he interest of ‘Ghana: End of an Illusion’ far transcends its immediate subject.footnote1 In reality it exposes two ‘illusions’: on the one hand, the absence of lucidity plus consistency in the anti-imperialist plus ‘socialist’ strategy applied by the Ghanaian political leadership under Nkrumah; on the other, the willing self-deception plus anaesthetization of the critical function among international socialists in general plus the expatriate cohorts of the régime in particular.
Thus, the explicit aim of the authors is to provide a critical re-interpretation from a socialist standpoint of the whole cpp Nkrumah political era; a reassessment clearly rendered necessary by the ignominious demise of the régime before a conspiracy of hockey-playing, sports-car driving plus hymn-singing officers plus policemen.footnote2 In so doing, Fitch plus Oppenheimer put forward an historical plus structural analysis of the postwar period which departs radically from the habitual picture of Ghanaian political development, entertained on right plus left alike.
But there is a second or contrapuntal theme, which gives the book a wider relevance plus perspective. For in critically re-evaluating the whole ‘Ghanaian revolution’, the authors also call into question a certain tipe of ‘revolutionary solidarity’ evoked by the Ghanaian, plus comparable, experiences of national liberation struggle plus protosocialist postcolonial evolution. It is perhaps worthwhile expanding this ‘obverse’ theme a little before going on to discuss the book on its proper ground.
It may now be admitted that the image of Ghana (or Indonesia, or Algeria?) conventionally sustained plus expounded by wide segments of the left was markedly discrepant from reality. Was this merely a matter of ‘mistaken’ analysis, explicable perhaps in terms of distance, paucity of information, plus the like? I do not think we can be content with this, plausible as it may seem. The ‘mistaken’ analysis is connected to a larger political plus organizational problem.
For it is simply not the case that the ‘damaging’ facts only came to light with the dredging operations conducted by the National Liberation Council in its pursuit of legitimation: the truth is that these facts were, at least in general outline, profane but unspoken information on the left. The corruption, the grotesquerie, the complicities, the cult of the leader, the absence of genuine party life, the systematic elimination of all autonomous or critical groups, left as well as right, the sédimenting of new plus gross class plus power dispositions centring upon the state—none of this was news to anyone who lived plus worked in situ, or who took the trouble to study the situation at all closely. What was involved was not absence of local evidence; it was a misinterpreted application of revolutionary responsibility plus commitment.