by Paddy O'Halloran
In reading anti-colonial
literature of the mid-Twentieth century, it becomes apparent that there was a
close relationship between anti-colonialism and socialism-communism; one that
was both practical and ideological. Why
did anti-colonialists draw so much on these political ideologies, and why were
so many anti-colonialists also socialists or communists? One answer would explain the relationship as
a matter of strategy: In the 1950s and 60s, the governments of the imperial
metropoles were in direct antagonism with a communist superpower, which made
political association with the Soviet Union attractive for anti-colonial
political parties, movements, and armies; and support for these groups, in Cold
War logic, could benefit the Soviet Union by destabilizing and dismantling the
Western empires. However, that answer
seems superficial. In developing a
deeper understanding of the relationship between anti-colonialism and communism,
the writing of Aimé Césaire proves useful.
Césaire defined colonialism, firstly, in economic terms,
and emphasized that colonialism not be obscured by religious, legal, or
philanthropic misunderstandings. ‘[W]hat
fundamentally is colonization?’ he asks, and answers that it is designed ‘to
extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies’, that
is, capitalism ([1955]1972, 2). Therein,
capitalism can be equated with the European colonial projects. The equation is a damning one to Césaire, who
extends it by writing that at ‘end of capitalism […] there is Hitler’ (1972,
3); the understanding is that capitalism, though an economic dispensation, has
moral and social implications as well, namely racism, exclusion, and violence.
This introduces an idea that appears quite frequently in
Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism,
and in which the strong connection between communism and anti-colonialism is to
be found: alienation. Marx first wrote
of economic alienation in 1844, in an essay that demonstrates the
objectification of labor, and the process by which labor ceases to belong to
the workers (1844, np). Césaire adopts
the same idea to the anti-colonial ideology.
He writes, ‘Between the colonizer and the colonized there is room only
for […] relations of domination and submission,’ relations which ‘turn the
indigenous man [sic] into an
instrument of production’ (1972, 6); that colonialism is a process of
‘proletarianization and mystification’ of societies that were ‘communal’ and
‘not only ante-capitalist […] but also anti-capitalist’
(1972, 7).
However, to this point, Césaire, a communist, could merely
be targeting colonialism as an aspect of capitalism and attacking it through a
communist interpretation. Indeed, there
are many other passages in the Discourse
that could be read in this way. However, the concept of alienation for Césaire,
and for others opposed to imperialism, extends deeper than the economic terms
in which Marx wrote. Colonialism involves
alienation of labor, but also alienation from the land, from the fruits of the
land, from pre-colonial political institutions and cultures, from individual
and collective identities, and from, above all, humanity—both locally, in the
treatment of the colonized as less than human, and globally, in that the colonized
are barred from joining the civilized, ‘human’ world which prospers through
their alienation.
A large portion of Césaire’s Discourse is devoted to quoting the racist remarks of European
intellectuals, and the various terms in which they deny colonized peoples
(black people, in this case) both the rights and the capacities of being human. One particular example from a Belgian
clergyman seeks to co-opt what he calls ‘Bantu’ theology into the colonial
order (1972, 14), a feat that demonstrates the profound pervasiveness of colonialism’s
alienating tendencies; it bereaves the colonized not only of practical
considerations like land, but of their metaphysics, as well.
In all
events, the result is that the colonized become ‘things’, ‘objects’ in both the
Marxian economic definition and in subtler ways. In the essay on alienation, Marx wrote, ‘the
human being (the laborer) does not feel himself to be free except in his animal
functions’, to the extent that ‘[t]he animal becomes human and the human
becomes animal’ (1844). It is in this,
the alienation of people from their humanity, that anti-colonialism finds
itself in communism; ‘the laborer’ in Marx is easily replaced by ‘the
colonized’ in Césaire.
Until Césaire’s middle age, the communists and socialists
were those speaking in these terms of alienation that appealed to and were
understood by those who also held anti-colonial convictions. Colonialism, though an aging, possibly
stricken, beast through the first half of the Twentieth century, was not in
full collapse until the 1950s.
Throughout the former period, it was communists and socialists who spoke
of revolution, possibly in the only political rhetoric into which black,
colonized peoples could transpose themselves.
For Césaire, at least, and probably others, it is important that
socialism and communism are revolutionary in that they seek to transform
society, but do not have national independence as a goal. Césaire was of a like mind; he probably would
have considered black nationalism to be as rife with alienating tendencies as
the white model. In writing Discourse on Colonialism, he was not expressing a desire for
independence in the colonies, but for equality of colonial people with French
people—an end to alienation.
The
conclusion to Césaire’s Discourse
writes the anti-colonial struggle into the communist-socialist revolution: ‘the
Revolution’. In fact it goes so far as
to utterly ignore the colonies and talk about ‘the salvation of Europe’ (1972,
24). There is a weakness in that, which Césaire
himself recognized, later calling it ‘abstract’ communism that did not address
the ‘Negro problem’, and talking of the need to ‘complete Marx’ (1972,
27). He had similar reasons behind his
resignation from the French Communist Party in 1956 because of European, and
particularly Stalinist, racism. Black
people had a ‘singular’ history, for which they had to take responsibility—‘Europe’
he wrote, can ‘only perfect our alienation’ (1956, np). It was not a perfect relationship between
socialism-communism and anti-colonialism (though the connection continued to be
a strong one in many liberation struggles), and Césaire’s writing has a clear
place in understanding the reasons behind the relationship, and how it can be
problematic.
Citations
Césaire, Aimé.
([1955]1972) Discourse on Colonialism,
trans. J. Pinkham. New York and London: Monthly Review Press.
Césaire, Aimé. (1956)
‘Letter of Resignation to the French Communist Party’, trans. Chike Jeffers. [http://readingfanon.blogspot.com/2011/06/aime-cesaires-letter-of-resignation.html]
Marx, Karl. (1844) ‘The
Alienation of Labor,’ in Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts 1844, trans. R. Hooker. [http://graphicwitness.org/undone/4alienat.htm]
