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Left and Right in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Immanuel Wallerstein
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Extract

One of the basic concepts of modern political analysis is the dichotomy (or continuum) of left–right. It has been a fundamental element of the ideological apparatus of the modern world at least since the French Revolution.

There have been two kinds of intellectual debates concerning this concept throughout modern history. One revolves around the criteria that should be used to delineate the ideal-typical poles of the concepts, and the degree to which the concept has discrete points or is a continuum. A subordinate question has always been whether it is fruitful to make the concept tri-modal and include a ‘centre’. Obviously, this debate has both moral and intellectual dimensions, and it is doubtful whether it is either possible or desirable to separate them.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , May 1971 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

Page 2 note 1 In October 1969, at the International Meeting on African Studies in Montreal, in a session entitled ‘Expériences à caractère socialiste en Afrique’, Gérard Chaliand, Samir Amin, and Abdou Moumouni all argued that so-called socialist régimes in Africa were not in fact truly socialist, nor were they as different from other African régimes as either hostile critics or they themselves claimed. Unfortunately, the interventions of this session have not been published.

Page 4 note 1 For a detailed analysis, see my Africa: the politics of unity (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

Page 6 note 1 This view is developed in JrNye, Joseph B., Pan-Africanism and East African Integration (Cambridge, Mass., 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 10 note 1 Feuermann, Peter, book review of Roger Genoud, Nationalism and Economic Development in Ghana, in The African Communist (London), XLI, 1970, p. III.Google Scholar