Socio-economic constraints on radical action in the people's republic of Congo

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Book chapter

Title:	Socio-economic constraints on radical action in the people's republic of Congo
Author:	Decalo, Samuel
Book title:	Military Marxist Regimes in Africa
Year:	1986
Pages:	39-57
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Congo (Republic of)
Subjects:	economic policy military regimes
Abstract:	Although the first sub-Saharan State to declare itself formally for Marxism (1963), socio-economic constraints on radical military rule in Congo are numerous and varied: impotence of the State to establish or control economic priorities and restrain budgetary excesses; residual ethnic tensions that produce strife, division, instability and nepotism; the rather acute demographic profile of the society that seriously aggrevates all other pressures; the irrelevance to many of the country's Marxist structures and ideology; the minuteness of the Marxist-Leninist party, and its sharp internal divisions along civil-military, radical-conservative and ethnic and regional lines; external financial constraints on the radical option; and the obvious difficulties faced by small modernizing polities in their efforts to shake off neocolonial dependency relationships. Pride of place among the constraints must be assigned to the oversized and wasteful public sector and civil service. More importantly, however, saddled with such burdens and preoccupations, the Government cannot but become mortgaged to the dictated of outside interests, entrepreneurs, international consortiums and pressure groups. Notes, ref.