Ambitzero
For those of us who are committed to the social, but have lost its’ “ism, yet have no capital, let alone the latter’s “ism, the present global economic crisis has left us in a big quandary. We face the most inextricable difficulties from which neither Karl Marx nor Adam Smith can, in practical and immediate terms, set us free. The market we were incessantly told was free has since been confined in New York, quarantined in London and detained without warrant in Lagos, while the famed invisible hand in economics has become so visible that its duplicity has become open to all. From the New York Stock Exchange where the Dow is down to the Lagos Stock Exchange where stocks, which had earlier hit the roofs, are now crawling on the floor, nothing of much value is being exchanged. Even though some odd analysts insist that the best time to buy is when the stocks are down, no one seems to be buying that.
We “who lack capital – did not participate in the undue, extravagant and even immoral pleasures that define the current economic collapse and financial meltdown; but we have been melted and thrown down alongside the biggest culprits of the predicted crisis of global capitalism. Notionally, we would have loved to ask Karl Marx to come to judgment over these glorified financial crooks and their colluding holders of state power, but the dialectics of the present times would challenge even the author of Das Capital – particularly in the aftermath of the earlier collapse of global communism with the attendant dystopian horror of its Soviet variant. What is left of the practical side of the Marxian narrative in China has become so indistinguishable from its ideological opposite, yet so successful in the mixture, that Marx may be asked by the last Marxists in charge of state power to hold on for now, if not hold-off permanently.
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But we cannot totally dismiss Marx, at least notionally. His position that change is wrought by the conflict of opposing forces during which, in a given contradiction, the secondary force succumbs to the primary and produces a new contradiction, is still useful. But even this, when confronted with our contemporary experience where global Islamic fundamentalism – with its associated terrorism – looks like the most critical opposing force of global capitalism and its associated liberalism, we wonder if even Marx and his remaining adherents would love to live in a world in which capitalism and Islamic fundamentalism are synthesized.
But where does Nigeria stand in all these? Central Bank Governor, Charles Soludo, who seemed to have a louder voice than even the Minister of Finance not only in monetary, but also in fiscal matters and even general issues of the economy, had assured Nigerians that our economy was stronger than the global crisis. Soludo added that he had put so formidable a scheme in place that even if the American, or Western economy, in general, were to collapse, Nigeria would still be a glorious island of economic health and wealth – or something to that exaggerated effect. As Soludo sold his baseless assurances, those of us who own no capital and are often mystified by a market that is anything but free, were left asking, which economy? The same economy that collapsed long ago as millions of Nigerians survived on less than $1 a day?
As the naira took a free fall in the no longer tiered-market, Soludo had to come out with new assurances. As both qualified and unqualified persons struggle for his job, Soludo must have a difficult task keeping one eye on the value of naira and the better of the two eyes on his position. The particular mention of Tanimu Yakubu Kurfi, President Umaru Yar’ Adua’s Man Friday, in the list of those interested in his job, must worry Soludo. Kurfi is so multi-dimensional, multi-talented and qualified for every available position from the economic, political, security to even house-keeping that Yar’Adua thinks only of the man. You could say how many of such people came with the president from Katsina to Abuja, but the implications of the current economic crisis understandably escape this government because, even before the crisis started, Nigerians were already in economic turmoil.
However, what really catches the attention of the government and the ruling elite, and for more civilized reasons, the class of capital, is the dwindling earnings from crude oil, which is the basis of no less than eighty percent of the economic activities in Nigeria. If the price of oil goes down, Nigeria goes down with it, particularly given the total lack of imagination of this and every other government that had been at the centre of our national life.
But is global capitalism seized by a terminal sickness? Some of us, for what is called bad belle on Lagos streets, would not mind, since we hardly have anything of value to lose. If we ever have any stock, it is usually so insignificant that we would get by anyhow without the stocks. Yet, while there is much to be reformed in global capitalism, from all the available evidence, there is still no alternative in the horizon that is capable of superseding the present global economic order. As radical scholars exaggerate the death of capitalism, in the end, whether the market is free or not can only be determined by a free people. Let the market be for now, Nigerians have less than a decade to save, and then free, a dying country, so that we can start to create a genuine market; one which will be truly free in its economic, social and political aspects.
