How to Have a Revolution

Wretched of the Earth

by Frantz Fanon (1961)

Free PDF:Wretched of the Earth

Book Review

Wretched of the Earth is a sociopolitical analysis of how revolution happens, based on the author’s personal experience in Algeria and his study of nationalist revolutions in sub-Saharan Africa, Vietnam, Latin America and Cuba.

Many Marxist scholars consider Fanon’s work to be the first major expansion of Marxist theory after Lenin. His primary contribution is to delineate the potential revolutionary forces of third world countries. His chief disagreement with Marx concerns the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat, the urban beggars, petty criminals, prostitutes and gang members who lack access to formal work. According to Fanon, the lumpenproletariat make up the majority of the population in third world countries (and increasingly, in 2017, the industrialized world)  thanks to first world colonizers who have driven them off their land.

Marx believed the lumpenproletariat were incapable of achieving class consciousness and thus of no use in the revolutionary struggle. In contrast, Fanon feels they help to instigate revolution owing to their high proportion of young people and their belief they had nothing to lose.

Unlike Marx, Fanon believes third world revolutionary struggles must originate with rural peasants (like the Chiapas uprising in Mexico), that city dwellers are too “colonized,” ie too invested in existing political and economic structures to want to dismantle them.

Wretched of the Earth also describes the phenomenon of economic colonialism, as manifested in Latin America (and later South Africa). In these cases, a country achieves political independence but continues to be economically (and militarily) oppressed by first world multinational corporations.

Fanon makes a number of recommendations for preventing this, including

1. immediate nationalization and decentralization (via the creation of wholesale and retail cooperatives) of the economy
2. mass political education aimed at enabling the masses to govern themselves,
3. rapid economic restructuring aimed at developing soil and other natural resources for national use (as opposed to first world benefit),
4. land reform to stem the migration of peasants to the city,
5. guarding against feudal traditions that view men as superior to women, and
6. avoiding the trap of political parties.

Frantz Fanon was born in 1925 of mixed heritage in Martinique. He fought with the French resistance during World War II and received a scholarship to study medicine and psychiatry in France. In 1953, he was offered a hospital position in Algeria, where he joined the Algerian National Liberation Front. He died of leukemia in 1961, shortly after the publication of Wretched of the Earth.

 

The US Colonization of Latin America

The War On Democracy

Directed by John Pilger (2007)

Film Review

The War Against Democracy is about the US colonization of Latin America, specifically the role of the CIA and the US military in systematically overthrowing democratically elected governments in Central and South America. In each case, the US installs hand picked right wing dictators who forcibly expel indigenous peasants from their land and privatize publicly owned assets and resources for the benefit of US corporations.

Australian filmmaker John Pilger begins by focusing on the US war against Venezuela’s democratically elected government, carefully debunking Washington and media lies depicting former president Hugo Chavez as a communist dictator. In addition to tracing the massive popular movement that brought Chavez to power, the documentary also features dramatic footage of the failed US-sponsored 2002 coup.

Pilger also highlights the 1954 coup in Guatemala, the 1973 coup in Chile and the Bolivian revolution that overturned Bolivia’s right wing government and bring the country’s first indigenous president (Evo Morales) to power in 2003.

Pilger’s interviews with former CIA agents who helped orchestrate some of these coups are priceless.