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The Bourgeoisie and Revolution in the Congo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

The anti-colonial revolution was a great event in the lives of the Congolese people, and both the masses and their bourgeois leaders expected a lot from it. The masses had accepted the leadership of the clerks and other educated groups, who presented themselves as their spokesmen and representatives to the colonial Government. Their hope was that their living conditions would be changed after independence, and this was in fact what their leaders promised them. But this promise was not honoured after independence, for many reasons, one of which was the fact that the anti-colonial revolution had masked the conflicts of interest opposing the bourgeois leaders to the people. These conflicts became open after independence, when, instead of fulfiffing their promises, the leaders responded to popular demands either with more promises or with repression. This situation ultimately led to the emergence of the ‘second independence’ movement in the Kwilu region and in the eastern part of the new Republic.

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Article
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

Page 512 note 1 Richard Centers is a good example of those who emphasise the ‘essentially subjective’ character of social classes as ‘psycho-social groupings’. Cf. The Psychology of Social Classes (New York, 1961)Google Scholar. On the false dichotomy between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ theories, see Dahrendorf, Ralf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, 1959), pp. 145–7.Google Scholar

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Page 513 note 3 Ibid. p. 49.

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Page 515 note 1 Comeliau, Christian, in Fonctions économiques et pouvoir politique (Kinshasa, 1965)Google Scholar, uses the degree of participation in the money economy as a criterion of group distinction in the Congo. This criterion, which I accept, seems to be in conifict with what Marx says about ‘the size of one's purse [as] a purely quantitative difference by which any two individuals of the same class may be brought inte conflict”. But, if income is not therefore a sufficient condition of class distinction, it is nevertheless a necessary condition. Cf. Marx, , ‘Die moralisierende Kritik und die kritisierende Moral’, in Deutscher-Brusseler Zeitung, 28 10-25 11 1847Google Scholar, in Marx, Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy edited by T. B. Bottomore and M. Rubel (London, 1956), p. 201Google Scholar. Italics in the original.

Page 515 note 2 Centers, op. cit. pp. 27–9.

Page 515 note 3 The necessity of a revolution arises from Marx's notions of alienation, reification, and the fetishism of commodities; these notions have a rich philosophical content and are too complex to be discussed here.

Page 516 note 1 The German Ideology, p. 69. See also The Manftsto of the Communist Party (1848) in Basic Writings, p. 17.

Page 516 note 2 Kenneth Boulding defines the field of conflict as ‘that set of relevant variables within which conflict movements may occur that make one party worse off and one better off in their own estimation’. Conflict and Defense (New York, 1963), p. 153Google Scholar. On the variability of attitudes and behaviour among social classes, see Converse, Philip E., ‘The Shifting Role of Class in Political Attitudes and Behavior’, in Maccoby, E. E.et al. (eds.), Readings in Social Psychology (New York, 1958), pp. 338–99.Google Scholar

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Page 518 note 1 That is, ‘the unemployed’, ‘intellectuals’, ‘traders’, ‘villagers’, and ‘workers’.

Page 518 note 2 Fox, RenÉe C., de Craemer, Willy, and Ribeaucourt, Jean-Marie, ‘The Second Independence: a case study of the Kwilu rebellion in the Congo’, in Comparative Studies in Society and History (Ann Arbor), VIII, I, 10 1965, p. 91.Google Scholar

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Page 518 note 4 Comeliau, op. cit. pp. 71–500, actually lists eight social groups; I have omitted the European minority, although its influence on Congolese politics is of no little importance.

Page 518 note 5 Some Africanists question the use of the term lumpenproletariat for the marginally employed and the unemployed urban population. Raymaekers' description of this group, especially the unemployed in Kinshasa, brings out almost all the characteristics of this class as delineated by Marx.

Page 519 note 1 Comeliau, Op. Cit. pp. 90–5.

Page 519 note 2 This is the view also of Raymaekers, op. cit. pp. 12–31.

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Page 523 note 2 This distinction does not exclude the possibility of a revolution that is at the same time national and social (e.g. Vietnam, Algeria, Guinea-Bissau). One of the requisites is that the leaders be ready to break with their bourgeois past and become one with the people–a development that does not seem to be well established in post-colonial Algeria.

Page 523 note 3 This account fits the pattern of revolutionary development described by David Thomson for the 1848 national revolutions in Europe: ‘Radical agitators had prepared the revolutions, and nationalist leaders emerged once they had begun; but the initiative in making revolution came not from such leaders but from the masses themselves.’ Cf. Europe since Napoleon (New York, 1964), p. 210.Google ScholarPubMed

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Page 524 note 2 On the intrusion of all kinds of foreign adventurers and show girls in this category of ‘technicians’, see Kalanda, Mabika, La Remise en question (Brussels, 1967), p. 81Google Scholar.

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Page 526 note 3 Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York edn, 1966), p. 50.Google Scholar

Page 527 note 1 What happened is what Marx calls a partial revolution, or a purely political revolution, ‘which leaves the pillars of the house standing’. Cf. Critique de la philosophie du droit de Hegel (Paris, 1895), pp. 1112.Google Scholar

Page 528 note 1 This is a paraphrase of one sentence from a letter by Congolese soldiers published in Emancipation (Léopoldville), 19 03 1960Google Scholar, and cited in Francis Monheim, Mobutu, l'homme seul (Brussels, 1962), p. 72.Google Scholar

Page 528 note 2 Kalanda, Mabika, in Tabalayi (Kinshasa, 1963), pp. 27 ffGoogle Scholar., shows how the politicians were clever enough to take advantage of the people's new equation of ‘talking politics’ and ‘telling lies’ as a way of de-politicising the masses and of silencing political opponents.

Page 528 note 3 Kalanda, La Remise en question, 83–4: ‘Mais il semble tout de méme établi que l'évolué congolais estime le moment venu de réaliser un réve vieux de plus de vingt ans et relatif àassimilation des colonisés par les colonisateurs. Il y a la une situation àl stigmatiser.’

Page 529 note 1 Fanon, op. cit. p. 143.

Page 529 note 2 Baran, Paul A., The Political Economy of Growth (New York, 1968), pp. 234–7.Google Scholar

Page 530 note 1 Marx, , The Eighteenth Brumaire, in Basic Writings, pp. 320–3Google Scholar. See also Fanon, , Black Skin, White Masks (New York edn., 1967), passim.Google Scholar

Page 530 note 2 Mulopwe was the title of emperors in the old Baluba empires. On the concept of bulopwe, see Vansina, Jan, Kingdoms of the Savanna (Madison, 1966), pp. 71–8Google Scholar. See also Kalanda, A. Mabika, Baluba et Lulua (Brussels, 1959)Google Scholar, on the migrations of Kasai Baluba.

Page 530 note 3 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Eloge de la philosophic (Paris, 1953), pp. 66–7.Google Scholar