senegal SENGHOR'S A FRAUD For several months now the Senegalese regime of Léopold Sédar Senghor has been engaged in a well-publicized political operation that Senghor himself calls "democratization. " This operation has drawn some attention in the international press, which has suggested that Senegal was in the process of breaking with the tradition of one-party states, dominant in black Africa. There should, however, be no illusions on this score. The old constitution guaranteed both multipartyism and the right to form trade unions. But the repression, intimidation, and provocation carried out by the ruling party, the Union Progressiste Sénégalaise (UPS — Senegalese Progressive Union), gradually wiped out all legal opposition and all independent trade unions. Abroad, the Senegalese regime may appear to have been transformed by the emergence of legal opposition parties and new trade unions, but inside Senegal the reality is more compelling than the appearance. Senghor's maneuver must be denounced for what it is: a means of maintaining the strong state, stable and authoritarian, while at the same time authorizing the expression of some differences that run through the The workers and democratic movement has been suffering the regime's repression for sixteen years now. Senghor's current appeals to the European Social Democracy cannot erase that record, especially since the legalization of parties is strictly limited and and the workers and democratic movement remains underground. But a discussion is now opening within that movement on how best to utilize the measures of so-called democratization. Associations and trade unions are forming. It is in this period; favorable to the repoliticization of a part of the mass movement, that the militants of the Groupe Ouvrier Révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Workers Group) have published the statement which we are reprinting below.
some neocolonial bourgeois leaderships on the other. These differences over the operational mechanisms of the capitalist world market and the market economy
do not call into question the fundamental factors that determine underdevelopment (a corollary of capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination) and are consequently only reformist debates within the world ruling classes. In this framework, during the recent period some imperialist factions and some neocolonial regimes have reached a consensus to press ahead with a process tending to modify the forms of imperialist domination. The European countries have thus turned up as advocates of a partial industrialization of some African countries, advocates of a rationalization of trade, of financial support through petrodollars for the construction of infrastructures in certain countries slated for future industrial investment. Before this backdrop of modifications in the neocolonial process, we have seen imperialist leaders like Giscard d'Estaing speak of a "new international economic order. " Senegal today is affected by this situation. The development of the river valley, the Cayar complex, the taxfree zone, and the Falémé iron mines are indications of this trend, which is developing at the expense of a slight decline in the importance of the nut plantations. In this general context, the state is trying to regularize, orient, and support the emergence of an indigenous capitalism on the fringes of the future imperialist investments. The state is taking over those sectors that have now become secondary for imperialism, such as the cooking oil industry, which is now 65 percent state-owned. It is likewise trying to rationalize its own structure, stabilize the administration, gain tighter control over the population (hence the present new census), and put itself forward as the center of the ongoing process both for imperialism and for indigenous capital. Nevertheless, the crisis of neocolonialism makes these projects especially delicate and creates a gap between the goals and the means. Given the permanent conflicts among imperialist factions, the turbulence of the class struggle, and the frequent instability of the neocolonial bourgeois leaderships, it is difficult to bring the reformist projects into line with the world market. While it is necessary to recognize the character of the process that has been engaged, it would be erroneous to regard its realization as inevitable, for the most probable trend will be toward the implementation of some reforms lacking in homogeneity and universality (as is shown by the relative failure of the UN Conference on Commerce and Development and the lack of success of the north-south conference). 2o marked by osmosis benean she personnel of he the Senegalese ruling class has beer state apparatus and the country's businessmen (with a few exceptions in the beginning, such as Sheikh M'Backé). Because of the extra bonuses of neocolonial management, some fringe layers have developed and emerged as small indigenous capitalists. We are now seeing the extension of a process that began in commerce: The regime is turning sectors like sale of peanuts and products of basic necessity over to the private sector.
Tourism and real estate have also been important spheres of investment. All these factors have permitted a relatively rapid accumulation which has fostered the insertion of the country into the new imperialist project. It is thus that there is now limited participation by some businessmen in some large enterprises (such as N'Diouga Kébé in the Senegal-Kuwait Bank). In conformity with the imperialist project itself, the small and middle-sized companies will be increasingly opened up to appropriation by national businessmen, through the mechanism of resale by the Senegalese state, in the image of the example set in the Ivory Coast. Moreover, wholesale trade has fostered the stabilization of a well-off petty bourgeoisie. A stable trading petty bourgeoisie, which represents the decisive base of the regime, has also developed by virtue of the deliberate policy of the government. Nothing today suggests the conclusion that un independent national bourgeoisie exists in Senegal. On the contrary, what is involved is an insertion of the Senegalese bourgeoisie into certain productive sectors, which ties this bourgeoisie to the imperialist market even more closely; in some cases it is simply a question of comprador sectors. 3.of the regime around Senghor has emerged which As a function of the factors listed above, a faction is favorable to restructuring "political life" so as to provide privileged social classes and layers with the means by which to express their demands without directly opposing the state apparatus, without compromising the stability of the whole system. This is especially true since the recomposition of political forces in Europe in favor of the Social Democracy seems to be guiding Senghor's tactics. He believes that his socioeconomic and even political and ideological projects would proceed more smoothly if the European imperialist countries, especially France, were under Social Democratic leaderships (and if those leaderships approved these projects). Senghor's relations with Mitterrand's Socialist party in France and the probable entry of the UPS into the Socialist International confirm the political axis around which Senghor wants to achieve legitimacy for his regime. Without offering a traditional framework of bourgeois democracy, Senghor is seeking to introduce greater rationality into the debates and conflicts within the ruling class. Nevertheless, his project is also aimed at lending himself a democratic image, at diverting any mass movement, and at fooling the workers. But this second point is not the major goal of the project today, even if the trend turns around in the future, as well it might. It is thus simplistic to believe that it is under the direct pressure of the mass movement or out of simple demagogy that the regime is proposing these constitutional reforms. Senghor has had to wage and continue to wage a political battle in his party in order to have his options prevail. In fact, the UPS is now divided essentially into two tendencies, of which the one led by Moustapha Niasse and Doudou N'Gom remains relatively hostile to Senghor's project and is exerting pressure on and a permanent check of the leadership.
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SENEGAL
In spite of all this, repression, although suspended So after the amnesty law, has been carefully prepared by an abundantly staffed and efficient police force, by a general system of informers and corruption. If the embryonic forms of revolutionary organization can be isolated, the repression will probably be selective but brutal. Once the regime achieves a certain threshold in consolidating its base, it will not hesitate to return to its measures of repression, intimidation, and open torture. Let us add that since the dissolution of the PRA, the UPS has played a role of virtual party-state, usurping the entire administration in a country in which the administration is a source of jobs and bonuses. Since this situation still persists today, the UPS possesses the means by which to reduce its reformist opposition to political helplessness. To better measure the limits of the process of "democratization, " it would suffice to mention the facts that the conditions for recognition of trade unions have just been toughened, that military potential has been boosted and directed toward the domestic enemy, along with the recent Franco-Senegalese maneuvers. 5. the government has recognized the existence of an In an attempt to perpetuate the regime and the state, opposition that respects the present institutions, legalizing the Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS — Democratic Senegalese party) of Abdoulaye Wade. To be sure, the PDS is an opposition party, but one whose pretensions and program are not capable of fundamentally challenging the system. Its propaganda calls for conceives of the trade unions as a force contributing to the national economy. The apparatus of the PDS, whose program is bourgeois, remains composed of petty-bourgeois layers. It has been able to link up with a number of well-known individuals through whom it has managed to build up a relative mass influence, which is not a genuine militant influence. Certain intellectual sectors have identified with the PDS and have even entered its apparatus fully. Although the character of the PDS is in line with the overall political project in the neocolonial context, it is nonetheless true that the PDS will gather a relative mass base and will run into friction with the ruling since the latter has hitherto occupied the local political field alone and intends to continue to do so. G.- Democratic National Assembly) of Sheikh Anta The Rassemblement National Démocratique (RND Diop has applied for legalization. Also of petty bourgeois composition, the RND upholds an essentially nationalist program containing no class line; it may be attractive to significant fringes of the intelligentsia since Sheikh Anta Diop and his friends have not been compromised with the regime. 30
The regime rather grotesquely opted for a constitution formally limiting the number of parties to three, specifying that one of them had to be democratic socialist (the UPS), one liberal democratic (the PDS), and the third Marxist-Leninist (not yet created), while still banning parties with foreign links. The latter stipulation was aimed at the Parti Africain de l'Indépendance (PAI), which is linked to the Soviet bureaucracy. The regime thus found itself in a sort of impasse with respect to the RND, which neither could nor wanted to present itself as Marxist-Leninist. Neither the RND nor the underground RAl has accepted the constitutional reform and both have come out against the limitation of the number of parties to three.
The lot of the masses has not been changed at all. 7. Inflation has hit hard at the incomes of the workers, peasants, and urban masses. In spite of some wage increases, subsidies to certain producers of some crops, and the recent lowering of the price of rice and sugar, the buying power of the masses has generally declined. In spite of the plans to increase the number of wage workers through industrial investment, the number of unemployed has risen as a result of the exodus from the rural areas, the increase in the size of the active population, and the many collective layofts of the past two years (Interpral, oil companies, fishing, etc.). To this is added the growing problems of supplying the cities with food, exacerbated by speculation in stocks (coal, meat, rice). 8 political conjuncture to be a decisive occasion for Revolutionary Marxists consider the new Senegalese clarification and discussion. They have no illusions whatever in the will and still less the capacity of a neocolonial bourgeois leadership to establish a bourgeois democracy even within the present limits of the new constitution. Revolutionary Marxists integrate the fight for democratic rights into the framework of a struggle to raise the level of consciousness and mobilization of the masses. While they fight for democratic rights, they do so in order to win the right of the independent organization of the workers, the right of association, expression, and the right to put forward demands. At no time do they create illusions in bourgeois institutions, neither in the UPS nor the PDS, the latter of which ceaselessly castigates the far left and has the unhappy distinction of being the only organization not to have denounced the new revision of the constitution. Revolutionary Marxists are aware of the fact that the new conjuncture favors the development of petty bourgeois, nationalist, or neo-Stalinist illusions in an alliance with "democratic bourgeois sectors" and they will wage a fight to prevent a new generation from being led astray into the reformist impasse. At no time will they participate in inculcating the masses with any illusion whatever in bourgeois institutions and their formal democracy. On the contrary,
the fight for democratic rights is understood as a part of the class struggle in the form of mass mobilizations, of organization and structuring of the workers, peasants, and popular masses. go demonstrated any consciousness of the implications The underground movement up to now has scarcely of the new conjuncture. Neither the PAl nor its splitoff, the Ligue Démocratique (Democratic League, characterized fundamentally by centrism with more or less neo-Stalinist features) has advanced central perspectives breaking with all illusions. The PAl maintains its illusions in democratic elections, while still seeking alliances with bourgeois sectors.' The Ligue Démocratique views the conjuncture solely through the prism of incantation-like proposals without advancing clear proposals for the recomposition of the mass movement. It remains more than ambiguous on class alliances and proposes the unity of revolutionaries only in order better to denounce "ultraleftism. " Finally, oriony really. the "Xarebi" (a Mao-populist group), seriously hit by repression, has not yet offered any response. 10. quences on the political awakening of sections The new conjuncture will not be without conseof the mass movement. Revolutionary Marxists will neglect no opportunity to exploit this situation and to express their point of view. Particularly the perspective of trade-union plurality would offer new means for militant work, for raising the consciousness of the workers, and for putting forward demands. In this regard, revolutionary Marxists hail the formation of new workers trade unions, such as the Union des Travailleurs Libres du Sénégal, which already includes many federations, the Syndicats Unique des Enseignants du Sénégal (a teachers union), and the Union des Etudiants Sénégalais (Senegalese Student Union) . Revolutionary Marxists will struggle for a democratic organization of the university and high-school students. They call for the creation of trade unions for the agricultural workers. They demand the abolition of taxes on poor peasants. They demand a struggle against speculators, hoarders, and accumulators. They denounce the new constitution and demand the unlimited right of organization and propaganda for all political currents and all mass organizations. Revolutionary Marxists call for united work within the far left around class objectives, for the recomposition of the mass movement. They demand the immediate withdrawal of French troops. They denounce the militarization of the youth and especially the prospect of military service for students. Dakar, May 1976 *Since this statement was written, the PAl has split again, the Diop faction applying for legal status as the "Marxist-Leninist" party envisaged in the constitution - INPRECOR.
AZAD HAY Azad Hay (Free Armenian) is an Armenianlanguage revolutionary journal published in Toronto, Canada. Number 7-8 of the bulletin has been published in English in order to inform the Canadian left of the major problems of the Armenian struggle and to begin a dialogue and establish ties between the Armenian community and the various ethnic and political organizaThe special issue of Azad Hay represents one of the most complete and concise presentations of the Armenian struggle available in English. In addition to the introductory statement of the Azad Hay collective explaining the purpose of the journal, it contains three articles. The first, "The Armenian Question: Its Definition, " offers a brief history of the political forces involved in the Armenian struggle and the central problems posed in both Soviet Armenia and the capitalist countries. The second, "The World Revolution in Relation to the Armenian Question, " examines the role of Armenians in the three main sectors of world revolution, the imperialist countries, the colonial countries, and the workers states, with specigl attention to the case of Soviet Armenia. The third, "The Revolutionary Strategy for the Armenian Liberation Struggle, " is a polemic against the solutions advanced by the three Armenian "national political parties" and counterposes the outlook of the Azad Hay collective. The special edition, 30 pages, also includes a list of the countries in which Armenians live with the estimate of the Armenian population of each and a map illustrating the areas of the Middle East where Armenians live. The English edition of Azad Hay can be ordered by writing to Azad Hay, P.O. Box 456, Station Z, Toronto Ontario, Canada.
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