Cabral argues that colonial domination can only persist by suppressing the subject people's cultural life, so liberation is itself the resurgence and reassertion of that culture, not merely a transfer of political power. The struggle returns the people to their own history by letting their productive forces and culture develop freely again.
Because the native petty bourgeoisie is the only stratum colonialism equips with the skills to lead liberation, but it is also positioned to inherit colonial privilege afterward, Cabral holds it must commit 'class suicide': consciously betraying its own class interests to merge with the workers and peasants rather than becoming a new ruling class. Failure to do so reproduces exploitation under a national flag.
Cabral treats culture as the living repository that preserves a people's identity under domination and so becomes the soil in which armed resistance germinates. But he insists culture is not uniformly progressive: it contains negative and reactionary elements, so liberation requires selectively developing the positive while discarding what weakens the people.
Cabral insists the movement must report reality to the people without exaggeration or fabrication, refusing to disguise setbacks as triumphs. He grounds this in the practical conviction that a struggle sustained by illusions collapses when reality contradicts the propaganda.