DECISIVE STAGE
By Michel Pablo
The decrees of March 1963 on self-management, plus the tour. of Ben Bella from one end of the country to the other after promulga~ tion of the decrees, marked the hishest point so far reached by the Algerian Revolution. Granting to the Algerian workers the broadest rights now in existence in the entire world in the field of manage~ ment of the economy, the March decrees greatly stimulated the move= ment known as "Management Committees" while consolidating and extending to the utmost under present conditions the "vacated" sector of the economy that has been broucht under self-management.
More than 4,000,000 acres of European and Algerian land are. at present under such administration, constituting already a decisive sector of the agricultural economy. ,
In addition, many industrial enterprises are functioning under the same administration, among them some very important ones such as the Verreries (glass works) de l'Afrique du Nord and the steel foundry Acilor, both in the Oran area,
The March decrees unleashed a veritable revolutionary | remobilization of the peasant and worker masses of the. country, illustrated in the most striking way at the time of Ben Bella's
April 196% tour, a tour interrupted at its height by the assassination of Khemisti, the militant young minister of Foreign Affairs.
_ Then came the formation of ONRA (Office National de la Reforme - Agraire) whose function it was in principle to organize the first ' phase of the Agrarian Reform, already begun on the "vacated" lands (nationalized de facto in reality), under the present form of selfmanaged farms, of “people's farms."
Shortly after, came the launching of the national campaign for democratic reorganization of the self~management bodies, which started on May 15 and which was interrupted temporarily in some places because of the harvest scason,
This campaign aimed at reorganizing self-management everywhere on a genuinely democratic basis, in accordance with a strict ‘ procedure relating to the designation by the workers themselves of an electoral commission entrusted with conducting elections,
The electoral commission registered the slates of candidates in each agricultural or industrial enterprise, whether submitted by the trade-union local of the farm or factory or by any group of ten workers (or jointly),
It posted these slates three days before the vote, printed single ballots listing all the candidates according to slate and held elections by secret vote. Each worker had the right to choose the candidates of his preference all printed on the same ballot (by encircling the number preceding the name of each candidate).
Next the electoral commission counted the ballots before the Workers Assembly, posted the results of the vote for another three . days, registering any possible contest of the outcome by the - workérs, and then transmitted the completed paper work of the . elections to the proper authorities for validation or possible ‘rejection (in case of fraud or irregularities committed during the election) of the electoral results. 7
Thanks to this electoral campaign for the democratic reorganization of self-management, many farms and factories now have regularly and democratically constituted bodies of selfmanagement.
But during the development of this campaign, many other lessons were drawn concerning the functioning and the future of self-management. .
It’ wovld be pointless to cyunccal the cxistence of certain dangers. Ce
For self-management to succecd, it is neccssary for the state and national organizations, the trade unions and the FLN (Front de Liberation National) in particular, to help the workers overcome
the difficulties which they face in the ficlds of credit, of | merchandising and the necessary technical staffing of the farms and plants.
‘Now the difficulties in these areas can serve as a pretext for the bureaucratic elements of the Administration and the national organizations to deprive self-management of an essential part of its prerogatives and reduce it to mere workers control in the frame~ work of a statized economy, centralizod and directed in an authoritarian way from above.
In the absence of a powerful ideological and political structurization of the workers through a genuinc revolutionary party and democratic trade unions, the growth of bureaucratism is almost automatic and irresistible,
The inability of the workers, under these conditions, to resolve on their own all the qucstions posed by self-management | becomes the reason for being of the administrative and political bureaucracy, which appears as the force that makes up for. the | failures and weaknesses of the workers.
In Algeria, a vast ficld of particular rovolutionary cxpcricnee marked by the absence of a revolutionary Marxist perty and leadership, a battle, sometimes confuscd, is now going on bctween the dcomocratic and bureaucratic forces of the Revolution, centering especially on the question of self-management. a, .
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This battle will be decisive not for the social but for the political fate of the R»volution.
- The Revolution can continue to progress toward the economic and social structures characteristic of a workers state, that of an economy largely nationalized and planned, freed from imperialism, either in the form of an economy democratically managed by the _ workers or in the form of an economy managed by a centralized bureaucratic state.
It is on the issue of these two roads of the Revolution that the debate and the struggle among the forces of the Revolution is now taking place.
This, however, should not lead us to forget the wholly counterrevolutionary struggle, which is becoming sharper and more aggravated in Algeria as imperialism and the native feudal, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois reaction gain awareness of the danger that threatens their economic, political and social positions,
The transformation of Algeria into a workers state ig not an enterprise which imperialism will accept without the most violent reactions,
Those who forget this and who analyze and judge the Algerian situation light-mindedly, superficially, by limiting themselves
solely to the phenomena of the superstructure, fall into gross error.
_ Algeria is caught in the convulsions of a struggle to the death between the Revolution anc the counterrevolution, in a very specific context, dominated by the absence as yet of a conscious Marxist-Leninist vanguard and leadership.
Algeria is advancing on the path of the Revolution @mpirically, under the instinctive drive of social forces clashing in great ideological confusion,
Those who seek to judge the real advance of the Revolution by . phenomena of the superstructure -- religion, status of women, form of the Constitution, and even form of the political power and of . the party -- could reach the conclusion that the game has already been won by the definitively counterrevolutionary forces. _
In. despair over such a conclusion they can resort to-all kinds of "ultra~-left" "releasing of the repressed," including, arms in. hand, "camping" in the "underground" of Dra-el-Mizan (1), in the company of elements under command, consciously or unconsciously, of ‘imperialisn,
This is the case with the "friends" ("copains") so dear to G, Martinet (2), who, before seeking to impose 6n the Algerian Revolution the ideal form of their juvenile dreams, would do much better, for example, to work to rid France of the Gaullist dictatorship or Spain of bloody Francoisn.
To intervene with arms in the present course of development of the Algerian Revolution, against the government of Ben Bella, which promoted self-management and the Asrarian Reform, which is defending courageously and loyally the most resolute anti~imperialist revolutionary struggle in Africa and supporting the Cuban Revolution, is the height not only of the light-mindedness characteristic of "ultra-left" confusionism but of provocation, pure and simple.
In face of such actions, the mildness of the regime in reality still remains great.
The real course of the Algerian Revolution cannot truly be judged from the Marxist point of view except by the way the structural transformation of the country has or has not progressed. That the.adopted Constitution sets up an almost absolute bonapartist political power; that the emergence of the FLN, a little unexpectedly, as the party controlling the government and even the Assembly (before this party yct exists as a revolutionary democratic organization holding a clear socialist ideology) is a move of bureaucratic character; thet Boudiarf and his comrades of the PRS (Parti de la Revolution Socialiste), a political tendency | which can be characterized by certain of its aspects as "ultraleft," have been placed under house arrest, however comfortable it may be, without an early regular trial (which, in our opinion, will
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soon take place); and that all these recent political manifesta- ° tions do not square with socialist political democracy is certain.
But so far as we are concerned, we were from the beginning . conscious of the inevitable limitations of political democracy of the regime in Algeria without thereby concluding that the course -of the Revolution would necessarily be blockeds a
-The Algerian Revolution is again at a turning point. Ina few days the President, holding all: the necessary powers, will rebuild his government, already abandoned by the most pro-bourgeois wing.
He will have’ to recreate a governmental team more homogeneous, more efficient, more dynamic which will have to promote the extension of the Agrarian Reform on all the European and Algerian lands above a certain ceiling; reorganize the system of credit and wholesale trade in’ relation to the needs of the socialized sector of the economy; support and extend the socialized industrial sector; promote the formation of skills on a mass scale at an accelerated rate through the radical reform of technical and general schooling; | reorganize the administrative system of the country, simplifying it, on a community basis, the economico~administrative unit indicated — by the Constitution; decide on the fate of self-management on the ' basis of the experience acquired and against the attempts of the bureaucratic wing of the Revolution to alter it in favor of a statized, authoritarian economy administered from above.
' We are firmly convinced that this new stage of the Revolution will likewise be passed through successfully and that the process _ of transforming Algeria into a workers state will again be accelerated and will experience veritable leaps ahead,
After all, this fundamental revolutionary process has not ceased up to now to be the most rapid of all the postwar socialist revolutions. ; ,
May the genuine revolutionists of Europe and the world be ready to defend more energetically than ever the Algerian socialist revolution in its decisive phase. August 28, 1963
(1) Dra-el-Mizan is the village where an armed group was recently captured. The government charged that they were linked with foreign agents.
(2) Gilles Martinet, editor of the weekly Parisian France- Observateur and member of the PSU (Parti Socialiste Unifie), recently wrote an article accusing the Ben Bella government of now holding more European defenders of the Algerian Revolution in prison than the Gaullist government, a
HUNGER STRIKE WINS RELEASE OF FERUVIAN PRASANT LEADERS
A hunger strike conducted by 643 peasant leaders in the central prison of Cuzco ended in victory, according to a report in the August 27 issue of Hsinhua. They were released by local police and judicial authorities. :
The 63 were arrested by the Peruvian government after the largescale land-seizure movement last winter and spring.