0965 : Conditions of the Congolese Revolutionary Movement

By | 09/01/2010 |

The revolutionary movement in the Congo is inseparable from an
African revolution, which in turn is inseparable from the real global
abolition of all class divisions, which are the fundamental divisions
of a society that has now spread all over the earth, and from which
come all the oppositions between nations and races. Thus, the Congolese
movement must be firmly internationalist, and the complete enemy of all
exploitation. It must recognize its friends and enemies everywhere in
the world upon this sole real criteria, and combat all illusions.

by Guy Debord

The Congolese movement must thus ascertain and critique the real
state of the world and the revolutionaries forces in it. These forces
have suffered a half-century of defeat in the wake of the defeat of the
Russian Revolution: the seizure of power by a self-avowedly communist
bureaucracy that identified [itself] with the State so as to command
and exploit the Russian proletariat. This bureaucracy liquidated the
existing revolutionary workers movement in the industrially advanced
countries. It objectively imposed this choice upon the movement:
reformism in the service of national capitalism, or
counter-revolutionary domestication in the service of the bureaucracy
in Moscow.

It is because the revolutionary movement was vanquished in the
advanced countries that the colonized and semi-colonized countries have
had to fight against imperialism on their own. The only combatants on a
piece of the total revolutionary terrain, they have only been partially
repelled from it. In China, the struggle against American, European and
Japanese imperialism has only led to a bureaucratic power on the
Russian model. It is the delay in the industrialization of Russia —
and not strategic, revolutionary differences, [the appearance of] which
are only cynical impostures, as the policies of the Chinese State
demonstrate on every occasion that it finds profitable — that today
brings the Chinese bureaucracy into conflict with the Russian form (as
well as causes the national struggles of the "great powers").

Where it has been able to modify its form of domination before the
struggles of the colonized people have led to victorious armed clashes,
imperialism has remained the master of the "de-colonized" countries.
Senghor or Mba[1] replace a foreign governor, and there are changes in
the details of the uniforms worn by the police, who are paid and
organized by the same masters as before.

In many of the officially "independent" countries, a local dominant
class is assured of a certain independent domination, but for itself.
It is a mixture of bourgeoisie and bureaucracy (the bureaucrats direct
the State, the economy and the political participation of the masses).
From Nasser to Boudmedienne, from Soglo to Nkrumah,[2] one sees the
diverse formations of a ruling class in the State. Class struggle that
has been framed bureaucratically creates a separated leadership (as in
Algeria and Ghana) that more or less collaborates with the local
bourgeoisie. Or it entails the bureaucratization of societies in which
the bourgeoisie is weak with respect to the army (as in Egypt). Or the
traditional leaders seize hold of the new State bureaucracy, and thus
tend to constitute a bourgeoisie, not for productive work, but for the
organized pillaging of the country. It is thus a bourgeoisie that
doesn't accumulate anything, but which squanders the surplus-value
produced by local work and the foreign subsidies provided by the
imperialist States that are its protectors. When the bureaucracy as
such constitutes the dominant class, it accumulates capital,
effectively industrializes [production], but according to its own
interests. It appears as the under-developed version of the old
European bourgeoisie.

All these powers pile up their lies, these so-called socialists. In
this, too, they are an under-developed imitation of the bureaucracy
that defeated the workers movement in Europe. The revolutionary
movement in the Congo, as elsewhere, must speak the truth, which means
the abolition of all power separate from society, because separate
power is the root of ideology, that is to say, the lie. One must
unreservedly denounce and transform the global reality.

The only one who is "under-developed" is he or she who accepts the
image of the development of their masters. But the only universal human
development in precisely the abolition of masters, [the creation of]
the classless society. The Congolese movement cannot recognize any
positive value in the social forms of their former colonizers, nor in
the new forms of bureaucratic exploitation by those who speak of their
liberation following the Russian or Chinese model. One must understand
that the colonizers have themselves been colonized: amongst themselves
[chez eux], in their own lives, in the midst of all of the powerful
activity of the industrial societies, which can turn at any moment like
an enemy against the masses of workers that produce them, but which
will never master them, and are indeed mastered by them. One must also
understand that the liberators of the Chinese type must themselves be
liberated. The real revolutionary movement in Africa and elsewhere in
the world will help them. One must admit straight off that nothing of
what exists should be respected.

The weakness of all African revolutionary governments — including
that of Lumumba[3] — is that it becomes independent from the masses of
its own country long before becoming independent from foreign
governments. In Africa, the State is an imported article. By entering
the State, the revolutionary movement always separates itself from the
masses that it claims to represent but, without the free activity of
these masses, the country cannot reconstruct and defend a new form of
free society against all the foreign exploiters who will utilize their
forces to maintain the oppression that is useful to them.

A ruling class in the Congo (and possession of the State is a
sufficient social base for such a class) will always be dominated by
foreign power: subjected to the goals of global industry. The Congo is
too rich to be abandoned by foreign exploiters (see the use of ore from
Kivu and Katanga in the American "space industry"). The advance and the
delay of the economic zones of the world are profoundly intertwined,
each one supporting the others. All the forms of possible exploitation
will thus be successively tried by diverse powers, and the Congolese
will never be abstract "masters of themselves" (like English or Italian
citizens with their political illusions) until they actually become
their own masters. To be truly independent, they must be actually free.

The failure of Lumumba was not due to the "primitivism" of the State
in the Congo, but on the contrary due to the best-possible wishes of
the State, which was animated by a quite authentic passion for
independence. It was too late for [Lumumba to practice] Jacobinism, the
voluntarism of the State. The State was the trap in which Lumumba was
caught. He discovered that, for Congolese radicals, the government is
only a role that has no effective force. Lumumba believed he could
govern, and could only manage to put these intentions into words. And
he was killed for what he said. In memory of this deed, Lumumba's
successors should destroy the State.

The pseudo-nationalism of Mobutu[4] is merely the demagoguery of a
domestic servant to foreign power, whose masters have advised him to
play the master. They are changing the names of the towns in the Congo,
but they are not changing their owners.

The armed struggle of 1964, which was only repelled by the open
intervention of Belgian and American forces that came to help the
permanent mercenaries of a new colonization, did not know to organize
itself as a revolutionary movement as well as it knew how to fight. It
did not learn from the experience of Lumumba. It gave authoritarian
power to leaders who, with the exception of Pierre Mulele,[5] played at
governing and who didn't understand the nature of the governments that
claimed to support them. Finally, they split up in exile. They had
shared a power that was already separated from the Congolese base in
struggle. They had begun the State's bad games even before they
conquered their State.

The goal of the Congolese revolutionary movement is self-management,
which appeared in a limited form after the first victories of the
Algerian Revolution, and which Boumedienne[6] fiercely fought against.
Self-management must be totally realized. It is the sole guarantee of
independence. It and not the centralized State must surpass tribalism.
Ever since Lumumba, who was disarmed in part by tribalism, emigration
to urban life has increased the proportion of the population that has
found itself living a de-tribalized life (the disappearance of Bakongo
domination in Kinshasa, for example). On the other hand, each tribal
representative has become a statesman. Representation has detached
itself from its tribal base. It has become foreign. It must appear as
foreign.

The workers in the cities must organize themselves in Councils,
which must hold the totality of power forever. Their delegates, who
must be revocable at any moment by the base that mandated them, along
with those from the country sides, must create a permanent [form of]
communication that will be facilitated by the fact that the
self-management of the workers will not impose any rhythm of
development intended to catch up with some foreign model, but will have
the power to freely create all of social life from the existing base.
If the Congolese workers directly possess their own labor power and all
of the industrial resources of the country, they could indeed decide to
cut production.

The question of economic development can only be posed with freedom
of choice and in the framework of the worldwide revolutionary struggle.
It is obvious that the portion of unpaid work placed at the disposal of
a central delegation of the Councils must be used in the defense of the
existing revolutionary situation, thus in the support of its
propagation in all of Africa and everywhere in the world where it will
appear on the same model.

The organization of coherent Congolese revolutionaries who defend
these principles must itself be conceived in accordance with such
principles. This organization must not recognize any "elite" and must
be prepared to combat any social elite that would like to constitute
itself upon it. The organization must refuse every separation between
manual and intellectual labor, and it absolutely must support the
radical equalization of the levels of life, with direct democracy in
and around it. It will propose to organize the workers in the cities,
and to employ modern forms of economic and political struggle (strikes,
urban uprisings). It will absolutely condemn parliamentary
representation, which is a comedy in Europe and an even worse comedy in
Africa.

For the masses, the Congolese revolutionary movement must be, not
only the model for organizing, but the model for the coherence of what
they want, by drawing all the consequences of what spontaneously
occurs. Socialism in Africa must certainly reinvent itself completely,
not because this is Africa, but because socialism still doesn't exist
anywhere else! Thus, it cannot define itself as African socialism.

This movement must declare that it desires the total
de-Christianization of the country in the shortest possible time and
without backsliding. Religion is an alienation everywhere. But in
Africa it is an imported alienation, and thus a doubly foreign force.
It is thus quite fragile. It will be dissolved easily.

The enthusiasm of the Congolese in 1960, which was called their
lunacy, their desire to change life, was the revolutionary side of the
independence movement, and its participation in governmental
"rationality" had in fact been its illusion and its derisory failure.
The Congolese revolutionary movement must not break up any community so
as to industrialize a society of separated individuals; on the
contrary, it must realize community at a superior degree, larger and
richer. The movement [must] believe that festival, rest, dialogue and
play are the principal riches of its society. It will want to develop
such values, and to propose them as examples to revolutionaries in the
technologically advanced countries.

The Congolese revolutionary movement must not hide the fact that,
once victorious, it will never lay down its arms before the total
liberation of South Africa takes place, thanks to boycotts, blockades
or war. Just as it declares itself ready to fraternally welcome the
revolutionaries of all countries, it also demands that the rest of the
so-called civilized world be prepared from now on to receive the racist
South African minority, which cannot in any case hope to remain
innocently in the country that it has totally subjugated. Its
dispersion will obviously be its only chance for survival.

The Congolese revolutionary movement of today cannot place itself in
the history of negritude, because it enters into universal history. It
is a part of the revolutionary proletariat that rises to the surface in
every country. As such, it must combat [President Lyndon] Johnson and
Mao. It must avenge Lumumba and Liebknecht, Babeuf and Durruti.

[1] Translator's note: Leopold Sedar Senghor (1906-2001) was a
Congolese poet and President of the country, as was Leon Mba
(1902-1967).

[2] Translator's note: Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt); Houari
Boudmedienne (Algeria); Christophe Soglo (Benin); and Kwame Nkrumah
(Ghana).

[3] Note by Editions Gallimard: Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961) was the
Prime Minister of the Congo at the moment of its independence in 1960.
He was assassinated the following year after Mobutu's coup d'Etat,
which was perpetrated with the complicity of the mining companies in
Katanga and the Belgian Army, supported by the United States.

[4] Note by Editions Gallimard: Joseph-Desire Mobutu (1930-1997) was
the Chief of the Defense Staff in 1960. He overthrew the government of
Patrice Lumumba and delivered him to him to his enemies. He took power
in 1965 and would be chased out in May 1997, a few months before he
died in exile.

[5] Note by Editions Gallimard: Pierre Mulele (1929-1968) was the
Minister of Education under Patrice Lumumba. He conducted a guerilla
campaign against the Mobutu regime. He, too, would be assassinated and,
like Lumumba, his body was never found.

Written by Guy Debord, July 1966. Unpublished during Debord's
lifetime, it was included in Oeuvres (Editions Gallimard, 2006).
Translated from the French by NOT BORED! January 2010. Footnotes as
indicated.

http://www.notbored.org/congo.html

Posted in Fiche du Congo - en, Histoire - fdc - en

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