Economic model or national culture?

             During our initial sessions, we talked about how anti-colonial movements were run by nationalist leaders who envisioned possibilities of a new future. But soon after the colonizers left the colonies, such claims burnt to ashes. This was because their outcry for independence was followed by neo-colonial economic exploitation which they did not think about previously. Fanon also raises the same concern by arguing that the bourgeoisie stuck to the same old economic model aimed to confine their economy to the production and export of a single crop or commodity e.g. rubber, “groundnuts” etc. I argue that the inherited economic structure of the newly carved nations was a way to construct a culture that would help them define themselves as a distinct nation. They tried to identify themselves as a nation that took pride in producing specific goods for exporting to instill a false sense of pride in the masses. This was, however, contrary to fanon’s idea of developing a social consciousness that argued for a down-top approach by including the masses in the economic policies of the nation.

             The bourgeoisie had an “academic” and “approximate” knowledge about their nations because they had never been part of the political structure run by the colonizer in the colonies. So, after independence, when it came to managing the economy, they had no idea of how to devise policies which could fulfill the promises made by them in their speeches. This led them to continue with the European economic model in the colonies which manipulated their colonies to produce and cultivate raw products of specific kinds which later on started to be attributed to that respective colony. One reason was that they lacked enough capital to set up a new industry. Since the product from these colonies was exported to Europe, such a model only profited the Europeans and the local bourgeoisie. To pacify the masses, the bourgeoisie termed the production of a specific good as the marker of national identity: “cloak local artisanship in a chauvinistic tenderness”. This manifests the anxiety of the process of nation-building in the colonies. The bourgeoisie tended to define nation-building through a distinct economic order because they did not have anything else to offer to their people. Given their incompetence, they proved to be a liability for their local people.

             For Fanon, such an idea of national consciousness was a hoax to divert the attention of masses from hunger, poverty, and “darkness”. It was catering only to the marketing of a constructed national pride that pacified the masses by the mere fact that the people were distinct in exporting a particular commodity. It could not change the fate of an ordinary “peasant”. Such a consciousness removed the masses from the scene and instead took refuge in the cloak of false nationalism built on an exploitative inherited economic model. Therefore, for him, the inclusion of masses was crucial in the development of a healthy economy because then they would decide what matters needed immediate attention. Only then could the matters of wealth distribution, social relations, and illiteracy be addressed. This can be termed as a down-top approach because in this case, the problems of the nations are discussed and resolved from the top leadership but by consulting and prioritizing the masses at the bottom of the social strata.

             National unity, for Fanon, was not the distinctiveness of a nation to export something different and distinct. That would mean decolonization as the continuation of the old order. It was, instead, the elevation of the living standards of people and addressing issues of poverty, illiteracy, and hunger. “Collective consciousness” and not a false pride in a constructed culture was what gave the nation a true meaning.