Les travailleurs ruraux du Mayombe, ébauche d'une classe sociale?

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the Mayombe district as well as in other rural parts of the Zaire Republic, there exists a rural proletariat consisting of factory and plantation workers with a high degree of integration in the wage economy. A process of widening social differentiation can be observed between these workers and the surrounding village communities, by way of ambiguous solidarity behavior related to opposing interests, which they become increasingly conscious of. Can such a strata of rural workers be considered as an emerging social class? In order to answer this question one must analyse these workers in the larger nation-wide context. Here, the dominant feature is one of a very profound remoulding of the post-colonial national society with quite a few new strata and quasi-classes likely to emerge. In this context, rural worker-peasant relations are continuously moving between alliances and conflicts, the result of which, in the longer run, may well depend on the role and policy of the national unions in a situa...