plantifa [they/them]

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Joined 4 years ago
Cake day: September 6th, 2020
  • plantifa [they/them]@hexbear.nettotheory@hexbear.net•The Wretched of the Earth Discussion - Chapter 2 Grandeur And Weakness of SpontaneityEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago
    1. What is the weakness of spontaneity?

    Put most elegantly by Fanon: “Tactics are mistaken for strategy.” As previously described with the lumpenproletariat, the spontaneous eruption of resistance within the cities may change the nature of the national struggle as forces of coercion in the form of colonial military forces or colonial police focused on cracking down on dissent in rural districts are forced to retreat to the cities (regions where compradors and colonial administration are centered) to restore the order of colonial rule, yet Fanon states that this is not enough:

    “They [leaders of popular revolts] discover that the success of the struggle presupposes clear objectives, a definite methodology and above all the need for the mass of the people to realize that their unorganized efforts can only be a temporary dynamic. You can hold out for three days—maybe even for three months—on the strength of the admixture of sheer resentment contained in the mass of the people; but you won’t win a national war, you’ll never overthrow the terrible enemy machine, and you won’t change human beings if you forget to raise the standard of consciousness of the rank-and-file.” [Emphases mine.]

    This gets back to Fanon writing that decolonization is a act that dismantles the material and ideology structures of the colonizers. One cannot rely solely on spontaneous reaction to the atrocities of the colonizing force (though their atrocities are many) to push the colonized into opposing the colonizers, because colonizers has in the past, and will, recruit among the compradors and opportunist lumpenproletariat to tamp down on anti-colonial movements.

    Decolonization requires political education of the masses, (“the political education of the masses is seen to be a historic necessity”), of self-critique and improvement on past shortcomings to improve in future programs and decision-making (“The leaders show their power and authority by criticizing mistakes, using every appraisal of past conduct to bring the lesson home, and thus insure fresh conditions for progress,”) and it requires the an organizational framework to facilitate the transmission of shared experiences and understandings, directing mass action, and establish communicative ties of solidarity between colonized people of all backgrounds in opposition to colonialism:

    "All this taking stock of the situation, this enlightening of consciousness, and this advance in the knowledge of the history of societies are only possible within the frame work of an organization, and inside the structure of a people [emphasis mine]. Such an organization is set afoot by the use of revolutionary elements coming from the towns at the beginning of the rising, together with those rebels who go down into the country as the fight goes on. It is this core which constitutes the embryonic political organization of the rebellion. But on the other hand the peasants, who are all the time adding to their knowledge in the light of experience, will come to show themselves capable of directing the people’s struggle. Between the nation on a wartime footing and its leaders there is established a mutual current of enlightenment and enrichment. "

    theory-gary A really great chapter, and while I’d like to answer the other questions, my understanding of every point Fanon is making for this chapter is from cursory reading and I don’t feel confident enough to answer some of the other questions for fear of completely misconstruing the points of the chapter (hopefully I didn’t misconstrue his points or miss context from some of the things I took away from the questions I did answer.) Fanon’s analysis on the lumpenproletariat in a exploited colonial/neocolonial society is really interesting and from some of the theory that I have read, lines up with Mao’s 1926 Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society as a class of revolutionary potential but with caveats: “Apart from all these, there is the fairly large lumpen-proletariat, made up of peasants who have lost their land and handicraftsmen who cannot get work. They lead the most precarious existence of all. […] One of China’s difficult problems is how to handle these people. Brave fighters but apt to be destructive, they can become a revolutionary force if given proper guidance.” I haven’t read much theory but the analyses of the lumpenproletariats and discussions on their revolutionary potential are always interesting, especially if Mao in the previous quote is like ‘uh we’re still going over our approach with the lumpen, everybody.’

    I spent a good bit of time reading the chapters (I missed the ping when this was first posted, sorry Othello) and it kept me way into the night and a bit in the morning so I hope this discussion response wasn’t better in my mind than posted. The analyses of class in any theory always pulls my interest and Fanon’s viewpoint of class structures within the framework of a colonial/neocolonial society is a new perspective to add to my existing understandings of class. Overall a great chapter, but one that I need to read over again (and with an exhaustion-free brain) to fully understand Fanon’s points. Thanks again Othello, looking forward to the discussion for this chapter from others, and with future chapter discussions!

    (Apparently Hexbear is not happy with my post in 1 block so I had to split it up into 2 posts)

  • plantifa [they/them]@hexbear.nettotheory@hexbear.net•The Wretched of the Earth Discussion - Chapter 2 Grandeur And Weakness of SpontaneityEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    Another Wretched of the Earth Chapter Discussion possum-party This one is my favorite so far (which I’ll get into in at the end.) Again my breadth of analysis is a bit limited as a first-time read but here are some of my understandings based on a few of the discussion questions. All quotes have been taken from the Farrington translation of Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth

    1. Who is the lumpenproletariat? Why are the essential to a revolution, why is discounting their potential a mistake?

    The Lumpenproletariat, writes Fanon, are composed of the dispossessed masses of growing rural populations, with either no physical holdings, or social ties of their own, or those who are affected by policies of colonial expropriation, and who exist within the periphery in urban centers, most often in conditions of poverty (“…that fraction of the peasant population which is blocked on the outer fringe of the urban centers, that fraction which has not yet succeeded in finding a bone to gnaw in the colonial system.”) who Fanon writes constitutes the “urban spearhead” of rebellion against colonialism. “For the lumpenproletariat, that horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe and from their clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.”

    In what ways is the lumpenproletariat so critical as to revolution? First, as Fanon writes: “The constitution of a lumpenproletariat is a phenomenon which obeys its own logic, and neither the brimming activity of the missionaries nor the decrees of the central government can check its growth.” I think here the key word that Fanon uses here is growth. Perhaps I’m reading a bit too much from just a single word, but my understanding of land dispossession, resource expropriation, and the associating rising poverty and social alienation that follows said policies by compradors of colonial rule, are social issues that increase in both intensity and popular discontent, with a continued colonialist or neocolonialist administration.

    Fanon also writes, the lumpenproletariat are a class that is unafraid of violence and action. “These classless idlers will by militant and decisive action discover the path that leads to nationhood. They won’t become reformed characters to please colonial society, fitting in with the morality of its rulers; quite on the contrary, they take for granted the impossibility of their entering the city save by hand grenades and revolvers.” Harkening back the the first chapter, “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon,” and the lumpenproletariat, a dispossessed class, one socially alienated from the colonial governance that they are subject to, and one that is unafraid of violence, and who, as a growing class exists at the edges of urban society constitute a potentially revolutionary portion of the urban population that plays a key role in social movements in opposition to colonial/neocolonial administration:

    “The outbreak of the rebellion in the towns changes the nature of the struggle. Whereas before the colonialist troops were entirely concerned with the country districts, we now see them falling back in haste on the towns in order to ensure the safety of the town population and their property. The forces of repression spread out; danger is present everywhere; now it’s the very soil of the nation, the whole of the colony, which goes into a trance. The armed groups of peasants look on while the mailed fist loses its grip. The rising in the towns is like an unhoped-for gas balloon.”

    On the other hand, why is brushing aside the lumpenproletariat as a class significant to an urban portion of resistance to colonialism or neocolonialism? Fanon writes that if the movement for national liberation does not reach out to the lumpenproletariat, than the foreign colonialists will (" If this available reserve of human effort is not immediately organized by the forces of rebellion, it will find itself fighting as hired soldiers side by side with the colonial troops.") He cites the recruitment of lumpenproletariats in social and military roles aiding foreign powers: by the French in Algeria, by the Portuguese in Angola, and by the Belgians in the presence of lumpenproletariat in mass-meetings in opposition to Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in the former Republic of the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.) Fanon writes of the tenacity of the colonizers in exploiting intranational and regional conflicts to divide popular discontent in order to quash it and that they too see the potential of the lumpenproletariat as tools of violence that can be directed toward a resisting colony:

    “The enemy is aware of ideological weaknesses, for he analyzes the forces of rebellion and studies more and more carefully the aggregate enemy which makes up a colonial people; he is also aware of the spiritual instability of certain layers of the population. The enemy discovers the existence, side by side with the disciplined and well-organized advance guard of rebellion, of a mass of men whose participation is constantly at the mercy of their being for too long accustomed to physiological wretchedness, humiliation, and irresponsibility. The enemy is ready to pay a high price for the services of this mass.”

    1. Who are the urban proletariat? what kind of positions do they have? why do they represent the “bourgeoisie fraction of the colonized population”?

    Fanon writes that the urban proletariat as a class within a colonized state differs in comparison the the urban proletariat within the Western capitalist state. Specifically, Fanon writes that the small, growing urban proletariat (described within the text as “embryonic”) are key members within the colonized populace that allows the administration by colonizers to function smoothly, and that within the colonized population, they are a class “which has been most pampered by the colonial regime” as potential compradors. Some of the roles that this urban proletariat include key occupations that allow for resource extraction and expropriation (in text examples of “dockers,” “miners”) occupations that maintains the functioning infrastructure within these urban centers ( in text as “tram conductors” “taxi drivers” “nurses”) as well as occupations that directly deal with the colonialists themselves (in text as “interpreters.”) The urban proletariat within a colonized nation, as the beneficiaries of the scraps given by foreign corporations and colonizing governments, are the ones most amenable Western ideology: “Their way of thinking is already marked in many points by the comparatively well-to-do class, distinguished by technical advances, that they spring from. Here ‘modern ideas’ reign.”

    The rural populace is distrustful of the urban proletariat, writes Fanon: they think of the urban proletariat as without morals, who adopts Europeans conventions, their ideology, their clothing, their language, as traitors to national heritage and values and who get along with occupying powers and make do within the framework of a colonial system. Fanon writes that this is not the classic rural-urban divide, that colonialism creates a new tension: “Here, we are not dealing with the old antagonism between town and country; it is the antagonism which exists between the native who is excluded from the advantages of colonialism and his counterpart who manages to turn colonial exploitation to his account.” This tension is not lost on colonizing powers, who seeks to make use of this conflict to further divide the rural and urban population to quash resistance to colonial rule.

  • plantifa [they/them]@hexbear.nettotheory@hexbear.net•The Wretched of the Earth discussion chapter oneEnglish
    6·
    11 months ago

    Thank you!

    Reading, even with the cursory analysis I had, through Fanon’s writing is a breath of fresh air, especially through his viewpoint as a PoC intellectual from Martinique [which upon looking up, is a French “Single territorial collectivity” to this day. 🔥 🇫🇷 🔥 Free Martinique!'] without the biases and chauvinism, conscious and unconscious, of white western theoreticians.

    Striking is his affirmation that the act of decolonization is violent and can only be violent similarly to how colonialism and its establishment can only be violent, and that hand-wringing by the moderate liberals who equivocate the violence by colonized with violence by the colonizer, who go over the talking points of “Yes I believe colonialism is a monstrous system and I denounce it, yet violence committed in the sake of colonialism’s opposition is also wrong! Change must be moderate, reserved, blah blah blah blah blah” ultimately are either cynical liars, or useful fools who will denounce the forceful response to colonialism/neocolonialism by the oppressed and exploited, and in the same breath, without any shame, excuse colonial violence as “a horrid thing, one to be opposed, but a regretful thing of the past, one that we can learn from” while turning a blind eye or denial of existing, ongoing oppression and expropriation of natural resources of colonies and neocolonies.

    He puts into words one of the things that infuriates me beyond measure when talking to the “white moderate” about imperialism, no matter how moralistically self-flagellating even the most well-meaning liberal is regarding imperialism, denying neocolonialism as an ongoing phenomena or relegating colonialism and the scars it had created as a ‘thing of the past’ and that ‘we [blech, what do you mean WE] learned from our mistakes’ and proceeding to uncritically absorb international “unbiased” news media or take government officials at face value perpetuating the same systems but under a new neocolonialist patina, which manufactures consent for punitive acts of military intervention or economic sanctions, makes apparent how it’s the same shit but just a little bit different and these “mistakes” are still continuing to be made. The West has not changed, it will not change, and it cannot be trusted to bring about change for the dismantling of the successor systems of historical colonialism.

    His analysis that decolonization must be undertaken bottom up, and address both base and superstructure is an excellent point. It’s apparent how decolonization of the base, of both means and relations of production, are critically important, but also with his point on how ignoring decolonization of the superstructure, of colonizer ideology, perpetuates a more decentralized system of compradors and vendepatrias that maintain oppressive systems.

    I meant to get around reading Wretched of the Earth, and what better time to do so than right now with comrades on Hexbear. I’m really liking this so far, thanks for pushing for this as a collective analysis on my favorite six-sided bear site.

  • plantifa [they/them]@hexbear.nettotheory@hexbear.net•The Wretched of the Earth discussion chapter oneEnglish
    12·
    11 months ago

    Have a bit of things to do on the side so I cannot answer every reading question, but because comrade Othello has so kindly made an effortpost on a book that I should read in-depth as a fellow PoC which is on my list, as well as to earnestly participate in future Hexbear theory read-alongs, I have begun reading (though not as deeply as I would like if I had completely free time to absorb a book) Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth

    what did you think of satare’s preface?

    An interesting and scathing preface written in the view of a European and (assuming through the usage of ‘we’ and of describing conditions of colonial expropriation of resources to Europe) writes for Europeans (“Europeans, you must open this book and enter into it.”), yet one that also applies to the US in the 21st century. Some of Sartre’s rhetorical flourishes about the cultural chauvinism displayed by Europeans, even in a voice that critiques such statements make me cringe a bit, yet Sartre exposes the colonialist mindset in such a stark way that echoes some of the neocolonialist apologia in the 21st century:

    “A few years ago, a bourgeois colonialist commentator found only this to say in defense of the West: ‘We aren’t angels. But we, at least, feel some remorse.’”

    “But, all the same, they think to themselves, there are limits; these guerillas should be bent on showing that they are chivalrous; that would be the best way of showing they are men. Some times the Left scolds them . . . ‘You’re going too far; we won’t support you any more.’ The natives don’t give a damn about their support; for all the good it does them they might as well stuff it up their backsides.”

    “You, who are so liberal and so humane, who have such an exaggerated adoration of culture that it verges on affectation, you pretend to forget that you own colonies and that in them men are massacred in your name.”

    A scathing preface of European colonialism and a solid intro to what Fanon will expound on later.

    what does Fanon mean by “replacing one species with another”?

    Fanon begins chapter 1 with the statement that “National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.” [emphasis mine] Fanon writes that in the undergoing of decolonization that success lies in the whole of the social structure changed from the bottom up, in both the material lives and cognitive consciousness of those colonized. Conversely, within the minds of the colonizers, the possible act of decolonization is “equally experienced in the form of a terrifying future.”

    Fanon writes: Decolonization never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally. It transforms spectators crushed with their inessentiality into privileged actors, with the grandiose glare of history’s floodlights upon them. It brings a natural rhythm into existence, introduced by new men, and with it a new language and a new humanity. Decolonization is the veritable creation of new men."

    who is the colonized intellectual? what role does he serve?

    Fanon writes of the frenzied search of compradors and local bourgeois within a colonized country by the colonizers for “the indigenous population is discerned only as an indistinct mass” to the colonizers, in order to undergo the “familiar dialogue concerning values is carried on” through colonial ideological indoctrination and dissemination. “The colonialist bourgeoisie had hammered into the native’s mind the idea of a society of individuals where each person shuts himself up in his own subjectivity, and whose only wealth is individual thought,” writes Fanon.

    Yet in cases of decolonization, Fanon writes of the dangers of the colonized intellectual that remain, especially if in positions of governance and power for: “We find intact in them the manners and forms of thought picked up during their association with the colonialist bourgeoisie. Spoilt children of yesterday’s colonialism and of today’s national governments, they organize the loot of whatever national resources exist. Without pity, they use today’s national distress as a means of getting on through scheming and legal robbery, by import-export combines, limited liability companies, gambling on the stock exchange, or unfair promotion.” When colonial ideology and indoctrination exist in a formerly colonized populace, colonized intellectuals within positions of power act as cat’s-paws and comprador cutouts furthering neocolonial interests.

    what does Fanon say about nationalist reformist movements? what are their failings?

    Fanon writes that the concept of colonialism has changed over time, when once a column of imperialist soldiers may occupy swathes of land to expropriate wealth and natural resources to the European market, now, " After a phase of accumulation of capital, capitalism has today come to modify its conception of the profit-earning capacity of a commercial enterprise. The colonies have become a market. The colonial population is a customer who is ready to buy goods; consequently, if the garrison has to be perpetually reinforced, if buying and selling slackens off, that is to say if manufactured and finished goods can no longer be exported, there is clear proof that the solution of military force must be set aside." [emphasis mine.]

    Yet, as Fanon writes: “Thus the nationalist leader who is frightened of violence is wrong if he imagines that colonialism is going to “massacre all of us.” The military will of course go on playing with tin soldiers which date from the time of the conquest, but higher finance will soon bring the truth home to them.” [emphasis mine yet again.]

    Fanon critiques nationalist reformist movements that " take the interests of both parties into consideration," [colonizer and colonized] solely through acts of peaceful dissent, alongside colonizers’ appealing to religion, of “all those saints who have turned the other cheek, who have forgiven trespasses against them, and who have been spat on and insulted without shrinking,” used to pacify dissent of a populace oppressed by violence who are exploited. However, harkening back to the beginning of the chapter “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon” and as also stated earlier within the chapter (and apparent through historical precedent) colonization too is a violent phenomenon.

    theory-gary Excellent first chapter, though again due to time, I unfortunately am unable to answer all of the reading questions, nor spend the preferred amount of time reading and analyzing Chapter 1 of Wretched of the Earth to the degree that I feel like I proficiently understand every point Fanon (and comrade Othello via reading questions) that On Violence and _Violence in International Context _ conveys. I will return in the future to re-read and re-examine these points and hopefully I did not misconstrue some of the points Fanon is making on this engaging (yet great in depth, especially with myself having a fried attention span due to being terminally online) first chapter. This is a great work to cover as a theory discussion series, no issue with how you have presented this intro to discussion, and sorry about not being able to cover all the questions that you have laid out for this first discussion. Thanks Othello!