Class Struggle and Revolution Theme Analysis

While he focuses on European colonialism in this book, Césaire also insists that this colonialism cannot be understood independently of its origins in and contributions to capitalism, the profit-oriented system of private ownership over resources, property, and technology (or, collectively, the “means of production”) that has dominated the global economy for several centuries. In turn, according to Césaire’s Marxist view of history and social change, stopping colonialism is impossible without stopping capitalism, which is why he sees anticolonial independence movements and the revolution of the proletariat as one and the same. While he emphasizes that it is impossible to turn back the clock and undo the damage of colonialism, Césaire ultimately concludes that the anticolonial, anticapitalist revolution must build a society based on the social and moral principles of precolonial, non-European societies while continuing to advance technologically and materially.

Césaire analyzes the rise and dominance of colonialism through a Marxist lens, which leads him to conclude that colonialism is evil for the same reason as capitalism: it concentrates all power in the hands of a small elite (the bourgeoisie), which uses that power to systematically exploit the rest of society (the proletariat). Specifically, he uses an analytical method called historical materialism, which means that he explains colonialism’s social, cultural, and philosophical dynamics by analyzing their relationship to material differences in power and wealth. Although Césaire talks about Europe as a single collective entity when he blames it for destroying the rest of the world, at times he clarifies that the common people of Europe cannot truly be held accountable for colonialism: rather, governments and the bourgeoisie (or the ruling class of property owners who stand to profit from colonial ventures) are fully responsible for its evil. Ultimately, then, Césaire sees colonization in terms of class conflict: a small elite that controls most of society’s wealth and power (the bourgeoisie) exploits everyone else (the proletariat) for their own self-interest. It just so happens that the bourgeoisie of Europe is exploiting the whole world’s proletariat (including Europe’s own).

Because he analyzes colonialism and capitalism as one and the same, Césaire sees both as intrinsically unstable: they worsen over time, but they will eventually come to an end. Similarly, he thinks that colonialism degrades Europe’s moral culture because it degrades the members of the bourgeoisie as individuals by making them numb to the feelings, experiences, and interests of the people they exploit and oppress. Since they control most of society as a whole, the degradation of bourgeois culture essentially is the degradation of European culture—in other words, the bourgeoisie spreads its affliction to the rest of the society. Césaire believes that this process of degradation worsens over time, because the bourgeoisie grows “more shameless” and “more summarily barbarous” over time, as its culture becomes more and more accustomed to inflicting cruelty on others. This is why he compares the “capitalist society” that this creates to “a beast” that “sows death”: capitalism squeezes more and more labor out of the majority of society and takes more and more resources out of the earth, while the gap between rich and poor progressively widens. At a certain point, Césaire continues, this cycle of increasing brutality means that capitalism and colonialism inevitably lead to fascism and mass murder. In fact, he thinks the pressure will gradually build up until the masses (whether the working people in a sovereign country or the colonized people in a territory) overthrow the ruling class.

For Césaire, the revolution against colonial rule and the revolution against capitalism are the same fight. It is impossible to revert to a time before colonialism, but revolutionaries can seek to build “a new society” that is “rich with all the productive power of modern times” but also “warm with all the fraternity of olden days.” What Césaire means by this is that the classless, communist, anticolonial society he envisions will see progress both in terms of values and in terms of technology. It will adopt the values of the communal and “courteous” pre-colonial civilizations of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, while continuing the technological advancement that began accelerating under the globalizing capitalism of the 17th through 20th centuries. Controlled more democratically, this technology has the potential to reduce oppression and suffering across the globe, rather than oppress some people so that others can profit. Notably, then, unlike many contemporary thinkers and despite his belief that capitalism was getting more and more cruel over time, Césaire continued to believe in historical progress. The way to achieve this progress, according to Césaire, was for colonized people to overthrow the colonial governments that oppressed them and establish their own democratic societies. While this seems like the obvious next step in retrospect, it is important to remember that Césaire was writing in 1950, when the first few colonies (like India and Pakistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia) were beginning to win independence from Europe after World War II. The Algerian War of Independence, which catalyzed a period of rapid decolonization in the French empire, did not start until 1954 and lasted until 1962; much of Africa and Asia remained colonized into the 1970s, and Césaire’s native Martinique remains a French colony into the 21st century. Therefore, Césaire was completely serious when he called for revolutionary wars in this book and associated decolonization, peaceful or violent, with the next stage in the development of the human species. Although he recognized that decolonization would be an exceedingly difficult task, Césaire was also optimistic about it. In fact, he believed that the “new society” he sought was on the horizon: specifically, he looked to the Soviet Union as a paragon of radical equality and popular unity. However, Césaire would leave the French Communist Party just a few years after publishing the Discourse on Colonialism precisely because of growing disagreements with the Soviet Union, and his dream remains yet to be fulfilled.