On 2011-12-22, at 11:25 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> But in such circumstances, the anti-imperialist struggles were
> typically led by the nascent national bourgeoisie hoping to step into
> their colonial masters' shoes…
I suppose, given the historical outcome, you might argue in retrospect that the Chinese, Algerian, Angolan, Vietnamese, and other movements for national independence in the colonial and semi-colonial world were in essence "bourgeois democratic" in character, and that they spawned a "nascent national bourgeoisie" which has now become dominant. These developments have given the "state capitalist" school a certain credibility it previously lacked.
But at the time these struggles were waged, the national bourgeoisies were very weak or nonexistent and were neither willing nor capable of leading the struggle for independence, and it would be absurd to describe Mao, Ben Bella, Neto, Ho, etc., whatever their social origins, as representing that class. They quite clearly instead led anti-imperialist movements which were solidly anchored in the urban working class and peasantry, and whose programs reflected the interests of these propertyless classes against the foreign-backed large landholders and comprador bourgeoisie. Such small bourgeois nationalist parties as participated in the struggle for independence were subordinate to the mass-based socialist and communist political and military formations supported by the Soviet Union, and later by the PRC and Cuba.