Are colonies non-capitalist? – Why Comrade Booker is wrong

Comrade Booker wrote in a recent statement on X (formerly Twitter):

“Kenya is not a capitalist state. Kenya is a backward semi feudal neocolonial formation dominated by United States imperialism, comprador power and persistent landlordism. Nairobi is not a centre of production but a vast warehouse for imperialist substandard goods. NDR it is!”¹

This view is wrong, very wrong actually. Why so? The reason is the following:

A colony is put under a form of comprador capitalism, which is despite the fact of imperialist domination, a form of capitalism. The colonies are ruled by dictatorships of the bourgeoisie – how else could they enforce the will of the comprador bourgeoisie and their lackeys? It is true that the comprador bourgeoisie allies with landlords and therefore feudal elements. The same was the case in the German Empire and Tsarist Russia more than a century ago as well – and these countries were even imperialist powers!

I self wrote these words and I am very aware of them: “Before getting rid of feudalism, a pre-capitalist form of exploitation, there can be no transition to socialism.”² The thing is, that feudal remnants in East Africa are not the predominant character of the economy, but a mere sector. The national-democratic revolution (NDR) would be impossible without the existence of capitalism. The Hungarian Marxist Ervin Szabó put it into this formula: “If there is no capitalism there can be no socialism.”³ Imperialism might have brought many negative aspects to the colonial countries, but it also catapulted the local people into the capitalist market and therefore led them into a capitalist society. This advance should not be overlooked.

The national-democratic revolution, which is synonymous with people´s democracy and new democracy by the way, is inseparable from the socialist revolution. It is the first stage in a holistic revolutionary effort. Mao called it the “transition of the revolution”⁴. Without the existence of a capitalist basis such a revolution would be unthinkable. Lenin said that “no revolt can bring about socialism unless the economic conditions for socialism are ripe” and also that “state-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism”⁵. What else is the comprador bourgeoisie if not a collective representative of such a class of state-monopolist capitalism?

Our struggle is directed against the comprador bourgeoisie and the landlords, therefore against comprador capitalism and feudal remnants, to create the conditions for the socialist stage of the revolution. Everything else would be a severe mistake.