The Wretched of the Earth

by Frantz Fanon

How do the nationalist parties react to this decisive irruption by the peasant masses into the national struggle? We have seen that the majority of the nationalist parties have not written the need for armed intervention into their propaganda. They are not opposed to a sustained revolt, but they leave it up to the spontaneity of the rural masses. In other words, their attitude towards these new developments is as if they were heaven-sent, praying they continue. They exploit this godsend, but make no attempt to organize the rebellion. They do not dispatch agents to the interior to politicize the masses, to enlighten their consciousness or raise the struggle to a higher level. They hope that swept along by its own momentum the action of the masses will not flag.