On my Facebook page this week, I asked my many contacts a question which remained unanswered. Before asking the question, I first shared the socio-economic slogan, which goes ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ Popularised by the German thinker Karl Marx in 1875, the slogan describes an ideal, classless society where goods and services are distributed based on what a person requires, rather than their social status or labour output. I then asked my Facebook contacts why this foundational ideal is ignored and why, by extension, people eschew communism, from whence this ideal is gleaned.
My answer to my own question was that people were generally products of collective brainwashing. Their answer was silence. Agreed. Ugandans and people in general these days are not ideologically inclined. Less charitably, and more specifically, President Museveni has frequently argued that many Ugandans and Ugandan politicians have historically ignored, misunderstood, or rejected core ideological principles. Instead of addressing ideological foundations, he claims citizens have traditionally gravitated towards the ‘pseudo-ideology’ of identity politics-based on tribes and religion-or personal economic gain.
However, on the flipside, elite Ugandans confront ideology with a ‘been there, done that’ mentality. Subsequently, they believe ideology has nothing left to reveal to them. They cannot feed on Marxian theories any more than they could the ruling National Resistance Movement’s diet of corrective measures envisaged in its previously 10, now 15-point programme. Ideology does not put food on the table. It does, owing to ideological cleavage, bring division to the home. But consider this ideology: the difference between us is reflected in what holds our attention. For instance, the following three options would probably catch your attention in this successive order. One, I’ve got your Shs50 million. Two, I’ll show you how to make Shs50 million.
Three, you have my Shs50 million!
The first would probably capture your attention as much as the third, because by then your interests are likely to take a hit or experience a windfall. The two have similar financial impact, thus impacting where your attention goes first and last in life. By this token, if the first is like the last option, then possibly the first is the last. Thereby shaping a vicious cycle of survival. This cycle implies the rolling back of any corresponding virtuous cycle. Then, as things go from good to bad, we must ensure the good stares down the bad. Our civic survival points to a collective effort to be able to gain it all by losing it all.
In this vein, Marxist-Leninist thinking says we must deconstruct to reconstruct the revolutionary. This concept describes how working-class consciousness is formed. It involves stripping away internalized bourgeois ideologies and replacing them with a strict scientific, class-based worldview to mold effective revolutionary cadres. Amílcar Cabral, the anti-colonial leader of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, presents an upshot to this thinking with the concept of class suicide. This is a revolutionary concept, coined by Cabral, arguing that for the privileged petty bourgeoisie to successfully lead a national liberation movement, they must abandon their class interests and embrace the struggles, culture, and material reality of the working masses.
In the process, our attentions are shifted away from material loss or gain towards redefining shared success and discovering intrinsic fulfilment. It involves recognising that material objects provide only temporary satisfaction, pivoting societal focus toward collective growth, meaningful materialism, and authentic civic connections in the shape of patriotism. In fine, what we give our attention; we give our power. It’s time we gave our attention to a better Uganda.