Abstract: | This article deals with one aspect of the links between the trends towards a change in the social structure and the types of orientation in the newly-free countries, i.e. the dialectical opposition and mutual preconditionality of the genesis, functioning and development of non-proletarian working people and non-working proletarian masses, that is, petty-bourgeois and pauper-lumpen strata in tropical Africa. Sections: The dilemma of small producer and social differentiation in the newly-free countries - African petty-bourgeois: common features, peculiarities, historical prospects - The phenomenon of declassing in societies with unformed classes - Political behaviour of petty-bourgeois and pauper-lumpen strata. Notes, ref. |