The Wretched of The Earth

by Frantz Fanon

  During the colonial phase the nationalist labor unions represent a spectacular strike force. In the towns these unions can paralyze or at least disrupt at any moment the colonialist economy. Since the European settlements are mostly confined to the towns, the psychological repercussions are considerable: no gas, no electricity, no garbage pickup, and produce lies rotting on the wharfs.

  These metropolitan enclaves, which the towns represent in the colonial context, are profoundly affected by this labor unrest. The stronghold of colonialism, the capital, has difficulty withstanding such a battering. But the rural masses of the interior remain unaffected by this confrontation.

  There is, therefore, a clear disproportion from the national point of view between the importance of the labor unions and the rest of the nation. After independence the workers enlisted in the unions have the impression of running on empty. Once the limited objectives they set themselves have been achieved, they prove to be extremely precarious given the huge task of nation building. Faced with a national bourgeoisie whose relations with the government are often very close, the union leaders discover they can no longer confine themselves to labor disputes. Congenitally isolated from the rural masses, incapable of extending their influence beyond the urban periphery, the unions adopt an increasingly political stance. In fact they become political candidates. They endeavor by every means possible to drive the bourgeoisie into a corner: protests are made against keeping foreign bases on national soil, commercial deals are exposed, and criticism is voiced against the national government’s foreign policy. The workers, now “independent,” are getting nowhere. The unions realize in the aftermath of independence that if their social demands were to be expressed they would scandalize the rest of the nation. The workers are in fact pampered by the regime. They represent the most well-to-do fraction of the people. Any unrest aimed at winning improved living standards for the laborers and dock workers would not only be unpopular but might very well stir up the hostility of the disinherited rural population. The unions, banned from union activities, make no headway.

  This malaise conveys the objective need for a social program which, at long last, concerns the entire nation. The unions suddenly discover that the interior must also be enlightened and organized. But since they never bothered to establish working links between their organization and the peasantry, who represent the only spontaneously revolutionary force in the country, the unions prove to be ineffective and realize the anachronistic nature of their program.

  The union leaders, immersed in worker-control politics, inevitably reach the preparatory stage for a coup d’état. But here again the interior is excluded. It is a showdown restricted to the national bourgeoisie and the unionized workers movement. The national bourgeoisie, appropriating the old traditions of colonialism, flexes its military and police muscle, whereas the unions organize meetings and mobilize tens of thousands of their members. The peasants shrug their shoulders as they muse over this national bourgeoisie and these workers who after all have enough to eat. The peasants shrug their shoulders for they realize that both parties treat them as a makeshift force. The unions, the parties and the government, in a kind of immoral Machiavellianism, use the peasant masses as a blind, inert force of intervention. As a kind of brute force.

  In certain circumstances, however, the peasant masses make a crucial contribution to the struggle for national liberation as well as to the course of action opted for by the future nation. For the underdeveloped countries this phenomenon is of fundamental importance, and this is the reason why we propose to study it in detail.

  We have seen that the nationalist parties’ will to smash colonialism works hand in hand with the will to remain on good terms with the colonial authorities. Within these parties two lines of action can emerge. First of all, some of the intellectual elements, who have made a thorough analysis of the colonial reality and the international situation, begin to criticize the ideological vacuum of the national party and its dearth of strategy and tactics. They never tire of asking the leaders the crucial questions “What is nationalism? What does it mean to you? What does the term signify? What is the point of independence? And first how do you intend to achieve it?” while at the same time demanding that methodological issues be vigorously addressed. To electioneering methods they suggest adding “any other means.” At the first signs of a skirmish, the leaders are quick to call them juvenile hotheads. But because these demands are neither juvenile nor hotheaded, the revolutionary elements articulating them are rapidly isolated and removed. The leaders cloaked in their experience ruthlessly reject “these upstarts, these anarchists.”

  The party machine tends to resist any innovation. The revolutionary minority finds itself isolated, confronted by a leadership, frightened and anguished at the idea it could be swept away in a whirlwind whose nature, strength and direction are beyond its imagining.

  The second line of action involves the senior or junior cadres whose activities have been the object of colonialist police persecution. It is worth noting that these men attained the leadership of the party through sheer hard work, self-sacrifice, and an exemplary patriotism. These men from the rank and file are often laborers, seasonal workers and sometimes even genuinely unemployed. For them, being activists in a national party is not a question of politics but the only way of casting off their animal status for a human one. These men, uncomfortable with the party’s exacerbated legalism, demonstrate, within the limits of their assigned activities, a spirit of initiative, courage, and a sense of purpose which almost systematically make them targets for the forces of colonialist repression. Arrested, convicted, tortured, and amnestied, they use their period of detention to compare ideas and harden their determination. Strengthened by the ordeal of hunger strikes and the brutal solidarity of the prisons that are little better than communal graveyards, they live out their liberation as a godsent opportunity to launch the armed struggle. Meanwhile outside, the colonial authorities, besieged now from all sides, are making overtures to the nationalist moderates.

  What we see therefore is a splintering close to breaking point between the official and the unofficial party factions. The unofficial elements are made to feel undesirable, and are shunned. The legal factions come to their aid, but taking so many precautions that the unofficial factions already feel themselves to be outsiders. These men then make contact with the intellectual elements whose position they admired a few years previously. The encounter leads to the formation of an underground party, parallel to the official party. But the repression of these irredeemable elements intensifies as the official party draws closer to colonialism and attempts to change it “from the inside.” The unofficial faction then finds itself in an historical dead end.

  Driven from the towns, these men first of all take refuge in the urban periphery. But the police network smokes them out and forces them to leave the towns for good and abandon the arena of political struggle. They retreat to the interior, the mountains, and deep into the rural masses. Initially, the masses close in around them, protecting them from the manhunt. The nationalist militant who decides to put his fate in the hands of the peasant masses, instead of playing hide-and-seek with the police in the urban centers, will never regret it. The peasant cloak wraps him in a mantle of unimagined tenderness and vitality. Veritable exiles in their own country and severed from the urban milieu where they drew up the concepts of nation and political struggle, they take to the maquis. Constantly forced to remain on the move to elude the police, walking by night so as not to attract attention, they are able to travel the length and breadth of their country and get to know it. Gone are the cafés, the discussions about the coming elections or the cruelty of such-and-such a police officer. Their ears hear the true voice of the country and their eyes see the great and infinite misery of the people. They realize that precious time has been wasted on futile discussion about the colonial regime. They realize at last that change does not mean reform, that change does not mean improvement. Now possess
ed with a kind of vertigo they realize that the political unrest in the towns will always be powerless to change and overthrow the colonial regime.

  Discussions with the peasants now become a ritual for them. They discover that the rural masses have never ceased to pose the problem of their liberation in terms of violence, of taking back the land from the foreigners, in terms of national struggle and armed revolt. Everything is simple. These men discover a coherent people who survive in a kind of petrified state, but keep intact their moral values and their attachment to the nation. They discover a generous people, prepared to make sacrifices, willing to give all they have, impatient, with an indestructible pride. Understandably, the encounter between these militants, hounded by the police, and these restless, instinctively rebellious masses can produce an explosive mixture of unexpected power. The men from the towns let themselves be guided by the people and at the same time give them military and political training. The people sharpen their weapons. In fact the training proves short-lived, for the masses, realizing the strength of their own muscles, force the leaders to accelerate events. The armed struggle is triggered.

  Insurrection disorients the political parties. Their doctrine has always claimed the ineffectiveness of any confrontation and their very existence serves to condemn any idea of revolt. Certain political parties secretly share the optimism of the colonists and are glad to be no party to this madness which, it is said, can only end in bloodshed. But the flames have been lit and like an epidemic, spread like wildfire throughout the country. The tanks and planes do not achieve the success they counted on. Faced with the extent of the damage, colonialism begins to have second thoughts. Voices are raised within the oppressor nation that draw attention to the gravity of the situation.

  As for the people living in their huts and their dreams, their hearts begin to beat to the new national rhythm and they softly sing unending hymns to the glory of the fighters. The insurrection has already spread throughout the nation. It is now the turn of the parties to be isolated.

  Sooner or later, however, the leaders of the insurrection realize the need to extend the insurrection to the towns. Such a realization is not fortuitous. It completes the dialectic which governs the development of an armed struggle for national liberation. Although the rural areas represent endless reserves of popular energy and its groups of armed men maintain a reign of insecurity, colonialism never really doubts the strength of its system. It does not feel in actual danger. The leaders of the insurrection therefore decide to move the war into enemy territory, i.e., into the serenity and grandiloquence of the cities.

  It is no easy matter for the leadership to foment an insurrection in the cities. We have seen that most of the leaders, born or raised in the towns, were so hounded by the colonialist police and so generally misunderstood by the rationally minded, overcautious cadres of the political parties, that they fled their home environment. Their retreat to the interior was both an escape from repression and a distrust of the old political formations. The natural urban relays for these leaders are the nationalists who have made a name for themselves in the political parties. But we have seen that their recent history has little in common with these timorous leaders who spend their time mired in endless discussions on the evils of colonialism.

  Moreover, the first overtures made by the men from the maquis in the direction of their former friends, those they consider to be farthest to the left, confirm their fears and eradicate any desire to renew their acquaintance with them again. In fact the insurrection, which starts in the rural areas, is introduced into the towns by that fraction of the peasantry blocked at the urban periphery, those who still have not found a single bone to gnaw in the colonial system. These men, forced off the family land by the growing population in the countryside and by colonial expropriation, circle the towns tirelessly, hoping that one day or another they will be let in. It is among these masses, in the people of the shanty towns and in the lumpenproletariat that the insurrection will find its urban spearhead. The lumpenproletariat, this cohort of starving men, divorced from tribe and clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneously and radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.

  In Kenya, during the years preceding the Mau-Mau revolt, the British colonial authorities increased their intimidation tactics against the lumpenproletariat. The police and missionaries coordinated their efforts in the years 1950-51 to respond appropriately to the enormous influx of young Kenyans from the countryside and the forest who, unable to find jobs, took to stealing, debauchery and alcoholism, etc. Juvenile delinquency in the colonized countries stems directly from this lumpenproletariat. Similarly, drastic measures were taken in the Congo from 1957 onwards to send back to the interior the “young hooligans” who were disturbing the peace. Relocation camps were opened and assigned to the evangelical missions under the protection, of course, of the Belgian army.

  The formation of a lumpenproletariat is a phenomenon which is governed by its own logic, and neither the overzealousness of the missionaries nor decrees from the central authorities can check its growth. However hard it is kicked or stoned it continues to gnaw at the roots of the tree like a pack of rats.

  The shanty town is the consecration of the colonized’s biological decision to invade the enemy citadel at all costs, and if need be, by the most underground channels. The lumpenproletariat constitutes a serious threat to the “security” of the town and signifies the irreversible rot and the gangrene eating into the heart of colonial domination. So the pimps, the hooligans, the unemployed, and the petty criminals, when approached, give the liberation struggle all they have got, devoting themselves to the cause like valiant workers. These vagrants, these second-class citizens, find their way back to the nation thanks to their decisive, militant action. Unchanged in the eyes of colonial society or vis-à-vis the moral standards of the colonizer, they believe the power of the gun or the hand grenade is the only way to enter the cities. These jobless, these species of subhumans, redeem themselves in their own eyes and before history. The prostitutes too, the domestics at two thousand francs a month, the hopeless cases, all those men and women who fluctuate between madness and suicide, are restored to sanity, return to action and take their vital place in the great march of a nation on the move.

  The nationalist parties are unable to grasp this new phenomenon that precipitates their disintegration. The outbreak of the insurrection in the towns modifies the nature of the struggle. Whereas the mass of the colonialist troops were aimed at the interior, they now surge back to the towns in order to safeguard people and property. The forces of repression are dispersed, danger lurks in every quarter. It is the national territory, the entire colony which enters into a trance. Armed groups of peasants watch as the military loosens its grip. The insurrection in the towns is an unexpected lifesaver.

  The leaders of the insurrection, observing the ardor and enthusiasm of the people as they deal decisive blows to the colonialist machine, become increasingly distrustful of traditional politics. Every victory justifies their hostility towards what they now call hot air, verbiage, bantering, and futile agitation. They feel a hatred for “politics” and demagoguery. Hence in the initial phase the cult of spontaneity is triumphant.

  The rash of revolts which break out in the interior testify to the nation’s substantial presence in every quarter. Every colonized subject in arms represents a piece of the nation on the move. These revolts jeopardize the colonial regime, force it to mobilize its troops by dispersing them, and threaten to suffocate them at any moment. They are governed by a simple doctrine: The nation must be made to exist. There is no program, no discourse, there are no resolutions, no factions. The problem is clear-cut: The foreigners must leave. Let us build a common front against the oppressor and let us reinforce it with armed struggle.

  As long as colonialism remains in a state of anxiety, the national cause advances and becomes the cause of each and everyone. The struggle for liberation takes shape and already involves the entire c
ountry. During this period, spontaneity rules. Initiative rests with local areas. On every hilltop a government in miniature is formed and assumes power. In the valleys and in the forests, in the jungle and in the villages, everywhere, one encounters a national authority. The action of each and everyone substantiates the nation and undertakes to ensure its triumph locally. We are dealing with a strategy of immediacy which is both all-embracing and radical. The objective, the program of every spontaneously formed group is liberation at a local level. If the nation is present everywhere, it must then be here. One step further and it is present only here. Tactics and strategy merge. The art of politics is quite simply transformed into the art of war. The militant becomes the fighter. To wage war and to engage in politics are one and the same thing.

  This dispossessed population, used to living in a narrow cycle of conflict and rivalry, solemnly sets about cleansing and purifying the local face of the nation. In a state of genuine collective ecstasy rival families decide to wipe the slate clean and forget the past. Reconciliations abound. Deep-buried, traditional hatreds are dug up, the better to root them out. Faith in the nation furthers political consciousness. National unity begins with the unity of the group, the settling of old scores, and the elimination once and for all of any resentment. Those indigenous elements who have dishonored the country by their activities and their complicity with the occupier are also included in the cleansing process. Traitors and mercenaries, however, are judged and punished. On their continuing road to self-discovery the people legislate and claim their sovereignty. Every component roused from its colonial slumber lives at boiling point. The villages witness a permanent display of spectacular generosity and disarming kindness, and an unquestioned determination to die for the “cause.” All of this is reminiscent of a religious brotherhood, a church, or a mystical doctrine. No part of the indigenous population can remain indifferent to this new rhythm which drives the nation. Emissaries are dispatched to the neighboring tribes. They represent the insurrection’s first liaison system and introduce the rhythm and movement of the revolution to the regions still mired in immobility. Tribes well-known for their stubborn rivalry disarm amid rejoicing and tears, and pledge their help and support. In this atmosphere of brotherly solidarity and armed struggle, men link arms with their former enemies. The national circle widens and every new ambush signals the entry of new tribes. Every village becomes a free agent and a relay point. Solidarity among tribes, among villages and at the national level is first discernible in the growing number of blows dealt to the enemy. Every new group, every new volley of cannon fire signals that everybody is hunting the enemy, everybody is taking a stand.