Mark’s Reviews > The Wretched of the Earth > Status Update

Criticism of what happened in the Congo

Because the bourgeoisie is uncaring and underdeveloped, it deposits the profits it makes from national resources in foreign banks and buys cars, villas and ostentatious goods.
The post-colonial bourgeoisie ends up becoming the new colonists.

Independence does not bring a change of direction. The same old ground nut harvest, cocoa harvest and olive oil harvest. Likewise the traffic of commodities goes unchanged. No industry is established. They continue to ship raw materials and produce for Europe.

The bourgeoisie following independence is incapable of truly developing the country. They do not have a clue about the economy. The precariousness of its resources and the scarcity of managerial talent force it for years into an economy of cottage industries.

National consciousness is nothing but accrued, empty, fragile shell.

The masses must be involved in in the management of public affairs and this cannot succeed unless the people are politically educated.

The bourgeoisie attempts to mask its mediocrity by ostentatious projects for individual prestige, chromium plated American cars, vacations on the French Riviera and weekends in neon lit nightclubs.

The bourgeoisie of Europe was dynamic, educated and secular and fully succeeded in its undertaking of capital accumulation and endowed the nation with a minimum of prosperity. In the under developed countries there was no genuine bourgeoisie but rather an inquisitive, voracious and ambitious petty cast, dominated by a small time racketeer mentality, content with the dividends paid out by the former colonial power.

The bourgeois phase in the underdeveloped countries is only justified if the national bourgeoisie sufficiently powerful, economically and technically, to be able to build a bourgeois society, to create the conditions for developing a sizable proletariat, to mechanize agriculture, and finally pave the way for a genuine national culture.

The failure of nations following independence: wealth and poverty, the army and the police forming the pillars of the regime who are advised by foreign "experts." Caravan of corruption