webGuinée / Etat & Société
La première décennie du régime PDG

Claude Rivière
Guinea: The Mobilization of a People

Ithaca. Cornell University Press. 1968. 260 p.

Conclusion

After a study from different angles of the evolution of Guinea since the time when the native Guineans made their collective appearance on the political scene, it seems possible to characterize the regime of Sékou Touré as a mobilization system, in which socialist, but not Marxist, goals only partially disguise the development of social inequality.
First of all, one must ask what has been the impact of the political and economic policy of the Guinean government on the stratification of society. In order to answer such a question, it is necessary to evaluate the real extent of integration and of internal conflict in that society by defining, at least in broad terms, the way in which the situation has evolved.
At the end of the colonial period, national integration was effected through the conflicts related to a domination/subordination situation, and by the ensuing elimination of the most brutal forms of oppression. At the same time that colonization engendered a sense of solidarity among the oppressed, it offered examples of social differentiation. Thanks to the impact of three major factors - a party, an ideology, and a leader - national solidarity developed. Nevertheless, the politicization or, rather, the hyperpoliticization of national life undermined the consensus. It did this to the degree to which inequalities in the sharing of power were accentuated by the existence of a hierarchy of partisans. The ritualization of the community's life and the stifling of adverse opinions by jailing the regime's opponents simply drove the conflicts underground.
Despite the muzzling of the opposition, the series of « plots » reveals a progressive emergence of certain social forces present in a new, or at least embryonic, stratification. Although a scarcity economy has leveled most incomes downward, it has at the same time favored the rise of those fishing in troubled waters.
Doubtless the political stalemate, the slow pace of economic development and modernization, the residual structure and compartmentalization of traditional society, and social instability and mobility have slowed down class stratification. Yet other factors have had the contrary effect of promoting the development of a bourgeoisie. In this respect, foreign aid and investments were used in part for the benefit of those running the state The expansion of education has increased differences in cultural and consumption levels that follow bourgeois models. Moreover the stabilization of power among the ruling cements has tended to make a privileged group more conspicuous.
Admission to that elite group is determined by political militancy, and those who compose it are required to identify themselves very closely with a system in whose management they share. Considering the means of its recruitment, management, self-enrichment, and solving of disputes, the group can be described as a state bourgeoisie. By gaining control over surplus labor and contraband, they are the first class to be formed, in conjunction with the big merchants who also benefit from the high profits of trading and commercial and monetary speculation. The cooperative societies and opportunities offered by the state sector of the economy also serve to contribute to their advancement.
In other words, a social restratification is taking place, thanks to the primacy accorded to politics, the main driving force of this managerial element. But the corpulence of the group results principally from the place it occupies in an underdeveloped economy - that is to say, by determining the course of development, the group's members have become the main beneficiaries. Its profits are further increased because the economic machinery has not yet been broken in and is poorly controlled, and because the state has taken over a good share in the country's industrialization, so that the ruling group is in a strong position to exercise legitimate authority. Its members' tactical alliances and client relationship to the army commanders, the influential intellectuals, and the big merchants and planters foster the emergence of a class that predominates politically, economically, and culturally. In the present restratification, control over the means of production through political power carries more weight than does the actual ownership of the means of production. Guinea being a country where both agricultural and industrial output is small, the hierarchical scale of privileges can be assessed above all in terms of consumption. Those who are dominated by the privileged hierarchy - the only visibly dominant class - are not aware of themselves as a class, either as a whole or in their respective sectors (employees, laborers, and peasants). This is because the hegemony wielded by the supporters of the state system prevents any political confrontation by groups that are, as these tend to be, composed of barely literate individuals.
Independence has also caused the labor movement to lose momentum, because its leaders have joined the political elite. The minority of partly trained or wholly unskilled laborers still employed has served the purposes of this budding bourgeoisie, which, by assuring them of a wage, has given them a status somewhat superior to that of the farmers. Perforce submissive to the regime by their need for survival, the laborers have been unable to develop aggressiveness in relation to their principal employer, which is the state. The peasantry, even though numerically far more important, is inhibited from undertaking coordinated action on its own behalf because of the diversification of its subsistence agriculture - such as animal husbandry and rice culture - and by its dispersal on large and small plantations, as well as the disparity of its interests and revenues.
Most of the country's craftsmen are to be found within the rural world. They form a marginal category characterized by a caste system, especially among Peul and Manding, the meagerness of their earnings, and the irregularity of their work. 1 The modernization of Guinea's crafts has been hampered by the poor functioning of the cooperative societies. Even though the craftsmen have survived in a scarcity economy, they seem doomed by their inadaptability. For the time being, the artisans' status remains fairly ambiguous, for the government's policy oscillates between, on the one hand, its goal of eliminating castes because they perpetuate inequalities among the craftsmen and, on the other, its desire to preserve certain traditional valuable techniques, and means of production, which were formerly inseparable because they formed a substratum of the system.
These few reflections on Guinea's social stratification obviously prompt the question as to how the existing inequalities can be reconciled with an emotional type of socialism. However, this problem of compatibility gives rise to still another question: to what degree can Guinea qualify as a socialist country when, above all, it hands over its most remunerative asset - its mineral resources to the international « imperialism » of the Western and Eastern blocs?
Socialism's impact certainly can be recognized in the predilection shown by Sékou Touré for the Groups of Communist Studies, the CGT, the French Communist Party (with which the RDA was temporarily affiliated), and, in the years following independence, the communist powers. It is also evident in the terms used by Sékou Touré, such as « progressive aspirations, » « the revolutionary party,» « dialectical analysis,» « mobilization of the services of the toiling masses,"» « revolutionary awareness,» « loyalty to the Party,» « self-criticism,» and « dictatorship of the people. » But his additions to, and the elimination or special interpretations of, basic socialist themes suggest an ideological independence rather than filiation or orthodoxy. The phraseology remains the same but its significance varies. His ideological attempts to build a socialist state might operate at the level of oratory, both in syntax and in symbols, but that does not mean that they were applied in day-to-day living.
Nevertheless, in Guinea's organizational plan, it appears that the single party - at least in its early stages - was modeled after that of socialist countries. Its principles of democratic centralism, the proclaimed participation of the whole population in public life, the tasks assigned to the base committees, the role given to the unions, the system of people's militias, the elimination of individual liberties, and the purges and tortures bring to mind the operating mechanism of the U.S.S R. Yet even so, they are less the phenomena of a socialist regime than the constant factors in the organization and operations of any mobilization system, whether it be that of a conservative or a radical totalitarianism. If one considers solely the organizational level, it cannot be determined whether a society is simply disciplined or is actually socialistic.
An examination of the economic structures whose aim was to suppress the exploitive relationships that prevail under neocolonial regimes makes more obvious Guinea's choice of a socialist system. This can be seen in the government's taking over the wholesale trade, including the setting up of distribution centers, state stores, and consumers' cooperatives, the nationalization of enterprises, the creation of state companies, the establishment of agricultural and craft cooperative societies, and the collective management of the apparatus of production. However, we know who benefited from those measures. Finally, by its strategy of alternating advances with retreats, de facto tolerance with the over-all control of policy, verbal propaganda and the indoctrination of youth, along with the interlude of a « cultural revolution, » the government of Guinea has aligned itself with socialistic modes of action.
Yet one cannot affirm that Guinea is a model of Marxist socialism if such a judgment is based simply on certain resemblances in its organization of the masses and the style of its planning. Analogy is not tantamount to identity. The perseverance shown by the ruling group in building what they call socialism (albeit a socialism not based on any particular dogma) simply expresses their determination to remain independent in relation to capitalism. The very nature of the PDG as a mass party and not a vanguard party, and the pragmatic flexibility of its policies as well as its concrete actions, preclude excessive assimilation. Even though Sékou Touré truly desires to reduce social inequality, those who share power with him find that the ideology they proclaim serves - either unwittingly or deliberately - as a cloak for their growing transformation into a bourgeoisie. That transformation is facilitated by the fact that the ruling group itself represents the state, and the state is the authority which has the greatest influence on the distribution of social revenues. Everyone makes the maximum effort to gain the greatest advantages that may be derived from the disparity between the regime's ideological declarations and its practices.
The trend toward a form of authoritarian government is the most obvious threat to the system of mobilization of the kind portrayed by David Apter. 2 In that system, the government intervenes actively in effecting social changes and economic development. Moreover, one vital aspect of its activities is the establishment and maintenance of a strong, highly hierarchized organization capable of overseeing the execution of the policy decisions made by the government. The fact that such controls can be exercised over the organization itself leads to both conservatism on the part of the public organism and to a reinforcement of the constraints required to reach the goals set. The use of such constraints necessitates an ideological justification, but as the ideology proposes objectives as ambitious as they are sacrosanct, these goals are always formulated in terms of future but not of present satisfaction. The strengthening of coercive methods to bring about the desired changes results in a diminution in the freedom of information flowing from the base toward the decision-making centers of power and lessens the validity of such information. To offset the unsettling atmosphere of uncertainty, the government imposes obedience to its policy, and the price it pays for using coercion is a steady rise in the cost of government and in the mobilization process. The necessity for increased governmental supervision and the effort required to eliminate the major opposition forces have so reduced the valid information available that the policymaking centers are encountering growing difficulty in accurately assessing the popular support they enjoy as well as in gauging the disparities between their economic goals and the people's aspirations. Consequently, stress is placed on ideological conformity and on loyalty to the groups that protect the regime, such as the militia, the army, and the bureaucracy.
To conclude, the mobilization system is foundering in a totalitarian type of government and is leading to a misconception of the country's real needs. Because of growing constraints, consensus is lost. This loss of consensus between the people and the elite is due mainly to the latter's mistakes in management. The loss of consensus between the leader and the population, though less perceptible, results from the burden of constraints and the rigorous measures imposed by a disguised dictatorship.

Notes
1. Dynamique de la stratification sociale en Guinée (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1975), pp. 569-615;
2. «La Difficile Emergence d'un artisanat casté, » Cahiers d'études africaines, 9, No. 36 (1969), 600-25.
3. 2. David E. Apter, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).