Liberation and Monetary Policy in Cabral and Pan-African Materialism

In general, the construction of global trade networks linked previously isolated systems of trade, movement, and even ecology. But the flows of capital and other resources that organize human activity are sharply unequal. This problem of uneven integration into a planetary economic and political order has long stood among the central concerns of pan-Africanist and Third-Worldist materialist thinkers, including political leaders of the anti-colonial movements who pushed for a “New International Economic Order” that aimed to create the economic preconditions for political self-determination by fundamentally restructuring the way planetary trade was conducted and regulated. Monetary policy is not often central to how political philosophers think about political freedom but is at home among those writing in the philosophical tradition of historical materialism, including substantial African and diasporic materialist intellectual traditions. This chapter will offer a descriptive account of the role of monetary policy in imperialism and unfreedom in recent pan-Africanist materialist thought, with an eye toward the relevance of these debates for political philosophers. It will conclude with a discussion of the stakes of such debates in the present day, in particular the implications of climate change and broader ecological issues.