this joy is monopolized by the investors of capital. The underlying argument is that capital is superior to labor in production and, therefore, should dominate decision making about production. This is a false and self serving argument. In reality capital is dead labor, the result of earlier labor. Labor created capital. And a creation can not be superior to its creator. Anyone who has organized an event knows very well that money for the event needs strong and active legs on the ground(labor) to put the event together. Otherwise, it will collapse. Many an event has floundered for not reckoning with this fact.

Furthermore, participation in enterprise decision making will ensure that the workers will insist that they receive a fair material compensation(wages) for their work. This is the nightmare of the Nigerian petty bourgeois who reap where they have not sowed through their control of state power.

Decision making about the material benefits of production is important, if not more so than , the psychological benefits of the decision process of the enterprise. It lies at the heart of inequality in the economic, social and political spheres. This inequality is the harbinger of injustice and the inability of Nigerians to truly exercise their democratic rights beyond the mere form of electoral voting without choosing. Elections in the country have become a sham because material and power resources decide the outcome, not the true wishes of the people.

This inequality also makes it almost impossible for workers to achieve some of their interests that inhere in their function as workers. For example, in order to successfully transform the physical and biological environment workers must have a good knowledge of this environment. In other words, they must have a good education. Inequality prevents the workers from affording this education in the true sense of good education. The best schools are the very expensive private ones. Besides, the system of education does not address production, the latter being divorced from the habitual consumption habits and the local resources necessary to satisfy these habits. Instead, it addresses the kind of production and consumption habits found in Western countries. This is why our educated people excel abroad but fail woefully in Nigeria. The answer to these inadequacies is a system of free education from the nursery to the tertiary level informed by the character of the new system of production and the social, economic and political relations arising therefrom.

Similarly, inequality in the health sector greatly impedes the function of the worker qua worker. Obviously, in order to work and work to the maximum ability, the worker must be healthy both in body and mind. The very expensive and clearly unaffordable system of healthcare in Nigeria does not permit this. Even the petty bourgeois have to travel abroad for treatment. The amount of labor hours lost to this grossly inadequate and costly health care system seriously adversely affects productivity and production. And there is no justification for this deplorable state of affairs. Thus, it is in the interest of the workers to have, as a remedy, a universal and free healthcare system that is fair to all and eliminates the heartaches associated with the health of the workers and their families which adversely affect the work process.

Also, it is in the interest of the working class to eliminate the inequality between the male and female workers inherent in patriarchy which characterizes Nigerian family life. Both must enjoy the right to work. For the female workers this must start with eliminating the obstacle posed by pregnancy and child care. This means paid maternity leave for a reasonable period of time, as well as adequate provision of free nursery care. In addition, the mindset created by patriarchy must be changed by treating males and females equally in the workplace and beyond.

It is also in the interest of the workers that the prices of products and services must not make nonsense of their wages. They must be stable and affordable. This is particularly of interest to pensioners whose pensions necessarily fall below their pre-pension wages. Part of the solution to this problem is a social security safety net which caters for those no longer working due to retirement, infirmity or other vulnerabilities. A significant component of this safety net must be affordable housing for all. The concept of the homeless must be banished from reality and thought. A human being must have adequate shelter..

In order to fully realize these working class interests, the workers must insist on the democratization of production. The productive enterprises must show accountability, transparency and patriotism. They must not be allowed to behave like the multinational companies that bask in the benefits of power without accountability and transparency. At the same time the workers must do away with the worshipping of money and, instead, emphasize what money can buy. In this way one can live comfortably on a low wage. Money has become a fetish which blinds it’s worshippers to its true function.

These class interests represent those of the hard core of the working class. These are the workers in the manufacturing enterprises. They directly create products out of the environment under the supervision of the owner of the enterprise or supervisors representing the owner. They form the heart and soul of the class-in-itself. It is they who must form the core of the working class movement. Therefore, they must be the primary and central target of consciousness raising. In Nigeria their closest allies are construction workers, mechanics, masons, carpenters, plantation farmhands, plumbers, unskilled wage earners, the underemployed and the unemployed. These should automatically be part of the working class movement.

The same should apply to the vast army of subsistent farmers. They stand to benefit from the realization of the working class interests, even though they belong to a cognate class, the peasantry. The same goes for the petty foodstuff traders in the villages.

All other classes and social categories are still eligible to join the working class movement. However, their membership must be conditional on a clear evidence that they have committed class suicide. This means abandoning the objective interests of their class, and identifying very closely, passionately, actively, strongly, publicly and exclusively with the above working class interests. In addition, they must demonstrate deep and abiding respect for work and the workers and must not harbor any superiority complex whatsoever.

This is particularly relevant for the petty bourgeois intellectuals and left wing progressive petty bourgeois who are very dissatisfied with the extant petty bourgeois rule. This rigorous vetting of these groups is because of the need to prevent government and foreign infiltration of the working class movement, which is most likely to rely on their members. In 1946, for example, a member of the Zikist Movement, a radical left wing nationalist organization, warned against the petty bourgeois whom he characterized as: perfidious, untrustworthy, unprincipled, unpatriotic, opportunistic, cowardly, of shifting loyalties, lazy, unwilling to accept their mistakes and failures, greedy, averse to making sacrifices for a cause, uncreative, entertain illusions of grandeur of wealth and ultramodern luxurious life style, highly condescending toward the poor and those less educated than them, intent on copying the Western ways of life, given to begging for favors rather than relying on their own strength, incapable of public criticism and self criticism, quick to lie, lawless, corrupt, unwilling to work hard for the benefits they desire but would rather go to God or the native doctor for relief, easily frightened by difficult situations, manipulative, ready to use religion and ethnicity to ease their way to power and wealth, lack all sense of history, disdainful of the masses and anyone else they deem below them, look down on the indigenous way of life, and easily influenced by foreign conspiracy theories. They are ready-made material for espionage.

However, the need for vetting means that there is a reasonable number, among them, who do not fit into this typical petty bourgeois mould and can be saved from themselves by participation in the working class movement. They are the ones most likely to benefit from the consciousness raising within the movement.

Such inculcation of working class consciousness must follow two intertwining paths: the one of words, the other of actions, walking the talk so to say. The objective is to imprint on the mind and psyche of the workers the objective interests of the working class. By objective interests we refer to those interests that arise from the role of the workers in production. The path of words is that of class orientation through motivational speeches and other intellectual activities. The path of action involves directly working with workers and their class allies in solving their problems of production and seeking a better life, and reacting to government policies and programs from the point of view of the workers and their allies. It is for the movement to decide what form such reactions will take.

Consciousness raising will go hand in hand with the setting up of branches of the movement within the enterprise and all places of work of the allies of the workers. Progress of the movement should be measured by the increase in the number, size and internal capacity of these branches and how many benefits they have helped to secure for the workers from year to year, as well as yearly improvements in the level of class consciousness of the members of the movement. There must never be any comparison with the achievements of workers anywhere else in the world.

The most important obstacle to the takeoff of this movement is inertia, the internal and external opposition toward taking the first steps. This situation is not helped by the often unsolicited advice of defeatists, those that a politician referred to as “the nattering nanobs of negativism “. Activists of the working class should also remind them of what another politician said “ we do not do these things because they are easy but because they are hard”. They fear for you and wish that you surrender even before the first salvo is fired in the struggle. Again remind them of what a politician said “ you have nothing to fear but fear itself.” The Igbo even say that death is never a reason not to go to war. Make them realize and understand that successes and failures invariably result from what people do, and not what existed before they did them.

Long live the Nigerian working people.

May the Grace guide their struggle and its progress.!!!!

THE END