CONFRONTS A CASE OF BURBAUGRATISM
The Acilor steel plant, Algeria's biggest enterprise in heavy indus- — try, was recently the object of special attention among workers, left-wing figures, and progressive elements within the government. Acilor became, | in fact, a case illustrating the problem of bureaucratism.in a spectacular way. .
On November 16, Révolution Africaine, the Algiers weekly edited by Mohamed Harbi, a we Ll-known figure In the left wing of the FLN [Front de Libération Nationale] who was recently made a member of the secretariat of the central commission charged with preparing the organization's next congress, published a vehement denunciation: of corruption: and bureaucratism involving the manager and two members of the self-management committes at the Acilor plant.
The following issue carried an editorial by Harbi and an article by Bachir Boumaza, Minister of Economy, which east further light on the phenomenon of bureaucratism as it mushroomed and was cut off at Acilor.
When Boumaza visited the plant, he was surrounded by angry workers who complained in the most urgent way about a monthly wage of only 26,000 francs (about $52) while members of the self-management committee had been granted up to 400,000 francs ($800) a month, This looked to them like bribery. They said that despite heated criticism, the self-management committee had failed to respond and put things in order.
Minister Boumaza quickly found that a great deal was out of order. The monthly deficit was around $50,000 a month. Foreign technicians had been hired at $2,000 a month, A stock of 900 tons of steel had been sold at far below cost. Waste and corruption were rampant,
Boumaza went into action. Within a half hour the manager was fired and machinery was in motion to change the self-management committee,
In the November 23 issue of Révolution Africaine, Harbi and Boumaza
farted el een aonann tal drew a number of lessons from the experience,
Harbi had-this to say: "The task to which the government, the administration, the party and the trade unions must give priority is to straighten out the economy and its leadership through a precise economic doctrine. . . Those militants who have firm socialist convictions and who possess the qualification required for quick and real understanding of economic problems. . . must concentrate ‘their efforts from now on upon the economy, It is dangerous and risky to leave technical administration in the hands of elements whose socialist and economic training is deficient if they are not even lacking in understanding or actually hostile towards the people's choice of socialism. ..
"To straighten out the economy means in the first place rational organization of the self-managed sector of the economy in agriculture and industry. Abandoned to itself, without adequate help or control from the .— state, this sector could experience. financial collapse,"
Continuing in the same tone, Harbi declared: "Urgent measures must be tndertaken flowing from the experience of self-management as underlined at. the recent congress of peasants. . . creation of a banking system to handle necessary credits and centralize the controlled financial operations of the self-management enterprises; determination by law of the division of income going in part to the national community and in part to the workers; . immediate organization of commercial activity and jebor planning at the communal level,'
Boumaza drew these conclusions: "Industrialization cannot succeed immediately, The formula should therefore be mass mobilization. Especially those workers who have no families should participate in work camps where they can be fed and lodged and work on big construction schemes, Out of concern for justice, the nation must participate in this effort ~ (through the National Solidarity Fund) not by starting strikes in a country advancing rapidly towards socialism but by working and accepting taxes,
In the coming days we shall invest the money of the National Solidarity Fund. This money, increased out of local resources and linked to human investment, will allow us to partially solve this problem Lof unemployment] through creation of semihandicraft shops to produce clothing, shoes, building materials, etc," ;
Looking ahead, Boumaza saids. "In collaboration with the government we have started a job which will lead us at the end of the year towards a congress of self-management committees in the industrial sector, where the problems of self-management in that sector will be considered. Ina few months we shall take in hand this sector whose weight should determine the country's. economic policy. The government hasn't been completely aware of wnat it possesses here, We haven't known how many plants were operating; there have even been socialist cells in a world which still has a capitalist structure, An exact inventory must be made of this sector... "
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