“We know that the traditional African society was founded on principles of egalitarianism. In its actual workings, however, it had various shortcomings. Its humanist impulse, nevertheless, is something that continues to urge us towards our all-African socialist reconstruction. We postulate each man to be an end in himself, not merely a means; and we accept the necessity of guaranteeing each man equal opportunities for his development. The implications of this for socio-political practice have to be worked out scientifically, and the necessary social and economic policies pursued with resolution. Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism. Hence, socialism. Hence, also, scientific socialism.”

African Socialism Revisited http://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nkrumah/1967/african-socialism-revisited.htm, 1967.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We know that the traditional African society was founded on principles of egalitarianism. In its actual workings, howev…" by Kwame Nkrumah?
Kwame Nkrumah photo
Kwame Nkrumah 26
Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Gh… 1909–1972

Related quotes

Jeffrey D. Sachs photo
Friedrich List photo

“The impulse to understand, and not merely to know and to act, is an impulse characteristic of man and apparently not shared by other animals. I am not concerned here with the origin and nature of this impulse, but with its implications that there is something to be understood and that understanding is not reducible to knowledge and action.”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

J.G. Bennett (1963) " General Systematics http://www.systematics.org/journal/vol1-1/GeneralSystematics.htm" in: Systematics] (1963) Vol 1., no 1. p. 5; cited on The Primer Project on isss.org, 2007.07.03

Carlos Drummond de Andrade photo

“And each moment is different, and each man
is different, and we are all equal.”

Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902–1987) Brazilian poet

E cada instante é diferente, e cada
homem é diferente, e somos todos iguais.
"Os últimos dias" ["The Last Days"]
A Rosa do Povo [Rose of the People] (1945)

Peter Kropotkin photo

“The higher conception of "no revenge for wrongs," and of freely giving more than one expects to receive from his neighbours, is proclaimed as being the real principle of morality — a principle superior to mere equivalence, equity, or justice, and more conducive to happiness. And man is appealed to to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support — not mutual struggle — has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race.”

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
Context: In primitive Buddhism, in primitive Christianity, in the writings of some of the Mussulman teachers, in the early movements of the Reform, and especially in the ethical and philosophical movements of the last century and of our own times, the total abandonment of the idea of revenge, or of "due reward" — of good for good and evil for evil — is affirmed more and more vigorously. The higher conception of "no revenge for wrongs," and of freely giving more than one expects to receive from his neighbours, is proclaimed as being the real principle of morality — a principle superior to mere equivalence, equity, or justice, and more conducive to happiness. And man is appealed to to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support — not mutual struggle — has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race.

Karl Marx photo

“In place of the bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, shall we have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Section 2, paragraph 72 (last paragraph).

Hendrik Verwoerd photo
Colson Whitehead photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Bono photo

Related topics