[Recent years have seen the re-emergence of anarchism as a trend drawing the attention of young people. Since there are only four fundamental currents of thought in the workers movement--anarchism, Social Democracy ("socialism"), Stalinism ("Communism"), and revolutionary internationalism--it's not a big surprise.

After all, "Socialists" from France's Mitterand to England's Blair have proven themselves utterly allied with the status quo--and even their most radical incarnation, Nicaragua's Sandinistas, produced only disaster out of one of the most promising popular revolutions in modern Latin American history.

But it's the "Communists" (actually Stalinists) who have demonstrated most spectacularly their repulsive essence as they have openly embraced capitalism, gangsterism, and even genocidal "ethnic cleansing"--not to mention their prior decades-long operation of murderous police-states.

Meanwhile, genuine revolutionary movements--from Iran to Mexico to South Africa to Cuba to Kosovo--have not generally produced conscious proletarian internationalist leaderships, with the exception of Cuba. And even Cuba--except perhaps for the long-dead Che--has been repeatedly tarred with Stalinism in the popular press. Then too--especially inside the United States--there have been no stirring resistance by the working class to repugnant imperial policies of war and austerity.

Not seeing an outstanding current of revolutionary working-class internationalism, some radical-thinking young people--repulsed by "Socialism" and "Communism"--naturally find themselves attracted to a current of thought that seems "new" and unencumbered by obvious failure: anarchism.

Of course far more have, for the same reasons, looked to various forms of bourgeois nationalism--especially movements identifying themselves with Islam, which in the United States appears in the extremely narrow form of Black nationalism championed by Louis Farrakhan.

In Frantz Fanon--who joined the Algerian Revolution of the late 50s and is best known for his book The Wretched of the Earth-- many of these alternative currents of thought find an exemplary exponent. Need we further underline how the following piece is timely for today?

Footnotes appear as [x] and appear at the end of the article--SeeingRed]

"Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!

Arise, ye wretched of the earth!

For Justice thunders condemnation.

A better world's in birth.

The earth shall rise on new foundations

We have been naught, we shall be all.""

--The Internationale

What the hell!

It's not a sin to have some fun!

Put your shutters up, I say -

There'll be broken locks today!

Open your cellars: quick, run down…!

The scum of earth are hitting the town! "

--"The Twelve", by Alexander Blok "

Here in a poetic form are two rather different concepts of social revolution. Is revolution to be a social transformation, the building of a new world? Or is revolution merely the destruction of an oppressive social order--a holiday of the oppressed as "the scum of earth" hit the town?

Since the middle of the 19th. century, the former view--revolution as the building of a new society--has been associated with the Marxist movement and its founder Karl Marx. In the same historical period, the concept of revolution as the destruction of an oppressive social order found its main support amongst the anarchist movement and romantic poets.

The Marxists looked to the working class, the property-less toilers of industry and the country side, as the agents of social transformation; both because their labor produced the wealth that made modern society possible and because the social oppression they experienced drove them to revolt.

The anarchists looked for forces outside the working class as the agents of its destruction. Russian anarchists, as typified by Bakunin, hoped for a peasant rebellion or a bandit uprising by Cossacks to bring down the Russian empire and institute a peasant-based communism.

In more modern times, political currents looking to forces other than the working class experienced a certain revival. One of the most influential spokesman for this tendency was Frantz Fanon. (After the death in combat of Che Guevara; there was a fraudulent attempt by Regis DeBray, to depict Che as an anti-Marxist; but that is another story.)

As political fighters and historical figures, both Marx and Fanon need to be seen as part of their time and as products of the struggles that they fought in. Let's look at their biographies.

Marx

Karl Marx was born in the city of Trier, the tiny capital of Westphalia, in the year 1818. His father was a prominent lawyer, a convert to Protestantism, and one of the leading liberal opponents of the Prussian rulers of his country. Marx was sent to the university to get a law degree and follow in his father's footsteps. Instead, he got involved in radical politics in college and became an editor of an oppositional newspaper and was then forced into exile by the Prussian regime. It was in exile, in Brussels and Paris, that Marx and his friend, Fredrich Engels, joined the working class communist movement of their day.

In 1847, the small group of workers who'd formed the Communist League assigned the young ex-students Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels to a committee tasked with drafting a political statement. Their joint creation, "The Communist Manifesto," marked the beginning of a literary collaboration that was to last for over four decades.

Between 1848 and his death in 1883, Marx lived the life of a professional revolutionary: decades of exile, poverty and police persecution. Marx edited major newspapers, agitated, served as a trade union organizer, gave countless speeches and classes … and somehow managed to write enough books to fill a small library. On Marx's monument, in London's Highgate Cemetery, are inscribed the words, "Karl Marx, Teacher of the Working Class." It is as a political economist and historian that Marx is best known--as discoverer of the 'law of surplus value' and developer of the 'historical - materialist' method in political economics.

Fanon

Frantz Fanon was born into an upper middle-class Afro-Caribbean family in the French colony of Martinique in the year 1925. After the Second World War, Fanon was educated in France and became a specialist in psychiatry. He returned to Martinique and went into practice. At age 27 he published his first book, Black Skins, White Masks--an analysis of the psychological traumas inflicted on a colonial people (especially, the colonial elite) by the racism of the colonizing power. This first book gained Fanon an audience amongst anti-imperialist intellectuals in France and the French colonial empire.

In the early 1950s Fanon moved to Algiers and began work as a psychiatrist for the French Ministry of Public Health. His arrival in Algiers coincided with the beginning of the Algerian national liberation struggle and soon Fanon found that his case-load was mostly torture and rape survivors … plus traumatized French soldiers and police doing the raping and torturing. Repulsed by the savagery of French repression--he was dealing with the victims every day--Fanon came to support the Algerian struggle for freedom. In 1956, Fanon joined the medical corps of the Algerian National Liberation Army.

During the next four years Fanon played an important role, both as a physician and a medical administrator. He led the organizing of psychiatric care for the resistance forces and in establishing a mental health system for the civilian population. After the French withdrawal, Fanon was Minister of Public Health in the workers and peasants government led by Ben Bella. In the course of the war Fanon contracted cancer ( he may well have been one of the thousands of victims of French chemical warfare attacks on the Algerian population) and died, while part of a diplomatic mission to the USA, in 1961.

Out the four years of revolutionary came two books: "L' An V de La Revolution Algerine" and "Les damnes de la terre". Both books were published by Francois Maespero (the famous independent leftist publisher) and "Les damnes de la terre" appeared with an introduction by Jean Paul Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher. Fanon's two works--with their exposure of French war crimes in Algeria--had a major impact, creating a serious political scandal and helping increase anti-war sentiment in France. In addition to political interest and the support of major progressive intellectuals, Fanon's works found an audience because of their literary merit.

As a writer, Fanon combined a lively style with the keen insight of a practicing psychiatrist. Above all, his works vibrate with passionate condemnation of French imperialist crimes against the people of Algiers. Anyone who reads Fanon will be convinced of the sincerity of his commitment to the revolutionary struggle. Fanon's works were not just limited to exposing outrages; they vividly described how the Algerian people organized to fight back and win. Perhaps most of all, Fanon shows how, in the course of the struggle, the Algerian toilers began to transform themselves into free men and women…

Although there are very serious political weaknesses contained in Fanon's works, simple justice to a revolutionary fighter requires that the many strengths should be recognized. It is possible that if Fanon were not distracted by the pain of cancer and the effects of chemo-therapy, he might have written politically stronger works, but we can only deal with reality, not 'might have beens'… .

The Communist Manifesto

Here's a brief introduction to the Marxist conception of class struggle and to the social forces that will lead revolution. (I'll only throw a few quotes at you, dear reader, I expect you to do some study on your own.) We go to Section I of the Manifesto, entitled "Bourgeois and Proletarians:" "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.".… There follows a concise history of the rise of modern capitalist society from the middle ages to the 19th century. The authors note that the rise of capitalism created the modern working class: "In proportion as bourgeois, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class developed - a class of laborers who live only as long as they find work and who find work only as long as they increase capital." [2]… Unlike previous exploited toilers, serfs or handicraft artisans for example, the proletariat--the working class--does not own means of production and is totally dependent upon wages for survival. In a real sense, modern workers are much more exposed to insecurity than other oppressed classes.

The essential contradiction of capitalist society is this: those who produce all the wealth own nothing and are exposed to insecurity, poverty, starvation. This contradiction leads towards revolution. "Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product." [3]

Finally, what kind of revolution does modern society face? "All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, can not stir, can not raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air."[4] In other words, the liberation of the working class involves the liberation of all the oppressed layers of capitalist society and is therefore the most democratic movement in history.

The Wretched of the Earth

Let us now turn to the writings of Frantz Fanon to discover his view points on social revolution. The easiest way to consider Fanon's strategic projections is to organize them as a series of eight stages of struggle. In the first stage, radical intellectuals leave the towns (fleeing police persecution) and join the peasantry. To their surprise, the intellectuals discover "...that the mass of the people have never ceased to think of the problem of their liberation except in terms of violence… in terms of armed struggle and armed insurrection."[5] The radical intellectuals begin political classes for the people, but the classes don't last long as the peasants are rebels by nature and push the "leaders" into an armed struggle.

The second stage is the spontaneous outbreak of revolution, which spreads rapidly throughout the country districts and scores many local successes: burnings of police stations, ambushes of military units and the like. The peasants advance, drive the colonialists from the country-side and the oppressed nation learns to be proud again.

In the next stage, the leaders realize that for the revolution to win it must be extended to the towns and cities. At this point, the leaders look for allies in the urban centers and finds that de-classed and even criminal elements are the natural allies of revolution. "It is within this mass of humanity, this people of the shanty towns, at the core of the lumpen-proletariat, that the rebellion will find its urban spearhead. For the lumpen-proletariat, that horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe… constitutes one of the most spontaneous and radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people."[6] This urban spearhead begins to bring the rebellion into the towns, by means of bombings and other attacks.

In the fifth stage, the imperialists organize and begin their counterattack. The liberated zones are subjected to bombardment, blockade and sweeps by ground forces. Merely-local resistance is crushed and the need for national political and military organization becomes apparent. A "protracted war" of national liberation has begun.

The sixth stage is the social divisions brought into the colonial people by the effect of the "protracted war". Food shortages allow village merchants to charge extortionate prices and take over farmers' fields and cattle. Well-to-do people begin to side with the colonial power. Part of the lumpen-proletariat go over to the imperialists as police agents and mercenary soldiers. In response, the revolution becomes more radical, the revolutionary movement becomes a party and committees of popular rule are elected. In the liberated areas rationing, public education, land reform and the expropriation of the rural exploiters begin.

In the seventh stage, the protracted war produces an effect within the people of the imperialist country. There is a rise of anti-war sentiment, some of the imperialist soldiers join the revolution, thousands of youth refuse to join the military. Both the political and financial costs of the war become too much for the colonial power and the imperialists finally withdraw.

In the eighth stage the national liberation forces have won and are faced with the task of constructing a new society. In this final stage, Fanon issues a moral appeal for the building of a non capitalist social order and a new kind of human being. " For Europe, for ourselves, and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man." [7].

The bottom-line

The greatest difference between Fanon's strategic ideas and Marxism is that Fanon completely ignores the political role of the working class. (To be fair, he does note in passing that the Algerian working class, especially the dockers, were in the habit of carrying out general strikes and mass protests. But that's all, no thought that these workers might be able to seize the city.)

Instead of the working class, it is the peasants that Fanon regards as the vanguard of the revolution, because small farmers are rebels by instinct and hold deep beliefs that armed struggle is the only way to win freedom. Fanon teaches that poor farmers, as a class, have some inherent revolutionary impulse and are just waiting for someone to come along and give them a push. Once the initial impulse is given, then the people as a whole (the peasant farmers, of course, are the authentic people, the holders of real national consciousness) will spring into spontaneous revolt.

Organization and political education all come after the spontaneous revolt.

I can think of a few things wrong with this approach. Other fighters in guerrilla wars, people like Che and Fidel, speak of the necessity of doing political preparation in the country side before beginning an uprising. Isn't it hard to believe that farmers--whether in Algeria, Mexico, or Ulster--lie awake at night dreaming of a political savior who will lead them into an insurrection? Aren't farmers mostly worried about making their crop, selling a bull for a good price, and holding onto their land?

Fanon's words about the Algerian peasants owes a lot more to his study of the 19th century Russian anarchists than to personal observation. Don't forget that Fanon did not join the revolution until it was a few years old. He was relying on survivor testimony a few years after the events. Experience strongly suggests that relying on spontaneous revolutionary sentiments, rather than doing careful military and political preparation, is a good way to get killed.

One major effect of Fanon's influence is the revolutionary romanticizing of the lumpen-proletariat. If we re-read Fanon's words, we realize that he made the error of identifying the unemployed, the under-employed, the landless peasants, and the shanty-town dwellers with the lumpen element. To a Marxist, an unemployed worker is a worker who doesn't have a job. To a Marxist, farmers driven off the land are farmers without land. To a capitalist ideologist, these same human beings are an underclass, a dangerous class, the scum of earth…and all that. To the capitalists, the unemployed, the landless, and the slum dwellers are potential trouble makers who need to be controlled . . . . and they liberally supply media defamation of the poor to prepare public opinion for repression and austerity.

The terms "Lumpen" or "lumpen-proletariat" are used by Marxists to refer to that layer of de-humanized individuals of all class origins who have turned to a life of predation and parasitism on the working class. The drug dealer waiting at suburban station or in Harvard Square is a 'lumpen', the narco-cop who shakes down the dealer is a 'lumpen' too--and so is an almost-respectable financier named Milliken. In the "Manifesto" Marx and Engels remarked that the "lumpen" might get swept along with a working class revolution, but that their entire way of life prepared them better to serve as agents of repression, tools of reaction.

Yet Fanon regarded the lumpen-proletariat as the most radical revolutionary force of a colonial people. And there should be no mistake that his 'lumpens' are little different than Marx's: "So the pimps, the hooligans, the unemployed, the petty criminals ... throw themselves into the struggle for liberation like stout working men ... the prostitutes, too, and the maids who are paid two pounds a month, all the hopeless dregs of humanity."

I fear we have to regard this as mere romanticism. Actual experience, whether in Algeria, Los Angeles or Belfast, teaches us that the lumpen are much more likely to end in the ranks of the FBI, the RUC or the French secret police than in the ranks of the liberation army. Even when recruitable, such recruits bring their life style, their "culture" with them and introduce an element of decay and disorder into the revolutionary struggle. The sad history of the Black Panther Party in the USA or of the INLA [a split from the IRA - ed.] in Ireland give concrete examples of orienting towards the lumpen element. In the Cuban revolutionary war, both Fidel and Che acted to suppress lumpen outbreaks with a very hard hand.

Let's be very serious about this: any rebel force that permits its fighters to engage in looting, rape, arson is not worthy of the name and will self-destruct, rotting from within. The Cuban experience suggests that cattle farmers don't like people to steal their cows… The Irish experience suggests that drug dealers can not be tolerated in a republican area…much less allowed in the movement.

Hasn't experience shown that parties that adopt Fanon's perspective on the lumpen element are headed for disintegration and defeat?

Why did Fanon's errors gained such a following in the mid 1960s--why are they experiencing a certain revival today?

Look to ideological pressures for a cause. In a very real sense, the ruling ideology, of any society, is the ideology of the ruling class. All the official organs of press, class room, pulpit and mass media bombard the minds of the oppressed with propaganda that the working class is not revolutionary, that socialism can never work…and some of it sticks, even in the brightest minds. So, too, do they hold up the drug addicts, the rapists, the under-class as the real threat to the status quo.

In addition, progressive intellectuals of Fanon's generation were profoundly repelled by the crimes and stupidities of Stalinism…the "official Marxism" of the 1930s and 1940s. This comes through very clearly in Sartre's introduction to The Wretched of the Earth where he praises Fanon as the first since Engels to write of history in the making. (We have to remember that quite a body of literature was produced by the Russian revolutionaries; Lenin and Trotsky each produced volumes of literature on the scale of Marx, Rejection of Stalinism led French intellectuals (and not just French) like Sartre, Camus and Fanon to reject the whole intellectual heritage of the Russian Revolution as well.

I suspect that the combination of official bourgeois ideology and an over reaction to Stalinism led Fanon to make these serious political errors. The weak side of Fanon's legacy is his revival of 19th century romantic rebellion and a search for a non-proletarian revolutionary force.

Fanon's strong side was the sincerity of his commitment to the revolution, his keen eye for details and his ability to report the experiences that he had lived through. With all his errors, Fanon remains one of us, a fighter for a socialist future--a world without war, racism, poverty or oppression.

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SeeingRed apologies for the momentary absence of footnotes. Click on subscribe and we will inform you as soon as they are available.

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