revolution
p. 56 · Read in the full issue
Marxism minus revolution
Science and Social Theory: A Brief Critical Examination.
By Nii-K. Flange. Published by South Pacific Review Press, Suva, 1984, uiii, 105 p. Price $A13.50.
Following Sione Tupouniua’s article “Political Independence; an opportunity to create” in South Pacific Dossier, and Alexander Mamak’s Race, class and rebellion in the South Pacific, Nii-K. Flange offers South Pacific readers a brief introduction to “Marxist sociology”.
Marxist sociology, for Nii-K.
Flange, means humanist Marx ism, here labelled “historical materialism”. Nii-K. Flange argues that no form of social organisation is natural. Rather, all social formations are his torically transient. A sharp distinction is drawn between the concepts “history” and “na ture”, and it is contended that societies, as historical products, are artificial. On this basis, racial differences and colonial under development are viewed, not as “natural” outcomes of geo graphy or heredity, but as deve lopments of the domination of a particular class in a particular historical period.
Humanist Marxism is usually, in academic writing, counter posed to the modem French Marxism of Louis Althusser, which analyses different class
societies in terms of the struc ture of successive historical modes of production. Nii-K.
Flange attempts to reconcile these two opposed versions of Marxism by presenting a structuralist analysis of colonial societies side-by-side with the exegesis of a humanist phi losophical position.
This small booklet cannot be accused of the harsh rigor of a doctrinaire. Sartre, Althusser, Fanon, Guevara and Mao Tse tung meet happily in its pages.
Jay Narayan’s The Political Economy of Fiji, recently re viewed in PIM, claimed that “racial exploitation is merely an additional dimension of ex ploitation of one class by an other”.
Nii-K. Flange, in contrast, suggests that writings by Marx ists “have shown the inability of Marx’s model to foresee the importance of race, gender and nationality”. Writing im mediately before the formation of the Fiji Labour Party, Nii-K.
Flange warns that working clas ses, contrary to Marx’s predic tions, tend to be conservative and to accept forms of “racism and even fascism”. There can be no doubt that such a liberal interpretation of Marxism will find favor among opinion lead ers in the South Pacific not ordinarily sympathetic to radicalism. Nii-K. Lange pre sents historical materialism as a method of academic analysis, not in any sense “revolu tionary”.
It is unfortunate that the booklet under review is ex tremely badly edited. It is distri buted in Australia through Pad
fic Publications.
O.G.