THE ALGERIAN TRAGEDY

THE ALGERIAN TRAGEDY - I

From Bulletin Vol. 2 No. 13, July-August, 1965

HOW BEN BELLA PREPARED HIS OWN FALL

Ben Bella's ouster by army backed Boumedienne and the insignificant resistance to the ouster should cause his supporters in the revolutionary movement to do a little thinking. The news of Ben Bella's deposal came without forewarning, but it should not have come as a complete surprise. Anyone familiar with the struggles that have taken place among the FLN leadership, and with the Ben Bella-Boumedienne relationship over the past couple years knew that a break between them was a real possibility. Boumedienne's takeover may be regarded as a move to the right, a step backward, for the revolution, but the shift from the former government's policies will not be fundamental. Any tendency to now regard Ben Bella idealistically as a left winger can be overcome by an examination of some recent history. 

    In the discussion of the coup, two facts are extremely important. Fact one is that Ben Bella was overthrown without a struggle. There was little organized or unorganized popular response or resistance to the coup. Ben Bella stood alone, and the change in government involved essentially only his removal. Fact two is that Ben Bella came out on top from the struggles within the FLN and the Provisional Government in 1962 with the support of Boumedienne, and has had his support throughout his nearly three years in office.

Since Ben Bella has had important disagreements with Boumedienne in the past, and since he has made efforts to moderate the power wielded by his vice-premier through his control of the regular army, why didn't he build up the organizations of the masses into a force with which to counter the army? The answer to this question is the key to the answer of the question: Who, and what, is Ben Bella?

Ben Bella's refusal to call upon the masses at such a critical moment was consistent with his relation to the Algerian masses in the past, and is also in character with those leaders who come under the category of petty bourgeois nationalists. It will therefore be helpful to point out some of the characteristics of the petty bourgeois nationalist in general, in order to see more clearly the nature of Ben Bella.

What Is Petty Bourgeois Nationalism? 

Petty bourgeois nationalists (e.g., Ben Bella, Sukarno, Nasser) have the common aim of political independence for their countries. National independence movements under their control have forced out the political machinery-politicians, soldiers, police-of the foreign rulers and are bringing about an end to the era of colonialism. No longer can the imperialist countries directly control the wealth of Asia, Africa, and South America. But the new nationalist governments still permit foreign capitalist interests to operate in their countries, with the difference from the colonial era that control and profits must be shared with the producing country. The arrangements vary from country to country but the fact of key capitalist participation in native economies is almost universal. 

In the past, nationalism went hand in hand with the growth of national capitalist economies and expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie. Today, however, in the underdeveloped countries nationalism expresses the interests of the petty bourgeoisie, the middle class. The tiny native bourgeoisie almost invariably identifies with the imperialist rulers. Not having any economic base of its own, and considering itself above the native masses, the middle class seeks a role of leadership as the middle man between the imperialist and the worker and peasant. Its aim in fighting the imperialists is to obtain the right to strike a deal with them. It uses and relies upon the masses as its source of power in the anti-imperialist struggle, but they share no common bond of interests.

After the independence struggle is over, the petty bourgeois makes a deal which maintains a role for the foreign capitalist investments, a role which is decisive for the viability of the economy. In return for its share of profits and control, the new government must maintain the stability of the country, which means it must keep the masses under control. When conflicts break out between workers and boss - whether he be a foreign capitalist or the native capitalist, the government comes out against the worker with the cry of the national interest. The worker is told he must sacrifice to the needs of the national economy. The economy must not be disrupted for the government is under the pressure to pay back the millions it has borrowed (plus interest) from some bank in London or New York. The economy also cannot function without the capitalist run enterprises, which demand that the government guarantee worker discipline, under the threat of withdrawal. As just one recent example of this conflict between worker and nationalist, Indonesian workers' attempts to take over foreign firms were opposed by the Sukarno government.

By the nature of his position, the petty bourgeois nationalist leader must ultimately turn against the interests of the masses. This is why Marxists put no trust or confidence in him. Even a nationalist as radical as Castro, who broke with imperialism, and who maintains a viable economy with help from the Soviet bloc, has not developed a worker controlled economy or a proletarian foreign policy. Cuba deals with other nations on a diplomatic, nation to nation basis only. For example, Castro is a Ben Bella supporter, and as we shall see, this is not in the interests of the working class--Cuban, Algerian, or any other, and it is not helping to defeat imperialism. 

The behavior of the Chinese Communist Party leadership in reaction to the army coup which overthrew Ben Bella is one of the most revealing and revolting developments in the long line of the betrayals of the world working class of which the Stalinist bureaucrats and their followers have been guilty. 

Throwing aside all consideration whatever for the interests of the Algerian workers and peasants, the Chinese ostentatiously flattered the military regime. They made a crude effort to gain the favor of the new regime, whatever its class program and position. Their aim was to see that the Afro-Asian conference scheduled for the end of June would proceed as scheduled and would exclude the USSR, with perhaps the agreement of the new Algerian regime. 

The Chinese failed to prevent the postponement of the conference. The fact is, however, that they acted to bolster what was obviously a government to the right of the Ben Bella regime. This outrageous bloc shows that the Chinese, like the Russians whom they like to criticize, place the foreign policy interests of the ruling bureaucracy above the interests of the workers in China, the USSR, and all over the world. The CCP stands condemned by its own actions. This latest incident is one more proof that they have their own brand of peaceful coexistence. Their criticism of the USSR is worth nothing under these circumstances.

The FLN and the Working Class

Returning now to Algeria, we would like to show that Ben Bella is a typical petty bourgeois nationalist, who doesn't deserve the support of the working class and the revolutionary movement.

From its very beginning, the FLN showed its contempt for the Algerian working class. A decision was made to wage guerilla warfare in rural Algeria with peasant based, but petty bourgeois led and controlled armies unrelated to workers' struggles in Algeria or France. The decision ignored a working class that had become exposed to Western ideas and socialist politics by fighting in two world wars and by working in industrial centers in France, and which was rather sophisticated politically. It meant that the long history of struggle for independence by Algerian workers was meaningless. It showed the typical petty bourgeois trait of becoming disillusioned and impatient with the working class, of wanting to skip over the absolutely indispensable task of developing a politically advanced, bolshevik vanguard of workers. The FLN wanted to go to the politically pristine countryside and lead the uncorrupted peasant to socialism, and avoid the task of grappling with the more advanced workers and developing a revolutionary socialist program. The armed struggle was always led by a small number of FLN militants. The masses were seldom involved in the decision making, and no mass organizations controlled by them were developed.

After the Evian Agreements, in the summer of 1962, differences between FLN leaders broke out. The differences were primarily between the leaders of the willaya (sectional) armies which operated inside the country, and those who led the outside armies, based in Tunisia and Morocco. The commander in chief of these outside armies was Boumedienne. In the fighting that broke out over these differences, which were mostly personal and not in the interests of the masses, Ben Bella emerged victorious with the support of Boumedienne. To gain power, Ben Bella had made an alliance with the section of the rebel army furthest removed from the Algerian people.

Not long after Ben Bella consolidated power in the fall of 1962, he showed his true colors vis a vis both imperialist France and the Algerian workers. He let it be known to France that she could count on friendly and cooperative relations with his government and that the Evian Accords would be honored. The agreements worked out at Evian by the FLN and France kept the Algerian economy tied to that of France, and by granting France Saharan oil rights, virtually made the economy dependent upon France.

Ben Bella's Balancing Act

Then, as if to show France his intentions, he brought the Algerian Trade Union Movement, the UGTA, under his control. The UGTA had been set up in 1956 by the FLN to counter the union set up by Messali Hadj, but the FLN did not seem to show much interest in it. By the end of the revolution, it had developed an independent existence. Ben Bella opened its congress in January 1963 by declaring that the trade unions must be subordinated to the government. He warned against "certain tendencies in Africa which go by the name of ‘workerism"' and suggested that the Congress could do its proper job if the delegates were - peasants. Two days later his agents seized control of the congress, packed it with lumpen elements from the streets, and called the resisting workers "bourgeois" and "leftists who act like counterrevolutionaries." Such is the stance of the petty bourgeois who has no program for the working class, who has no faith in it and who fears it, who would rather appeal to the scattered, unorganized, undeveloped peasantry, and even to lumpen mobs. 

During 1963 Ben Bella began to disturb Boumedienne with his seemingly radical pronouncements. Ben Bella had committed himself to safeguard French interests, but in order to maintain popular support he ordered the confiscation of some French land and French published newspapers. Such acts were taken by some radicals as evidence that the objective conditions of the revolution were pushing him leftward. But any such interpretation of course is nonsense. The French government knew the reason for such moves and did not oppose them. According to an Economist article of October 5, 1963, "The French government has leant over backwards to bolster up President Ben Bella in his efforts to stabilise the country." The cheapness of such moves, in relation to the needs of the Algerian masses at the time is pointed up by the situation in Kabylia. From the Economist article mentioned above:

"The confusion and unemployment that generally beset Algeria, except in the areas where workers have alleviated their poverty by taking over French property, are especially acute in Kabylia. Among the thousands of Kabyles who demonstrated against Mr. Ben Bella last Sunday in Tizi Ouzou, their capital, were multitudes of women simply crying for bread. This barren overpopulated region was the scene of the greatest devastation during the war against France. Kabylia contributed the most guerilla fighters and counted the most dead. Today it is overweighted with war widows who, through government administrative delays, wait interminably for their war pensions and with families who, for the same reasons, are behindhand in getting their remittances from their menfolk working in France.

The Kabyles also complain that they have had no share of the charitable aid that is flowing into Algeria...The Kabyles meanwhile have known little of the joy of taking over abandoned European properties. Few such properties existed in their region. Nor are there many French farms to be seized under Tuesday's new nationalization decrees. These decrees are therefore no answer to Kabylia's economic distress."

What reason can Ben Bella give for shortchanging this section of Algeria, which gave more than any other to the revolution; which has a strong democratic tradition, and which has a sizable proletarian composition? What kind of socialist thinking was involved in calling the socialist Kabylian leader Ait Ahmed a counter- revolutionary, while maintaining office with Boumedienne's support.

While the Fight against the rebellious Kabyles was being carried out in 1964, the Ben Bella government was stressing its non-alignment. A New York Times article of April 3, 1964 notes that "While calling for the eventual nationalization of all industry, the Ben Bella regime has quietly welcomed negotiations with private investors from the United States, Britain, and West Germany. Officially the U.S. has seldom been attacked by name."

When the Kabylian revolt spread, and opposition developed from many sources and on several fronts, Ben Bella called for the formation of a popular militia to defeat the "counter-revolution". This warmed the hearts of his leftwing supporters, and had it been carried through would have been a progressive move. Its formation, however, never went far. It was organized only locally to clean up guerilla forces. The militia idea was essentially an attempt to counter the power of Boumedienne, whose army would gain strength politically as a result of defeating the insurgents. In the meantime, Boumedienne was trying to mold a more responsive (to him) army by recruiting youngsters and getting rid of the old willaya guerilla fighters, which had been incorporated into his army.

The Lessons of the Algerian Tragedy

Boumedienne's army now controls Algeria and the press says that the students and "Marxist" intellectuals who demonstrated in opposition to it claimed that it would turn the country into a military dictatorship. The lesson that should be learned from Ben Bella's history is that there is no justification for calling for his return. A Marxist has no business supporting Boumedienne or Ben Bella. Just because Ben Bella allowed so-called Marxists to write for Revolutione Africaine, and give him advice, because he clothed his speeches in revolutionary rhetoric, because he was vulnerable to pressure from the masses, does not mean that he was any better for the masses than Boumedienne. Ben Bella's Bonapartist maneuverings couldn't last forever, and considering Boumedienne's position, they led directly to his takeover.

Those who are serious about revolutionary politics must learn from the Algerian events the fundamental principle that: a socialist revolution cannot be made without the working class, and that the working class must be led by a revolutionary Marxist party. How many times must revolutions be defeated before this truth becomes evident?

THE ALGERIAN TRAGEDY - II

IT IS TIME TO MAKE AN ACCOUNTING 

(The following is part of an article by Tim Wohlforth printed in the internal discussion bulletin of the Socialist Worker's Party in May of 1963, over two years ago. It clearly counterposes the line of the minority which became the nucleus of the American Committee for the Fourth International with that of the SWP majority on the development of the Algerian Revolution. Recent events have fully confirmed our analysis and revealed the complete bankruptcy of the SWP leadership. What was at stake in this discussion was far more than Algeria, important as that country is in itself. Here we had two counterposed views of the world and the way to go about building a movement that can change the world. The tasks revolutionaries face today require us to go back over the lessons of this dispute so as to arm us the better to re-build a revolutionary movement here and internationally.)

ALGERIA: THE ACID TEST OF AN ACID TEST 

Algeria and Cuba stand side by side as the two most profound revolutionary upheavals in the colonial sector since the Chinese Revolution. A knowledge and understanding of the evolution of the Algerian Revolution is as important to a general understanding of the colonial revolution in the postwar period as is an understanding of the Cuban Revolution.

In addition to its importance in its own right, Algeria has a very special importance for the theoretical development of the Trotskyist world movement. The Algerian Revolution is the "acid test" so to speak, of the lessons learned from the Cuban experience by the two political tendencies in the world movement today. Michel Pablo made this clear in his letter to the PLN leadership, "The Decisive Hour of the Algerian Revolution" (Winter 1961-1962 Fourth International): "In brief Algeria at the hour of victorious revolution faces the choice between a solution a la Tunisia or a la Cuba." Of the two alternatives before Algeria, the thrust of Pablo's letter is that the "Cuban Way" will win out because "the international revolutionary context, the new balance of forces established already on a world scale for many years has not ceased to evolve against Imperialism, enormously favoring the victory of the Algerian Revolution."

The party majority took, (of course) the same approach. The editorial in the April 2, 1962 Militant declared, like Pablo, that these two roads were before the Algerian Revolution and optimism was expressed that Algeria would follow the Cuban pattern. This issue was introduced into the 1962 Plenum as a major point in the majority resolution, "Problems of the Fourth International -- and the Next Steps." Here the differences between the Majority and the Pabloites on the one hand and the British and French sections on the other were posed as being essentially over different interpretations of the Evian Accords and the consequent political independence granted to Algeria. The real difference between these two tendencies was not whether or not the actual granting of even nominal independence was a victory for the Algerian masses but what was the significance of the Evian Accords; the agreement reached between the FLN leadership and the French government which was to set the pattern for future developments in Algeria.

The British and French comrades felt that these Accords amounted to a sell-out of the true interests of the Algerian masses because they provided, in essence, for the maintenance of French imperialist domination over Algeria. The majority comrades considered the compromises at Evian relatively unimportant because the objective conditions in Algeria would soon force the Algerian leadership, like the Cuban leadership, down the road to socialist revolution under the pressure of the armed peasantry. Thus the British and French comrades were attacked for taking a "pessimistic" and "subjective" attitude by concerning themselves with the "character of the official leadership" of the revolution. In summary the majority document stated: "Between them Cuba and Algeria encompass most of the basic problems confronting Marxists in the present stage of colonial revolution. This disorientation displayed by the SLL in regard to these two revolutions flows from their wrong method of approach to the fundamental process at work." (emphasis mine). 

This outlook of the majority of course makes sense, granted their evaluation of Cuba. All the elements were present in the Algerian situation at the moment of Castro's coming to power in 1959. The revolution had been conducted by an armed peasant mass and had been very fundamental in nature. The leadership of this armed peasantry was, as Pablo notes, "jacobins sui generis", that is a petty bourgeois strata with an empirical but ‘radical outlook. Ben Bella, in fact, had suffered many years in jail for his convictions and had conducted himself while in prison with a heroism comparable to that of Castro. The Algerians even felt a very real solidarity with the 26th of July movement. With the flight of the French, power rested in the hands of this armed peasant mass, almost all capitalists had fled, and the old state apparatus had pretty much disintegrated. Certainly if the "Cuban Way" is the pattern for future revolutionary developments in the colonial sector, the stage was set for Algeria to follow Cuba. With such an outlook, the underestimation of the importance of the Evian compromises is understandable. 

Upon reaching Paris, Comrade Hansen wrote a series of articles on the evolution of the Algerian Revolution which applied this basic outlook of the majority. On August 19 Comrade Hansen wrote his first article declaring that the revolution is moving "to the left" and that the situation is "strikingly similar to that in Cuba immediately after Batista fled." "Ben Bella's first appeal," Hansen notes approvingly, “is to the Algerian peasantry."

His next dispatch, that of September 3, takes a different approach. "Ben Bella's course in Algiers," Hansen tells us surprisingly, "thus stands in contrast to Fidel Castro's actions at a ‘similar period in the Cuban Revolution." The development which occurred between these two dispatches to change so sharply Hansen's analysis was the armed rebellion of Willaya against the Political Bureau leadership. Comrade Hansen was not too sure who would win out. But he was not really worried who would win because of the "already evident tendency of the revolution to develop in the socialist direction."

The situation was still unclear by the time of Hansen's September 15 dispatch. This time another new factor emerged in the situation - the working class. Conspicuous by its absence from previous dispatches of Hansen's, the Algerian workers moved decisively during this period under the leadership of the Algerian Trade Union movement, the UGTA. The workers mobilized masses of people to stand between the contending armies in the developing civil war situation and demanded an end to the power struggle from which they felt deeply alienated. This development so disturbed Hansen's whole analysis that he felt it was high time he opened up a veiled polemic against the SLL and the French for fear some misguided Militant readers would sympathize with their outlook. He attacks "a current, dominated by an ultra-left mood, which holds that all present leaders have 'betrayed' and that there is no hope since a Leninist-type party was not organized before the revolution broke out! Events, he felt, were still moving "to the left" and he concludes: "Naturally, no guarantee can be given that Algeria will go the way of Cuba, but the inherent possibilities are strongly in this direction." 

By his September 21 dispatch, Joe Hansen has recovered from his momentary doubts as to who in Algeria may be the developing Fidel Castro. We arrive back with Ben Bella, who  incidentally survived the power struggle and was starting a process of consolidation of power. Ben Bella is now a "“leadership which intends to move in a socialist direction, but which lacks Leninist clarity." The working class is conveniently dropped despite its highly progressive role mentioned only a week earlier. The "pessimists" are again attacked and great emphasis is put on the revolutionary potentiality of the armed peasantry organized in the ADN.

But, by now Ben Bella is pretty firmly in power and already showing his true nature. In this period he offered to "shake hands and turn over a new leaf" as far as relations with the capitalists were concerned and urged the French exploiters to return to the country. Hansen, because of his deep worry over the "pessimists", decides to apologize in part for Ben Bella by noting "that not even Lenin was against making concessions to capitalists." Another dispatch, of the same date, is devoted to praise of the revolutionary implications of the Tripoli program of the FLN. 

Hansen then drops writing about Algeria and nothing much appears in the Militant on the subject until the December 17 issue. In this issue a dispatch from Algiers comments on the action of Ben Bella banning the Communist Party. It warns: "Some quarters have interpreted it as indicating that Algeria has turned away from the direction of socialism. This is not the case although it was a step backward." A short dispatch, in fact, is printed actually quoting an Algerian minister apologizing for the ban. 

After this last report the Militant conveniently abandoned for a long period, any attempt to analyze what was becoming an increasingly embarrassing turn of developments in Algeria for them. So we turn to the Christian Science Monitor, whose correspondent, John Cooley, sums up the developments in December and early January as follows: Though Algeria may still conduct some minor flirtations with Communist countries, its economic cooperation with France now looks like a solid and durable marriage which has the firm blessing of the United States." He reports that in addition to reaching agreements with France on economic aid and industrial development, it has reached an "agreement in principle” with France even on agrarian reform. "It has been agreed," Cooley comments, "that the final arrangements would infringe neither the private property rights of the French owners nor the principle of collective administration of them by Committees of workers and peasants." That is a trick if you can do it.

The basic turn to the right taken by Ben Bella's administration, immediately following his consolidation of power in late September, can be seen most clearly in the developments around the Congress of the UGTA held in the middle of January. In fact the basic class issues that are posed in the colonial sector as a whole find their expression at this fateful congress (which has not been reported in the Militant). As mentioned earlier it was the UGTA which had played such a progressive role in the struggle for power in September and which was shown to have deep support among the masses of Algerian people. The UGTA was desirous of maintaining its own independence and it was this issue of the independence of the trade union movement of Algeria which dominated the congress. Prior to the congress, the UGTA leadership under great pressure from the Ben Bella leadership, came to an agreement with Ben Bella to recognize the political leadership of the FLN if the FLN government in turn would guarantee the internal democratic rights of the UGTA.

Ben Bella opened the congress on January 17 with a speech insisting that the trade unions must be subordinated to the Algerian government. But he went even further than this. "We must guard ourselves against certain tendencies that exist in Africa," he warns, "which go by the name of 'workerism' l'ouvrierisme) . The Congress can attain its goal if in the coming sessions, 80% of the delegates wear the turban, that is to say that they are peasants." So Ben Bella, holding the same evaluation of the working class in the colonial countries as Comrade Pablo, urges the trade union organization to be composed of - peasants. The next period of the convention was taken up with the usual "“fraternal" speeches of representatives of various countries and foreign unions. Then the delegates got down to serious work discussing the problems of the organized Algerian workers. This was to be their last opportunity for such a discussion.

On January 1 at 6 a.m. the partisans of Ben Bella entered the congress hall and simply seized control of the presidium. When the legitimate delegates arrived they faced a fait accompli. The morning passed in a bitter verbal struggle against this take-over of a workers’ organization by the agents of the government. Then the congress recessed for lunch. When the delegates returned from lunch they found that Ben Bella agents had brought in a lumpen mob from the street and simply taken over most of the seats in the hall in order to give backing to Ben Bella. So this is the way Ben Bella saw to it that "les turbans" (in reality a lumpen proletarian mob) controlled the trade union organization. During the melee that followed Ben Bella's forces attacked the workers as - you guessed it - "bourgeois" and "leftists who acted like counterrevolutionaries."

After seizing control of the UGTA the meeting then proceeded to a round of further governmental pronouncements which urged "total socialism' as a goal to be sought in Algeria but - only after a 'transitional period' of cooperation with capitalism. Following these events, the Monitor on February 21 reported two incidents which also give us an insight into the policy of the Algerian leadership: "At Djidjelli, members of an anti- FLN faction of the Algerian Trade Union Federation (UGTA) demonstrated in protest against the Political Bureau's decision at the UGTA congress in January to subordinate labor policy to FLN directives.... In Tablet, security forces reportedly acting on FLN orders fired on a demonstration of unemployed persons who were demanding food and jobs." 

The reaction of the Pabloites to these developments is also significant. Their French journal L'International proceeded to attack the UGTA leaders for really being only on the fringe of the Revolution anyway. Also these workers are considered to be guilty of the sin of "underestimation of the peasantry", a charge which should be familiar to anyone in our movement who knows the history of the struggle within the Bolshevik Party in the 1920's. They stated: “in accenting the necessity of transforming the UGTA by rooting it in the class of the revolutionary peasantry which alone can make it an organization truly representative of the Algerian workers, Ben Bella in fact emphasized a real necessity for the Algerian union organization."

Comrade Hansen and the Militant judiciously refrained from any comment on Algerian events during this critical period following the suppression of all parties but the FLN. Then on April 15, we are treated to two full pages eulogistically reporting the moves of the Ben Bella government against vacated European holdings and against a few holdings of reactionary Algerians who were political opponents of the FLN. The Militant also reported in detail the establishment of local workers' councils and management committees which are to administer this seized property along with an administrator appointed by the government but subject to the approval of the local committee. Comrade Hansen comments: "The tendency of the Algerian Revolution to develop in the socialist direction has grown stronger."

Comrade Hansen makes no attempt to relate these new developments with the happenings of the previous period: 

1) growing economic collaboration between Algeria and the U.S. and France 2) the suppression of all working class parties; and 3) the suppression of independent trade unionism in Algeria. Secondly, no sooner had the Militant of April 15 rolled off the press with its headline "Ben Bella Extends Algerian Working Class Rule" than the New York Times of April 14 reported that Ben Bella had pushed through the National Assembly a new budget which increased appropriations for the army and police forces. This was done "despite a dozen Deputies efforts to cut the police payroll in favor of teachers salaries." It was also reported in the same article that the Algerian army with the aid "of newly installed French-trained gendarmes and police" had succeeded in "neutralizing rural Algeria's roving postwar bands of former guerillas." 

Certainly local workers councils will have little meaning under conditions where any independent political working class trends in Algeria are suppressed and only one party, the party of Ben Bella, is allowed to exist. This is especially the case under conditions of a growing army and police apparatus. Land seizures and nationalizations in and of themselves are no sign that Algeria is a socialist country or will become one. So far Algeria has not proceeded anywhere near as far along this line as Nasser's Egypt. Further the Ben Bella government has made it very plain that it intends to take these measures while at the same time collaborating economically with French and American imperialism. Thus Algeria shows no sign of taking the kind of step Castro took in relation to American imperialism which was partly responsible for the deep radical course the Cuban Revolution has taken.

Contrary to the impression created by Hansen's article, the French were not particularly disturbed by these seizures of Algerians. In fact, the New York Times has reported the Algerians were favorably impressed “with the mildness of the reaction to their steps in France. The imperialists expect this sort of development. As long ago as last summer the Wall Street Journal reported: "But these public statements which have through the process of journalistic shorthand convinced a large portion of average Americans that Mr. Ben Bella is a dangerous Red menace, do not particularly worry the men whose job is to gauge the Algerian situation for the West.

" 'We don't have many illusions about him, ' one North African expert declares. ‘We don't imagine that we're going to be able to control him. But on the other hand Khrushchev is proveably going to find him just as hard a man to do business with. And that's really about all we can hope for. We have always predicted Algeria would be a tough, one-party state with such socialistic features as nationalization of many industries and drastic land reform.' "

Thus the actual events that have transpired in Algeria stand as a dramatic and complete confirmation of the line of analysis of the SLL and the French comrades and the American minority and a total repudiation of the analysis of the majority. This is the way these analyses stood up to the actual test of the blessed "facts". The real significance of the Evian Accords was that they showed the readiness of the Algerian leadership as a whole to subordinate a future Algeria to the essential interests of French and U.S. imperialism. In all the subsequent events this "jacobin" leadership remained true to the terms of the Accords and is presently engaged in seeking to consolidate the control of the bourgeois state over the masses and subordinating Algerian developments to this goal. During the whole period since the end of September when the Algerian leadership was actually moving to the right Hansen continued to maintain it was moving to the left and thus defying the actual facts that were before his eyes. Economic cooperation with France and the U.S. has been followed by the suppression of the CP and of the new radical Revolutionary Socialist Party, and the suppression of independent trade unionism in Algeria.

The differences between the two tendencies over Algeria were not a matter of "optimism" or "pessimism" about the revolution itself. Yes, we were "pessimistic" about the Algerian leadership and this proved to be a correct analysis. But there are genuine grounds for revolutionary optimism in the Algertan in the Algerian events. The working class emerged as an important factor in the events of September. The UGTA leadership was bureaucratically crushed by Ben Bella because he recognized the potential power of these "bourgeois" workers in Algeria. He has won the first round of the battle but there is much reason to be optimistic about the role of the working class in the next round. In order to play this role the workers must first learn not to trust those petty bourgeois leaders the party majority puts its trust in. The workers must learn themselves that they can and must lead the colonial revolution to its ultimate conclusion in alliance with the peasantry. It is in this specific sense that we are optimistic about the creation of a revolutionary proletarian party "in the very process of revolution itself." 

The majority's whole analysis has failed the test of events so miserably in Algeria because its basic method is erroneous - that is it is based on a superficial Impression of momentary reality and lacks any real understanding of the underlying motive forces in the modern world. This can be seen by asking one simple question: WHY DIDN'T ALGERIA FOLLOW THE CUBAN EXAMPLE? By all possible objective criteria Algeria appears as a Carbon copy of Cuba's early developments: guerrilla warfare, empirical but dedicated leadership, collapse of capitalist state and. economy upon coming to power, etc. The only answer the majority can give to this question is that the Algerian leaders didn't choose to follow the Cuban example. This, comrades, is complete subjectivism and in fact an admission that the majority has no answer at. all. The creation of a workers state then becomes reduced to an existentialist "moment" when the leader on top decides whether or not to follow the advice Comrade Pablo has so decently taken the trouble to write to him in a letter. Then all the talk of the objective forces which are compelling empirical leaderships down the road of the permanent revolution must be dropped and the majority must instead devote itself to personality analysis. (Objectivism and subjectivism are in fact but two sides of the same coin as they are the result of the same empirical method. The dialectical Marxist method always shows the proper interrelations between these two factors in all social developments.)

The Algerian developments can only be explained by the analysis of the minority and serve as a dramatic confirmation of the theoretical evaluation of Cuban developments expressed earlier in this document. Ben Bella has not and will not follow the "Cuban Way" because the "Cuban-Way" could only be open to Ben Bella if the USSR allowed it - that is if the USSR would be willing to allow Algeria to swing into its economic orbit as it did with Cuba. Thus the future revolutionary course of Algeria would be dependent on the counterrevolutionary Stalinist bureaucrats. That this is an impossible contradiction can be seen if one seriously considers the consequences for the Kremlin of a policy of subsidizing such revolutionary developments. Such a policy would fly in the face of its policy to seek an accomodation with imperialism at the expense of revolution. For the Kremlin to utilize Cuba in this manner as a pawn to pressure the West into a deal is one thing but for it to attempt to subsidize a pattern of such developments is quite another - would in fact mean a breaking from its whole peaceful coexistence outlook. Thus it is highly doubtful if the alternative of  the "Cuban Way" was even open to Ben Bella.

Secondly, even if the USSR had been willing to allow such a development as Algeria following Cuba into the Soviet Bloc even temporarily - no leadership in its right mind would seriously consider such a course after the Kremlin's backing down over the missiles affair. If the USSR is willing to recognize capitalist hegemony in the Caribbean it will certainly extend the same courtesy to the imperialists in the Mediterranean.

Hasn't the peasantry in Algeria, under petty bourgeois leadership, carried through a profound revolutionary struggle against France? Of course it has. Will not possibly Ben Bella in the future nationalize more industry and carry through some type of agrarian reform? He certainly must. The bourgeoisie realizes this too.

But Algeria is limited in how far it can really go in carrying out even its bourgeois democratic revolution by its dependence on the advanced capitalist countries for economic aid and a market for its goods. To the extent that Algeria or any other colonial country frees itself from this dependence (as did Cuba) without aligning itself with the international proletariat it becomes dependent in turn on Stalinism. But Stalinism seeks to maintain itself through peaceful relations with the capitalists, not through revolution which will undercut its own rule at home. An occasional utilization of a Cuba as a way of pressuring the U.S. into a deal, yes. Cuba as a pattern, no, no, never! THE FUTURE LIES WITH THE CONSCIOUS ORGANIZED PROLETARIAT ITSELF!