The Future of the State in Africa

Abstract

The state is a specific modality of class domination, a generic phenomenon in capitalist and socialist formations. The unique feature of the socioeconomic formations in postcolonial Africa is that the state, if we can properly talk of such an existence at all, has very limited autonomy. The state in Africa is only a particular modality of class domination. In the social formations of Africa that are supposedly capitalist, we find a rudimentary autonomization of class domination. In the African social formations that are purportedly socialist we find a limited possibility of class domination being mediated and autonomized effectively by commodity production and exchange. As far as the state and social forces are concerned, we can state that much of postcolonial Africa remains essentially an enclave capitalism marked by the class domination typical of capitalism.