SOCIALISM AND NATIONALISM: FANONS' STRENGTH AND LIMITATIONS

FRANTZ FANON was born in Martinique in 1925, studied medicine in France and then specialized in psychiatry.

He occupied a major position in the Algerian medical service during the Algerian war.

In 1952 he published his first book, 'Black Skin, White Masks'.

His works include 'A Dying Colonialism' (1959) and 'The Wretched of the Earth' (1961). He died in Washington December 1961 a few days after the publication of this latter book, after suffering from leukaemia.

The productive period of his short life spanned the last ten years and coincided mainly with the Algerian struggle for national liberation from French rule.

The volume Toward the African Revolution' includes many essays and notes written during this struggle.

He took up his post in Algiers in 1952 and resigned it in 1956 to play a more active part in the National Liberation Front (FLN). against French imperialism.

He went to Tunis where he was an editor of 'El Moudjahid'. Many of ¿his artic for this publication are included in the Pelican edition of the comwore le contand in this elion.

FRENCH NATION In February 1952 Fanon wrote "The North African Syndrome', a psychological - political study of the N African abroad.

In this essay he still speaks of the 'French nation (the metropolis and the French Union)' wants inhuman attitudes to be fought, condescending ways of speech to be ruled out, men to be humanized', but does not identify this view with his own development at the time.

Nevertheless, it appears to coincide with the consciousness of the politically rising but socially crushed petty-bourgeois in the French colonies at the time-a consciousness which, in large measure, was influencec by the 'socialism' of 'the metropolis'.

It was this "socialism' which was to play a life-saving role for French imperialism, in helping to form the basic ideology of African nationalism', that most valuable agent of imperialism in Africa.

The ideological unfolding of African socialism, of which Frantz Fanon was one of the main exponents, was the colonialist work of European 'socialism' on the 'soil' of African nationalism.

REVOLUTION TROTSKY WHAT IS THE AND WHERE IS IT GOING? Frantz FANON 'TOWARD THE AFRICAN REVOLUTION' Pelican Books, Middlesex, England. 5s.

by N MAKANDA The European so - called socialist cannot afford to turn up his racialistic nose at the African nationalist, who grew up under the colonialist tutelage of this socialist.

The latter is what Lenin called a social - chauvinist (socialimperialist).

The African nationalist may be called a social-nationalist with equal justification. His heroism and contribution notwithstanding, Fanon unquestionably belongs to this category. Those who try to make more out of this do him no service.

NEGRO PEOPLE

In his essay 'West Indians and Africans', published in 'Esprit' in February, 1955, Fanon Although he says 'philosophically and politically there BETRAYED is no Other a West Indian people, this I do believe' (p. 28).

Fanon himself was one who suffered sharply from the racial discrimination of France in Martinique. His basic weakness is his failure to reject the very concept of race — a weakness shared by 99.9 per cent of those who consider themselves 'revolutionary' and who reject only racial inequality, but not the this videnc Algeria'. social roots in the oppressed recognition as a class Similarly o the colonia tole ap labour these subuy con let ut he failed to see the soc ell-out, in th e FLN itselt. which Evian laborat LOYAL PART task of the ras the necessary For the really accessar ionary in the war.

breach covered rench Solis, the commun The Commur detended the Frenc masses on the question (p. sular colonies set up by French, British, Belgian and American imperialism after the Second World War.

'NEUTRALISM'

This 'neutralism' is as neutral as the 'independent' states are independent.

The 'third world', in fact, is the group of semi-colonies on which imperialism depends for its very life and which are political dependencies, in turn, of their imperialist masters.

There is no capitalist country which is neither imperialist nor a colony (or semi-colony).

A capitalist country is either a colony or an imperialist country.

There is no 'third world' between capitalism and socialism. There are no exceptions to this rule. It is an iron law of the very nature of capitalist society. The theory of the 'third world' is a petty bourgeois, nationalist,

Messali HADJ

social democratic illusion and deception.

That apostle of the 'third world' theory, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, admitted:

'We belong to the West.' This is its reality: it is a pro-imperialist position.

Fanon died before Nyerere revealed the 'secret' of the neutralist illusion. But when he lived he believed in it, after it had been blessed by Tito, Nasser, Nehru, Nkrumah and at the Bandung conferences, by the Stalinist bureaucracies of both the Kremlin and Peking.

He was not alone in this Fanon's essays on 'The Cold War' and "The Third Bloc' (pp. 134-136) fully reveal his commitment to 'positive neutralism'.

It goes without saying that he stood to the left of the CP of France on the whole question of the war and on the plebiscite for de Gaulle, on which he correctly advocated a boycott (a vote was a vote for French imperialism, he says p. 143).

(Fanon's stand was followed only by • Sekou Touré at the time, Guinea giving the only 'no' in Africa to de Gaulle's plan for a new French Union.)

But, in the end, one of his heroes, Ben Bella, did say 'yes' to de Gaulle, when he sold Algeria at the Evian conference, where Algeria became a French semi (economic) colony.

In the final two years of his life Fanon spent some time examining the 'newly, independent' countries in Africa.

He concluded that they 'are as unstable as their new middle SET He declared: 'We must again come back to the Marxist formula' (p 197), but persisted with his neutralist and Pan-Africanist illusions, even in his sharp articles on the murder of Lumumba by the UN, Ishombe and Belgian imperialism.

He criticized Lumumba for calling in the UN, which he came to condemn as a rescue agency of the colonialists. He commented that 'before the arrival of the UN, there were no massacres in the Congo'. (p. 215.)

He mercilessly brands African leaders who endorsed the imperialist police in the Congo (p. 206) and who later 'vie with one another in shedding crocodile tears around the tomb of Lumumba' (p. 206), adding 'no one knows the name of the next Lumumba'. (p. 207.)

Although he was not killed in the same way, Frantz Fanon himself was in fact within one year, to become 'the next Lumumba'.