about the Algerian revolution and the Algerian nationalist movement. I hope that you will live up to the Leninist tradition of telling truth without restraint by publishing in The Militant the whole or extensive parts of this letter, thereby correctly the false positions of Philip Magri-which I hope. are not those of the SWP. "POLITICS OF ASSASSINATION" —IN RECENT MONTHS OR FOR THREE YEARS?
Philip Magri's thesis, in a nutshell, amounts to the following. The National Algerian Morement, MNA, led by Messali Hadj. is the left wing of the
Algerian revolution: the National Liberation Front. FLN, is its right wing. The struggle between the FLN and the MNA is something like a class struggle the "bourgeois" and the "proletarian" wings of that revolution. The point of departure for this thesis is that "in recent months, supporters of the Algerian liberation struggle have been profoundly disturbed by crimes against Algerians committed, not this time by the French, but by other Algerians participating in the struggle against French imperialism.
As the victims of these murders have been large number of Algerian trade-unionists," the inference drawn is simple: "reactionary bourgeois" forces within the FLN have murdered honest socialist revolutionaries 'of the MNA.
Unfortunately for Philip Magri and other defenders ot this thesis, it is not only in "recent months" that "crimes and murders" have been committed against Algerian revolutionaries in France. These crimes have been going on without interruption since the end of 1955. Philip Magri does not mention these assassinations for a very simple reason: they were. with few exceptions, committed by the MNA: the victims were militants and leaders of the FLN (among them, the leader of the FLN organization of the Algerian workers in Belgium).
The then Minister of the Interior, BourgèsMaunoury, speaking before the French National Assembly, declared recently:
42
The attacks multiplied during the year 1956.
The victims were mostly FLN people: there were 80 murdered, most of them of that faction, during that year. At the beginning of 1957, the FLN, having consolidated itself. started to counter-attack by increasing its activity. And it also began a terrorist campaign and tried definitively to exterminate its enemies.
These actions and reactions are becoming more and more violent, and the two nationalist parties are today carrying on a real struggle of mutual extermination on our territory.
(Journal Officiel, November 12) we do not need this testimony of French imperialism to confirm the correctness of our thesis.
Magri himself says that the MNA solidly controlled the Algerian workers in France at the moment of the outbreak of the revolution. could the weak, if not inexistent, FLN have in a short time organized sufficient arms and people to kill 80 persons? All French revolutionaries know how desperately the few FLN cadres were searching for arms to defend themselves during the whole year 1956. Why does Philip Magri keep silent about the 80 murders of that year? Certainly not because they were committed by the "bourgeois" FLN; he indicts them only for the crimes of 1957. Very significantly, "solemn" public appeal made by Messali himself to the Algerian workers in France to stop murder and bloodshed was made... in the summer of 1957, not in the spring of 1956. not because it was his own supporters who were killing FLN militants in 1956 before the tide turned?
The truth is that the MNA had the complete support of the Algerian workers in France when the revolution broke out. It tried to keep that support by pretending that it was the MNA that led the rerolutionary struggle in Algeria itself. this was an obvious falsehood, and as the Algerian workers in France started to receive news about the actual struggle in their homeland from their families and friends on the spot, first a few, then more and more, militants left the MNA to set up
FLN organization among the workers.
Messali was furious and desperate. He had lost his control over the revolution in Algeria. He began to fear that he would lose also his control over the Algerian workers in France. So he gave orders that militants leaving the MNA in France to found FLN organization should be executed as "traitors." ip Magri well characterizes this action when
What more need to be said to characterize a political movement than that its preferred method of political discussion is the assassin's
Finally the FLN, having consolidated its organization and receiving more and more help from the Algerian workers in France when it hecame clear
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL that the armed struggle in Algeria was FIN-led, started to answer back to assassination by assassin-
And as the relationship of forces changed radically between the two organizations around the beginning of 1957, soon the majority of the people killed became MNA people. And it was only then, after they had been forced to swallow their own bitter medicine, that Messali and the MNA began to protest about 'murders'.
...
Let me make our position clear from the start. We are opposed to methods of physical violence inside the labor movement, inside the international revolutionary movement, in which we include the liheration movement of the colonial peoples. to the extent that violence is inevitable in the fight against imperialism, to the same extent it should be banned within the revolutionary forces. We have consistently defended that position in the past. we defend it today, and we shall defend it tomorrow. It applies in the Algerian question quite apart from the change in the relationship of forces between the rival nationalist organizations. Only such a principled position can be consistently defended. It is completely unprincipled, nay, cynically hypocritical, to let out a great shout of moral indignation about the killing of Messalists by their opponents while keeping complacently silent, whitewashing, or justifying for reasons of "self-defense," the numerous murders of FLN militants by MNA people.
murders, by the way, continue. especially in the North of France where the MNA still has some strength. The latest incident was during the night of January 27-28, when five armed Algerians broke into a workers' dormitory of the Bouchain factory, near Valenciennes, and savagely sprayed the room with shots, killing one worker and gravely wounding another; a third saved his life by simulating death. Three hours later the murderers were arrested. According to all newspapers, they belonged to the MNA: the leader among them had already been arrested on December 18 for "reconstitution of a dissolved league" (the police definition of the organizations), and-significantlv-later on set free. It is particularly to be noted that it is a matter of public knowledge that those cases where whole cafés are machine-gunned without regard to the individual identities of the people in them are exclusively MNA jobs. THE ORIGINS OF THE FLN AND THE MNA
The second reason why, according to Philip Magri. the MNA is the "left" and the FLN the ""right" wing of the Algerian nationalist movement is to be found in the origins of both organizations. The storv he tells in that respect is highly colored. He writes about the split which occurred inside the old Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques (MTLD) in 1954, between the right-wing
Cairo or Tunis politicians, but of the leaders of the than to the Spanish one.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL "centralists' and the "orthodox" Messalists. He himself admits that the insurrection of November Ist 1954 was launched, not by these centralists (who wanted to collaborate with French imperialism, according to Philip Magri), but by "impatient" militants of the MILD. But he then hastens to conclude that at present it is these right-wing people who lead the FLN, whereas the MNA continues to be led by the old intransigent revolutionary group around Messali Hadj.
There is something slightly ridiculous about the "leader Messali" "carefully preparing the revolution." and suddenly "taken by surprise" by the "action of a small group of men" somehow "stealing" the masses from the "true revolutionists" by launching it. The truth of the matter is that the Messali leadership had been for years procrastinating and increasingly passive, that it was that passivity and lack of perspectives I shall return later to the political reason for this—which had led some opportunistic leaders of the Messalist party toward a policy of winning reforms from the "moderate" imperialists, that at the same time however the rank and file and the lower cadres in Algeria became exasperated by the passivity of the leadership, especially when they saw how armed struggle was spreading over Tunisia and Morocco and winning important victories for the revolution in those coun tries, and that it was these rank-and-file militants who started the insurrection of November Ist 1954.
sad for self-proclaimed "leaders" that the revolution doesn't follow their timetable. But if they are responsible people they acknowledge the fact and try to reintegrate themselves into it. • When on the contrary they subordinate the objective processes of history to their own narrow sectarian purposes, the revolution simply passes them by. That is what happened to Messali.
But, says Philip Magri, the nature of the FLN
"changed" when right-wing politicians like Ferhat late of twhen its
Abbas and the former reformists of the MTLD (the so-called "centralists") joined it. and when its initial leadership around Ben Bella was kidnapped from a Moroccan plane by the French army. Now the FLN leads a revolutionary army of tens of thousands of people, spread over thousands of villages. It has the active support of hundreds of thousands of poor peasants and agricultural workers, organized in village committees. It is hard to see clearl how the nature of that mass movement could have heen changed by the kidnapping of a couple of its leaders.
Contrary to what Philip Magri affirms. the whole world press has reported the fact that the real leadership of the FLN is in the hands, not of the
43 armed underground. These, on the other hand, are described by the bourgeois press as "the hard ones, the "intransigents."' and "the extremists." They lead the army; they collect the money; they control the apparatus: and they are under the tremendous pressure of the uprisen revolutionary masses Algeria. It is not very clear why they should turn the leadership of their movement over into the hands of a couple of turncoats.
But, some bright boy will argue, didn't we see in Spain how the leaders of a revolutionary mass uprising abdicated and turned their power over to the shadow of a bourgeoisie? Well, in the first place. there is no comparison between the capitalist class inside the Republican camp in Spain and the "Algerian bourgeoisie" in Algeria. The former. though very weak, did have factories, banks, landed property, big merchant capital, innumerable links with its class brothers in Wall Street, the City, and Paris; the latter is economically, socially, and tically non-existent, as Philip Magri himself indi-
Wealthy lawyers, physicians, and state funetionaries are not capitalists, but rich petty-bourgeois.
In the second place, the Spanish "shadow of a bourgeoisie" got the power back, notwithstanding its weakness, for the sole reason that the recognized leaders of the mass movement, i.e. the Stalinists, the Social-Democrats, and the right-wing Anarchists, handed it back to them voluntarily. By their own strength, the Spanish capitalists could never have expropriated the revolutionary masses in the Republican camp. Even Philip Magri himself does not dare say that the leaders of the Algerian revolution in Algeria, the heroic figures who lead the armed struggle against the sanguinary French imperialists, voluntarily handed over the power, which they created through innumerable sacrifices, to a existent) bourgeoisie. This "bourgeoisie" "captured" that power somehow by... taking a plane to Cairo and The absurdity of this thesis simply knocks one's eye out.
It is true that some opportunist petty-bourgeois leaders of nationalist groups to the right of the old Messalist MTLD have joined the FLN. But if it is "historical precedents" that are being sought for.
one would be that of some bourgeois and petty-bourgeois politicians joining Tito's "Popular Front" during the war. At that time also, many comrades feared that these forces would lead the Jugoslav revolution back capitalism: history showed those fears to be unfounded. There is a decisive difference between workers or revolutionary leaders being the "hostages" of the bourreoisie. pettv-bourgeois politicians being the "hostages" of revolutionary or Stalinist forces. Algerian case seems much closer to the Jugoslay
44 THE CLASS NATURE OF THE ALGERIAN REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONS
In order to determine the social nature of both the FLN and the MNA, it is necessary to sketch the social structure of the country, to analyze the objective role which both organizations play toward the different social classes and layers of Algeria, to examine their programmes and see to what extent their day-to-day politics are consistent with those programmes. This is the Marxist method of analyzing the social nature of an organization past; it is the same method which has to be applied to the case of Algeria, and for which we cannot substitute Philip Magri's method of gossip and fairy.
about "intrigues," "murders," people taking planes to strange places with strange
As Philip Magri himself admits, there does not exist any capitalist class in Algeria. There is not a single Algerian industrialist or banker of any importance. There is no compradore class linked to French capital in foreign trade. The French capitalist class, which tried to destroy the Algerian nation, has completely monopolized the leading economic and entrepreneurial functions in all ways
The only better-off layers of the Algerian population are some landowners and the upper strata of the petty-bourgeoisie (local merchants, intellectuals, and state functionaries).
At the other end of the social ladder, the broad mass of the Algerian population is composed of semi-proletarian layers of landless peasants, who as agricultural laborers and as wage-earners for private bosses or the public administration, whenever they find work, which is not very often. Above them stands the class of more or less permanently employed city-dwelling wage-earners, proletariat in the true sense of the word, which is not very broad. The rest of the Algerian people is composed of a mass of small peasants, eking out a dubious existence for themselves and their many unemployed relatives on the unfertile land which the French colonialists did not grab, and in the primitive Algerian village where a strong bond of collective solidarity still reigns.
Under such conditions, it is clear that no bourgeois or even petty-bourgeois mass movement is possible. The incredibly miserable and highly explosive social conditions imply an instinctively revolutionary mass movement, plebeian and semiproletarian in nature, led by more or less educated petty-bourgeois elements. That was the nature of Messali's MTLD. That is the nature of the MNA. That is also the nature of the FLN. Inasmuch as the basis of the FLN is today much broader than that of the MNA, the relationship of forces is more favorable to the pleheian masses than to the petty-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL bourgeois elements in that movement than in the MNA. And as a matter of plain fact there are more conservative religious landowners in the MNA than in the FLN.
Again I should like to make our position quite clear. We do not say that the FLN is a socialist or a revolutionary Marxist movement. We say that it is a broad mass movement of a revolutionary anti-imperialist character, in which the crystalization of distinct political currents, defending distinct social interests, has only begun, reflecting parallel tendencies within the society itself. It is the task and duty of revolutionary Marxists to aid that process by defending and unconditionally helping the Algerian revolution and its organizations against imperialism, by developing a clear Marxist programme for Algeria, North Africa, and the whole Arab world, by advocating an independent organi. zation of the working class. Such an independent organization is a matter of principle for Marxists; but not the independence of one petty-bourgeois nationalist organization from another, and especially not in armed struggles against imperialism.
Concerning the programme of both the MNA and the FLN, it can be in general said that they remain mostly on the line of the old MTLD programme. It should not be forgotten that Messali was in origin a Communist, and that the old pre-war Algerian Popular Party (PPA), of which the MTLD was an offspring, had strong socialist elements in its programme. In the MTLD's own programme these socialist slogans were much less put in the forefront; in the MNA's propaganda they are never mentioned. It is true that both organizations, being pettyhourgeois nationalist groupings and not revolutionary Marxist class parties, are trying to solve their pro. blems also by internationalizing the Algerian conflict and thus avoid any formulation which would antagonize American imperialism. The only distinction is that the FLN, from time to time, reasserts these socialist elements of its positions, whereas the MNA has descended to such depths of opportunism calling Washington to save Algeria. NATO!
For instance, on 24 January 1957 Moulay Merbah. secretary-general of the MNA, sent a telegramme to President Eisenhower which said among things:
The Algerian people and Messali Hadj greet with favor your policy on the Middle East and approve it as a generous and positive contribution to the well-being, the peace and the liberty of the Arab people... The truly colonial war which is being waged in Algeria weakens the security of Europe [!], as 500,000 French soldiers, among which 4 NATO divisions and
NATO arms, are being engaged in it.
(Le Monde, 25 January 1957)
Sara Demoratin in tiali ate rod ring day t
FOURTI INTERNATIONAL
And in an interview with a Social-Demorratic weekly. Demain. Messali Hadj declared:
We are convinced that a solution of the Algerian problem will consolidate peace in North
Africa, will reënforce the camp of freedom [!], and consolidate Franco-Arab friendship... Islamic North Africa will develop by taking into account its Western neighbors, their economic interests and relations with Mediterranean states.
Let us meditate about the examples of India and Pakistan. Pakistan, this great Islamic power, while enjoying freedom [!] and independence, has maintained links of sympathy and relations of interest [!] with Great Britain.
On the other hand, the FLN leaders, in an interview with the radical French weekly FranceObservateur, made the following statement of policy:
European property which has been honestly acquired will be respected. But the Algerian government will claim interest makes it necessary, to nationalize for example the great means of production. which are today in the hands of a few colonialists. It will be the same for the agrarian reform.' No
Algerian government worthy of the name could tolerate that a single family exploits tens of thousands of hectares while the immense majority of Algerians stagnate in dismal misery.
Again I repeat that in our opinion the FLN is not a socialist organization, although there is a Marxist proletarian current which is erystalizing in that organization. The one thing I do want to point out is that there is no objective basis in the matter of programme for handing the palm of virtue for socialism or "leftism" to the MNA while refusing it to the FLN. What remain are two radical plebeian organizations, which represent the same class forces and present substantially gramme. It is precisely under these conditions that the concentrated attacks of the MNA upon the FLN, revolution, lose all principled character, and become purely cliquish, destructive, and gravely harmful.
Philip Magri proclaims that the MNA is for a is for Lind terrori she Perpes acereas as emack
These accusations smack somehow of the slander campaign which the French
1 Just as this issue was going to press, there arrived the March-April issue of the British publication, Labour with an article by Michael Banda, "Marxism and the Algerian Revolution," which is as factually inaccurate and erroneous as that of Philip Magri. Taken in connection with the above declaration, there is a particular lack of candor in Michael Banda's phrase, "Since the programme of the FLN does not involve land reform nationalization...'
Magri and Michael Banda would do well to study the programme adopted by the FLN in its 1956 Congress in the liberated Valley of Summam, particularly its quite advanced provisions for agrarian reform.
45 imperialists are conducting day and night against heroir Algerian revolutionaries, This "blind Ierrorism" is being carried out by a revolutionary army of lens of thousands of poor workers and peasants, swelled month after month by new recruits. The official programme of the FLN, adopted at the Congress held in the liberated Valley of the Summam on 20 August 1956, proclaims that the FLN is preparing the general armed uprising of the whole Algerian population and the general armament of "pourecois perres ying to crime "is an agreement" the whole A strange slogan indeed for with French imperialism! THE STRUGGLE FOR ALGERIAN INDEPENDENCE
"Certain" newspaper correspondents have found the MNA more moderate than the FLN, says Philip Magri: nothing. he considers. could be more ludicrous. May 1 point out that this opinion has been voiced not only by "certain" newspaper correspondents but by such responsible bourgeois organs as the London Economist and the New York Times? I should further like to point out to him that the International Latex Corporation, the most fanatic defender of French imperialism within American monopolist cireles (because it owns great plantations in South Vietnam), is paying thousands of dollars to put ads in newspapers like the New York Times, in which all the attacks are concentrated upon the FLN, and the MNA is also declared to be moderate." And I should like finally to point out that French Foreign Minister Christian Pineau, a staunch partisan of the imperialist Atlantic Pact and a staunch supporter of the Algerian War. who should know what he is talking about, declared at the United Nations on 4 February 1957:
What is the difference between the MNA and the FLN? The MNA appears to us to be more
Westernized I•, more realistic |•), especially more independent [from whom?], which does not mean that its claims are less vivid.
(Le Monde, 5 February 1957)
Be this as it may, the essential difference in day. to-day poliey between the FLN and the MNA is the fact, as Philip Magri states, that the FLN stands for unconditional independence which France must recognize prior to any negotiations, whereas the MNA stands for a round-table conference between all representatives of Algerian opinion and French imperialism, in order to prepare free elections which would lead to self-determination.
Now, says Philip Magri, the FLN position is only "verballv radical." What the FLN really wants is "to persuade the French to allow them to share in the government of Algeria and in the profits to be derived from its exploitation." Why do they really want only such a "share" and not total independence? Because, Philip Magri writes, the FLN,
"representing the Algerian capitalist class cannot dream of standing alone against.
privileges [?] have been
Algerian masses.
derived from coöperation with colonialism, and perpetuation continued
"French presence" in Algeria as a counterweight against the Algerian revolution.
According to that thesis, one would then expect representative leadership of the "Algerian revolution," to stand for inconditional independence. Alas, against the "verbal extremism" of the FLN, -I quote-"that the war be ended by means of a round-table conference which all Algerian tendencies involved would be represented," without prior recognition of independence by France.
What does that mean? It means that the representatives of different Algerian parties plus the representatives of French settlers in Algeria will start "discussing" its imperialism, ie, repeat the sterile policy of stagnapractical passivity which Messali has consistently followed for many years and provoked the crisis and split in his organization!
means that the French imperialists will be allowed to play the cards of communal and national differences among the various sectors of the Algerian people, instead of a united front of anti-imperialist struggle being built. It means giving up the tremendous advantages won by the armed revolutionary struggles through countless sacrifices of thousands and thousands of the best sons and daughters of the Algerian people.
The actual slogan launched by the MNA for many months was the slogan, Aix-les-Bains on the Algerian question." Aix-les-Bains round-table conference to which this slogan alludes was the conference which granted formal independence to Morocco while " safeguarding" the economic interests of French imperialism in that country. (In the December 1957 issue of the newspaper La Voix du Travailleur Algérien, organ
MNA-controlled trade-union federation, the USTA, Ahmed Bekhat, its secretary, since killed, published an article on the Bamako Conference, that brought together most of the political militants of the French colonies of Central Africa at the end of September 1957. In this article he wrote: "We have seen that the African people are whole-heartedly ready to build a union with France on a basis of equality." Terrible words if we recall the moment when they were written. At the moment when the Algerian people had gone into open insurrection, whose example has been inspiring and will continue to inspire the revolutionary movement in Central the so-called "left-wing" leader of the Algerian nationalist movement calmly opinion of the reformist collaborationist tendency among the petty-bourgeois politicians for the opinions
FOURTI INTERNATIONAL of "the people"! And then they condemn the FLN
"collaborationist" tendencies?)
So now we have the following ludicrous picture painted by Philip Magri: the FLN, which stands flatly in so many words for unconditional indepenand refuses to stop the civil war until the imperialists formally recognize that independence, is accused of really wanting "to share power" with French imperialism; but the MNA, which actually launches the slogan for a conference leading to a share-the-power compromise, is presented as the staunch. defender of unconditional independence! It is hard to imagine a more grotesque distortion of truth and facts than this completely upside-down NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE AND PERMANENT REVOLUTION
Philip Magri tries to make some capital out of the fact that the MNA defends the "consistently democratic position" of self-determination by means of free elections for a sovereign Constituent Assembly. But the FLN recognizes the same principle. The whole question here who and under what conditions will call for these elections?
The Algerian people have had a bitter experience with "general elections." Philip Magri himself describes how "all the elections in Algeria were outrageously falsified" after 1945. Now at that time there was relative "peace" in Algeria, whereas today
French soldiers thousands of armed European "militiamen." Under these conditions could "elections" be anything hut
The position of the FLN is that only a provisional Algerian government could call or general elections after the recognition of Algeria ndependence and after the withdrawal of frenc
It might be said that democratic guarantees for elections under these conditions would be found insufficient. The right for all Algerian national parties, all shades of Algerian national opinion, participate in these elections, could and should be demanded. We ourselves would always defend the right of the MNA to participate in the elections. But is it not clear that the FLN position is far more anti-imperialist, revolutionary, and democratie than that of the MNA which, in the midst of a war, calls for a "democratic election" without saying word about the presence of the sanguinary occupation
This is all the because it has political programme of that reformist stooge of French imperialism, Guy Mollet, "democratic elections after a cease-fire" to for unconditional recognition of Algerian independence. MNA slogan came dangerously close to that imperialist one; and what
FOURTI INTERNATIONAL is implied in the latter has been made clear by that French Noske called Robert Lacoste, who openly stated last week in the French National Assembly that "cease-fire" implied disarmament of rebels, and that no elections could be held without those rebels being disarmed.
The position now becomes quite clear. In the armed uprising of the Algerian people against French imperialism, the FLN, leaders of the revolution, whatever may be the insufficiency of their doctrine or the opportunism of their tactics, call for unconditional independence and for the withdrawal or disarming of the imperialist troops: the imperialists, for their part, logically stand for the disarming (ie, wholesale murder) of the revolutionaries, and "free elections" atterwards. And what does that "vanguard" organization called the MNA stand for? For a round-table conference of both camps and "free elections, " without mentioning the few hundreds of thousands of people busy cutting each other's throats in the war! One could make a definition of that position. But it would certainly not be the definition "Bolshevism" or "socialism.
The question of the winning of national independence by an armed uprising of the masses is decisive question in the unfolding of the revolutionary process in a colonial or semi-colonial country. It is no accident that the colonial or semi-colonial bourgeoisies, from Ghana to India, and from Argenhave always shied away from the perspective of an armed mass uprising against imperialism. Their way to "win independence" has always been that of negotiation, of haggling, of compromise, of "round-table' conferences, which enabled them to keep the masses from violent action maintain important economic links with imperialism. On the other hand, the strategy of proletarian parties in the national-liberation struggles of colonial countries has always consisted in developing the mass struggle, culminating in the armed uprising, to its logical conclusion, because the theory of the permanent revolution teaches us that the process that begins as an armed mass struggle for national independence ends as a civil war for proletarian dictatorship.
The hesitations, weakness, and betrayal of the Indian bourgeois national Congress leadership prevented this process from working out completely in India in August 1952; the same characteristics of the bourgeois Mossadegh leadership in Iran, of the bourgeois Arbenz leadership in Guatemala, of the bourgeois Perón leadership in Argentina, enabled imperialist or pro-imperialist counter-revolution in each of these cases to triumph temporarily without organized armed mass resistance. But the example of Jugoslavia shows that where a revolutionary leadership, even an opportunist Stalinist one, consistently tries to develop the mass uprising for national independence, it is forced by the logic of the situa-
47 tion and the pressure of the masses to trespass on the fields of social revolution. There are many signs that the same process is taking place in Algeria, with incalculable consequences for the whole of North Africa. The confirmation of that revolutionary process would shatter the shaky compromises in Tunisia and Morocco, would bring about a new stage of the North African revolution, and would give a tremendous impulse to the revolution in all Arab countries.
Already today the relations between Bourgiba and that part of the FLN revolutionary army stationed on Tunisian territory are very strained. indeed strained to the point where American imperialism felt it wise to send some arms to Bourgiba to enable him to defend himself against the much stronger Algerian forces. In Morocco the FLN partisans openly collaborate with the Liberation Army, against the pro-imperialist stooges around
Mohammed V.
It is true that the FLN leadership as a whole cannot be said to work consciously for a Algeria. But by developing the mass uprising more and more broadly, by preparing and putting into effect regionally the general arming of the whole population, it is objectively preparing the socialist Algeria and socialist Middle East of tomorrow. and slanderous gossip, copied from the imperalist yellow press which, like Philip Magri, speaks of them only as "gangs of killers" and "assassins." THE BELLOUNIS CASE
In the last weeks, however, at the very time that Philip Magri's articles were being printed in The Militant, the real situation in the Algerian national movement has been made even clearer by the dramatie betrayal of Bellounis.
Bellounis was the only important underground leader heading a large group of armed fighters in Algeria in the name of the MNA. The Algerian "maquis" visited by the French journalist Claude Gerard, whom Philip Magri quotes, was precisely the "maquis" organized and led by Bellounis. After many months of very strange and shady goings-on, Bellounis, at the beginning of December 1957, signed an agreement with the French imperialist army. In the first public declaration, published by the French newspapers, he declared:
If I should be recognized as representing the national army of the Algerian people and the
Algerian National Movement, and if Messali
Hadj were recognized as the "valid negotiator."
I am ready to participate in the pacification [!] of Algeria with my. army.
As there are differences among the imperialists,
48 and most of them do not think it useful to "play up" the MNA and Messali. Bellounis a few days later made a speech over thr French radio of Algiers, in which. without mentioning the name of Messali, he denied having any links with the MNA.
Some provinces of Algeria were covered with his "proclamations, in which he defends the position of "free elections" in his somewhat special manner:
I hereby solemnly declare that my army is struggling against the anarchistic [!] forces of foreign obedience represented by the FLN, in order to liberate the population of this country from their [!] cruel rule. My goal is essentially to allow everyone to express himself freely on the day when the destruction of the FLN will allow the people of Algeria to define freely
[!] their destiny in a harmonious framework indissolubly linked with France.
I have undertaken this struggle in close collaboration and friendship [!] with the civil and military authorities of France.
is engaged in the struggle which France wages against the killers of the FLN, who spare neither women nor children nor old people.
Bellounis, of course, has become a vulgar traitor. After his proclamation and the open collaboration of his armed forces with the imperialist army, there can be no doubt about this. But Bellounis was defended by Messali and his friends till the very last moment; why do they keep silent today? Why don't they openly and publicly dissociate themselves from this traitor? (In its issue of 6 January. The Militant states that "the MNA has disclaimed any connection with Bellounis or his action." I believe that The Militant published this statement in good faith, and that some "informants have deliberately provided incorrect information to its editors. in fact. no such declaration of the MNA has been published anywhere: and several French left newspapers have repeatedly declared that Messali Hadj, while refusing himself to come to terms with imperialism, has also refused to denounce Bellounis, because the majority of his followers in Algeria approve Bellounis.)
We do not want to identify the MNA or Messali with Bellounis; neither do we identify with the MNA that irresponsible split-off group of French Trotskyism led by Lambert. But what should one say about these people when one reads the following sentence in their newspaper, La Vérité, of 14 November 1957?
With regard to the objectives of Bellounis and the situation in the zone he controls, most fantastic and contradictory information has circulated and still circulates. On the other hand, the assertions of those who pretend that
Bellounis has gone over "to serve France" are brought into question when one reads [...] l'Action, the official paper of Bourgiba, which,
FOURTI INTERNATIONAL in its issue of 28 October. savs that Bellounis has reached a "modus vivendi with the French troops, that is to say, an armistice. which is a purely military situation [!] and which does not presuppose any maricular polion military situation which involves collaboration with the French army against "anarchistic," "communist assassins-doesn't that remind negotia 1 one of the behavior of the Mihailoviteh forces in making "armistices" with the fascist forces against Tito's "gangs of assassins'?
Furthermore. after Bellounis's political betrayal became public and he went over into the camp of imperialism, a trial was being held in Algiers of some MNA militants. According to Le Monde of 15 January 1958 they claimed that ther were MNA people and that they had fought under the leadership of Si Lahoucine and Si Mohammed Bellounis. Two days later, Le Monde gave the following excerpt from the speech for the defense made bv Lawyer Dechézelles, a close friend of Messali Hadj:
Today my task could be easy: for if these men had not been captured in 1956, they would be part of an army which seems to have been recognized !!] by the French government. 1 do not wish to penetrate into the mysteries of government affairs, but I am forced to that the civil and military authorities come to an agreement with the chief of these accused: Bellounis.
Some sophists have tried to compare the "desperate situation" of the Bellounis forces to the situation of the POUM and Trotskyist armed forces on the Spanish Civil War front, when Stalinist repression closed in on them from behind. I have already explained why the social and political characterization of the FLN makes such a comparison absolutely slanderous. The Stalinists in Spain strangled and killed the revolution: the FLN for the moment it and pushes it forward. But even the parallel were correct, can anyone for one moment
POUM or Troyskyists "purely military" or military and political agreements with Franco for common struggle against the Stalinists? Only the Stalinist slanderers movement have ever advanced such possibilities. will be to the eternal honor of the Trotskyist movement that never and nowhere did it for one moment subordinate the general interests of the revolution and the abyss separating hostile class camps, to its own self-defense. There were no such traitors or turncoats in our movement. no people making "military armistices" with fascism! We must defend the POUM and all honest revolutionaries against slanderous comparisons like this one. And we must openly denounce the unprincipled irresponsibility of people like the Lambert group. which puts the label of "Trotskyism" on sentences like
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the above-quoted, which come very near to open betrayal.
Comrades might say: in Spain and in Jugoslavia there was fascism: in France, there is bourgeois democracy: this makes a difference.
comrades are quite wrong. It was not in France that Bellounis made his agreement with the army of imperialist butchers: it was in Algeria. And in Algeria there is not only no bourgeois democracy, there is a regime of terror and wholesale assassination worse than Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1938 and beyond comparison with fascist Italy. horrors of the imperialist repression in Algeria can be compared only with the worst traits of the Nazis in Poland, Jugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. servative figures of the number of innocent civilians Plain by the imperialist bandits are around 500.000. In such a situation one chooses one's side without a moment's hesitation. One is the camp of the revolution. whatever may have been the errors or even the crimes of its leaders, and the other is the counter-revolution. And Bellounis is today. Any honest revolutionary who has mistakenly identified himself with that traitor should today show the moral courage of acknowledging his mistake. And an organization like the MNA, which has consistently and proudly identified itself with Bellounis, should dissociate itself all the quicker because of the extent of its past mistake in the matter. History tolerates no misunderstandings on questions of such importance. A DANGEROUS REVISION OF LENINISM
But, it might be asked, how do we explain the bitter fight between the two Algerian nationalist organizations. if there are no class differences between them?
One of the reasons for this fight is. of course, cliquism, which has often and will often in the future play a role in young and rapidly growing revolutionary movements. Messali was the acknow-
Home congres of 1951, He hatind
nominated president for life" (a strange proposal for a socialist, don't you think?).
When he saw that control over the mass movement and the revolution was escaping from him, he tried to recapture it by all means. abandoning thereby all principled positions and becoming cynical and demoralized.
But of course there is a question of "profound political difference between Messali and the FLN. and that question trickles through Philip Magri's articles, although it is nowhere explicitly stated. Magri many times alludes to the necessary solidarity between the French proletariat and the Algerian masses." This seems OK, of course. But what is behind this correct phrase is Messali's conception that, because of the presence of a million
49 French settlers in Algeria and the strength of resistance of French imperialism toward the national liberation movement in that country, the victory of the Algerian revolution is impossible without a revolutionary upsurge in France. As there is no immediate prospect of such an upsurge. the Algerian revolution cannot achieve military victory.
During the last session of the United Nations General Assembly, according to the newspaper Le Monde, the MNA issued a communiqué stating that "the end of the Algerian conflict cannot be the result of military victory. The only democratic and just solution can be the organization of free . elections under the effective control of the United Nations."
the irresponsible Lambert. acting like a mouthpiece for Messali, faithfully echoed in La Vérité:
As a result of its relative isolation. essentially from the French proletariat [...] the Algerian people cannot achieve a military victory.
Issue of 7 November 1957)
Such theories are wrong in principle and unproved and irresponsible in practice. It is true that the proletarian vanguard in a national-liberation movement of a colonial country must be internationalist in theory and action, that it must call on the oppressed people of its own country not to identify the rulers of the metropolitan country with the exploited toilers of that country. It is also true that the victory of the colonial revolution will be the easier and the quicker. the more energetically the proletariat of the metropolitan country joins in the fight against imperialism. But it is absolutely wrong that the armed uprising or the revolution of the • oppressed people must be subordinated in any way to the "favorable timetable" for revolution... in the metropolitan country. On the contrary, the revolutionaries of the colonial country must audaciously forge ahead, conseious of the fact that by the blows they are striking against imperialism. they are preparing the revolutionary upsurge in the metropolitan country.
Philip Magri comes close to formulating this wrong and dangerous theory of the "impossibility of a victorious revolution in a single country" when he writes in the 6 January Militant: "Exhaustion of the Algerian revolutionary forces is a serious when he speaks of a "deadlock. " and when he concludes:
But the French workers will have to act soon, for the war of attrition has begun to tell on the
Algerians. As Messali has emphasized all his life. the fate of the Algerian revolution rests in the hands of the French working class.
This thesis of the "exhaustion" of the Algerian revolution was feverishly developed by French imperialism on the eve of and during the session
50 of the United Nations General Assembly, in order to prevent an "internationalization" of the Algerian conflict. All bourgeois and pro-imperialist newspapers in France were talking about this "exhaustion." Alas, no sooner was Philip Magri's article printed than the news from Algeria caused great alarm in French imperialist circles. Butcher No. 1, Robert Lacoste himself, was forced to admit that the were now so strong and so well-armed Ledged corilla could go over from "terrorism" to fullwarfare." And Bourgiba nounced to French public opinion, without being contradicted, that the Algerian revolutionists control "large parts of the Algerian territory."
Under these conditions, talk about "exhaustion" and "attrition' is irresponsible, moderate term. Working-class and Marxist revolutionists should always be the most enthusiastic and intransigent soldiers in the struggle for national liberation, who should tell the downtrodden masses that they are able to liberate themselves, and not constantly shed doubt on the future of the colonial revolution and repeat the defeatist and anti-Leninist thesis that without action of the metropolitan proletariat the colonial revolution is doomed to defeat.
reproach the FLN leadership "adventurism" which "favors" the climate for war in France! This is Leninism turned upside-
When the exploited people of the colony rise, it is the task of the vanguard of the metropolitan proletariat to call tirelessiv on the masses to come to the defense and active help of the colonial revolution, irrespective of the "errors" and "mistakes" of its leaders. To correct these "errors" is primarily the task of the proletarian revolutionaries of the colonial countries, rather than of the workers of the metropolitan countries. They must first uin the right to "correct the errors" of the colonial revolution by showing practice their capacity to help this revolution.
Now in practice the French proletariat, owing to the betrayal of the Stalinist and reformist leaderships, and to the hesitations and procrastinations of the most influential centrists, has done nothing to help the Algerian revolution. There has not been one strike in a harbor: there has not been one ship transporting soldiers or loaded with munitions
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL which was held up 24 hours: there was not one general strike on an all-city level anywhere in France against the Algerian war. Under these circumstances, it is not very becoming for a French revolutionist to reproach the heroic leaders of the Algerian revolution for their "nationalism"; he would do better to address these reproaches to the leaders, cadres, and even sometimes militants. of the working-class organizations of his own country.
It is significant that the FLN is not only far to left of bourgeois-nationalist Bourgiba's Neo-Destour the Moroccan Istiglal. Its criticism of Stalinism it also criticism of a left
CP leader Léon Faix was forced last week in the Stalinist paper France Nouvelle to get into public polemics with the FLN over its accusations that the French CP leadership is criminally inactive with regard to the Algerian war. He timidly reproaches the FLN for its "ingratitude," saving that French Communists have "done help the Algerian revolution. In reality. the bitter FLN criticism of the criminal passivity of French Stalinism has found broad echoes inside the French CP, and especially in the international Communist movement (Moroccan and Tunisian CPs, Jugoslav CP, Polish CP. Chinese CP, etc.).
There is no imperialist war in Algeria; there is a war of liberation by an exploited people against imperialist slavemongers. Under these conditions, honest revolutionary can "wage a war on two
Leninism teaches us under such conditions the only correct position is the united front, not made conditional on polities within the colonial revolution, between the working rlass of the imperialist country and the colonial revolution. for the defeat of imperialism. The MNA, Messali. and the Lambert group have never said this in so many words. Our International and its French section are proud to be the only working-class organizations that have consistently defended that position. The Militant would do well to defend it
Fraternally, PATRICK O'DANIEL
Paris
3 February 1958
XXth Plenum of the International Executive Committee: