Draft Resolution: The Algerian Revolution from 1962 to 1969

[p061] Draft Resolution The Algerian Revolution from 1962 to 1969 I Six months after the coup d’état that overthrew Ahmed Ben Bella, the Eighth World Congress of the Fourth International, meeting December 1965, analyzed the situation in Algeria in a resolution, ‘Progress and Problems of the African Revolution. This analysis singled out the following aspects in the development of the Algerian revolution from 1954 to 1965: (1) Before independence, the Algerian revolution took the form of a deep-going mobilization of the masses. The political instrument of the revolution, the FLN, took form as a politically ill-defined multi- class front. (2) Following independence, the FLN~ literally burst into fragments at the time of the crisis in the summer of 1962, which developed along very unclear lines. (3) A new stage characterized by a dynamic of growing over into socialism opened with the exodus of the French colonists. The rising curve in the revolu- tion reached its highest point with the March 1963 decrees and continued up to the expropriation measures in October of the same year. Observing this process, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International took note of the fact that a workers and peasants government had been established in Algeria. At that time the process had already slowed and a pause had set in. (4) Algerian society remained marked by the coexistence and conflict of different and antagonistic forces and sectors. A _ significant Algerian private capitalist sector continued to exist, including in the countryside, as well as a powerful foreign capitalist sector (oil and gas). Furthermore, imperialist aid con- tinued to be important and Algeria remained depen- dent on the franc zone. An administrative, economic, and military state bureaucracy developed which en- joyed a privileged share of the national income. (5) The coup d’état of June 19, 1965 was the outcome of the deterioration in the situation which Ben Bella could no longer forestall. The coup d’état was supported by the most well-known representatives of the state and army bureaucracy. Its result was to encourage those forces most hostile to a _ socialist conclusion to the Algerian revolution. Pabloite Congress: Algeria In adopting these conclusions, the World Con- gress, however, left discussion open on the Algerian question. Moreover, am amendment judging that the characterization of the Ben Bella government had been premature and had caused a certain confusion as to the tasks of revolutionary Marxists was rejected by only a relatively narrow majority. Superimposed on this difference in evaluation was a difference with the comrades who had worked in Algeria over the assess- ment of the June 19 coup. They held that the coup only replaced one Bonapartist team with another, changing the form but not the content of the govern- ment. II Today, however, we can say that in coming to grips with a general analysis of the policy the Bou- médienne government has followed for more than three years and an analysis of the present situation in Algeria, these points of disagreement seem second- ary and of purely historical importance. Immediately after June 19, 1965, two factors favoured a temporary misunderstanding of the nature of the coup d’état: (a) The fact that the coup eliminated only a relatively small number of figures, while a whole series of ministers in the Ben Bella government joined Boumédienne’s ‘Council of the Revolution.’ (b) The support which the Chinese leadership gave to the Boumédienne regime in the weeks follow- ing the coup and which was motivated by considera- tions of a factional nature linked to the way in which Ben Bella and his team had been preparing the Afro- Asian conference. Today these factors are no longer operative. In Algeria as well as elsewhere the nature of the Bou- médienne government is clear. After having over- thrown Ben Bella, Boumédienne adopted a completely different orientation from that of the Ben Bella government. But while the revolutionary vanguard is no longer affected by hesitation, Moscow and not Peking is making conciliatory moves towards the regime, accompanying this with an attempt on the ideological level to paint up the Boumédienne regime as ‘anti- 111

[p062] imperialist.’ This line is being followed by the PAGS,! in which former members of the Algerian Communist party are active. In addition, after the Algerian leaders assumed verbal ‘leftist’ positions in the Israeli-Arab conflict, Fidel Castro, who had very’ severely con- demned the authors of the coup d’état, went back on his condemnation, doing this in the form of self- criticism. Thus it is necessary to reaffirm the position of the revolutionary Marxists on the present regime in Algeria without any ambiguities. The June 19 coup d’état was a victory for the reactionary forces, a qualitative expression of the erosion and the molecular changes occurring both in the state personnel and organisation and consciousness of the classes—thus it clearly represented a qualitative change. After a period of deterioration it became relatively ‘easy’ for Boumédienne to register this change in the relationship of forces qualitatively which the revolutionary party had not been able to counteract. The contradiction between the capital- ist state and the socialist orientation of the workers and peasants government was then eliminated by Boumédienne and his army, ‘the only force in the country capable of protecting the Constitution and the national institutions.’ (El Djeich, organ of the army, June 1965: ‘Why June 19?’) During the first period extending from 1965 to the end of 1967, which still reflected an equilibrium of forces, there was an increasing drift to the right. At the end of 1967, a second period opened, which continues to the present, with the rise of Kaid Achmed (former Commander Slimane) to the second highest political post in the country, to the position of head of the ‘party.’ As the background for this shift in the balance of forces, a dual phenomenon should be noted: (a) The development of a state capitalist sector in the economy in close osmosis with imperialist interests. (b) The steady loss of momentum by the UGTA trade-union apparatus. This apparatus thought it could maintain its independence and serve as a centre for a new mobilization of the masses by limiting itself in the interval to a defensive struggle to preserve self-management, if not to a purely economic struggle. The attempted counter coup d’état of El Affroun, led by Tahar Zbiri in December 1967 and supported by a section of the trade-union militants, was a desperate attempt to reverse this drift. The masses did not intervene in any way. Il The essential feature in the changes which have occurred in the Algerian economic structure has been the strengthening of the ‘mixed’ (state capitalism and foreign capital) fuels sector of the Algerian economy. This is the main sector of the economy from the standpoint of export and has undergone constant expansion (39.7 million tons produced in 1967 as against 26.1 million in 1964). The fuels sector is dominated by Sonatrach,? a state company created 1 PAGS: Parti de l’Avant-Garde Socialiste, formerly ORP (Organisation de la Résistance Populaire) founded after June 19. 2 Sonatrach: Société National de Transport et de Commercialisation de Hydrocarbures. 112 originally to manage the third Hassi Messaoud-Arzew pipeline completed in 1966 but which has developed into one of the principal petroleum producers. The activities of Sonatrach, which is aided by American and Soviet experts and collaborates. closely with foreign interests, have expanded to such a degree that this enterprise constitutes a veritable state within a state. The basis for the collaboration between im- perialism and the state sector is still the 1965 oil agreement concluded shortly after the June 19 coup d’état and ratified in the French parliament by a UNR-PCF majority. Algerian state capitalism has been collaborating with imperialism without any major conflicts. The ‘nationalization’ of the American oil companies distribution network in September 1967 was, in appearance, an anti-imperialist measure in response to the Israeli aggression. In reality it was a purchase agreed to by the companies involved. The same was true of the purchase of the other distribu- tion centres in May 1968. While collaborating with imperialism, the state sector seeks to assure its control over the transfer of currency and to impose its conditions with regard to export prices. These are minor conflicts in which the primary objective is ‘getting into position’ for the renewal of the 1965 agreement in 1969. It must be added that the Algerian left forces have never advanced specific demands for this sector, limiting themselves to declaring that nationalization of mineral and energy resources was a ‘long-term goal’ (1964 Algiers Charter). As against the constant expansion of this sector, the modest self-managed industrial sector, composed in general of old plants, is steadily losing momentum. Its social weight is minimal. The workers in this sector are calculated at less than 15,000 (6 per cent of the Algerian working class). Moreover, the new investment code freezes the limit of development of this sector. It guarantees that there will be no nationalization of the foreign capital invested in Algeria for ten years time and that after that it can be nationalized only with payment of 100 per cent compensation. The nationalization of French plants in June 1968, planned by American and Swiss ‘experts,’ was carried out according to this scheme. These plants were turned over to state companies that were not self-managed. Some of them were previously self-managed plants returned to their forrher owners (Norcolor). In other cases, the ‘nationalization-purchase’ was made long after these concerns had brought the enterprises in the self-managed industrial sector to their knees (oil works, soap factories). Parallel to the industrial sector, peasant self- management has had to struggle constantly against sabotage by the authorities combined with difficulties on the French wine market (wine import quotas). As for the ‘agrarian reform’, adopted in 1966 but left unimplemented, it itself is nothing but a caricature of the reform drawn up under the Ben Bella govern- ment. Matching the appetites of the state bureaucracy, it is limited to an area producing a net annual income equal to the state payroll. IV Given the social and political weakness of the Algerian bourgeoisie, this state bureaucracy has Fourth International, Winter 1969/70

[p063] proved to be more of a danger to the Algerian revolution than the bourgeoisie itself. In order to understand the reasons for the be- haviour of this new bureaucratic layer, we must examine the elements making it up, its international context, and the international social forces on which it bases itself. We can define three layers in the Algerian state bureaucracy. These layers are based on the social interests they have represented in post-1962 Algeria, independently of the social origins of the bureaucrats themselves. According to this criterion, a bureaucrat may drift imperceptibly from one stratum to another. (1) An initial layer which made it possible to maintain a ‘well functioning’ state apparatus between the cease-fire and the formation of the first Ben Bella government. It is composed of a certain number of functionaries, who were old and recent collaborators with the colonial regime, coming from the famous ‘Lacoste promotion’. It is made up both of Algerians and reformed and co-operative Pieds-Noirs.? This stratum is the most faithful supporter of the leaders who want to maintain a state of the bourgeois type. By its inertia and its sabotage of revolutionary measures, this layer plays an important braking role. It hides behind the mask of ‘technical competence’ in order to maintain itself. But it is being subjected to criticism by the most conscious cadres, who demand that it be purged. The continually promised removal of this stumbling block is always indefinitely post- poned. This stratum takes advantage of the delay to consolidate its privileges and it exercises a pernicious influence on the opportunistic nationalist cadres who are slipping into reactionary positions. (2) The national bourgeoisie was extensively rep- resented in the first Ben Bella government. These cadres based themselves in the state apparatus on a bureaucratic layer of high functionaries (cabinet mem- bers, prefects) whose actions then and since have been guided by the same class interests. M. Khider, the secretary of the FLN, worked in the party apparatus to consolidate the power of these strata, if not for a seizure of power by them. Representatives of this layer were to be found in the successjve Ben Bella governments. A few were unmasked, but these bourgeois bureaucrats remained throughout the machinery of state. Certain bourgeois technocrats remain also in the Boumédienne government. (3) The third layer in the state bureaucracy, and the most numerous, formed as a bureaucratic layer in the FLN administrative apparatus during the war. It emerged from the agrarian and urban petty- bourgeoisie which flocked to the FLN and the ALN. This layer rallied first to Ben Bella and then to Boumédienne. It includes the majority of the army and men in the ministries whose opposition to the June 1968 ‘nationalizations’ tends to show that some of them, too have slipped into the first group. The vast majority of the intermediate-level functionaries in the ministries and the local administrations have come from different strata of the petty bourgeoisie— small and middle tradesmen, middle peasants, petty functionaries of the colonial era. The ANP officers are almost entirely representatives of the petty bourgeoisie. 3 French born in Algeria. Pabloite Congress: Algeria A part of this strata came from the working class in the cities or in emigration. Former working-class cadres in the MTLD and former CGT or UGTA union- ists have risen to positions of responsibility in the state apparatus. Boumaza, Alia Yahia, and Zerdani represented this element. But in the context of the alliance that the petty bourgeoisie has concluded with the national bourgeoisie, this layer of the working- class bureaucracy, which is rather weak moreover, has been buffeted about between the govérnment and the mass pressure it is subject to—insofar as it is con- scious of the political weight of the pressure from the massses. This layer will never be capable (with very rare exceptions) of conducting a proletarian policy. It is being totally rooted out of the state apparatus. The most characteristic feature of this state bureaucracy is its heterogeneity. Representatives of the national bourgeoisie are found side by side with representatives of the working class, in the same ministerial and government commissions, in the Politi- cal Bureau. The question which arises continually for each of these strata is, whom to serve. Such a hetero- geneous bureaucracy becomes conscious of its social role only through constant confrontation with the social forces and classes which it claims to serve as a whole. This is why since 1962 all government bodies have been torn by clique infighting and struggles over immediate interests. The pressures of imperialism on this bureaucracy must not be overlooked. French imperialism has brought pressure to bear through economic co-oper- ation, continuation of the Evian accords, and the 1965 hydrocarbon agreements; British imperialism through mixed companies. American imperialism has exercised pressure through its not inconsiderable economic aid. And West German imperialism as well as others have been present. No less important is the considerable economic aid provided by the bureaucracies of the workers’ states—the USSR, China, and Yugoslavia heading the list. Far from being provided in accordance with the principles proclaimed by Che Guevara at the Algiers Afro-Asian Economic Seminar, this aid has been accompanied by declarations favourable to the regimes in power and in the last analysis has favoured stabilization of the state structures and the status quo. The same effect was produced by the _ ideological default of the former PCA (Alger Républicain) and later, after Harbi’s arrest, of the ORP-PAGS (specu- lation on conflicts in the government team even today) assuming that a ‘socialist state’ or a ‘non-capitalist road’ had been achieved or was in the process of being achieved. Enmeshed in this international context, the state bureaucratic giructures have become allied with the retrograde socialist forces. Vv The general political resolution of the Second Congress of the UGTA in 1965 listed the ‘bureaucratic layer being formed’ among the ‘forces of tounter- revolution’ alongside the feudalists and _ exploitive bourgeoisie. But the Oumeziane leadership of the UGTA, elected at the Second Congress, timidly avoided drawing the necessary conclusions from this analysis. It tried to counter the dismantling of self-management 113

[p064] by a defensive struggle, seeking support in the government. Its paper has been repeatedly prevented from coming out (May 1966, December 1967, and up to the present). In Algeria today, the workers’ right to determine the rules under which their unions function, to elect their representatives freely, to formulate their pro- gramme without interference from the authorities, and to decide their actions in complete independence —that is, the four necessary criteria of trade-union independence from the state apparatus—have been deprived of all semblance of reality. VI At the present time, despite Cherif Belkacem and then Kaid Ahmed’s ‘reorganization’, the ‘FLN party’ is still non-existent. But on the side of the opposition organizations, the picture is not a reassuring one. (a) The ‘CNDR’ or ex-‘PRS’,‘ was never able to develop after its initial ‘Menshevik-type’ positions comdemning the Ben Bella government’s revolutionary measures as ‘premature’. (b) The ‘PAGS’ or ex-‘ORP* became nothing but a vehicle of the Kremlin’s foreign policy, under Alleg’s leadership after Mohammed Harbi and Sahouane were arrested. This was shown by its turn on January 26, 1966, toward the formation of a broad ‘people’s democratic’ front demanding even the release of Ait Ahmed, who was imprisoned at that time, and proposing a front with the FFS, It has no mass ase. (c) Ait Ahmed’s ‘FFS’ and Mohamed Labjaoui’s ‘OCRA” represent factions in the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois wing of the old apparatuses. (d) The ‘Rassemblement Unitaire des Révolution- naires’ (RUR), which was born of splits from the ex-ORP and the OCRA, represents, from the stand- point of its programme and its analyses, the tendency closest to revolutionary socialism. Its base in Algeria, however, is as limited as that of the other movements. Vill (1) In this context the fundamental strategic task remains the organization of a revolutionary Marxist vanguard and the subsequent formation of a party of the urban and rural workers which would struggle for the overthrow of the Boumédienne regime and the establishment of a government of the worker and peasant masses. 4 Conseil National de la Défense de la Révolution, and Parti de la Révolution Socialiste. 5 Parti de l’Avant-Garde Socialiste, and Organisation de Resistance Populaire. 6 Front des Forces Socialistes, and Organisation Clandestine de la Resistance Algérienne. (2) Inseparably bound up with this task is the necessity of struggling to revitalize the trade-union Movement and gain its complete independence from the state. . (3) This struggle can only be waged through and parallel to a revival of the mass movement. And the mass movement can be revived only through struggle for: (a) Stimulation of the noncapitalist sector of the economy by putting the entire nationalized industrial sector under self-management and giving priority to this sector as regards fiscal advantages and the development of trade relations, etc. (b) The establishment of a monopoly of foreign trade and the introduction of mandatory national planning to avert strangulation of the self-managed sector. (c) Nationalization of the petroleum-producing enterprises belonging to all the imperialist countries involved in the June 1967 aggression against the Arab revolution, and the establishment of workers’ control exercised jointly by representatives of the oil workers and the socialist industrial sector over Sonatrach and the other oil companies. (d) Abrogation of the pseudo-agrarian reform of 1966 and implementation of a radical agrarian reform by means of expropriation of the large landowners and severe limitations on the right to hold property in land. The starting consideration must be that it is of course incorrect to call only for the restriction of large and middle landownership independent of seeking the most productive use of the land. But it is not correct either to envisage agrarian reform as an attempt to put the most land possible under cultivation according to abstract criteria of economic efficiency, independent of social relationships. (e) Amendment of the 1966 law on municipal government for a new definition of municipal bound- aries guaranteering that the municipalities will be economic units and eliminating interference by the FLN apparatus. (f) Defence of the revolution by the creation of workers’ and peasants’ militias based on the big farms, the big factories, and the municipalities. (g) Renovation end purging of the _ state apparatus, the creation of organs of people’s power, and promotion of equalitarian tendencies in the struggles against bureaucratic privileges. Revival of the struggle for democratic demands—emancipation of women, the struggle to keep Islam out of public affairs, the struggle against illiteracy and for education, the struggle against regional particularism. (4) Particular importance must be accorded to work among the Algerian workers in Europe as well as work for the release of all the interned mili- tants and leaders, especially Ben Bella, Ben Allah, Zahouane, Harbi, and Hadj Ali.