Pan-Africanism and Communism by Hakim Adi

shihab496

In 1956, George Padmore, an Afro-Caribbean activist and intellectual from Trinidad and Tobago, considered one of the most prominent fighters for the decolonization of Africa, published one of his best-known works: Pan-Africanism or Communism? (Dennis Dobson, 1956). This book, very influential in its time, stated that there were two great ideological movements that were guiding the decolonization process in Africa: pan-Africanism and communism. After an analysis of the origins and development of each movement, Padmore declared them incompatible and strongly opted for a Pan-Africanism of a socialist nature, proposing that communism in Africa had led to colonial servility towards the USSR, which prevented true liberation of the peoples and nations of the continent.

Faced with this hypothesis of incompatibility, Hakim Adi, British historian and one of the most relevant researchers on the subject worldwide, proposed a different hypothesis from historical study: Pan-Africanism and communism do not have to be incompatible. To support the argument, the author carried out research for more than a decade in various archives around the world, publishing his results in 2013 in the book Panafricanism and Communism (Africa World Press, 2013), whose translation into Spanish we can enjoy thanks to the recent edition published by the AQB Directory Bellaterra publishing house (2023). This work investigates in depth a specific case where the convergence between both movements is demonstrated, such as the strategies, tactics, orientations, resolutions, institutions and various actions that the Comintern, also known as the Communist International or Third International, promoted to address the situation of the black African and Afro-descendant working population.



There will be those who will be surprised by this hypothesis. Those who know a little about the history of the relations between Pan-Africanism and Communism will be able to object with many arguments, also supported in specific cases, that there is quite a bit of incompatibility between both horizons, let's look at some of them.

The origin of Pan-Africanism is usually located towards the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century in movements, activists and intellectuals of the African diaspora critical of the process of mass enslavement of the African population led by Western powers. Figures such as Olaudah Equiano and Quobna Ottobah Cugoano had been enslaved as children in Africa and, after a life of exploitation on plantations in America, managed to free themselves and become leaders of the abolitionist movement in England at the end of the 18th century. Other black abolitionist leaders of the time, such as Paul Cuffe or Prince Hall, promoted the “return to Africa” proposal, proposing that the best solution to end slavery was to return to the continent of their ancestors.