Paris, she notes, "resembled a city under siege during the closing months of the war. In the wake of a failed coup attempt, the Secret Army Organization (OAS), a clandestine fascist group based in the officer corps of the French army, had unleashed a campaign of bombings and assassinations in the capital aimed at bringing down the French government before it recognized Algerian independence. Paratroopers armed with submachine guns stood guard twenty-four hours a day on every street corner, and plastic bombs exploded nightly in mailboxes and other public locations throughout the city."

Waters joined student antifascist demonstrations that challenged the prohibition on street actions and faced off against the hated special police force, the Compagnie Républicaine de Sécurité (CRS). Many students were injured or arrested in the conflicts and eight people died in February 1962 when the CRS attacked a demonstration. That brutality proved to be a decisive turning point in public opposition to the war. The Evian Accords, recognizing Algerian independence, were signed a few months later.

In the wake of agreements with the French government, a June 1962 meeting of the Algerian National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale--FLN) adopted a revolutionary document called the Tripoli Program. The program noted that the mass participation in the struggle against French colonialism opened a new phase in Algerian history. Among other measures, it pointed to the need to deepen the mobilization of the masses of workers and peasants in order to carry out a sweeping agrarian reform; the nationalization of basic industry, transport, banks, and foreign trade; the widening of education throughout the country; and collaboration with anticolonial struggles around the world.

These events, together with the socialist revolution in Cuba, had a profound impact on revolutionary-minded young people of the day, Waters explains, helping them to become communists and to see the need to build revolutionary organizations in France, the United States, and elsewhere.

The Algerian Revolution of 1954-65 was one of the most powerful of the post-World War II anticolonial struggles that swept Asia and Africa. The French imperialist masters considered Algeria, conquered in 1830, to be an integral part of France, like the city of Paris or the Burgundy region. In response to the rising actions of the liberation movement, the French rulers unleashed a savage war to retain the country among their territories.

The first action of the FLN was a Nov. 1, 1954, guerrilla attack against French forces in the Aurès mountains of eastern Algeria. This took place just six months after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam--a defeat that spelled the end of French domination of Indochina and accelerated the disintegration of the French colonial empire.

By 1956 a New York Times report said that "99 percent of Moslems are converted now to the idea that there must be an Algerian nation instead of Algeria continuing as an official part of France. The insurrection has struck heavy blows to the life of France’s main North African holding." Some areas in eastern Algeria, the paper reported, "are served now only by boat, plane, or convoy, and even military convoys are attacked."

The liberation struggle, which included armed attacks against all aspects of the colonial regime, won widespread support among villagers. In the cities, the FLN quickly won solid backing. The Casbah, a working-class district in the capital city of Algiers, where support for the FLN ran high, became famous as a no-go zone for the imperialist forces. Massive pro-independence demonstrations swept Algerian cities in 1960, making clear to the French government the determination of the Algerian people.

The root causes of this national liberation struggle were the social consequences of the economic exploitation of Algeria. "In 1954 the French settlers comprised only 11 percent of the population," Bob Chester wrote in Workers and Farmers Governments Since the Second World War, "yet they held 42 percent of the industrial jobs. Ninety percent of industrial and commercial activity was in European hands." They controlled the best agricultural areas, owning large, modern estates.

"In contrast," Chester wrote, "the Algerian people were exploited and repressed. Undernourishment was the norm for the majority of the native population. Ninety percent of the population was illiterate and only one Moslem child in ten went to school.

"Against this liberation struggle, France threw the full weight of its modern army, supplied with the latest weapons from NATO. In the seven-and-a-half-year war more than 400,000 French troops--including almost two-thirds of the air force and half the navy--engaged in the war. The French also used the most refined counterinsurgency methods. In addition to planes, tanks, and a naval blockade, they used electrified barriers to seal off the borders of Tunisia and Morocco, operated dragnets to isolate the rebels, and wiped out more than 8,000 villages in a scorched-earth program. They employed the most sophisticated and diabolic methods of terror, espionage, and torture in the attempt to smash the liberation movement.

"Casualties were extremely high. Two and a half million persons were displaced as a result of the war," Chester says, "and more than a million deaths were directly attributed to it. More than 300,000 orphaned children flooded the cities, while 300,000 other Algerians were driven into Tunisia and Morocco, where they became an additional base of the liberation struggle."

The workers and farmers government that came to power in Algeria in 1963 carried out far-reaching anticapitalist measures. "The nationalization of big properties of both European and Algerian landholders and the announcement of decrees definitively establishing Workers Management Committees, Workers Councils, and Workers Assemblies have been received with enormous enthusiasm throughout Algeria," wrote The Internationalist--a precursor to World Outlook--in the lead article of the April 11, 1963, issue. "In a nationwide tour following announcement of the new measures, Ben Bella was greeted with celebrations reminiscent of those when independence was won last July. Entire populations of towns and villages turned out to hail the head of government...."

The government aided other national liberation struggles in Africa, for example, assisting in the opening of a headquarters in Algiers of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola in February 1963. A report in The Internationalist described a rally of 180,000 in Oran, Algeria, to express solidarity with the Angolan struggle against Portuguese imperialism.

The reprinting of the preface by Waters in the Militant two weeks ago sparked interest by readers who were unfamiliar with this chapter of revolutionary struggle. In response, we are reprinting below an article by Waters from the September-October 1965 issue of the Young Socialist that explains the conquests of the Algerian Revolution and the causes of the 1965 overthrow of the workers and farmers government headed by Ahmed Ben Bella.

Reprinted by permission. Copyright © 2001 by Pathfinder Press. Subheadings are by the Militant.
 
BY MARY-ALICE WATERS  
The night of June 19, 1965, marked a decisive turning point in the Algerian Revolution. Minister of Defense, Col. Houari Boumédienne, backed by a section of his 60,000-man professional army and aided by a few important figures in the Algerian government, moved his troops with lightning speed to occupy key posts in the cities and countryside. The three year coalition between Ben Bella and Boumédienne, which in the summer of 1962 had ousted the neo-colonialist Provisional Government, was broken, and the army, headed by Boumédienne, was now in control.

It was impossible for the Boumédienne government to maintain the myth of normalcy in the face of continuing riots, some of which were severely suppressed. However, by July 5, the third anniversary of Algerian independence, calm had returned to the streets and demonstrations had ceased. The weakness of the opposition to the coup is evidence of the prevailing apathy of the Algerian people in the absence of any organization capable of inspiring them with a will to resist. At the same time, however, the protests that did erupt indicated fibres of strength within the Algerian revolution.

Boumédienne had learned that Ben Bella intended to move decisively against the ever growing influence of the army in governmental affairs, and it was rumored that at the next meeting of the Political Bureau of the National Liberation Front (FLN), Ben Bella would ask for the removal of Foreign Minister Bouteflika who was considered to be in the far right-wing of the government. These moves would have strengthened Ben Bella’s personal power, but combined with an extension of the land reform planned for the summer of 1965, they would have marked another significant step forward for the Algerian revolution.

Prior to the coup, debate over Algeria’s economic and political direction had taken place daily within the leading bodies of the Algerian government. The Tripoli Program, the political platform adopted by the FLN in June 1962, had proclaimed that "the Popular Democratic Revolution is the conscious construction of the country according to socialist principles with the power in the hands of the people. In order that the development of Algeria be rapid and harmonious, and in order that the primary economic needs of the people be satisfied, it must be conceived within a socialist perspective, within the framework of collectivization of the basic means of production and within the framework of a rational plan."

Although this socialist perspective was frequently reaffirmed in the documents of the FLN, nearly half the seats on the National Committee and Political Bureau of the FLN were given to men opposed to the development of the nationalized sector of the economy, and opposed to the self-management committees. These political figures sabotaged attempts to limit speculation, and fought against restricting foreign profits.

Because this tendency favoring the capitalist sector of the economy was supported by most of the state apparatus, operations of the nationalized sector were continually hampered.

The other major political tendency in the FLN, was headed by Ben Bella. Its strongest base of support was in the self-management committees, which developed in response to the vacuum created by the exodus of Europeans during the last months of the war. Eighty percent of them (virtually the entire middle class of Algeria) fled the country in early 1962, leaving farms, shops, and industries without owners or managers. With the fields full of crops, the peasants organized and brought in the harvest, dividing the proceeds among themselves. Soon these spontaneous peasant committees completely controlled large sections of the land throughout Algeria.  
 
Workers self-management
The same spontaneous appropriation took place in the industrial sector of the economy, resulting in the formation of factory committees that administered the plants. The Ben Bella government responded by legalizing and supporting the development of self-management, and by significantly strengthening the nationalized sector of the economy.

Ben Bella’s effectiveness as a leader, however, was severely limited by the fact that he chose to play a mediating role between the two major factions within the government, balancing off left against right, making concessions first to one and then the other in an attempt to appease all. Boumédienne, on the other hand, aligned himself with neither the left wing nor the right, but based his support on the army.

The struggle between capitalist and socialist tendencies revealed itself most sharply over the question of extending the land reform to affect the large holdings of Algerian proprietors. According to the Paris daily Le Monde, only one quarter of Algeria’s farm land is now included in the self-managed sector. Half is divided into tiny plots of a few acres which barely sustain the peasants working them. The remaining quarter consists of large farms of several hundred acres owned by Algerians. European land holdings were nationalized in the fall of 1963.

Although it was announced more than a year and a half ago that a decree was being drawn up to limit the extent of private holdings, it was never implemented. Had this step been taken, it would have created great opposition among the Algerian proprietors and resulted in a split in the government. However, the outcome of such a split would have been an important step forward for the revolution because the socialist forces, by taking the initiative and extending the benefits of the revolution to the most oppressed peasants, would have gained their active and enthusiastic support.

Instead of inspiring the peasants with the will to extend their revolution, Ben Bella made deals within the leadership of the government while attempting to increase his personal power. Because of this, the military coup appeared to the masses of peasants as just another leadership intrigue meaning little. While Ben Bella compromised himself more and more by back-corridor politics within the leading circles of the government, the neo-colonialist forces were gaining strength. The industrial working class of Algeria felt itself threatened and expressed its discontent in both word and action, as indicated by the strikes of January 1965, where it demanded higher wages and better job security.

Due to the low level of economic development, however, the industrial working class within Algeria is extremely small, numbering only 100,000 in a population of over ten million. Yet this small percentage of the population has expressed itself loudly and frequently on every basic problem facing the revolution.

The self-managed sector of industry accounts for a very small percentage of the total production of Algeria, and controls only four percent of Algeria’s basic industry. Nine-tenths of the industrial workers are employed by privately owned companies, and in addition to this, Algeria has more than one million unemployed. Many of the industries abandoned in 1962 have never reopened, due to lack of trained personnel, but it was projected that all newly opened industries would begin production again under the control of self-management committees.

In the privately owned factories, the demand for workers’ control over production was raised more than a year ago by the union at Renault-Algerie which "asked the government to promulgate a law instituting workers control in the non-self-managed enterprises" (Le Peuple, May 28, 1964). The demand was immediately taken up by other unions and confirmed by the National Congress of the UGTA, the Algerian General Trade Union, meeting in Algiers in March, 1965. At this congress, the workers’ dissatisfaction with their present leadership was so deep, that they voted the entire UGTA Executive Committee out of office, replacing it with many rank-and-file militants, including two women. (Le Peuple, March 29, 1965).

A week after the Boumédienne coup this new leadership passed a resolution which stated, "The opening provided by the event that occurred on June 19 would be put in question by the return to the political scene of careerists and opportunist elements, who are also responsible for the lack of respect for our institutions.... For June 19 to become a genuine opening, it is necessary to also permit the emergence of tested militants, clear about their options, courageous in the expression of their opinions, and who have proved their genuine attachment to socialism." (Le Monde, June 29, 1965)

This resolution emphasized that "the extreme weakness of the party in organizational structure...and the failure to apply democratic centralism and the absence of a collective leadership" permitted "the reinforcement of personal power and the practice of anti-democratic methods." It went on to demand that "the FLN, party of the vanguard, be composed mainly of workers, of poor peasants and revolutionary intellectuals."

The composition, role, and structure of the FLN has been one of the most important disputes in the three years of Algeria’s independence. Between 1954 and 1962 the National Liberation Front and its military arm, the Army of National Liberation, were well organized, efficient fighting organizations. They gained the support of the vast majority of the population and offered the country unity in its struggle against French domination. However, the leadership, by and large, was still fettered to the military-bureaucratic concepts of the army and the feudal-colonial structure it had always known. This phenomenon has been studied and analyzed by the FLN in the Tripoli Program: "Paradoxical as it may appear, the national revolutionary struggle is perceived and felt in its newness and its originality by the popular masses more than by the leadership and the directorates.... We have witnessed and are still witnessing a very serious lack of contact between, on the one hand, the collective consciousness tested in reality, and on the other hand, the practice and authority of the FLN at all levels. Very often, in a paternalistic manner, the authority has purely and simply substituted itself for political responsibility which is inseparable from the search for an ideology."

More important, the leadership was not ideologically prepared to deal with the struggles and splits that inevitably developed once the fighting stopped. This has disoriented the Algerian people time and again, and their weak response to the Boumédienne coup is merely the latest tragedy resulting from the ideological meanderings of the revolution’s leadership.

A merger between the National Liberation Front and the state followed Algeria’s victory over France. The army, however, maintained itself as a professional fighting unit, resisting the formation of local militias which would have become the primary defensive organizations of the revolution. This was one of the major points of contention between Boumédienne and Ben Bella. So strong was the army in this dispute that it was able to prevent the implementation of a decision of the National Congress of the FLN to create a popular militia.

A June 6, 1964, editorial in Revolution Africaine, written by Mohammed Harbi, declared that "the only effective way to meet these plots [terrorist acts of the OAS and the counterrevolution] is to set up without delay a popular militia, as was advocated by the Congress. The arming of the people is one of the main acts by which the revolutionary will of the leaders can be recognized. It is the only way that will make it possible to galvanize the energy of the people." (original emphasis). The publication of this editorial and others like it resulted in Ben Bella’s removing Mohammed Harbi from his post as editor, in order to appease Boumédienne.  
 
Did not build vanguard party
As the FLN and the state apparatus became more completely fused, the FLN became less the party of the vanguard and more thoroughly bureaucratized. Though the self-management committees and national unions of peasants and workers were still able to voice criticisms and put forward proposals for action, the FLN was not able to serve the function of a revolutionary party, bringing together the most conscious elements. Thus, no mechanism existed to hold the state apparatus in check; there was no form for developing leadership, and no way to educate the peasants and workers for the new struggles that continually faced them. As a consequence, it became extremely difficult for the leadership to win enthusiasm, incentive, and direction from the peasants and workers. The National Congress of the FLN, meeting in the spring of 1964, recognized the need for such a revolutionary party and proposed to transform itself into such an organization by bringing into it more peasants and workers, and by expelling those who actively sabotaged the socialist perspective. However, the failure of the left wing of the FLN to resolutely work for this objective made the party unable to function as the vanguard, thus paving the way for Boumédienne’s coup.

Because the FLN contained within it all the conflicting class interests of the country, it was unable to come to grips with the most pressing problems of the revolution. Land reform was one such problem, and control over natural resources and foreign investment was another. Under Ben Bella only minimal restrictions were placed on profits leaving the country, and upon taking power, Boumédienne rushed to assure the capitalist countries that investments in Algeria were secure.  
 
Role of oil
The key role of oil in the Algerian economy can hardly be over-emphasized. If the petroleum industry were nationalized, the profits, most of which now go to foreign investors, would provide the necessary capital for trade and industrial development. These proceeds would enable Algeria to develop her other natural resources such as iron and natural gas. These profits could be reinvested in basic industries which in turn could produce machinery to expand existing industries and develop new ones. Such investment would also increase the size of the working class, as well as stabilize it financially, further strengthening the mass base of the socialist tendency. Furthermore, the openings for employment would attract from Europe much of the 400,000-man Algerian working class that still lives outside of the country and which is more highly skilled than the average worker living in Algeria. Tractors and other machines could be produced to mechanize the existing farms and make it profitable for the small peasants to collectivize their holdings. This would increase output and raise the rural standard of living greatly. In short, nationalization of the oil would lay the basis for the development of an industrialized Algeria, and in addition, provide money for construction, land reclamation, education, and medical care.

Those who favor a neo-colonialist development for Algeria, however, depend upon foreign capital to solve the industrial and employment problems of the country. They argue that since capitalism is responsible for the highly developed industrial economies of France, the United States, and Britain, why not Algeria? A close look at this argument reveals that the contradictions involved are tremendous. Those who favor capitalist development in underdeveloped countries today are opposed to those aspects of capitalism that made it at one time a socially progressive system. Those who support neocolonialism oppose land reform, oppose the creation of a militia, oppose the development of a self-sustaining economy, and oppose the basic freedoms traditionally associated with middle class revolutions. It was the promise of these demands being fulfilled that historically justified the political ascendancy of the capitalist class.

The Algerian mid-dle class, however, does not have the capi-tal necessary to solve the immense social and economic problems that face the country. Consequently, in order to retain its relatively privileged social position it must rely on the power of foreign investment to deal with these issues. In this way, it is forced to play the role of unwilling broker for foreign investors. Boumédienne, regardless of his intentions, will be forced either to play this role or to seek a new base of support in the masses of Algerian peasants and workers by extending and deepening the revolution. No alternative course exists for Algeria.

The middle class is caught in a contradiction, resulting from the fact that foreign investors have no desire to develop the Algerian economy, but only to extract those materials that are useful to the economies of Europe and North America. It is little wonder, however, that the middle class has been forced to act in this manner. For decades its own development has been subordinated to the interests of the European investor who has determined--through force of arms and the power of the franc--the economic, social, and political structure of Algeria.

Without a rationally planned economy determining how profits will be invested, and how resources will be allocated, the wealth of Algeria will be accumulated by only a small handful of Algerians, with the lion’s share going to foreign investors.  
 
Social Democrats and Stalinists
The failures and the successes of the Algerian revolution in dealing with these problems must be carefully studied and the lessons absorbed by anti-colonial forces the world over. It is unlikely, however, that any clarity will be forthcoming from the parties of the Second or Third Internationals. Their willingness to compromise the Algerian Revolution has already been sharply demonstrated. The Soviet Union even refused to recognize the FLN until France had done so. The struggle against France was greatly prolonged due to the isolation imposed on the FLN by the Communist bloc and by the leadership of the Communist and Socialist Parties of France.

This treacherous role was recognized by the FLN when it stated in the Tripoli Program that "the French political left, which has always played a role in the anti-colonial struggle on a theoretical level, revealed itself powerless in face of the unforeseen implacable development of the war. Their political action remained timid and ineffective because of their old assimilationist conceptions, and their erroneous idea of the evolutionary nature of the colonial regime, and its ability to transform itself peacefully."

China, too, has revealed itself devoid of revolutionary principle in its dealings with Algeria. Considering diplomatic maneuvers with the Soviet Union and the neo-colonialist regimes of Africa to be more important than the fate of the Algerian revolution, China rushed to endorse the military council of Col. Boumédienne the day following the coup. In this way China hoped to gain favor with the new regime and thus be allowed to play a major role in the Afro-Asian Conference, scheduled to begin June 29. The outraged students of Algiers showed their contempt by publicly burning the Chinese flag in the streets.

D. N. Aidit, head of the Indonesian Communist Party, the largest Communist Party in the nonsocialist world and under Peking’s influence, stated to the press three days after Ben Bella’s ouster that the coup came as no surprise to him, for Ben Bella was following a right-wing policy "contrary to the aspirations of the Algerian people." Aidit went even further to say, "The situation in Algiers is now better than it was under the regime of Ben Bella. We should thank Col. Boumédienne for his efforts to create a better atmosphere in the final days preceding the Afro-Asian Conference."

Mao Tse-tung notwithstanding, the military coup led by Boumédienne is a serious setback both for the Algerian revolution and the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle. In sharp contrast to China’s attitude, the response of the revolutionary leadership of Cuba was to condemn the military seizure of power as having "no possible justification." (The Militant, July 26, 1965). Knowing full well that Cuba was risking a diplomatic break with Boumédienne, Castro stated, "If they should break relations with us, they should not be the first military regime to do so. We are thinking of the future, and we do not act as opportunists, but as Marxist-Leninists."

Ben Bella unquestionably made serious mistakes during his three years of leadership. He relied on compromises and deals within the leading circles rather than appealing to the workers and peasants; he substituted personal power for collective leadership; and most important, he failed to lead the left wing of the FLN in a fight to transform the party into an organization capable of protecting and extending the gains of the revolution. Despite Ben Bella’s failures, he was the popular leader of the socialist tendency of Algeria, and gained his support by his defense of the workers’ and peasants’ self-management committees which controlled the nationalized sector of the economy.

Although the military leaders who removed Ben Bella from power are not the direct instruments of counterrevolution, their coup can serve only to encourage those hostile to the socialist development of Algeria. Boumédienne’s isolation from the masses of peasants and workers will oblige him to depend even more on the support of the imperialist powers.

Unless the people of Algeria organize to prevent the consolidation of the Boumédienne regime, it will be a long time before the revolution takes another step forward.
 

When the editors of the Militant first proposed reprinting the article that appears on these pages I was very hesitant. Written some 36 years ago by an author still in her early 20s, who only hoped some day to become a Marxist, I feared it would be so full of errors that it could not stand the test of time.

It was, in fact, my first attempt at revolutionary journalism. I had been following the course of the Algerian Revolution closely, having developed an abiding interest in that powerful anti-imperialist struggle during my student days in France. That experience is described in the preface to Pathfinder Press’s newest publication, Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, by Jack Barnes. As a new young member of the Young Socialist Alliance and Socialist Workers Party, our main source of information in addition to the Militant was the biweekly newsletter World Outlook, then published in Paris under the editorial direction of Joseph Hansen. Hansen was a former editor of the Militant and one of the central leaders of the Socialist Workers Party, then on international assignment based in France.

Some of Hansen’s best writings on the Algerian Revolution, and the broader political and theoretical questions posed by the workers and farmers governments that came to power in both Cuba and Algeria in the transition period following their revolutionary victories, can be found in the Education for Socialists bulletin distributed by Pathfinder Press entitled "The Workers and Farmers Government" by Joseph Hansen.

On June 19, 1965, I accepted the invitation of the San Francisco Militant Labor Forum to give a presentation on recent developments in the Algerian Revolution. Except for some campus classes sponsored by the Berkeley chapter of the Young Socialist Alliance, it was my first public talk, a prospect so frightening that I had prepared for days and had every word written down. The meeting went well, much to my relief. More importantly, however, its timeliness was demonstrated the next day when we opened the morning newspapers to learn that even while the forum was in progress, the workers and farmers government headed by Ahmed Ben Bella had been overthrown by forces directed by defense minister Houari Boumédienne.

I was on my way from California to New York to take up a new assignment in the national office of the Young Socialist Alliance, and the editors of the Young Socialist asked me to prepare for the next issue of the magazine the article that is reprinted here.

Were I to write something on the subject today, there are a number of things I would explain differently, of course, and things I would hope to be able to explain more clearly. Two points are especially jarring. One are the references to Ben Bella attempting to strengthen his "personal" power; the other is the depiction of Boumédienne as a military power broker. More could have been done to offer a clearer description of the petty-bourgeois class forces concentrated in the officer corps of the National Liberation Army (ALN) for whom Boumédienne was acting. And whatever his political mistakes in making leadership compromises, Ben Bella’s goal was not personal power, but strengthening the workers and peasants of Algeria and advancing an anticapitalist course. That was what the Boumédienne coup definitively put an end to.

On balance, however, the article does offer a credible summary of some of the major issues and class forces that determined this watershed in the Algerian Revolution and for that reason may be useful. Perhaps it will also serve to encourage Young Socialists today to approach their first speaking and writing assignments with greater confidence, and to stimulate a deeper interest in the powerful anti-imperialist struggle that culminated in the Algerian Revolution among those who will soon be on their way to Algiers for the 15th World Festival of Youth and Students, August 8-16.

--MARY-ALICE WATERS  
 
 
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