In recent years in the context of a revolutionary upsurge taking
place in Upper Volta, called Burkina Faso, new social strata are
contributing to the widening and radicalization of the struggles of the
revolutionary and democratic movement, which is shaking the neocolonial
system in crisis and bankruptcy. In the massive struggles taking place
in the country, particularly in those organized by the Coalition against
the High Cost of Living, Fraud and Impunity and for freedoms, the small
businesses, the informal sector in urban areas, the women and the
peasantry are increasingly joining the demonstrations for their specific
demands. Thus, in these generalized struggles the poor peasants,
particularly those in the areas of export crops such as cotton,
controlled by the multinationals and the local bourgeoisie, are
launching manifold movements to express their legitimate demands. The
Burkina Faso countryside is gradually becoming a focus of struggle.
How broad is the peasant movement in Burkina? What is its place and
its role in the revolutionary process for national and social
liberation? We point out some elements of these important issues at a
time when the dissemination of the Agrarian Program of the Revolutionary
Communist Party of Volta (PCRV) is being greeted enthusiastically by
the revolutionary masses and the peasants of the country.
Let us first examine the characteristics of the peasantry in the neocolonial context.
Capitalism and neocolonialism are the source of the evils suffered by the poor peasants and agricultural workers
Upper Volta, called Burkina Faso, is a backward, agricultural
neocolonial country, where feudal remnants persist; it is dominated by
imperialism, particularly French imperialism, which relies on such
reactionary social classes and strata as the political-bureaucratic
bourgeoisie, the comprador bourgeoisie and the vestiges of the feudal
forces. This fundamental characteristic of the country is reflected on
the economic plane by the predominance of the agricultural sector. More
than 85% of the population lives in rural areas. In the backward
agricultural sector, subsistence economy predominates, but depends on
the neocolonial policy of French imperialism and its local allies.
Therefore, agriculture is largely oriented towards cash crop (cotton,
peanuts, sugar cane, soybeans, etc.), it is not free from the fetters of
the pre-capitalist economic forms subordinated to the needs of finance
capital. This implies a dependency of the peasant economy under the yoke
of merchant and usurious capital. The logical consequence of this
orientation of agricultural is the growing exploitation and oppression
of the peasants, and the methods of production remain essentially
archaic. The development of capitalism in agriculture as well as of
finance capital in the countryside have caused class differences among
the peasantry of Upper Volta.
Therefore, there are many poor peasants without technical, material
and financial means who live in miserable conditions on small plots of
land. Some cannot even live off their crops and are forced to work for
the rich peasants or on large capitalist farms: they are the ones who
form the agricultural proletariat, which is brutally exploited and
suffers under miserable living conditions.
Some data illustrate the characteristics of agriculture in Burkina Faso:
* 84.3% of the peasants are illiterate.
* 73% of households use rudimentary work tools such as the “daba” (small hand hoe).
* Only three peasants out of a thousand own a tractor.
* 84% of peasants do not have any means of transport and continue carrying their merchandise on their heads.
* Only one in a thousand has a motor-pump for irrigation.
* With over 3.5 million hectares of cropland, only 20,000 have irrigation, that is, 0.6%.
* With over nine million hectares of arable land, only 3.5 million are cultivated.
Given this appalling poverty, there are a small number of rich
peasants with large fields, modern means of cultivation and livestock.
They are the rural bourgeoisie whose interests are linked to the
vestiges of the feudal forces, to the foreign capitalists and the
capitalists of Upper Volta and the neocolonial state. The agricultural
policy implemented under the direction of the international financial
institutions, such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO, consisting mainly of
structural adjustment programs, lead to serious consequences.
We summarize:
* Liquidations, decline in value, privatization of state companies.
Among others are the National Grain Agency (OFNACER), National Company
for Marketing Rice (SONACOR), Price Stabilization Fund for Agricultural
Products (CSPPA), National Center for Agricultural Equipment (CNEA),
etc.. These measures have led to massive layoffs and downsizing.
* The State ignores the plight of the peasants and of agricultural
production by blocking the recruitment of engineers, technicians and
agricultural personnel since 1991, as well as eliminating aid and
support to production.
* The development of export crops (to the detriment of food crops) to
obtain the hard currency needed to pay the debts incurred by the State
with the IMF and the new rural bourgeoisie. The land is well prepared
for the development of big agricultural business for the benefit of
multinationals such as AIGLON / SOPROFA, AIGLON HOLDING and the new
rural bourgeoisie.
The usurpation of the land and the expropriation of the rural
poor for the benefit of the multinationals and the local bourgeoisie
We are witnessing the development of capitalism in agriculture by
applying a whole series of administrative and economic measures that
lead to the looting of the country’s agricultural resources and the
growing impoverishment of the small peasants for the benefit the large
agricultural companies. The neocolonial state has imposed a new law on
agricultural and real estate organization (RAF), adopted in June 2009.
This law is based on the same logic of the former bourgeois and
anti-popular decree of the regime of the Second Republic in early 1970:
“The land for those who can work it.” Basing themselves on this law, the
rich, the leaders in power, the top ranks of the colonial army and the
businessmen have seized the land. They have monopolized large domains,
thousands of hectares of the fertile regions of the country and of the
areas with water resources.
The relations in these areas have deteriorated progressively. The
land that was once a vital asset for the people is now commercialized.
The owners of these lands were obliged, sometimes by force, to cede
them. This causes conflicts in the communities since the property was
still communal. Those who had been given land to work have been deprived
of them overnight. They form the reserve of the future agricultural
laborers for large farms of the rural bourgeoisie, at the head of which
are the Chief of State Blaise Compaore and his clan of gangsters made up
of his family and his closest allies. The fertile lands of the east,
west and southwest regions of the country are the target of these
predators to create smallholdings to the detriment of the local
population. To better control the peasants, they have created peasant
organizations manipulated by the authorities, such as the Burkinabe
Peasant Confederation and the National Union of Cotton Producers, both
led by landowners.
However, the poor peasantry has not remained idle faced with such
exploitation and oppression that is causing the misery that they suffer
daily. The peasants and the local population are joining the struggle to
express their own demands against the cotton companies SOCOMA, SOFITEX
and FASO COTTON.
The struggle of the poor peasantry and the agricultural proletariat and the alternative for a true emancipation
Faced with great misery, exploitation and oppression, the peasant
masses are developing diverse forms of struggles that are shaking the
passivity of the countryside. The great struggles of the democratic and
revolutionary movement against impunity for economic and blood crimes of
the gangster regime of the Republic, against the high cost of living
and for democratic freedoms, have a positive influence on the peasant
masses. This is despite the divisive maneuvers of the authorities to
keep the population under the burden of backward customs supported by
the remnants of the feudal forces. The class struggle is gradually
spreading to the rural areas, especially where agricultural wage labor
predominates, as in cotton and sugarcane. In these struggles the young
people are showing a great fighting spirit.
In 2011, a year of great popular struggles in all the economic and
social sectors of the country, the peasants in the cotton-growing areas
waged multiple struggles (demonstrations in the streets and markets)
including insurrectionary movements to boycott the cultivation of
cotton, for a fair purchase price for their crops, etc., since the
Inter-Professional Cotton Association of Burkina AICB imposes the
ridiculous price of cotton of less than 1 euro per kilo…
These struggles have been violently repressed by police forces to
prevent the destruction of crops by the angry peasants. The peasants are
arbitrarily arrested and held in police centers to prevent the rise of
the social movements. But this crackdown has not undermined the
determination of the producers, who are organizing to demand the release
of their arrested comrades as well as for their demands.
The PCRV strongly supports these struggles and is carrying out work
of agitation and propaganda to strengthen and improve the organization
of the peasant movement. The party, on the basis of Marxism-Leninism is
analyzing the characteristics of the economic and social reality of the
country, and has developed its agricultural program to guide its
activities to mobilize and organize the poor peasantry and the
agricultural proletariat. The PCRV is the only political party that in
its political program actually addresses the great popular aspirations
whose realization is made impossible by the rule of the country by
French imperialism and its local allies. In this struggle for the
winning of political freedom and total emancipation, the working class
has as its main ally the poor peasantry, without which it will not
achieve its final objective. Similarly, without the working class led by
the party, the poor peasantry despite their numerical importance will
not achieve a correct revolutionary solution to their problems. The
revolutionary alliance of the working class and the peasantry under the
PCRV is the key to the struggle to achieve political freedom, for the
National Democratic and Popular Revolution (NDPR).
In the process of this struggle, particularly in a context of the
revolutionary crisis in our country for ten years, the party calls on
the people to organize independent of the reactionary forces, to fight
for bread and freedom, to fight for the realization of the urgent
demands of the social and popular classes and strata summarized in the
Party Program. The immediate struggle for these partial demands will
contribute to improving the living and working conditions of the popular
masses, especially the poor peasants. In its agrarian Program, the PCRV
summarized the demands of the peasant.
“To eliminate the remnants of the old feudal system and in the
interest of a free development of the class struggle in the countryside,
to resolutely mobilize, organize and lead the peasant masses in the
struggle for the achievement of the NDPR, the PCRV is fighting to
achieve the following demands:
“1) Abolition of all penal servitude (“corvee”), the institutions
and all forms of feudal and semi-feudal oppression and exploitation,
particularly in the east and north of the country (Mossi Plateau,
Yatenga, Gourma, Djelgodi, Liptako)
. “2) Right to organize peasant unions.
“3) Elimination of mortgages and debt bondage over the land and
crops. Free disposition by the peasants of their land and crops.
Nullification and prohibition of usurious loans and contracts of a
feudal nature.
“4) Elimination of unfair taxes and rates on the peasants.
Prohibition of confiscation and sale of the property of the peasants, of
imprisonment or forced labor (in the fields of the feudals and
“notables”, of the chiefs, of cleaning of public places, etc.) for
inability to pay taxes. Elimination of tax collectors and repressive
methods to collect taxes in the countryside.
“5) Canals, reservoirs and water dams at the expense of the State
in sufficient quantity and quality for the land of the peasants and
livestock owners. Agricultural equipment, fertilizers, seeds and
insecticides at affordable prices in relation to the purchasing power of
the peasants.
“6) Confiscation and division among the poor peasants of the
warehoused rice, maize, millet, etc., seized by the usurers and
speculators. Actual handover to the peasants of the provisions and aid
released or received to help fight against famine and natural
calamities.
“The PCRV is resolutely struggling to group the agricultural
proletariat into an independent class organization, to lead it to take a
firm position between its interests and those of the rural bourgeoisie,
the political-bureaucratic bourgeoisie, the comprador and the foreign
capitalists. Thus the agricultural proletariat, under the leadership of
the party, can play its vanguard role in the countryside and for the
achievement of the NDPR as the transitional stage towards full
revolution, the only way to do away with all exploitation and misery.
“In short, the revolutionary alliance of the working class and
peasantry under the leadership of the PCRV is the only way to guarantee
better living conditions of the poor peasants and the agricultural
workers, for the revolutionary and consistent solution to their
fundamental problems and those of all the people.
“Bread and freedom for the people!
“Long live the revolutionary alliance of the working class and
peasantry under the leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party of
Volta!”
Revolutionary Communist Party of Volta-2014
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