If there is a mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, one thing is not left a mystery, the fact that Barack Obama organized his life on the ideals given to him by his Kenyan father. 

Obama tells us, "All of my life, I carried a single image of my father, one that I .. tried to take as my own." (p. 220)  

 

And what was that image?  It was "the father of my dreams, the man in

my mother's stories, full of high-blown ideals .." (p. 278) 

 

What is more, Obama tells us that, "It was into my father's image .. that

I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." 

 

And also that, "I did feel that there was something to prove .. to my father" in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230)

Barack Obama's father, a Harvard trained economist, attacked the economic proposals of pro-Western 'third way" leader Tom Mboya from the socialist left, siding with communist-allied leader Oginga Odinga, in a paper Barack Obama's father worte for the East Africa Journal. 

 

As Odhiambo and Cohen write, "The debates [over economic policy] pitted .. Mboya against .. Oginga Odinga and radical economists Dharam Ghai and Barrack Obama, who critiqued the document for being neither African nor socialist enough."

1.  Obama advocated the communal ownership of land and the forced confiscation of privately controlled land, as part of a forced "development plan", an important element of his attack on the government's advocacy of private ownership, land titles, and property registration. (p. 29)

 

2.  Obama advocated the nationalization of "European" and "Asian" owned enterprises, including hotels, with the control of these operations handed over to the "indigenous" black population. (pp. 32 -33)

 

3.  Obama advocated dramatically increasing taxation on "the rich" even up to the 100% level, arguing that, "there is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay" (p. 30) and that, "Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed." (p. 31)

 

4.  Obama contrasted the ill-defined and weak-tea notion of "African Socialism" negatively with the well-defined ideology of "scientific socialism", i.e. communism.  Obama views "African Socialism" pioneers like Nkrumah, Nyerere, and Toure as having diverted only "a little" from the capitalist system. (p. 26)

 

5.  Obama advocated an "active" rather than a "passive" program to achieve a classless society through the removal of economic disparities between black Africans and Asian and Europeans. (p. 28)  "While we welcome the idea of a prevention [of class problems], we should try to cure what has slipped in .. we .. need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now .. so long as we maintain free enterprise one cannot deny that some will accumulate more than others .. "  (pp. 29-30)

 

6.  Obama advocated price controls on hotels and the tourist industry, so that the middle class and not only the rich can afford to come to Kenya as tourists.  (p. 33)

 

7.  Obama advocated government owned and operated "model farms" as a means of teaching modern farming techniques to farmers.  (p. 33)

 

8.  Obama strongly supported the governments assertion of a "non-aligned" status in the contest between Western nations and communist nations aligned with the Soviet Union and China.  (p. 26)