Great Benefits of Attending NDC School

Before delving into the substantive issues, let me play the role of a preacher-man (pastor) on my wall by find out from NDC, CPP, PNC and other pro- Nkrumahists comrades their inner convictions when it comes to socialism and practice of it.

Go through yourselves and if you know very well that your behaviour, thoughts and actions are sharp departure from the idles and virtues of socialism or social democracy, then,stand up wherever you are, raise your hands and kindly recite the prayer of forgiveness and seek for spiritual edification for a renewed political spirit. Nobody should downplay the initiative (the ideological school).

It is one project, the party must protect and support to grow to the level envisioned. Part of the party’s problems, is the lack of understanding of what the party represents in terms of ideological inclination by section of its supporters.

This lack of understanding of its ideological disposition by section of its supporters has allowed their ideological opponents to evangelise chunk of its supporters creating the tension, power struggle, insults, crave for power etc we witnessing.

The party is an amalgamation of people from all the ideological bases and ethics groups hence the need to always protect it from unnecessary internal divisions and attempts to hijack the soul of the party by any of the subsets. The survival of the party depends on many factors but chief among them is how best it handles its internal tribal dynamics.

What we must all understand is that, the demographic development of the last few years have created conditions which will stay with us for a long time to come. The era where small groups could be completely self sufficient is dead and buried.

Our target should not always be on just a moral and ethical critique of the capitalist system, but to make sure we pull back all our natural allies especially, the workers and make them central agents in all our dealings. Every election year, millions of new first time voters are added to the register, political awareness is on the ascendency, this calls for effective measures to combat the dominant ideology of market individualism.

If the party and its activists cannot articulate an attractive vision of true socialist freedom, it will not be able to overcome the emerging feuds and negative attitudes. I am all for this school because, a democratic socialist organization that doesn’t have a rich and accessible internal education life will not develop an activist core who can be public tribune for the ideology. The party is going through the current internal challenges because of lack of a comprehensive policy to guide it in terms of grooming leaders and using them. As social democrats, the NDC should be the most competent organisers in struggle, and must also always offer analysis that reveals the systematic roots of a crisis and offer scientific reforms and panacea that are effective.

I started getting worried when some supporters of the NDC started attributing part of the reasons for the party’s defeat to over concentration on building more projects etc. What I know is that the social democrats have shifted from what they call Orthodox Marxism and the approach is evolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism to achieve egalitarian and solidaristic outcomes. I am a Marxist/Nkrumahist but have no serious problem with the scientific approach adherents of the ideology espouse. The party must always device effective tools to combat the capitalists logics else, the supporters will continue using the capitalist parameters in assessing the party’s performance in government. But that notwithstanding, we must also understand the economic philosophy of the party. State interventionism and the welfare systems are the core philosophies underlying the party’s economic philosophy. This the reason why I have issues with those who chastise the last administration’s policies which were implemented to ensure equality and protect the underprivileged groups. Part of the core policies

One of the economic principles practiced by most social democratic governments is the Keynesian economics which focuses on state interventionism and the welfare state. Policies services such as care for the elderly, child care, education, health care, provision of portable water and electricity are areas a social democratic government must always make its priority.

Supporters of the NDC have been evangelized by their friends on the other side and interestingly, they condemn their own policies and programmes using policies of the liberals as their yardstick.

I pray that the school is not hijacked by core party folks. Handlers of the institution must institute acceptable and academic bias measures to make it attractive to other socialist inclined persons who are not hardcore members of the party. It can be used as an avenue to attract more brains from the academia into the party.

Ghanapoliticsonline.com