The Wretched of The Earth

  This bourgeoisie, which has unreservedly and enthusiastically adopted the intellectual reflexes characteristic of the metropolis, which has alienated to perfection its own thought and grounded its consciousness in typically foreign notions, has difficulty swallowing the fact that it is lacking in the one thing that makes a bourgeoisie —money. The bourgeoisie of the underdeveloped countries is a bourgeoisie in spirit only. It has neither the economic power, nor the managerial dynamism, nor the scope of ideas to qualify it as a bourgeoisie. Consequently, it is in its early stages and remains a bourgeoisie of civil servants. Whatever confidence and strength it possesses will derive from the position it occupies in the new national administration. Given time and opportunity by the authorities, it will succeed in amassing a small fortune that will reinforce its domination. But it will still prove incapable of creating a genuine bourgeois society with all the economic and industrial consequences this supposes.

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  The national bourgeoisie from the outset is geared toward intermediate activities. Its power base lies in its business sense and petty trading, in its capacity to grab commissions. It is not its money that is working but its sense of business. It does not invest, and cannot achieve that accumulation of capital needed for the formation and expansion of an authentic bourgeoisie. At this rate it would take centuries for it to set up the rudiments of industrialization. In any case it would come up against the implacable opposition of the former metropolis, which will have taken every possible precaution in the framework of neocolonialist agreements.

  If the authorities want to lift the country out of stagnation and take great strides toward development and progress, they first and foremost must nationalize the tertiary sector. The bourgeoisie, who wants the spirit of lucre and materialism to prevail as well as its contemptuous attitude toward the masses and the scandalous aspect of profit, or theft we should say, in fact invests massively in this sector. Once dominated by the colonists the tertiary sector is raided by the young national bourgeoisie. In a colonial economy the tertiary sector is by far the most important. For the sake of progress the decision to nationalize this sector must be made in the first few hours. But it is evident that such a nationalization must not take on the aspect of rigid state control. This does not mean putting politically uneducated citizens in managerial positions. Every time this procedure has been adopted it was found that the authorities had in fact contributed to the triumph of a dictatorship of civil servants, trained by the former metropolis, who quickly proved incapable of thinking in terms of the nation as a whole. These civil servants swiftly begin to sabotage the national economy and dismantle the national institutions, while corruption, fraud, misappropriation of goods, and black market trafficking set in. To nationalize the tertiary sector means organizing democratically the cooperatives for buying and selling. It means decentralizing these cooperatives by involving the masses in the management of public affairs. All this obviously cannot succeed unless the people are politically educated. Previously the need to clarify such a paramount issue once and for all would have been recognized. Today the principle of educating the masses politically is generally taken for granted in the underdeveloped countries. But it is apparent that this basic task is not being honestly addressed. The decision to politicize the people implies that the regime expects to make popular support a condition for any action undertaken. A government which declares its intent to politicize the people expresses its desire to govern with the people and for the people. It should not use a language designed to camouflage a bourgeois leadership. The bourgeois governments of the capitalist countries have long since left this infantile phase of power behind. They govern dispassionately using their laws, their economic power, and their police force. Now that their authority is solidly established they are not obliged to waste time with demagogic considerations. They govern in their own interest and make no nonsense about it. They have made themselves legitimate and are strong in their own right.

  The bourgeois caste of the newly independent countries has not yet attained either the cynicism or the serenity on which the old bourgeoisies based their power. Hence its concern to hide its deep-rooted convictions, to allay suspicions, in short to demonstrate its popularity. It is not by mobilizing dozens or hundreds of thousands of men and women three or four times a year that you politically educate the masses. These meetings, these spectacular rallies, are similar to the old preindependence tactics whereby you displayed your strength to prove to yourself and to others that you had the people on your side. The political education of the masses is meant to make adults out of them, not to make them infantile.

  This brings us to consider the role of the political party in an underdeveloped country. We have seen in the preceding pages that very often simplistic minds, belonging, moreover, to the emerging bourgeoisie, repeatedly argue the need for an underdeveloped country to have a strong authority, even a dictatorship, to head its affairs. With this in mind the party is put in charge of monitoring the masses. The party doubles the administration and the police force, and controls the masses not with the aim of ensuring their actual participation in the affairs of the nation but to remind them constantly that the authorities expect them to be obedient and disciplined. This dictatorship, which believes itself carried by history, which considers itself indispensable in the aftermath of independence, in fact symbolizes the decision of the bourgeois caste to lead the underdeveloped country, at first with the support of the people but very soon against them. The gradual transformation of the party into an intelligence agency is indicative that the authorities are increasingly on the defensive. The shapeless mass of the people is seen as a blind force that must be constantly held on a leash either by mystification or fear instilled by police presence. The party becomes a barometer, an intelligence service. The militant becomes an informer. He is put in charge of punitive missions against the villages. Embryonic opposition parties are eliminated at the stroke of a baton or in a hail of stones. Opposition candidates see their houses go up in flames. The police are increasingly provocative. Under these circumstances, there is, of course, but a single party and the government candidate receives 99 percent of the votes. We have to acknowledge that a certain number of governments in Africa operate along these lines. All the opposition parties who were generally progressive and strove for a greater participation of the masses in the management of public affairs, who wanted to see the arrogant and mercantile bourgeoisie brought to heel, have been bludgeoned and incarcerated into silence and then driven underground.

  In many of today’s independent regions of Africa the political party is being seriously bloated out of all proportion. In the presence of a party member the people keep mum, behave like sheep, and pay tribute to the government and the leader. But in the street, away from the village of an evening, in the café or on the river, the people’s bitter disappointment, their desperation, but also their pent-up anger, can be clearly heard. Instead of letting the people express their grievances, instead of making the free circulation of ideas between the people and the leadership its basic mission, the party erects a screen of prohibitions. The party leaders behave like common sergeants major and constantly remind the people of the need to keep “silence in the ranks.” This party, which claimed to be the servant of the people, which claimed to work for the people’s happiness, quickly dispatches the people back to their caves as soon as the colonial authorities hand over the country. The party will also commit many mistakes regarding national unity. For example, the so-called national party operates on a tribal basis. It is a veritable ethnic group which has transformed itself into a party. This party which readily proclaims itself national, which claims to speak in the name of the people as a whole, secretly and sometimes openly sets up a genuine ethnic dictatorship. We are no longer witness to a bourgeois dictatorship but to a tribal one. The ministers, private secretaries, ambassadors, and prefects are chosen from the leader’s ethnic group, sometimes even directly from his family. These regimes bas
ed on the family unit seem to repeat the age-old laws of endogamy and faced with this stupidity, this imposture and this intellectual and spiritual poverty, we are left with a feeling of shame rather than anger. These heads of government are the true traitors of Africa, for they sell their continent to the worst of its enemies: stupidity. This tribalization of power results, much as one would expect, in regionalist thinking and separatism. Decentralizing trends surface and triumph, the nation disintegrates and is dismembered. The leader who once cried: “African unity!” and thought of his own little family awakes to find himself saddled with five tribes who also want their own ambassadors and ministers; and as irresponsible, oblivious, and pathetic as ever he cries “treason.”

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  We have many times indicated the very often detrimental role of the leader. This is because in certain regions the party is organized like a gang whose toughest member takes over the leadership. The leader’s ancestry and powers are readily mentioned, and in a knowing and slightly admiring tone it is quickly pointed out that he inspires awe in his close collaborators. In order to avoid these many pitfalls a persistent battle has to be waged to prevent the party from becoming a compliant instrument in the hands of a leader. Leader comes from the English verb “to lead,” meaning “to drive” in French.15 The driver of people no longer exists today. People are no longer a herd and do not need to be driven. If the leader drives me I want him to know that at the same time I am driving him. The nation should not be an affair run by a big boss. Hence the panic that grips government circles every time one of their leaders falls ill, because they are obsessed with the question of succession: What will happen to the country if the leader dies? The influential circles, who in their blind irresponsibility are more concerned with safeguarding their lifestyle, their cocktail parties, their paid travel and their profitable racketeering, have abdicated in favor of a leader and occasionally discover the spiritual void at the heart of the nation.

  A country which really wants to answer to history, which wants to develop its towns and the minds of its inhabitants, must possess a genuine party. The party is not an instrument in the hands of the government. Very much to the contrary, the party is an instrument in the hands of the people. It is the party which decides on the policy enacted by the government. The party is not and never should be merely a political bureau where all the members of government and dignitaries of the regime feel free to congregate. Alas all too often it is the party which makes up the entire political bureau and its members reside permanently in the capital. In an underdeveloped country the leading party members should flee the capital like the plague. With the exception of a few, they should reside in the rural areas. Centralizing everything in the capital should be avoided. No administrative pretext can justify the bustle of the capital already overpopulated and overdeveloped compared with nine tenths of the territory. The party must be decentralized to the limit. This is the only way to revive regions that are dead, the regions that have not yet woken up to life.

  In practice there will be at least one member of the political bureau in each region and care should be taken not to appoint him regional head. He will not handle administrative responsibilities. The member of the regional political bureau is not obliged to hold the highest rank in the regional administration. He should not necessarily join forces with the authorities. For the people the party is not the authority but the organization whereby they, the people, exert their authority and will. The less confusion there is, the less duality of powers, the more the party can fulfill its role as guide and the more it will become a decisive guarantee for the people. If the party merges with the authorities, then this is the fastest way for the party militant to achieve his selfish ends, obtain a job in the administration, be promoted, change his rank, and make a career for himself.

  In an underdeveloped country the creation of dynamic regional bureaus halts the process of urban macrocephaly and the chaotic exodus of the rural masses toward the towns. The establishment, during the very first days of independence, of regional bureaus with the power to stimulate, revive, and accelerate the citizens’ consciousness is an inevitable prerequisite for any country that wants to progress. Otherwise, the party leaders and dignitaries of the regime congregate around the leader. The administration swells out of all proportion, not because it is expanding or specializing, but because more cousins and more militants expect a position and hope to slip into the works. And the dream of every citizen is to reach the capital, to have his piece of the pie. The towns and villages are deserted, the unaided, uneducated, and untrained rural masses turn their backs on an unrewarding soil and set off for the urban periphery, swelling the lumpenproletariat out of all proportion.

  Another national crisis is looming. We believe, on the contrary, that the interior, the back country, should be given priority. In the last resort, moreover, we see no drawback to the government convening elsewhere besides the capital. The myth of the capital must be debunked and the disinherited shown that the decision has been made to work in their interest. To a certain degree this is what the Brazilian government attempted to do with Brasilia. The arrogance of Rio de Janeiro was an insult to the Brazilian people. But unfortunately, Brasilia is still a new capital, as monstrous as the other one. Its only advantage is that today a road has been built through the forest. No, no serious objection can be made to the choice of a new capital, to relocating the entire government to one of the most destitute regions. The idea of a capital in underdeveloped countries is a commercial notion inherited from the colonial period. In the underdeveloped countries, however, we must increase our contacts with the rural masses. We must apply a national policy, i.e., a policy specifically aimed at the masses. We must never lose contact with the people who fought for their independence and a better life.

  Instead of delving into their diagrams and statistics, indigenous civil servants and technicians should delve into the body of the population. They should not bristle every time there is mention of an assignment to the “interior.” One should no longer hear their young wives threaten to divorce their husbands if they cannot manage to avoid a rural posting. Hence the party’s political bureau should give priority to the disinherited regions, and the artificial and superficial life of the capital, grafted onto the national reality like a foreign body, should occupy as small a place as possible in the life of the nation which, on the contrary, is fundamental and sacred.

  In an underdeveloped country the party must be organized in such a way that it is not content merely to stay in touch with the masses. The party must be the direct expression of the masses. The party is not an administration with the mission of transmitting government orders. It is the vigorous spokesperson and the incorruptible defender of the masses. In order to arrive at this notion of party we must first and foremost rid ourselves of the very Western, very bourgeois, and hence very disparaging, idea that the masses are incapable of governing themselves. Experience has proven in fact that the masses fully understand the most complex issues. One of the greatest services the Algerian revolution has rendered to Algerian intellectuals was to put them in touch with the masses, to allow them to see the extreme, unspeakable poverty of the people and at the same time witness the awakening of their intelligence and the development of their consciousness. The Algerian people, that starved, illiterate mass of men and women who for centuries were plunged into incredible darkness, have resisted the tanks and planes, the napalm and the psychological warfare, but above all, the corruption and the brainwashing, the traitors and the “national” armies of General Bellounis. The Algerian people have stood firm in spite of the weak-minded, the fence-sitters, and the would-be dictators. The Algerian people have stood firm because their seven-year struggle has opened up spheres they never even dreamed of. Today arms factories operate deep in the jebel several meters underground; today people’s tribunals function at every level and local planning commissions carve up the large agricultural estates and draw up the Algeria of tomorrow. An isolated i
ndividual can resist understanding an issue, but the group, the village, grasps it with disconcerting speed. Of course if we choose to use a language comprehensible only to law and economics graduates it will be easy to prove that the masses need to have their life run for them. But if we speak in plain language, if we are not obsessed with a perverse determination to confuse the issues and exclude the people, then it will be clear that the masses comprehend all the finer points and every artifice. Resorting to technical language means you are determined to treat the masses as uninitiated. Such language is a poor front for the lecturer’s intent to deceive the people and leave them on the sidelines. Language’s endeavor to confuse is a mask behind which looms an even greater undertaking to dispossess. The intention is to strip the people of their possessions as well as their sovereignty. You can explain anything to the people provided you really want them to understand. And if you think they can be dispensed with, that on the contrary they would be more of a nuisance to the smooth running of the many private and limited companies whose aim is to push them further into misery, then there is no more to be said.

  If you think you can perfectly govern a country without involving the people, if you think that by their very presence the people confuse the issue, that they are a hindrance or, through their inherent unconsciousness, an undermining factor, then there should be no hesitation: The people must be excluded. Yet when the people are asked to participate in the government, instead of being a hindrance they are a driving force. We Algerians during the course of this war have had the opportunity, the good fortune, of fully grasping the reality of a number of things. In some of the rural areas, the politico-military leaders of the revolution found themselves confronted with situations that required radical responses. We shall now address some of these situations.