^{Page 585 note 1} Of course, Castro defeated the regular Cuban army with his own guerrilla forces. The very recent socialist victories in Mozambique and Indochina were also based upon campaigns by the ‘people's army’. None of these socialist régimes were products of a peaceful transition. In all cases, the costs of military victory or revolutionary survival were staggering.

^{Page 586 note 1} The Development Minister of Mali argued that ‘the attitude which consists of opposing Marxism by citing the absence of classes in Africa is not a solution; it is purely negative. As a matter of fact, our countries are open to foreign private initiative. A proletariat will come about. If classes do not exist today, the workers of tomorrow, born of this private capital, will assume themselves destined to play the historic role of the revolutionary class. The assertion that classes do not exist in Africa is accurate today, but might not hold true tomorrow.’ Jacobs, Dan (ed.), The New Communisms (New York, 1969), p. 230.Google Scholar

^{Page 586 note 2} Notwithstanding explanations that refer to a variety of developments and reactions by other actors, this seems to be the gravamen of Snyder, Frank G., One-Party Government in Mali: transition toward control (New Haven, 1965);Google ScholarBiro, Andres, ‘Mali: realism, rather than the pursuit of chimeras’, in Ceres: FAO review (Rome), II, 09/10 1969, pp. 28–34;Google ScholarJones, William I., ‘Economics of the Coup’, in Africa Report (New York), XIV, 03/04 1969, pp. 23–9;Google Scholar and Bebler, Anton, Military Rule in Africa: Dahomey, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Mali (New York, 1972), pp. 129 and 138.Google Scholar

^{Page 586 note 3} In assessing the Ghanaian and Malian coups, Immanuel Wallerstein portrays Anglo- American and French rôles as reactive and passive – see ‘The Range of Choice: constraints on the policies of governments of contemporary African independent states’, in Michael F. Lofchie (ed.), The State of the Nations: constraints on development in independent Africa (Berkeley, 1971), pp. 19–33.Google Scholar His analysis is grounded upon the view that high levels of the state bureaucratic class seek to use their positions (including western contacts) to become a commercial bourgeoisie. Despite an expansion of public-sector job opportunities, there are insufficient reserves to withstand the curtailment of revenues and credit consequential to attempted closure of the economies to the West. The result is acute austerity which catalyses intense hostility among civilian and military members of this bureaucratic class. According to Megahed, Horeya T., Socialism and Nation-Building in Africa: the case of Mali, 1960–68 (Budapest, 1970), p. 27,Google Scholar salary reductions of the order of 25 per cent were imposed upon high-level administrators in Bamako during the two years preceding the coup.

^{Page 587 note 1} This historical yet essentially positivistic conceptual frame of reference owes much to Lenski, Gerhard E., Power and Privilege: a theory of social stratification (New York, 1966).Google Scholar While the existence of relational self-consciousness is a dependent variable, I hypothesise that social classes are more likely to become self-conscious: (i) when there is considerable inequality; (ii) among the more privileged, as opposed to the lower levels of the stratification systems; and (iii) during periods of redistributive conflict. Surplus is the share of economic output which is not required to ensure survival and reproduction of the labour force – presumably close to the modal standard.

^{Page 588 note 1} If we distinguish strategic alternatives from the specification of necessary and sufficient conditions (where there is considerable variation), the former usually imply a choice between an evolutionary-diffusion model – e.g. Barringer, Herbert R. et al. (eds.), Social Change in Developing Areas (Cambridge, Mass., 1965)Google Scholar – or a revolutionary rejection of existing satellite- metropolis relations, together with centralised control over the use of economic surplus – e.g. Baran, Paul, The Political Economy of Growth (New York, 1957),Google Scholar and Rhodes, Robert I. (ed.), Imperialism and Underdevelopment: a reader (New York, 1970).Google Scholar Regardless of approach, development itself seems to imply balanced industrialisation, and the diffusion of modern amenities among an indeterminate yet large majority of the population.

^{Page 588 note 2} The use of this term by Deutsch, Karl W., Politics and Government (Boston, 1974), pp. 543–5,Google Scholar differs from mine, which is derived from customary usage. Hence, as used here, it will refer to the process of increasing the proportion of the population whose energy is devoted to developmental activities, i.e. increasing national output. A mobilisation system maximises the exploitation of natural resources, and the retention of value-added as a consequence of processing or other fabrication. Politically, this is generally associated with high levels of participation and commitment to national development.

^{Page 589 note 1} Sinai, I. Robert, ‘The Case for Authoritarianism’, in Tachau, Frank (ed.), The Developing Nations (New York, 1972), pp. 148–9.Google Scholar

^{Page 590 note 1} While data reported in Vol. III of the U.N. Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics, 1972, and the U.N. Statistical Yearbook for 1972, are consistent with the hypothesis that state socialist systems are closing the gap on both output and welfare indicators with levels in advanced capitalist nations, no difference appears between state capitalist and mixed economies in the Third World. As the Malian experience suggests – according to U.N. documents, income per capita fell during the Keita era – much of the output in such transitional systems may be unofficial due to administrative corruption and inability to effectively reduce reactive smuggling and tax evasion. Hence Bebler's citation – op. cit. pp. 114 and 128 – of unpublished I.D.A. reports implying a doubled income per capita and estimated trade growth in the parallel market.

^{Page 590 note 2} Giovanni Arrighi, ‘International Corporations, Labor Aristocracies, and Economic Development in Tropical Africa’, in Rhodes (ed.), op. cit. pp. 220–67.

^{Page 590 note 3} Existing surplus can be captured by imposing austerity upon élites and inhibiting the export of capital, while potential surplus is created by increasing employment in extractive activities, as well as ancillary processing, manufacturing, and service sectors.

^{Page 591 note 1} Hence, according to Bebler, op. cit. p. 84, national independence meant that ‘Mali could no longer count on the “traditional” French budgetary subsidy of $7·5 million per annum’. At the same time he reports that the government payroll increased from 13,337 in 1961 to 22,903 seven years later.

^{Page 592 note 1} Only the ton or generational youth association came close to being culturally amenable to collectivist values. In highlighting this discrepancy between socialist aspiration and rural practice, William I. Jones pinpoints what proved to be an important obstacle to peasant radicalisation – ‘The Misc and Demise of Socialist Institutions in Rural Mali’, in Genève-Afrique (Geneva), II, 2, 1972, pp. 19–44.

^{Page 592 note 2} On party developments, see Snyder, op. cit.; Zolberg, Aristide, ‘Political Revival in Mali’, in Africa Report, X, 07 1965, pp. 15–20;Google Scholar and Bebler, op. cit.

^{Page 592 note 3} Victor D. DuBois notes that although Keita sympathised with Sékou Touré's move for immediate independence, several factors inhibited him from adopting the same course. First, since the P.S.P. had won 32 per cent of the 1957 vote, the U.S.–R.D.A. was in a much weaker position than the Parti démocratique de Guinée. Secondly, there was a related fear that the French would use troops and bribes, as they had in Niger, to garner a ‘yes’ vote anyway. And lastly, Keita – who had been a deputy in 1956 and member of the French Government a year later – was personally well disposed towards the French. See ‘Changing Relations among Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Mali’, in American Universities Field Staff Reports: West Africa series (New York), V, September 1962, pp. 1–14.

^{Page 593 note 1} With the exception of the ‘white’ Tuareg nomads of the Sahara, Mali was devoid of serious antagonisms. Tribes were intermixed in various regions, and ethnic assimilation was practised by the dominant Mande. On these and other factors that favoured Malian political integration, see Zolberg, Aristide, ‘Patterns of National Integration’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), V, 4, 12 1967, pp. 449–67.Google Scholar

^{Page 593 note 2} As Zolberg has emphasised, diffuse rather than functionally-specific authority relationships seem to have been predominant. Along with Keita's charisma for some, this traditionalism accounts for the widespread perception that the Government was no more than a legitimate instrumentality of the party.

^{Page 593 note 3} A fairly sizeable residual or petty-bourgeois sector is normally associated with state capitalist régimes. Even Soviet analysts now concede that further systemic change is primarily a function of political variables – see, for example, Levkovsky, Alexei, ‘The State Sector: its social content and development’, in Social Sciences (Moscow), V, 2, 1974, pp. 130–41.Google Scholar A coalition of capitalist-oriented groups based in the private sector, part of the higher public bureaucracy, and the trans-national corporate community, actively enter into conffict with eastern-supported ideological elements within and external to the public sector. A stalemate or balance of these contending forces results in an unstable state capitalist equilibrium.

^{Page 594 note 1} Senghor was not only personally linked to private-sector interests, but his francophilism was pronounced. Furthermore, the Malian leader's R.D.A. background had created durable ties with French Marxists, whereas Senghor's were with the traditionally anti-communist French socialists who had backed Keita's opponents in the P.S.P. Ultimately the conflict, in so far as issues were concerned, centred upon whether the Federation would continue as a mixed economy totally dependent upon French investing interests, or adopt a public-sector oriented state-planning system of a markedly different character than France's indicative planning. As Wallerstein, Immanuel notes in Africa: the politics of unity (New York, 1967), pp. 231–2,Google Scholar this was the significance of the dispute between those opting for ‘scientific socialism’ like Keita, and more conservative leaders with Senghor's outlook who espoused African socialism – rimarily to symbolically outflank radical internal opposition. Donn M. Kurtz offers an incisive analysis of the abortive Federation which similarly emphasises differences in political culture and aspirations as the key source of its demise – see ‘Political Integration in Africa: the Mali Federation’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, VIII, 3, September 1970, pp. 405–23.

^{Page 595 note 1} As a non-aligned member of the Casablanca Group, Mali had withdrawn her troops from the Congo U.N. operation, and offered unqualified diplomatic support to the Algerian F.L.N. Until 1963 – when the Bamako–Dakar railway was finally reopened – she actively backed pro-Moroccan insurgents in Mauritania. Mali's rapprochement with Senegal, initiated by Senghor, was not associated with any moderation in Mali's militant non-alignment.

^{Page 595 note 2} The costs of the break to both countries are discussed at length by DuBois, Victor D., ‘Mali Five Years after the Referendum’, in American Universities Field Staff Reports, VI, 05 1963, pp. 1–10.Google Scholar The following paragraph indicates the kinds of agricultural products and light industry which a continued mixed-economy dependency relationship (i.e. Federation) would have foreclosed to Mali: ‘The breakup of the Mali Federation and the closing of the railway also exacted a heavy price from the Senegalese. Prior to the events of August 1960, Senegal exported 50% of its shoe manufactures, and 15% of its cement to Mali. This market was lost. Hardest hit perhaps were Senegalese ports… causing a loss of revenue of $32 million a year to the port of Dakar… Similarly hurt were Senegal's Cap Vert textile mills. Before the split they had bought 80% of their cotton from Mali and exported 40% of their finished goods to that country.’ During the Keita régime, Soviet, Chinese, and other eastern aid resulted in the construction of more than a dozen new factories for such products. These and other accomplishments, e.g. highway construction, schools, dispensaries, and the opening of new land (only 15 per cent of Mali's arable fields were used when she declared independence in 1960), are discussed by Megahed, op. cit.

^{Page 595 note 3} See Arrighi, Giovanni and Saul, John S., ‘Socialism and Economic Development in Tropical Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, VI, 2, 08 1968, pp. 141–69,CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a succinct description of the origins and stylistic attributes of this inexperienced and, in most cases, not especially well-trained bureaucratic class: ‘The salary structure of the independent African states remained as a colonial heritage and, as Africans gradually entered the civil service and the managerial positions in large foreign concerns, they assumed the basic salaries attached to the posts. This unquestioning acceptance of a colonial salary structure brought about a huge gap between the incomes of the élites and sub-élites in bureaucratic employment and the mass of the wage workers… A closer examination of the practice of African states conventionally labelled “socialist” contributes markedly to such a picture. Thus Samir Amin's valuable study of Ghana, Guinea, and Mali demonstrates, with telling statistical force, the heavyweight of bureaucratic expense and conspicuous urban consumption, both public and private, in the budgets of these states… In Guinea administrative expenditure rose by 80 per cent between 1959 and 1962, in Mali by 60 per cent; salary structures, inherited from the colonial era, have been only marginally reformed… Gérard Chaliand's figures for francophone West Africa as a whole reveal an important aspect of this tilting of resources towards an increasingly consumptionist middle class; uniformly across these countries there is a gross discrepancy between the amounts spent abroad for importation of drink and other luxury items (toiletries, certain kinds of motor cars) and the amounts of foreign exchange used for capital formation… Certainly it becomes increasingly difficult under these circumstances for a rural population to take at face value the protestations and demands for sacrifice of such an elite.’ This may be one important reason for the mobilisational failure in Mali prior to the 1967 ‘cultural revolution’. Megahed, op. cit. pp. 26–7, recounts the absurd rationalisation of the social distance between ‘the high ranking officials who live in modern “high standard” houses, while the rest of the employees in Bamako, for instance, still live in the mud houses which represent the bulk of the buildings in the capital… In Bansako, for instance, the three luxurious villas on the Niger in the final process of construction belong to high officials in the party and government. About all the modern cars in Mali belong to party leaders and administrators. All these manifestations are contradictory to the line of the Sixth Party Congress, instigating the masses against the luxurious life and the embourgeoisement. The Malian leaders… [i]n an attempt to justify these tendencies…emphasized to the masses that having a ear or a villa is not a manifestation of embourgeoisement, because the bourgeoisie is a state of mind that implies the detachment of [sic] the masses, which is not true of Mali. The leaders have struggled and suffered along with the people, and their victory is that of the masses, thus they deserve to have a comfortable life.’

^{Page 596 note 1} On administrative corruption in Mali prior to the military intervention, see Biro, loc. cit. p. 31; and Snyder, Francis G., ‘An Era Ends in Mali’, in Africa Report, XIV, 03–04 1969, p. 20.Google Scholar Bebler, op. cit. p. 204, notes that following the coup, corruption in the civil bureaucracy only took different and less conspicuous forms. Corruption may be defined as the partieularistic use of an official position for personal enrichment or social advancement.

^{Page 596 note 2} Hence, while the 1968 coup moved Mali to the ‘right’ domestically and internationally, the ultra-francophile mixed economy faction led by 36-year-old Captain Yoro Diakité did not carry the day. Not only were most state firms retained, but Bebler, op. cit. p. 99, reports that the military régime soon reintroduced state control over internal trade because liberalisation had eatalysed a marked increase in smuggling! In the absence of a strong comprador class or unreserved military identification with a neo-eolonial western power, it seems unlikely that ‘rightist’ coups will involve the dismantlement of public enterprises which offer lucrative managerial positions to those controlling the state. As in Mali, the more typical approach will be to open new resources to foreign exploitation, and to enhance the attractiveness of such investments by repressing labour and providing generous tax incentives.

^{Page 597 note 1} At the time of independence, Zolberg notes – ‘Political Revival of Mali’, loc. cit. p. 18 – that 97 per cent of Mali's exports (largely groundnuts) went to France, while 90 per cent of her imports came from that country. The latter were 400 per cent greater than exports in the modern sector! Almost all investment was public, of which about 50 per cent went to subsidise the unprofitable Office du Niger agricultural development project.

^{Page 597 note 2} While it is quite true that little had changed for the largely subsistence traditional sectors, both Bebler, op. cit. p. 114, and Megahed, op. cit., provide substantial evidence of a reasonably impressive economic performance in the modern sector. Even Jones recognises that the state trading monopoly and rural co-operatives did function in some manner – ‘The Mise and Demise of Socialist Institutions in Rural Mali’, loc. cit. pp. 38–42. In addition to learning how to carry on such activities more efficiently, the main problems were initial peasant disinterest in the collective fields, and failure of regional cercle trade intermediaries. What is important to note is that, despite the fiscal and monetary difficulties, economic activity not only grew, but was supported by infrastructural expansion and complemented by diversified industrialisation. As Victor DuBois makes clear, the modern-sector consumer goods crisis was catalysed by French decisions to curtail credit and operations following the introduction of a national currency in 1962 – see ‘The Struggle for Stability in the Republic of Mali’, in American Universities Field Staff Reports, VIII, December 1964, pp. 1–10.

^{Page 598 note 1} See Terence K. Hopkins, ‘On Economic Planning in Tropical Africa’, in Rhodes (ed.), op. cit. pp. 161–2, for a thesis on corruption which I suspect reinforced the appeal to Keita of a modified Chinese model by mid-1964. He notes, almost prophetically: ‘The very substantial and rapid change which most African political leaders have experienced in their social standing makes them particularly prone to anomie, to a condition of normlessness regarding what they can and cannot legitimately aspire to. Some among them are susceptible to bribery, and corruption is often a serious problem… Its elimination at the source, would appear to be a condition not only of economic development but of the success of the national revolution as well. And although the interrelation of interests is likely to mean for a government which moves against them that its ability to survive is put to the test…’

^{Page 598 note 2} Hence, in reporting an interview after the coup with an official of the new régime, Biro, op. cit. p. 31, refers to the reaction to the 1965 decrees which were intended to replace the very many small merchants with a new co-operative system: ‘When those decrees were issued, five or six thousand tradesmen promptly vanished.’ ‘Vanished, on the official level, I should say”, the Minister added, “in fact, they went right on trading. These regulations turned out to be a windfall for those traders since they didn't pay for their license, nor did they pay their taxes. Trading was carried out by remote control through third parties which managed to penetrate, to some extent, into our economic administration. So they imported and sold their merchandise clandestinely. No one could clap them in jail, the régime couldn't do anything about it because legally they weren't trading at all. So they prospered openly under the government's very nose… By increasing bureaucratic controls to stop smuggling, the government only forced [sic] the peasant to dispose of his millet and groundnuts through the traders, who shipped them out of the country. Livestock Went the same way. The situation grew from bad to worse.”

^{Page 599 note 1} Two leading opponents of the régime, Sissoko and Dicko, who had declined to join the Union scoudanaise –unlike most of their fellow P.S.P. leaders were tried and convicted of instigaring the ‘riot’. Imprisoned in the Sahara, they were killed during the Tuareg uprising in 1964. Even if they were innocent and their deaths were murder, such treatment stands out as exceptional to the relatively mild repression that characterised the Keita régime. On the 1962 ‘riot’ and its aftermath, see Megahed, op. cit. and especially the reports by DuBois, loc. cit.

^{Page 600 note 1} With the exception of the I.D.A. credit of $9.1 million, Mali had not received any World Bank loans before 30 April 1968. This offer was made several days after Keita brought francophile Louis Nègre into his cabinet, and the new Finance Minister then began to negotiate a monetary rapprochement with Paris.

^{Page 600 note 2} Addressing the Abidjan Chamber of Commerce in August 1962, Keita stressed: ‘the language we speak is the French language, the culture which we know is French culture, the tastes which we have are those which have been passed on to us by French culture. Whatever the passing difficulties which we have had with France…one must look to the future. Frenchmen in foreign countries, whether they be engaged in the public or private sector, have a particularly important civic role to play: that of seeing to it that the moral and human heritage of French culture not only maintains but reinforces itself.’ Translated by DuBois, loc. cit. p. 14, from Le Monde (Paris), 18 August 1962.

^{Page 602 note 1} Even so, there was no real decline – see Biro, op. cit. and Megahed, op. cit. – in the living standards or production of the more than 90 percent of the population in the traditional or rural Sector. Hence the short-term ‘failure’ of the 1965–8 rural collectivisation effort was not translated into peasant backing for the militarists. These people were acculturated to a subsistence livelihood, and for the most part carried on pretty much as before. Thus, elections to new village councils generally reflected traditionally ascriptive status relationships at that level, and most peasants simply ignored the collective fields. Zolberg – loc. cit. 1967, p. 463 – implies that ‘mobilisation’ in urban areas was also nominal under the state capitalist régime: ‘The parties have not transformed society, but rather by incorporating existing structures such as ethnic associations in the Ivory Coast and regional coalitions in Mali into their own organization, they have reinforced these patterns, endowed them with a renewed legitimacy, and provided a broader frame of reference for their operations.’ A similar view was articulated by Snyder, op. cit. p. 115, at the end of 1964 when he observed that the Keita régime ‘has not greatly upset the social structure of the country. This is due in part to the party's extremely limited progress in establishing rural cooperatives and collective fields.’

^{Page 603 note 1} Bebler, op. cit. p. 153.

^{Page 603 note 2} Lee, I. M., African Armies and Civil Order (New York, 1969), pp. 125 and 145.Google Scholar

^{Page 604 note 1} That this was a chauvinistic rationale for an aversion to low status ‘manual’ type of work or simply laziness, is suggested by officer rôles since 1968 – Bebler, op. cit. pp. 191–2 – as well as by the prevalence of military dictatorships elsewhere. The innumerable historical perversions of ‘honour’ when it impeded careerism are documented by Vagts, Alfred, A History of Militarism (New York, 1959).Google Scholar

^{Page 604 note 2} The recalcitrance of the more professionally-oriented officers may have been enhanced by the obvious conflict between civilian orders to participate in such activities, and the autonomist conception of professionalism to which they were acculturated by their French and American mentors – see Lt. Col. Sadler, Jack R., ‘West Africa: searches for stability’, in Military Review (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas), 49, 11 1969, p. 34,Google Scholar and Bebler, op. cit. pp. 109–12. Hence, Keita's decision irs 1961 – almost certainly a consequence of Kennedy's charm during a visit to Washington – to accept American (and quite possibly continued French) training was a major irrationality as it tended to vitiate efforts of the U.S.–R.D.A. to directly politicise the officer corps. Analogously, Zolberg, loc. cit. 1965, p. 20, noted that the ‘Indictment of American neo-colonialism continues, while at the same time an American military mission assists the Mali Government.’

^{Page 604 note 3} The political objectives and indoctrinational aspects of such training include the structuring or reinforcement of anti-socialist attitudes and hostility to the East. Rarely attained maximal goals are to create an exclusively American reference group within Third-World military establishments. See Kiare, Michael, War Without End (New York, 1972),Google Scholar and the primary sources cited by Wolpin, Miles D., Military Aid and Counterrevolution in the Third World (Lexington, 1972).Google Scholar After noting that when the French were asked to leave in 1961 Mali simply shifted her military dependence to the United States which ‘could effectively train crack units in the army of Mali with Russian equipment’, Lee concludes – op. cit. pp. 120 and 125 – that the importance of external reference groups to African officers is such that their ‘integration into the community’ is materially hindered.

^{Page 605 note 1} Between July 1961 and July 1967, close to $3 million worth of military material was given to Mali by the United States – U.S. Department of Defense, Military Assistance and Foreign Military Sales Facts (Washington, 1970), pp. 13–14.Google Scholar The process that brought such deliveries to an end on the latter date probably began in December 1964 when Keita abolished the post of Army Chief of General Staff after his return from China, Korea, and Vietnam. The following May, the Army Chief of Staff, Sékou Traoré, and the State Secretary for Defence, Mamadou Diakité, visited the U.S.S.R. as guests of Marshal Malinovsky. While a good deal of what went on is unknown, within a year or so Soviet arms reportedly were being trucked in via Algeria, a new Defence Secretary had replaced Diakité (who may have been a relative of Yoro Diakité, the military school commander who began plotting in 1966), and some junior officers were sent to Moscow – Bebler op. cit. p. 149.

^{Page 605 note 2} Hence, the survey of Mali's economy which appeared in Marchés tropicaux et méditerranéens (Paris) of 5 October 1968, noted:

‘the Franco-Malian monetary accords…had failed to encourage a repatriation of Malian funds and had facilitated a flight of capital previously blocked in Mali, while Mali's $24 million account with the Banque de France had been largely “wiped out.” Finance Minister Louis Nègre, seeking to counter critics of the accords, argued on the government radio on October 15 that “whatever one may say, Franco-Malian cooperation is evolving favorably.” He pointed out that Mali's two-way trade with the franc zone last year reached 8.5 billion MF out of Mali's 16.7 billion trade total.’ – translated in Africa Report, January 1969, p. 35.

Looked at differently, Franco-Malian trade had been halved between 1961 and 1967, while the Soviet Union and China accounted for much of the difference and were increasing their share at a steady if not dramatic pace. This, in turn, contributed to such achievements – reported in the same source – as the extension of paved roads by 400 per cent (to 1,200 km) since 1960, the creation of 18 state enterprises since 1964 which grossed $30 million annually and employed 20,000, and an increase in cotton production. The government deficit was down to about $6 million, but groundnut production had declined (probably due to lower world market prices). What is especially interesting is that despite the rise in bureaucratic employment, and the vast expansion of the public sector, the deficit was actually less than the pre-independence French administrative subsidy. Given rapid Africanisation, with virtually no university-trained administrators in 1960, the Keita leadership acted as remarkably as one could expect under state capitalism. Its performance in such areas as education (primary enrolment up from 64,000 to 156,000) and medicine (from 75 doctors in 1960 to 135) was also fairly respectable. See Africa Report, November 1968, p. 34.

^{Page 606 note 1} Socialist mobilisation always involves maximising employment and domestically-generated economic surplus. Since trans-national corporations avoid investing in such an antithetical business climate, convertibility can only result in a short-term capital flight which reduces the resources available for development. And no government which takes its socialist aspirations seriously will dismiss thousands of workers in order to assure the profitable operation of economic enterprises. It is quite likely that Keita agreed to these measures in order to obtain the short-term import credits that would enable him to postpone a final break with the domestic francophile faction led by Jean Marie Koné.

^{Page 607 note 1} Figures are available in Megahed, op. cit. That the private capitalist sector was far from dead is indicated by the fact that in October 1968 Marchés tropicaux et méditerranéens could report its gross sales as being $5.6 million at official prices.

^{Page 608 note 1} The National Committee for the Defence of the Revolution had been appointed in the wake of the Ghanaian coup of February 1966. This and the beginning of Soviet military training relationships discussed above in footnote 1 on p. 605, were given added importance by the realisation that (i) only the Soviet-advised presidential regiment had actually fought for Nkrumah; and (ii) the mobilisational potential of the Union soudanaise was likely to be as limited as that of the C.P.P. in the event of an attempted coup d'état.

^{Page 608 note 2} Several years earlier, C.I.A. funds had been instrumental in suborning Congolese politicians. See Marchetti, Victor and Marks, John D., The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York, 1974), p. 31.Google Scholar

^{Page 608 note 3} According to Lee, op. cit. p. 92, the army had been exempted in 1966 because of the Government's apprehension that a failure to do so might prompt a coup d'état. At the time of the 1968 coup, which occurred not long after the announcement of new austerity measures, Bebler, op. cit. p. 89, could report that ‘The army was rather well-paid and equipped although its standard of living had been gradually declining’. While this may have encouraged the conspirators and enhanced the likelihood of post-coup backing within the army, the commencement of the 1966 plotting seems to have been conditioned by the new leftist political trend and related career prospects. Hence the egalitarian levelling down caused by inflation and the 1968 austerity measures (top officials took a 10 per Cent salary cut, Keita turned his own farm over to a workers' committee, etc.) functioned primarily as symbols of the approaching endof the state capitalist era.

^{Page 609 note 1} Bebler, op. cit. p. 89, records: ‘The US-RDA tried to penetrate the military, and a substantial number of membership cards was distributed among members of the military. Nevertheless, the army had passively resisted the inroads and retained its separate and to a degree non-political identity.’

^{Page 609 note 2} Although he refers to this trip, Bebler doubts that it had any connection with Moussa Traoré's rôle as a conspirator! Methodological naïveté or pro-western bias accounts for the conclusion that the coup was purely domestic in origin; hence, in the absence of any public confession by a plotter or an external power, no evidence exists that could warrant an inference by Bebler of even a supporting rôle by one or more neo-colonial powers.

^{Page 610 note 1} Bebler, op. cit. p. 88, characterises it as ‘a preemptive coup, as the arrests of about 40 persons, including several officers, were imminent as soon as the president arrived in the capital’. Whether this was indeed true, or a rumour designed to catalyse the conspirators, is unclear. I raise this question because such a lengthy lead-time between the decision to arrest and the execution of the orders is unusual – particularly if Keita had some information on the two-year-old conspiracy. Furthermore, leaflets had mysteriously appeared in Bamako a month earlier calling on the armed forces to save the country – see Africa Report, November 1968, p. 34. Planting rumours and publicity of this Sort are, of course, C.I.A. specialities according to Marchetti and Marks, op. cit.

^{Page 611 note 1} Apparently because of fear that ‘leftists’ or security agents would report the plots, Diakité's conspiracy was limited to personal friends and relatives. Only after the coup, in order to consolidate it and prevent a counter-coup, did they invite the participation of other key commanders. The American-trained paratroopers – an élite counter-insurgency unit – probably acted as the primary strike force for the conspirators.

^{Page 611 note 2} To enhance the acquiescence of the junior officers, the conspirators initially refrained from promoting themselves or dramatically increasing their salaries. Instead they cleverly assumed about half of the national ministerial positions, while allocating such lower-level jobs as civil governorships and mayoral positions to coup supporters. Bebler notes, somewhat euphemistically: ‘All these were double and triple job arrangements while actual business was carried out by civilian administrators’. This partially explains his conclusion that ‘narrow corporate’ as well as ‘personal security interests’ were the ‘single strongest motivation’ for the overthrow of Keita. Op. cit. pp. 182, 191–2, and 210.

^{Page 612 note 1} According to Bebler, corruption has taken ‘less conspicuous’ forms under the army régime. He acknowledges that only merchants and the military have economically benefited from the coup. For the latter have ‘improved material and other conditions of service’. Ibid. pp. 204 and 191–6.

^{Page 614 note 1} Chorley, Katherine elucidates this pattern of antipathy in Armies and the Art of Revolution (Boston, 1973),Google Scholar but ascribes excessive causal significance to upper-class social recruitment. As Abrahamsson, Bengt demonstrates in Military Professionalization and Political Power (Beverly Hills, 1972),Google Scholar anticipatory and intra-military socialisation ensure the perpetuation of conservatism, as does selective promotion to higher rank. Other sources of anti-egalitarian sentiment are: (i) the pre-existing social privileges of the officer corps; (ii) the tendency of most men to be materially self-interested; (iii) the aristocratic origins and hierarchical nature of military organisation; (iv) elitist or chauvinistic disdain for civilians and, especially, party politicians; (v) corporate budgetary aspirations conditioned not merely by military necessity, but also by prestige aspirations – both externally influenced by western training programmes.

^{Page 615 note 1} I have reversed the use of the terms ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ as employed by Welch, Claude E. and Smith, Arthur K., Military Role and Rule: perspectives on civil-military relations (North Scituate, 1974).Google Scholar The former is an institutionalised relationship characterised by superior civilian resources and routinised fragmentation of civil–military boundaries. When civilians habitually decide what policy matters will be left to intra-military discretion, ‘objective’ control exists. Where officers make that decision and allow civilians to operate in military-relevant policy areas, such consent can be withdrawn at the discretion of autonomous commanders who are no more than ‘subjectively’ subordinate. In truth, this is a misnomer, for under those conditions they are not subordinate but sovereign. Hence, DuBois cites – loc. cit. 1969, p. 5 – the all-too-common attitudinal manifestation of military supremacy in non-socialist Third-World politics: ‘Many military men feel they are better equipped than civilians to rule their countries, because, unlike civilians, they are politically untainted. This supposed political purity emanates mainly from the fact that as military men they are usually not a part of any political party, indeed, in their professional capacity as soldiers they have remained almost totally aloof from the internecine struggle that characterises politics. To many military men political parties are at worst a cancer which must be excised if the nation is to survive; at best they are a nuisance which must be tolerated but only so long as they abide by the Strictures of good behaviour as set down by the military themselves.’

^{Page 615 note 2} See Vagts, op. cit. Also King, Edward, Death of the Army (New York, 1970),Google Scholar and Herbert, Anthony, Soldier (New York, 1973).Google Scholar Those who attribute the desire for corporate autonomy to professional sentiments overlook the fact that careerist intra-military politicking is the dominant preoccupation of most if not all officers. This is not to say that they are wholly devoid of professional concerns, only that in cases of conflict the latter generally tend to be operationally defined so as to be compatible with more crass interests. Hence while the large majority of these men can adjust to careers as dependent or subordinate professionals, this is undoubtedly easier under a régime of privilege – mixed economy or state capitalist – than serving one with egalitarian pretensions. Even in the United States, as Janowitz, Morris notes – The Professional Soldier (New York, 1960)Google Scholar – there is an association between lower social recruitment and a rise in officer propensities to regard their work as ‘a job’ rather than a calling or noble mission.

^{Page 616 note 1} Even if Moussa Traoré and the other four conspirators were not on a genuine arrest list, reassignment to the sunbaked fields of the Office du Niger was as undesirable as having the soldiers fraternise there with Marxist youths in the Service nationale. As Lt.-Col. Sadler, loc. cit. p. 34, observed shortly before the coup: ‘Mali's President Modibo Keita told his army that its first job was to increase its work in political education. Such views carried in them the seeds of conflict. Assignments to village well-digging or weed-chopping projects or to political indoctrination campaigns were hardly more appealing to the professional officers and men of the armies of West Africa than they would be to those of the U.S. Army.’ If not overdone, however, such assignments would not have entailed measurable hardship for Mali's higher officers. Most would have remained in office headquarters in the field, provincial centres, Koti or the capital.

^{Page 617 note 1} Bebler records, op. cit. P. 91, that of the 14-member Comité militaire de libération nationale five were trained in France and five in the United States. That the Central Intelligence Agency has endeavoured to subvert all socialist regimes, and has commonly relied upon Defence Department positions for cover, is amply attested to by Marchetti and Marks, op. cit. pp. 24, 26–7, 59, 712, 124, 131, and passim. More fundamentally, these authors identify, on p. 238, a C.I.A. ‘program, operated with the cooperation of military intelligence, to suborn foreign military officers who come to the United States for training’. With respect to the French, Bebler's implication by avoidance that they were indifferent to the rapid growth of various forms of Chinese influence in 1968 seems wide of the mark, as is his contention that Mali then needed France more than the converse. In the first place, it ignores both class and strategic bases for the possession of particular colonial territories. Whereas prior to independence only the first (gains to a small number of French firms) was operative in the Malian case, the strategic fear that a Maoist Mali might inspire subversion in contiguous states like Senegal and Ivory Coast – both with considerably higher levels of French investment – cannot be ignored by the serious scholar. Domino metaphors, even if qualified, have always conditioned the realpolitik of conservative policies during periods of revolutionary struggle! The fact that groundnut prices declined (also injuring Nigeria), whereas cotton prices increased, does not itself refute the possibility of market manipulation. Export-bound cotton production in Mali was still largely under French control!

^{Page 618 note 1} In addition to my Military Aid and Counterrevolution in the Third World (Lexington, 1972),Google Scholar already cited, see Wolpin, Miles D., Cuban Foreign Policy and Chilean Politics (Lexington, 1972),Google Scholar and Social Revolution and Military Subordination in the Third World (forthcoming).

^{Page 620 note 1} The decision of the plotters in Mali to limit their conspiracy to five persons indicates their fear that the intra-military environment was, at best, neutral. It is conceivable that they were even paralysed by a view that Keita's legitimacy was pervasive enough to make success problematic – and only acted when informed offhandedly by a sergeant (who may have been a ‘plant’) that they were to be imprisoned upon Keita's return. From the perspective of revolutionary leadership, the point at which military autonomy is finally being undermined would appear to be the most dangerous. That is when the penetration of the army and the build-up of revolutionary para-military units is approaching the level of effective deterrence. Relaxed vigilance or foreign travel by the revolutionary prince at such times invite counterrevolutionary success.