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forms of exploitation. An investigation into the economic, racial and civil structure is necessary to arrive at a correct political valuation of the "dark continent".

South Africa shows the greatest degree of economic and political development. One and a half million Europeans own 260 million acres of land, 5 1/2 million natives own 40 million acres of land. The Boer War and the war of the Union against German South West Africa marked two stages of the unifying process of the white ruling classes. The differences however between them are being put aside in the economic development which bases itself mainly on mining; the present parliamentary form of government of South Africa is a tool of capitalist interests. The industrialisation of the country resulted in a partial proletarisation of the white population and brought an influx of cheaper black labour to the cities and industrial centres; this resulted in the competition between black and white labour; but the white reformist trade unions and the white "Labour Parties" support the government in its exploitations of the natives. The South African white reformist Unions organize the Europeans - Dutchmen, Englishmen and Germans into a uniform body that opposes the native population; a sharp line is drawn between "gentlemen" and coloured people. Unity between the black and white workers is extremely difficult. They receive the lowest wages and are burdened with special taxes. Since the "Colours Bar Act of 1927" Negroes are forbidden to do any skilled labour so that the former drivers and engineers have to give their jobs to the whites. These conditions led to the formation of affiliated to the RILU. Slavery reign on the farms. (Up till now the education of the Negroes lay entirely in the hands of the missionaries.)

Imperialist Penetration further north.

Capitalist development inevitably draws further masses of Negroes into the class struggle. The class struggle begins to extend further to the north, to Rhodesia and spreads among the Negroes that are imported from Portuguese East Africa. The last generation lived in patriarchial [[patriarchal] communities or in ancient communist tribal communes, the present generation is industrial workers. The projected Cape-Cairo railway undergoes many changes dependent on the course, the economic opening up of the country is taking. The project, if completed, would spread the class struggle to east of Central Africa, and would connect these districts with the cotton districts of the Sudan and with Egypt. The continuation of the line from the zinc and lead mines of Brokenhill (northeast Rhodesia) to Tanganyika has been abolished and a line has been built to the bog copper mines at Katanga in the Belgian Congo. The nearer the development approaches to the tremendous human reserves of the Equator, the more are the natives proletarised (which means pauperisation but, at the same time, leads them from tribal seclusion to class consolidation, and educated them technically)

Western Africa is, on the whole, a uniform structure, based on the almost exclusive Negro population as the method of colonisation. Colonisation started on the coast, and the methods applied by the different European nations were almost the same; exopropriation of the Negroes from the land and relentless extermination wherever they resisted, the laying out of farms and establishment and unpalatable religious lecturing by missionaries. These methods gave birth to what is called the "trousered Negro", a class of native scribes, foremen, storekeepers, overseers, policemen, servants, mission-officials, a class whose thoughts run smoothly in the ruts of the ruling system of the whites; they brag about their

"achievements", before the bushman who constitutes the bulk of carriers and plantation labourers. They pay the bushman for the kicks received from the white master - but they nevertheless adore "civilisation". Every mass movement of the natives would have to reckon with this class first. The bush-Negroes, closely confined to their tribes area are not yet capable of the wide organization, are quite helpless before the onslaught of civilisation and confine themselves to reactionary institutions, religious superstitions and fetishism. Their headmen for the most part take a successful hand in trading. A continuation of this state of things is a great necessity for imperialism, because it is impossible for the European to stay of long duration, because of the climate of Western Africa and the countries around the Gulf of Guinea to which British Nigeria belongs.

Nigeria forms, since the Great War a certain exception to the usual methods of colonisation; it is being experimented upon by Imperialism. Nigeria is "native territory" that is, no European is allowed to buy land there or to own plantations. (The colony has a climate much worse than anywhere else; it is called a "no white man's country" by the Englishman.) But the military power is still in the hands of Great Britain and the administrative methods favour the development of the "trousered Negro" into a petty capitalist who is gaining ever more privileges under the protection of the European power apparatus; it is the same in the whole of Western Africa. They constitute a kind of body guard of the white rulers. The "trousered Negro" independently manages the production and preparation of goods for export; thus he is being opposed to the native reserves in the interior who are but a disconnected mass of tribes living in the most primitive conditions. The coast "trousered class" adapts itself to the state institutions imposed by the colonisers; they support him. The bush-Negro still goes on living in a primitive state of society and does not known any other form of organization but the tribe.

The first signs of a "Negro nationalism", after the pattern of Liberia, are to be noticed among the privileged classes; but the lack of any industrial development does not permit this movement to gain any force. But a "catastrophe" from without, at a moment of the weakening of the imperialist system on a world wide scale would accentuate the sharp contradictions among the Negroes; it might stir up the bush Negroes.

Though the economic stage of Western Africa, the most backward in the world, is uniform, it is impossible to apply summarily political slogans in these districts. The backwardness of the aboriginal population, the contrast between the natives and the colonial administration tend to split the interest and hinder the penetration of uniform and all embracing views. It is true that a part of the young Negro population in the French coast district begins to develop itself ideologically away from rule of the invaders (thanks to the more brutal oppression of all classes) they are united in "the League for the Defence of the Negro Races" and strive to grasp the leadership of the emancipation struggle from within. They will be able to make headway only if they succeed in bridging the economic contradictions and the ancient conditions of the masses in the interior, thus organizing them.

LIBERIA

The white race can produce another "shining example for its providing for the oppressed races"- it is the Negro Republic Liberia founded with the help of American capital. A number of liberated Negro salves returned from America to Western Africa about a hundred years ago, shouting humanitarian phrases and lustily advertising the "new won liberty". The tribes living in the "free state" that was proclaimed later on were given land along the coast and the rest of the