The party and the gun: African liberation, Asian comrades and socialist political technologies

Abstract

In many African states, decolonisation brought neither prosperity nor meaningful independence. The discontent with weak political and economic sovereignty led African revolutionaries to seek support from Asia, a proximity that continues to endure long after 1989. This paper focuses on decades of diverse forms of political interaction – ideational inspiration, policy emulation, party-to-party cooperation – between several Asian states, such as China, Korea and Viet Nam, and African (neo)liberation movements turned governments, from Eritrea and Ethiopia to Mozambique and Tanzania. Socialist imaginaries, institutions and, above all, technologies of rule have been central in these processes and far more prominent – substantively and rhetorically – than any alternative ideology: the development of the vanguard Party, operated through democratic centralism; the popular defence force, an army loyal to the Party; and state capitalism to control the economy’s commanding heights. These enduring ties between African and Asian comrade state-builders, and the quest for heterodox political modernities they represent, have been largely overlooked, especially in the post-Cold War period. They not only shed light on alternative political geographies and transnational histories of Africa and Asia, but also alert us to present-day ideological projects that differ starkly from Western liberal hegemony and its emphasis on Washington Consensus-style economics and representational democracy.