EGWU IBIAM O.1; UDEUHELE G.I.2
Department Of Political Science,
Faculty Of Social Science,
Ebonyi State University, Abakauki
Abstract
This article on “The bourgeois state and peripheral underdevelopment: A critical view “, is an effort at synthesizing the role of the bourgeois state in the crises of development being witnessed among most, if not all peripheral societies. This effort is informed by the decades of crises and conflict most third world societies have experienced from their colonial days till the contemporary post colonial era. Using Nigeria, a major Actor in the process of exploitation and expropriation of wealth, south of the Sahara as a unit of analyses, this researcher is focusing on a content analyses of the journey so far by the Nigerian people, as they strive to develop themselves. Based on the use of the historical and dialectical materialistic interpretation of the socio-economic process of-wealth creation and distribution among Nigerians, under the hegemony of the prebendalist state, data gathered were interpreted. The findings show that the bourgeois state in Nigeria is both an alien and rogue state. It is a state under the control of a cabal in both military and civilian uniforms who sit in “council” on behalf of their metropolitan bourgeois masters to facilitate the endless and rapacious “rape” of the Nigerian masses. Thus this state as it operates under the capitalist order controlled by the international order of liberal democracy and globalization cannot facilitate the even development of Nigeria, To address the ills identified in this paper, the researcher recommended among other things, a return to the Nigerian people’s indigenous ways of life under which political leadership and ruler ship were people oriented. Based on an ideological re-orientation, a new order of African socialism should be advocated, under which welfarism and brotherhood will be pursued to usher in egalitarianism.
Introduction
The state has come over ages to constitute an unavoidable aspect of the lives of men. From antiquities through the dark ages to contemporary times, the state has grown to become on institution that orders the affairs of men for good life. Many philosophers and scholars have given various meanings of the state. The definitions, as many as they may be can be taken from the view of a scholar who sums them up here. According to Igwe (2005:416) the state is ‘a creature of the basis, and most decisive element of the superstructure of society’. In layman’s forms, we can say the state is a territorial society with specific characteristics that range from a people, a government, with sovereign powers to pursue the interests of its citizens.
The origin of the state according to Cicero (106 34BC) stems from the people. To him this “people” is an association of a good number of persons based on justice and partnership to source common good. This, Cicero says originates from mans natural gifts of social spirit that draws him always to partnership. Functionally, the state; in the views of Plato (C.428 348BC) pursues an ideal life which must be just. Here justice being a permanent quality and attribute of the human soul constitutes basis for the role of the state in the life of men.
Mandel (1991:24) summarized the works of the social contract theorists such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and J.J. Rousseau, which we may find useful for greater appreciation of our study. According to this theorists, the state came into existence through a contract by the members of a society who surrendered their territory and collective freedom to an institution called the state, and allowed it to command such resources from them as are necessary for its purposes. The most important of these resources are the monopoly of force and taxation. In return for these powers to the state, the members of the society enjoy protection and other services for their collective welfare from it. The basic need for the state arises in the context of this social contract from man’s observation that life outside society is solitary, nasty, brutish and short, thus the need for a power superior to all men to mediate and protect men.
It is easy to see that this theory of the origin of this state poses some issues.
First, it implies that the origin of the state is part of the natural order of things, as the need for protection and escape from nature’s barbarism has always existed in all human societies. This means that the state has always existed from antiquity and it will exist in perpetuity.
Second, the theory is significantly silent on who it was that proposed the social contract. A contract is usually between identifiable parties; so who represented the proposed state? Who were those recruited to run the state? Third, there is a neutralist assumption about the state in the social contract, which pre-supposes that because the state arose from the collective will of society, it is a benevolent institution serving the interests of the whole of society, from the repression of sections of society which often degenerates into open fascism. Thus, this neutral arbiter (the state) is a necessary actor that resolves group conflict.
The essence of the state can best be understood when a conceptual interpretation is given to it. Laski (1989:73) offers a meaning for the state as:
…a territorial society divided into the government and the subject. The government being the body of person within the state who apply the legal imperatives upon which the state rests and differently from any person within the territorial society, it is entitled to use coercion to see these imperatives are obeyed… Weber (1947) on his parts says the state is;
…that regime or system of regulations and laws which form the basis for supreme authority, which orders for all and receives, orders from none…
From the above definitions, we see the state a neutral arbiter whose roles is to mediate between men, imbued with power, authority and the coercive force to order for all. It stands above all men in society to ensure the existence of law and order without fear or favour. Indeed it stands out “ideally” as the mediator between men for order to reign in society.
Scholarship on the state are in their; legion but most importantly, they exist within two definite schools of thought widely known as the liberalists and Marxist schools. These schools stand in constant opposition to each other over the origin, nature, and role of the state, mostly under the capitalist economics mode of production.
Fundamentally, this study seeks to take an historical and dialectical study of the role of the state among the dependent third world societies, using the Nigerian experience as a reference study.
The methodology adopted here is content analyses of the literature already established by field researchers in both directly and indirectly related subjects. Here a reasonable literature source provided needed information that created strong base for the views canvassed here. Based on a critical analyses of the issues identified, this study is adopting the Marxist (which some may call the radical) views as theoretical underpinnings for the final analyses to be carried out here.
As much as social science exists with inherent divergence of views hence the existence of a legion of theories, and concepts, this study is taking the Marxist historical and dialectical perspective.
The Bourgeois State and Peripheral Underdevelopment
The bourgeois state is used within this study as a concept that represents the capitalist exploiter state. It is called the bourgeois state here based on a Marxist scholarship already established in this study. The focus of this section is on how this exploiter state facilitates the underdevelopment of the peripheral societies. Here we shall attempt an appreciation of the peripheries and their underdevelopment. The term periphery is one of the many terms employed in social science to identify the societies whose socio-economic and political life are below the standards obtainable in the advanced societies.
Igwe, O. (2005:111) conceives of peripheral societies as the dependent societies:
…with a systematically subordinated status in relations with other states or actors, usually starting economically but with implications in other spheres of activity…
Peripheral societies are called different names by a variety of scholars. These include; the third world, dependent, satellite, less developed, under-developed or developing societies, as well as traditional or backward societies. Whatever the term or concept, the implication here is that some societies do exist with their socio-cultural, economic, technological, political etc life being contingent upon the trajectory of decisions and events occurring in the metropolitan societies.
Peripherialism is an outcome of the diametrical and unequal relations that exist between the developed metropolitan societies and the third world. Essentially, peripheral underdevelopment is a complex process that occurs through the processes of socio-economic and other forms of relations that occur between the developed and the third world societies. Peripheral underdevelopment is characterized by the slow growth and subordination of the economies of weak societies to the control of the stronger ones, unequal trade relations and international division of labour, low income and loss of real autonomy through politically motivated intrigues.
Ekekwe (1991:15) identifies some features of underdevelopment which are easily identified and recognized in peripheral societies such as Nigeria. These include: monopoly capitalism that favours the metropolitan societies, predominance of MNCs in the economy, poor relationship between resources and needs leading to mismanagement and misappropriation of scarce resources. Others include capital flight from the periphery to the metropolis, poverty of ideology, marginalization of the peasantry leading to high rate of poverty, mono-cultural and enclave economy, over depending on foreign technology, goods and other factors that contradict the generally accepted indicators of development.
Using Nigeria as a reference case in this study, it can be argued that the above features of underdevelopment do exist across the frontiers of the society. From the socio-economic to the political and the infrastructural aspects of the people’s life, evidence of neglect, decay and lack that lead to the pauperization of the people exist.
Across the continents of Africa and Asia, similar studies have been carried out by scholars such as Manual (1967) Cerroux (1968) Cardoso (1972) Myer (1975) Baran and Sweezy (1966), Aminm (1974), Frank (1975), Santes (1970), Ake (1985), Ihonubere (1991), Eze (2003) and Alapiki (2005). These studies reveal the different forms of peripheral underdevelopment occasioned by the preponderance of the states of the third world societies over the peoples affairs. These states which we refer to as the bourgeois state in this study, constitutes a force of underdevelopment worthy of analyses if peripheral problems are to be addressed.
We therefore contend that the peripheral state constitutes a serious analytical subject. By their nature, the peripheral states are colonial creations designed by the imperialists for capitalist interest, hence they are more of alien bourgeois states than they are of the people of these peripheries such as “Nigeria”. Nabudere (1977:84) argues that;
…the neo-colonial state is a contradiction in itself. It had origins in the colonial state itself, which was created by imperialism to oppress the people of the colonies, to facilitate the extraction of surplus value through colonial production. It has emerged not as an autonomous unit, but as an arbitrary entity, carved out by the metropolitan powers in their scramble for whatever remained of the uncolonized world in the 19th century…
The neo-colonial Nigerian state is therefore an alien organ, living, feeding and breeding among the peripheries to exploit them and in that order, occasion poverty, disease, and a rapacious decimation of the people. Atthis juncture one may ask. Howdoesit do this?
Arrighi (1972:52) answers this when he argues that this states are dependent states that ground their people to a level of physiological subsistence. He furthers that;
… by transferring through non-equivalent exports, a large portion of its surplus to the rich countries, the (dependent), capitalist state deprives itself and it’s people the means of accumulation and growth. The narrowness and stagnancy of their market discourages the fixation of capital, which flies from it, ‘so that substantial proportion of labour force is unable to afford employment… (arising from dearth of investments)
The Nigerian state is a major peripheral nation-state in the African continent. She plays major roles in the determination of the overall underdevelopment of the nations of this part of the world and therefore constitutes a subject of political economy analyses. This is traceable to the Berlin act of 26lh February 1885 (Ignacy 1976), which marked the water shed to the imperialist conditioning of the Nigerian state to occupy the indefinite position of a facilitator of expropriation of its people. By this act, British intrigues saw to the 1914 amalgamation of the indigenous peoples and nations of Nigeria for administrative convenience, thus effectively colonizing them. Colonialism being a system of rule under which an external power assumes the right of the colonized people to impose its will upon them also facilitated a dominance that saw to the birth of a colonial state. (Ekwekwe E. 1980).
It is this neo-colonial Nigerian state that serves capitalist interest through a systematic control and subordination of the people’s socio-cultural, psychological, environmental, territorial, politico military and most importantly their economic life. Thus, a status of dependence is established under which wealth, resources and manpower is exploited and expropriated to Europe in capital’s interest.
This exploiter Nigerian state has grown in strength to provide institutional and coercive mechanisms that facilitate the maximization of imperialist exploitation of the Nigerian people.
It therefore is obvious that the peripheral Nigerian state of both the colonial and post colonial era was and remains a pro capitalist state that protects the interests of capital and by so doing, deepens the dependency and underdevelopment of the people.
Ake (1981:104) identifies some indicators the capitalist state has created within the Nigerian society that facilitate underdevelopment, these include: « Disarticulated infrastructural economic base.
• Incoherent market systems and monopolistic tendencies skewed to the favour of capital.
• Financial and Technological dependence.
- Primitive capitalist accumulation.
• Capital flight and trade imbalance.
• Unfavorable international political considerations and division of labour
As much as these indicators are subjects of debate, the indicators constitute the nature of the Nigerian economy seen vastly in the endless agitations against the MNCs at the Niger Delta area of Nigeria where resources of the people are rapaciously expropriated, leaving the poor, a situation that creates restiveness among the people leading to various forms of demand on the state. Thus the pauperized having lost faith in this capitalist state take up arms as militants, religious zealous, anarchists, ethno-centric nationalists and secessionists. Evidence of all these abound across Nigeria, with the Niger Delta area constituting the climax of the crises.
Okowa (2003:66) argues that the struggle by various segments of Nigeria for self-determination outside the crude-capitalist (bourgeois) Nigerian state’s control reveals that Nigeria’s dependency is deepened by the Nigerian state. His findings led him to conclude that;
.. .Nigeria is a nation state of many complexities.
It is complex in its political structure, complex in
its social setting and complex in its economy.
The Nigerian nation state is therefore one
organized on the basis of fraud or “419”.., Okowa’s contentions run deeper than may be adduced here. It is an expression of the decay of the state in its sustenance of the dependency, status of a people whose interest it was in the first place instituted to protect and develop, going by the idealist contentions of the liberal scholars, whose patronage of the bourgeois class leaves them no alternative directions of though in peripheral officers.
With the triumph of capitalism over other forms of economic production process across societies, climaxing under globalization; within which the system of primitive accumulation continues unperturbed among dependent societies under the protection of structures like the Nigerian state, the pauperized people’s development crisis becomes deepened by this circumstance which ossifies their helplessness. Wallerstein (1989:92) had earlier pointed out that the system of capitalist primitive accumulation of the peripheries such as Nigeria is sustained by the logic of a global division of labour which places the peripheries at a disadvantage. He furthered that basic characteristics of the plundered peripheral economics such as Nigeria include; unequal trade, international credit and usury as well as loans and credit facilities. They by extension lead to debt burden and other socio-economic variables that condition under-development among the third world societies.
Through the complicity between the Nigerian state and the owners of capital, a coercive process to dispossess and extract surplus in the economy is sustained. This being an ongoing worldwide capitalist process subordinates the Nigerian economy to a massive wealth appropriation to the metropolis which in turn creates massive poverty, economic decay, and external dependency cumulatively spiraling into underdevelopment
The Debate between the Schools of Taught on the State
Many scholars and philosophers of liberalism that span from Plato, Aristotle, Machiavellian to (the social contractors) i.e. Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, as well as. Smith, Ricardo and other contemporary thinkers, conceive the state as a neutral arbiter. They argue that the state is a superintendent over the affairs of men in order to maintain stability and order in society, an order that dates back to antiquities, but took to greater relevance from the middle ages.
The preponderance of the state in the affairs of men as a neutral arbiter can be traced to between the AD 14lh and the 18lh century renaissance and reform movement. Through these periods, the state arose steadily under the spurring of the humanists and reformists who sought to reposition it as a superintendent of the political and socio-economic life of men. It grew to the point of great relevance to create structures and institution within which contemporary societies have become confined.
Maciver (1947:60) captures the entire views of the liberal theorists about the state when he holds that:
. .the state is an association when acting through laws as promulgated by a government endowed to this end conceive power to maintain within a community
territorially demarcated the universal conditions of several others..,
We shall adopt the above to represent the liberal views for purposes of space and time. At the opposite school of the debate are the Marxist scholars whose works are based on the views of their pioneer, Karl Marx, who tasked the claims of the liberalists on the state and indeed every liberalist view of society.
The general views of the Marxist school are based on the contention that the increasing division along class structures in society, arises from the nature of social relation in the production of material wealth, among men and thus constitutes the core of the other contentions in society. They further that as men compete over the scarce resources of society, the attendant antagonism causes conflict, which inadvertently draws the state into it. But this state having been drawn in, has taken sides with the oppressor class against the oppressed, because it’s instruments of coercion and the material needs of its operators accrue from the oppressor class.
To Engels (1977:45) the state is in instrument of class domination. He argues that;
because the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but because it arose, at the same time, in the midst of the conflict of these classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed classes. Thus, the state of antiquity was above all the state of the slave owners for the purpose of holding down the slaves, as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage labour, (Peasants and other working people) by capital.
Engels lays bare the fact that the state is fundamentally an instrument of class domination. It is used by the dominant class to suppress and oppress other classes, and in the process, it is a tool for the consolidation and reproduction of the dominant class. The state is used for these ends in class struggle through the protection of private property and exploitation of the weaker class by the stronger class.
Engels’ position is that the state from antiquity arose under the slave mode as an instrument of holding down the slaves, just as the feudal state stood to hold down the serfs and peasants for the nobles and land lords to exploit them. Thus Marxists assert that the capitalist state is an executive committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie. The modern state is adduced here as the protector of the exploiter class, existing under laws that ensure the sustenance of the interests of the capitalists, to the detriment of the exploited class.
Belov (1986:38) summarizes the Marxist views when he contends that the essence of the state cannot be revealed if the material base of its origin is ignored. He argued that an understanding of the nature and emergence of the state through the various socio-economic production processes, as a class motivated order, explains the material determinants of its biased intervention between the social classes, across societies, throughout the various epochs.
The Marxist theory has some important implications: one is that the state is not natural in all human societies, because there have been societies without states. Thus, before the emergence of private property in human history at the stage of the slave mode of production, there was no state. This implies that when private property is abolished in the human society of the future under communism, the state will also ‘wither away1. Moreover, it is the irreconcilability of class antagonism in society that produced the state. The need for the state arose from the requirements of the dynamics of this class conflict. In this class struggle, the state is organized, controlled and used at any given time and place by the dominant class in the society. The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little as it is ‘the reality of the ethical idea’, ‘the image and reality of reason’, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; when men admitted that their society had become entangled in an insoluble contradiction that split them into irreconcilable antagonism which, they being powerless. to control, sought for this control by other means.
Marx (1978:95) argues that in order that these antagonism, these classes with conflicting economic interests might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power seemingly standing above society; that would alleviate conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.
Scholars of the Marxist school contend that the state is a product of class conflict, against Adam Smith’s claim that the state exists for the reconciliation of classes, for the alleviation of class antagonisms and the preservation of society. Marxist scholars argue further that liberalist’s class-mediation theory rests on two false assumptions. One is the false assumption that the state is neutral between social classes against the reality of its being established, manned and controlled by the most powerful class. It can therefore not be indifferent to the direction and outcome of the class struggle which under capitalism is in favour of the bourgeois class. This neutrality of the state, championed by liberalism is required as a camouflage in the false consciousness of masking true class interest, which is an integral part of bourgeois ideology. Hence state neutrality is under capitalism ideologically apologetic, this is the true position of the contemporary state which remains, in contestable and irrevocable.
The other false assumption of the liberal class reconciliation theory is that the underlying class structure of society is an immutable datum like a natural order. Marxist ideology postulates that given the existing classes and their inherent contradictions this “ceteris paribus” assumption is unacceptable. This leads us to ask how the social classes emerged and what the role played by the state in their development and survival is.
The answer is provided by the Marxist “class-domination theory of the state”. For (Ake 1996) as earlier noted, the state is organized in the midst of class conflict by the economically dominant class, which thereby becomes also the politically most powerful class. The major organs of this state; the legislature, executive, judiciary and armed forces are filled and controlled by members of this dominant class. Hence Marxists regard the state as the executive committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie as a whole. (EngeK1977).
As an instrument of class domination, the primary and most important function of the state is the defense of private property, because under capitalism, the system of property relations is synonymous with the class structure of society. The use of the state for class domination is the same as its use for the protection of private property. These property relations enable one class of owners to dominate another class of non-owners, to reap material, political and social advantages, while the other class suffers material and other disadvantages. In some bourgeois constitutions, the right to private property is a fundamental human right-but the right to employment is not, hence a contradiction exists to negate issues such as liberal democracy.
In performing this function for private property, the state exercises sovereignty over all those under it’s jurisdiction or in its territory. This means that the state is the special institution capable and willing to use force to whatever extent required in order to maintain the property relations in society. This creates bourgeois sovereignty for the minority or the dominant class to defend their private property and other social privileges by oppressing the mass-majority of the disposed or ‘have-nots’. The state is therefore an integral part of the mechanism of dispossessing one class by another in socio-economic production processes as well as an instrument of monopolizing private property by the dominant class. The organization of wars, the capture of slaves, the primitive accumulation that generated capital through measures like land enclosure, abolition of traditional land tenure, colonialism, the sale of land, and other sanctions that ensure private property rights under different modes of production, were all critical aspects of the primary function of the state to guarantee private property across the epochs.
The system of domination here remains necessarily one of oppression and exploitation, within which the state is a perfect tool for the same. By using force and other means to guarantee private property, the state necessarily oppresses the class of non-owners in society. The basic form of this oppression by the state is its supervision of the dispossession of one class by another. This is followed by the fact that regardless of their sense of social injustice and being swindled in every stage of social arrangement, the class of non-owners are forced by economic necessity, political-legal sanction and even brute force exercised by the state, to toil for the class of owners of the means of production. Here the state sustains the processes of guaranteeing the monopoly of the means of production for the ruling class, which extends to inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the income from that wealth and in the distribution of social opportunities and facilities. The role of the state as an instrument of exploitation thus follows directly from its use as a tool of class domination.
We can therefore say that the nature, structure and character of the Nigerian peripheral bourgeois state is that of a facilitator of the deepening socio-economic decay held under the hegemony of a prebendalist cabal on behalf of the international capitalists in their campaign for the rapacious underdevelopment of backward societies to satisfy their metropolitan development needs.
Analyses
The dependent capitalist (peripheral) state is established here as an instrument of class exploitation. It is a facilitator of bourgeois expropriation of the wealth of societies such as Nigeria. A distinguishing feature of this state’s role in the underdevelopment of the third world is it’s facilitation of the monopoly of the means of production and wealth accumulation by the metropolitan bourgeoisie through their MNCs.
Another distinguishing feature of this state is the establishment of a public power, which no longer directly coincides with the interests of the population. By organizing itself with laws and the perfection of the use of armed force it has become a public power necessary for the protection of the interests of the dominant class and in that order sustains its hegemony over the masses. This public power exists in every state and consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons and institutions of coercion of all kinds of which gentile society knew nothing, but has grown stronger by day to oppress the masses.
To sustain its class rule and the oppression of the opposite class, the state must be deployed to monopolize the means and use of coercion-the military, police, prisons and courts by this oppressor class. This coercive apparatus is the mechanism through which the state becomes a power that arises from society but places itself above society and alienates itself more and more from it. This totality of force in the state is the heart of the legal sovereignty of the state as a means of preserving its territorial integrity and the protection of private property in order to ensure class rule, and the perpetuation of capitalist wealth appropriation.
Class domination and the oppression of other classes as means of containing class antagonisms would be more difficult and less common without the monopoly of force by the state. If all classes were to have free access to the means of force, class struggle will become armed struggle and the survival of the bourgeois society would be jeopardized, hence the relentless aggression of the state to opposition.
Moreover, the enforcement of juridical relations such as the ownership of slaves, land and other means of production in different types of society will be impossible without state monopoly of coercive sanction. This is most clear in the enforcement of capitalist contracts and the suppression of labour. The breaking and banning of strikes, imposition of wage freeze, and enforcement of legal working day are all class measures which have to be backed up by force against the opposition of labour.
The state has historically played a critical role in the emergence of the bourgeoisie at early stages of capitalist development through the symbiotic link between political power and private property. With usually fragile economic bases, bourgeois politicians in young nations, like their counterparts in the advanced capitalist countries, often cannot resist the temptation to use their political power to acquire private property. This often involves blatant venality and other methods, evidenced in Nigeria’s decades of prebendalism by military rulers, now perfected by “democratic” political contractors.
Several mechanisms are used under these era of dictatorship. These include; the economics for transforming the public sector into conduits for the development of the narrow economic base of the comprador bourgeoisie. Another is the setting up of industrial incentives involving fiscal credit and infrastructural support by the state to the nascent bourgeoisie in the name of industrialization. Inclusive here are Pioneer status, tax holidays, import duty relief, accelerated sectional infrastructural transformation, specialized investment banks for commerce, industry, agriculture and mortgage offering cheap credit made easily accessible to class members and their cronies as well as industrial estates established and leased out very cheaply to these emergent capitalists and contemporary stake holders and founding fathers.
The indigenization of foreign enterprises is another method. The state offers very generous loans to the local capitalists to purchase small and medium scale foreign enterprises or to acquire equity participation in them. Another use of the state involves the corrupt public enterprises managed by petty-capitalists, which have become conduits for siphoning public funds into private pockets and ventures. The widespread mismanagement and “official ineptitude” orchestrated across the society without sanction’s by the state are also the hallmarks of this primitive accumulation process.
Included here are highly inflated and lucrative state contracts for supplies and the construction of roads, ports, buildings, etc. Many of these dubious and outright fraudulent contracts attract corrupt 10% kick-back bribes and foreign bank accounts in collusion between foreign and domestics capitalists, who act as fronts or intermediaries for imperialists exploiters, all leading the people’s resources into concrete jungles.
Here petty-bourgeois contractors make their fortune by collecting mobilization fees’ for these contracts without delivery on such contracts. This fraudulent mechanism of primitive accumulation has also been widely documented in the reports of commission of enquiry in countries such as Nigeria, without any sanctions applied as deterrents. This outright kleptocracy involving the looting of state treasuries by members of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie becomes orchestrated as the state operators become active participant in the official corrupt enrichment processes.
Through these and many other ways, the rise of the petty-bourgeoisie in Third World countries has been facilitated by the use of the state at the expense of the toiling masses. This is the order of the state in the peripheral societies where national resources are pillaged and transferred to safe havens at the metro poles to the detriment of the development needs of the home countries and masses of Nations such as Nigeria.
Recommendations
From the issues discussed above, we recommend among other things that:
First, a re-awakening of the consciousness of the people about their plight under the hegemony of this capitalist Nigerian state through agencies such as schools, NGOs, Faith Based organizations, the media and pressure groups and the need for alternative ideologies beyond this crude capitalist state that stands to protect only the interest of a cabal dedicated to the expropriation of the poor. When a new ideology is embraced by the masses which itself must be engineered by an egalitarian minded intelligentsia against the age old liberal conservatism, a new force can be created as a movement against second slavery (MASS) by the masses to oppose the capitalist order among the peripheries. Hence the repression of radical thoughts in our schools, organizations, labour groups etc must be discouraged if our society wishes to develop.
Secondly, this mass movement must be given a wider people oriented participation among the youths, students, the academic, village and community leaders, and most importantly sloganeered, preached and practiced by the working class and peasants. Here a new consciousness and identity must be created among the masses based on an adoption of relevant aspects of socialism.
Without sounding Utopian, it is clear today that classical capitalist views of the 19th century have been re-designed to accommodate the aspects of socialism such as egalitarianism, workers welfare, free education, and other “ideals” of socialism 19′h and 20th century Europe and America saw as anti-capitalist.
These aspects of socialism should then be integrated into the people’s cultural systems (Egwu O.I. 2008 “Elements of sustainability of Igbo social welfare systems). Through these efforts, the people can engage the processes of total recreation of themselves with a vision of a new Nigerian state of the people.
Thirdly, a non-violent mass participatory Movement sustained in the spirit of the anti-military rule pro-democracy order of the 1990’s carried out by patriotic Nigerians to oust the military from politics, must be embarked upon. Here labour unions, villages and community organizations, NGO’s and professional unions sympathetic to the cause of a just and egalitarian society in Nigeria and indeed the peripheries, must put hand on the plough to cultivate and nurture this new order.
Fourthly, all men (women) dedicated to this order must in the spirit of comradeship remain resolute in the face of the use of legal imperatives and coercion by the state to scuttle the struggle. Change must be focused on, for as Nigerians successfully used a non-violent but committed struggle to oust the military and usher in a democratic process in Nigerian state control, so shall they; with eternal vigilance and sacrifice succeed in changing this crude petty-bourgeois state from its rogue status; away from the hegemony of the control of the metropolitan errand boys among us; to a people oriented welfarist state.
Finally, it is the hope of the researchers that the principle of dialectics being an indisputable aspect of society, must effectively be activated against the present Nigerian capitalist state if change for the better is to be actualized in Nigeria. This we cannot avoid, but must continue to agitate for, until mankind reaches the glorious land of egalitarianism in Nigeria.
References
Akani C. (2004) Globalization and the people of Africa: Fourth
Dimension Publishing Company, Enugu.
Ake C. (1988) APolitical Economy of Africa Longman Press Lagos.
Akpuru A.A. (1997) Fundamentals of Modern Political Economy
and International Economic Relations. WillyRose and
AppleSeed Publishing Coy. Abakaliki.
Ananaba W. (1969) The Trade Union Movement in Nigeria: C. Hurst
and Co. London.
Arrighi E. (1972) Unequal Exchange: A study of imperialism of
Trade, new belt Book I .ondon.
Belov G (1986) What is the State? ABC of Social Science and
Political Knowledge. Public Press Moscow.
CleffH.A. (1960) Trade Unions I !nder Collective Bargaining Black
Welli oxford. Cohen R. (1974) Labour and Politics in Nigeria: Heinmenan:
London.
Dos Satos T. (1970) The structure of Dependency U.S.A. American
Economic Review.
Ekekwe E. (1980) Class and the State in Nigeria Longman
Publishers: Lagos,
Engels F (1977) Origin of the family. Private Property and the State.
Morscow Publisher House Moscow,
Fanon R (1965) The Wretched of the Earth Britain; Melbourn and
Kee.
Frank A.Q (1967) Dependent Accumulation and underdevelopment:
Monthly Review; New York.
Igancy S. (1976) The Discovery of the Third World Cambridge M.I.T
Press.
Igwe 0. (2004) Politics and Globe dictionary Aba; Eagle Publishers.
Lenin V.I. (1970) Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism:
Pecking Foreign Languages Press.
Mandel I. (1991) Marxist Economic Theory London, Redwood Press
Ltd.
Marx K. and Engels R (1978) Wages Labour Capital; Foreign
Languages Press Perking.
Mark K. (1978) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:
London: International Liberal Publishing Company.
Nnoli O. (1981) Ethnic Politics in Nigeria Fourth dimension
Publishers, Enugu.
Okowa W.F. (2003) The Political Economy of Development in
Nigeria; Pam Unique Press: Port Harcourt.
Rodney W. (1972) An Inquiry into the Nature and Sources Wealth of
Nations. London: Methuen Press.
Weber M. (1947) The theory of Social Organizations. New York Free
Press.
Journals And Publications
Ake C. (1996) “The marginalization of Africa” CASS Monograph
No 6 Port Harcourt. Anikpo M. (1996) Hegemonic Legacies: Issues in the Sociology of
Nigeria’s underdevelopment. University of Port Harcourt
Inaugural Lecturers Service No 16: Uniport. Press Port
Harcourt. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003) London,
Longman.