Benin the Congo Burkina Faso: Politics, Economics and Society

by Chris Allen, Michael Radu, Joan Baxter

This volume in the "Marxist Regimes" series examines three African Marxist states which were formerly French Benin is discussed by Chris Allen, The Congo by Michael Radu and Keith Somerville, and Burkina Faso by Joan Baxter and Keith Somerville. From Independence in 1960 until Major Kerekou's 1972 coup, Benin was the least stable state in Africa. Since then, Benin has been a stable Marxist regime. Part 1 investigates the sources of the earlier unrest, the process of stabilization and its relationship to the radicalization of Benin's politics. Its claims to socialism are assessed and its gradual renewed contact with Western and capitalist systems in the 1980s is noted. The Peoples' Republic of Congo is the oldest self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist regime in sub-Saharan Africa. In Part 2, its political development is traced from Independence in 1960 to the Sassou-Ngouesso regime and the institutionalization of radicalism. The role of oil and the vulnerability of a one-commodity economy are covered, along with the Congo's part in the Angola-Zaire conflict and in Chad's civil war. Burkina Faso, formerly Upper Volta, also gained independence in 1960. The subsequent coups and involvement of the military in government are covered here, alongside the economic development plans and efforts of "national recovery". The name Burkina Faso was adopted in 1984.

Genres: Africa

300 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1992

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been hammering the same nail for a while now. But let the record note once again that African marxism, not as the philosophical writings of academics, but as a historical movement spanning the governments of over ten countries, is bafflingly underdiscussed. From the left-wing point of view, this is understandable — Ethiopia, Madagascar, Benin, Mozambique, etc, were no Nicaraguas or Koreas in which foreign intervention either toppled or permanently crippled a country's prospects, leaving an unfulfilled dream of a better alternative standing; it's hard to square so much internally-generated chaos within a left-wing frame of reference without becoming cynical ("socialism can never be done") or, worse, trotskyist ("somehow traitors came out on top"). But why no right-wing profiling of these self-evident left-wing failures? Are their propagandists so racist they refuse to pick this low-hanging fruit?

Whatever it may be, Bogdan Szajkowski's Marxist Regimes series was a rare attempt to critically understand a now lost political world. This book devoted half of its pages to the People's Republic of Benin (previously Dahomey, since Benin), a third to the Congolese People's Republic (since the Republic of Congo or Congo-Brazzaville) and a measly 30 pages to Burkina Faso. The latter discussion is too brief to shed much light on matters, though its an illuminating artifact of a time when it was self-evident and generally accepted that Sankara's comrade-in-arms and killer, Blaise Compaoré, sought to continue the socialist revolution, although without Sankara's diplomatic and economic excesses (working through Sankara, the doctrine of socialist delinking claimed yet another victim).

Much better are the first two studies. Congo underwent a series of radicalizing revolts and coups in the 60s, in '63 embracing 'scientific socialism' under Massamba-Débat, in '69 becoming the first African People's Republic under Ngouabi. As a central administrative node in the French colonial empire, Congo had unusually high wage labor participation rates, syndicalisation, literacy and higher education rates. Via the communist-dominated unions, the Leninist analysis of imperialism, neocolonialism and underdevelopment made its way to the parliament. As with all things marxist, this worldview was a vocabulary rather than a programme — the vast majority of foreign aid remained French, the country preferred tightening relations with non-aligned Cuba rather than the USSR, support for Cuban intervention in Angola remained secondary to pragmatic considerations, at one point sharing the stage with support for the separatists in the Cabindan exclave.

Benin, very well documented here, reads like a feverish parody of Congo. The military takeover by Mathieu Kerekou didn't declare socialism until years after the fact, much of the economy was contingent on smuggling to and from Nigeria; the Biafran war, by disabling a significant part of the Nigerian economy, was a windfall to the revolutionary government.

The authors emphasize the need to look deeper than the rhetoric, into the actual machinery of governance. Postcolonial governments, being little integrated in a functional market economy, oscillate between two stabilization paths. The one is spoils politics, meaning that voting blocs, local power brokers and agencies are bought with the scarce resources available. Some groups, or the people at large, end up being the dupes, so at some point a 'renegotiation' of the spoils becomes necessary. Inherent instability though often disguised as populist justice. The other pole is authoritarian hierarchy, subduing power brokers, centralizing decisionmaking and spending the budget centrally instead of letting the lieutenants decide. In time, austerity can be imposed and resources rerouted to productive means instead of consumption subsidies. The centralization itself is however an obstacle to business.

Benin, Burkina Faso and Congo all started at A and ended up committing to B. It's signifcant that the parties and leaders survived decommunization; Kerekou, Compaoré and the PCT would rule well into the 2010s. Marxism was a technique of cooptation of the dangerous trade unions, who organized the few industries there were; once sufficiently centralized and the opposition decapitated, left-wing slogans lost their utility. The permanent reliance on French largesse to fund the bureaucracy also helped erode dead-end "autonomous development"; as the Asian tigers, Vietnam and China were to make clear, there's no way to climb the global rungs outside of world market integration.