Popular Social Revolution vs. Capitalist Military Bonapartism
I celebrate the expulsion of the imperialist French military from Burkina Faso and other countries in West Africa, as should be done to all imperialist military everywhere. But breaking diplomatic relations with France was mere symbolism and a distraction.
Shockingly in the middle of a genocide, Traoré smilingly received the Israeli ambassador. What a contrast with Cuba, which broke relations in 1973!
A picture is worth a thousand words. More incontrovertible evidence of the character of the Traoré regime.
Unlike the revolution led by Thomas Sankara, Traoré and his capitalist government offer little change to working people in Burkina Faso.
Radical-sounding pronouncements seek to pacify rather than mobilize working people to organize and fight in their own interests, as Thomas Sankara sought to do.
Traoré claims to be anti-imperialist, but Burkina Faso remains a capitalist society. Imperialist domination is fundamentally an economic relationship.
It is domination by imperialist currencies that subjugate semicolonial nations, like the imperialist Colonies françaises d'Afrique — CFA currency — that continues to dominate BF. It is banks, capital, loans and interest, unequal trade relations, and unequal levels of productivity that siphon off the surplus value from the blood, sweat and tears of the exploited into the imperialist nations. It is the mere existence of capitalism that is the mechanism for imperialist exploitation.
The only effective anti-imperialism requires the overthrow and expropriation of the national bourgeoisie that serves as the transmission belt and local enforcer of imperialist domination. Without that even modest progressive measures are inevitably undone. That is why only a socialist revolution can actually be anti-imperialist.
Traoré’s “anti-imperialist” rhetoric masks the fact that the regime is avoiding the historical task of organizing the Burkinabè toilers to prepare themselves to carry out the necessary socialist revolution.
That is precisely what the Bonapartist Traoré regime is preventing by throwing up radical-sounding smokescreens as cover.
The history of semicolonial nations is strewn with capitalist regimes with nationalist or “anti-imperialist” rhetoric, from Perón, Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, or Maduro. They change nothing for working people. Worse still, they tie the hands of the exploited and oppressed, who end up disoriented and demoralized.
Traoré is not organizing workers and poor farmers; no unionization drives; no encroachment on the prerogatives and profits of the capitalist rulers; no agrarian reform to nationalize the large properties to distribute land to poor and landless peasants; no mass organizations of the poor, for women, for youth. Unlike under Sankara, there is no movement towards a social transformation.
Traoré is exchanging one imperialist exploiter for two other imperialist exploiters, looking for a better deal for the Burkinabè bourgeoisie. It is legitimate to try to play upon imperialist rivalries for advantage, but for working people, one imperialist pole is the same as the last imperialist pole.
Judging these developments is not a matter of demanding “radical words” or how fast and how deep the measures go at a given moment, but what is the direction and content. It's been four long years now. Actual revolutions are unmistakable within months.
Sankara educated, organized and mobilized the toiling masses of Burkina Faso against capitalism, against imperialism..
Sadly, that is not the case today.
_____________
The revolutionary political legacy of Thomas Sankara. Read his words:
“Shockingly in the middle of a genocide, Traoré smilingly received the Israeli ambassador” Burkina Faso maintains no embassy in Israel and the ambassador arriving in BF to present himself to the new administration was purely ceremonial. It has occurred in every administration before Traoré, and will likely continue to long afterwards. To use this as some sort of reasoning that “BF is actually pro-imperialist” completely ignores the political reality in the country.
To your point that Traoré’s admin is nothing like Sankara’s—neither are the characteristics of Western capitalist hegemony. The Burkina Faso Revolution cannot hope to survive if they are stuck in the era of 1983-1987. Neocolonialism has matured and expanded its genocidal methods significantly since 1987. And as I mention SEVERAL TIMES, Western-backed Jihadist terrorists didn’t control over half of the country when Sankara’s revolution was underway.
To your point that “Traoré is not mobilizing peasants and workers,” the Agricultural Offensive which I mentioned in my article has seen hundreds of millions of USD worth of investment into the public infrastructure, providing thousands of jobs and establishing Burkina Faso’s first major highway.
The Burkina Faso Revolution of today is up against much stronger forces of neocolonial development than those of Sankara's era ever were. Traoré and his administration have made it clear as a matter of rhetoric and policy that their commitment is to the working class people of the country, the Sahel region, and to Africa as a united sovereign people. Endless Western-backed coup attempts against him should be all the proof you need of this fact.
Libs and socdems love failed revolutionaries who are safely dead, but fear those who are dangerously alive.
Excellent analysis !
(how could this bastard die from a heart attack if he had no heart? Anyway, there's still hope.)
SANKARA vs. TRAORÉ
Popular Social Revolution vs. Capitalist Military Bonapartism
I celebrate the expulsion of the imperialist French military from Burkina Faso and other countries in West Africa, as should be done to all imperialist military everywhere. But breaking diplomatic relations with France was mere symbolism and a distraction.
Shockingly in the middle of a genocide, Traoré smilingly received the Israeli ambassador. What a contrast with Cuba, which broke relations in 1973!
A picture is worth a thousand words. More incontrovertible evidence of the character of the Traoré regime.
Unlike the revolution led by Thomas Sankara, Traoré and his capitalist government offer little change to working people in Burkina Faso.
Radical-sounding pronouncements seek to pacify rather than mobilize working people to organize and fight in their own interests, as Thomas Sankara sought to do.
Traoré claims to be anti-imperialist, but Burkina Faso remains a capitalist society. Imperialist domination is fundamentally an economic relationship.
It is domination by imperialist currencies that subjugate semicolonial nations, like the imperialist Colonies françaises d'Afrique — CFA currency — that continues to dominate BF. It is banks, capital, loans and interest, unequal trade relations, and unequal levels of productivity that siphon off the surplus value from the blood, sweat and tears of the exploited into the imperialist nations. It is the mere existence of capitalism that is the mechanism for imperialist exploitation.
The only effective anti-imperialism requires the overthrow and expropriation of the national bourgeoisie that serves as the transmission belt and local enforcer of imperialist domination. Without that even modest progressive measures are inevitably undone. That is why only a socialist revolution can actually be anti-imperialist.
Traoré’s “anti-imperialist” rhetoric masks the fact that the regime is avoiding the historical task of organizing the Burkinabè toilers to prepare themselves to carry out the necessary socialist revolution.
That is precisely what the Bonapartist Traoré regime is preventing by throwing up radical-sounding smokescreens as cover.
The history of semicolonial nations is strewn with capitalist regimes with nationalist or “anti-imperialist” rhetoric, from Perón, Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, or Maduro. They change nothing for working people. Worse still, they tie the hands of the exploited and oppressed, who end up disoriented and demoralized.
Traoré is not organizing workers and poor farmers; no unionization drives; no encroachment on the prerogatives and profits of the capitalist rulers; no agrarian reform to nationalize the large properties to distribute land to poor and landless peasants; no mass organizations of the poor, for women, for youth. Unlike under Sankara, there is no movement towards a social transformation.
Traoré is exchanging one imperialist exploiter for two other imperialist exploiters, looking for a better deal for the Burkinabè bourgeoisie. It is legitimate to try to play upon imperialist rivalries for advantage, but for working people, one imperialist pole is the same as the last imperialist pole.
Judging these developments is not a matter of demanding “radical words” or how fast and how deep the measures go at a given moment, but what is the direction and content. It's been four long years now. Actual revolutions are unmistakable within months.
Sankara educated, organized and mobilized the toiling masses of Burkina Faso against capitalism, against imperialism..
Sadly, that is not the case today.
_____________
The revolutionary political legacy of Thomas Sankara. Read his words:
“Thomas Sankara Speaks:
The Burkina Faso Revolution 1983–87”
By Thomas Sankara
https://www.pathfinderpress.com/products/thomas-sankara-speaks-burkina-faso-revolution_1983-87
PDF:
https://library.agnescameron.info/revolutionary%20history/Thomas%20Sankara%20Speaks.pdf
“The Revolution Cannot Triumph without the Emancipation of Women”
By Thomas Sankara
March 8, 1987
https://www.thomassankara.net/la-liberation-de-la-femme-une/?lang=en
THOMAS SANKARA ARCHIVE
https://www.marxists.org/archive/sankara/index.htm
“Shockingly in the middle of a genocide, Traoré smilingly received the Israeli ambassador” Burkina Faso maintains no embassy in Israel and the ambassador arriving in BF to present himself to the new administration was purely ceremonial. It has occurred in every administration before Traoré, and will likely continue to long afterwards. To use this as some sort of reasoning that “BF is actually pro-imperialist” completely ignores the political reality in the country.
To your point that Traoré’s admin is nothing like Sankara’s—neither are the characteristics of Western capitalist hegemony. The Burkina Faso Revolution cannot hope to survive if they are stuck in the era of 1983-1987. Neocolonialism has matured and expanded its genocidal methods significantly since 1987. And as I mention SEVERAL TIMES, Western-backed Jihadist terrorists didn’t control over half of the country when Sankara’s revolution was underway.
To your point that “Traoré is not mobilizing peasants and workers,” the Agricultural Offensive which I mentioned in my article has seen hundreds of millions of USD worth of investment into the public infrastructure, providing thousands of jobs and establishing Burkina Faso’s first major highway.
The Burkina Faso Revolution of today is up against much stronger forces of neocolonial development than those of Sankara's era ever were. Traoré and his administration have made it clear as a matter of rhetoric and policy that their commitment is to the working class people of the country, the Sahel region, and to Africa as a united sovereign people. Endless Western-backed coup attempts against him should be all the proof you need of this fact.