The State of Ambivalence: Right and Left Options in Ghana

Judith Marshall examines the different interests of international capitalism and the politically powerful groups among the Ghanaian petty bourgeoisie in Ghana since 1960. She analyses the conflicting and complementary relations among them, and compares the specific policies of successive regimes in Ghana, military and civilian. She shows that progressive plans for transformation of the neo-colonial political economy could not succeed without an adequate class base and mass mobilissation. While international capital has been able to profit from the changing policies of successive regimes it has been unable to establish stable conditions for its own domination, and the perpetuation of the privileges of its local partners. The continued failures of capitalist development strategies sustain the relevance of radical alternatives, as they did during the Nkrumah period.