The celebration of the triumph of Capitalism over Communist ideals was indeed a hasty and premature one and a function of naive understanding of classic Marxist ideology and the dialectics of international political economy in a changing world. Though I am not a practicing communist(so that I am not misunderstood), but has anybody asked why the Governments of Capitalist economies - The US, Britain, France Germany, Japan etc are now buying up shares and debts of private financial institutions? Why did the world's largest capitalist society the United States massively elect a President who was characterised as a Communist and a redistributor of wealth? This apparent recourse to the same Communist ideals whose repudiation had formed the basis of modern day capitalism is an eloquent testimony that indeed the world did not arrive at the end of history with capitalism, and the last man will certainly not be liberal democracy.
The contention by Western Capitalist theorists (left unchallenged for decades) was that the extreme exploitation of the working class in Europe and America which Karl Marx had predicted will lead to a common consciousness and consequently a revolt against the system, did not eventually occur as a result of the so called flexibility of the capitalist system which provides through its welfare mechanism a substantially decent living for the so exploited workers to make for a minimum standard of living. Nothing could be farther away from the truth than this. This theory tended to treat in context, the economies of Europe as distinct and insular from the colonial economies that funded their wealth during the colonial era. Indeed the predicted contradictions of Capitalism occurred internationally. It was the sweat, blood and sufferings of the workers and masses in the former colonies that provided the cushion for the working class in Europe and America. By taking from sources (the colonies) to which they were not giving back anything, the Governments of the Imperial States had an excess with which they provided more for their own working class and thus created the so - called flexibility of capitalism.
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Last month, the Nigerian reading public was thrown into a frenzy of jubilation when Merril Lynch, a leading global financial management and advisory company, released a report saying that Nigeria is the safest economy on earth in the face of the global financial crisis rocking the biggest economies in the world presently. The message behind this report is that the Nigerian economy has the least vulnerability to the financial crisis in the global system occasioned by massive credit crunch.
First of all, there are two key issues I will like to address here - the statement by Merril Lynch as it is, and the context of the statement in terms of its nuances and subtexts. Taken austerely, that statement simply amounts to an incalculable pettiness of instincts. It is reminiscent of seventy year old woman rejoicing because a foreteller assured her she will not die of childbirth. The Nigerian economy is a semi-primitive economy with only the barest minimal level of credit financing. It is a cash- based economy operating at the periphery of the global financial credit system hence insulated from speculation based exchanges within the international division of labour. Need anyone tell us that such an economy cannot go into a credit crunch? A man who is carrying nothing does not break anything.
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