Let Edison turn off his electric light and we are in darkness in Liberty Hall in two minutes, The Negro is living on borrowed goods."
Those of us who study industrial conditions among the race must have noticed that Negroes in AMerica have been thrown out of jobs that they occupied formerly, and their positions taken by European Immigrants.
Negroes are still filling places, and as time goes on and the age grows older our occupations will be gone from us, because those for whoom we filled the places will soon appear, and as they do we shall gradually find our places among the millions of permanently unemployed...A race that is solely dependent upon another for it's economic existence sooner or later dies.
-Marcus Garvey
"Ujamaa," then, or "familyhood," describes our socialism. It is opposed to capitalism, which seeks to build a happy society on the basis of the exploitation of man by man; and it is equally opposed to doctrinaire socialism which seeks to build its happy society on a philosophy of inevitable conflict between man and man.
We, in Africa, have no more need of being "converted" to socialism than we have of being "taught" democracy. Both are rooted in our own past--in the traditional society which produced us. Modern African socialism can draw from its traditional heritage the recognition of "society" as an extension of the basic family unit. But it can no longer confine the idea of the social family within the limits of the tribe, nor, indeed, of the nation. For no true African socialist can look at a line drawn on a map and say, "The people on this side of that line are my brothers, but those who happen to live on the other side of it can have no claim on me." Every individual on this continent is his brother.
-Julius Nyerere