Dictatorship of the proletariat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat 

 

In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a state of affairs in which a proletarian party holds political power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the post-revolutionary state seizes the means of production and compels the implementation of direct elections on behalf and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party. Instituting elected delegates into representative workers' councils that nationalise ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership. (Though the concept of workers councils originated in Russia) During this phase the administrative organizational structure of the party is to be largely determined by the need for it to govern firmly and wield state power to prevent counterrevolution and to facilitate the transition to a lasting communist society.

The socialist revolutionary Joseph Weydemeyer coined the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels adopted to their philosophy and economics. The term "dictatorship" indicates full control of the means of production by the state apparatus. The planning of material production would service the social and economic needs of the population, such as the right to education, health and welfare services, public housing.

The Paris Commune (1871), which controlled the capital city for two months, before being suppressed, was an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In Marxist philosophy, the term "Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" is the antonym to "dictatorship of the proletariat".

There are multiple popular trends for this political thought, all of which believe the state will be retained post-revolution for its enforcement capabilities:

• Marxism–Leninism follows the ideas of Marxism and Leninism as interpreted by Vladimir Lenin's successor Joseph Stalin. It seeks to organise a vanguard party, as advocated by Marx, and to lead a proletarian uprising to assume power of the state, the economy, the media, and social services (academia, health, etc.), on behalf of the proletariat and to construct a single-party "socialist state" representing a dictatorship of the proletariat, governed through the process of democratic centralism, which Lenin described as "diversity in discussion, unity in action". Marxism–Leninism forms the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam, and was the official ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the late 1920s, and later of the other ruling parties making up the Eastern Bloc.
• Libertarian Marxists criticize Marxism–Leninism for perceived differences from orthodox Marxism, opposing the Leninist principle of democratic centralism and the Marxist–Leninist interpretation of vanguardism. Along with Trotskyists, they also oppose the use of a one-party state which they view as inherently undemocratic, although Trotskyists are still Bolsheviks, subscribing to democratic centralism and soviet democracy, seeing their ideology as a more accurate interpretation of Leninism. Rosa Luxemburg, a Marxist theorist, emphasized the role of the vanguard party as representative of the whole class, and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the entire proletariat's rule, characterizing the dictatorship of the proletariat as a concept meant to expand democracy rather than reduce it - as opposed to minority rule in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

In The Road to Serfdom (1944), the economist Friedrich Hayek wrote that the dictatorship of the proletariat likely would destroy personal freedom as completely as does an autocracy. The European Commission of Human Rights found pursuing the dictatorship of the proletariat incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights in Communist Party of Germany v. the Federal Republic of Germany (1957).

Theoretical approaches

Karl Marx

Karl Marx did not write much about the nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but in The Communist Manifesto (1848) he and Engels said that "their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions". In light of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, Marx said that "there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror".

On 1 January 1852, the communist journalist Joseph Weydemeyer published an article entitled "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in the German language newspaper Turn-Zeitung, where he wrote that "it is quite plain that there cannot be here any question of gradual, peaceful transitions" and recalled the examples of Oliver Cromwell (England) and Committee of Public Safety (France) as examples of "dictatorship" and "terrorism" (respectively) required to overthrow the bourgeoisie. In that year, Marx wrote to him, saying:

Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy. My own contribution was (1) to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; [and] (3) that this dictatorship, itself, constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society

— Karl Marx, 1852

Marx expanded upon his ideas about the dictatorship of the proletariat in his short 1875 work, Critique of the Gotha Program, a scathing criticism and attack on the principles laid out in the programme of the German Workers' Party (predecessor to the Social Democratic Party of Germany). The programme presented a moderate, evolutionary way to socialism as opposed to revolutionary, violent approach of the "orthodox" Marxists. As a result, the latter accused the Gotha program as being "revisionist" and ineffective. Nevertheless, he allowed for the possibility of a peaceful transition in some countries with strong democratic institutional structures (such as the case of the Great Britain, the US, and the Netherlands), suggesting however that in other countries in which workers can not "attain their goal by peaceful means" the "lever of our revolution must be force", on the principle that the working people had the right to revolt if they were denied political expression.

Marx stated that in a proletarian-run society the state should control the "proceeds of labour" (i.e. all the food and products produced) and take from them that which was "an economic necessity", namely enough to replace "the means of production used up", an "additional portion for expansion of production" and "insurance funds" to be used in emergencies such as natural disasters. Furthermore, he believed that the state should then take enough to cover administrative costs, funds for the running of public services and funds for those who were physically incapable of working. Once enough to cover all of these things had been taken out of the "proceeds of labour", Marx believed that what was left should then be shared out amongst the workers, with each individual getting goods to the equivalent value of how much labour they had invested. In this meritocratic manner, those workers who put in more labour and worked harder would get more of the proceeds of the collective labour than someone who had not worked as hard.

In the Critique, he noted that "defects are inevitable" and there would be many difficulties in initially running such a workers' state "as it emerges from capitalistic society" because it would be "economically, morally and intellectually... still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges", thereby still containing capitalist elements.

In other works, Marx stated that he considered the Paris Commune (a revolutionary socialism supporting government that ran the city of Paris from March to May 1871) as an example of the proletarian dictatorship. Describing the short-lived regime, he remarked:

The Commune was formed of the municipal councilors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible, and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally workers, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive, and legislative at the same time.

This form of popular government, featuring revocable election of councilors and maximal public participation in governance, resembles contemporary direct democracy.

Friedrich Engels

Force and violence played an important role in Friedrich Engels's vision of the revolution and rule of proletariat. In 1877, arguing with Eugen Dühring, Engels ridiculed his reservations against use of force:

That force, however, plays yet another role in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with the aid of which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilised political forms

— Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring, 1877

In the 1891 postscript to The Civil War in France (1872) pamphlet, Engels said: "Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"; to avoid bourgeois political corruption:

[...] the Commune made use of two infallible expedients. In this first place, it filled all posts—administrative, judicial, and educational—by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And, in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates [and] to representative bodies, which were also added in profusion.

In the same year, he criticised "anti-authoritarian socialists", again referring to the methods of the Paris Commune:

A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois?

— Friedrich Engels, On Authority, 1872

Marx's attention to the Paris Commune placed the commune in the centre of later Marxist forms.

This statement was written in "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League", which is credited to Marx and Engels:

[The workers] must work to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not suddenly suppressed after the victory. On the contrary, it must be sustained as long as possible. Far from opposing the so-called excesses – instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated – the workers’ party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction.

— Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League", 1850

Vladimir Lenin

In the 20th century, Vladimir Lenin developed Leninism—the adaptation of Marxism to the socio-economic and political conditions of Imperial Russia (1721–1917). This body of theory later became the official ideology of some Communist states. 

The State and Revolution (1917) explicitly discusses the practical implementation of "dictatorship of the proletariat" through means of violent revolution. Lenin denies any reformist interpretations of Marxism, such as the one of Karl Kautsky's. Lenin especially focused on Engels' phrase of the state "withering away", denying that it could apply to "bourgeois state" and highlighting that Engels work is mostly "panegyric on violent revolution". Based on these arguments, he denounces reformists as "opportunistic", reactionary and points out the red terror as the only method of introducing dictatorship of the proletariat compliant with Marx and Engels work.

In Imperial Russia, the Paris Commune model form of government was realised in the soviets (councils of workers and soldiers) established in the Russian Revolution of 1905, whose revolutionary task was deposing the capitalist (monarchical) state to establish socialism—the dictatorship of the proletariat—the stage preceding communism.

In Russia, the Bolshevik Party (described by Lenin as the "vanguard of the proletariat") elevated the soviets to power in the October Revolution of 1917. Throughout 1917, Lenin argued that the Russian Provisional Government was unrepresentative of the proletariat's interests because in his estimation they represented the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". He argued that because they continually put off democratic elections, they denied the prominence of the democratically constituted soviets and all the promises made by liberal bourgeois parties prior to the February Revolution remained unfulfilled, the soviets would need to take power for themselves.

Proletarian government

Lenin argued that in an underdeveloped country such as Russia the capitalist class would remain a threat even after a successful socialist revolution. As a result, he advocated the repression of those elements of the capitalist class that took up arms against the new soviet government, writing that as long as classes existed a state would need to exist to exercise the democratic rule of one class (in his view, the working class) over the other (the capitalist class). He said:

[...] Dictatorship does not necessarily mean the abolition of democracy for the class that exercises the dictatorship over other classes; but it does mean the abolition of democracy (or very material restriction, which is also a form of abolition) for the class over which, or against which, the dictatorship is exercised.

— Vladimir Lenin

The use of violence, terror and rule of single communist party was criticised by Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Mikhail Bakunin. In response, Lenin accused Kautsky of being a "renegade" and "liberal" and these socialist movements that did not support the Bolshevik party line were condemned by the Communist International and called social fascism in early 30's.

Soviet democracy granted voting rights to the majority of the populace who elected the local soviets, who elected the regional soviets and so on until electing the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Capitalists were disenfranchised in the Russian soviet model. However, according to Lenin in a developed country it would be possible to dispense with the disenfranchisement of capitalists within the democratic proletarian dictatorship as the proletariat would be guaranteed of an overwhelming majority.

The Bolsheviks in 1917–1924 did not claim to have achieved a communist society. In contrast the preamble to the 1977 Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the "Brezhnev Constitution"), stated that the 1917 Revolution established the dictatorship of the proletariat as "a society of true democracy" and that "the supreme goal of the Soviet state is the building of a classless, communist society in which there will be public, communist self-government".

Banning of opposition parties and factions

During the Russian Civil War (1918–1922), all the major opposition parties either took up arms against the new Soviet government, took part in sabotage, collaboration with the deposed Tsarists, or made assassination attempts against Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders. When opposition parties such as the Cadets and Mensheviks were democratically elected to the Soviets in some areas, they proceeded to use their mandate to welcome in Tsarist and foreign capitalist military forces. In one incident in Baku, the British military, once invited in, proceeded to execute members of the Bolshevik Party (who had peacefully stood down from the Soviet when they failed to win the elections). As a result, the Bolsheviks banned each opposition party when it turned against the Soviet government. In some cases, bans were lifted. This banning of parties did not have the same repressive character as later bans under Stalin would.

Internally, Lenin's critics argued that such political suppression always was his plan. Supporters argued that the reactionary civil war of the foreign-sponsored White movement required it—given Fanya Kaplan's unsuccessful assassination of Lenin on 30 August 1918 and the successful assassination of Moisei Uritsky the same day.

After 1919, the Soviets had ceased to function as organs of democratic rule as the famine induced by forced grain requisitions led to the Soviets emptying out of ordinary people. Half the population of Moscow and a third of Petrograd had by this stage fled to the countryside to find food and political life ground to a halt.

The Bolsheviks became concerned that under these conditions—the absence of mass participation in political life and the banning of opposition parties—counter-revolutionary forces would express themselves within the Bolshevik Party itself (some evidence existed for this in the mass of ex opposition party members who signed up for Bolshevik membership immediately after the end of the Civil War).

Despite the principle of democratic centralism in the Bolshevik Party, internal factions were banned. This was considered an extreme measure and did not fall within Marxist doctrine. The ban remained until the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991. In 1921, vigorous internal debate and freedom of opinion were still present within Russia and the beginnings of censorship and mass political repression had not yet emerged. For example, the Workers Opposition faction continued to operate despite being nominally dissolved. The debates of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union continued to be published until 1923.

Stalinism and "dictatorship"

Elements of the later censorship and attacks on political expression would appear during Lenin's illness and after his death, when members of the future Stalinist clique clamped down on party democracy among the Georgian Bolsheviks and began to censor material. Pravda ceased publishing the opinions of political oppositions after 1924 and at the same time, the ruling clique (Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and Joseph Stalin) admitted large numbers of new members into the party in order to shout down the voices of oppositionists at party meetings, severely curtailing internal debate. Their policies were partly directed by the interests of the new bureaucracy that had accumulated a great deal of social weight in the absence of an active participation in politics by the majority of people. By 1927, many supporters of the Left Opposition began to face political repression and Leon Trotsky was exiled.

Some modern critics of the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat"—including various anti-communists, libertarian Marxists, anarcho-communists and anti-Stalinist communists and socialists—argue that the Stalinist Soviet Union and other Stalinist countries used the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to justify the monopolisation of political power by a new ruling layer of bureaucrats, derived partly from the old Tsarist bureaucracy and partly created by the impoverished condition of Russia.

However, the rising Stalinist clique rested on other grounds for political legitimacy rather than a confusion between the modern and Marxist use of the term "dictatorship". Rather, they took the line that since they were the vanguard of the proletariat, their right to rule could not be legitimately questioned. Hence, opposition parties could not be permitted to exist. From 1936 onward, Stalinist-inspired state constitutions enshrined this concept by giving the various communist parties a "leading role" in society—a provision that was interpreted to either ban other parties altogether or force them to accept the Stalinists guaranteed right to rule as a condition of being allowed to exist.

This justification was adopted by subsequent communist parties that built upon the Stalinist model, such as the ones in China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba (initially the 26th of July Movement).

Post-Stalin

At the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev declared an end to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the establishment of the "all people's government".

Tyranny of the majority

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority 

The tyranny of the majority (or tyranny of the masses) is an inherent weakness to majority rule in which the majority of an electorate pursues exclusively its own interests at the expense of those in the minority. This results in oppression of minority groups comparable to that of a tyrant or despot, argued John Stuart Mill in his 1859 book On Liberty.

The scenarios in which tyranny perception occurs are very specific, involving a sort of distortion of democracy preconditions:

• Centralization excess: when the centralized power of a federation make a decision that should be local, breaking with the commitment to the subsidiarity principle. Typical solutions, in this condition, are concurrent majority and supermajority rules.
• Abandonment of rationality: when, as Tocqueville remembered, a decision "which bases its claim to rule upon numbers, not upon rightness or excellence". The use of public consultation, technical consulting bodies, and other similar mechanisms help to improve rationality of decisions before voting on them. Judicial review (e.g. declaration of nullity of the decision) is the typical way after the vote.

In both cases, in a context of a nation, constitutional limits on the powers of a legislative body, and the introduction of a Bill of Rights have been used to counter the problem. A separation of powers (for example a legislative and executive majority actions subject to review by the judiciary) may also be implemented to prevent the problem from happening internally in a government.

Term

A term used in Classical and Hellenistic Greece for oppressive popular rule was ochlocracy ("mob rule"); tyranny meant rule by one man—whether undesirable or not. 

While the specific phrase "tyranny of the majority" is frequently attributed to various Founding Fathers, only John Adams is known to have used it, arguing against government by a single unicameral elected body. Writing in defense of the Constitution in March 1788, Adams referred to "a single sovereign assembly, each member…only accountable to his constituents; and the majority of members who have been of one party" as a "tyranny of the majority", attempting to highlight the need instead for "a mixed government, consisting of three branches". Constitutional author James Madison presented a similar idea in Federalist 10, citing the destabilizing effect of "the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority" on a government, though the essay as a whole focuses on the Constitution's efforts to mitigate factionalism generally. 

Later users include Edmund Burke, who wrote in a 1790 letter that "The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny." It was further popularised by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty (1859). Friedrich Nietzsche used the phrase in the first sequel to Human, All Too Human (1879). Ayn Rand wrote that individual rights are not subject to a public vote, and that the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities and "the smallest minority on earth is the individual".In Herbert Marcuse's 1965 essay "Repressive Tolerance", he said "tolerance is extended to policies, conditions, and modes of behavior which should not be tolerated because they are impeding, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery" and that "this sort of tolerance strengthens the tyranny of the majority against which authentic liberals protested". In 1994, legal scholar Lani Guinier used the phrase as the title for a collection of law review articles.

Examples

The "no tyranny" and "tyranny" situations can be characterizated in any simple democratic decision-making context, as a deliberative assembly.

Abandonment of rationality

Herbert Spencer, in "The Right to Ignore the State" (1851), pointed the problem with the following example:

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that, struck by some Malthusian panic, a legislature duly representing public opinion were to enact that all children born during the next ten years should be drowned. Does anyone think such an enactment would be warrantable? If not, there is evidently a limit to the power of a majority.

Usual no-tyranny scenario

A collective decision of 13 voters in a deliberative assembly. Result: 8 votes for X (purple) and 5 votes for Y (brown). X option wins, because it has a majority (more than half).

 

Suppose a deliberative assembly of a building condominium with 13 voters, deciding, with majority rule, about "X or Y", 

X: to paint some common rooms (as game room, lobby and each floor's hall) with purple color.

 

Y: to paint with brown color.

 

Suppose that the final result is "8 votes for X and 5 votes for Y", so 8, as a majority, purple wins. As collectively (13 voters) the decision is legitimate. 

It is a centralized decision about all common use rooms, "one color for all rooms", and it is also legitimate. Voters have some arguments against "each room with its color", rationalizing the centralization: some say that common rooms need uniform decisions; some prefer the homogeneous color style, and all other voters have no style preference; an economic analysis demonstrates (and all agree) that a wholesale purchase of one color paint for all rooms is better.

Federated centralization excess

Centralization excess is the most usual case. Suppose that each floor has some kind of local governance, so in some aspects the condominium is a "federation of floors". Suppose that only on the third floor the majority of residents manifested some preference to "each floor with different color" style, and all of the third floor residents likes the red color. The cost difference, to purchase another color for one floor, is not significant when compared with the condominium contributions.

In these conditions some perception of tyranny arrives, and the subsidiarity principle can be used to contest the central decision.

Tyranny emerging

Minority and tyranny characterized: a coherent subset of voters with some collective action; a central decision; the subsidiarity principle can be used by minority group decision.

In the above no-tyranny scenario, suppose no floor federation, but (only) a room with some local governance. Suppose that the gym room is not used by all, but there is a "community" of regulars, there is a grouping of voters by its activity as speed-cyclists (illustrated as spiked hair), that have the gym room key for some activities on Sundays. They are acting collectively to preserve the gym room for a local cyclists group.

In this situation the following facts hold:

• There is a subset of voters and some collective action, uniting them, making them a cohesive group.
• There is some centralization (a general assembly) and some central decision (over local decision): there is no choice of "each room decision" or "each regulars' community decision". So it is a central decision.
• The subsidiarity principle can be applied: there is an "embryonic local governance" connecting the cyclists, and the other people (voters) of the condominium recognise the group, transferring some (little) responsibility to them (the keys of the gym room and right to advocate their cycling activities to other residents).

There is no "enforced minoritarianism"; it seems a legitimate characterization of a relevant (and not dominant) minority. This is a tyranny of the majority situation because:

• there is a little "global gain" in a global decision (where X wins), and a good "local gain" in local decision (local Y preference);
• there is relevant voting for a local decision: 6 voters (46%) are gym room regulars, 5 that voted Y. The majority of them (83%) voted Y.

In this situation, even with no formal federation structure, the minority and a potential local governance emerged: the tyranny perception arrives with it.

Concurrent majority

Secession of the Confederate States of America from the United States was anchored by a version of subsidiarity, found within the doctrines of John C. Calhoun. Antebellum South Carolina utilized Calhoun's doctrines in the Old South as public policy, adopted from his theory of concurrent majority. This "localism" strategy was presented as a mechanism to circumvent Calhoun's perceived tyranny of the majority in the United States. Each state presumptively held the Sovereign power to block federal laws that infringed upon states' rights, autonomously. Calhoun's policies directly influenced Southern public policy regarding slavery, and undermined the Supremacy Clause power granted to the federal government. The subsequent creation of the Confederate States of America catalyzed the American Civil War.

19th century concurrent majority theories held logical counterbalances to standard tyranny of the majority harms originating from Antiquity and onward. Essentially, illegitimate or temporary coalitions that held majority volume could disproportionately outweigh and hurt any significant minority, by nature and sheer volume. Calhoun's contemporary doctrine was presented as one of limitation within American democracy to prevent traditional tyranny, whether actual or imagined.

Viewpoints

Critique by Robert A. Dahl

Robert A. Dahl argues that the tyranny of the majority is a spurious dilemma (p. 171):

Critic: Are you trying to say that majority tyranny is simply an illusion? If so, that is going to be small comfort to a minority whose fundamental rights are trampled on by an abusive majority. I think you need to consider seriously two possibilities; first, that a majority will infringe on the rights of a minority, and second, that a majority may oppose democracy itself.
Advocate: Let's take up the first. The issue is sometimes presented as a paradox. If a majority is not entitled to do so, then it is thereby deprived of its rights; but if a majority is entitled to do so, then it can deprive the minority of its rights. The paradox is supposed to show that no solution can be both democratic and just. But the dilemma seems to be spurious.
Of course a majority might have the power or strength to deprive a minority of its political rights. [...] The question is whether a majority may rightly use its primary political rights to deprive a minority of its primary political rights.
The answer is clearly no. To put it another way, logically it can't be true that the members of an association ought to govern themselves by the democratic process, and at the same time a majority of the association may properly strip a minority of its primary political rights. For, by doing so the majority would deny the minority the rights necessary to the democratic process. In effect therefore the majority would affirm that the association ought not to govern itself by the democratic process. They can't have it both ways.
Critic: Your argument may be perfectly logical. But majorities aren't always perfectly logical. They may believe in democracy to some extent and yet violate its principles. Even worse, they may not believe in democracy and yet they may cynically use the democratic process to destroy democracy. [...] Without some limits, both moral and constitutional, the democratic process becomes self-contradictory, doesn't it?
Advocate: That's exactly what I've been trying to show. Of course democracy has limits. But my point is that these are built into the very nature of the process itself. If you exceed those limits, then you necessarily violate the democratic process.

Trampling the rights of minorities

Regarding recent American politics (specifically initiatives), Donovan et al. argue that:

One of the original concerns about direct democracy is the potential it has to allow a majority of voters to trample the rights of minorities. Many still worry that the process can be used to harm gays and lesbians as well as ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities. ... Recent scholarly research shows that the initiative process is sometimes prone to produce laws that disadvantage relatively powerless minorities ... State and local ballot initiatives have been used to undo policies – such as school desegregation, protections against job and housing discrimination, and affirmative action – that minorities have secured from legislatures.

Public choice theory

The notion that, in a democracy, the greatest concern is that the majority will tyrannise and exploit diverse smaller interests, has been criticised by Mancur Olson in The Logic of Collective Action, who argues instead that narrow and well organised minorities are more likely to assert their interests over those of the majority. Olson argues that when the benefits of political action (e.g., lobbying) are spread over fewer agents, there is a stronger individual incentive to contribute to that political activity. Narrow groups, especially those who can reward active participation to their group goals, might therefore be able to dominate or distort political process, a process studied in public choice theory. 

Class studies

Tyranny of the majority has also been prevalent in some class studies. Rahim Baizidi uses the concept of "democratic suppression" to analyze the tyranny of the majority in economic classes. According to this, the majority of the upper and middle classes, together with a small portion of the lower class, form the majority coalition of conservative forces in the society.

Vote trading

Anti-federalists of public choice theory point out that vote trading can protect minority interests from majorities in representative democratic bodies such as legislatures. They continue that direct democracy, such as statewide propositions on ballots, does not offer such protections.

Imagine No Malaria

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_No_Malaria 

 

Imagine No Malaria (INM) is a comprehensive anti-malaria campaign run by The United Methodist Church.

The ministry mission statement is: Imagine No Malaria is an extraordinary effort of the people of The United Methodist Church, putting faith into action to end preventable deaths by malaria in Africa, especially the death of a child or a mother. As a life-saving ministry, Imagine No Malaria aims to raise $75 million to empower the people of Africa to overcome malaria’s burden. Imagine No Malaria works in partnership with the United Nations Foundation and the Global Fund to reduce the number of deaths caused by Malaria in African countries.

Leadership

Bishop Thomas Bickerton is the chairperson of the executive committee for Imagine No Malaria. He stated, "Today there's a 3-year-old who's going to be bitten by a tiny bug, and, in 48 hours, she is going to die. She's the reason I do what I do. To make the world a healthy place for every child has everything to do with what Mr. Wesley intended us to do."

Strategy

Imagine No Malaria is a fundraising and advocacy campaign to support a comprehensive, integrated anti-malaria strategy in Africa. This program is focused on delivering four key components: prevention, treatment, education, and communications.

Prevention

Building on the success of Nothing But Nets, Imagine No Malaria is often thought of as Nets Plus. Insecticide-treated mosquito nets are still the best way to prevent malaria, however, other measures like draining standing water where the insects breed, trimming foliage and proper sanitation, are also critical to preventing malaria.

Treatment

The United Methodist Church has been working in Africa for more than 160 years. The church has the infrastructure of more than 300 clinics and hospitals in Africa to treat many patients. The Imagine No Malaria campaign has the goal of getting medicines and diagnostic tests to those hospitals and clinics.

Education

The program provides training for local community health workers to educate people on the symptoms and defenses against malaria, as well as educating them about how to use their bed nets.

Communications

The program provides education on malaria and information through its vast radio network in Africa. The campaign also delivers solar powered and hand-crank radios to African women.

Raising Money

Imagine No Malaria is using current technology in its strive to achieve its $75 million fundraising goal. Donations can be made through text messages as well as in traditional ways. The operational costs for Imagine No Malaria are covered by a grant, awarded by the United Nations Foundation. This allows the effort to ensure that 100% of funds raised are used to support for malaria programs in Africa.

In 2014, The INM programme held a conference, in which they revealed that they were able to raise more than $40 million.

Advocacy

Imagine No Malaria also includes an advocacy effort that calls for support by urging elected officials in Congress to protect global health funds (which includes international malaria aid) in the US budget. Recent efforts include events in Washington DC, hosted by the General Board of Church and Society and a mobile SMS (text) campaign asking individuals to text the word SWAT to 27722 and sign a "petition to save lives." The petition is part of a toolkit that will be used to persuade elected officials to reject proposed cuts to malaria funding as proposed in the initial FY13 budget.

Partners

The United Methodist Church is working on this project in conjunction with partners of a religious and secular nature. Partners include the World Health Organization, the United Nations Foundation, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Red Crescent Society.

Results

The Imagine No Malaria campaign has seen success in many different areas in Africa. In April 2010, in a coordinated effort with many different religious faiths and institutions, 25,000 bed nets were distributed in Lubumbashi, DRC. In another effort, the program distributed 5,000 bed nets in Nyadire, Zimbabwe.

Ethnic democracy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_democracy 

 

Ethnic democracy is a political system that combines a structured ethnic dominance with democratic, political and civil rights for all. Both the dominant ethnic group and the minority ethnic groups have citizenship and are able to fully participate in the political process. Ethnic democracy differs from ethnocracy in that elements of it are more purely democratic. It provides the non-core groups with more political participation, influence and improvement of status than ethnocracy supposedly does. Nor is an ethnic democracy a Herrenvolk democracy which is by definition a democracy officially limited to the core ethnic nation only.

The term "ethnic democracy" was introduced by Professor Juan José Linz of Yale University in 1975, and subsequently by University of Haifa sociologist Professor Sammy Smooha in a book published in 1989, as a universalised model of the Israel case. The model was used widely in subsequent decades; in 1993 for a comparison of several countries, in 1997 for a comparison of Israel and Northern Ireland, applied to Estonia and Latvia in 1996 and Slovakia in 2000.

Model definition

Smooha defines eight features that are the core elements of his model of an ethnic democracy:

1. Ethnic nationalism installs a single core ethnic nation in the state.
2. The state separates membership in the single core ethnic nation from citizenship.
3. The state is owned and ruled by the core ethnic nation.
4. The state mobilises the core ethnic nation.
5. Non-core groups are accorded incomplete individual and collective rights.
6. The state allows non-core groups to conduct parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggle for change.
7. The state perceives non-core groups as a threat.
8. The state imposes some control on non-core groups.

Smooha also defines ten conditions that can lead to the establishment of an ethnic democracy:

1. The core ethnic nation constitutes a solid numerical majority.
2. The non-core population constitutes a significant minority.
3. The core ethnic nation has a commitment to democracy.
4. The core ethnic nation is an indigenous group.
5. The non-core groups are immigrant.
6. The non-core group is divided into more than one ethnic group.
7. The core ethnic nation has a sizeable, supportive Diaspora.
8. The homelands of the non-core groups are involved.
9. There is international involvement.
10. Transition from a non-democratic ethnic state has taken place.

Applicability of the model

The model has been applied by researchers to several countries, with various levels of fit.

Israel

The State of Israel is seen as a country that utilises the ethnic democracy model in its relations with the country's Arab minority, as Israel has combined viable democratic institutions with institutionalized ethnic dominance.

Latvia and Estonia

There is a spectrum of opinion among authors as to the classification of Latvia and Estonia, spanning from Liberal or Civic Democracy through Ethnic democracy to Ethnocracy. Will Kymlicka regards Estonia as a civic democracy, stressing the peculiar status of Russian-speakers, stemming from being at once partly transients, partly immigrants and partly natives. British researcher Neil Melvin concludes that Estonia is moving towards a genuinely pluralist democratic society through its liberalization of citizenship and actively drawing of leaders of the Russian settler communities into the political process. James Hughes, in the United Nations Development Programme's Development and Transition, contends Latvia and Estonia are cases of ‘ethnic democracy’ where the state has been captured by the titular ethnic group and then used to promote ‘nationalising’ policies and alleged discrimination against Russophone minorities. (Development and Transition has also published papers disputing Hughes' contentions.) Israeli researchers Oren Yiftachel and As’ad Ghanem consider Estonia as an ethnocracy. Israeli sociologist Sammy Smooha, of the University of Haifa, disagrees with Yiftachel, contending that the ethnocratic model developed by Yiftachel does not fit the case of Latvia and Estonia; it is not a settler society as its core ethnic group is indigenous, nor did it expand territorially or have a diaspora intervening in its internal affairs as in the case of Israel for which Yiftachel originally developed his model.

However the notion that Estonia or Latvia are ethnic democracies has been rejected by some commentators. On the one hand, the citizenship laws of these countries are not based on ethnic criteria, treating citizens of Russian extract, including a number of people who automatically became citizens because their families have resided there since before 1940, with the same rights as the ethnic majorities. Moreover, non-citizens enjoy social rights on a par with citizens. On the other hand, given the proportion of non-citizen minorities without certain political rights (7.5% in the case of Estonia), Estonia and Latvia may not yet even qualify as ethnic democracies: in Smooha's definition of ethnic democracy, minority groups should enjoy full rights as citizens of the country.

Canada

Smooha describes Canada from independence in 1867 to the Quiet Revolution of 1976, which raised the status of French Canadians to the level of English Canadians, to have been an ethnic democracy.

Northern Ireland

Smooha describes the Government of Northern Ireland (1921–1972) from the Partition of Ireland in 1921 to the Sunningdale Agreement in 1972 as an ethnic democracy, favoring Protestants of mainly Ulster Scots descent to the native Irish Catholics.

Malaysia

Article 153 of the Constitution of Malaysia, as well as the Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy) ideology followed by post-independence Malaysian governments since the 1970s, gives more rights to the Bumiputra in general and to Malaysian Malays than to Malaysian minorities, such as Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians.

Slovakia

Slovak nationalism is grounded in ethnicity and language. "State-building and nation-building in Slovakia are designed to install ethnic Slovaks as the sole nation and to prevent any sign of binationalism. This objective is made clear in the preamble of the Slovak constitution which begins with the following words: “We, the Slovak nation, bearing in mind the political and cultural heritage of our predecessors, the experience gained through centuries of struggle for our national existence and statehood…”

Colonisation of Africa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonisation_of_Africa 

 

The history of external colonisation of Africa can be dated from ancient, medieval, or modern history, depending on how the term colonisation is defined. In popular parlance, discussions of colonialism in Africa usually focus on the European conquests of the New Imperialism and the Scramble for Africa (1884-1914) era, followed by gradual decolonisation. The principal powers involved in the modern colonisation of Africa are Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, and Italy. In nearly all African countries today, the language used in government and media is the one imposed by a recent colonial power.

History of Africa

• In ancient times, people from Southern Europe and Western Asia colonized North Africa, while people from Southeast Asia colonized Madagascar.
• In the Middle Ages, North and East Africa was further colonized by people from Western Asia.
• In the Modern Era, Western Europeans colonized all parts of the continent, culminating in the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century. A wave of decolonisation followed after World War II.

Ancient and Medieval colonization

A map of Africa in 1910

North Africa experienced colonization from Europe and Western Asia in the early historical period, particularly Greeks and Phoenicians.

Under Egypt's Pharaoh Amasis (570–526 BC) a Greek mercantile colony was established at Naucratis, some 50 miles from the later Alexandria. Greeks also colonized Cyrenaica around the same time. There was also an attempt in 513 BC to establish a Greek colony between Cyrene and Carthage, which resulted in the combined local and Carthaginian expulsion two years later of the Greek colonists.

Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) founded Alexandria during his conquest of Egypt. This became one of the major cities of Hellenistic and Roman times, a trading and cultural centre as well as a military headquarters and communications hub.

Phoenicians established a number of colonies along the coast of North Africa. Some of these were founded relatively early. Utica, for example, was founded c. 1100 BC. Carthage, which means New City, has a traditional foundation date of 814 BC. It was established in what is now Tunisia and became a major power in the Mediterranean by the 4th century BC. The Carthaginians themselves sent out expeditions to explore and establish colonies along Africa's Atlantic coast. A surviving account of such is that of Hanno, which Harden who quotes it places at c. 425 BC.

Carthage encountered and struggled with the Romans. After the third and final war between them, the Third Punic War (150–146 BC), Rome completely destroyed Carthage. Scullard mentions plans by such as Gaius Gracchus in the late 2nd century BC, Julius Caesar and Augustus in the mid- and late 1st century BC to establish a new Roman colony near the same site. This was established and under Augustus served as the capital city of African continent Roman province of Africa.

Gothic Vandals briefly established a kingdom there in the 5th century, which shortly thereafter fell to the Romans again, this time the Byzantines. The whole of Roman/Byzantine North Africa eventually fell to the Arabs in the 7th century.

Arabs introduced the Arabic language and Islam in the early Medieval period, while the Malay people introduced varieties of their language to Madagascar even earlier.

Map of West Africa, ca. 1736, "explaining what belongs to England, Holland, Denmark, etc."

However the oldest European founded city on the African continent is Cape Town, which was founded by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, as a halfway stop for passing European ships sailing to the east.

Early modern period

Early European expeditions by the Portuguese concentrated on colonising previously uninhabited islands such as the Cape Verde Islands and São Tomé Island, or establishing coastal forts as a base for trade.

Areas controlled by European colonial powers on the African continent in 1913, shown along with current national boundaries

  Belgian

  British

  French

  German

  Italian

  Portuguese

  Spanish

  Independent

 

Areas of Africa controlled by European colonial powers in 1939

  Belgian

  British

  French

  Italian

  Portuguese

  Spanish

  Independent

Scramble for Africa

Established empires, notably Britain, France and Portugal had already claimed coastal areas but had not penetrated deeply in land. Europeans controlled only one 10th of Africa, primarily along the Mediterranean and in the deep South. An important early leader in penetrating inland was King Leopold of Belgium, who operated the Congo as his own private domain until 1908. The 1885 Berlin Conference, initiated by Otto von Bismarck to establish international guidelines and avoiding violent disputes formalised the "New Imperialism". This allowed the imperialists to move in land, with relatively few disputes. The only serious threat of inter-Imperial violence came in the Fashoda Incident of 1898 between Britain and France; It was settled peacefully. Between 1870 and 1914 Europe added almost 9 million square miles (23,000,000 km²)—one-fifth of the land area of the globe—to its overseas colonial possessions. 

Vincent Khapoya notes the great self-esteem some European states felt at possessing territory larger than themselves. He adds the significant contribution made by Africans to struggle among the Great Powers. He states that one million people of African descent fought for the Allies in World War I and two million in World War II.

Khapoya considers the colonisers' administrative styles. "The French, the Portuguese, the Germans and the Belgians exercised a highly centralised type of administration called 'direct rule.'" The British sought to rule by identifying local power holders and encouraging or forcing these to administer for the British Empire. This was indirect rule.

France ruled from Paris, appointing chiefs individually without considering traditional criteria, but rather loyalty to France. France established two large colonial federations in Africa, French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. France appointed officials, passed laws and had to approve any measures passed by colonial assemblies. 

Local groups in German East Africa resisted German enforced labour and taxation. The Germans were almost driven out of the area in 1888. A decade later the colony seemed conquered, though, "It had been a long drawn-out struggle and inland administration centres were in reality little more than a series of small military fortresses." In 1905, the Germans were astonished by a widely supported uprising. This resistance was at first successful. However, within a year, the insurgency was suppressed by reinforcing troops armed with machine guns. German attempts to seize control in Southwest Africa also produced ardent resistance, which was very forcefully put down.

King Leopold II of Belgium called his vast private colony the Congo Free State. His harsh treatment of the Africans sparked a strong international protest and the European powers forced him to relinquish control to the Belgian Parliament to take control.

Khapoya notes the significant attention colonial powers paid to the economics of colonisation. This included: acquisition of land, often enforced labour, introduction of cash crops, sometimes even to the neglect of food crops, changing inter-African trading patterns of pre-colonial times, introduction of labourers from India, etc. and the continuation of Africa as a source of raw materials for European industry. Colonial powers later focused on abolishing slavery, developing infrastructure, and improving health and education.

Decolonisation

Vincent Khapoya notes the significant resistance of powers faced to their domination in Africa. Technical superiority enabled conquest and control. Pro-independence Africans recognised the value of European education in dealing with Europeans in Africa. Some Africans established their own churches. Africans also noticed the unequal evidence of gratitude they received for their efforts to support Imperialist countries during the world wars.

Vincent Khapoya also notes that while European imposed borders did not correspond to traditional territories, such new territories provided entities to focus efforts by movements for increased political voice up to independence. Among local groups so concerned were professionals such as lawyers and doctors, the petite bourgeoisie (clerks, teachers, small merchants), urban workers, cash crop farmers, peasant farmers, etc. Trade unions and other initially non-political associations evolved into political movements.

Khapoya describes the differences in gaining independence by British and French colonies. Britain sought to follow a process of gradual transfer of power. The French policy of assimilation faced some resentment, especially in North Africa. Shillington describes the granting of independence in March 1956 to Morocco and Tunisia to allow concentration on Algeria where there was a long (1954–62) and bloody armed struggle to achieve independence. Khapoya writes that when President de Gaulle in 1958 held a referendum in its African colonies on the issue, only Guinea voted for outright independence. Nevertheless, in 1959 France amended the constitution to allow other colonies this option.

As Shillington describes farmers in British East Africa were upset by attempts to take their land and to impose agricultural methods against their wishes and experience. In Tanganyika, Julius Nyerere exerted influence not only among Africans, united by the common Swahili language, but also on some white leaders whose disproportionate voice under a racially weighted constitution was significant. He became the leader of an independent Tanganyika in 1961. In Kenya, whites had evicted African tenant farmers in the 1930s; since the '40s there has been conflict, which intensified in 1952. By 1955, Britain had suppressed the revolt, and by 1960 Britain accepted the principle of African majority rule. Kenya became independent three years later.

Shillington vividly portrays Belgium's initial opposition to independence, the demands by some urban Africans, the 1957 & 1958 local elections meant to calm this dissatisfaction, the general unrest that swept the colony, the rapid granting of independence and the civil strife that ensued.

The main period of decolonisation in Africa began after World War II. Growing independence movements, indigenous political parties and trade unions coupled with pressure from within the imperialist powers and from the United States and the Soviet Union ensured the decolonisation of the majority of the continent by 1980. While some areas, in particular, South Africa, & Namibia retain a large population of European descent, only the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla and the islands of Réunion and Mayotte, the Canary Islands, and Madeira remain under European control, the latter two of which were never part of any African polity and have an overwhelmingly European population.

Theoretical frameworks

The theory of colonialism addresses the problems and consequences of the colonisation of a country, and there has been much research conducted exploring these concepts.

Mahmood Mamdani

Mahmood Mamdani

Mahmood Mamdani wrote his book Citizen and Subject in 1996. The main point of his argument is that the colonial state in Africa took the form of a bifurcated state, “two forms of power under a single hegemonic authority”. The colonial state in Africa was divided into two. One state for the colonial European population and one state for the indigenous population. The colonial power was mainly in urban towns and cities and were served by elected governments. The indigenous power was found in rural villages and were ruled by tribal authority, which seemed to be more in keeping with their history and tradition. Mamdani mentions that in urban areas, native institutions were not recognised. The natives, who were portrayed as uncivilised by the Europeans, were excluded from the rights of citizenship. The division of the colonial state created a racial segregation between the European ‘citizen’ and African ‘subject’, and a division between institutions of government. 

The division Mamdani spoke about in Citizen and Subject is still visible in African cities. The segregation he talks about was based on race, but now is also based on wealth and class. Urban areas of African cities are divided between rich areas and poor areas that do not have services. This is best illustrated by Johnny Miller, who created a project called Unequal Scenes to showcase the inequalities found in some urban African spaces. One city that Miller looks at is Nairobi in Kenya. The photographs he provides highlights the housing inequality. The suburb of Loresho is home to the rich that live in gated communities, and to the poor that live in slum communities. They are only separated by a concrete barrier. This barrier represents a class segregation and the uneven distribution of wealth.

Achille Mbembe

Achille Mbembe

Achille Mbembe is a Cameroonian historian, political theorist, and philosopher who has written and theorized extensively on life in the colony and postcolony. His 2000 book, On the Postcolony, critically examines postcolonial life in Africa and is a prolific work within the field of postcolonialism. It is through this examination of the postcolony that Mbembe reveals the modes through which power was exerted in colonial Africa. He reminds the reader that colonial powers demanded use of African bodies in particularly violent ways for the purpose of labor as well as the shaping of subservient colonised identities. 

Through a comparison of power in the colony and postcolony, Mbembe demonstrates that violence in the colony was exerted on African bodies largely for the purpose of labor and submission. European colonial powers sought natural resources in African colonies and needed the requisite labor force to extract them and simultaneously build the colonial city around these industries. Because Europeans viewed native bodies as degenerate and in need of taming, violence was necessary to create a submissive laborer.

Colonisers viewed this violence as necessary and good because it shaped the African into a productive worker. They had the simultaneous goals of utilizing the raw labor and shaping the identity and character of the African. By beating into the African a docile nature, colonisers ultimately shaped and enforced the way Africans could move through colonial spaces. The African’s day-to-day life then became a show of submission done through exercises like public works projects and military conscription.

Mbembe contrasts colonial violence with that of the postcolony. Mbembe demonstrates that violence in the postcolony is cruder and more generally for the purpose of demonstrating raw power. Expressions of excess and exaggeration characterize this violence.

Mbembe’s theorization of violence in the colony illuminates the unequal relationship between the coloniser and colonised and reminds us of the violence inflicted on African bodies throughout the process of colonisation. It cannot be understood nor should be taught without the context of this violence.

Stephanie Terreni Brown

Stephanie Terreni Brown is an academic in the field of colonialism. In her 2014 paper she examines how sanitation and dirt is used in colonial narratives through the example of Kampala in Uganda. Writing also about Abjection through sanitation planning in the city and how this plays a key role in this narrative of colonisation.

Brown describes Abjection as the process whereby one group others or dehumanizes another. Those who are deemed Abject are often avoided by others, and seen as inferior.  Abjectivication is continually used as a mechanism to dominate a group of people, and control them. In the case of colonialism, she argues that it is used by the west to dominate over and control the indigenous population of Africa.

Abjectivication through discourses of dirt and sanitation are used to draw distinctions between the Western governing figures and the local population. Dirt being seen as something out of place, whilst cleanliness being attributed to the “in group”, the colonisers, and dirt being paralleled with the indigenous people. The  reactions of disgust and displeasure to dirt and uncleanliness are often linked social norms and the wider cultural context, shaping the way in which Africa is still thought of today.

Brown discusses how the colonial authorities were only concerned with constructing a working sewage system to cater for the colonials themselves, and weren’t concerned with the Ugandan population. This rhetoric of sanitation is important because it is seen as a key part of modernity and being civilised, which the African population are therefore seen as not being. This lack of sanitation and proper sewage systems add to this discourse of the people of Africa and Africa itself being savages and uncivilised, playing a central role in how the west justified the case of the civilising process. Brown refers to this process of abjectification using discourses of dirt as a physical and material legacy of colonialism that is still very much present in Kampala and other African cities today.

Critique

Critical theory on the colonisation of Africa is largely unified in a condemnation of imperial activities. Postcolonial theory has been derived from this anti-colonial/anti-imperial concept and writers such as Mbembe, Mamdani and Brown, and many more, have used it as a narrative for their work on the colonisation of Africa.

‘Post colonialism can be described as a powerful interdisciplinary mood in the social sciences and humanities that is refocusing attention on the imperial/colonial past, and critically revising understanding of the place of the west in the world.’ 

Postcolonial geographers are consistent with the notion that colonialism, although maybe not in such clear-cut forms, is still concurrent today. Both Mbembe, Mamdani and Brown’s theories have a consistent theme of the indigenous Africans having been treated as uncivilised, second class citizens and that in many former colonial cities this has continued into the present day with a switch from race to wealth divide.

Mbembe is one of the most prominent writers within the field and this has led to his work being reviewed by numerous academics. On the Postcolony has faced criticism from academics such as Meredith Terreta for focusing too much on specific African nations such as Cameroon. Echoes of this criticism can also be found when looking at the work of Mamdani with his theories questioned for generalising across an Africa that, in reality, was colonised in very different ways, by fundamentally different European imperial ideologies. In contrast to Mbembe and Mamdani, Brown is a less prominent writer and one whose work is yet to be reviewed by other academics meaning it is currently harder to grasp what academic theoretical critiques could be brought against her work.