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80 THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTHGRANDEUR AND WEAKNESS OF SPONTANEITY81thoughts. Voices are raised within the oppressor nation that drawattention to the gravity of the situation.As for the people living in their huts and their dreams, theirhearts begin to beat to the new national rhythm and they softlysing unending hymns to the glory of the fighters. The insurrectionhas already spread throughout the nation. It is now the turnthe parties to be isolated.Sooner or later, however, the leaders of the insurrection realizethe need to extend the insurrection to the towns. Such a realizationis not forhlitous. It completes the dialectic which governsthe development of an armed struggle for national liberation.Although the rural areas represent endless reserves of popularenergy and its groups of armed men maintain a reign of insecurity,colonialism never really doubts the strength of its system. Itdoes not feel in actual danger. The leaders of the insurrectiontherefore decide to move the war into enemy territory, i.e., intothe serenity and grandiloquence of the cities.It is no easy matter for the leadership to foment an insurrectionin the cities. We have seen that most of the leaders, born orraised in the towns, were so hounded by the colonialist policeand so generally misunderstood by the rationally minded, overcautiouscadres of the political parties, that they fled their homeenvironment. Their retreat to the interior was both an escapefrom repression and a distrust ofthe old political formations. Thenatural urban relays for these leaders are the nationalists whohave made a name for themselves in the political parties. Butwe have seen that their recent history has little in common withthese timorous leaders who spend their time mired in endlessdiscussions on the evils of colonialism.Moreover, the first overtures made by the men from the maquisin the direction of their former friends, those they consider tobe farthest to the left, confirm their fears and eradicate any desireto renew their acquaintance with them again. In fact theinsurrection, which starts in the rural areas, is introduced intothe towns by that fraction of the peasantry blocked at the urbanperiphery, those who still have not found a single bone to gnawin the colonial system. These men, forced off the family land bythe growing population in the countryside and by colonial expropriation,circle the towns tirelessly, hoping that one day oranother they will be let in. It is among these masses, in the peopleof the shanty towns and in the lumpenproletariat that the insurrectionwill find its urban spearhead. The lumpenproletariat, thiscohort of starving men, divorced from tribe and clan, constitutesone of the most spontaneously and radically revolutionary forcesof a colonized people.In Kenya, during the years preceding the Mau-Mau revolt, theBritish colonial authorities increased their intimidation tacticsagainst the lumpenproletariat. The police and missionaries coordinatedtheir efforts in the years 1950-5 I to respond appropriatelyto the enormous influx of young Kenyans from the countrysideand the forest who, unable to find jobs, took to stealing, debaucheryand alcoholism, etc. Juvenile delinquency in the colonizedcountries stems directly from this lumpenproletariat. Similarly,drastic measures were taken in the Congo from 1957 onwards tosend back to the interior the "young hooligans" who were disturbingthe peace. Relocation camps were opened and assigned to theevangelical missions under the protection, of course, of the Belgianarmy.The formation of a lumpenproletariat is a phenomenon whichis governed by its own logic, and neither the overzealous ness ofthe missionaries nor decrees from the central authorities cancheck its growth. However hard it is kicked or stoned it continuesto gnaw at the roots of the tree like a pack of rats.The shanty town is the consecration of the colonized's biologicaldecision to invade the enemy citadel at all costs, and if needbe, by the most underground channels. The lumpenproletariatconstitutes a serious threat to the "security" of the town andsignifies the irreversible rot and the gangrene eating into theheart of colonial domination. So the pimps, the hooligans, the