Study Group - Texts on anti-imperialism

[BobKKKindle$]

This forum is now going to be home to the study groups as well, so I want to try and get a new one going. I think it would be good if those amongst us who support anti-imperialist struggles studied one of the classic texts which has motivated people around the world to rise up against their colonial oppressors and fight for their collective right to self-determination, as it will give us greater insight into the history of our politics, and enable us to better understand why it is so important for Marxists to support anti-imperialist struggles. I want this to be a serious group, but given that many of us have other commitments, it might be better to start with a short essay. Here are some suggestions I came up with:

The Pitfalls of National Consciousness by Frantz Fanon
Deflected Permanent Revolution by Tony Cliff
The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination by Lenin
On Development by Che Guevara

Personally, I'm in favour of the Fanon text, as I've never studied him before, and he should satisfy everyone regardless of ideological current.

[BobKKKindle$]

I'm going to start this study group in a few days, with the text that has the largest number of votes.

[thejambo1]

i would be interested in this. i voted for the tony cliff one,but would do any of them to be honest.

[Pawn Power]

I voted Fanon. I have be meaning to re-read The Wretched of the Earth. Fanon has been immensely important to the liberation struggles of the 60's and 70's and his work today has an strong influence on Africana Philosophy and even existencialism. Not to mention anti-imperialist movments.

[BobKKKindle$]

We're going to read the Fanon text. Unfortunately I didn't make the poll public so I don't know who voted, but anyone who wants to be part of the group should feel free to make a contribution at any time, as long as they are serious, and hopefully we can discuss some of the issues raised in the text and understand what it has historically been so inspirational. I haven't read the text yet, so I'll make my first comments in the next few days or so, but for now here is a short article from Socialist Worker on Fanon's life and main ideas:

The legacy of Frantz Fanon

Sheila McGregor looks back at the life and work of the radical psychiatrist

The World Social Forum in Kenya earlier this year was marked by a resurgence of interest in the ideas of Frantz Fanon, a thinker whose works have for many years been neglected.

Fanon was a North African writer and psychiatrist who became famous in the 1960s for his radical critique of colonial racism and its impact on colonised people.

His devastating description of how racism destroyed people, not only physically, but also in terms of their mental and emotional lives, inspired leaders of the Black Power movement in US.

But Fanon’s name was also inseparable from his most controversial and uncompromising stance – his defence of the right of colonised people to use violence in their fight for liberation.

Fanon was born in 1925 on the Caribbean island of Martinique, growing up under the French colonial regime that still rules there. He joined the French army to fight fascism during the Second World War – a journey that took him to Algeria and on to France. He subsequently went on to train as a psychiatrist in the French city of Lyon.

These times were Fanon’s first experience of racism and what it felt like to be a black man living in white society. His first book, Black Skin White Masks, was published in French in 1952.

This was two years before the defeat of the French army at Dien Bien Phu, the battle which routed the French in Vietnam. It was four years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in the segregated South of the US – an action that triggered the movement for black liberation in the US, which Fanon would have a profound influence on.

Colour bars

But in 1952 anti-colonial struggles were in their infancy. Racist ideas permeated all levels of society in Europe as well as the colonies controlled by the British, French and Portuguese. Colour bars operated openly in all areas of life – including housing, jobs and entertainment.

Black people were supposed to “prove themselves” by assimilating into the white world of the colonisers. They were expected to try to “become white” by forgetting their own language, traditions, cultures and ways of life.

This was a world where the French psychoanalyst Octave Mannoni was considered a liberal despite arguing that the native population willed the colonisation of Madagascar by the French because they suffered from a “dependency complex”.

Fanon’s searing reply to Mannoni in Black Skin White Masks pinpoints the racism of European colonial societies as the cause of the problems faced by natives. It illustrates how Fanon set out to root the mental illnesses faced by his patients in their real life experiences.

Committed to developing his work as a psychiatrist, Fanon arrived to take up a post at Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria in September 1953. He developed his distinctive approach to treating the mentally ill that rejected the pervasive racist views of a specific “Arab mentality”.

A year after Fanon arrived in Algeria, the national liberation struggle exploded. Fanon came into contact with the FLN, the Algerian independence movement, and gradually became more fully involved in the struggle.

He supplied essential equipment to the FLN, safe havens for militants on the run, as well as psychiatric treatment for the tortured and the torturers alike. Fanon quickly came to be seen as a foreign representative for the FLN at conferences abroad.

By 1957 Fanon was receiving regular death threats, making his work in Algeria unsafe. He left for France before travelling secretly to Tunisia. In his resignation letter, he described his experiences of colonial Algeria:

“If psychiatry is a medical technique which aspires to allow man to cease being alienated from his environment, I owe it to myself to assert that the Arab, who is permanently alienated in his own country, lives in a state of absolute depersonalisation. The status of Algeria? Systematic dehumanisation.”

Fanon’s next book, A Dying Colonialism, was a fascinating portrait of the impact the liberation movement had on all those involved in it.

He described how Algerian women fighters would put the veil on or take it off according to the needs of the liberation movement – if it was easier to pass the checkpoints dressed as a European then the veil would disappear. He also records out how the determination of colonial authorities to “liberate” Muslim women from the veil directly inspired more women to wear it.

Fanon also noted how relationships within the family underwent substantial changes as young men and women joined the resistance.

Fathers were no longer accorded automatic authority, since the needs of the liberation movement prevailed. Couples began to find a new equality as they shared a common goal in the liberation of their country.

But the ideas which came to be synonymous with Fanon were those set down in The Wretched Of The Earth. This was his final book, published after his death from leukaemia in December 1961, only months before Algerian independence was declared.

Dictated rather than written, this volume contains Fanon’s views on violence, the role of the peasantry in the liberation struggle, and his fears for what might happen after independence.

Fanon had a vision of how ordinary people could create a new world by overthrowing the old colonial order. He saw the struggle itself as a means for transforming human relationships and forging a new humanity.

Colonisation was a violent process that destroyed old ways of life and robbed the colonised of their means to live with dignity. Fanon argued against those who believed in limiting struggle to non-violent protest. A violent colonial power could only be broken by violent means, he said.

Fanon rightly understood that the French and British empires had taken land and resources by military conquest, and would only give these up when forced to do so. Algeria’s bitter independence struggle was proof of that analysis.

However, other aspects of Fanon’s views on violence are more problematic. He believed violence could act as a kind of cement, creating solidarity amongst different tribes, overcoming hierarchies and binding people to the liberation movement.

Profound impact

This idea that there was some kind of redemptive quality to violence would have a profound impact on the developing Black Power movement in the US. Radical black activists such as Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver were looking to counter the prevailing pacifist views of the civil rights movement.

Fanon’s ideas were a means to do this – but they also appeared to provide an alternative path to revolution that would bypass the bulk of working people in Europe and the US.

Many radicals during the late 1960s wrote off such groups of workers, believing they had been “bought off” by high wages and apparent job security in the post-war world.

Fanon’s views encouraged a deepening of the revolt against imperialism – but also pointed people away from workers and towards the dispossessed and the peasantry. This direction contrasted sharply with the views of Karl Marx, who saw workers as the crucial force that could draw together and lead the struggle for change.

Moreover, Marx argued that debate, solidarity and democracy were an essential part of any successful revolutionary movement. Violence was unavoidable – but only as a tool of the mass workers’ movement itself, not as a tactic in the hands of a separate guerrilla force.

Just before his death, Fanon became concerned with what independence might look like in the former colonies. He was familiar with developments in anti-colonial movements throughout Africa through his work for the FLN.

Fanon worried that independence could see a new capitalist class emerging in the liberated nations. This, he argued, would lead to a range of religious and ethnic rivalries as the new rulers hastened to gain from the departing colonists – a prediction that sadly proved to be correct.

Those who struggle against imperialism today have much in common with Fanon. We share his profound anger at how imperialism destroys every aspect of people’s lives.

We share his humanist vision of self-transformation – of men and women creating a new way of life free from racism and all forms of bigotry.

We believe, like he did, in standing shoulder to shoulder with the wretched of the earth. But we would also argue that the working class people who marched against the Iraq war in cities across the globe – such as London, Cairo, Cape Town and São Paulo – are the key to building the international solidarity needed to fight for and win our vision of a new and better world.

Octave Mannoni's view - that colonization is necessary or beneficial due to an inherent "dependency complex" - is interesting, because throughout history the leaders of imperialist states have always tried to justify imperialism as a "civilizing mission", designed to introduce the western values of freedom and equality to the ignorant natives who are apparently unable to realize these values on their own without the aid of an occupying power, and thereby obscure the basic fact that imperialism is ultimately a stage in the development of the capitalist system which arises from crises of profitability and benefits the ruling classes of the imperialist bloc at the expense of subjugated population. In fact, Rudyard Kipling's poem entitled 'The White Man's Burden' directly promotes this view and seeks to characterize impeiralism as a task which "white men" assume out of a sense of moral obligation. This theme even continues today despite the fact that direct colonization is no longer the preferred tool of imperialism, as the invasion of Afghanistan was framed as a struggle for womens liberation, even though the position of women in Afghan society has drastically deteriorated since the invasion due to the destruction of the education infrastructure and the prevalence of armed violence outside of the major urban centres. The impact of imperialism on national culture and the role of culture as a motivating force behind anti-imperialist struggles is one of the main themes within Fanon's work, as we will see when we go through the text, and hopefully we'll reach some conclusions on how Marxists should analyze culture during the imperialist epoch.

[Post-Something]

I think this is a fantastic idea. Are there any rules or time limitations I should know about before taking part?

I'll try and read the text within the next few days nonetheless.

[Ligeia]

I've read the Fanon-text like two days ago.
So: How will this be working?

[BobKKKindle$]

Anyone can make a contribution at any time, although if someone makes a point relating to something Fanon says near the beginning of the text I may move their post to keep things in order. If you want to begin the discussion, go ahead!

[Ligeia]

Anyone can make a contribution at any time, although if someone makes a point relating to something Fanon says near the beginning of the text I may move their post to keep things in order.

Does this mean, that you'll have to begin at the end or the middle but not at the beginning of the text?
Like analyzing in a chronological order?

[BobKKKindle$]

This study group will now begin.

Fanon begins his text by arguing that in a situation of national oppression, a strong sense of national identity capable of binding the population together and acting as a mobilizing force in the struggle against imperialism (or what he describes as "national consciousness") does not emerge immediately during the course of the struggle for national liberation, and instead initial struggles will focus on immediate economic concerns such as "forced labour, inequality of salaries [etc]". This comment is interesting, because there are numerous historical examples of uprisings and revolts which have been motivated by concerns of this sort and have failed to develop into nation-wide struggles against the colonial relationship itself because the participants did not see themselves as part of a broader whole, merely as people of a highly localized community. For example, the mutiny of the Indian sepoys in 1857 was sparked by the rumour that pork fat was being used to clean rifles, in violation of the Hindu religion - in this case a perceived religious offense was the focus of the "energies" of the "natives". As someone who was personally engaged in a struggle against imperialism in Algeria, and given that Fanon also had experience with the victims of imperialism in his capacity as a psychiatrist, this is not merely an intellectual issue - Fanon is pointing to the lack of national consciousness as a weakness, and something anti-imperialists must fight to overcome in order to open the possibility of a successful anti-imperialist struggle. Fanon's argument here exposes a crucial dilemma for Marxists - we are opposed to nationalism in the abstract because we believe that all workers fundamentally have the same interests and should not be turned against each other for the benefit of the ruling class of any country, but at the same time we are also anti-imperialists and acknowledge that nationalism can play a crucial role in removing an occupying power, and weakening imperialism as a global system, even if the eventual result is the creation of a new ruling class in place of the colonial administration. This dilemma yields a further set of questions - are all forms of nationalism the same, and should they all be treated in the same way by Marxists? Is national independence always a advance, even if there are no meaningful improvement in the conditions of the working class as a result?

At the end of his first paragraph, Fanon notes that the "educated classes" will, due to various weaknesses, such as their lack of "practical links" with the people, and their "laziness", "give rise to tragic mishaps". It is not immediately clear what Fanon means by this, but he does investigate the role of the middle class later in the text, and explains why the middle class may have such a weak and reactionary role in the struggle. The second paragraph follows the same theme as the first, the role of national consciousness, and also points out that the lack of this attribute undermines the unity and efforts of new countries, in that it creates the potential for tribalism, and leads of the nation being "passed over for the race". There are, again, numerous examples of this, of which the Rwandan genocide is perhaps the most famous, during which the Hutu militia carried out a genocide against the Tutsi population, due the widespread perception that the latter had been complicit in and benefited from Rwanda's colonial occupation. Fanon concludes the second paragraph by arguing that the lack of national consciousness and the associated problems are "the historical result of the incapacity of the national middle class to rationalize popular action, that is to say their incapacity to see into the reasons for that action". Fanon is explicitly identifying the middle class as responsible for the failure to develop national consciousness.

[BobKKKindle$]

In the next part of his analysis, Fanon considers in-depth the role of the middle class, and shows that in nations subject to colonization, the middle class is unable to raise itself to the position of a national bourgeoisie and establish industrial enterprises, and so takes on positions which benefit the imperialist powers by facilitating the exploitation of the nation's natural and human resources - Fanon expresses this in emotional terms by claiming that the main concern of the middle class is to keep in "the running and to be part of the racket" instead of carrying out industrialization and other progressive tasks. Fanon is making an important point here which has obvious implications for how workers and peasants living in colonized states should go about organizing against their oppressors in terms of the class forces they should cooperate with and the strategies they should adopt - the middle class has historically served as a sort of "middle man" between the working population and the colonizer in order to obscure and legitimize the exploitative relationship, and this would suggest that, for Fanon, the middle class cannot be trusted to adopt a principled anti-imperialist position, and may not have an objective interest in fighting imperialism, because its own class interests are so closely bound up with the presence of the colonizer. The parallels with Trotsky are obvious here, as Trotsky argued that the close links between the bourgeoisie and the interests of the imperialist powers mean that the bourgeoisie is incapable of carrying out its historic tasks, including the resolution of the national question, and so these tasks must fall to the proletariat, which, after completing these democratic tasks, will go on and extend the revolution to socialist tasks - hence the term permanent revolution. Mao, by contrast, argued that the anti-imperialist struggle involves drawing a distinction between the "bureaucratic" and "national" sections of the bourgeoisie, as the latter suffers oppression under imperialism and so has a progressive role to play in overthrowing imperialism and carrying out industrialization once the movement has succeeded in driving out the occupying force. Having examined the role of the middle class under the yoke of colonialism, Fanon goes on to examine the same class in a newly independent state.

[Magdalen]

I'd be very interested in this study group. Although I'm vaguely familiar with Fanon, I've never sat down and read The Wretched of the Earth cover to cover. I'll look at it on marxists.org just now, but I'll try and get myself a hard copy when I can.