Marxism and the Algerian Revolution

[p009] Marxism and the Algerian Revolution Michael Banda ALGERIA, which was ruled by the Turks for three centuries, was invaded by the French in 1830. Apolo- gists for the French occupation have sought to explain the subsequent piecemeal conquest of Algeria on moral and humanitarian grounds. The conquest, they tell us, was necessary in order to stop the Mediterranean piracy from which Algiers derived its income. The history of Algeria has given the lie to the apolo- gists of colonialism. France annexed Algeria in the first place because its fertile hills and valleys and its thriving woollen industry offered lucrative prospects for French settlement and trade. Before the French conquest Algeria was a semi- independent State ruled by a Turkish Bey who owed formal allegiance to the Ottoman Empire. She had treaty relationships with England, France, America and Holland. However, unlike Morocco, Algeria did not have a strongly constituted and centralized State but- tressed by an important religious hierarchy. Marshal Lyautey—the Lugard of France—comments on the state of Algeria at the time as follows: “We were confronted in Algeria with a completely crumbling and disorganized state of affairs where the only established power was that of the Turkish Bey, whose Government collapsed immediately upon our arrival.’! Lyautey, in true im- perial tradition, was embellishing the truth. Algiers nevertheless capitulated within a month. The Treaty of Algiers (July 5, 1830) signed after the surrender of the town stipulated that ‘the exercise of the Mohammedan religion will remain free, liberty of ‘all the inhabitants, including all classes, their religion, property, businesses, industries will not be interfered with. Their women will be respected.’ The collapse of the Bey’s régime rekindled the flame of nationalism, and in November 1832 the people of South Oran proclaimed the Emir Abdelkader leader of the resistance against France. A government of national defence was established and was exercised thoughout Algeria, with the exception of Bone, Algiers and Oran. This was the first truly national, representa- tive and popular government Algeria had experienced in four centuries. It was also to be its last. The resistance organized by the Emir was bloody and protracted. It lasted fifteen years. So fierce was the struggle that in 1834-35 Abdelkader’s government was able to force the French to give it diplomatic re- presentation in Algiers, Oran and Paris. The backbone of the resistance was nomadic tribesmen and farmers, and its leadership was recruited from the emirs—the representatives of a dying feudal order. In this lay its weakness. In 1847 the Emir surrendered and went into exile. The war continued but not on the same scale nor with the same success as before. The major areas of disaffection were the Kabylie, Constantine and South Oran. Sporadic fighting continued in these areas for JQuoted in Morocco (World Muslim Conference, London, 1951), p. 49. another fifty years until the troops of Bouamama were driven into Morocco from South Oran in 1881. The thesis that Algeria is a part of France is a very .recent innovation. Between 1830 ‘and 1848 Louis Philippe considered Algeria an ‘embarrassing legacy’ and he pursued a policy of limited occupation. This was not based on altruism, but on the low level of French capitalist development. Even under the régime of Napoleon III, when Algeria was formally declared French property, there was no attempt at extensive penetration. In fact military rule was restored and colonization was completely stopped for fear of an- other national rebellion. This policy was reversed in the sixties and seventies when France experienced a vast in- dustrial and commercial expansion. Finance capital extended its operations. The struggle for markets and raw materials intensified. The colonial question took on a new and important significance. The protagonist of colonial expansion, Jules Ferry, summed up the pros- pects of French imperialism under the Second Empire when he wrote: ‘France, which has always exported capital abroad, should consider the colonial question from this angle. For countries like ours, which, because of the nature of their industries, have to export, it is a question of markets. Where there is political pre- dominance, there is a predominance of products—an economic predominance.’ His words were echoed in 1894 by Eugene Etienne, chairman of the colonialist group in the Chamber of Deputies: ‘We have created and intend to preserve and develop a colonial empire, in order to safeguard the future of our country in the new continents, to ensure a market for our goods and find raw materials for our industries.’ Since Algeria was France’s major acquisition she was the first to experience the full force of the new colonial- ism. The first task which confronted the French was the obliteration of Algeria’s national identity and the cultural and religious homogeneity which made her an integral part of the Arab Maghreb. This was achieved by a judicious admixture of administrative decrees and violent reprisals. In 1865 the Senatus Consulte was decreed and all Moslems were declared tc be French subjects. In the same year the first customs union was set up between France and Algeria.4 In 1870 another decree converted Algeria into three French departments. 1871 marked a turning point in Algeria’s history.5 The defeat of France by Bismarck and the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine led France to intensify the ex- ploitation of Algeria. Military rule was abandoned and a civilian governor was appointed under the authority of the French Minister of the Interior. Colonization 2Arab News Letter, supplement 2 to no. 16 and 17, Oct. 30, 1956. 3Quoted in Morocco, p. 42. 4A new customs union in 1884 assured a monopoly of the Algerian market to French industry. 5In 1871 the great uprising of the Kabylie was followed by the most violent massacres in French colonial history. 37

[p010] LABOUR REVIEW was resumed in earnest, thousands of displaced Alsa- tians being resettled in Algeria. The spoliation of Arab land was extremely rapid. As Bugeaud—a notorious colon—has stated: ‘It only matters that the land be good; it does not matter to whom it belongs’. In 1850 the colons had 115,000 hectares, in 1900, they had 1,600,000 hectares and in 1950, they had 2,703,000 hectares.’ Besides the land owned by the colons there are another 11 million hectares held by the French State, known as terres domaniales. In a century of un- precedented poverty and repression the Arabs have been deprived of two-thirds of their land. . The Cremieux Law of 1870 promised the rights of French citizenship to all Moslems who rejected their personal status and accepted French civil law. That the vast majority of Algerian Moslems rejected this law is not at all surprising. It implied: the renunciation of Islam and a departure from koranic law and custom. ‘What this law did achieve, however, was the creation of a new privileged layer of Spaniards, Italians, Jews and other non-French colonists who took advantage of the law to acquire French citizenship. Only one-third of the colons and other Europeans in Algeria are French by blood. These ‘new French’ colons, together with the French, dominated the local assemblies created after the ending of military rule. Using their newly won political power they attacked and confiscated the com- munal property of Arabs and by means of forced judicial sales were able to extort enormous tracts from the Arab farmers. After 1889 European foreigners born in Algeria were naturalized automatically. The high birth rate of the non-French Europeans alarmed the Administration and from 1904 settlers from France were given special rights in assigning lots of land. By the end of the nineteenth century French economic and political domination was securely established. France next turned her attention to the Sahara, whose pacification took another twelve years (1899-1911). ALGERIA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: ASSIMILATION The social and economic problems created by French imperialism are numerous and complicated, and it is possible here only to outline the major ones and to suggest a socialist solution. The political structure of Algeria is simple. At the head of State is a governor-general with administrative, judicial and military powers. Certain special legislative powers are delegated to him by the French Chief of State. He not only prepares the budget, but has the right to dissolve the Algerian Assembly and to proclaim a state of emergency. Between the wars, particularly after the Popular Front took office, a determined attempt was made to ‘assimilate’ Algeria. The idea. behind this policy was to create a social buffer of loyal Algerian Moslem land- owners and petty bourgeoisie between the colons and the dispossessed. This attempt at division, known as the 6Arab News Letter, supplement 2 to no. 16 and 17, Oct. 30, 1956. 7 7These figures were cited by Jean-Paul Sartre in a speech in Paris, Jan. 1956. 38 March-April 1958 Projet Violette, was defeated by the colons, who feared the slightest incursion on their rights and wanted to Keep the Moslems in perpetual disfranchisement. The result of this defeat was particularly galling to the French reformists: in 1938 only 3,000 Moslems were French citizens. The second world war weakened France considerably. She suffered her biggest defeats in her North African territories. By the end of the war it was plain to the most obtuse administrators that Algeria was on the verge of a social upheaval. France hurriedly promulgated a new election law which modified the Cremieux Law of 1870 and con- ferred French citizenship on 60,000 Moslem without loss of personal status. But this niggardly concession, which affected a very small minority of Moslems, was ineffec- tive. Unlike the British in India the French had failed (it is doubtful whether they ever tried) to create a solid and relatively strong native ruling class of Moslems on whom they could rely in an emergency. Thanks to the opposition of the colons this task had become a hope- less one. France also increased native representation in the Algerian municipal and general councils from one- third to two-fifths, but even this was no help in stem- ming the tide of resurgent nationalism. It satisfied only the évolués, who had nothing to gain and everything to lose in a revolution. . Soaring inflation, a terrible shortage of imports and three successive bad harvests produced a bloody. in- surrection in the Kabylie in May 1945. While the world was celebrating the victory of the ‘democratic Allies’ over ‘totalitarianism’ France was indulging in an orgy of murder and rape in Algeria. Dr. J. Thomas, of Algiers hospital, described the conditions of the Algerian Moslems at this time, and the attitude of the French: I have been living in Algeria a long time. I have seen legions of children in rags earn their living, starting from the age of five, by selling newspapers and polishing shoes; I have seen slums in the Arab quarters and the ‘bidonvilles’ —a shame to civilization. At the time of the wine harvest, I have met farm labourers walking for hundreds of miles’ in search of employment, sleeping the night in ditches, feeding themselves with a few dates and grapes, marauding along their way. . I remember talks I had with European settlers, and, seeing their hauntiness, their insolence and their hatred of the Arab people, I was ashamed of being French... I was in Algeria in 1945 at the time of the famine, when thousands of people died of hunger during a year of drought. The criminal policy of the government allowed wheat—the Moslems’ staple food—to be uprooted every- where in order to replace it with vineyards . . I have seen the appalling repression which resulted in 60,000 dead. I have seen children a year old eat earth and I have seen 200 persons die of malaria in a few days in Chardaia. How could we not reap rebellion when for such a long time we sowed hatred, humiliation and misery?’ After the crushing of this abortive rising the adminis- trative machinery went into top gear and produced the infamous Algerian Statute of 1947. This was the product of an unholy alliance between the French bour- geoisie and the French Stalinists, who wished to con- tinue the policy of assimilation which Blum and Violette 8France Observateur, Oct. 4, 1956.

[p011] THE ALGERIAN REVOLUTION had begun in the palmy days of the Popular Front.? The 1947 Statute confirmed the untenable thesis that Algeria was a part of France. It abrogated the Ordinance of 1834 and set up a special status for Algeria; increased the representation of Moslems in the financial delega- tions of the Algerian Assembly; and established a new Algerian Assembly in which nine million Moslems had the same representation as a million Frenchmen. It had no legislative power and all its decisions were subject approval by the French National Assembly. The same principle of parity applied to the representation of Moslems in the French National Assembly. In order to confuse the picture further, and to divide the Algerians, France has set up a clumsy and exceed- ingly complicated administrative structure. Algeria is divided into two parts: the territories of the North (Oran, Constantine and Algiers) and the territories of the South. The latter were in 1956 amalgamated with the Sahara to form a new administrative unit. Under the Code de I’ Indigénat—the basic administra- tive directive—Algerians are deprived of all fundamen- tal liberties. Even French jurists have characterized it as a ‘judicial monstrosity’. The meagre reforms of the 1947 Statute were never implemented. The colons sabotaged the elections to the Algerian Assembly and the majority of the Nationalists under Messali Hadj boycotted the elections and refused to co-operate with the French administration. The Algerian delegation in the French Assembly walked out after the first article of the Statute had been adopted. The defeat of the Statute signified the death of the theory of assimilation. Since then two new expedients have been put forward. The first is federalism—put forward by a section of the socialists and Sedar Senghor, deputy from the Senegal. Federalism envisages local autonomy with defence, foreign affairs and finance in the hands of France. This, if implemented, would mean the creation of a castrated commonwealth in place of the French Union. The other idea comes from the extreme Right, from Jacques Soustelle, who proposes ‘integration’. This would mean the complete integration of France and Algeria, with Algeria sending 100 repre- sentatives to the French Parliament and enjoying the same rights, social services and salaries as France. Both theories are based on the same assumption: the denial of Algerian nationhood. They are bound to fail. THE LAND QUESTION Algeria’s economy, which is dominated by agriculture, performs two functions for metropolitan France: it pro- vides a source of raw materials and a market for manu- factured goods. The discovery of oil will no doubt alter the structure of the Algerian economy, but at present the dominant position is held by agriculture. Six-sevenths of Algeria is desert. Half of the remainder is steppe. Most of. the 16 million cultivable acres are in the moist coastal area known as the ‘Tell’. Of the cultivated area one-third is owned by about 25,000 9The French Stalinists had helped to crush the 1945 uprising, Thorez publicly calling for the execution of Ferhat Abbas and Messali Hadj. Eleven years later the French Communist Party was to sanction the policy of ‘ratissage’—the genocide policy pursued by Mollet. French landowners and the rest by Arabs. The individ- ual holdings of the French average 235 hectares, and many of the estates are over 1,000 hectares in size. The average Moslem holding is about 1.6 cultivated acres. Seventy per cent. of the holdings are normally un- viable. This is not the whole story however. Over- grazing and the wind and water erosion of the steep slopes have produced dust bowls and are daily depriving the fellah of his land. What is even more tragic is the fact that the Moslem cultivator is absolutely helpless against the unpredictable climate and the capricious rainfall of this area. Every drought is invariably followed by a famine, and the precarious balance between sub- sistence and starvation, between life and death, is upset. The colons are protected against such natural disasters. They occupy the humid areas. Their land is irrigable and the French Government spends milliards of francs on public works and irrigation projects whose bene- ficiaries are the colons. Most of the colons’ estates are exempt from taxation. There is no legal limit to the extent of their estates. Of government credits granted to agriculturalists in Algeria 99 per cent. have gone to the colons and only one per cent. to the impoverished fellah. _ Periodic famines, constant erosion, a high rate of indebtedness, lack of irrigation, absence of cheap credit, high prices for imports, high taxes and the ex- haustion of all sources of arable land—all these things have contributed to the social and economic disintegra- tion of the Algerian nation. Algerian agricultural pro- ductivity, symbolized by the donkey and wooden plough, remains extremely low, leaving little surplus for export or accumulation. There is only one alternative: ‘They have no recourse but to sell their lands, abandon their communities and emigrate to the cities of the littoral, where they swell such terrible African slums as the notorious eastern section of Algiers, the Casbah.’!0 There is another and more sinister aspect to the agrarian problems, which dominates the colonial struc- ture of Algerian economy and emphasizes its complete dependence on the French market. That is the displace- ment of cereal production in favour of wine growing. This was particularly true of the period from 1927 to 1937, when more than half the land taken from the Moslems was devoted to the production of wine. What are the effects of this policy? First, Algeria is forced to import—at high prices—SO per cent. more foodstuffs _ than she exports (excluding wine). Secondly, the produc- tion of cereals has gradually moved away from the fertile maritime belt to the southern desert region, which is not irrigated and is infertile. Thirdly, and most im- portant, it has created a vast agricultural proletariat (sub-proletariat, it would be more correct to say) who lead a precarious and migratory existence. Thousands of these labourers periodically emigrate to France in search of employment. They constitute 73 per cent. of the Moslem population. Their annual income does not exceed 55 dollars, of which 78 per cent. is spent on food. In the Oran province, for example, a farm labourer is not employed for more than 150 days a year; yet the labourer is considered privileged in comparison with the thousands of unemployed who are too poor even to emigrate. It is these propertyless workers who form the . 10Josué de Castro, Geography of Hunger (1952), p. 183. 39

[p012] LABOUR REVIEW backbone of the Liberation Army, but not its leader- ship. The only solution for the unrelieved poverty of the Moslems is the industrialization of Algeria, which abounds in mineral wealth. But France will never tolerate such a project. She is determined to keep Algeria as a market for the industrial products of France. The consequences of industrialization would be disastrous for the colons. They would automatically lose their only source of cheap and abundant labour. Industrialization would also mean the growth of trade unions, the creation of a skilled and educated working class and, inevitably, the growth of a socialist movement. RELIGION To smash the basis of Algerian economy and to let it suffocate in the grip of pastoralism and primitive agriculture was not the sole object of French rule in Algeria. It was necessary to consolidate the economic conquests with an attack on the spiritual basis of Moslem resistance. Before 1830 the Moslem religion had played an important and vital part in cementing the unity of Algeria. It provided a moral and legal basis for society. The wakf or habous—the property of the religious foun- dations—provided for the social and educational ser- vices. Not only schools but public works and charity were maintained by wakf revenues. The French appropriated the trusts and kept only a tiny fraction of their revenues for the upkeep of Moslem institutions. The mosques today are under the direct control of the colonial administration. All Moslem preachers and judges are appointed and paid by the . State, and are consequently its servants. The sermons of the imams are censored and only the official clergy— those in the pay of the administration—are allowed to preach. Despite these efforts the Moslem religion continues to play a part in unifying Algerian resistance. The mosques have become the rallying point for national resistance and a target for French revenge. If the Moslem religion was an important ancillary pillar of Arab culture the Arabic language was its central support. The xenophobia of the French found ample scope for its destructive activities in attacking the Arab language. French was made the official lang- uage and the medium of instruction. In the government schools Arabic is either excluded or taught only in the colloquial form. Consequently Arabic has degenerated into a clumsy patois. The persistence of Arabic learning despite the French is due mostly to the efforts of the Society of Algerian Ulema, a religious and _ political organization founded in 1929, which maintained 125 schools by means of private donations. It provided a strong bulwark against the French policy of assimila- tion, thanks to its links with centres of Arab-Moslem culture in Tunisia and Morocco. The social and educational policy of the French is largely determined by the economic needs and privileges of French vested interests. Between 80 and 90 per cent. of the Moslems are illiterate. In the University of Algiers there were in 1956 only 557 Moslem students out of a total of 5,146. . 40 March-April 1958 As far as the Moslems are concerned the sanitation, housing and public works projects do not exist. As for the administrative and social reforms, they are worse than useless. The reform of rural administration in 1956 which began with the removal of the caids (the Beni Oui Ouis) and the formation of communes under the Specialized Administrative Sections has been an utter failure. It was motivated in any case by the desire to win the villagers from the rebels.! The land reform programme has proved to be just as hopeless and ineffective. Here the Government pro- posed to purchase in the areas irrigated by Government projects all land over 150 hectares per man (and 100: hectares per child) for distribution among Arab farmers. The amount of land thus affected would have amounted to about 475,000 acres. Even this timid reform could not be implemented because of the violent opposition of the colons. The reform, known as the Martin Law, still remains on the Statute Book. Paris proposes— Algiers disposes! CLASSES One of the unique features of present-day Algerian society is the complete absence of a native Arab bour- geoisie. There are a small number of big Moslem land- Owners, a considerable petty bourgeoisie and an im- mense mass of labourers and rural paupers estimated at 700,000 families. But there is nothing approximating to a genuine Third Estate. The petty bourgeoisie, which dominates the national movement, constitutes 6 per cent. of the Moslem popula- tion and has a per capita income of not more than 372.5 dollars per year. The ‘middle class’—the term is used in a very wide context—constitutes less than one per cent. of the Moslem population and has an income per head of 673 dollars per annum. The heights of Algerian society are dominated completely by a hand- ful of French landowners and businessmen. On the other hand the huge emigration of landless labourers to France has given rise to a well-organized, skilled indus- trial proletariat whose experience in the French political and Labour movement has helped to give a proletarian tempering to Algerian nationalism. PARTIES From its inception Algerian nationalism has reflected the uneven and belated development of class relations among the Moslem population. After the first world war the essentially political struggle of Algerian nation- alism was diverted into reformist channels. The leaders of this movement—mostly petty bourgeois lawyers— declared categorically in favour of the assimilationist {1The ‘loi cadre’ of the Gaillard Government is another device of the French Administration to woo the more ‘moderate’ elements among the Moslems. Its promise of regional autonomy and free elections exists only on paper; its real motive is revealed by the admission of General Massu— the butcher of Algiers—that ‘the rejection of the first out- line-law by Parliament .. . was a major set-back for the policy of pacification’ (The Times, March 4, 1958).

[p013] THE ALGERIAN REVOLUTION policy of France in exchange for certain administrative and social reforms. The leader of this movement, Ferhat Abbas, wrote in 1936 about the Algerian nation: This homeland does not exist. I did not find it. I asked history. I asked the living and the dead. I visited the grave- yards: no one spoke about it to me. We have dispersed for good the clouds and the ghosts in order definitely to attach our future to the French work in this country. We are the sons of a new world born out of the spirit of the French effort.12 Abbas soon modified his views on assimilation in favour of an Algerian State within the French Union. But his method and aims remained reformist—and adapted to the perpetuation of French rule in the Maghreb. The growth of an Algerian proletariat found its re- flection in the national movement by the formation of the North African Star (ENA) founded and led by Messali Hadj, who was himself an emigrant Algerian strongly influenced by the Russian Revolution, the Riff war and the Kemalist revolution in Turkey. The pro- gramme of the North African Star was diametrically opposed to that of the bourgeois group of Abbas— known as the UDMA (Friends of the Algerian Mani- festo). The ENA, in its programme adopted in 1933, called for: complete independence for Algeria; complete withdrawal of the occupation troops; establishment of a national army; a constituent assembly elected by uni- versal suffrage; free compulsory education; and agrarian reform. The majority of Algerians supported the ENA in preference to the weak and compromised UDMA. There is no doubt that ENA, with its predominantly proletarian character, would have rapidly grown into a revolutionary socialist party had it not been for the treacherous and pro-imperialist policies of the French Popular Front, elected in 1936. The policy of assimila- tion pursued by the Blum régime quickly disillusioned the Algerian nationalists in socialism and communism, and tragically turned them back towards Islam and Pan- Arabism. The dissolution of the ENA (also known as PPA (People’s Party of Algeria), MTLD (Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties) and MNA (Algerian National Movement) ) by the Popular Front in 1937 confirmed this trend and left the Algerians with no alternative but to rely on their own forces and ideas. Despite—or rather because of—the violent repres- sion of the French administration (both Vichyite and Free French) the ENA built up a nation-wide organiza-. tion with a membership of 600,000 during and after the second world war. The support of the bourgeois faction during this time dwindled almost to nothing while Messali’s influence spread. The defeat of 1945 not only depleted the forces of the ENA but threw it back considerably and contribu- ted to growth of reformist tendencies inside the party. These tendencies became more pronounced after the failure of the 1947 Statute and the policy of corruption practised by the French on the more conservative ele- ments of the party. From 1947 the ENA went back- wards politically. The president, Messali, living in exile, was unable to check this development which embraced a majority of the central committee. This reformist 12Annex no. 3, Document on the Algerian Revolution, Inter- Afrique Presse, no. 118-119, June 27, 1957. faction began to revise the programme of the party and emulate the tactics and concepts of the bourgeois Neo- Destour of Tunisia and the Istiqlal of Morocco. At the Second Congress of the ENA-MTLD held in 1953, the old policy of the party, which included nationalization and land reform, was discarded in favour of ‘the reorganization of agriculture in the general interests of Algerians’. Anti-communism and a favourable attitude to ‘the progressive evolution of North American policy’.were the keynote of the con- ference. The problems of the women, the youth and the working class were ignored or glossed over. This line —or lack of line—was strongly resisted by the rank and file and by Messali. Moreover the isolation of the MTLD and its stagnation contrasted strongly with the other national movements in the Maghreb, which were snatching concession after concession from the French. In the summer of 1954, after a bitter struggle, a new congress was convened in Hornu (Belgium) and the ‘centralists—as the revisionists were known—were expelled. This historic congress, the last legal gathering of the ENA-MTLD, reaffirmed the revolutionary nationalism which inspired its foundation and growth. It pledged its solidarity with the Tunisian and Moroccan independence struggles and decided to struggle with the French ‘by all and any means’. The ‘centralists’ attempted to set up a rival centre in Algiers with the funds of the MTLD, which they had appropriated fraudulently. The Algerian people, however, turned a deaf ear to their pleas and pro- phecies. In the meantime a new force had emerged grouped around some of the leaders of the old paramilitary organization of the MTLD, the OS (Secret Organiza- tion). This new organization, known as the CRUA (Revolutionary Committee for Unity of Action) was led by men who had little contact with the party in France and even less knowledge of political realities. Among the leaders of this faction were Ben Bella, Mohammed Khider, Krim Belkacem, Omar Oumrane. According to what little knowledge is available of this organization, it decided, independently of the ‘centralists’ and Messali, to launch the insurrection. On the night of October 31-November 1, 1954, a series of armed attacks were launched against police stations in the Aures and Kabylie regions. This was the signal. for a nation-wide insurrection which soon covered the three departments of the North and many of the southern territories. Why did the CRUA (Whose leaders had turned to Cairo after the 1952 revolution) launch the insurrection before the plans of MTLD were ready? Why did it not only exclude but actually help to imprison the Messalist delegates in Cairo? The only probable ex- planation which conforms with subsequent events is that Nasser feared that the Algerian revolution would pass under the effective leadership of the Messalists once it began, which would constitute a deadly threat to the ambitions of the Egyptian bourgeoisie, who want to dominate the Arab world. The ‘centralists’ were too compromised, but the CRUA proved an effective tool. It had a number of militants, some capable administra- tors and military organizers. Its greatest asset, as far as 41

[p014] LABOUR REVIEW ‘Nasser was concerned, was its lack of political perspec- tive. But the CRUA leaders, because of their lack of political experience and forensic skill, were forced to group around them all the ragtag and bob-tail of the reformist wing, including of course the ‘centralists’, whom they ignored before the insurrection. This new constellation of patriots and charlatans was now called the National Liberation Front (FLN), and in- cluded the UDMA, the ‘centralists’, the Ulemas, the Independents and the Stalinists. The latter were allowed to participate only as individuals. One of the most curious recruits to this curious conglomeration was the ex-president of the Algerian Assembly and one of the most violent opponents of Algerian independence—Mr Fares. . Gilles Martinet, whose profession seems to be that of permanent apologist of the FLN, stated fairly ex- plicitly the reasons for its formation: I remember a discussion I had about a year and a half ago in Cairo with Ben Bella, precisely about the case of - Messali Hadj. Ben Bella, who was then the main leader of the FLN, told me that the tactics of his organization were to be explained by the desire to avoid the occurrence in Algeria of a new Bao-Dai phenomenon. He explained: ‘To avoid “Bao-Dai-ism” we have to accept among us— and not as leaders—all Algerians, including those who col- jaborated with the French Administration. But for this purpose we have to have a single organization. An associa- tion of movements (what Messali Hadj demands) would present for us enormous dangers, for the French Govern- ment would be able to play one against the other. That is why we are ready to welcome Messali to the FLN but not to compromise with the MNA.!3 This view is also confirmed by Rafaello Uboldi, foreign correspondent of Avanti: ‘ALN [Army of National Liberation] units reject any internal division. It is severely forbidden to do any political propaganda in the name of any party. One must limit oneself to . slogans of a general character against the French Administration and relating to the basic programme ef the FLN.’!4 Since the programme of the FLN does not involve land reform or nationalization it is safe to assume that the anti-democratic and totalitarian character of the Front is neither accidental nor episodic, but arises from the class basis and ideology of the Front. In order to im- pose their-policy on the people and to combat the rival propaganda of the MNA the leaders of the FLN have resorted to methods of intrigue, terror and murder. In Algeria they murdered Ben Boulaid, one of the fore- most military leaders in the Aures, and Goffal. Added to this we had the massacres of Melouza and LaFayette. The most serious aspect of this terrorist campaign has been—and still is—the murder of MNA and USTA militants in Paris. These murders have nothing in com- mon with the struggle for Algerian freedom. They serve only to alienate the French and European working class and thus undermine the heroic struggles of the fellaghas. The following extract from an interview between Jean Daniel, reporter for the journal L’Express and an FLN Tepresentative in Tunis reveals the anti-socialist, anti- working class character of the FLN leadership: 13France Observateur, Dec. 14, 1957. 14Jbid. 42 March-April 1958 FLN: The Messalists were only stronger in France. When over a year ago we attempted to turn the Algerian workers. away from the counter-revolutionary Messali, they started shooting down our people. So we did the same. From now on we shall continue to do this and now we have the initia-- tive. This matter concerns us alone. . J.D.: Is it your intention to continue? FLN: Certainly. Without a moment’s respite. We are here training commandos whose mission is to shoot down traitors wherever they may be ... J.D.: Aren’t you worried about repercussions on French public opinion? FLN: For three years French public opinion has had no influence on events. Even if, as some of us suggest, we were to take French opinion into account, this would mean less to us than to get rid of the traitors. J.D.: Why do you call traitors people who claim they want independence and who have the same objectives as you have? , FLN: Because we have all the proofs of their treason. Because they are protected by the socialists and the police. J.D.: No, they are being arrested, persecuted, condemned to death. FLN: That only applies to some of them. It is to create a diversion . . . Terrorism must be tolerated, without it there would be no revolution. J.D.: There are revolutionary workers:in France in whom the execution of trade union leaders inspires considerable doubt about your revolution: it recalls to them the physical destruction of the anarchists*by the Stalinists during the Spanish Civil War ... And if French opinion appears to you as insignificant as all that, you will finish by attacking ’ Frenchmen in France itself. It is madness! FLN: Some of us have considered such action .. .15 Significantly, the attacks against the MNA were stepped up only after the foundation of the USTA (Algerian Workers’ Trade Union Federation) in the summer of 1957. The setting up of the USTA was an historic step towards the independent organization of the Algerian workers and a step towards their emanci- pation. The programme of the USTA is undoubtedly one of the most advanced trade union programmes in the Arab world. It includes the demand for the forty- hour week, the sliding scale of wages, three weeks of paid holidays, absolute prohibition of heavy or un- healthy work by women, equal pay for equal work for youth and women, the right for agricultural workers to organize unions and strike and the institution of a national fund for the unemployed, to be secured by a tax on the profits of the large estates. It is quite easy to understand the anxiety and terror that such an organ- ization and programme would strike in the heart of the Arab bourgeois in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Feypt. For this reason the FLN has attempted to organize the workers in Algeria and France under the aegis of the UGTA (General Union of Algerian Workers). The extension of the UGTA in France is the AGTA (Friendly Society of Algerian Workers) which is a friendly society working in close collaboration with the Communist Party and CGT (General Confederation of Labour). SOME APOLOGISTS FOR THE FLN _ The internecine struggle between the FLN and MNA in France - has naturally become the concern of the French Left. With-a few exceptions, every Left-wing 15L’Express, Nov. 7, 1957.

[p015] THE ALGERIAN REVOLUTION leader and intellectual has denounced the murder of the leaders of the USTA, Bekhat, Fillali, Semmache and Maroc, which took plac in the autumn of 1957. The ex- ceptions are the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the journals Quatriéme Internationale and La Vérité des Travailleurs. |The arguments contained in these journals would not be worth considering if it were not for the spurious claims made by the authors to be ‘Marxists’ and ‘Trotskyists’. Following in the footsteps of Martinet and Bourdet these gentlemen attempt to use the ‘Bellounis affair’! as a means to prove that the MNA is actually an adjunct of the French adminis- tration and is an enemy of the Algerian people. Conversely they try to dress up the FLN as the sole authentic leader of the Algerian Revolution without defining its class basis or its programme: It is a fundamental fact in the North African situation and the revolution: the FLN has taken the initiative in the armed struggle at the present stage. The MNA on the other hand does not occupy such a place in the mass movement and on the other hand by its “more realistic’ positions finds itself to the Right of the FLN.17 This is truly amazing! But they go even further in trying to give a ‘socialist’ tint to a bourgeois pro- gramme: The growth to maturity [of the national movement] is expressed on the political plane by the abandonment, to some extent, of grandiloquent and hollow phrases in favour of a more concrete, precise and better formulated policy, and of more suitable slogans in response to the very con- crete problems which the movement now has to solve every day. The Maquis living in the country districts on the support of the peasant masses have to respond to the daily needs of these masses and to their demands for tomorrow. A new administration has arisen in the villages and popular assemblies are being set up, inspired by the FLN. The agrarian question has become one of the essential preoccupa- tions of the new leaders. (My emphasis—M_.B.)!8 The reader’s distinct impression is that the FLN Jeaders are gradually adapting themselves to the pressure of the rural masses and are solving the problems of the democratic revolution in Algeria. The reference to the agrarian question is deliberately vague for the authors know only too well that the FLN leaders have done nothing and will do nothing to solve the agrarian question. In their time Chiang Kai-shek, Nehru and Thakin Nu also paid attention to the agrar- jan question, but did nothing to solve it. The fault lay not in themselves but in the class they represented. It would be dangerous to imagine that the FLN, because 16See The Newsletter, Feb. 1, 1958, pp. 33-4. 17Quatriéme Internationale, Jan. 1958. 18E.a Vérité des Travailleurs, Oct. 1957. This statement does not bear out the testimony of the correspondent of The. Times, who, after spending some time with the FLN leaders, observed that the ‘FLN’s elephantine tactics and the com- plete absence from their programme of such familiar essen- tials as land reform make it difficult to support the French thesis that this is a revolutionary movement a la Mao Tse- tung’ (The Times, March 3, 1958). Cf. the Economist, Feb. 22, 1958, p. 646: ‘As it stands the FLN is a movement without a leader . . . and without a programme beyond victory . . . The members of the executive committee either have not thought, or have failed to agree, about the kind of State they would like to create in place of the legal extension of France that they seek to destroy.’ it has 50,000 men under its command, can do what Nehru could not do. As Trotsky remarked, ‘Civiliza- tion has made the peasantry its pack animal. The bourgeoisie in the long run only changed the form of the pack.’! The authors also go out of their way to prove that Messali is prepared to guarantee in an independent Algeria ‘the legitimate economic, cultural and strategic interests of France’, whereas the FLN is prepared to nationalize French enterprises ‘if the general interest demands’. The last phrase is indeed felicitous. It is also contrary to the most recent statement made by Mr. M’hammed Yazid on behalf of the National Council of the Algerian Revolution on October 1, 1957, to the chairman of the First Committee of the Twelfth Session of the United Nations General Assembly. While calling upon the United Nations to intervene in a just and democratic solution of the Algerian problem the message concludes thus: ‘The Front of National Liberation is prepared to consider any formulation of free co-operation between France and North Africa, such co-operation taking into account the legitimate interests of France.’ This formulation does not differ in any way from the oft-repeated statements of Messali in relation to a Franco-Maghrebin Commonwealth and the preservation of French interests in Algeria.”° What they do differ on however is the means adopted to secure an independent and Free Algeria. The FLN states that the recognition of Algerian independence must precede any negotiations for a cease-fire and that a provisional government (the FLN) would be charged with establishing the new relations with France as well as deciding when and how elections to a constituent assembly should take place. The MNA, on the other hand, demands a round-table conference of all trends of Algerian nationalism and the French, to be accom- panied by the immediate cessation of executions, liberation of all political prisoners and the re-establish- ment of democratic liberties. This is to be followed by the organization of. general elections for a sovereign constituent assembly under United Nations supervision and the designation of an Algerian government which would negotiate with the French. The FLN proposition precludes the right of any group or party apart from its own to help determine the future relations between France and Algeria. The MNA, while it does not lay down any preliminary conditions to a cease-fire, nevertheless provides a more democratic framework for an independent Algeria.?! 19L. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol. iii (1933), p. 7. 20Arab News Letter, no. 23, Dec. 1957. 21Cf. The Times, March 3, 1958: ‘Of the system on which the future State would be run, there is not a word, although some of the leaders, such as Ouamrane or Abbane Ramdane, are reported to think that Algeria should begin its inde- pendence by three or four years of military dictatorship! The extreme weakness of the Moslem bourgeoisie in a world in which capitalism is tottering makes a stable, democratic, capitalist régime absolutely impossible. The enormous pres- sure of the landless peasantry and the workers on the Left, and the danger of a French reconquest from the Right, would tear a democratic parliamentary régime apart in a short time. That is why a military-Bonapartist régime—even more to the Right than Nasser’s—is the only conceivable Government for an independent capitalist Algeria. . 43

[p016] LABOUR REVIEW The most revolting thing about the canard of Quatriéme Internationale is the unconscionable way in which it treats the murder of trade union militants in France. This resembles the worst traditions of Stalinism: The campaign of indignation which was launched against the FLN has little in common with proletarian morals: it is a question of a political operation intended to turn opinion against the North Africans and specifically against the FLN.22 The logic of this argument defies description. It repeats, in a different context and in a different period, the insinuations and slanders used by the Stalinists against all those who protested against the Moscow trials and other abominations of the Stalin régime. Another scurrilous calumny hurled against the USTA ‘by this journal is that its founding congress in France ‘was held legally with police protection and that its representatives were allowed to travel to Bamako for the conference of the RDA (African Democratic Assembly). If the authors of this argument seek to prove that the USTA leaders are police agents then they will find themselves in the most unexpected company. For it is a fact that the AGTA-FLN also held its congress legally in France in September 1957 with police pro- tection and under the presidency of a well-known Stalinist—Andre Tollet. The hall was also lent by the Stalinists! If the USTA is a pro-French organization then how 22Quatriéme Internationale, Jan. 1958. March-April 1958 explain the fact that the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions—and Irving Brown?3 in. particular— turned down the affiliation of the USTA? Does this means that the ICFTU is anti-imperialist? The persons around the Quatriéme Internationale will have to fabri- cate better myths if they wish to delude the French working class about the aims and composition of MNA and USTA. Whereas the FLN in its social composition and its programme is predominantly petty-bourgeois, the MNA, because of its overwhelming proletarian com- position and its long traditions of struggle, is, though not a socialist party, the precursor of a revolutionary socialist party of the future. It is difficult to predict when such a party will arise. That will depend on how soon a strong Marxist movement can be created in France and on how the war progresses. The formation of the USTA is a step in that direction. This much is certain. The future of Algeria does not rest with the FLN and its apologists but with the work- ing class and landless peasantry. Only they can carry through the political and economic liberation of this martyred land. The task. of Marxists is not to apologize for and de- fend the accomplished fact but to hasten the day when the Algerian working class through its independent organizations will rise up as the true protagonist of Algerian freedom. 23Representative of the AFL-CIO in the ICFTU.