Frantz Fanon and The Violent Route to Decolonization
By Oscar Medina
After ejecting a colonial regime, newly independent countries may take two distinct routes to establish a new government. In Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, two routes and two governments emerge after the colonial regime fails: a national bourgeoisie government and a national liberation government. Using Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of political situations and political struggles, this essay describes how Fanon lays out two possible outcomes that can emerge. Highlighting where Fanon makes note that only through violence can a national liberation movement achieve decolonization, I conclude with Fanon’s argument that a government of the national liberation is the peoples route to decolonization.
Economic Forces of National Bourgeoisie Government
In the national bourgeoisie model, the small elite class will take over the
economy the absence of the colonial regime. However, the national middle class is an underdeveloped middle class (p.149). The national middle class has practically no economic power, and it is in no way equivalent with the bourgeoisie of the colonizer’s mother country (p.149). It lacks economic power because the national bourgeoisie is not involved with the productive capacities of the country (p.149). The economy has always developed outside the limits of the national bourgeoisie’s knowledge (p.151). Therefore, the middle class falls into deplorable stagnation and will seek out financial assistance from the private companies of the mother country for manufactured products and machines under the condition that it keeps the factories in the mother country going (p.104). The economic system of the national bourgeoisie is one that sustains exploitation in the colonized country by exploiting national raw material and the peasantry. The underdeveloped middle class, reduced in numbers and without capital, refuses to follow the path of revolution. The national bourgeoisie of the colonized country identifies itself with the decadence (corruption) of the bourgeoisie of the West because “to [the national bourgeoisie] nationalization quite simply means the transfer of power to the native [elite] class” (p.153).
Economic Forces of the National Liberation Government
Under the national liberation government, economic dependence on the mother country no longer exists. The national liberation government breaks all relationships with the colonizer. The national liberation movement will redistribute wealth and establish a socialist government, free from capitalist exploitation. It will first nationalize the middleman’s trading sector (p.179). It will nationalize trade within the first few hours of national independence (p.180). Under the national liberation government people are invited to partake in the management of the country (p.189). Unlike the national bourgeoisie government, laws are passed in favor of the people who work and till the land (p.191).
Military Forces
Under the national bourgeoisie government, capitalism reigns and the nationalist bourgeoisie is frightened by violence (p.66). Under the national liberation government, the colonized people fling themselves with whatever arms they have against colonialism (p.79). The army and the police force constitute the pillars of the national bourgeoisie regime (p.172). The policeman or the customs officers join the procession of corruption (p.172). Under the national liberation government, the colonized people are very well aware of international political life and act in terms of this universal violence (p.80). Under the national bourgeoisie, “the militants are only called upon when so-called popular manifestations are afoot, or international conferences, or independence celebrations.”(p.171). The national liberation government makes it a national service in civil society or the military, so that every able-bodied citizen can take his or her place in a fighting unit for the defense of national and social liberties (p.202)
Political Forces of National Bourgeoisie Government
Political forces shape the national bourgeoisie government into a single party with a single objective. The single party may govern through a dictatorship that benefits only the national bourgeoisie (p.165). The objective of the party becomes a means of private advancement that creates an economy based on narrow interest (p.171). Inside the new regime there exist an inequality of wealth and monopolization of resources. Hence, privileges multiply, corruption triumphs, and morality declines (p.171). The party of national bourgeoisie government keeps the masses down and immobilized. Fanon adds:
“The bourgeois dictatorship of underdeveloped countries draws its strength from the existence of a leader. We know that in the well-developed countries the bourgeois dictatorship is the result of the economic power of the bourgeoisie. In underdeveloped countries…the leader stands for moral power, in whose shelter the thin and poverty-stricken bourgeoisie of the young nation decides to get rich. The people…spontaneously put their trust in this patriot (p.166). The leader will be of the same racial ethnic group as the colonized masses, claims independence and gains consent from the people to establish nationalist government, a government that reigns no differently than the prior colonizers except under a different flag. In fact, “from time to time the leader makes an effort; he speaks on the radio or makes a tour of the country to pacify the people, to calm them and bemuse them” (p.169). The national bourgeoisie is “unable to bring about the existence of coherent social relations” (p.164). The political forces of the national bourgeoisie, a dictator and party, does not create a state that reassures the ordinary citizen, but rather one that rouses the peoples’ anxiety (p.165).
Political Forces of National Liberation Government
The national liberation government develops a social and political party. However, their “party is not a tool in the hands of the government…on the contrary, the party is a tool in the hands of the people… it is they who decide on the policy that the government carries out”(p.185). The national liberation government sees the party as an organism through which the people exercise their authority and express their will (p.185). The national liberation political party decentralizes. This party avoids centralization in the city and expands to the rural and country regions. The party sees this act as “the only way to bring life to regions which are dead, those regions which are not yet awaked to life” (p.185). The political bureau of the party considers treating the forgotten districts in a very privileged manner (p.187).
The national liberation movement will lead the people not only toward a national consciousness but a social and political consciousness. The party believes that nationalism will not do it alone. “[Nationalism], if not enriched and deepened by a very rapid transformation into a consciousness of social and political needs, in other words into humanism, it leads up a blind alley” (p.204).
The national liberation government will be “by the people for the people”(p.205). The party is the direct expression of the masses”(p187). The national liberation government makes it their duty to create national policies for the masses (p.187).
Two Trajectories: National Bourgeoisie and National Liberation Movement
Fanon describes two possible societies that might emerge based on different class forces that unite and collide during the unstable moment. The independent national bourgeoisie wants to maintain a similar social structure to that of the colonial settlers: to keep the lumpenproliterat and peasant in their place. The peasantry and lumpenproliterat (country people) are spontaneous, they rebel at times, but remain unorganized. The national party is appealing to the peasantry and lumpenproliterat because in their villages the anti-colonial period still echoes in their hearts, they still remember their fight against the conquerors and still have pre-colonial memories (p.114). The nationalist party , because it’s centralized in the inner-towns and city, struggles to organize the peasantry and lumpenproliterat.
Trade-union officials have no idea how to organize the country people, so they step into working class political action to try to establish working links with the peasants (p.123). This working link does not actually work because, “ the peasants confronted with this national middle class and these workers… look on, shrugging their shoulders: they shrug their shoulders because they know very well that both sides look on them as a makeweight”(p.123). In other words, the unions and the political parties use the peasants to push forward their agenda; an agenda that uses the peasantry and the country people. This is the point where the people question nationalism.
Political Education
The national liberation movement works to politically educate the people because the political education of the people is seen to be a historic necessity (p.138). The national liberation movement urges a political education because without it national unity crumbles:
“To educate the masses politically is to make the totality of the nation a reality to teach citizen. It is to make the history of the nation part of the personal experience of each of its citizens” (p.200). Therefore to educate the masses politically means to teach the masses that everything depends on them (p.197). According to Fanon, “a government which declares that it wishes to educate the people politically thus expresses its desire to govern with the people and for the people” (p180).Fanon and Gramsci posit a similar strategy to organize a counter-hegemony. Gramsci posits that collective political consciousness will unite, politicize, and engage them the social group in political reform that will work to center the general interest of the subordinate group (Gramsci, p.181-182). This collective political consciousness, in Gramsci theory starts with “a critical elaboration… of what one really is… ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical process,” in order to understand his or her sociopolitical, historical and global position in international affairs (Gramsci, 324). Fanon is similar to Gramsci in that he believes that through political education (a philosophy of praxis grounded in history) the colonized will move from “common sense” to “good sense” to let the political education and philosophy of praxis guide their actions (Gramsci, 330).
Violence
For Fanon, the national liberation movement requires violence in order for it to be a successful struggle, violence is required. Fanon notes that violence constitutes a terrible menace for the oppressor (p.70). It is through violence that the colonized people find their freedom (p.86). Fanon also posits that in the colonial country the peasants are the first exploited group to realize that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain and realize that only violence pays (p.61). According to Fanon, “violence alone, violence committed by the people, violence organized… makes it possible for the masses to understand social truths” (p.147). At the individual level, Fanon asserts that “violence is a cleansing force that frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect”(p.94). Without violence, “without that knowledge of the practice of action there’s nothing but a fancy-dress parade and the blare of the trumpets” (p.147). Fanon makes violence a fundamental element of decolonization. Violence, for some, appears to be a “backward” method to do away with oppression; however, violence, in this case, is a politically educated method that attempts to humanize the colonized people.
When the people have taken violent part in the national liberation they will allow no one to set themselves up as masked “liberators”(p.94). This is part of the advice that Fanon gives on the transition to a post-revolutionary period. The national liberation government shall not attempt to seek out a leader; rather it shall be a government by the people for the people. Nationalism has to be enriched and deepened in social and political consciousness in order to form hegemony of national liberation. The route to decolonization, in Fanon theory, will need violence. An armed struggle lead by the marginalized peasantry (the wretched) will lead the revolutionary armed forces to do away with colonial oppression.
Fanon’s text is relevant at many levels. His text covers strengthens and weaknesses of the political forces at work after a colonial regime leaves a country. Using his theories and concepts, one is exposed not only to the impact of colonialism and imperialism, but also the complex forces and radical actions taken by the colonized to overthrow such an oppressive system. Both Fanon and Gramsci analyze the situations during an unstable government and the different routes that can emerge. Both authors give insight to the internal forces (social, political and economical) that formulate institutions of power. Ultimately, Fanon sees violence and an armed struggle as a key and justified element to reorganize the masses.
Work Cited
Fanon, Frantz (2004). The Wretched of the Earth (Richard Philcox, Trans.). New York: Grove Press. (Original work published 1963)
Gramsci, Antonio (2005). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith, Trans.). New York: International Publishers. (Original work published 1971)
After ejecting a colonial regime, newly independent countries may take two distinct routes to establish a new government. In Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, two routes and two governments emerge after the colonial regime fails: a national bourgeoisie government and a national liberation government. Using Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of political situations and political struggles, this essay describes how Fanon lays out two possible outcomes that can emerge. Highlighting where Fanon makes note that only through violence can a national liberation movement achieve decolonization, I conclude with Fanon’s argument that a government of the national liberation is the peoples route to decolonization.
Economic Forces of National Bourgeoisie Government
In the national bourgeoisie model, the small elite class will take over the
economy the absence of the colonial regime. However, the national middle class is an underdeveloped middle class (p.149). The national middle class has practically no economic power, and it is in no way equivalent with the bourgeoisie of the colonizer’s mother country (p.149). It lacks economic power because the national bourgeoisie is not involved with the productive capacities of the country (p.149). The economy has always developed outside the limits of the national bourgeoisie’s knowledge (p.151). Therefore, the middle class falls into deplorable stagnation and will seek out financial assistance from the private companies of the mother country for manufactured products and machines under the condition that it keeps the factories in the mother country going (p.104). The economic system of the national bourgeoisie is one that sustains exploitation in the colonized country by exploiting national raw material and the peasantry. The underdeveloped middle class, reduced in numbers and without capital, refuses to follow the path of revolution. The national bourgeoisie of the colonized country identifies itself with the decadence (corruption) of the bourgeoisie of the West because “to [the national bourgeoisie] nationalization quite simply means the transfer of power to the native [elite] class” (p.153).
Economic Forces of the National Liberation Government
Under the national liberation government, economic dependence on the mother country no longer exists. The national liberation government breaks all relationships with the colonizer. The national liberation movement will redistribute wealth and establish a socialist government, free from capitalist exploitation. It will first nationalize the middleman’s trading sector (p.179). It will nationalize trade within the first few hours of national independence (p.180). Under the national liberation government people are invited to partake in the management of the country (p.189). Unlike the national bourgeoisie government, laws are passed in favor of the people who work and till the land (p.191).
Military Forces
Under the national bourgeoisie government, capitalism reigns and the nationalist bourgeoisie is frightened by violence (p.66). Under the national liberation government, the colonized people fling themselves with whatever arms they have against colonialism (p.79). The army and the police force constitute the pillars of the national bourgeoisie regime (p.172). The policeman or the customs officers join the procession of corruption (p.172). Under the national liberation government, the colonized people are very well aware of international political life and act in terms of this universal violence (p.80). Under the national bourgeoisie, “the militants are only called upon when so-called popular manifestations are afoot, or international conferences, or independence celebrations.”(p.171). The national liberation government makes it a national service in civil society or the military, so that every able-bodied citizen can take his or her place in a fighting unit for the defense of national and social liberties (p.202)
Political Forces of National Bourgeoisie Government
Political forces shape the national bourgeoisie government into a single party with a single objective. The single party may govern through a dictatorship that benefits only the national bourgeoisie (p.165). The objective of the party becomes a means of private advancement that creates an economy based on narrow interest (p.171). Inside the new regime there exist an inequality of wealth and monopolization of resources. Hence, privileges multiply, corruption triumphs, and morality declines (p.171). The party of national bourgeoisie government keeps the masses down and immobilized. Fanon adds:
“The bourgeois dictatorship of underdeveloped countries draws its strength from the existence of a leader. We know that in the well-developed countries the bourgeois dictatorship is the result of the economic power of the bourgeoisie. In underdeveloped countries…the leader stands for moral power, in whose shelter the thin and poverty-stricken bourgeoisie of the young nation decides to get rich. The people…spontaneously put their trust in this patriot (p.166). The leader will be of the same racial ethnic group as the colonized masses, claims independence and gains consent from the people to establish nationalist government, a government that reigns no differently than the prior colonizers except under a different flag. In fact, “from time to time the leader makes an effort; he speaks on the radio or makes a tour of the country to pacify the people, to calm them and bemuse them” (p.169). The national bourgeoisie is “unable to bring about the existence of coherent social relations” (p.164). The political forces of the national bourgeoisie, a dictator and party, does not create a state that reassures the ordinary citizen, but rather one that rouses the peoples’ anxiety (p.165).
Political Forces of National Liberation Government
The national liberation government develops a social and political party. However, their “party is not a tool in the hands of the government…on the contrary, the party is a tool in the hands of the people… it is they who decide on the policy that the government carries out”(p.185). The national liberation government sees the party as an organism through which the people exercise their authority and express their will (p.185). The national liberation political party decentralizes. This party avoids centralization in the city and expands to the rural and country regions. The party sees this act as “the only way to bring life to regions which are dead, those regions which are not yet awaked to life” (p.185). The political bureau of the party considers treating the forgotten districts in a very privileged manner (p.187).
The national liberation movement will lead the people not only toward a national consciousness but a social and political consciousness. The party believes that nationalism will not do it alone. “[Nationalism], if not enriched and deepened by a very rapid transformation into a consciousness of social and political needs, in other words into humanism, it leads up a blind alley” (p.204).
The national liberation government will be “by the people for the people”(p.205). The party is the direct expression of the masses”(p187). The national liberation government makes it their duty to create national policies for the masses (p.187).
Two Trajectories: National Bourgeoisie and National Liberation Movement
Fanon describes two possible societies that might emerge based on different class forces that unite and collide during the unstable moment. The independent national bourgeoisie wants to maintain a similar social structure to that of the colonial settlers: to keep the lumpenproliterat and peasant in their place. The peasantry and lumpenproliterat (country people) are spontaneous, they rebel at times, but remain unorganized. The national party is appealing to the peasantry and lumpenproliterat because in their villages the anti-colonial period still echoes in their hearts, they still remember their fight against the conquerors and still have pre-colonial memories (p.114). The nationalist party , because it’s centralized in the inner-towns and city, struggles to organize the peasantry and lumpenproliterat.
Trade-union officials have no idea how to organize the country people, so they step into working class political action to try to establish working links with the peasants (p.123). This working link does not actually work because, “ the peasants confronted with this national middle class and these workers… look on, shrugging their shoulders: they shrug their shoulders because they know very well that both sides look on them as a makeweight”(p.123). In other words, the unions and the political parties use the peasants to push forward their agenda; an agenda that uses the peasantry and the country people. This is the point where the people question nationalism.
Political Education
The national liberation movement works to politically educate the people because the political education of the people is seen to be a historic necessity (p.138). The national liberation movement urges a political education because without it national unity crumbles:
“To educate the masses politically is to make the totality of the nation a reality to teach citizen. It is to make the history of the nation part of the personal experience of each of its citizens” (p.200). Therefore to educate the masses politically means to teach the masses that everything depends on them (p.197). According to Fanon, “a government which declares that it wishes to educate the people politically thus expresses its desire to govern with the people and for the people” (p180).Fanon and Gramsci posit a similar strategy to organize a counter-hegemony. Gramsci posits that collective political consciousness will unite, politicize, and engage them the social group in political reform that will work to center the general interest of the subordinate group (Gramsci, p.181-182). This collective political consciousness, in Gramsci theory starts with “a critical elaboration… of what one really is… ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical process,” in order to understand his or her sociopolitical, historical and global position in international affairs (Gramsci, 324). Fanon is similar to Gramsci in that he believes that through political education (a philosophy of praxis grounded in history) the colonized will move from “common sense” to “good sense” to let the political education and philosophy of praxis guide their actions (Gramsci, 330).
Violence
For Fanon, the national liberation movement requires violence in order for it to be a successful struggle, violence is required. Fanon notes that violence constitutes a terrible menace for the oppressor (p.70). It is through violence that the colonized people find their freedom (p.86). Fanon also posits that in the colonial country the peasants are the first exploited group to realize that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain and realize that only violence pays (p.61). According to Fanon, “violence alone, violence committed by the people, violence organized… makes it possible for the masses to understand social truths” (p.147). At the individual level, Fanon asserts that “violence is a cleansing force that frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect”(p.94). Without violence, “without that knowledge of the practice of action there’s nothing but a fancy-dress parade and the blare of the trumpets” (p.147). Fanon makes violence a fundamental element of decolonization. Violence, for some, appears to be a “backward” method to do away with oppression; however, violence, in this case, is a politically educated method that attempts to humanize the colonized people.
When the people have taken violent part in the national liberation they will allow no one to set themselves up as masked “liberators”(p.94). This is part of the advice that Fanon gives on the transition to a post-revolutionary period. The national liberation government shall not attempt to seek out a leader; rather it shall be a government by the people for the people. Nationalism has to be enriched and deepened in social and political consciousness in order to form hegemony of national liberation. The route to decolonization, in Fanon theory, will need violence. An armed struggle lead by the marginalized peasantry (the wretched) will lead the revolutionary armed forces to do away with colonial oppression.
Fanon’s text is relevant at many levels. His text covers strengthens and weaknesses of the political forces at work after a colonial regime leaves a country. Using his theories and concepts, one is exposed not only to the impact of colonialism and imperialism, but also the complex forces and radical actions taken by the colonized to overthrow such an oppressive system. Both Fanon and Gramsci analyze the situations during an unstable government and the different routes that can emerge. Both authors give insight to the internal forces (social, political and economical) that formulate institutions of power. Ultimately, Fanon sees violence and an armed struggle as a key and justified element to reorganize the masses.
Work Cited
Fanon, Frantz (2004). The Wretched of the Earth (Richard Philcox, Trans.). New York: Grove Press. (Original work published 1963)
Gramsci, Antonio (2005). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith, Trans.). New York: International Publishers. (Original work published 1971)
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