Arts & Books

“Capitalism is a hegemonic social order. Capital seeks to dominate as many aspects of our lives as possible and to control every institution, from state to schools. Very little escapes its dom­ination, including our thoughts.

The working class has millions of tales. These are narrations of contradictions; these are descriptions of deprivations; these are tales of toil and torture; and most of these tales are untold and unknown.

Can the working class change the world? It is a fundamental political question in every economy and society, relevant to all concerned with and aware of class interests tangled in exploitative production relations. Politics in countries has centred on this question of class power.

Introduction

I started this piece as a review of the book, but enlarged it to address a couple of important issues arising out of it. 

This is the first ever time I have written about the village. To most young people the village is a boring place. In the village there are no bright lights. No sophisticated infrastructure or the rendezvous of the fast life we find in towns. 

On 6 October, I wrote a short message to Professor Chris Wanjala, I wanted to share with him some news about the Egyptian Marxist and political economist Samir Amin who had died in early August 2018.

That Moment.

I dream of it every night.

I grew up in a small town in Kenya that felt like it had too many families affected by sickle cell disease. We knew of so and so’s brother or sister who was a sickler or had unfortunately passed away as a result of the disease.

On the 5th of August, a former apartheid detective, Mark Minnie and a journalist, Chris Steyn, released a joint book titled The Lost Boys of Bird Island.

The police chief had wanted to assign him to the drug squad to target the black community but he used his discretion to open contact with the KKK and apply for membership in his real name, requiring a white officer to pose as him during meetings.