The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State

4. The Dynamics of Inequality: Class Formation

4 The Dynamics ofInequality: Class Formation Once upon a time God, who created the world, decided to reward hissons living on this earth. He warned them in advance that he would throw down from heaven two packages containing the different rewards. On the day agreed upon the packages were thrown down from heaven. The elder son rushedforward to the biggerpackage, leaving the smaller one to the younger son. The two packages were opened in front ofthe assembly, [which was} filled with wonder. The bigger package contained French, a very good French. The smaller package contained money, a lot ofmoney and the necessary skills to increase its amount. The elder son is the ancestor of the intellectuals. These master French and speak a refined French, indeed. But they eat cow skin. The younger son is the ancestor of the traders. They speak little French, if any. But they were rewarded with the money and with the skills to increase its amount. The history ofButembo is the history ofa battle between these two packages. Popular parable, Butembo, Kivu, 19801 The Butembo parable projects as a genesis fable a contemporary folk perception ofsocial cleavage. To the Zairian anthropologist who encountered it on returning to his home area after a five-year absence, the parable was new. Indeed, it rested upon a novel configuration of locally dominant classes. In Butembo a new group oflocally recruited, successful merchants (the money package), based in the burgeoning informal economy, had become the most wealthy and powerful group; the local representatives of the state (the French package) faced eroding standing and influence as a consequence of the decline of the state. In the folk sociology of Butembo, class formation is rooted in possession of French or money, an intuition which compares honorably with the insights reflected in more academic categories, such as mode of production or occupational rank. In Zaire the two most salient and persistent cleavages within civil so100 The Dynamics ofInequality 101 ciety are class and ethnicity. Both are related-class most directly-to patterns of inequality, actual or perceived, and to the struggle for resources within the arena primarily bounded by the state. The character ofclass and ethnic relationships is reflected in the state itself; in turn, the state partly determines the outcomes ofclass and ethnic competition, and even the categories in which class and ethnic cleavages are expressed.2 On the concept of class We conceive of a "class" as a social aggregate within the polity, defined by its common role, function, and status within a socioeconomic setting primarily bounded by the nation-state, but influenced by the external arena. Unlike ethnicity, class is above all an analytic construct, although it may become a subjective collectivity as well, as classes are to a degree in industrial societies.3 Like ethnicity, class is relational; both objectively and subjectively it is a device for ordering a social universe. The international political economy, the domestic economic structure, and the state are motor forces of class formation, not necessarily in that order.4 Economic differentiation is the most salient aspect, but not the only one. Class differentiation may originate in divergent access to status or power or in unequal command of societal resources. The several dimensions ofclass formation are interactive; unequal political power may be transformed into high levels of economic differentiation, or vice versa. Finally, class is a dynamic phenomenon, not a static one, and is in a continuous flux shaped by context and situation. These definitional reflections are not intended as a lexical innovation, but only as a means ofclarifying our own usage, drawn from a small fraction of the vast literature. There is a marked tension between the specificity of a particular national society in space and time and the universality of the categories of class analysis. We feel that appropriate classifications ofsocial groups must derive inductively from the political universe under consideration (although the boundaries ofthat universe need not coincide with those ofthe state). At the same time, such classifications are necessarily influenced both ideologically and analytically by the dominant categories of class analysis applied elsewhere (as well as by the effects of the international arena upon the given polity); so deeply embedded are these conventional labels (despite the variety of definitions) that they serve as inescapable orienting metaphors. Whatever the methodological premises of the investigator, such terms as "bourgeoisie" (ruling class, elite, middle class), "proletariat" I02 The Dynamics ofInequality (workers, wage...