{UAH} Tribes, Ethnicity and Social Bliss!

 

Dr. Karl Marx was about to crack the code in his sociology.

 

And Prof. Kisambuzi is actually dealing with what either Karl Marx in his Das Kapital nor could Maximilian Karl Emil ”Max” Weber solve in his Society and State!

African societies too, have their array of economic trajectories. Once economic structures can’t sufficiently sustain society structures, society collapses – and Karl Marx (he was right on this one) thought this could launch capitalist society into communism based on stories he had heard from European travellers from the Far East Asian countries.

Asian villages were mired in abject poverty and social misery – but the kingdoms where they existed, combined with Asian strict religious belief system sustained these societies into the capitalist age and era AND LET ME ADD the same structures, will launch them out of capitalism back to where they started - Adam Smith's Wealth of The Nations!

Tibet, Taiwan, North and South Korea, Philippines  etc.

 

Karl Marx though albeit wrongly that there was a romantic social bliss called communism, communitarian etc. W.W. Rostow calls it a consumption society referred to as Conspicuous consumption by the Norwegian-American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen.

Food is in plenty, sex in plenty, joy-fication etc.

Had any African society ever reached the above mentioned stages - YES with our cattle, matooke, lumonde, grass houses you name it!

 

Today, needs and wants have changed in characteristics but not content; health, care, love, shelter and food ala good hospitals as opposed to a witchcraft, family care to fat pension, grass huts to a clay tiled mansions, home grown food stuffs to super market fast foods, self home employment to industrial waged employment!

I don't know where my sons placed my book on the History of Economics- it is an interesting exposure.

Now, reading Karl Marx late writings; Grunderisse pg. 77 - 110(101) about communism, community and society, he dealt with this issue albeit confusingly and not conclusively! What Karl Marx failed to understand, was the fact that society is in constant flux BUT in a confined social realm, I call it a social cube (constraints, enablement, biosphere etc).

By nature, society doesn’t change much for needs and wants are basically the same. If needs and wants were different in every society epoch – we could have different social development trajectories!

 

For those who leave in Europe and have practiced or practicing politics under the social democrats, communist, liberals, moderates have witnessed the decline and convergence of these party influences with the decline in labour unions, economic fortunes and subsequent industrial establishment structural changes etc.

There is indeed convergence of ideas even in the U.S.A between democrats and republicans.

 

The above informs us just that Karl Marx’s social theory based on economic theorem has consequences on the nature of society. Empirically, post capitalist and communist societies have exactly similar resultant social structures: United Kingdom breaking up into small unique states, the Soviet Russia also has the same structure.

 

Can society today, therefore form tribes and clans and where is the evidence?

 

Yes they can:

There has emerged several religious sects in the west with unique social values and systems; Green Peace could become a family with the same values and their long beaded men and vegetarianism practices. The 1960’s hippies too could have formed their own society had it not been that contemporary law as opposed to social conventions couldn’t allow it. They called themselves naturalists having sex with any women in the community, have common children care, grow their won food and closed communities etc. In the U.S.A so many groups of people have tried to do the above but have failed simply because of rigid law regulations as opposed to social convention in Africa, into which such social acts manifestly obtains.

You can as well place Kibwetere, Kayanja, NRM revolution, Common Man's Charter, Amin's economic war, Bwanika Urban theory  in Uganda into the same social realm of an ever evolving society seeking for a social bliss - a mileage?

 

Bwanika

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Bwanika Nakyesawa Luwero