Problems of Socialist Transformation in Africa: The Congolese Experience

The thesis of this article is that, at the onset of African nationalism, the working class organisations were genuinely proletarian in character. But in time they ware subsumed under state control, so that by the 1970s what appears to be workers’ movements ware actually struggles waged by the emergent bureaucratic bourgeoisie within the labour unions. Sections: background to the Congolese trade union movement – nationalist politics and independence – the dictatorship of Fulbert Youlou – labour union unification and the rise of the MNR (Mouvement National de la Rvolution) – ‘la domestication des syndicats’, labour policy and the MNR – the final blow to proletarian organisation. Notes.