The Wretched of the Earth - Frantz Fanon: On Violence and Spontaneity

Breht: Hello everybody and welcome back to Red Menace. So today we start our basically three-part series on Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth. So today we're covering the first two chapters on violence and the grandeur and weakness of spontaneity. And then next month we're coming back and doing the next two chapters. And by the end of the year we'll have covered this entire text and that is when we will move back to Marx and Engels specifically. We've always... told our listeners we're doing this interesting trajectory where we cover a lot of the basic Leninist and Maoist texts. And then we come back to Marx after a year of that with all of that stuff in mind and hopefully bring some new light to the original Marx. So that will be coming at the very beginning of the new year. But for the next two to three months, we will be working through this amazing text, The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon. And that's what we're going to start today. If you do like the show and you want to support us, definitely go check us out at RevolutionaryLeftRadio.com. You can find both Rev Left and Red Menace, all of our Twitter pages, our Patreon, etc. And if you do join our Patreon for Red Menace, you get monthly bonus content. So yeah, this is going to be a pretty long episode. So I'm going to make the intro very short and sort of finish it there. And let's just go ahead and start diving into this amazing tech. So Allison, if you want to just go ahead and start us off.

Alyson: Awesome. Cool. So yeah, I'll go ahead and start the text off. So I want to start by just acknowledging this text is very hard to summarize. And so we'll probably go a little bit longer on the summary section than we normally would. Please bear with us. Fanon's writing style is very, very beautiful, but also very difficult to track at times. So we're trying to parse it into as coherent of a structure as we can. And that means kind of drawing some things out more than we normally would. So with that said, Fanon begins the opening chapter of this book titled On Violence with a very bold and blunt and just quite frankly, to the point claim. He writes that, quote, national liberation, nationally reawakening, restoration of the nation, of the people or commonwealth, whatever the name used, whatever the latest expression, decolonization is always a violent event, end quote. And these words really perfectly capture Fanon's project in this chapter. He attempts to look at the conditions under which decolonization can occur while while paying special attention to the psychological aspects of violent colonial repression, as well as the psychological aspects of a violent decolonial uprising and what that does to the people who participate in it. So Fanon insists that decolonization is a historic process, which must be understood, quote, as the encounter between two congenitally antagonistic forces that in fact owe their singularity to the kind of reification secreted and nurtured by the colonial situation. End quote. So that's a lot of words that can be kind of hard to parse. So let's try to break down a little bit what Fanon is talking about here and about the way that the colonizer and the colonized reinforce this image of each other and shape each other through a specific dialectic. So Phnom points out that the colonized and the colonizer occupy the same land, and that the leader exploits the former through a violent process of oppression and occupation. And so in order to justify this, the colonizers have to create an image of the colonized as these dehumanized, more animalistic, sort of another species, really, who can be rightfully oppressed, exploited, and who can have their land stolen from them. So colonization actually is a process that transforms the colonized in a specific way by transforming them into what Fanon says is another species. In contrast to this, Fanon tells us that decolonization also involves a transformation of the colonized subject, but this time in a different direction. He writes that it provides them with, quote, a new rhythm, a new language, and a new humanity, end quote. Thus, Fanon claims that the process of decolonization is a matter of, quote, the creation of new men. The colonized subject, which was previously reduced to a non-human thing, is elevated to the status of human through anti-colonial and decolonial struggle. So this transformation can only be achieved through violent confrontation between the colonized. the colonized. Fanon insists that, quote, in its bare reality, decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives, for the last can be the first only after a murderous and decisive confrontation between two protagonists, end quote. And so it's through this violent confrontation that decolonization transforms the colonized subjects. It's this violence that allows that to take place. So having outlined the violent nature of the decolonial transformation, Venon next lays out the colonial conditions in which decolonization occurs, and this is a bit more descriptive. Venon argues that the colonial situation is defined by division, by compartmentalization, and by bifurcation. some towns are for colonizers and some are for the natives and this division occurs throughout colonial society you see divided schools divided streets divided buildings there's a constant compartmentalization of the world along the basis of colonization and this divided world is divided on the basis of colonial violence vanon writes quote the dividing line the border is represented by the barracks and the police stations In the colonies, the official legitimate agent, the spokesperson for the colonizers, and the regime of oppression is the police officer or the soldier, end quote. So Fanon explains that in capitalist societies, exploitation is often masked through moral teachings. So we might look at the way that religion, for example, teaches people in capitalist society to be humble and subservient to people with authority. Or we might look at the way that school teaches us that it's good to sacrifice for a good job someday. and that you should do what your boss tells you so that you can get a promotion, or you should stick to the schedules that are dictated for you by other people. This subservience is bred through sort of ideological means. But Fanon tells us that this isn't really how things work in colonial society. In contrast to this, the colonial society is marked by brutal and obvious violence. The police and soldiers enact brutal violence that's not masked behind some pretty ideology. For the colonized subject, they're not given an ideology that makes a beautiful story of why they should submit. They are daily reminded through brute force and repression that they have to submit to the colonizing forces. And this violence is used to keep Native people confined to Native sectors outside of the areas occupied by the colonizers. these areas according to fanon are marked by poverty and desperation and the conditions inside them often cause the colonized to grow resentful and to look at the european colonizers with a strong sense of envy fanon claims that there is not one colonized subject who at least once a day does not dream of taking the place of the colonist In this world of division and bifurcation, things operate slightly differently than in capitalist society. Fanon actually tells us that race can't be conceptualized as a mere superstructure, which results from the economic base of colonialism. Here, he somewhat challenges the Marxist view of things that often reduces race to an ideological product of capitalism. rather than a starting point for repression in the first place. Fanon writes that, quote, looking at the immediacies of the colonial context, it is clear that what divides the world is first and foremost what species, what race one belongs to. In the colonies, the economic infrastructure is also a superstructure. The cause is effect. You are rich because you are white. You are white because you are rich. This is why a Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched when it comes to addressing colonial issues. it's not just the concept of pre-capitalist society so effectively studied by marx which needs to be re-examined here the serf is essentially different from the knight but a reference to divine right is needed to justify that difference in status in the colonies the foreigner imposed himself using his cannons and machines despite the success of this pacification in spite of his appropriation End quote. And so Fanon pushes back against potentially reductive Marxist readings of colonization that look at colonization as primarily about capitalism and see race as a secondary afterthought that doesn't need to be centrally focused into our theory. Fanon says we need to stretch Marxism and realize that we can't have this reductive approach if we really want to understand colonization in the first place. And so the colonial system divides the world into two separate species, the colonizer and the colonized, and it enacts intense violence in the service of preserving this division. The colonized are seen as evil and vicious animals by the colonizer, but the colonized know that this is not the case. They know that they're humans and that they eventually will begin to prepare for the struggle which will demonstrate their humanity through violence. Decolonization then is the quote-unquote appropriation of violence by the colonized. This is not an idyllic process of simply removing the compartmentalization of the colonial world. Decolonization is a fundamentally violent act. It's an act of destruction. Fanon writes that, quote, End quote. And so Fanon shows us that the colonized will eventually rise up and wage a struggle against the colonizers to appropriate the violence that their enemies have used and to assert their humanity through revolutionary struggle. He then attempts to sketch out how the colonizers will respond to this reality and how they attempt to deal with this move towards insurrection. So, in response to the stirrings of decolonization, the colonizers often make an appeal to Western colonial values. Benon tells us that the colonizers ask for decency and civilized discourse around issues like equality and reason. But the colonized can see through this hypocrisy. The masses really do understand that these values are only being brought up in a desperate attempt by the colonizers to remain in power. not out of a genuine hope for equality and reason to win out at the end of the day. So as tensions heighten, the colonizers attempt to make contact with the elites of the colonized world, according to Fanon. Despite these efforts, the colonized understand that there can be no equality without an end to decolonization itself. Some intellectuals from the colonized class may attempt to defend these abstract ideas of freedom and reason, but these efforts will not usually succeed in convincing the masses that it is enough to appeal to European values. At the same time, the talk of equality and the realization that equality can only exist through concrete decolonization causes the colonized to see past their own dehumanization in many ways. Fanon writes, quote, the colonized subject thus discovers that his life, his breathing, and his heartbeats are the same as the colonists. He discovers that the skin of a colonist is not worth more than the natives. In other words, his world receives a fundamental jolt. The colonized revolutionary's new assurance stems from this. In fact, my life is worth as much as the colonists. His look can no longer strike fear into me or nail me to the spot, and his voice can no longer petrify me. I'm no longer uneasy in his presence. In reality, to hell with him. Not only does his presence no longer bother me, but I am already preparing to waylay him in such a way that soon he will have no other solution but to flee. As things intensify, the colonial intellectuals will at first see to integrate themselves into the colonial system by filling highly technical positions previously closed to the colonized. So Fanon tells us that basically the intellectual class among the colonized masses might try to integrate into the colonial system. But despite this, the masses do not see this as sufficient justice and will continue to push for decolonization. The colonized intellectuals will thus learn from the masses that the abstract Western values that they clung to are just meaningless abstractions in the face of decolonial struggle. The colonized intellectual will be forced to learn to abandon these values. Fanon argues that individualism will be the first to go and that the intellectual will have to learn to subject their personal will to the collective will of the colonized masses. Through a process of self-criticism, quote, the intellectual sheds all that calculating, all those strange silences, those ulterior motives. that devious thinking and secrecy as he gradually plunges deeper among the people, end quote. So in this context, abstract intellectual philosophizing that these intellectuals are obsessed with about the true and the good becomes useless in the face of struggle. The intellectual has to make themselves useful for the masses and for the movement for decolonization. Fanon writes that, quote, truth is what hastens the dislocation of the colonial regime, what fosters the emergence of the nation. So, having outlined the immediate response to the beginnings of the decolonial movement by the colonizing class, Benon next turns to analyzing the effective and psychological states that are created by this colonial situation and colonial context. The decolonial movement at first maintains the dichotomy of an us versus them, which was created by the colonial context of René Fanon. The colonized need to actually reverse this, and they need to paint the colonizer as an otherized enemy to be struggled against. The dehumanization almost becomes flipped in order to create a basis for political struggle. And this is an inevitable result of the compartmentalization of colonial culture. It's the way that society has been structured, so it's what the masses have to work with. This compartmentalization makes the colonized often feel trapped by colonial relations, which can only be escaped through dreams, according to Fanon, because there's no real outlet for the colonized at all. Fanon argues that this frustrating sense of being trapped creates violence among the colonized, as colonized people attack each other due to the constant tension of a colonial society. The constant policing by the occupying European order, the sense of being trapped, and the constant demand to be submissive makes this sort of tension fester even more intensely within the colonized corners. So Fanon explains that in this context, common sense seems to disappear. People turn to violence at, you know, the slightest provocation, as the only way that the colonized subject can assert its power at all is through violent self-defense whenever the colonized subject is wronged by other colonized subjects. Fanon explains that, quote, by throwing himself muscle and soul into bloody feuds, the colonized subject endeavors to convince himself that colonialism has never existed, that everything is as it used to be, and history marches on, end quote. So, this condition causes people to turn to superstition and to supernatural explanations for things as well. Benon argues that the ritual dance and possession rituals that we see within African spirituality can be best understood as an expression of this exhausted, intentioned colonial affectivity. He also notes that as the liberation struggle kicks up, these rituals begin to fade to the background as the colonized are forced to face immediate needs like feeding the poor or surviving intense violent repression from colonial forces. Fanon writes that, quote, after years of unreality, after wallowing in the most extraordinary phantasms, the colonized subject, machine gun at the ready, finally confronts the only force which challenges his very being, colonialism. The colonized subject discovers reality and so transforms it through his practice, his deployment of violence and his agenda for liberation, end quote. So Fanon next turns to asking how we can know if a situation is ready for national liberation and which forces can play a decisive revolutionary role within that struggle. Fanon argues that nationalist political parties composed mostly of urban voters will often try to quell revolution, instead asking for power to be handed to them by the colonizers. So as we move into this decolonial context, this is how things begin to shape up. This is because their urban support base often benefits in some ways from the economic conditions of colonization. These parties might secure advances for the rich and powerful individuals, but the masses are never satisfied with this piecemeal reform. In fact, the revolutionary peasantry who live outside the cities where these parties are most active feel left out of these nationalist parties, and the peasants latch on to the need for revolutionary violence all the more because of the reform that the nationalist parties often seek. And so in response to this desire for violence, the colonial bourgeoisie then began to push a new ideology, according to Fanon, the ideology of nonviolence. This is yet another attempt to stifle the masses' desire for revolutionary violence. The nationalist parties attempt to move things in this nonviolent direction so that the movement for decolonization doesn't threaten capitalist relations within the colony. And thus the Nationalist Party, to some extent, plays a pacifying role, attempting to keep the revolutionary struggle from occurring by acting as a peaceful release valve for the anger of the colonized. And in this sense, we can see the Nationalist Party playing a counter-revolutionary function, but this is not the end of the story, according to Fanon. Despite their attempts to stop the outbreak of revolutionary violence, the nationalist parties actually still end up playing a partially progressive role in the liberation struggle. So Fanon explains when he writes, quote, The politicians who make the speeches, who write the nationalist presses, raise the people's hope. They avoid subversion, but in fact stir up feelings in the unconsciousness of the listener or readers. Often the national or ethnic language is used. Here again, expectations are raised and the imagination is allowed to roam outside the colonial order. Sometimes even these politicians declare, quote, we Blacks, we Arabs, end quote. And these terms charged with ambivalence during the colonial period take on a sacred connotation. These nationalist politicians are playing with fire, end quote. So thus these parties can actually end up raising the revolutionary consciousness that they seek to oppose on accident. By formulating demands in nationalist terms, they create more furor and fervor for national liberation and the movement for getting rid of the colonizers through violent actions. They end up creating the very forces which they seek to control. This leads to the state repression as the colonized try to crack down on the nationalist movement in most instances. This doesn't stop the movement, however, and repression actually usually revitalizes opposition to the colonizers. It often radicalizes the masses even more, causing them to move away from the faltering nationalist parties. instead embracing revolution. And in return, this usually causes the colonists to prop up the nationalist leaders and grant them formal independence. Rather than face actual physical overthrow, the colonizing class often decides to just give the nationalist parties control and cut their losses once it becomes clear that violent revolution is on the horizon. But this independence doesn't usually satisfy the masses, as they still see the way that the rest of the world has more than them and still feel that they have been robbed by colonialism. In the time that Fanon writes, he says that the new nation becomes a plaything for the USSR, for the Americans to fight over, and the masses feel themselves caught in the conflict between socialism and capitalism. This causes the colonized to see their position in the international system in relation to imperialism. Fanon tells us that, quote, when Mr. Khrushchev brandishes his shoe at the United Nations and hammers the table with it, no colonized individual, no representative of the underdeveloped countries laughs. For what Mr. Khrushchev is showing the colonized countries who are watching is that he, the missile-wielding music, is treating these wretched capitalists the way they deserve. Likewise, Castro attends the UN in military uniform not to scandalize the underdeveloped countries. What Castro is demonstrating is how aware he is of the continuing regime of violence. What is surprising is that he did not enter the UN with his submachine gun, but perhaps that wouldn't have been allowed. End quote. And so what he points out is now these newly independent nations and the masses among them start to see where they fit into the international struggle that is occurring. And they look to socialist leaders in many instances as an example of resisting imperialist violence. And so this led to an alignment between much of the third world and Soviet socialism. as the Soviets often provided aid to colonized people through arms provision. And this caused capitalism to originally develop a sort of opposition to national liberation struggle. The imperialists, of course, paid lip service to oppressed peoples throughout the Third World, but they also promoted psyops and soft power projects like Radio Free Europe instead of actually assisting countries in developing on the path of independence. So, the masses have thus attained liberation, but they do not feel like their situation has been totally rectified. Benon says that the conditions for the colonized to develop values and citizenry doesn't yet exist at this stage, and that the leaders of these new nations often turn to international neutrality, aligning with neither the Soviet Union nor the United States as a result of this. This neutrality is strategic, as it allows them to gain money from both the Soviet bloc and the Americans, but it's also dangerous because it means that the new nation is not defended by either one of these superpowers. Now, these newly independent countries, caught between the various forces of the Cold War, still suffer greatly, according to Fanon. He writes that, quote, a world of underdevelopment, a world of poverty and inhumanity, end quote. So this condition, this lack of development results through the colonizers withdrawing capital and investment when they leave or are driven out in the independent struggle. These colonizers often create economic pressures to punish these new nations as well. You can look at the way that France required reparations from the Haitians after their revolution as an example of way that they punished the newly independent nations. This forces the nationalist leaders to enact austerity and to demand that the populace rebuild the infrastructure of the country, even though the populace is usually poor, tired, and doesn't have the resources to do so. These countries which choose total independence are forced to develop a sort of cruel self-sufficiency, while others in European nations live in luxury, and the masses in these nations see that discrepancy and that difference. Other countries don't choose autarky and self-sufficiency, though, and instead become economically dependent on the old colonizers. Fanon writes that, quote, the former colonizer, which has kept intact and in some cases reinforced the colonial marketing channel, agrees to inject small doses into independent nations budget in order to sustain it. End quote. And so for Fanon, the underdevelopment, the lack of investment in capital, the lack of wealth that these newly independent nations have completely holds them back from accessing equality with the rest of the world. These countries, Fanon insists, must not be forced to choose between aligning themselves with the force of capitalism or falling apart completely. He writes that, quote, End quote. Now, Fanon is not rejecting socialism entirely here, we should be clear about that. He concedes that capitalist exploitation cannot be allowed in these new countries, and that socialist development is necessary to create a successful new nation. The problem that Fanon points out, however, is that there's simply not the necessary resources within these new nations for socialist development to occur in the first place. So a redistribution of wealth is necessary for the newly independent nations in the global south to build socialism at all. Fanon insists that it's not enough for the imperialists and the colonists to pull out of these new independent nations, taking their wealth with them. He demands reparations from the imperialists instead, writing, quote, End quote. This paying up, of course, does not play out, and capital flight is actually a constant problem that these newly liberated nations have to deal with. This ultimately, of course, ends up hurting the capitalists as well as the colonized, because it forces the colonized to turn to self-sufficiency and autarky instead of integrating into the international market. This actually causes the international capitalist class to lose out on new markets that are opening up. The capitals lose out on these potential markets, and this eventually leads the capitalists to change their mind and offer much more aid to underdeveloped nations in many instances. Fanon writes that, quote, it is clear, therefore, that the young nations of the third world are wrong to grovel at the feet of capitalist countries. We are powerful in our own right and the justness of our position. It is our duty, however, to tell and explain to the capitalist countries that they are wrong to think the fundamental issue of our time is the war between the socialist regimes and them. An end must be put to the Cold War, the nuclear arms race must be stopped, and the underdeveloped regions must receive generous investments and technological aid, end quote. And so, again, Fanon insists the necessity of creating equality and a redistribution of wealth that could allow these newly independent states to integrate into the global order, and he says that this is an imperative that extends beyond the Cold War and the fighting between the USSR and the United States. So the Third World then must ask for reparations and true equality. Fanon further writes that what the Third World, quote, expects from those who have kept it in slavery for centuries is to help it rehabilitate man and ensure his triumph everywhere, once and for all, end quote. Fanon is not ignorant, and he's not really an idealist, however. He notes that European benevolence can't be sufficient to ensure that this task is undertaken. And instead, he makes a final call for internationalism, writing that, quote, this colossal task, which consists of reintroducing man into the world, man in his totality, will be achieved with the crucial help of the European masses, who do well to confess that they have often rallied behind the position of our common masters on colonial issues. In order to do this, the European masses must first of all decide to wake up, put on their thinking caps, and stop playing the irresponsible game of Sleeping Beauty. And so Fanon ends this chapter by an appeal not to the capitalist classes that rule the capitalist European countries, but to the masses of those countries to stand in solidarity and to fight back against the colonial masters who have continued to oppress the formerly colonized nations through things like austerity, through things like demanding reparations, or through things like not putting capital into their markets so that they remain permanently underdeveloped. The call that Phenom makes is not on the capitalists to suddenly have a change of heart, but for the masses to rise up and band together in solidarity with the third world.

Breht: Beautifully done. Beautifully said. I do want to make a structural point before we move on. From my understanding, this book, The Wretched of the Earth, was originally a bunch of separate essays. So in chapter two, it does not follow where chapter one left off, right? Chapter one says, is Fanon talking about violence and everything Allison just mentioned. In Chapter 2, he sort of restarts the entire process again and goes through it to show the evolution of national liberation struggles and how different factions operate within it. And it starts back from a position of being colonized, right? So just for people listening and trying to follow along, don't think of this text as a hyperchronological argument being laid out. It really is sort of a more collection of essays put together. And in fact, I have this... This book right here called Meditations on Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth by James Yaki Salas. It's really, really good. And one of the things he does in this text is actually propose that you read this book in a whole different order because he's getting at that same structural problem. So I just want to make that clear up front so nobody expects this chapter two to just pick up where Allison left off. So with that all firmly in mind, let's go ahead and dive in to Chapter 2 here. So Fanon opens up Chapter 2 of his book by reflecting on the fact that in Chapter 1 on violence, he laid out how there is often a discrepancy between the masses and the nationalist parties in a colonized country. This is important for this entire chapter because what Fanon aims to tackle here are the competing strategies or more precisely the different aspects of a process between spontaneity and organization in the context of national liberation struggles. That contradiction in tactics can often be a focal point which reflects the tensions not only between spontaneity and organization as such but also between short-term rebellion and long-term revolutionary war. But what Fanon is basically doing throughout this chapter is tracing the evolution and common pitfalls of national liberation struggles. He does this by demystifying general laws, patterns, and trajectories which are common to all anti-colonial struggles and methodically reveals how these struggles develop over time. And it's essential to remember why he is doing this. He is doing this with the express purpose of equipping national liberation revolutionaries and movements with a deep understanding of these processes in order to increase the likelihood of success for these movements. He is not talking to some generalized readership, and he is certainly not talking to Europeans or Americans. He is talking directly to and for the victims of colonialism, to the wretched of the earth. Fanon also reminds us here, and this will be important to keep in mind throughout this section, that the very creation of these reformist and often collaborationist nationalist parties in the colonized countries is inseparable from the rise of an intellectual and business elite within those countries. And it is this elite who fill the ranks of these nationalist parties. And it's in the implicit interests of these elites that these parties often function. So with all of that in mind, let's jump into chapter two entitled Grandeur and Weakness of Spontaneity. Fanon begins by pointing out how the very notion of a reformist political party is imported from the metropoles and is forged in those contexts, and as such, it is often out of sync with the needs and realities of a colonial society. In the imperial core, these organizations are used to manage and obscure the struggle of the proletariat within the context of a highly industrialized capitalist society. As such, the focus of these parties and the fatal flaw of them, according to Fanon, is to address first and foremost the native urban proletariat in colonial society, which represent the most politically conscious as well as the most relatively privileged, as they hold positions which Fanon refers to as indispensable for the operation of the colonial machine. Civil servants, interpreters, nurses, drivers, intellectuals, etc., This is often the base of the nationalist parties in the colonial world. The problem with this, as Fanon points out, is that this population of a colonial society is incredibly small, seldom representing more than 1 or 2% of the entire population of a given colonial country. On the other side of this yawning divide are the rural masses, upon whom the nationalist parties, made up of urban workers, as I said, civil servants, intellectuals, etc., look with distrust and skepticism. One of the reasons for this, Fanon argues, is that these peasants still live in a feudal state with a medieval structure. And this reality is nurtured and solidified by the colonizers who benefit from keeping these rural masses under the authority of feudal overlords and rulers while petrifying them in a state of non-progress, a more or less static feudal state. The feudal rulers, who are often propped up by the colonizers, immediately come into conflict with the urban sectors of the population, specifically the emerging national bourgeoisie and business class. The latter find themselves in competition with the feudal rulers as their rural society is not dominated by markets and free trade, but by religion, tradition, and superstition, much of which is an open hostility to the values and goals of the burgeoning national bourgeoisie. From this, a cultural as well as an economic and political divide emerges and strengthens. These agents of feudal rule form a barrier between the Nationalist Party base in urban areas and the masses of people in rural areas. The traditional authorities feel their power and status in society to be threatened by urban elite and their aspirations to infiltrate economically and culturally the rural areas. On the other side of the coin, Fanon says, quote, End quote. So as colonialism continues to develop, the landless peasants and those who cannot make a living in the countryside are slowly driven into the cities, crammed into shantytowns, and become the lumpenproletariat. We'll get back to this later. Those peasants who stay in the countrysides often become staunch defenders of traditions, and in a colonial society, importantly, they actually represent elements of discipline and communalism, while the urban centers become increasingly individualistic. So you see this gap widening and different elements taking place in different parts of the country. This divide, Fanon makes sure to remind us, is not the traditional opposition between cities and rural areas, especially not if you're an American or North American thinking about the differences between cities and rural areas. That's not the divide here at play. Rather, it represents the opposition between the colonized people who find a way to benefit from the colonial system and those who are excluded from those benefits. This is all to the colonialists' advantage, as they often leverage these splits and antagonisms in their struggle against the nationalist parties, setting those in the mountains and countrysides against those in the urban centers and thereby dividing the possible anti-colonial forces. We have seen this dynamic play out countless times in countless colonial contexts. Instead of adapting their nationalist party's tactics and organizational methods to trying to inject the rural areas with nationalist or progressive elements, the nationalist parties instead set themselves against the rural masses, fighting what they see to be backward traditions and mindsets. In this way, the colonial structure benefits, while the divide between the burgeoning urban elite and the rural peasant masses only grows. When the urban elements do go to the rural areas, it's always with the authority of the urban powers at their backs, and it usually causes only more resentment and division. They do not go into these areas to teach, to unify, to educate, or to cooperate. Rather, they go there to dictate and dominate, erasing important traditions and histories in the name of a new national identity. The colonial powers and the entire colonial structure continues to benefit from this divide. Even after a successful national liberation struggle, Fanon goes on to say, "...these same mistakes are often repeated, which fosters a trend towards social, cultural, and political balkanization, and the feudal tribalism of the colonial period becomes replaced by regionalism and factionalism in the national phase." But Fanon points out, quote, And the dreams in the villages are not those of the children in the cities dreaming of luxury goods or passing their exams, but rather dreams of identification with such and such hero whose heroic death still brings tears to their eyes. End quote. This basis described above by Fanon goes on to undergird and fuel the flames of peasant revolt against colonialism and for national liberation. In cases where nationalist party leaders are repressed by colonial forces, the peasants can actually act as relays from the city centers to the countryside. informing the others of often exaggerated instances of colonial aggression, riling them up into a fury which they then sometimes spontaneously unleash on colonial forces and their proxies in the areas, inviting heavy repression from the colonial forces in the form of bombing campaigns and troop invasions. This often leads to the settling in of guerrilla warfare. Back in the urban centers, the nationalist parties struggle to respond to the blossoming of revolt by the peasant masses. Remember from last chapter that these nationalist parties often do not outwardly advocate for armed rebellion, right? They're reformist, they're nonviolent in nature, etc. But they're also not necessarily against it, specifically and especially when it's carried out by the peasant masses, which allows them to claim plausible deniability while still benefiting from it. However, instead of attempting to unite with the peasants, organize a more sustainable rebellion, educate and politicize the masses, and take the struggle to a higher level, the nationalist parties sit back and hope that the spontaneous eruption of the masses continues. But as Fanon says, quote, End quote. The resentment, distrust, and huge divide between the nationalist parties and the rural peasant masses continues after the colonial period into the national period, often resulting in the nationalist parties cracking down on, repressing, or otherwise attempting to dominate the rural areas. Not completely unlike the way the colonists engage with the colonized, which is noted as ironic by Fanon. And it's also important to remember that even after a successful anti-colonialist fight, the colonial power, often through clandestine mechanisms, continues to exert control over the country, fomenting discontent and throwing up obstacles in front of the new government. If anybody has trouble understanding this, we can just think of Cuba, which is a touchpoint that a lot of us understand, and how the U.S. government continued to operate or try to operate, overthrow, sabotage, and topple the new revolutionary Cuban government even after the successful revolution and the ousting of the Batista regime. So that's just an example for people to anchor themselves to. In fact, the colonial powers often attempt and succeed at creating new political parties in the rural areas based on tribal and regional loyalties in opposition to the development of a national consciousness and unity in order to weaken or take down a young nationalist government or general anti-colonial movement. The party of national unity is overwhelmed with new political factions, and the tribal parties formed with the aid of the old colonial power begin to vocally oppose centralization and national unity and denounce the new government as a one-party dictatorship. So let's pause here for a moment and summarize what we've just been over before launching into the second half of this chapter. In hyper-summary, what Fanon is doing here is tracing out a general pattern and trajectory that virtually always occurs during decolonization in the Third World, whereby different factions, with specific geographic bases and with distinct interests, compete with one another in such a way that it represents a radical and deep division, and thus a systemic weakening of the anti-colonial forces. This is preyed upon and aggravated and intensified by the colonial forces who have an interest in creating and sustaining divisions among and between colonized subjects. But we are now going to see what Fanon is getting at by tracing this history. And fundamentally, he will be arguing that by unleashing violence, the rural masses begin to exert their agency and therefore begin to develop in earnest an anti-colonial subjectivity. In opposition to the classic Marxist orthodoxy that a successful liberatory revolution must be led by the advanced segments of an industrialized proletariat, Fanon is arguing that in the context of colonialism... It's the peasant masses, not the urban proletariat, who become the leading fighting force. But let's go back to the text. Fanon's next move is to show that there are truly revolutionary and dedicated elements within the otherwise reformist nationalist parties which, in the face of this party's reformism, nonviolence, and weakness... slowly become dissatisfied and then disenfranchised by those parties as the parties themselves come into closer alignment with the forces of colonialism and disavow their radicals, formally or informally. These revolutionary forces come from a section of the intellectuals as well as from the rank-and-file cadres who have been the most brutally repressed by colonial forces in the urban areas, oftentimes having gone through periods of torture and imprisonment at the hands of their foreign oppressors. What this represents is a breaking point between the official and the unofficial or revolutionary party factions. The revolutionary elements from the intellectual sector and the rank-and-file sectors unite to form an underground party initially, but as the repression from the official parties and the colonial forces intensify, these elements are eventually almost always driven out of the city and town centers and into the countryside. Fanon says, Driven from the towns, these men first of all take refuge in the urban periphery. But the police network smokes them out and forces them to leave the towns for good and abandon the arena of political struggle. They retreat to the interior, the mountains, and deep into the rural masses. Initially, the masses close in around them, protecting them from the manhunt. The nationalist militant who decides to put his fate in the hands of the peasant masses instead of playing hide-and-seek with the police in the urban centers will never regret it. The peasant cloak wraps him in a mantle of unimagined tenderness and vitality. Veritable exiles in their own country and severed from the urban milieu where they drew up, the concepts of nation and political struggle they take to the maquis. Constantly forced to remain on the move to elude the police, walking by night so as not to attract attention, they are able to travel the length and breadth of their country and get to know it. Gone are the cafes, the discussions about the coming elections, or the cruelty of such and such a police officer. Their ears hear the true voice of the country, and their eyes see the great and infinite misery of the people. They realize that precious time has been wasted on futile discussion about the colonial regime. They realize at last that change does not mean reform, that change does not mean improvement. Now possessed with a kind of vertigo, they realize that the political unrest in the towns will always be powerless to change and overthrow the colonial regime. Discussions with the peasants now become a ritual for them. They discover that the rural masses have never ceased to pose the problem of their liberation in terms of violence, of taking back the land from the foreigners, in terms of national struggle and armed revolt. Everything becomes simple. These men discover a coherent people who survive in a kind of petrified state, but keep intact their moral values and their attachment to the nation and the land. They discover a generous people, prepared to make sacrifices, willing to give all they have, impatient, with an undestructible pride. Understandably, the encounter between these militants hounded by the police and these restless, instinctively rebellious masses can produce an explosive mixture of unexpected power. The men from the towns let themselves be guided by the people and at the same time give them military and political training. the people sharpen their weapons. In fact, the training proves short-lived, for the masses, realizing the strength of their own muscles, force the leaders to accelerate events. The armed struggle is triggered. Now this beautiful piece of prose could have been written by Mao himself. In any case, this retreat into the countryside by the revolutionary elements casted out of the city centers by their thoroughly compromised reformist nationalist parties constitutes for the first time the revolutionary unity of the most radical elements of the urban areas and the urban proletariat with the peasant masses. And it's at this point where Fanon says the armed struggle is triggered. Let's go back to Fanon because he continues. Insurrection disorients the political parties. Their doctrine has always claimed the ineffectiveness of any confrontation, and their very existence serves to condemn any idea of revolt. Certain political parties secretly share the optimism of the colonialists and are glad to be no party to this madness which, it is said, can only end in bloodshed. But the flames have been lit, and like an epidemic, spread like wildfire throughout the country. The tanks and planes do not achieve the success they counted on. Faced with the extent of the damage, colonialism begins to have second thoughts. Voices are raised within the oppressor nation that draw attention to the gravity of the situation. As for the people living in their huts and their dreams, their hearts begin to beat to a new national rhythm, and they softly sing unending hymns to the glory of the fighters. The insurrection has already spread throughout the nation. It is now the turn of the parties to be isolated. Sooner or later, however, the leaders of the insurrection realize the need to extend the insurrection to the towns. It completes the dialectic which governs the development of an armed struggle for national liberation. So this leads to a unification with the lumpenproletariat, who I said earlier live in the shantytowns around the city centers and are driven by their desperation to earn a living through crime initially. But when approached by the revolutionary masses making their way towards the cities, the lumpenproletariat jump headfirst into the liberation struggle. The leaders of the insurrectionists, Fanon says, observing the zeal and restlessness by which its revolutionaries deal decisive blows to the colonialism machine, become increasingly distrustful of the traditional politics that are the hallmark of the nationalist parties at this time. In this initial phase, Fanon says the cult of spontaneity is dominant. The revolutionary energy expands and bursts of its own accord, rejecting anything that can be seen as political in the traditional sense. Fanon argues that this is a strategy of immediacy, and every spontaneously formed group represents quote-unquote liberation at a local level. Reconciliations between tribes and rival families are made in favor of national unity, and this real national unity, forged in spontaneous uprisings and insurrections against the common enemy, is strengthened and deepened by this elimination of old rivalries and resentments. Fanon says... On their continuing road to self-discovery, the people legislate and claim their sovereignty. Every component roused from its colonial somber lives at boiling point. The villages witness a permanent display of spectacular generosity and disarming kindness and an unquestioned determination to die for the cause. All of this is reminiscent of a religious brotherhood, a church or a mystical doctrine. No part of the indigenous population can remain indifferent to this new rhythm which drives the nation. Emissaries are dispatched to the neighboring tribes. They represent the insurrection's first liaison system and introduce the rhythm and movement of the revolution to the region still mired in immobility. Tribes well known for their stubborn rivalry disarm amid rejoicing in tears and pledge their help and support. In this atmosphere of brotherly solidarity and armed struggle, men link arms with their former enemies. The national circle widens and every new ambush signals the entry of new tribes. Every village becomes a free agent and a relay point. Solidarity among tribes, among villages, and at the national level is first discernible in the growing number of blows dealt to the enemy. Every new group, every new volley of cannon fire signals that everybody is hunting the enemy. Everybody is taking a stand. But it's at this point, the spontaneous insurrection and uprising is developing and spreading throughout the country. Rivalries are being put down in favor of national unity, and there's a real offensive going on. But eventually, the counteroffensive happens, and it's here where the tide begins to change, for the colonial powers will not take this sitting down. And it is at this phase that they begin to rally a brutal offensive against these uprisings. Casualties and losses are huge as the full force of violent colonial repression descends upon the country. Communities endure the brutal attacks and survivors are wracked with doubt about how to proceed. At this point, the boiling spontaneity which launched this conflict into the open becomes its key weakness. And as Fanon puts it, quote, End quote. Leaders of the insurrection realized that in order to survive and to win, organization needs to be built in place of spontaneity. The struggle needs coordination. It needs strategy. It needs cooperation across space, time, and differences. In other words, the very politics that was seen as suspect in the initial phases of the insurrection comes back into sympathetic view. But politics now no longer functions as it did before. It is no longer a reformist compromising politics. It's no longer a mechanism of mystification. Instead, it becomes the means by which the armed struggle, born in spontaneity but needing structure, is thereafter conducted, controlled, and guided. This shift towards organization and away from spontaneity transforms the struggle from a peasant revolt and uprising into a revolutionary war of national liberation with clear objectives, a well-defined methodology, political and social education, and the orientation of the struggle around a definable timetable. At this point, the colonial forces add another weapon to their arsenal, psychological warfare. Fanon warns of many things here. Among them, he includes the co-option of the lumpenproletariat by the forces of colonialism. Fanon points out that the lumpenproletariat, while always willing to revolt, can and will be bought off by the colonial powers if the national liberation movement does not pay adequate attention to them and, importantly, their political education. If this happens, the unity that was present during the initial spontaneous phase begins to erode and is eventually undermined. Fanon, like Mao before him and Fred Hampton after him, argues that political education is essential in preventing this sort of co-option, short-sighted selfishness, and general dissolution of the revolutionary energies. Psychological warfare on the part of the colonialists intensifies and can take many forms. They start to turn to experts in psychology and sociology to guide their strategies of repression. They hand down dictates to their proxies to engage respectfully with the colonized subjects, extending to them the politeness and manners they extend to one another in the metropoles. After decades of dehumanization, Fanon realizes that some colonial subjects will respond well to trivial displays of human respect and decency from their occupiers. Having been able to buy off segments of the colonized population through money, psychological warfare and other mechanisms, the forces of national liberation begin to shrink or waver a bit. And since the wealth and resources of the colonial powers are many times more abundant than those of the liberation forces, even more advantages begin to fall into the lap of the occupiers, increasing the difficulty of the war for the colonized and also protracting the entire struggle. Some colonial forces even dramatically decrease their ubiquitous military presence and offer various low-level concessions in order to convince the people that they are or have succeeded, and that engagement in the war is no longer necessary. This, as Fanon points out, is pure mystification and cynicism on the side of the colonizers. In fact, at times, a colonial force's control can be strengthened through this process, creating a more subtle and therefore more resilient form of domination and control. The cure to all of this, Fanon makes clear, is organization. Organization creates assemblies and tribunals throughout the country. It systematizes the very sort of political education for the masses that is essential to counteract the cynical psychological tactics now employed by the colonial powers. And it replaces the old black and white dichotomies with the sort of nuanced and complex grasp of the variables at play in their society and beyond... which constitutes a political maturation process that is necessary for any future decolonized society to be born and to eventually function. Among these revelations include the fact that not every person from a colonial country supports their government's treatment of the colonized, and some even take the side of the colonized over their own country – On the flip side, some members of the colonized population are shown to be self-interested scoundrels who will happily replace one form of repression and occupation with another if it benefits them. This breaking down of simple dichotomies is a very difficult but necessary part of this decolonizing process. And on top of all of this, engaging in the struggle itself is of huge educational importance, as leaders and fighters learn more about their enemies as well as about themselves through the act of violently struggling for liberation. So it's here that Fanon ends this chapter and he ends it as follows. The nationalist militant who fled the town, revolted by the demagogic and reformist maneuvers of the leaders of the parties and disillusioned by politics, discovers in the field a new political orientation which in no way resembles the old. The new politics is in the hands of cadres and leaders working with the tide of history who use their muscles and their brains to lead the struggle for liberation. it is national revolutionary and collective this new reality which the colonized are now exposed to exists by action alone by exploding the former colonial reality the struggle uncovers unknown facets brings to life new meanings and underlines contradictions which were camouflaged by this reality The people in arms, the people who struggle enacts this new reality, the people who live it march on, freed from colonialism and forewarned against any attempt at mystification or glorification of the nation. Violence alone, perpetrated by the people, violence organized and guided by the leadership, provides the key for the masses to decipher social reality. And that is how Fanon wraps up chapter two.

Alyson: All right, so now we're going to go ahead and move into our second section, which is a question answer where we pose some questions that we had after reading the text for each other, and we try to break down the text a little bit more conversationally. So I'll go ahead and start with the first question for Brett. So how, if at all, does Fanon's use of the term, as well as the role played by the Lincoln proletariat, differ from the traditional Marxist use and role?

Breht: So the first thing to do here would be to define what we mean by the lumpenproletariat. And this is actually more difficult than one may expect. As with terms like petty bourgeois, their meanings can actually shift over time or be used with different emphasis by different thinkers. As capitalism's structure continues to change and evolve, sometimes the lines between classes and subclasses can blur or even alter in interesting ways. So for a general definition of the lumpenproletariat as used by Marx originally, I turn to Marxist.org, and they define it as follows. "...roughly translated as slum workers or the mob, this term identifies the class of outcast, degenerated, and submerged elements that make up a section of the population of industrial centers. It includes beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded, or degenerated elements." In times of prolonged crisis like capitalist depressions, innumerable young people also who cannot find an opportunity to enter into social organization as producers are pushed into this limbo of the outcast. The term was coined by Marx in the German ideology in the course of a critique of Max Stirner. In a passage of The Ego and His Own, which Marx is criticizing at the time, Stirner frequently uses the term lumpa and applies it as a prefix, but never actually uses the term lumpenproletariat. Lumpen originally meant rags, but began to be used to mean a person in rags. From having the sense of ragamuffin, it comes to mean riffraff or knave. And by the beginning of the 18th century, it began to be used freely as a prefix to make a range of pejorative terms. By the 1820s, lumpen could be tacked on to almost any German word. End quote. Okay, so that helps a bit in coming to a general understanding of the term and how it originated. I've read elsewhere that lumpen in German means rogue, so another way of thinking about the term is as rogue elements within the proletariat, often associated with a seedy criminal underclass of people who are too disorganized and uninformed to be part of a revolution. So what Fanon does with this term is that he actually sort of redefines it outside of an industrialized capitalist context and within a colonial one. By doing this, the term shifts its meaning in interesting ways. Fanon actually argues that being uninformed or uneducated in certain essential ways can actually help the lumpenproletariat to be free of colonial ideologies in a way that the urban proletariat and colonial societies are not. Fanon interestingly identifies the rural peasantry as these so-called rogue members of the colonial proletariat. He argues that it is these rural peasants who are forced into the peripheries of urban centers and therefore into shanty towns and ghettos through the process of colonialism, which make up the lumpenproletariat in the colonial context. But the biggest claim that Fanon makes here is that by virtue of their unique situation, this lumpen rural peasantry is actually placed in a special position to take a meaningful and important part in the revolution instead of being excluded from it as more orthodox Marxist understandings would claim. This general idea that the lumpenproletariat, far from being excluded from revolution, can actually play a decisive role within it is actually carried on to this day in hip-hop by artists like Bamboo, Earthgang, Dead Prez, Killer Mike, and many more. But what is essential to remember here is that Fanon also highlights the dangers of this subclass, as he argues it's essential for any revolutionary movement to educate these elements politically. In lieu of formal political education, these elements can become incredibly individualistic, short-sighted, and even straight-up reactionary. In fact, there is a segment of the white lumpenproletariat in the United States specifically that goes over to the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood type of fascism fairly easily and consistently, both within and outside of prisons. The mafia, though not necessarily totally lumpen in nature, but certainly with lumpen elements, especially as you go down the hierarchy of the mafia, has long been associated in Italy and America with far right-wing formations. This danger, which Marx and Fanon reflect on, is actually really important to keep in mind. But fundamentally, I think Fanon has done interesting work on the concept of the lumpenproletariat in the same way, actually, or at least analogously to the way that Silvia Federici did interesting work on primitive accumulation in Caliban and the Witch, right? One could see both of these contributions as deviations from Marxism or arguments against Marxism, but I actually reject that. I see both of them as necessary and important updates to Marxism, which actually makes it stronger. After all, Marxism is an open-ended science of socialism. It is meant to change and evolve over time. I think Fanon, like Federici after him, did Marxism a service by altering past orthodoxies, improving the overall theory, and making us all continue to think deeply about things that others simply take on board as dogma. Allison?

Alyson: Definitely. I mean, I think that you're very on point here. One of the things that's interesting about the concept of the lumpenproletariat is that Marx talks about it very little. There's a few times when it crops up, but you don't get a lot of commentary from Marx on it. And Marx, he tells us a lot about the mechanisms that create it, right? The reserve army of labor, for example, can create lumpenproletarianization because you need to have some people who are unemployed and exist on the fringes. outside of class in many ways, but he doesn't really talk about sort of the political orientation of them as a class. And when he does, it's mostly pessimistic. The times when Marx talks about the liberal proletariat, it's in very derogatory terms, and with this fear that they are particularly right wing, sort of social element. And I think that obviously, like you bring up, that has often been the case. Fascism, of course, has always had a criminal component to it, and a criminal connection that has organized gangs, for example, as parts of its early paramilitary formations. But I think that, you know, at the time when Marx was writing, we hadn't yet seen the role that the lumpenproletariat could play within revolutionary movements. And just as Lenin could later look back at Marx in the era of imperialism and see how Marx had his certain limits, Bonin can do the same in the era of decolonization in anti-colonial struggle and can update Marxist theory by showing us that, in fact, if they're integrated into real organizational formations, the lumpenproletariat can absolutely play a progressive role. We just have to be careful about

Breht: Yeah, exactly. And you saw this with like the Black Panthers, right? They did this sort of outreach to street gangs. And on the podcast that could happen here, he actually dedicates a big chunk of one of the episodes to talking about the revolutionary and anti-fascist potentiality of specifically black and brown street gangs, right? Imagine Nazis trying to march through the south side of Chicago. They're going to get fucked up. And so I really like that revolutionary potentiality. But in my application later on, I'm going to actually dive into the potentiality versus the actuality of it and actually drill down on this concept because I find it so fascinating. So stay tuned for that. That will be in part three, and I'll really drill down on that even more. But moving on, I want to ask Allison a question now. Now, in the text, Fanon says that when we apply Marxism to the colonial context, it is necessary to stretch it somewhat. What does he mean by this? Is Marxism capable of explaining colonialism? And if it struggles to do so, why?

Alyson: Yeah, so this, I think, is one of the most interesting quotes in the text that I really spent some time wrestling with. So Fanon, basically, you know, as we talked about in the first chapter, he says that Marxism and its distinction between the base and superstructure can obscure what's happening in the colonial context. So again, he says that if you look at colonialism in the colonial society, it is not that you have this class strata, which then creates race as an after effect. He says the cause is the effect and the effect is the cause. To be rich is to be white and to be white is to be rich. Those two things are conflated in a specific way. And so Marxism has to stretch to accommodate this. That's a really interesting quote. Is Fanon throwing away Marxism here or is he modifying Marxism in some way? And there are certainly people who want to read it in both directions. But I want to argue that it's a scientific advancement of Marxism. So when Marx wrote, we hadn't seen large scale decolonial struggles that Marx had access to studying. And so Marx, of course, cannot necessarily give us the tools to understand what those struggles would look like and what the context in which they would occur would look like. When Lenin later came along and theorized imperialism, then we started to get some tools to understand colonialism. We started to understand the movement of capital and finance and the way that that creates spheres of influence in which countries control other countries and colonization can occur in the first place. And Marxism began to give us an understanding of how that could function. But again, Lenin doesn't give us an incredibly in-depth examination of what colonial society looks like and what its internal contradictions and its internal construction looks like. Lenin, of course, gives us incredible tools to think about colonialism and decolonization. colonization. It's Lenin and Stalin who begin to formulate national liberation from a Marxist perspective. But again, the nuances and details of the colonial society itself are not necessarily there. And so when Fanon says that we need to stretch Marxism to account for colonialism, and how colonialism structures a given place in a given society, we need to recognize that that's not saying that Marxism needs to be thrown out. That's saying that Marxism needs to be expanded. A historical materialist analysis of those conditions needs to be under And this is where Marxism remains the most useful tool that we have, because it has the self-critical ability to fix its own problems. Marxism, for example, has been Eurocentric at various points in time, but it's Marxists who have criticized Marxism for its Eurocentrism and sought to expand it. And I would argue that whether or not we think of Fanon as a Marxist or as someone who is interacting with Marxism, Fanon is creating an expansion of Marxism and updating Marxism here and giving us the ability to understand colonialism through a dialectical materialist lens. It's hard to read this text and not just see the dialectics throughout it. It's in the very core of every structure that Fanon talks about, this constant focus on contradiction and moving beyond that contradiction. And I would argue that this text then, by stretching Marxism, doesn't break Marxism, doesn't revise it in some way that negates the class struggle at the core of it, but rather provides a scientific update to it and demonstrates what struggle in the decolonial context looks like in a way that previous Marxist thinkers couldn't. So yes, I do think that Marxism is capable of explaining colonialism, but that is through augmenting it with new research in the studies of decolonial struggle that have taken place. And Fanon does an incredible job of doing that.

Breht: Absolutely. I could not agree more. I really like this emphasis you put on this text as being a very dialectical text. And I totally agree with that. And I pulled that out as well. And it's fascinating. I do want to read a quote really quick. This is from James Yaki Salis, the person who did the meditations on Wretched of the Earth. I'll be reading it in a second. But he had a really succinct quote that kind of connects colonialism, imperialism and capitalism. And he just puts it in a really good way. So he said, colonialism is a form of imperialism. And imperialism is an international expression of capitalism. You don't fully understand colonialism and you don't successfully attack it without understanding and attacking capitalism. So just for people trying to struggle these differences between colonialism and imperialism and capitalism, I, for one, found that quote to be extremely helpful. So for what that's worth. But I'm ready to move on to the last question if you are, Allison.

Alyson: Awesome, cool. So the last question then is, in what ways does Fanon's analysis overlap with Mao's in this text? So where and about what, in other words, do Fanon and Mao agree?

Breht: Okay, so I actually – I was talking to my friend about this who's a Maoist and loves Fanon, and we couldn't really decide or neither of us knew if Fanon read Mao or if Mao read Fanon, right? They sort of existed around the same time. Fanon died in 61. The Chinese Revolution is happening in the 50s and into the 60s. So there's definitely overlapping lifespans here. But the latter, like Mao reading Fanon, actually does seem more unlikely based on translation realities at the time. But the former is certainly not out of the question, right? I think it's fair to say that by one route or another, Fanon was directly or indirectly influenced by Mao. Now, if that is true, it's yet another beautiful example of Mao deeply influencing black liberation and anti-colonial movements specifically. It's also an example of proletarian internationalism more broadly. But if it's untrue, and Fanon never came across Mao in any meaningful way, then the conclusion is actually even more surprising, for it means that Fanon and Mao came to very similar conclusions by completely independent routes. In any case, I could not help but continually jot down the word Mao on the margins of my copy of Wretched as I read through it, for there are so many connections to be made. First and probably foremost, I think the big similarity is that both Fanon and Mao reject and then update the more orthodox Marxist conception of the peasantry. Marx, as we all know, was a European and many of his theories were premised on the idea that a truly revolutionary socialist force could only really be led by an industrialized proletariat in the most advanced capitalist societies. Of course, this is a simplification, but not necessarily a very intense one. While Marx may have shifted his thoughts and made shifts in his thinking over his life, it's undeniable that the general orthodoxy surrounding this point has continued down the line and affected many people's understanding of socialism and revolution. In any case, what both Mao and Fanon do is reject this orthodoxy in the process of trying to understand revolution in a non-industrialized capitalist context. For Mao, he was operating in the hyper underdeveloped China of his day. China was not developed enough to have the sort of idealized industrial proletariat that more European-based conceptions of Marxism demanded. Mao grew up as a peasant and understood the specific conditions of China at that time, which led him to realize that the peasant masses were, in many ways, the heart and soul of the Chinese Revolution. Fanon is locating his thought not in Europe or even China, but specifically in the colonized, quote-unquote, third world countries, specifically in Africa. And by so doing, Fanon finds himself coming to the same conclusion as Mao came to regarding the peasantry. And countless movements inspired by both Mao and Fanon have proven them to be correct in this regard. I mean, I think in the Philippines, as well as in India, these sorts of things are still playing out and still being taken up. But beyond the question of the peasantry, there still exist many similarities between Fanon and Mao. Both stress the importance of self-criticism and anti-individualism in the context of combat liberalism for Mao. And throughout this text, Fanon continues to make references to communalism as opposed to individualism. They both stress the utter importance of political education as a necessary prerequisite to successful revolution. They both understood that revolutions are deeply violent affairs and that the process of violent revolution is fundamentally an educational one for those engaged in it. Both advocated for the necessity of cultural revolutions, of revolutions in the superstructure, and both have an unwavering and deep love and trust in the masses of oppressed people, something that leaps beautifully from the pages of both of their work. In these ways and in so many others, reading Fanon with a good understanding of Mao or vice versa is surely an incredibly valuable way to come to a deeper understanding of both. It is no coincidence, then, that anyone who is really deeply into Mao will almost always certainly and without a doubt be really deeply into Fanon. And that is how it should be. Allison?

Alyson: Yeah, one other component that I would talk about, I think, of similarity between the two is I think that Fanon has a theory of knowledge and practice, actually, that comes up several times in this text that seems very similar to Mao's. I think it's really interesting, one of the quotes that I talked about in On Violence, where he says, like, truth in the decolonial context becomes what hurts the colonists the most. It becomes what dislodges them. It becomes what succeeds, essentially. And he even goes so far as to say, that the colonized masses find reality. in their struggle and in their violent practice, right? And so I think that one really big point of overlap is this idea that our ideas play out in practice, and that's how they're tested, which, of course, underlies so much of Mao's work on practice, as we talked about in one of our other episodes. And I think that while Fendon doesn't really thematize it in an epistemological manner, that sort of similar Maoist epistemology actually underlies a lot of the claims in this text about how the masses come to understand things through struggle.

Breht: Yeah, absolutely. I love those connections. I think it's beautiful and it really helps understand both sides of that equation. So I'm glad we were able to talk about that a bit. All right. So that is the end of part two, our discussion question section. And now we're going to move on to part three, our application points. For my application point, I wanted to explore a set of related ideas and concepts, which Fanon makes great use of throughout this text, centered on the differences between rebellions and revolutions, especially as they apply to the lumpenproletariat. Now, I'm a huge fan of and have been deeply influenced by hip-hop, as many of you know. In other episodes of both Red Menace and Rev Left, I've often gestured toward the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat, and specifically the black and brown lumpenproletariat in systematically impoverished U.S. ghettos. Fanon, in his book, links the activity of the colonized lumpenproletariat, namely criminal and gang activity, which he refers to as internecine feuds, to the psychological and material conditions of colonialism. We often hear from reactionaries in the United States about black-on-black crime, and this social phenomenon is almost always marshaled by reactionaries and white supremacists of various sorts in our society in the service of demeaning or denigrating black liberation movements, black culture, and black people broadly. It's a trope that gains a lot of traction in a white supremacist settler colonial society like our own because it simultaneously obscures the socioeconomic roots of criminality and racialized poverty while protecting and reifying the logic of brutal law and order capitalism. So what I want to do here is to read a few short sections of Wretched where Fanon discusses this, and then I want to read an expansion and reflection on those passages by James Yaki Salus, a black liberationist and U.S. political prisoner born and raised on the south side of Chicago who read multiple times and studied deeply the wretched of the earth and applied its lessons to the context of black people in the United States. So first, let's briefly revisit some core passages, relevant passages from Fanon. He says, We shall see later what should be made of this phenomena. But confronted with the colonial order, the colonized subject is in a permanent state of tension. At the individual level, we witness a genuine negation of common sense. Whereas the colonist or police officer can beat the colonized subject day in and day out, insult him and shove him to his knees, it is not uncommon to see the colonized subject draw his knife at the slightest hostile or aggressive look from another colonized subject. For the colonized subject's last resort is to defend his personality against his fellow countrymen. Internacing feuds merely perpetuate age-old grudges entrenched in memory. By throwing himself muscle and soul into his blood feuds, the colonized subject endeavors to convince himself that colonialism has never existed, that everything is as it used to be, and history marches on. Here we grasp the full significance of the all-too-familiar head-in-the-sand behavior at a collective level— As if this collective immersion in a fratricidal bloodbath suffices to mask the obstacle and postpone the inevitable alternative, the inevitable emergence of the armed struggle against colonialism. So one of the ways the colonized subject releases his muscular tension is through the very real collective self-destruction of these internecine feuds. Such behavior represents a death wish in the face of danger, a suicidal conduct which reinforces the colonist's existence and domination and reassures him that such men are not rational. Okay, so now let's move on to a reading from Meditations on Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth by the new African revolutionary and political prisoner, James Yaki Salas. I think it's important to read this at length because this was written by a black communist who was directly and deeply influenced by Malcolm X, George Jackson, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, and many others. He spent over 33 years of his life in prison in Illinois, both as a juvenile and as an adult, and was radicalized in prison through his readings of various revolutionary thinkers, including and especially Frantz Fanon. He organized relentlessly both inside and outside of the prison walls. He was a brilliant thinker who was relatively unknown, and part of the reason he is so unknown is because he wanted to be. He was a highly disciplined and a deeply anti-individualist figure. One of the most endearing and rewarding aspects of reading his meditations on Wretched of the Earth is that he writes in the everyday language of working and poor people. There is absolutely no academic pretension to the way he writes and expresses himself. He is authentically of and for the black radical proletarian tradition. And in this segment of his book, which I'm about to read, he explores concepts related specifically to the black lumpen proletariat in the United States found in the wretched of the earth. This essay is called On Transforming the Colonial and Criminal Mentality. And it starts off with a long quote by Malcolm X, which I'll not read. I'll just get into the content itself from Yockey. So he starts during a conversation with the comrade, the movie Battle of Algiers was mentioned within the context of using that film as a way of making a comment on the present and probable direction that many prisoners are taking and that many more will take in the escalating class and nationalist liberation struggles inside U.S. borders. An apology is made in advance should we make errors in our recollection of events taking place in the film or the order of their appearance. In the opening scene or in one of the early scenes, the setting is a prison and the principal character was, we believe, portrayed as Ali Aponte. Ali Aponte was an Algerian who had entered the prison as a common criminal or a bandit and was then in the process of being politicized and politically educating himself. He was being approached by a revolutionary, a prisoner of war, who had noticed Ali's strong sense of nationalism and his revolutionary potential, thus his potential of becoming a revolutionary nationalist rather than his remaining a bandit, a criminal, or a lumpen with nationalist sentiments and emotional commitment to nationalism. We know this already sounds familiar to many. Quote, I've been in rebellion all my life, I just didn't know it, comrade brother George Jackson said. And quote, for a young new African growing up in the ghetto, the first rebellion is always crime. End quote. A clear distinction must be drawn between rebellion and revolution, because unless this is done, we become confused in our thought and our actions. Arriving at clarity on this and other issues is a necessary aspect of transforming the criminal and the colonial mentality. We can rebel against something without necessarily rebelling or making revolution for something. A rebellion is generally an attack upon those who rule, but it is an attack which is spontaneous, short-lived, and without the purpose of replacing those who rule. Rebellions bring into question the methods of those who rule, but stop short of actually calling into question their very right to rule, without calling into question the entire authority and the foundation upon which that authority or legitimacy rests. We rebel as a means of exposing intolerable conditions and treatment, but we seek to have someone other than ourselves change these conditions and to change the treatment rather than to assume responsibility ourselves for our whole lives. A rebellion essentially wants to end bad housing or have full employment or end police brutality and change prison conditions, etc., to, in other words, reform the system and leave the power to make these reforms in the hands of the master. A revolution, on the other hand, seeks not merely to reform the system, but to completely overthrow it, and to place the power for overthrowing it and the power for running the new system that is established in the hands of the revolutionary masses. Thus the slogan, All Power to the People. The failure to make a similar distinction between a rebellion and a revolution... is what prevents many bloods from recognizing and then making the transformation from capital colonials to political prisoners and prevents those outside the walls from making the transformation from colonial subjects to conscious citizens and active cadres. It prevents us from consciously and systematically bringing up a new generation who know the difference between new African reform and rebellion and new African revolution. It prevents us from consciously and systematically creating new African revolutionary leadership to lead a revolutionary movement as opposed to new forms of civil rights struggles under bourgeois leadership for bourgeois ends. It prevents us from making a class analysis of the forces inside our own neo-colonized nation so that we can carefully ascertain exactly which forces can be mobilized to realize the vision of a new African revolution. More of comrade brother George Jackson words are familiar to us. Quote, prisons are not institutionalized on such a massive scale by the people. Most people realize that crime is simply the result of a grossly disproportionate distribution of wealth and privilege, a reflection of the present state of property relations. and we must educate the people in the real causes of economic crimes. They must be made to realize that even crimes of passion are the psychosocial effects of an economic order that was decadent a hundred years ago. All crime can be traced to objective socioeconomic conditions, socially productive or counterproductive activity. In all cases, it is determined by the economic system, the method of economic organization." Back to Yaki. Many prisoners and many people outside the walls, many political prisoners and even some POWs have, we believe, not taken the interpretation of the above words far enough. We feel this way because many comrades have based many of their beliefs and positions on the so-called inherent revolutionary capacity of lumpen on their understanding of the above quoted statements. We tend to overlook the fact that Comrade George was making a broad analysis, describing objective factors and presenting a general ideological perspective. The grossly disproportionate distribution of wealth and privilege and the crime that results from it does not automatically make us revolutionaries. the real causes of crimes are not necessarily, not of themselves, the causes of commitments to revolutionary struggle. Objective economic conditions, the method of economic organization, are not of themselves factors which inspire and or cement conscious activity in revolutionary nationalist people's war. Comrade George described the objective set of conditions, the economic basis of crime, and he recognized that he had been objectively in rebellion all his life. But he also said he just didn't know it. He wasn't aware of his acts as being forms of rebellion. He wasn't conscious of himself as a victim of social injustice, and he wasn't consciously directing his actions toward the destruction of the enemy. And comrades asked in the past, what is the difference between these mentalities? Primarily because it was hard to see the difference, and it had been assumed that there was no difference between the lumpen and the outlaw or the revolutionary. Some bloods simply want the lumpen to be the outlaw, the revolutionary, and some say this is what George meant. George said that the revolutionary was a lawless man because revolution is illegal in America. Thus, the revolutionary, the outlaw, and the lumpen would make the revolution. Some Bloods read revolutionary actuality into the potentiality alluded to by George in his analysis of the economic basis of crime. Quoting Marx, End quote. Quoting Mao, End quote. Back to Yaki. In order for us to know Ali Aponte today as an Algerian revolutionary, he had to become politicized, consciously joining with the Algerian FLN and point his guns at the enemies of the Algerian people. The employment of the skills he acquired and sharpened as a bandit continued to violate the law of the colonial state, but the difference was fundamental. Aponte's previous violations of the colonialist state law were violations of an individual for personal gain. But more important, they were seen even by him at that stage as true violations of the law because the law and the state that it upheld were still recognized by Aponte as being legitimate. He was a criminal because he still saw himself as a criminal within the definition of the practice of colonialist oppression. This is an aspect of the criminal and the colonial mentality. Continued recognition and acceptance of the legitimacy of colonial rule to continue to feel that the colonial state has a right to rule over the colonized. As long as we continue to see the oppressive state as legitimate ruler, even the circumstances and personal motives which push us toward crime continue to be isolated cases, presenting no danger to the foundations of the oppressive state and offering no benefits toward the struggle for independence and socialism. This criminal colonial mentality was similarly described by Comrade Sister Assata Shakur, quote, I am sad when I see what happens to women who lose their strength. They see themselves as bad children who expect to be punished because they have not in some way conformed to the conduct required of good children in the opinion of prison guards. Therefore, when they are punished, they feel absolution has been dealt, and they are again in the good graces of the guards. Approval has been given by the enemy, but the enemy is no longer recognized as an enemy. The enemy becomes the maternal figure patterning their lives. It's like a plantation in prison. You can see the need for a revolution, clearly." Before Comrade George met Marx and the black guerrillas, his mentality was best characterized as criminal. It was only after he was redeemed that he was able to see himself as a victim of social injustice, that he was able to know that his past criminal acts had been an embryonic form of rebellion, had constituted a tendency and a potential for undermining the oppressive state's authority, its prestige, the legitimacy of its law, and to ultimately overthrow it. To kill the prestige of the oppressive state is, first of all, to kill the image of its legitimacy in the minds of the people. To transform the criminal mentality and the colonial mentality into a revolutionary mentality is to destroy within the minds of the people the sense of awe in which they hold the oppressive state. For Comrade George to become first the political prisoner and then the prisoner of war, he had to move beyond the mere understanding of the objective economic law and its relationship to crime. He had to begin applying his knowledge of revolutionary activity aimed toward changing the world, toward changing these objective economic laws and eradicating their effect upon the people. We know George today as a revolutionary because he educated himself and then went on to change existing circumstances. If we were to leave the objective analysis understanding of the economic basis of crime and proceed no further, we end up legitimizing the dope pushers in our communities, the pimps and other backward reactionary elements who engage in such activity because of the circumstances caused by the present economic order. We can't continue to say the devil made me do it. If we don't move beyond an explanation of objective socioeconomic conditions and consequently don't move beyond the acceptance of criminal activity on the part of the lumpen as somehow honorable and inherently revolutionary simply because they reflect the present state of property relations, what we will end up doing is condoning those relations in practice if not in words. We will end up accepting the ideology behind those relations as well. There is a scene sequence in Battle of Algiers where Ali Aponte, the ex-criminal, the revolutionary nationalist and member of the FLN, confronts lumpen criminal elements who are surviving the best way they know how, under the existing circumstances. Ali makes this confrontation in accordance with the FLN view that a weak and disorganized, demoralized and diseased people cannot successfully attack and defeat the enemy. The pimps, dope pushers, and otherwise backward elements were asked, warned, encouraged to find other means of survival, means which would be more in tune with the needs and direction of the people and the national liberation struggle. The backward elements refused, resisted the transformation of their mentalities, and thus placed themselves squarely in the path of the nation's progress. Ali Aponte responded to this refusal, to this blocking of progress and national salvation, with a short burst from his Thompson. End quote. So, I don't know. I found that to be incredibly fascinating to go into the psychology. of criminal potentiality, right? This confusion that simply by being a criminal, you are being revolutionary. And what he's saying is there's a potentiality there, but if not for education, if not for giving it direction, if not for embedding it inside of a real revolutionary organization, that criminal lumpen reactionary stuff comes to the surface and actually undermines revolutionary goals. So the distinctions and the nuances and the complexities, you know, marked out in that little passage, I think is really interesting. And again, fully and completely come out of, of Yaki's engagement with Frantz Fanon's wretched of the earth. So yeah, that's, that's my, that's my point of application. Allison.

Alyson: Totally. Yeah, no, that's a really useful, actually. I think that distinction between rebellion and revolution also is, is so helpful for understanding how to look at, you know, forms of resistance that do exist and are really resisting, but aren't revolutionary and actually going to change things systemically. And that's just a really useful heuristic for distinguishing those things. Honestly, I found that really helpful. Now I really want to read that book.

Breht: Yeah, it's great.

Alyson: Awesome. All right. So that's about all that I have. Was there anything else that you wanted to cover or...

Breht: No, I'm good. We mentioned that the Sartre preface will be on our Patreon for this month, and then, yeah, next month we're just going to continue on this book, so...

Alyson: awesome so thank you all so much for tuning in we know this is a particularly long episode but this is also a very dense and very you know wonderful text that needs to be wrestled with and we hope that you'll bear with us as we do that with a little bit more detail so again next month we will be covering the next two chapters of this text so go ahead and start reading up on those if you are interested in following along and we also need to give a shout out to some of our patrons real quick who donate at an elevated level who we incredibly appreciate and whose help you know keeping this program going and making this something that you know we can felt like devote this much time to is very helpful so a quick shout out to craig melody anton panekoic kansas brad cosmic explorer and jacob sparks for all donating at an elevated level we appreciate it so much and this show in this episode is possible because of your help and support so thank you so much