Discourse on Colonialism

by

Aimé Césaire

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Class Struggle and Revolution Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Colonial Racism and the Moral Corruption of Europe Theme Icon
The Consequences of Colonial Plunder Theme Icon
Scholarship and Power Theme Icon
Class Struggle and Revolution Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Discourse on Colonialism, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Class Struggle and Revolution Theme Icon

While he focuses on European colonialism in this book, Césaire also insists that this colonialism cannot be understood independently of its origins in and contributions to capitalism, the profit-oriented system of private ownership over resources, property, and technology (or, collectively, the “means of production”) that has dominated the global economy for several centuries. In turn, according to Césaire’s Marxist view of history and social change, stopping colonialism is impossible without stopping capitalism, which is why he sees anticolonial independence movements and the revolution of the proletariat as one and the same. While he emphasizes that it is impossible to turn back the clock and undo the damage of colonialism, Césaire ultimately concludes that the anticolonial, anticapitalist revolution must build a society based on the social and moral principles of precolonial, non-European societies while continuing to advance technologically and materially.

Césaire analyzes the rise and dominance of colonialism through a Marxist lens, which leads him to conclude that colonialism is evil for the same reason as capitalism: it concentrates all power in the hands of a small elite (the bourgeoisie), which uses that power to systematically exploit the rest of society (the proletariat). Specifically, he uses an analytical method called historical materialism, which means that he explains colonialism’s social, cultural, and philosophical dynamics by analyzing their relationship to material differences in power and wealth. Although Césaire talks about Europe as a single collective entity when he blames it for destroying the rest of the world, at times he clarifies that the common people of Europe cannot truly be held accountable for colonialism: rather, governments and the bourgeoisie (or the ruling class of property owners who stand to profit from colonial ventures) are fully responsible for its evil. Ultimately, then, Césaire sees colonization in terms of class conflict: a small elite that controls most of society’s wealth and power (the bourgeoisie) exploits everyone else (the proletariat) for their own self-interest. It just so happens that the bourgeoisie of Europe is exploiting the whole world’s proletariat (including Europe’s own).

Because he analyzes colonialism and capitalism as one and the same, Césaire sees both as intrinsically unstable: they worsen over time, but they will eventually come to an end. Similarly, he thinks that colonialism degrades Europe’s moral culture because it degrades the members of the bourgeoisie as individuals by making them numb to the feelings, experiences, and interests of the people they exploit and oppress. Since they control most of society as a whole, the degradation of bourgeois culture essentially is the degradation of European culture—in other words, the bourgeoisie spreads its affliction to the rest of the society. Césaire believes that this process of degradation worsens over time, because the bourgeoisie grows “more shameless” and “more summarily barbarous” over time, as its culture becomes more and more accustomed to inflicting cruelty on others. This is why he compares the “capitalist society” that this creates to “a beast” that “sows death”: capitalism squeezes more and more labor out of the majority of society and takes more and more resources out of the earth, while the gap between rich and poor progressively widens. At a certain point, Césaire continues, this cycle of increasing brutality means that capitalism and colonialism inevitably lead to fascism and mass murder. In fact, he thinks the pressure will gradually build up until the masses (whether the working people in a sovereign country or the colonized people in a territory) overthrow the ruling class.

For Césaire, the revolution against colonial rule and the revolution against capitalism are the same fight. It is impossible to revert to a time before colonialism, but revolutionaries can seek to build “a new society” that is “rich with all the productive power of modern times” but also “warm with all the fraternity of olden days.” What Césaire means by this is that the classless, communist, anticolonial society he envisions will see progress both in terms of values and in terms of technology. It will adopt the values of the communal and “courteous” pre-colonial civilizations of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, while continuing the technological advancement that began accelerating under the globalizing capitalism of the 17th through 20th centuries. Controlled more democratically, this technology has the potential to reduce oppression and suffering across the globe, rather than oppress some people so that others can profit. Notably, then, unlike many contemporary thinkers and despite his belief that capitalism was getting more and more cruel over time, Césaire continued to believe in historical progress. The way to achieve this progress, according to Césaire, was for colonized people to overthrow the colonial governments that oppressed them and establish their own democratic societies. While this seems like the obvious next step in retrospect, it is important to remember that Césaire was writing in 1950, when the first few colonies (like India and Pakistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia) were beginning to win independence from Europe after World War II. The Algerian War of Independence, which catalyzed a period of rapid decolonization in the French empire, did not start until 1954 and lasted until 1962; much of Africa and Asia remained colonized into the 1970s, and Césaire’s native Martinique remains a French colony into the 21st century. Therefore, Césaire was completely serious when he called for revolutionary wars in this book and associated decolonization, peaceful or violent, with the next stage in the development of the human species. Although he recognized that decolonization would be an exceedingly difficult task, Césaire was also optimistic about it. In fact, he believed that the “new society” he sought was on the horizon: specifically, he looked to the Soviet Union as a paragon of radical equality and popular unity. However, Césaire would leave the French Communist Party just a few years after publishing the Discourse on Colonialism precisely because of growing disagreements with the Soviet Union, and his dream remains yet to be fulfilled.

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Class Struggle and Revolution Quotes in Discourse on Colonialism

Below you will find the important quotes in Discourse on Colonialism related to the theme of Class Struggle and Revolution.
Section 1 Quotes

A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization.
A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a sick civilization.
A civilization that plays fast and loose with its principles is a dying civilization.
The fact is that the so-called European civilization—“Western” civilization—as it has been shaped by two centuries of bourgeois rule, is incapable of solving the two major problems to which its existence has given rise: the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem; that Europe is unable to justify itself either before the bar of “reason” or before the bar of “conscience”; and that, increasingly, it takes refuge in a hypocrisy which is all the more odious because it is less and less likely to deceive.
Europe is indefensible.
Apparently that is the conclusion the American strategists are whispering to each other.
That in itself is not serious.
What is serious is that “Europe” is morally, spiritually indefensible.
And today the indictment is brought against it not by the European masses alone, but on a world scale, by tens and tens of millions of men who, from the depths of slavery, set themselves up as judges.

Related Characters: Aimé Césaire (speaker)
Related Symbols: Civilization and Barbarism
Page Number: 31-2
Explanation and Analysis:

Colonization and civilization?
In dealing with this subject, the commonest curse is to be the dupe in good faith of a collective hypocrisy that cleverly misrepresents problems, the better to legitimize the hateful solutions provided for them.
In other words, the essential thing here is to see clearly, to think clearly—that is, dangerously—and to answer clearly the innocent first question: what, fundamentally, is colonization? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization nor philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law. To admit once and for all, without flinching at the consequences, that the decisive actors here are the adventurer and the pirate, the wholesale grocer and the ship owner, the gold digger and the merchant, appetite and force, and behind them, the baleful projected shadow of a form of civilization which, at a certain point in its history, finds itself obliged, for internal reasons, to extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies.

Related Characters: Aimé Césaire (speaker)
Related Symbols: Civilization and Barbarism
Page Number: 32-3
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 3 Quotes

Once again, I systematically defend our old Negro civilizations: they were courteous civilizations.
So the real problem, you say, is to return to them. No, I repeat. We are not men for whom it is a question of “either-or.” For us, the problem is not to make a utopian and sterile attempt to repeat the past, but to go beyond. It is not a dead society that we want to revive. We leave that to those who go in for exoticism. Nor is it the present colonial society that we wish to prolong, the most putrid carrion that ever rotted under the sun. It is a new society that we must create, with the help of all our brother slaves, a society rich with all the productive power of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of olden days.

Related Characters: Aimé Césaire (speaker)
Page Number: 51-2
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 6 Quotes

American domination—the only domination from which one never recovers. I mean from which one never recovers unscarred.
And since you are talking about factories and industries, do you not see the tremendous factory hysterically spitting out its cinders in the heart of our forests or deep in the bush, the factory for the production of lackeys; do you not see the prodigious mechanization, the mechanization of man; the gigantic rape of everything intimate, undamaged, undefiled that, despoiled as we are, our human spirit has still managed to preserve; the machine, yes, have you never seen it, the machine for crushing, for grinding, for degrading peoples?

Related Characters: Aimé Césaire (speaker)
Page Number: 77
Explanation and Analysis:

The salvation of Europe is not a matter of a revolution in methods. It is a matter of the Revolution—the one which, until such time as there is a classless society, will substitute for the narrow tyranny of a dehumanized bourgeoisie the preponderance of the only class that still has a universal mission, because it suffers in its flesh from all the wrongs of history, from all the universal wrongs: the proletariat.

Related Characters: Aimé Césaire (speaker)
Page Number: 78
Explanation and Analysis: