Throughout this note, it has been commented that Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o espouses Marxist ideals and principles in Devil on the Cross. What, specifically, however, are the ways in which his own philosophies overlap with those of Marx and Engels—and in what important ways do Ngũgĩ's own ideas differ from those of the foundational Marxists?
First, it is important to explicitly draw out the ways in which Ngũgĩ's worldview aligns with that of conventional Marxist philosophy. In conventional Marxist philosophy, a majority working class, the proletariat, is kept indentured in a slave-like servitude to the wealthy, minority bourgeoisie class as a basic condition of capitalism. Instruments of the bourgeoisie like religion, mainstream culture, and educational institutions all reinforce the capitalist system and allow the bourgeoisie to maintain their disproportionate control over natural resources and the means of production. In Devil on the Cross, then, it is not hard to find the parallels to such a worldview: under the disproportionate influence of foreign money and the elevation of wealthy, local compradores, the majority peasant class is kept indentured to these powers, who seek to do nothing more than exploit them. The extremes of this exploitation can be seen in the absurd and hellish ideas proposed at the Devil's Feast. Moreover, through the mouthpiece of Ngũgĩ's Devil speaking to Warĩĩnga, the author is able to introduce a disdain for religion, bourgeois culture, mainstream media, and the local education systems, each of which he sees as reinforcing the control of capitalist tycoons over the disenfranchised majority.
Another important parallel between Ngũgĩ's Marxism and the conventional Marxism of Engels and Marx lies in the fact that Ngũgĩ sees the worker majority as a revolutionary force. Marx and Engels believed that, though the proletariat is originally kept in the dark by the bourgeoisie, an awakening into a collective class consciousness could spur a revolution that would upheave the capitalist system and allow the proletariat to rework the instruments of their oppression. In Devil on the Cross, Ngũgĩ explicitly lays out what he sees as the inevitability of such an event, both by relying on the Mau Mau Uprising (itself a peasant/worker's revolution) as a historical touchstone and by aligning our sympathies with figures like Mũturi, who leads another such uprising at the Devil's Feast. In both cases, Ngũgĩ advocates for a return not only to local rule by the peasant majority, but also to local customs and the deployment of dialects, traditional art forms, and local idiomatic language. By making his text a hybrid, Kenyan-inspired form and by making the Gĩcaandĩ Player—a folk artist driven by the collective desires of the people—our narrator, Ngũgĩ thus attempts to speak directly to this peasant collective, using their language to inspire a similar class consciousness and awareness, and showing them that revolutionary action is possible and effective (for example, see the way in which Warĩĩnga, despite her violent action towards the Rich Old Man from Ngorika, is presented as a redeemed heroine at the text's end).
In what ways, then does the Marxism of Ngũgĩ differ from that of conventional Marxist thought? In a 1998 article, Govind Sharma aptly points out just a few differences between Ngũgĩ's beliefs and the Marxism espoused in the philosophy's seminal texts. For one, Sharma tells us, while Marx and Engels espouse a base level of admiration and respect for the bourgeois class—taking positive note of the ways in which they have industrialized society, bent nature to their human will, and so on—Ngũgĩ affords this class no such respect. Rather, Ngũgĩ sees them as merely exploitative, stealing the accomplishments and labor of the majority, who are really behind each major profit, each major advancement, and each national victory. He tells us as much through the voice of Mũturi over and over again. Additionally, while Marxists saw a necessary partnership between some academics (whose job was to educate and expose the exploitation of capitalism to the masses) and the working majority, Ngũgĩ is less enthusiastic about such solidarity. Though in Devil on the Cross, certain university students are willing to lay down their lives for the revolutionary actions of the workers, in the character of Gatuĩria, Ngũgĩ shows us a case study in why such partnerships are not to be taken for granted, or perhaps not even welcomed. Because such people have privilege that they must denounce in themselves and their own backgrounds, they are not always able to fully join in the ideals and actions of the proletariat. Sharma tells us that this deviation of Ngũgĩ's thought likely stems from the fact that Ngũgĩ felt alienated in Kenyan academia for his own beliefs, and that his detainment and imprisonment was prefaced by a series of intellectual conflicts with others in the academic world.
Thus, while Ngũgĩ is a Marxist through and through, we can see here through some key idiosyncrasies in his thought that—as Sharma says—he agrees more with Fanon than Marx or Engels. In Ngũgĩ's lived experiences, the masses and the peasants are the center of all progress, both ordinary and revolutionary, and all others may be seen in some light to be detracting from their ultimate goal of overthrowing the exploitative systems of capitalism, classism, and racism.
