EXTREMELY CARELESS
Gert Cornelius de Bruyn, a housepainter, was found guilty in Johannesburg of culpable homicide. De Bruyn killed a Coloured man when he attempted to hit him with the barrel of a loaded shotgun; but he had his finger on the trigger and the gun went off. The magistrate, R.D.Bax, fined de Bruyn £100 and described his action as. "extremely careless,
DEFEND THE ALGERIAN REVOLUTION!
_ [The following declaration was issued by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International June 23.]
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The military coup d'état in Algeria June 19 ended the alliance between the wing of the Front de Libération Nationale led by Ben Bella, which was oriented toward socialism, linking itself to the masses through "workers! self-management," and the "frontier army't headed by Houari Boumedienne, which favored an Islamic "Arab - socialism," It was this alliance that enabled the Ben Bella- Boumedienne combination to topple the regime of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic in the summer of 1962. The coup d'état constitutes a heavy blow against the left wing of the Algerian revolution and places in danger the main conquest of the revolution up to now == workers! self-management of the nationalized enterprises.
The support immediately accorded to the new regime by the uléma [Muslim theologians], the absence of any support for the coup d'état from the unions or the youth of the FLN, the massive arrests of left-wing militants, the first popular demonstrations against the coup d'état and in favor of Ben Bella, all confirm this estimate of the basic meaning of this grave development.
On the other hand it would be a serious error to view Boumedienne's military dictatorship as the direct instrument of a social counterrevolution, as the direct instrument of bourgeois or neocolonialist forces. Subjectively, Boumedienne and the army cadre favor continuing and even expanding the nationalized sector of the economy -- but along the lines of Nasser's Egypt. Objectively the new regime is Bonapartist and under the given relationship of class forces could not restore the nationalized sectors to capitalist ownership for quite a time, To consolidate his power, Boumedienne is capable of taking some steps in the direction of the second agrarian reform promised by Ben Bella although this would run against the wishes of the Algerian landowners to be seen behind the Muslim clerical faction for whom Boumedienne has become a spokesman. But due to his isolation from the masses, Boumedienne, even more than Ben Bella, will find himself obliged to keep in the good graces of French imperialism.
The ease with which Ben Bella was removed from power at the very moment when his prestige appeared to be the highest and when he seemed to have all the strings of government in his own hands shows the correctness of the criticisms which the revolutionary Marxists offered while supporting Ben Bella against the right-wing forces that sought to block, slow down and derail the Algerian revolution,
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The reasons for the easy victory of the coup d'état are quite clear. There was no genuine mass party of the vanguard capable of . mobilizing the most politically conscious sector of the toiling population of the towns and countryside on a nation-wide scale. The second agrarian reform was interminably postponed, thus disappointing the most disinherited layers of the countryside, to whom the revolution has not yet brought any fundamental change in their miserable standard of living nor any perspective of relieving it in the immediate future, No solution was worked out to the bitter problem of unemployment, thus contributing to a grave rise in apathy and the progressive demobilization of the masses, who demonstrated. their support for a revolutionary socialist orientation by the hundneds of thousands in March and May 1963, The decision of the FLN congress to construct a genuine popular militia, thus arming the workers and poor peasants, was never carried out. In short a military coup d'état, put into motion in the dead of night, was able to take over in a few hours because the Algerian revolution had not been carried through to the end, to the institution of a workers state based on committees of workers and poor peasants exercising the real power,
The displacement of Ben Bella by right-wing forces is the bitter price which the Algerian left wing must pay for a policy of continual compromise at the top, which for more than a year was substituted for mobilizing the masses and deepening the revolution. The failure to mobilize the masses, to organize a mass vanguard party, to-extend the revolution, left the country without a powerful counterweight to the army which was becoming a professional force holding a privileged position in relation to the rest of the population. This opened the way for Boumedienne's coup d'état,
The increasing personal Bonapartism, which Ben Bella substituted for a revolutionary socialist policy, was.a big factor in his downfall, Ben Bella did strike at the right-wing forces, but he balanced these with blows at the left. The inordinate concentration of personal power reflected the narrowing basis of his rule and therefore his increasing vulnerability. This was masked by his speech-making and his capacity to maneuver with the heads of the rival cliques and factions.
The revolutionists of Algeria and all other countries must draw the indicated lessons. Once again the theory of the permanent revolution has been strikingly confirmed; this time, unfortunately, not in a positive sense as in the case of Cuba, but in a negative way. No conquests in a colonial revolution can be considered to have been consolidated until a workers state has been created, until a revolutionary socialist party has been built, until the workers and poor peasants hold power through their own institutions of proletarian democracy.
The Algerian revolution has just. lost a battle. But it is far from having been liquidated. Its roots in a population of some
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twelve million are too deep, the militants it aroused to political consciousness during eleven years of tumultuous struggles are too numerous, the hopes which it aroused among the masses are too great for the Algerian people to passively accept the installation of a military dictatorship that would begin by eliminating at least part of the conquests of the revolution,
Even in the best of cases, the Boumedienne regime stands on a program of "austerity" and the military direction of self-management, the abolition of any tendency toward the development of popular institutions of rule, the liquidation of what remains of workers! democracy (Ben Bella himself contributed to this), the smothering of spontaneous mass action, the reinforcement in the long run of all the rightist elements in the state apparatus and the economy. Already the political spokesmen of the circles linked to the business world and to imperialism, who were driven out by Ben Bella, are. again moving onto the scene. The military Bonapartism of Boumedi enne raises the specter of Algeria becoming another Syria or another Congo.
The resistance to the engineers of the coup d'état is beginning to form, It must be organized and extended to all fields -~ in workers! action in defense of self-management, in political struggle, in armed struggle. A campaign must be opened to save the lives of the leaders of the left and to free them from prison, An underground network must be organized to unleash a mass struggle at the first favorable opening. The military dictatorship must not be permitted to become consolidated.
The Fourth International, which was the first organization to come to the aid of the FLN in the most difficult days of the struggle for freedom, appeals to the workers and poor peasants of Algeria, the Maghreb, of Africa and all countries in the world to defend the Algerian revolution against the new danger. A lasting setback tothe Algerian revolution would signify a terrible blow to the Arab and African revolutions.
In this defense of the endangered Algerian revolution, the workers and poor peasants will draw all the lessons of the latest experience. The main lesson is absolutely clear. It is necessary to build a mass revolutionary party that will actually carry out the Algiers Charter, that will lead the socialist revolution forward to victory in the creation of a stable government of the workers and’ poor peasants in Algeria.
Directeur~Gérant: Pierre FRANK.» l'éditeur).