Hungarian Review, 1976 (22. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1976-09-01 / 8-9. szám

Capital and labour south of One of the biggest questions for the now independent Africa is: are the leaders of the independent African countries able to reckon with the realities of the social structure? In this regard one of the difficulties is that in the part of Africa lying south of the Sahara the process of the development of classes has still not ended. The African worker is undoubt­edly more rarely a worker than a peasant; most of the peasants have now become or are becoming the owners of their land; the native bourgeoisie is weak, lacks capital, and its dividing lines are growing indistinct. The national liberation struggle in Africa proceeded under very contradictory condi­tions. On the one hand, a very broad move­ment got under way, a movement of elemen­tal force sweeping along with it a lot of emo­tions, interests and endeavours; but the masses involved in the movement lived mainly outside the towns, and those who were town-dwellers were very heterogeneous. However, we can conceive the revolution going on in Africa merely as a process not in its different parts and pieces. Africa’s tens of millions did not take part (consciously or less consciously) in the revolution within their own possibilities and limits in order that the local bourgeoisie could take shape, become stronger and achieve self-determination. For them national independence did not only mean independence, but something more than that. A national independence which offers political rights but which in reality brings no important changes to their lives satisfies them only for a short time. If their lives after inde­pendence remain as they were before, the bitterness begins to gather again. In the final analysis everything depends now on what the forces forming the new state are capable of. Can they set themselves goals which contain democratic, anti-feudal, anti-capitalist re­forms? In Black Africa's jungles, in the mangrove swamps, in the savannahs far from the sea, labour is getting out on the road and becom­ing “free", and capital gets the chance—to quote the definition of Marx—“to buy the objective conditions of labour”. From this point of view great weight is attached to these questions: Is there a local bourgeoisie, and if so, is it connected with the concentrated sectors of production or not? How far is it interwoven with foreign capital? And to what extent are there aspirations which clash with the interests of foreign capi­tal? How great is its influence upon the devel­opment of the social processes? Where are its limits? And what are we in fact to under­stand by “bourgeoisie" in Tropical Africa? On the one hand, the ancient commer­cial capital created a tough, firmly-rooted, widespread system, and other “antediluvian" forms developed too, not only the traders’ and usurers’ capital which, although in emb­ryo, comprise in themselves the peculiarities of capitalist production relations. Many are of the opinion that no construc­tive role can be expected from the bourgeoisie "Labour is getting out on the road and becoming free" in Africa, that it played out its role even before it started, that the attainment of national independence has no sense, no content, and that the African revolution begins not with the achievement of self-determination, but with the taking over of power by the people. Frantz Fanon was right in saying that the African bourgeoisie is deficient in capital, that it carries on an intermediary activity, that it wants to take the place of the Euro­peans, that it is “small-scale”. But he was wide oflf the mark when he said the African bour­geoisie was a “caste petty in mind and num­bers”, that it had no ambitions. A thorough axamination reveals that this bourgeoisie cannot be classed as having only negative features. For one thing it is extremely prolific and tough. That quasi-stagnation which characterizes most Tropical African countries, the capital growth which in some cases is their own, is feeding this very bourgeoisie. Its unfavourable international situation, the distorted economic and social structure, the odds-on race it has to run with tremendous handicaps, forces it to the ground, and at most it can console itself with illusions of its equal rights, although in the hard world of finance it is even less equal than it is politi­cally. But there in the midst of a backward society—if no far-reaching social change takes place—it spreads ineradicably. Its exist­ence cannot be left out of consideration. This African bourgeoisie offers a completely different spectacle from the European one. Fishing-net owners, stockyard owners, the owners of a multitude of small farms—by the standard of developed countries their capit is insignificant; only against the backgrour of their country’s backwardness is it conside able. To explain how the rich man becomes capitalist is not difficult. And we can al: define easily what in Furopean eyes mak the poor man a capitalist—after all the crit rion of capitalist production is not that tl means of production should be modern, ar that the wage-earners should work in bit overalls. But where is that borderline beyot which we speak about a bourgeoisie, a capit: ist class? Or if we do not speak about th; then about what? For the “mummy” with widespread network, who in Europe would most be taken for a stall-keeper but wou never be considered as a capitalist trader, is "This African bourgeoisie offers a completely different spectacle from the European one... by the standard of developed countries their capital is insignificant."

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