Jarh L. Rodriguez’s Reviews > The Wretched of the Earth > Status Update

Because it is lacking in ideas, because it is inward-looking, cut off from the people served by its congenital incapacity to evaluate issues on the basis of the nation as a whole, the national bourgeoisie assumes the role of manager for the companies of the West and turns this country virtually into a bordello for Europe

In its decadent aspect the national bourgeoisie gets considerable help from the western bourgeoisies who happen to be tourists enamored of exoticism, hunting, and casinos. The national bourgeoisie establishes holiday resorts and playgrounds for entertaining the Western bourgeoisie. This sector goes by the name of tourism and becomes a national industry for this very purpose. The ex-colonized turns party organizer.

The national bourgeoisie, with no misgivings and with great pride, revels in the role of agent in its dealings with the Western bourgeoisie. This lucrative role, this function as small-time racketeer, this narrow-mindedness and lack of ambition are symptomatic of the incapacity of the national bourgeoisie to fulfill its role as bourgeoisie

Independence does not bring a change of direction. The same old groundnut harvest, cocoa harvest, and olive harvest. Likewise the traffic of commodities goes unchanged. No industry is established in the country. We continue to ship raw materials, we continue to grow produce for Europe and pass for specialists of unfinished products

When these parties [bourgeois] are questioned on their economic agenda for the nation or the regime they propose to establish, they prove incapable of giving an answer because in fact they do not have a clue about the economy of their own country. This economy has always developed outside their control

This underdeveloped bourgeoisie is not geared to production, invention, creation, or work. All its energy is channeled into intermediary activities. Networking and scheming seem to be its underlying vocation; with the psychology of a businessman not that of a captain of industry. And it should go without saying that the rapacity of the colonists and the embargo system installed by colonialism hardly left any choice

The characteristic, virtually endemic weakness of the underdeveloped country's national consciousness is not only the consequence of the colonized subjects' mutilation by the colonial regime. It can also be attributed to the apathy of the national bourgeoisie, its mediocrity, and its deeply cosmopolitan mentality

Historical examples have demonstrated that the masquerade of concessions and the heavy price paid by certain countries have ended in a servitude that is not only more discreet but also more complete. The people and every militant should be conscious of the historical law which stipulates that certain concessions are in fact shackles

The enemy who analyzes the forces of the insurrection, who delves deeper and deeper into the study of that global adversary, the colonized subject, identifies the ideological weaknesses and spiritual instability of certain segments of the population

The violence of the colonial regime and the counter-violence of the colonized balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity. The greater the number of metropolitan settlers, the more terrible the violence will be. Violence among the colonized will spread in proportion to the violence exerted by the colonial regime