THE CONGO CRISIS
AND THE FORCES OF THE AFRICAN REVOLUTION
The Congo crisis has already been going on for months without a stable solution, in spite of the fact that most powerful forces and pressures on a world scale have been turned upon it: the USA, the UNO, the NATO, the African countries, etc.
What is it that gives the Congo crisis this importance, scope, and persistency? What is it that is preventing this affair from being arranged, as in the past, by a simple police operation by imperialism or the UNO? What are the reasons that explain the failure or neutralization of the repeated attempts at dismemberment of the Congolese state, that have prevented it from breaking up in the midst of imperialist pressure and the pressure of the tribal chiefs?
It is not a simple mutiny of troops or attacks on the white population that made the Congo the centre of an international crisis, of a world-wide mobilization of forces and pressures.
The fact that the Congo has become a neuralgic point in the international crisis, that political and mass actions modest in their proportions have become the centre of
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL international attention, indicates above all the depth of the crisis of imperialist dominion over the colonial world. It is an indication of the powerlessness of imperialism to face up to these focal points in the development of the colonial revolution. It is an indication of how these movements, in small countries, which till yesterday seemed far away, are shaking the regime by the repercussions and mobilizations that they are engendering.
But if the movement in the Congo has reached this extent of international repercussions, it is because it is the expression of a new development of revolutionary forces, until yesterday powerless or inexistent in the midst of tribalism, and held in cheok by the political hegemony of imperialism.
The development of these forces is contradictory, anarchic, and not expressed through an organized and well delimited force, even of the type of those known in similar countries, but by reactions and explosions, with pauses of apathy. It has its strengths and weaknesses: strength and! clarity when the enemy facing it is the white European exploiter, the white functionary; weakness and soft spots when it is a matter of delimitation from tribalism and the backward elements of Congolese society.
The Congolese army and the Congolese national movement of Patrice Lumumba are the only native forces that are not set up on a tribal basis. That is the reason why they were the first to express in the most centralized way this rebellion against imperialist oppression imposed by the Belgians. The Congolese army, in which all contradietions are reflected, was the first, after independence, to express the revolt against the attempt by white imperial. ism to prolong its grasp on the country in new forms. They were at the origin of a confused and contradictory movement, whose general line, however, was against imperialism, for a centralized state, and against secessionist or tribal movements, in most cases isolating them.
The force which inspires and supports this movement, with all its contradictions, is the Congolese masses. It is not the political skill of Lumumba which prevented the break-up of the Congolese state under the cross-fire of pressures from Belgian imperialism, US imperialism, the UNO, the NATO, the most right-wing African regimes such as Tunisia and Morocco, the tribal chiefs, the Union Minière, and the Belgian military forces stationed in the country.
It is a movement of masses which wants to emerge from its tribal backwardness, both economic and social, which is seeking access to new and more human living conditions, which, though still confused in its purposes, wants to see emerge a centralized government that expresses it, as occurred in other colonial movements, personified by Lumumba and his team, and by an army under Negro officers. This movement can be temporarily derailed or confused by actions like Mobutu's, but its deeper signifi. cance is that it prevents solutions that are openly opposed to the national movement, it prevents a Mobutu-KasavabuIleo solution, even though it does not have sufficient strength or clarity as yet to impose the Lumumba solution.
Unless this movement of masses were understood, it would not be possible to understand the Congo crisis, the "miraculous" survival of Lumumba, and the impossibility for Hammarskjold, the UNO, and its "blue hel magnet. mets" to impose their Kasavubu-Ileo solution. Nor would it be possible to understand the paralysis and impotence of the old tribal forces on which imperialism is relying
5 against the centralized state. These forces are neutralized, they have begun to fall apart in face of the national movement for economic and social change developed by the masses. Tribal forces and parties formed on a tribal basis can keep a certain strength only as pressure groups, or by rendering more difficult a cohesive action by the national forces, the state, the government, the army, and the MN C (Congolese National Movement). The efforts of imperialism and the UNO to get Kasavubu, Shombé, Ileo, Kalondji, and Mobutu to give one another mutual support are not succeeding in getting together a force capable of offering a valid alternative.
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There is another force that is supporting the Congolese revolution: the African revolution. The role of certain African governments (Guinea, Ghana) arises from their own situations, faced by the same pressures from imperialism, which, basing itself on the most backward forces of tribalism, is trying to check the drive of these newborn states and to prevent a force greater than that of the colonial companies from arising. To stabilize independence and progress in Africa, this double — external and internal — and decentralizing pressure must be fought against, and, in view of the weakness of these states, a certain alliance and mutual aid among the progressive forces is required. By supporting Lumumba, Sekou Touré or Nkrumah are seeking support for their own power internally. The break-up of the Mali by the alliance between French imperialism and the Dakar bourgeoisie is an example.
The role of the UN O, for example, has been to isolate one section of the country from another, to paralyze the centralizing government of Lumumba, and, by itself becoming the only centralizing force in the country, thus tn detour the road toward the more open solutions of imperialism. The contradictions among the ON U's own military forces stationed in the Congo, the withdrawal of contingents and threats to do so, show to what a degree the Congolese situation influenced the UN O's own unity of action, and prevented it from going further with the plans of Hammarskjold and imperialism.
The intervention of the USSR was no whim of Lumumba's, but the African revolution's deepening consciousness of the growing strength given it by the existence of the workers' states and alliance with them. The scientific, technical, and economic successes of the U SS R and China are exerting a strong attraction on this revolution, basically in search of a change in living conditions for the Negro masses, which the imperialist regime denied them.
The intervention of the US SR, together with that of the African states, helped neutralize Belgian aggression and the real threats of other direct interventions by imperialism. If, despite that, the Soviet and CzechosTovak embassies were closed, this partial and probably temporary success of the reactionary Mobutu wing was rendered possible only by the willingness of certain African states, anxious to avoid a too rapid growth of Soviet influence in Africa.
In the Congo, something more than a centralized state, semething more than the expulsion of imperialism, is in discussion. The masses are seeking to enter civilization, and their only way to do so is to expel the "civilizers," who have been relegated to rely on the most backward elements of Congolese society.
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Support of the Congolese revolution by the world workers' morement and by the workers' states must take into account above all these underlying aspirations of the national movement, supporting the expulsion of the imperialist companies and the use of these resources for the Congo's economic development, supporting at the same time a plan for the development of the Congolese economy, with aid by the workers states in agricultural machines and techniques, with investments of basic capital, and in an industry of consumers goods that permits raising the masses' level of consumption, and provides a material hasis for wiping out illiteracy and for cultural development, for a change in tribal social organization. The workers' states must develop a plan for the training of Congolese technicians, ete.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL It is not capitalism that will pull the Congo up out of its backwardness. A precondition for any step forward is the immediate withdrawal of the UN troops, and distriThe Congolese people must open up the path to their own sell-government, by means of popular organs of selfadministration democratically elected, which can democratically elect the central government and form the basis nationally for its support and functioning. For this purpose, the international workers movement must aid by every means the development of independent organizations of the Congolese proletariat (parties, trade unions), a vital necessity for going beyond the bourgeois framework -which has never been broken through, even by Lumumba.