WORKERS STRUGGLES RISE IN TUNISIA by M. AZIZ two Tunisian revolutionary Marxists. cialist party. French colonization, which had begun in Tunisia in 1887, came to an end in 1956 with the proclamation of the independence of the country. The achievement of independence was an expression both of the inability of French imperialism to subdue the nationalist movement led by Bourguiba and of its desire to divide the anticolonial struggles. These struggles had been spreading throughout the Maghreb and had been stimulating consciousness among the peoples of the region that they belong to the same nation. In granting independence to Tunisia, French imperialism intended to use neocolonialism in order to move from direct to indirect rule 22
• Habib Bourguiba & B.MALIK based on the country's continuing economic dependence on France. One of the basic characteristics of French colonialism in Tunisia had been the prevention of the formation of a powerful local bourgeois class that could have bid for direct power once independence was achieved. Instead, a weak landed and commercial bourgeoisie, based largely on speculation, took shape around the colonial enterprise. Concurrently, the betrayal of the French Stalinists and their Tunisian subsidiary - who, on the basis of a false analysis of the national question that con-
demned them to remain in the framework of the "French Union, "were either unwilling or unable to grasp the immediate contradiction between the colonized and the colonizers - deprived them of any claim to provide any leadership for the movement to free the masses. These two historic features, combined with the vacuum created by the absence of a revolutionary pole capable of uniting the spontaneous energy of the masses and directing it toward a struggle for full emancipation, pushed the petty-bourgeois team assembled in the neoDestour party to the forefront, enabling it to take the leadership of the liberation movement. The slogan of independence, which the neo-Destour was able to raise at the opportune moment, rallied both the workers of the General Union of Tunisian Workers (GUTW) and the disinherited masses of the countryside, as well as the patty-bourgeois layers and sections of the bourgeoisie aspiring to take up the torch from the colonial power. When the neocolonial pact was signed, all these sectors assembled behind the neo-Destour. Power was transferred (not without clashes) to the most seasoned team, the team that had demonstrated the greatest ability to hold back and dampen the mass movement while simultaneously relying on the mobilization of that movement. Once in power, this team was to place the mass organizations under its heel and operate in accordance with the historic interests of the bourgeoisie. After noting the failure of its extremely timid liberal policy, the nationalist leadership resigned itself to entering a phase of "collectivization. " In 1956, just after independence, Ben Salah, former secretary of the workers federation who had previously been condemned and expelled by the neo-Destour leadership, was recalled to the country to implement the program of the GUTW. Remaining within the neocolonial framework, the team of bureaucrats and technocrats assembled around Ben Salah had illusions in the possibility of reordering the system from within by means of increasingly heavy structural reforms. These reforms affected the sectors of wholesale and retail trade, as well as the agrarian system, the aim being to modernize the economic structures and thus permit some accumulation of capital that would then be transferred to the still very embryonic industrial sector. This experiment received the support of American imperialism (toward the middle of the 1960s) and the ruling party, while the landed bourgeoisie took a more or less wait-and-see attitude, since the project did not damage its system of private property. In fact, the landlords were able to draw some profit from this scheme, for they participated in administering the cooperatives that were formed and also enjoyed the benefits of a parallel circuit erected by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Tunisian central bank which ran directly counter to the initiatives of the various official plans. Ben Salah believed that the large landlords could be knocked out of commission by the mere establishment of compulsory cooperatives on their land, a step that was taken in 1969 with the blessings of Bourguiba. Subsequently, the economic crisis, the deterioration of the standard of living of the masses, the increasingly pronounced proletarianization of the small peasants, and the growing discontent in the countryside served as a springboard for the financial and landed bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie reacted violently to the cooperatives, drawing the mass of small and medium-sized peasant producers behind them, for their interests were at stake as well. It was decided to break the spirit of the cooperatives. The heavy concentration of land and the proletarianization of new layers of small peasants, logical consequences of the Ben Salah experiment, intensified further. The immediate consequence of the crisis of September 1969 (some months after the decision to generalize the cooperatives throughout the country) was the ouster of Ben Salah from power and then his condemnation to ten years at hard labor on charges of "high treason. " This crisis provoked some wavering and a general malaise at all levels within the ruling layer, which had appeared homogeneous since the Bizerte congress of 1964, when the neo-Destour party changed its name to the Destourian Socialist party (DSP). The shift was reflected in a return to a so-called liberal economic policy. From the 'congress of destiny to the "congress of clarity" It was not until the DSP congress of 1971, dubbed the "congress of destiny, " that the acute social contradictions among the ruling political personnel were reflected much more clearly. At that congress on inter-bourgeois clique struggle broke out over how to administer the neocolonial state. The congress exposed the internal contradictions within the neo-Destour party and state and was marked by wrangling over succession. A bourgeois opposition of a liberal variety began to take shape, Its offensive was essentially centered around corridor battles aimed at remodeling the norms of functioning within the party and the state apparatus and at a certain democratization of institutions. Because of the crisis that hod been shaking the country since 1969 and had affected the instruments of bourgeois rule full force, this battle would have been won but for the direct intervention of Bourguiba the Bonaparte, who took the wind out of the liberals' sails and reestablished an unstable equilibrium that was to last until the "congress of clarity, " held in 1974. That congress purged the party, eliminating the liberal clique. Lacking any economic or social base, the Mestirists* were unable to formulate any coherent project or to *Mestiri, one of the leoders of the DSP, was the leader of the "liberal" current, an advocate of establishing a genuine bourgeois democracy.
TUNISIA present themselves as an alternative bourgeois pole to the policy of the ruling group. The congenital weakness of the local bourgeoisie, due to the structural weakness of a dominated economy, inevitably relegates this bourgeoisie to an intermediary role between a very small local market (within which remnants of precapital ist production remain very much alive) and the world capitalist market. After the various abortive attempts at bourgeois reform under Ben Salah - projects that had been implemented on the basis of improvised plans — the entire policy of the ruling class became one of palliatives and substitutes. At the same time, the ruling class tried to make some gestures of good will to the middle classes (the social base of the regime), whose various sectors were manifesting a certain attitude of defiance in face of the repeated crises, which had cast discredit on the abilities and coherence of the neo-Destourian team in power. Condemned to remain within the orbit of imperialism, this team was to keep the door open to foreign capital in an effort to gather some crumbs, try to minimize the extent of growing unemployment, and increase long-term capacities for industrialization - all on the basis of subsidiary operations and joint ventures! It was in this framework that the investment code was worked out in 1969. Later, 1972 legislation paved the way for the creation of the Agency for the Promotion of Investments (1973) and extended the "investment code. " The real aim was to codify the implantation of imperialist corporations in the country by creating a special system that entailed fiscal, customs, and exchange benefits. This law, which relates to manufacfuring industry, includes such provisions as: complete exemption from taxes on profits for a ten-year period, then 80 percent exemption for the next ten years; exemption from all restrictions and taxes on turnover relative to purchases made in the countryThe advocates of this law proudly compared Tunisia to Singapore, Malaysia, and Ireland, countries which are already rather more advanced in this realm, fiscal paradises with abundant skilled labor receiving very modest wages. The essence of this policy, which is in force today, may be summed up in this extract of on interview granted the review Afrique Industrie in February 1974 by Shadly Ayari, ex-minister of the economy: "Why textiles in Tunisia? Not because everybody makes textiles, but because we thought that the raw material we could produce was not wool or cotton but labor and wages. ... This labor and these wages are now sufficiently competitive in Tunisia to enable us to produce good quality textiles relatively cheaply." Nevertheless, in order to perfect this financial parodise, the bourgeois class must guarantee the imperialists lasting social peace in order to assure their colossal profits. Thus, in addition to restructuring and modernizing the repressive apparatus (especially the police, and the parallel armed gangs), the regime passed new laws aimed 24 at setting up important political frump cards. The ruling class had been compelled to deal with the first wave of radicalization at the end of the 1960s, especially in the student milieu, where the direct impact of the Palestinian resistance influenced the forms in which the for left emerged. The far-left organizations were the ones primarily targeted by the repression. But as discontent spread to other social layers, particularly the workers, the regime had to confront a more threatening mass movement. It thus had to use all the means af its command, including physical force, to try to dam up the movement. In the framework of its policy of "contract for progress" or "social contract, * the Nouira government assembled the "social partners" - the employers association, the ruling party, and the workers federation held in check by the party - in an effort to dampen the effervescence of the mass movement. At the same time, however, big strikes for economic demands broke out. The workers engaging in the most advanced struggles (railway and transport workers) were attacked by the police. From that point on, the regime has not established any real social truce, despite its demands for social peace. The latest struggles, in May 1976, beyend their spontaneous and militant character, took on a manifest political significance given the present context. The workers resolutely entered into struggle just when the contradictions among the various factions of the regime were sharpening, disregarding the "defense of the national interest" which the exploiting class had attempted to make them respect. The advocates of "national unity" had long since counted on social peace, the guarantee needed for assuring investments by imperialist capital in the country. The control of the mass organizations (including the fradeunion federation), the repression, and the role the party made the servile trade-union bureaucracy play allowed the neo-Destour to pretend that unanimity had been created around it. Thus, in March 1976, on the eve of the anniversary of independence, the regime took advantage of an abortive "coup" directed by the @adhaffi regime in Libya to wage a hysterical campaign against the "bloody and terrorist Libyan regime, " to issue an appeal to the population to close ranks around the Supreme Fighter and the party he guides, to raise the specter of the fatherland endangered by foreign threats, and to warn the Mestiri bourgeois opposition clique, which had begun to agitate, once again demanding the democratization of institutions and the toning down of the old repressive methods. This campaign culminated in the carefully orchestrated show staged around the trial before the state security court of the three Libyans charged with having organized the coup. In spite of the tarnished image of the nationalist Libyan pefty bourgeoisie, which once again demonstrated its true character by expelling thousands of Tunisian workers from Libya, in the eyes of broad layers of workers and youth this trial appeared as a real charade, a way of covering up the real problems. The intervention of
Ould-Daddah, president of, Mauritania, who mediated the Tunisian-Libyan dispute, came at a good time to prove once again that inter-bourgeois Arab contradictions are relegated to the back seaf in face of the real threats that may emerge from the mass movement itself.
The workers struggles of May broke out in a context marked by the deterioration of the living standards of the masses, a dizzying rise in the prices of basic commodifies, and a stagnation of wages. This new effervescence of workers struggles stingingly belied the regime's claims to have established social stability and negated the pretensions of the trade-union bureaucracy.
This bureaucracy had just "celebrated" one of the calmest. May Days ever, the "fruit" of the close collaboration between the social partners and the joint efforts of the GUTW and the DSP to finally cement "national unity, "efforts supposedly facilitated by the comprehension and responsibility of the workers, who were working within and through their organization to increase productivity so as to definitively assure the beginning of real economic progress. But immediately after the May Day weekend, thousands of workers moved into struggle, occupying their work places. The movement began in the urban transportation system, paralyzing the major activities of the capital and its suburbs for two days, and then spread like an oil stain. The truck drivers were the next to walk out. Then it was the turn of the postal workers, who held twenty-four-hour work stoppages in several centers in the provinces. The 2,400 workers of the steel factory of el-Fouladh also participated in the mobilizations; they constitute the largest concentration of workers in Tunisia and have a genuine tradition of struggle. Other smaller enterprises joined in, sometimes for work stoppages of several hours, sometimes picking up a struggle that had been left hanging. The demands were always the same. For the first time since 1956, the public health system was also affected by the movement. The workers of some of the big hospitals in the capital stopped work for several hours, forcing the regime to make concessions, granting medical and "paramedical" personnel a one-hour-per-day reduction in hours (from eight to seven). But this gain was to be eroded several weeks later; summer hours went back to the old system. The last week of May was marked by the entry into struggle of the young magistrates, who in violation of the bourgeois legality of the institutions in which they function (all members of the judicial system are forbidden to engage in any concerted action that halts or impedes the functioning of the courts, according to article 18 of the magistrate code promulgated in July 1967), widened the fissures in the state apparatus itself. And while a good number of the fourteen demands they raised were corporatist (such as salary increases), their demand that trade-union rights be recognized and that the threat of layoff for political activity be eliminated expressed the aspirations of some fringes of young magistrates to act against the ossification and arbitrariness of the judicial bodies.
Between the hammer and the anvil The regime's response was clear. Once it overcame its initial surprise, it quickly recovered its repressive reflexes. The "Forces of order" (police and public security brigades) attacked strikers and began arresting "ringleoders. " But blind repression was no longer effective, given the scope of the movement. Thus, while utilizing a part of its repressive apparatus in an effort to break the spirit of the workers, the regime had to resort to the tactic of calling upon the trade-union bureaucracy. The maneuver was obvious: Use the GUTW to cool things down and control the movement. Once the situation was pacified and after a number of preventive arrests under the pretext of protecting public order, the regime launched new trials of militants. From the very first day of the transit strike, the movement had promised to be a tough one. The trode-union leadership had to assume its responsibilities. It had been driven to the wall. Previously the GUTW had organized some "legal" strikes against some of the smaller "intransigent bosses. " This enabled the GUTW to preserve and even extend its working-class base. It was thus able to appear as an organization defending the interests of the workers. But this time the mobilization went way beyond the rules of the game and escaped bureaucratic control. The bureaucracy's position became clear as of the beginning of June. It was to condemn the mobilizations as illegal and to issue an ultimatum to the workers, demanding that they go back to work. Just after the railway strike broke out, the executive bureau of the GUTW (the minister of social affairs of which is also a full member of the secretariat of the neo-Destour party) held an emergency meeting to "study the causes of the wildcat strikes unleashed in some enterprises. " The motion adopted by this meeting emphasized the following four points:
*respect for low and order;
*condemnation of wildcat strikes and all chaotic action;
*launching of a strike is not to be parmitted without prior agreement from the trade-union federation;
*threat of expulsion and coordination of action with the party in order to prevent elements expelled from the union federation from entering the structures of the party. The motion concluded as follows: "to promote producTion and to mobilize all potential with a view toward achieving integrated economic progress and toward realizing a more just division of the national income, within the framework of national unity." At the beginning of each struggle the party simply repeated (in the press, on the rodio and television) the condemnations and ultimatums issued against the workeis by the trade-union bureaucracy. While some contradictions could have emerged between the party and the union bureaucracy during the struggles, these contradictions were the product only of the position of the buregucracy, caught between an increasingly
25
TUNISIA threatening mass movement (which if was determined to tame) and its own complete fealty to the party. The determination and insolence of the workers broke down the bureaucracy's dream of maintaining its policy of "dialogue" and harmony among the "social partners" with the aim of concretizing its hazy theory of "national unity." Not so long ago the weekly organ of the GUTW, ElSha'b (The People), claimed that the union had 400,ing influx of workers into the union proves only one thing: the workers are clearly expressing their consciousness of the need to organize to defend their immediate interests against the deterioration of their living conditions as a result of unemployment and the rising cost of living. The only legal framework open to them for doing this (even if it is o meager and even fake framework), the only structure they can occasionally use to launch some struggles, is the GUTW. It remains for the most advanced workers, those who are now waging radical struggles, along with revolutionaries, to transform the GUTW, to make it a real class-struggle trade union. Following the latest struggles, a workers vanguard conscious of the role it will have to play in the future struggles has been taking shape. The workers who bosed and challenged the trade-union bureaucrats before thousands of their comrodes, who tried empirically through their creative imagination to link up with the best traditions of the international workers movement, both on the level of Forms of struggle and on the level of self-defense, the workers who spontaneously and courageously contested the forces of bourgeois order for control of the streets, these workers are now asking themselves a question: How to construct the instruments, both inside and outside the union, that can enable the most militant workers to wage struggles, to make their demands felt by breaking ouf of the bureaucratic straitjacket. In the course of these mobilizations, which are becoming increasingly intense, the most advanced workers have exhibited enormous capacities to drow other layers of workers behind them, to induce these workers also to wage their own struggles and to realize their potential for self-organization. It is on the basis of these experiences that revolutionaries must concretely plan ouf their interventions. Addressing themselves to and relying on the most rodicalized sectors of the toiling masses, they must begin from the most directly felt concerns of the masses, stressing defense of their immediate interests and the strug gle for democratic rights like the right to strike, freedom of organization and the press, etc. On this basis they must formulate overall political objectives that directly challenge the bourgeois regime and the imperialist order. At present the main objective is to deal with the repression hitting the workers in struggle, to demand the immediate and unconditional release of those imprisoned. But to limit oneself exclusively to demands for demo26 cratic rights would only strengthen the illusions of the toiling masses in the ability of the present neocolonial regime to respond to their demands. It is thus necessary to immediately link struggles for the defense of the most elementary democratic rights to socialist objectives, in order to raise the consciousness of the masses. Adiscussion must immediately be opened with the existing revolutionary forces on the strategic context of the Arab nation in order to create the political and organizafional instrument that is needed to confront the reactionary holy alliance of Arab bourgeoisies with the greatest chance of success: the Arab-wide revolutionary party. The mutual defense pact that has been recently concluded between the bourgeois Sadat regime in Egypt and the bloody military junta of Joafar el-Nimeiry in the Sudan is only one more declaration of war on the Arab mass movement developing in the region. The workers of the Tunisian transit and rail system, the postal workers, and the workers of el-Fouladh, following the example of the workers of Helwan, Mahalla el-Kubra, the Cairo industrial suburbs, and Alexandria in Egypt, have now pointed the way forward. They have demonstrated the sort of class solidarity that can unite them in the daily fight they must wage against the bourgeois regimes that exploit them. E
New IMG pamphlet containing trans lation of documents by Fourth International organisations in the Arab world. Available from RED BOOKS, 97 Caledonian Road, London N.1. -price 30p & 6p p&p THE ARAB REUOLUTION Its Character, Present State. And Perspectiues
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