How to achieve economic freedom in developing countries

Full text of lecture delivered by Chief Obafemi Awolowo at the First Lecture in the University of Lagos Annual
Lecture Series on Friday, 15th March, 1968.

CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK

IN actual practice, the attainment of these objectives will involve: (1) the abolition of all kinds of unearned income including economic rent and inheritance; (2) the legal elimination of the rentier class; (3) the recognition that all the able-bodied citizens of the State are workers or labourers of various gradations and skills, and that this being so all such able-bodied citizens who work or render services to and in the country are entitled to remunerations, only in the forms of salaries and wages of various scales or equivalent earnings or fees; (4) the effective co-ordination of all economic activities and the direct control of economic forces; (5) the sustained pursuit of full employment policy; (6) the provision by government of free educational and health facilities for all citizens; (7) the care by government of the infirm, disabled, and aged; (8) the regulation of consumption by legislative acts; and (9) subject to the dictates of prudence and pragmatism, the vesting in the State of all the means of production, exchange and distribution.

These objectives are highly controversial, and there are a number of forensically formidable objections which have been and can be urged against them. In this lecture, however, time does not permit me to expatiate on the socialist aims as I have stated them; and to marshal and refute all the traditional and possible objections to these aims. With the permission of the Vice-Chancellor, however, I would like to say that in my next book, ‘THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC’, which, it now seems certain, will be published by 1st October this year, I have dealt in extenso with these aims and the objections to them.

To sum up, it is abundantly clear that the evils of the capitalist system are naked self-interest, greed, and the gross and irremediable injustices arising from the forces of supply and demand and the margin. Since these evils are inherent in, and inseparable from, the capitalist system and since they tend, inexorably, to make the weak progressively weaker relatively, and the underdeveloped country more systematically enslaved as an economic entity, every underdeveloped country will be wise resolutely to avoid the capitalist system.

At the same time, I have tried to show that the socialist system is preferable to the capitalist system, because it is devoid of the evils of the latter, and is positively superior to it. This then, in my considered judgment, is the path to economic freedom in underdeveloped countries. But it must be emphasised that there is an imperative and indispensable need for thorough and detailed planning, and stem discipline of body and mind, to make the socialist’ system work, and to ensure, under it, effective and efficient mobilisation, co-ordination, deployment, and development of an the available natural and human resources.

In direct contrast, the capitalist path does not require the attributes of planning and discipline on the part of those who choose to tread’ it. Indeed, the rules of the path forbid planning and discipline. And such indirect controls and directions as are occasionally attempted to make the path safe for its users are invariably frustrated by the inherent vices of the system. Consequently, the path of capitalism is unavoidably strewn with injustices; gross inequalities; strifes; incessant social collisions; recurrent distresses; an assured economic enslavement for underdeveloped countries; and leads, dialectically, to eventual and certain doom and perdition.

On the other hand, the socialist path is paved with mutual love, social justice, the triumph of human dignity, and economic freedom for underdeveloped countries. But in order to tread it successfully, it demands as I have said before, the attributes of planning and discipline, in their best forms.

From the foregoing analyses, therefore, my own considered verdict is that the path to economic freedom in developing countries is socialism.

CONTINUES NEXT WEEK

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