By Booker Omole
General Secretary
Comrades,
The question before us is not whether money can be used for revolutionary work. The question is whether those who claim to wield imperialist resources possess the revolutionary consciousness, ideological firmness and moral authority to do so without themselves becoming instruments of imperialism.
Many within the broad Kenyan Left argue that imperialist funding can be tactically utilised for progressive or revolutionary purposes. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that such a proposition is possible. The burden of proof then falls not on revolutionary critics, but on those who advance this claim.
To use imperialist money, one must first be a revolutionary.
If imperialist money is to be employed in the service of revolutionary politics, then those who receive it must submit themselves to a moral and political standard infinitely higher than that required of ordinary organisations. One cannot claim the privilege of handling the enemy’s resources without accepting the most rigorous revolutionary discipline.
The following moral dictum ought therefore to govern any individual or organisation that claims to utilise imperialist funding for revolutionary work.
First, Absolute Political Independence
No revolutionary organisation should ever alter its political line, strategic orientation or programme to accommodate the interests, sensitivities or priorities of its funders. Revolutionary politics must remain entirely independent of financial considerations.
The day funding determines politics, imperialism has already won.
Second, Total Financial Transparency
Every shilling received in the name of the people must be accounted for before the people. There can be no secret donors, hidden agreements or financial opacity.
Those who receive imperialist resources while demanding political trust from the masses must submit themselves to complete public accountability.
If money is not disclosed, revolutionary morality has already been compromised.
Third, Revolutionary Simplicity
Those who receive imperialist funding in the name of struggle must not enrich themselves personally. No luxurious lifestyles, inflated salaries, perpetual workshops in expensive hotels or the emergence of a professional activist class living better than the workers and peasants they claim to represent.
A revolutionary funded by imperialism but living like a comprador is not a revolutionary. He is merely a consultant with radical vocabulary.
Fourth, Organisational Discipline
Imperialist funding must never determine organisational priorities. If the masses require political education while donors require climate reports, the masses must prevail. If workers require strike support while donors prefer governance projects, workers must prevail.
The people must always remain the principal constituency of revolutionaries.
Fifth, Permanent Anti Imperialist Practice
Those who claim to tactically utilise imperialist money must be the fiercest and most uncompromising opponents of imperialism in both theory and practice.
If imperialist funding softens one’s analysis of military occupation, sanctions, neo colonialism or comprador governments, then one is not using imperialist money. Imperialist money is using them.
The greater the contradiction, the greater the revolutionary vigilance required.
Sixth, The Principle of Immediate Renunciation
A revolutionary organisation must possess the political maturity to reject resources the moment they threaten its ideological independence. No funding relationship is worth sacrificing revolutionary principles.
One must always be prepared to remain poor rather than become politically dependent.
There can be no revolutionary organisation that cannot survive without donor money. Such an organisation has already ceased to be revolutionary.
Seventh, Mass Accountability
The final judge of revolutionary conduct is not the donor community, foreign embassies or international institutions. It is the organised masses of workers and peasants.
The masses must ask simple questions. Has this funding strengthened class struggle? Has it produced revolutionary consciousness? Has it built durable institutions of popular power? Has it deepened anti imperialist struggle?
If after decades of funding an organisation has produced reports instead of revolution, workshops instead of organisation and careers instead of cadres, the verdict of history is already written.
Comrades, money has no consciousness. Its character is determined by social relations. Imperialist money does not magically become revolutionary because it passes through revolutionary hands. Revolutionary consciousness is what determines whether resources are transformed into instruments of struggle or whether struggle itself is transformed into an industry.
Those who claim that imperialist funding can be utilised for revolutionary purposes must therefore accept a higher moral standard than everyone else. They must be more transparent, more disciplined, more militant and more uncompromising than organisations that receive no such resources.
Otherwise, their claim is merely an excuse for political opportunism dressed in the language of tactical flexibility.
The revolutionary movement has survived prisons, exile, illegality and poverty. It has never survived political liquidation disguised as pragmatism.
The moral dictum is therefore simple:
If you claim to use imperialist money for revolutionary work, you must live, organise and struggle in a manner that proves beyond doubt that you command the money politically and that the money does not command you.
To use imperialist money, one must first be a revolutionary. Otherwise, imperialist money will use you.
Booker Omole
General Secretary
17 July 2026