ABSTRACT
The most complete apparatus of violence nowadays is the State. Its insidious, omnipresent, arrogant or disguised pressure dominates our lives. But the State is an ambiguous social formation: for the peoples of the Third World in struggle for their liberation it is the instrument against the aggression of foreign powers. Angola and Mozambique are the two African cases closest to that of Guinea-Bissau, for obvious historical reasons: they had the same colonizer, their national liberation movements emerged simultaneously and co-ordinated their struggle against imperialism, and they had similar strategies of mobilization. The dictatorship of the proletariat is conceived in more pragmatic and realistic terms than in Angola. Samora Machel comments: But to pretend that the working class had already taken on the leading role would be to forget our history. It would be to ignore the history of the Mozambican people's struggle.
