Colonel Boumedienne would have done well to reread the remarks of Comandante Che Guevara in which the Cuban leader strongly reminded his listeners that not only is planning one of the laws of socialism but still more that without a correct plan there can be no leap forward in the development of the economy in the present epoch.
It is true that the Cuban socialists, and Che Guevara in particular, are no longer held in repute in the entourage of Algeria's ministers.
In recent weeks, El pjoten. which is published by the People's National Army [Armée Nationale Populaire], has become particularly interesting to read. It was announced that it is to appear twice a month, For technical reasons this had to be postponed, In addition, issue No. 28 (August) denied the rumors that have been circulating about No. 27 being seized. It is quite possible that here, too, the homogeneity is not total...
However that may be, in an interview published without commentary in the same publication, the assistant director of the People's Bank for Algerian Trade and Industry [ Banque Populaire pour Le Com merce et 1'Industrie Algérien] made the glorious announcement that the financial balance for 1964 was positive, that for the first time profits had been recorded, and that deposits had doubled over those of 1962. There is nothing astonishing about this, since the Algiers Charter, adopted by the April 1964 congress of the FLN [Front de Libération Nationale], stated that "the banks still control, directly or indirectly, the economy of the country as a whole, and exercise a
threatening pressure on the entire socialist sector,"
The Algiers Charter added: “Absorption by the socialist sec-~ tor ofall the deposit and credit establishments must constitute one of the fundamental cbjectives to be undertaken by the party and the government..." Co
In the declaration of the assistant director of the BPCIA, this is transmuted into the following: "At present, the BPCIA is addressing the management committees as it has addressed the companies. Instead of granting them credit in response to a mere letter as in the past, it is demanding an accounting situation permitting it to undertake a study of the files [sic]. It is a question of accustoming the self-managed enterprises to banking practices [sic again]."
- This "nuance" reveals the unbridgeable barrier that separates the opposing classes within the capitalist structure.
Finally, touching on the crying disparity separating the traditional peasantry from the modern sector, Boumedienne, in his programmatic speech, advocated developing the projects now underway: reforestation, stock breeding, irrigation, soil reclamation, ete, Of the necessary readjustment in ownership and the galvanizing of the poverty-stricken rural economy through a radical agrarian reform, not a thing. was said. The Algiers Charter nevertheless put it on the agenda and the central committee of the FLN let it be known first in February and again in June that this would be carried out in the summer of 1965,
A program of this kind leaves the road wide open to neocolon-— jalism. In keeping with its incapacity to resolve the present crisis and to offer a genuine solution to the current economic difficulties, the Boumedienne regime is searching desperately for diversionary political issues.
Thus, since the beginning of September, the Algerian press has launched a big offensive against...the "pieds-rouges."*- The offensive -was mounted under pretext of replying to an article by André Laude in the August 21 Le Monde entitled "In Defense of the Pieds-Rouges." Laude stated in his article that he was referring to those French who offered disinterested aid to the Algerian Revolution during and after the war for national liberation.
An editorial in the September 4 Hl Moudjahid was the opening gun. After commenting on the "benefits and unquestionable successes"
*The French colonialists were contemptuously referred to in their time as "pieds-noirs" (black feet). Boumedienne's propagandists have now coined the term "pieds-rouges" (red feet) for French socialists who rallied to the cause of the Algerians in their freedom struggle and who, with the victory, went to Algeria to offer help in reconstructing the war-torn country.
of the traditional technical cooperation between France and Algeria, the editor wrote: "Certain people cooperated in the struggle for the country's independence. Friends in the difficult times and in our combat, they are continuing to serve our country with faith and ardor, but quite often it is difficult for them to reach equilibrium... Algeria has no need to accept the collaboration of adventurers, of 'cloudy! minds or representatives of minority tendencies within minority movements..."
The September 4 Révolution Africaine likewise took this theme for the subject of an editorial by Dr. A. Khaldi. (Omar Ouzegane was removed from his post as editor of this weekly with the August 20 issue following two editorials advocating a certain agrarian reform. ) The new editor attacked the "pasture-seekers, advisers more than _ technicians, who distinguished themselves more by their toadyism than by their seruples, adventurers making the rounds of certain African capitals, these 'pieds-rouges! sneaking around in rubber soles who know how to put on green Turkish slippers if needed."
Finally, still in Révolution Africaine, an article by Malek Bennabi on the level of the worst period of McCarthyism and rabid anti-Communism:
"at the present time, the evil we must worry about in Algeria is sabotage of the state apparatus. Communist Russia had to face this peril in the 1927-1939 period,
"Tt is worse than an armed attack because they can gnaw away at this apparatus silently, in the dark, until it falls to pieces, without our hearing anything or seeing anything while it is going ONeeo
"The virulent saboteur is the one who works in liaison with other elements of the same kind knowing the objective of their work. He knows that he wants to destroy a society, a state, a regime.
"In addition, this type of social microbe can be unaware of other members of the same pathological family -- it is even a technical necessity for those with the card-index (the foreign power utilizing them) -= but he cannot. be unaware of the nature of his work and the pay for his work,
"He knows that he is working in accordance with a plan drawn up abroad within the framework of a global strategy that applies all the methods of microscopic work wherever the atomic bomb is not necessary or possible,'
Such literature would warrant only an ironic smile were it not combined with repression of the former left wing of Ben Bellism* and
*The partisans of Hocine Zahouane, author of a proclamation by a new resistance movement, the Organisation de la Résistance Populaire,
blind but rigorous repression. directed. essentially against French technicians cooperating with Algeria who are considered to one degree or another to hold leftist views.
Whatever the propaganda intended to disorient the working masses of the towns and countryside, while hunting down new scapegoats, the diversion has little chance of being long lived.
[see World Outlook August 6]; Mohamed Harbi, who, according to a report in Le Monde, was arrssted August 9, etc.
SEVEN FRENCH