wretched-of-the-earth-frantz-fanon

124THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTHTHE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS 125by involving masses in the management of public affairs.this obviously cannot succeed unless the people are politicdlleducated. Previously the need to clarify such a paramount issueonce and for all would have been recognized. Today the principleof educating the masses politically is generally taken for grantedin the underdeveloped countries. But it is that this basictask is not being honestly addressed. The decision to politicizepeople implies that the regime expects to make popular support acondition for any action undertaken. A govemment which declaresintent to politicize the people its desire to governthe people and for the people. It should not use a languagedesigned to camouflage a bourgeois leadership. The bourgeoisgovernments of the capitalist countries have long since leftinfantile phase of power behind. They govern dispassionately usingtheir power, and their police force. Now thatauthority is solidly established they are not obliged to wastetime with demagogic considerations. They govern in their owninterest and make no nonsense about it. They have made themselvesand are strong in their ownbourgeois caste of the newly indcpendent countries hasnot attained the cynicism or the serenity on which thebourgeoisies based their power. Hence its concern to hideits deep-rooted convictions, to allay suspicions, in short toonstrate its popularity. It is not by mobilizing dozens or hundredsof thousands of men and women three or four times apolitically educate the masses. These meetings, spectacularrallies, are similar to the old preindependence tacticswhereby you displayed your strength to prove to yourself and toothers that you had the people on your side. The political educationof the masses is meant to make adults out of them, not tomake them infantile.brings us to consider the role of the political party in anunderdeveloped country. We have seen in the preceding pagesvery often simplistic minds, belonging, moreover, to theemerging bourgeoisie, repeatedly argue the need for an underdevelopedcountry to have a strong authority, even a dictatorship,to head affairs. With this in mind the party is put in charge ofmonitoring the masses. The party doubles the administrationpolice force, and controls the masses not with the aim ofensuring their actual participation in the affairs of the nation butto remind them constantly that the authorities expect them tobe obedient and disciplined. This dictatorship, which believesitself by history, which considers itself indispensable in"ftermath of independence, in fact symbolizes the decisionbourgeois caste to lead the underdeveloped country, at firstwith the support of the people but very soon against them. Thegradual transformation of the party into an intelligenceis indicativc that thc authorities are increasingly on thesive. The shapeless mass the people is seen as a blind forcemust be constantly hcld on a leash eithcr by mystificationor fear instilled by police presence. The party becomes a baromanintelligence service. The militant becomes an informer.He is put in charge of punitive missions against the villages.Embryonic opposition are eliminated at the stroke of abaton or a hail of stones. Opposition candidates seego up in flames. The police are increasingly provocative.these circumstances, there is, of course, but a single partyand the government candidate receives 99 percent of the votes.We have to acknowledge that a certain number of governmentsin Mrica operate along these lines. All the opposition partieswere generally progressivc and strove for a participationof the masses in the management of public affairs, who wantedto see the arrogant and mercantile bourgeoisie brought to heel,have been bludgeoned and incarcerated into silence and thendriven underground.In many of today's independent regions of Africaparty is being seriously bloated out of all proportion. In thc