l’Organisation Marxiste-Léniniste du Sénégal
November 2024
General considerations
In examining this theme of the anti-imperialist national liberation struggle, the concept note of this third theoretical conference refers insistently to the need to take into account theoretical references relating to the national and colonial question in the national liberation struggle against imperialism.
Everything points to the fact that we are still in the age of imperialism, with the exacerbation of fundamental contradictions pitting the forces of aggression against oppressed peoples and nations, capital against labor, and strategic connivances between different monopolies and imperialist forces. Added to this is the aggravation of ecological disturbances and their environmental repercussions, affecting the equilibrium of the planet and the biosphere. Not to mention the proliferation of epidemics and their impact on growing inequalities.
Marx and Engels emphasized the primordial character of the international struggle of the working class and the facilitating effect it can have on the resolution of the national question, on which they called for a clear distinction to be drawn between the nationalism of the oppressing nation and that of the oppressed nation. Lenin also reaffirmed the centrality of proletarian internationalism in the class struggle to establish socialism, while insisting on the right to free disposition of nations, up to and including the right to separation, in contrast to those who limited the main demand to national and/or cultural autonomy. Stalin was able to systematize the revolutionary point of view on this issue. Unlike some, such as the Austro-Hungarian socialists, who truncated the community of culture as a unilateral determinant of the nation, he clearly showed that the nation is a historically constituted human community, which may be subject to internal (class struggles) and external (migrations) factors of change, but is stable, born on the basis of a community of language, territory, economic life and psychic formation translated into a community of culture. Later, Lenin’s advances in the evolution of capitalism led to a better understanding of imperialism and a closer link between the national question and the colonial question. The principle of the right of peoples to self-determination must therefore be formulated in such a way as to elevate the struggle of peoples against oppression to the level of the struggle against the common enemy, imperialism. Addressing the peoples of oppressed nations, Lenin said: You are going to be confronted with totally new questions, which we have not been confronted with. Mao and the CCP, drawing on the lessons of their own rich experience and the lessons of historical experience, particularly the First World War and the October Revolution of 1917, enunciated and put into practice the New Democracy theory of revolution. A whole new dimension was thus conferred on the proletarian revolution, at the heart of which the storm zones in the colonies and semi-colonies were to occupy an even more important place alongside the workers and peoples of the capitalist centers.
APPROPRIATION OF THE THEORY OF NEW DEMOCRACY IN SENEGAL AND RESOLUTION OF THE NATIONAL-COLONIAL QUESTION / ISSUES AND PROSPECTS
There are two main periods. A period of predominantly clandestine struggle and a period of predominantly legal struggle.
A- PART ONE
Period of predominance of the underground struggle of the revolutionary current in the national democratic movement (MND)
MLM-based Reenu-Reew-Mi (Racine De la Nation) was founded in 1973 as a critical alternative to the PAI, PCS and MJML as a pre-party organization committed to building the proletariat into an independent political force.
The OMLS has appropriated the New Democracy theory of revolution as the quintessential general line required for a correct orientation of the national struggle against imperialism in our country. It has done so from the point of view of the program, the national, African and international strategic and tactical line, and the organizational, political and ideological line of construction. To this end, it created AJ/Unité d’Action and its central political organ, La Lutte, as an organization of revolutionary workers, peasants and intellectuals. On this basis, it distinguished itself from the first democratic opening and its law of three currents.
The process of appropriating the theory of New Democracy as part of revolutionary deployment has led to the creation of a dynamic and creative cultural sector through cultural workers and researchers, managers, leaders and activists from diverse backgrounds.
The Senegalese Cultural Front and historical heritage research: mass cultural work in neighborhoods and the countryside. Translating works into the national language. The development of creativity in the form of revolutionary patriotic poems and songs, based on the principle of old form, new content. Sketches and plays denouncing imperialism, power and conservative social practices. Plastic arts. The exhumation of the first generation of Senegalese-West African revolutionaries Lamine Senghor Garang Kouyaté. After the events of May ’68, and during the 1970s in particular, research and other work undertaken by patriots and academics played an important role in bringing these leading figures out of oblivion, thus establishing a link between generations of anti-imperialists separated by more than half a century of history. Revolutionization in sport, with the creation of the Mouvement-Sport et Progrès (MSP) and the motto ‘Friendship first, competition second’, and district martial arts. The promotion of national languages in terms of literacy, artistic creation, scientific popularization and translation of works. Neighborhood socio-cultural activities.
Based on the decisions of its founding congress in 1973, and its two national framework conferences (corrective and rectificative) in 1974 and 1976, it adopted the RNDP strategy at its 2nd ordinary congress in 1979, and was thus able, relatively correctly, to define the nature of social formation in Senegal, and carry out a class analysis of society, highlighting the primordial role of the proletariat and peasantry in this country, which was practically the capital of the French colonial empire in the French West Indies (AOF), like Congo Brazzaville in the French West Africa (AEF), had a relatively less rudimentary industrial and administrative infrastructure, and was therefore marked by the existence of a working class. At union level, union conversion and responsible participation. The 1969 union congress and the substitution of the CNTS for the UNTS, which had become resistant to responsible participation in the form of union integration. Union conversion and responsible participation. The movement for autonomy and independence of the central union against integration and then against affiliation. The peasant malaise and the revival of workers’ and trade union struggles, the renewal of shop stewards, experiments in training advanced workers or even setting up workers’ schools of education and struggle (cf. the workers’ school and other federative workers’ conferences). The need to link up with the rising tide of struggles in large companies (port, fishermen, food and canning industries in particular, oil and fats, Taïba phosphates, Régie des Chemins de Fer, etc.).
What all this calls for in terms of organizing the working masses in factories and neighborhoods, and the equation of setting up factory cells as the basis of the future proletarian party.
A- PART TWO
Period of predominance of legal struggle
During this period, it contributed to the progressive establishment of national democratic left-wing organizations such as the Mouvement Révolutionnaire pour la Démocratie Nouvelle (MRDN) in 1981-82, the Parti Africain pour la Démocratie et le Socialisme (PADS) in 1991 and the YAW/Mouvement pour l’Autonomie Populaire in 2008.
In the same vein, the total surrender of all the forces of the traditional Left, alongside social democracy, which has played its role as the fifth wheel of the neo-colonial chariot to perfection, has effectively increased the responsibilities of the forces of true rupture, in the sense of accomplishing the central task of the period, which is the foundation of a revolutionary New Left, a central task of which the unification between RND/YAW -PASTEF currently underway, suitably extended to other entities imbued with the same concerns, has been the backbone.
The unification with FERNENT and comrades from the historic PAI, followed by that with MOOM SA REEW militants within the framework of YAW, were decisive moments of counter-current, part of a constant dynamic of rootedness-differentiation and rupture-overcoming. They were followed by other experiments, all of which were achievements that could serve as the basis for more significant advances. The work in progress by anti-imperialist, pan-Africanist and anti-capitalist organizations such as YAW/ /RND/ PASTEF and other genuine lefts can be situated within this framework. They have indeed taken up the torch today, and have set themselves the goal of working alongside the masses to contribute to national and popular emancipation, and the fight for the establishment of new-style societies in Senegal and Africa. The first two, although each successively embodied the main patriotic or revolutionary opposition at a given time, were ultimately confronted with serious difficulties due to the many obstacles and constraints. But at the same time, overcoming their handicap, they undeniably asserted themselves as actors in a dynamic that heralded a new political quality. This was expressed at the heart of the struggle to reverse the balance of power between the people’s camp and that of reaction, and simultaneously to change the relationship of hegemony between the bourgeois liberal pole and the pro-people patriotic pole.
A turning point has thus been reached in the country, reinforced on the one hand by the bulimia of a declining regime that stubbornly clings to power in an unconstitutional manner to maintain and perpetuate this unbearable state of affairs, and on the other, by the determination of living forces to confront and put an end to this system. PASTEF (Patriotes Africain du Sénégal pour le Travail, l’Ethique et la Fraternité – African Senegalese Patriots for Work, Ethics and Fraternity), which the neo-colonial regime claims to have dissolved, has played a central and widespread role in the changes the country is undergoing, alongside patriotic political parties and civil society organizations engaged in a struggle against the system at the root of the impoverishment of the broad masses of Senegalese men and women. This party-movement embodies the emergence of a new generation at the heart of this deteriorating social situation. Determined to fulfill its mission, it poured out the overflow of an atrophied society on March 21, 2021 to neutralize the low-level shenanigans of the MS regime, with such combativeness that more than two years later, the regime is struggling to recover and regain the lost initiative, notwithstanding all its attempts to manipulate and instrumentalize institutions, intimidate, parasitize the defense and security forces or install a fascist regime of exception. It is unquestionably the new deal in our country. The local and legislative elections confirmed that the country is at a crossroads. Barely out of these unusual local and legislative elections, the country is heading for a presidential election that is full of challenges, insofar as it raises the need to work towards a new alternation corresponding to the establishment of a genuine alternative of national refoundation and popular citizen sovereignty. In this context, the balance of power between the pro-imperialist neo-colonial camp and the patriotic and democratic popular camp is shifting more and more in favor of the latter, with a simultaneous shift in the hegemonic transition in favor of the forces breaking away from the dominant order. In the wake of the nomination of its candidate, the organization of resistance and vigilance against the forces of the right, the anti-imperialist movement must play a decisive role in preventing the liberation struggle from veering off course towards the reformism that is the carrier of neo-liberal-colonial reproduction. We need to work to ensure that the anti-imperialist and democratic movement plays a decisive role in bringing about an alternative to a simple changeover.
THE ROLE OF THE POPULAR AND PATRIOTIC MOVEMENT
The mobilizations of 56-60, followed by the uprisings of 68, 88 and 2011, to mention only the historical peaks, represent advances made by the people and the national democratic movement. But the balance of power and relations of hegemony did not allow the neo-colonial system to be challenged in its foundations. The two alternations won by the popular democratic movement are a perfect illustration of this, with their respective hijacking by the social-liberal forces facilitated by the capitulations of the Left and the errors of the revolutionaries. As a result, the same machinery of despoilment that our country has been living through for half a century has been perpetuated.
Democratic struggles against the neo-colonial system have never ceased, however, despite fierce repression and undermining practices of all kinds. The cumulative effects of impoverishing structural adjustment policies, among others, have pushed popular struggles to generalize and converge. Drawing on the source of their own genius, in line with their status as a true constituent power, the people have stimulated citizen interaction and convergence, bringing about a republican social re-foundation of politics centred on the human factor, thus giving a new content to elections in our country. But the opposition, and the so-called Left forces in particular, were slow to adjust their traditional strategic and tactical lines to the new equations, and were only able to respond in part to such historic demands. A trend reversal has, however, made its way over time. In this respect, the 2019 presidential election, which is one of its moments, has been the beginning of a turning point. The real results were seen by the ruling classes allied to imperialism as a serious warning and a grave threat to the very foundations of the neo-colonial systemic scaffolding. They therefore set up a tyrannical regime of exception, violating the hard-won democratic gains and accentuating the dictatorship against the popular forces who had constantly maintained citizen mobilizations against all forms of arbitrariness. As a result, more than two thousand political detainees have been imprisoned, most of them victims of barbaric torture with irreversible consequences for some, and the deadly repression of the major popular uprisings from 2021 to 2024. Taking into account the complex relationship between the objective and subjective socio-political balance of power in favor of the people, on the one hand, and the military-state factor in favor of those in power, on the other, the popular democratic movement, armed with the cultural code of our people, seized this moment of equilibrium in all its surjective intensity, at the precarious moment when the probabilities of a confrontation were equal to those of civil peace, to contain the mass bloodshed that was about to ensue; this, by varying the forms of struggle until the peaceful path to overthrowing power, combined with mass mobilization and uprising, prevailed. Cornered, the regime decided to kill two birds with one stone, passing an amnesty law to cover its tracks and get away with it. Will it land on its feet? The democratic movement also succeeded in thwarting the constitutional vacancy which the neo-colonial camp had dreamed of using to perpetrate its reactionary electoral coup de force, with the support of imperialism. It thus succeeded in imposing the holding of the presidential election just in time, and the unprecedented electoral victory of the popular patriotic movement in the 1st presidential round.
NEW CONSTRUCTION SITES
So, broadly speaking, it’s a question of changing the system by committing the country to the path of patriotic and popular sovereignty, pan-African unity on the continent and international solidarity with the peoples of the world, in particular the people of Palestine.
The strategic objectives are to realize the aspirations of the people over the decade 2024-2034. This means laying the foundations for global emancipation in the first five years, so that generations of patriots and democrats will be in a position to earn the ever-renewed trust of the people committed to breaking with the system of domination.
In the immediate future, we need to create the conditions for such a breakthrough, here and now, by setting in motion a controlled transition, on the one hand by implementing the conditions for systemic deconstruction, and on the other, by laying the foundations for the implementation of the four ruptures for reconstruction in the political-institutional, military, economic, social and cultural spheres. From a national, sub-regional and pan-African perspective, and taking into account the stakes and challenges of the global world, the rupture/refondation project therefore consists of transforming the four evils into four goods: mal-development into truly self-generating development; ill-living into a life worthy of being lived by the people as a whole; ill-being into well-being shared by all citizens; and ill-governance into a governance of patriotic and democratic rupture. It’s a huge challenge, but one within our people’s grasp, provided that the pole of revolutionary rupture is able to redefine and assume its historic responsibilities in the new situation.
RESPONSIBILITY OF OMLS
How will the path taken by the OMLS make it possible to answer, for the benefit of the people, the question of who will ultimately prevail between the patriotic democratic forces and those of reaction on the steep path of the New Democracy Revolution? Will it strengthen their armature to thwart counter-revolutionary intrigues and maneuvers? To what extent will it support the consolidation of the achievements of the democratic patriotic movement, and strengthen the forces of progress concerned with the future of our people? In what way will it help to create the ideological and political-organizational conditions needed to take the current momentum to the next level?