One way out for Congo as for all ‘backward’ countries, 1965 International Communist Party Africa Reports One way out for Congo as for all ‘backward’ countries Il Programma Comunista , No.1, 1965) Let us reiterate a simple and clear concept: the capitalist states and all other political forces of conservatism in the east as well as the west either carry out a counter-revolutionary policy or act militarily to stifle every class insurrection and every national liberation movement, or they do both together. This cursed activity, which only revolutionary communism can put an end to, is the logical and necessary product of the division of society into classes and the existence of nation-states. No propaganda will ever convince us that the bourgeois world can change to become less hateful and oppressive. The hypocrisy of this society is such that the first commandment for workers is to distrust every word or gesture of the state rulers to the utmost. When they then, with their characteristic impudence, dare to speak of humanitarianism and act the part of civilisation offended by the ‘barbarians’, one can only expect from them the infamous and bloody massacres of exploited workers and oppressed peoples. No trust, then, but only contempt and class hatred, on our part, for this whole aristocracy of money. What has happened and is happening in Congo is highly instructive. With the farce of white ‘hostages’ in the hands of Congolese guerrillas, the bourgeois rabble as a whole has thrown itself body and soul into either the slaughter of black peoples or into solidarity with the massacres of poor wretches, guilty only of the crime of wanting to free themselves from the economic exploitation of the major industrial and financial trusts of the West, and of the political enslavement of those states that, repeating every day their anti-colonialist profession of faith and their desire to help underdeveloped and starving countries, perpetuate the already aggressive and more brutal forms of classical colonialism when the ‘clean’ forms of neo-colonialism prove inadequate to pursue their thieving aims. It is, we repeat, military action that alternates or combines with counter-revolutionary political action. Capitalism was born colonialist, and will only die as such under the blows of the united proletarians of all countries and races, led by the revolutionary Communist Party. The latest bloody episodes of armed violence in Congo are but a new link in the chain of suffering that capitalism has produced from the first moment it penetrated it, sufferings which have grown out of all proportion since it gave it the great gift of independence in 1960, because since then, on the already bleeding prey, the lion of the capitalist jungle, the United States of America, has thrust its deadly claw. As usual, the Americans made use of the worthy organisation of the United Nations to feast on this rich but powerless country. The pretext was not lacking, and everyone knows that it was provided by the secession of Katanga, desired by the Belgians and their henchman Tshombé. The much-vaunted peace and order function of the UN (and everyone knows how that chorus has always been joined by the robust voice of the Russians) was thus tested once again. And, as if that were not enough, the USA, with an impudence equal only to its arrogance, now demands that the other member states of the organisation contribute to the payment of the expenses for the operations carried out by this instrument of theirs and by the ‘blue helmets’ on behalf of their prevailing if not exclusive interests. The Russians are therefore right to deny their financial contribution, but they are dead wrong to invoke as their main justification the legal argument that the deployment of the blue helmets was decided by the Assembly and not by the Security Council, which – according to their interpretation of the Charter – is the only body competent to do so. We note in passing how the invocation of statutes serves no purpose, and how democracy wherever applied resolves itself into doing the will of the strongest. The intervention of the Belgian paratroopers transported by American planes and supported by the Tshombist army composed of regular formations and white mercenaries paid for with US dollars, was justified on anti-racist and humanitarian grounds. To this whole band of hypocrites and their crocodile tears we repeat what we have said before: ‘Xenophobia? If the exploitation is foreign, the fight against it necessarily takes on xenophobic colours: its fault, not the fault of the exploited’. As for the ‘causes’ that these gentlemen put forward as the basis of the ‘atrocities’ committed by the ‘savages’, namely unpreparedness for self-government and political immaturity, have they not blamed themselves for all this, thereby completely contradicting the old propaganda campaign according to which colonisation was not carried out for the purposes of exploitation and robbery but only to bring in the inestimable values of ‘civilisation’? All their tears, therefore, do not move us. On the contrary, revolutionary communists stand by the side of the black guerrillas of Congo as of all the countries of Africa, and of all the masses of exploited people of any skin who struggle against colonialist imperialism and its armed violence. For the success of the aspirations for true Congolese independence and unity, as a prelude to future and definitive struggles for the triumph of world socialism, we hope that the political leadership forces headed by Gbenye, Soumialot, Kanza and Mulele will abandon the path formerly taken by their courageous predecessor Lumumba, if they do not want to see their efforts and heroism fail once again: that is, that they do not delude themselves into thinking they will achieve their goals through shady compromises with parties serving the interests of foreign capital. With such a course of action, other bloody pitfalls can only be expected. Past and very recent experience must teach us once and for all not only to be wary, but to multiply the blows until the puppet government of Tshombé is overthrown and all the forces behind it destroyed. We know the task is terribly hard, but there is no other way out if the proclaimed Congolese People’s Republic (PRC) is to be given real content and replace the current Congolese Democratic Republic (DRC) of Tshombé. Without the international support of the revolutionary proletariat, we know how difficult it is to win the game against such powerful adversaries who are determined not to relinquish their plunder, of the profit extorted from the wage slaves in the copper, tin, uranium, cobalt and diamond mines of Congo. The meaning of the independence granted to this country, in the minds of the old and new rulers, is only to create an internal political force that will help them further exploit the immense wealth that exists there. The way to achieve true political sovereignty and dispose, as absolute masters, the entire domestic product is therefore certainly not through compromises with foreign trusts. Following such a path would reduce one to the level of the servile politics of Tshombé, and one would only be agreeing with them. The nullity that followed the August talks between Gbenye and the Belgian foreign minister, the ‘socialist’ Spaak, assisted by the US special envoy Devlin, prove this. Further striking proof is the talks that Kanza, the Gbenye government’s foreign minister, held in Nairobi with Attwood, the US ambassador to Kenya, just before the last crisis. The response was armed aggression. These facts show that no such political solution have appealed to the Americans so far, and that they have insisted and will insist on the military solution. It costs them nothing more than sending a few planes, weapons, ammunition and ‘advisers’ to train mercenaries gathered from all parts of the world and paid a few dollars more than the soldiers of the regular army of the D.R.C. in Léopoldville, with the function of stimulating the warlike action of the ‘regulars’, or at least avoiding their mass desertion and their crossing over to the side of the popular forces. It is unbelievable and paradoxical, but according to some informants, the Tshombist army fights in a ‘sandwich’ style, i.e. with regular formations preceded and followed by units of less unreliable mercenaries. If this is true, it is yet another sign of the decline of capitalism. This being the case, we would like the strategists of the Botteghe Oscure [the Italian Communist Party was based in the Via delle Botteghe Oscure . Ed.] to explain to us how they find the solution to the Congolese problem. ‘ Rinascita ’ No. 48 writes: ‘The road to Congolese independence and peace in this country the size of Europe passes through a genuine national reconciliation and an elimination of all foreign intervention (...) The alternative is a civil war that may not be won militarily by the guerrillas but that would open another Western blade wound in the flank of the Third World and Africa’. It only takes a moment’s reflection to notice the inconsistency of this prose. According to these strategists, the moderates (from which Tshombé should perhaps be excluded) should make peace with the radicals (Gbenye, Mulele, etc.), reconstitute the old unity of the movement, and proceed together (without saying ‘how’) to eliminate the foreigner. Beautiful, isn’t it? Too bad this convenient strategy remains the wishful thinking of unrepentant gradualists! For what revolution in history has ever driven out the foreigner in such a manner? Has it not always happened (as in France in 1789) that in order to beat the external counterrevolution, it has been necessary to also, and before that, to put down the internal one, in which the moderates have always taken refuge? Has it not always been the case that when the most decisive part threw itself into the arms of the moderate part of the revolutionary movement, it failed (as in Germany in 1848) in its purpose? Why then the holy terror of the ‘alternative’ of civil war? Don’t you realise, O emeritus opportunists, that at best you are and remain mere ‘philanthropists’ and that only this vague humanitarianism makes you stage protests against the arrival of Tshombé and the fact – shock! – that Paul VI welcomes the ‘bloody puppet’ with open arms? Revolutionary communists know that humanitarianism has nothing to do with a party’s class position. On the contrary, they know that always, as in this case, it only serves to mask opportunist positions, characterised by an inconclusive and demagogic uproar. The workers should remember that it is precisely due to the abandonment of the Leninist strategy of welding together proletarian revolution in the white metropolises with the anti-colonial revolutionary movements by the Muscovite parties (of the ‘Chineseophile’ parties one cannot speak of abandoning that revolutionary path because they never set foot on it), that today black peoples in revolt against imperialism are encountering obstacles that are sometimes insurmountable, or only surmountable through infinitely greater sacrifices of blood. So down with the appeasement buzzwords thrown around in ‘advanced’ countries as in underdeveloped ones. As Lenin put it, the programme of those who wave them ‘is not socialist, but bourgeois-pacifist’.