Resolution on "The Downfall of Mobutu and the New World Order in Central Africa". Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International
On Sunday 18 May the last of Mobutu's guards in Kinshasa capitulated to Kabila’s Democratic Alliance for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire. Before they did so, they killed a General whom they accused as being a conciliator and looted the city and even the palace of their former "beloved president". Former dictator Mobutu abandoned his country. Kabila renamed Zaire as the "Democratic Republic of Congo". The 32 years of Mobutu anti-Communist dictatorship were over. Backed by the USA and all the Western "democratic" powers, Mobutu plundered one of the biggest and richest African countries for more than 3 decades. Though it had the majority of the cobalt and industrial diamond reserves on earth and huge reserves of copper, oil and other minerals and was one of the most fertile places on earth, the Zairian masses are one of the poorest people in the world. On the contrary, Mobutu was one of the richest men and he had a personal fortune of many billions of dollars, the equivalent of more than the national debt and more than the yearly average income of all the population. Mobutu was the cornerstone of the old order against any anti- imperialist struggle. The man who killed Lumumba also backed the pro- South African UNITA which was responsible for killing tens of thousands of innocent Angolan civilians. His overthrow sets an example to other African peoples to smash UNITA in Angola and to dispense with the dictatorships in Nigeria, Sudan, Togo, Kenya and other countries. It opens up the possibility for the Zairian and other African workers and poor peasants to organise themselves against the capitalists and imperialists. Workers all over the world have to welcome the overthrow of a terrible dictator and look forward to the building of mass movements across the Black continent that will get rid of other Big Men. However, we need to take into account the reactionary nature of the new Democratic Republic of Congo. It is another bourgeois and pro- imperialist regime. Kabila, instead of nationalising all the multinationals, is making better deals with them and other new companies. Three decades ago Kabila fought alongside Che Guevara, but today he no longer claims himself to be a Marxist, and his model for Congo is a neo-liberal paradise to please the IMF and World Bank. His army was not based on poor peasants guerrillas who fought for the land and against imperialism. It was very well trained and equipped, integrated by soldiers from Uganda and Rwanda and assisted by the USA and the CIA. Kabila like Museveni and Kagame is in favour of a non- party "democracy" (which is a Bonapartist dictatorship based on some local concessions to elections) and a less corrupt system which is better able to deliver a neo-liberal "modernisation". The overthrow of Mobutu was in part the result of a joint military action backed by Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Angola who wanted to get rid off the guerrilla forces which operated from Zaire. South Africa’s intervention in this situation was the most important of Mandela’s diplomatic initiatives. The Anglo-Yankee media is quite happy with Kabila. France's influence in the region will diminish. English is becoming the main language from Sudan to the Cape and with it is being spread a new neo-liberal model based on some forms of limited parliamentary democracy behind popular nationalist rulers. Now with a stabilised economy which allows the Multinationals freedom to super- exploit the Congo, the bourgeois media is putting forward the idea that Africa can at last make some economic improvement. For The Guardian (17-May-97) "South Africa’s technological strengths combined with Zaire’s mineral wealth, enormous hydropower potential to produce the cheapest electricity in the world and agricultural resources, could fire the continent’s great leap forward." Workers and peasants in Zaire-Congo have to maintain their own political independence and armed opposition to the new regime. No workers and peasant organisation should send any minister to the new cabinet. The workers, peasants, street sellers, unemployed and poor people should develop their own organisations, self-defence militias and councils. It is inevitable that the Zairian toilers will want to take justice into their own hands and punish the members of the Presidential Guard and the Mobutu's repressive institutions. We should be in favour of rank and file committees to investigate and punish every person who enriched themselves plundering the masses or who massacred or tortured the poor. Kabila promised to end the corruption. We should demand that the only way to do so is to leave it to the workers and poor people's committees to investigate and punish corruption. All the financial account books must be opened and all fortunes must be investigated. All the contracts with the multinationals have to be annulled. The exploited are going to demand an end to the persecution of all ethnic groups and for the right to national self-determination; better wages and living conditions; for the land to be nationalised and distributed to the poor peasants; and the nationalisation of all the big companies and national capitals which made huge profits under Mobutu's corrupt system. A very key question is what to do with Mobutu's and his family and friends fortunes. We should demand their expropriation under workers control and the cancellation of the foreign debt because it was entered into by a corrupt system. Kabila promised more democracy. We should be against his non-party democracy and for complete freedom of assembly, publications, speech, trades unions and political affiliation. We should demand immediate free elections for a Constituent Assembly in which all of its members must be recallable. The workers and poor peoples' committees must control the electoral process and the media. The toilers have to fight now against any new bourgeois ruler. They not only need to develop and expand their own organisations and to put them under the democratic control of the rank and file, they need a revolutionary workers party. Based on the miners, railway, factory and enterprise workers, such a party should try to unite the poor from the shanty towns and the villages and create a parallel system of power. Their aim should be to replace the bourgeoisie with a new workers' and peasants' council’s republic which should fight for a socialist federation in Central and Southern Africa. Africa in the New World Order During the Cold War the main aim of the NATO powers in Black Africa was to defend the "free world" imposing terrible anti-Communist dictatorships against the pro-Soviet bourgeois nationalist movements. During the 1980s Africa suffered a terrible economic collapse which until now is continuing. All the prices of their raw material goods went down while the interest rates on the foreign debt rocketed. The results were famine, ethnic massacres and instability. Since the early days of their independence most of the Sub-Saharan countries were captured by one-man dictatorships. In the late 1980s the majority of them started to be shaken by the so- call "Black Intifada" which consisted in the spreading of general strikes, mass demonstrations and mutinies. The downfall of the Degenerated Workers States and the imposition of a new world order dominated by NATO and the IMF and its neo-liberal and privatisation programmes, created a new situation. The former "Marxist-Leninist" one- party states became savage capitalist regimes in which a sort of multi- party democracy was used to cover terrible austerity measures. The CIA ceased to protect its Big Men and pressed for political liberalisation. The imposition of a fake parliamentary democracy was seen by the West as progress. There was not any "red" risk anymore and it could create more stable societies in which investments could make bigger profits with less lost in corruption and chaos. Before the end of the cold war most of the inter-imperialist rivalries were less sharp, and were subordinated to the common goal of achieving a anti-Communist united front. Just as the USA had its "backyard" in Latin America, the franco-phone Black countries were France's "chasse garde'e" (hunting preserve). Today the imperialist powers are facing significant economic problems. They need to get access to more cheap labour and raw materials to increase the profitability of their major companies. Now there is no longer a common "socialist" enemy, the main powers are beginning to declare their separate interests in dividing up again the world market. Inter-imperialist rivalry is hotting up. This is what explains the new carve up of Africa. The USA, which never had a colony in Africa, is trying to become the major economic and political power in the area. The "humanitarian" troops that the Pentagon sent to Somalia was part of that policy. The US followed by the UK and South Africa are very keen to become a major investor and power in west and central Africa. France and Belgium, which were the colonial powers in most Central and West Africa, had a constant tradition of military intervention. Like the US sent marines to the Caribbean, France sent troops to Chad, Central Africa Republic,Congo, Zaire, Rwanda, etc. Fourteen African countries have a currency link with France and six have defence agreements with France. Before 1994 only three of these 14 countries had implemented an IMF programme, after that year ten are now under the IMF and World Bank's instructions. France has had to accept his retreat. "Being the major provider of economic and military assistance to these countries no longer seems possible or desirable." (Financial Times 8-4-97). The Rwandan war was a clear expression of that confrontation. France was very keen on backing its old ally Habyarimana, like they tried also to protect Mobutu. Uganda is the main Anglo-speaking and pro-US power in the densely populated and agriculturally rich region of the Great Lakes. It's president Museveni is becoming the US hero in the area. In the late 1980s he created the Rwandan Patriotic Front which was openly led by his Defence Minister. They organised a well-armed military invasion which was not supported by the Rwandan population. In the area of the Great Lakes the pre-capitalist social divisions was based on a privileged minority who had the cattle and the arms (Tutsi) and the peasant oppressed majority (Hutu). Belgium became the dominant power at the very end of the last century to after the first world war. Colonialism promoted this social polarisation. In 1959-61 a peasant (Hutu) rebellion deposed the Rwandan Tutsi monarchy and elite and it went into exile. In neighbouring Burundi the Tutsi monarchy, elite and army remained in power. In both countries the Hutus comprise around 85% of the population while the Tutsi are around 14%. In the last three and a half decades the Tutsi elite in Burundi killed hundreds of thousands of Hutu while the Rwandan republic did the same with the Tutsi minority. The RPF invasion succeeded not because the local population backed it, but because of their military superiority. Its leaders, like Kagame, were instructed by the CIA, and its army had better equipment and the decisively heavy support of Uganda. Kagame was Defence Minister of Uganda where he was being trained "in the US in 1990 until he received the call to return home as head of the Ugandan-based Tutsi guerrilla" (Time14-4-97) In a desperate attempt to try to prevent the victory of the RPF, the Interahawne Hutu militias organised the massacre of more than half a million Tutsi and Hutu opponents. Today the new Tutsi regime in Rwanda claims that a quarter of the 8 million inhabitants of Rwanda participated in such slaughter. The victory of the Tutsi army in Rwanda consolidated the terrible Ugandan dictatorship and the terrorist rule of the Tutsi ruling class and army in Burundi when the repression and slaughter against the majority Hutu population was increased. In Uganda, Museveni is from a Tutsi group in a Bantu nation. He imposed his, rule massacring hundreds of thousands of peoples particularly with Nilotic and Hamitic origins in the north. Between 2 to 3 million Rwandans left their country. It was the biggest exodus in the last decade. Rwanda was depopulated by between 1/3 and 1/4 of its population. They lived in the most inhumane conditions and where victims of Aids and all kinds of epidemics. The Hutu refugee camps created new problems for Zaire. The Civil war in Zaire Zaire is the biggest African country. With a territory larger than western Europe, Zaire is one of the world's main producers of industrial diamonds, cobalt (a metal as expensive as gold), zinc, copper, etc. It is an enclave in the middle of black Africa. No other African country has frontiers with so many neighbours (ten). Its internal roads are seriously damaged. In the last years enormous centrifugal tendencies were shaken this country which also has around 400 different ethnic and linguistic groups. The Zairian economy is in a completely disastrous situation. 80% of the adult population is unemployed. The industry is operating at 10% of its capacity. With the crisis all Zairians are becoming millionaires but in a paradoxical way. A worker could earn some tens of millions in the old Zairian currency which is worth only a few US dollars. In the last years the Zairian currency was so hyper-devalued that they had to change its name. The New Zaires are exchanged at a ratio of between 162,000 to 600,000 per US dollar. In east Kasai the population are still using the old Zaires which are exchange at a ratio of 16 million per one dollar. The Zairian currency was devaluated from a ratio of 3 per dollar to several millions per dollar. Most soldiers and bureaucrats received nominal wages of $2 per month, but many times they have not bee paid for months and even years. So, they have to subsist with a de facto legalised massive coercion. Since 1991, after facing several riots, Mobutu promised to replace his one-party state by a multi-party democracy. Etienne Tshisekedi, the leader of the bourgeois "democratic" opposition, was twice nominated as primer minister and later sacked. In late 1996 the Zairean situation became complicated by an important new factor. In Eastern Zaire there is a large Rwandan-speaking population (the Banyawardanan) where many don’t have citizenship rights. The Rwandan language is the most populous tongue in the region and is spreading into all the countries which surround the Great Lakes. Like in Burundi and Rwanda the Banyawardanan are divided between Tutsi (which in eastern Zaire are called Banyamulenge) and Hutu. Mobutu played the ethnic card to maintain his power. Many native Zairean Tutsis were harassed or expelled into Rwanda. The Rwandan army constantly made interventions inside Zaire with the aim of attacking refugee camps. Rwanda decided to promote the creation of another Tutsi-led army in Zaire. On 18 October the Alliance of Democratic Forces of the Liberation of Congo-Zaire was set up. Laurent Kabila, and old supporter of Lumumba, became the leading figure, but its main base was the Zairian Tutsis who started an invasion from Rwanda. Who is Kabila and who is behind him? Kabila was in his youth a self-claimed "African Marxist". In the mid- 60s he organised the Shimba (lion) rebellion in Eastern Zaire which was personally supported by Ch'e Guevara. The leader of the Cuban revolution complained in his diaries about Kabila’s behaviour: he liked too much women, alcohol and to travel. He was more outside the military front (in where extremely poor and ill soldiers have to fight with rudimentary arms) trying to have comfort in nice places and countries. Guevara complains about his affection for magic, his lack of "socialist" ideals and his links with the former Tutsi elite. Kabila's uprising was defeated, and in 1967 he created his People's Revolutionary Party. Like Savimbi in Angola or Siad Barre in Somalia he used some "Marxist-Leninist" and even "Maoist" rhetoric and became a US puppet. Kabila is not raising any anti-imperialist or democratic tasks. Zaire is a backward semi-colonial country in which the most elementary democratic tasks have to be resolved. The imposition of a democratic bourgeois system with human rights, the self-determination of its nations, the expulsion of imperialism and the achievement of national sovereignty over its own resources and territory and the elimination of the landlords, are essential *democratic* tasks which are NOT part of his programme. The Kabila forces are not like the Sandinistas, a limited nationalist petite bourgeois movement which raised some anti-imperialist or democratic demands. It is an army which is financed and armed by USA and its puppets in the region, and, instead of attacking the landlords and the multinationals, is trying to show its willingness to protect their interests in a better way than Mobutu. For revolutionary Marxists only the working class can achieve these demands in a process of permanent revolution which means combining the fulfilment of democratic aims with proper socialist tasks and trying to internationalise the revolution. That is why we need to fight now for the cancellation of the foreign debt and the expropriation of all the multi-nationals and big capitalists, and for an international revolution which can expel the neo-colonial powers from the continent and unite it around voluntary socialist basis. Kabila is becoming popular not by his own merits but by the extreme disintegration of the Mobutu’s corrupt army. Mobutu didn’t want a strong army and he constantly purged it trying to prevent coup d’ etats against him. He trained his army by looting his opponents. The population saw that Mobutu’s army was the main danger because they would not fight Kabila’s forces and, instead, they would retreat looting as much as they can. Kabila is imposing order. His army is not vandalising or looting and in the areas which they control, like Goma, they re-established water and basic services. The West knows that the fight between Mobutu and Kabila is between two rival bourgeois leaders. However, Kabila is presented as a more honest man who can impose a less corrupt, more "democratic" and pro-US strong rule. Kabila's project is not any kind of multi-party democracy. "They have banned all opposition parties in occupied territory. There are strong signs they may be considering introducing a no-party political system modelled on neighbouring Uganda." (Financial Times, 3-4-97). "In areas already occupied by the insurgents they are showing distinctly authoritarian tendencies, with re-education camps and summary executions." (The Guardian, 4-4-97).Kabila said that he was opposed to elections because he first wants to sack Mobutu and to establish order. Later he will convene the kind of fake elections which are the norm in Uganda. No party can exist or stand candidate and only local no-party candidates could stand and without challenging the rule of the dictator. Because he has raised the expectations of the masses he now says that he will convene a Constituent Assembly in two months. Nor will Kabila put a stop to imperialist super-exploitation. The Zairian oligarchy and the multi-nationals plundered this rich country. Mobutu’s fortunes are around $9 to 10 billion, more than the foreign debt. However, Kabila has not touched the interests of any of these multi-nationals. Kabila was well received by Mukamba, an all-powerful chief of the MIBA (Societe Miniere de Bukwanga) which controls most of the diamond production in Mbuji-Maji. De Beer, who controls the world’s industrial diamond market, is dealing with Kabila and other businessmen from Canada, USA, South Africa and Belgium travelled to make deals with him. For them Kabila could give more opportunity for profits because he can achieve a more stable and less corrupt administration. In early April, Joseph Martin, director of the AMF (a mineral field multinational), said "I firmly believe Kabila is going to make a better Zaire without corruption." (The Independent, 8-4-97). Kabila is not allowing self-determination for the countries many ethnic groups. On the contrary, he is showing contempt for hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees in Zaire. He has harassed and expelled them or denied any humanitarian assistance to them. His forces allowed many Hutu to die in the refugee camps and forcibly repatriated them into UN camps caused many hundreds of deaths. There is not evidence that he will allow the many ethnic groups in Congo-Zaire the right to self- determination. His army is not based on poor guerrilla forces which are rooted in the land-hungry peasants. He has a very well trained and armed apparatus with good and modern communication system and led by many officers from the Rwandan and Ugandan army. "Disciplined and purposefull, the ADFL copies the tactics of its mentors, the National revolutionary Army, which seized power in Uganda in 1986, and its offspring, the RPF, which seized power in Rwanda in 1994." (The Economist, 8-3-97). Many US advisors are fighting alongside Kabila, just like Mobutu is employing Serb and Western European mercenaries. The Tutsi, which are the dominant force in Kabila’s army, are no more than 300,000 in all Zaire (less than 1% of the population). A Spanish journalist wrote "The Zairean Tutsi shock troops are the Mai Mai, warriors which fight semi- naked and consider themselves immortal because they have a magic potion. They castrate their enemies and cut their ears with the aim of interrupting the reincarnation cycle." (El Pais, Spain 16-3-97). For Time (17-2-97). They are "tribesmen who smoke Marijuana, worship water and festoon themselves with bathroom fixtures -faucets and hoses- in the believe that these fetishes will aid them in battle". There are some reports that the population has problems with some Kabila’s officers, and especially with the ones that come from Rwanda. Kabila’s troops "call locals MUJINGA, or ignorant in Swahili" (The Economist 15- 3-97) The Museveni "international". "The Economist", the main journal of conservatism and British imperialism, is welcoming Kabila and asking him not to deal with Mobutu but to expel him from power as soon as possible. The US model is now Museveni, the Ugandan Pinochet. A recent issue of Time (April 14, 1997) had a cover which said "Africa’s new order" and in its article "Shaking Up Africa" they welcomed "Ugandan President Museveni’s disciples (who) are transforming the Lost Continent". "What's going on now in the Great lakes region is a "good thing" declares a US ambassador in the region. "Museveni sounds like Margaret Thatcher", marvels a Western diplomat. "He's bought the whole gospel". Uganda’s "current 7% annual growth rate makes this former jewel of British East Africa respectable amongst today’s tigers' of East Asia." Time characterised Museveni as "an ex-Marxist who has spearheaded one of the most remarkable economic and social comebacks in the world." He is the leader of a pro-US "New Order" in the region. "With Museveni as its godfather, this realignment of Africa’s old order tends to be Anglophone in its international voice, pro-American in its diplomacy and obeisant to Adam Smith in its economics. As the old-style Big Men are being pushed aside, so is the influence of France." When Cuba, Libya or Iran promoted armed struggles in other countries the USA characterised them as "terrorist states" which need to be boycotted, military attacked or become world pariahs. However, Uganda, which is ruled by a 13-year old dictatorship, not only gives help but is also actively involved in promoting armed rebellions in the majority of its neighbouring countries. A US official declared to Time in relation to Museveni that "the regional meddling he’s done in Sudan we’ve helped fund." Sudan has the only Islamic fundamentalist republic in Africa and the West views with sympathy the military resistance put up by the southern Christians and animists against Muslim North. The other important US international current affairs magazine has also given its enthusiastic support for the Uganda-Rwanda intervention into Zaire. A report from Newsweek (2-12-96) showed how close the US feels to the new Tutsi regime in Kigali: "Welcome to Rwanda, a Central-Africa friend so close to Washington that French diplomats mutter darkly about a plot to create an anglo-phone empire from cape Town to Cairo." "Recent visits by Rwandan president Paul Kagame to London, Washington and Israel have fed suspicions that he may have sought a green light to move on Zaire through rebel proxies." A US diplomatic recognised that the Tutsi "are the Israel of Africa". The comparison fits because they are also a privileged pro-Western minority surrounded by hostile and "backward" people who suffer genocide. Revolutionary tasks In Zaire the working class is a minority but with a very important weight in the population. They are the workers who extract the cobalt, diamonds, petroleum, manganese, zinc, cooper and other raw materials, the ones that produce the food and textile industries, along with wage workers in the service and state sectors, etc. The workers don't play a passive role. They have made demonstrations and strikes since the early 1990s. The response to workers actions produced massive deportations of ethnic minorities in the cooper mines . At the beginning of the third week of April the students and workers paralysed Kinshasa. We don't have too much information about the state of the parties and unions inside the Zairian workers movement. However, it is inevitable that in the mass discontent the wage workers want to push for their own demands and to organise their own committees.The proletariat has to make an alliance with the poor people in the cities and in the countryside. This is the only class which can lead a radical transformation of the society. The extreme poverty and constant plagues are a product of the combination of capitalist imperialist oppression and lack of capitalist development. However, central Africa can not overcome its underdeveloped dependence unless it breaks with the bourgeois system. The poor masses in Zaire need to take advantage of the inter-bourgeois dispute to raise their own class demands: for the expropriation of all the multinationals, big industries and banks, and mansions; for the cancellation of the foreign debt and the debt from poor peasant and city dwellers to the big private banks; for a nationalised planned economy that could employ all the population and raise living standards; for the redistribution of the land and the nationalisation of the big estates; for the right of every nation to self- determination including separation if they wish; for end to any racial and ethnic bigotry and for full-citizenship to all the Bunyawardene and "non-official Zairian" people; for workers control over the production; for committees of workers and poor people from the cities and countryside to exchange their goods without capitalist intermediates; for a free elected constituent assembly; for workers and peasant councils and militias, a voluntary socialist federation of African republics. Appendix Workers Power’s wrong methods. The groups which were calling for the victory of Kabila are adapting to the Anglo-Yankee imperialist media pressures. Lets see one example. In Rwanda, Workers Power’s LRCI raised the demand "Victory for the RPF!". This army was resisted by most of the Rwandan people and by its small working class. It’s victory created a massive exodus and more ethnic massacres in Burundi. Trying to continue their positions they supported the Rwandan army incursions in Zaire with the aim of repressing the poorest refugee camps in the world. For Workers Power (December 1996) "wherever the RPF government clashed sporadically with the Interahamwe in defence of the Rwandan population against the genocide raiding parties, revolutionaries would again have supported the RPF forces. This conditions our attitude to the Rwandan army intervention in support of the ADFLCZ." In recent years the imperialists are trying to justify their interventions with the "fight against genocide". These are the same powers that sent atomic bombs to innocent civilians and that wiped out entire native peoples. For example, in Bosnia they use the anti- genocide mask to promote the worst ethnic cleansing in post-war Europe: the expulsion of one million Serbs and the entire depopulation of a Serb republic (Krajina). In central Africa the imperialist media only talks about the holocaust of the Tutsi but is silent of the hundreds of thousands of Hutu which were killed by the Tutsi elite (the act that in 1993 precipitated the fratricidal war and the latest 1994 anti-Tutsi genocide). Workers Power only wants to see the holocaust of one side to support the plight of million of refugees. During the worst NATO attack in history the LRCI asked for the defeat of the cleansed Serbs and to their own imperialist powers to send men and weapons to assist the Croat and Muslim puppets which were expelling hundreds of thousands of them from their traditional homelands. Marxists always start with objective analysis and later arrive at conclusions. Workers Power’s LRCI method is the opposite. First, they arrived at the conclusion that we need to tail the liberal western media (victory to the Tutsi elite) and later they create the facts that they want. One example of that is the way they completely distort the reality in Rwanda and in eastern Zaire. In POF (November-December 96) , the paper of its French section, they wrote that "the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutu was a threat to 80% of the east Zairian population which were Tutsi". This is completely false, the Tutsi are a very small minority even in that region. The LRCI leaders have a terrible problem. Like most of the international right-wing’s democratic New World Order, they believe that there is a world contradiction between democrats and authoritarians, and that we have to be with the first against the second. That is why they made united fronts with and behind the destruction of the Soviet degenerated Workers State or with "democratic" imperialist puppets in Bosnia and central Africa. We think in working class, and not bourgeois liberal terms, that imperialism is the main enemy of the worlds workers and poor peasants. In a battle between an oppressed nation ruled by a terrible dictator, like Argentina, Libya, Iraq, etc., we will always be with them, despite our desire to overthrow those regimes, against "democratic" imperialism. For the LRCI the point of departure is who is "democratic" or not. In central Africa all major capitalist semi-colonial regimes use terror and massacre against rival nationalities and ethnic groups. The regimes that they backed (Uganda and Rwanda) also made terrible ethnic cleansing. Around this illusion in the "democrats" who are pro- US and ethnic-cleansing dictators, the LRCI creates dis-illusion about the potential of the working class as an alternative of power. That is why the International Secretariat of the LRCI adopted in late 1993 the statement that "the majority of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America have been de-industrialised. There is a real perspective of not only continued economic decline but of the DESTRUCTION OF THE WORKING CLASS AS THE INSTRUMENT OF SOCIALIST REVOLUTION." (See Documents 1 The Left Opposition in the LRCI). If the proletariat is being destroyed as a class and as "the instrument of socialist revolution", the conclusion is obvious: we need to support the US/UK- backed neo-liberal armies because they are not so genocidal and repressive as the ones that are being defended by France. However, when they come to power they will do what Museveni has done over 13 years: massive privatisation, vicious IMF austerity measures, massacres and deportations of hundreds of thousands, and an "democratic " despotism.