Dumping the Common Man’s Charter? – A reply to Comrade Yoga Adhola

The Common Man’s Charter is until today seen by the Ugandan left as a major document, especially among the left wing of the UPC.

In a statement from 2023, which can not be called a thorough analysis at all, Yoga Adhola addresses this matter. He claims that there is no need to study it just because “the author regretted it”¹. Yes, Obote in his last years of life said that he regretted the Move to the Left. He said in an interview from 2004 for example: “I also regret the Move to the Left.”² But does that actually make a change? Was the Common Man’s Charter only a thing because of Obote as a person or was it because of the objective conditions in Uganda? There is a myth by Evangelical Christians that Charles Darwin would have renounced the evolution theory on his deathbed (which is untrue by the way). Even if he would have done so – would that change anything? Would that undo his objective scientific research, just because he subjectively would have renounced it? Saying that such a thing would matter would be an idealist stance; it would be not a materialist one, therefore not scientific. In short: Yoga Adhola´s approach towards the matter is not scientific.

It is of no use that Yoga Adhola says: “That said, I would like to argue that The Common Man’s Charter still had value.” He speaks in simple past. There is the question: When did it “had value” for the last time? As it seems it is not in the current.

Especially this sentence of the 2023 statement aged like milk in a relatively short period of time: “At this stage of social development the economic base is not yet sufficiently developed to give rise to class struggles.” The retail strikes in 2024 – was that not a recent and very obvious case of class struggle in Uganda? Yoga Adhola seems short-sighted in playing oracle – oracle because this sentence cannot be reasoned by the Ugandan history nor the current Ugandan class structure³. Yoga Adhola seems to miss out the fact that decades passed with a development of the economy that led to a shift in the class composition of Uganda. For every Marxist the actual class composition of a country is vital to draw conclusions. Yoga Adhola should know that when he learned so much about Marxist theory as he claims.

It is true, to step towards socialism a transitional phase is needed. Yoga Adhola calls it “national-democratic liberation”. The term does not matter. People’s democracy is the general term, New Democracy is the term by Mao and the term in East Germany after World War II was antifascist-democratic revolution. What matters is the content. On that Yoga Adhola goes astray. He makes references to Chairman Mao, but none of them on New Democracy. As it seems Yoga Adhola never touched the work “On New Democracy” by Mao Zedong, otherwise he could not have claimed: “Marxists view national-democratic liberation as the equivalent of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions that took place in Europe in the times when European countries were moving from the feudal era into the bourgeois one.”⁴ This is only half of the truth. It is not seen as equivalent to the bourgeois-democratic revolutions, it is an emulation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution under the leadership of the proletariat that will grow into the socialist revolution (as Lenin and Mao make very clear)⁵. The goal is to eliminate feudalism and imperialism (with its comprador-bourgeois class). After it the main intern contradiction will be that between working class and national bourgeoisie, as Mao Zedong already pointed out in March 1949⁶, so before the founding of the People’s Republic of China. This is where the people´s democratic revolution grows into the socialist revolution under the leadership of the proletariat. When Comrade Yoga Adhola recognizes that this is the path also the Ugandan socialists have to go, then this should be the essence of its “national-democratic revolution” which Uganda has to undergo⁷.

Stalin said in 1929: “According to Bukharin, the imperialist front breaks where the national-economic system is weakest. That, of course, is untrue. If it were true, the proletarian revolution would have begun not in Russia, but somewhere in Central Africa.”⁸ That is obvious. Instead the imperialist chain breaks where the contradictions intensify the most. Does that mean that socialism in underdeveloped countries is impossible? Of course not, as we can see in the case of China under Mao and many other socialist countries of the so-called “Third World”.

Yoga Adhola writes as if Leninism never developed the Marxist theory on a new stage: “Classically, Marxism is socialism for the rich. It is a socialism which starts with highly developed capitalism and highly developed proletariat.”⁹ This never happened in the world except for the DDR for example. Tsarist Russia in 1917 was among the imperialist countries the least developed one; China was in 1949 a country that was not higher developed than today´s Uganda. And still they achieved socialism. The proletariat was not the biggest class of the working people but the leading one. That was enough. This is why Lenin stressed the workers-and-peasants-alliance so much. Also Uganda has a proletariat that can take the lead and ally with the working peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and parts of the national bourgeoisie.

Yoga Adhola wrote in 2015: “That kind of socialism Obote had in mind was a sort of socialism similar to that of the Labour Party of Britain which aims at distribution of income.”¹⁰ That is just social-democracy, not socialism; the Labour Party in history was never a Marxist party, but always just a social-democratic one (the author told me that in a new edition he would correct that comparison, but that does not make this essential error of fact undone; the damage is already done). Even worse is to call Obote just a nationalist. That is voiding him of every ideological content.

That Yoga Adhola still talks about the Common Man’s Charter and the Arusha Declaration in the same sentence in his 2023 statement though rejecting the claim that the former copied the latter in his book from 2015¹¹ is lacking logic in my point of view. Nyerere’s Arusha Declaration was not mainly wrong because its formal goal was socialism, but the wrong strategy and class foundations stated in it (agriculture instead of industry; peasants instead of workers as the leading class)¹². Nyerere idealized the pre-colonial era. In short: It had nothing to do with the Marxist definition of socialism which is headed forwards, not backwards.

The focus of the Common Man’s Charter was also on founding agricultural cooperatives but giving lead to a nationalized industry. It also rejects the idealization of the pre-colonial society. From Marxist perspective the Common Man’s Charter is not fully sufficient but a solid basis. I already wrote about that subject¹³. Still we can build up on it. The fundamental tasks are still the same today.

Yoga Adhola is right when he says, “that socialism never comes through declarations.” That is a truism everyone can agree on. But that does not help us for practice at all. Programs are needed to guide the way towards a goal. The Common Man’s Charter is such a program. Today we should take it as a basis to create a Common People’s Charter, fully rooted in Marxism-Leninism this time.

We all know that Jesus taught us to love our enemies. Now is Comrade Yoga Adhola not an enemy, though misled and obviously misinterpreting Marxism in many ways. This makes him an opponent in argumentation; he can be called a revisionist from Marxist perspective. The Bible says: “Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”¹⁴ Therefore I hope that we can still find common ground in the future.