THE FUTURE OF THE ALGERIAN REVOLUTION
The Algerian revolution is once again at a crossroad.
The struggle carried on for nearly five years by French imperialism to exterminate the Algerian masses has not succeeded in bringing to their knees the peasants and workers fighting under the banner of the FLN.
There are now, on the Algerian side, more than 600,000 dead, innumerable villages destroyed, prisons and concentration camps full of Algerian militants, both in Algeria and France, more than a million "displaced persons" in Algeria, penned up under inhuman ditions that will forever stigmatize the barbarous face of the imperialist brigands. engaged in this dirty colonial war.
Savage and gone wild, imperialism, encouraged by the lack of even the slightest effective resistance on the part of the French proletariat, is visibly seeking to change the relationship of forces between the Arab and European elements in Algeria by the outright mass extermination of the women, the children, and the men of that martyred country. This is one of the most horrible operations perpetrated in our century by imperialism before it leaves history's stage.
This atrocious balance-sheet of imperialist repression gives the measure of the strength of the Algerian revolution. Struggling practically alone for nearly five years under the most adverse conditions, the peasants and proletarians of Algeria are still valiantly standing up to the unleashed forces of imperialism. Here we have an example of the incredible revolutionary potential of the colonial masses in our epoch, which should serve to stimulate the revolutionary struggle of the French and European proletariat, so shockingly far behind the action of our colonial brothers.
The terrible blood-letting being inflicted by French imperialism on the valiant Ålgerian revolution, however. is not without grave disadvantages for that revolution's future. The question of financial, material, and moral aid to it is now urgent. It is impossible not to be surprised and indignant, especially that the profuse promises of help made on various occasions by certain Arab states and workers' states do not materialize and remain a sort of verbal propaganda aimed at their own masses, who solidarize themselves with the Algerian revolution.
It is urgent that an end be put to fobbing off the sacred cause of the Algerian revolution for purposes of internal "popularity" or of diplomacy, and to move on to real financial, material, and moral aid.
From this viewpoint, we must hail the decision of People's China to aid the Algerian revolution on a large scale. It is also possible that the Kremlin, to bring pressure on de Gaulle, now Adenauers ally and a fervent crusader for the Atlantic Alliance, may stake heavily on the Algerian card, and materially aid - and even, at a later stage, recognize - the Algerian government.
The possibility of Chinese and perhaps Soviet aid will not fail to produce a differentiation within the
"Eastern" and a "Western" tendency. The former will unquestionably receive more and more the support of the peasant and proletarian ranks of the determined to continue the fight and anxious to get the means (money, arms, etc), wherever they may come from. This is the healthy tendency, the attacking flank, of the revolution.
The "Western" tendency would like still to temporize with American imperialism and its of the Maghreb, Bourguiba himself and the King of Morocco. It is itself a "Bourguibist" wing inside the FLN, ie, a pro-Western and pro-bourgeois wing always tending to find an "acceptable compromise with French imperialism.
It must be hoped that this tendency, fought against by the partisans within Algeria and the proletarian and plebeian cadres outside, will find itself isolated within the leading organisms of the FLN, and that it will capitulate or take itself off in one way or another. The constant danger lying in wait for the Algerian revolution, leprived of the active support of the French proletariat, is, naturally, the development of this "Bourguibist" ›ro-Western and pro-bourgeois tendency that might be capable of taking an orientation toward a compromise that favors French imperialism.
To fight against it effectively, it would be necessary that the FLN turn itself from the vague movement that it is at the present time, into a political party, with a definite national and social programme, and with a more precise organizational structure, able to exercise a genuine control from the base to the summit. It would also be necessary, profiting by the teachings of all revolutions that have ended in genuine victories, to transfer the leading organisms to Algeria itself and link them up with the real base of the revolution: the combatants and the Algerian population. Abroad, would naturally be necessary to have various delegations of the leading organisms resident in Algeria itself and indissolubly tied up with the revolutionary army.
These measures are in reality the only ones that would be able to permit avoiding the bureaucratic and neobourgeois corruption of the leadership of the revolution, to politicize the movement, and to increase its organizational efficiency, including on the military plane.
The later conduct of the Algerian revolution is not an exclusively military question, which can be solved on the level of increased financial and material means. It is above all a political question, a question of programme and perspectives. The army can become a genuine revolutionary army, welded to the civilian population, only of the basis of a clear and arduous social programme, defining the simultaneously anti-imperialist, national, democratic, and social goals of the revolution. The aim of national independence must go hand-in-hand specific programme about agrarian reform, nationalizations, industrialization, liberation of women, and the democratic structure of the new power.
To endow the revolution with a well-structured and disciplined party, with a precise programme, and with leading organisms linked with the revolutionary army and with the masses of the country and effectively con-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL trolled by them, is to inspire the revolution with a new and invicible drive.
These changes would have an influence even on the level of the conduct of the war, facilitating operations by small ultramobile units composed of conscious revolutionary fighters who would derive all possible profit from their close relations with the population, from the terrain, and from their adequate weapons.
Naturally other political problems must already now occupy the attention of a really politicized leadership of the revolution: the strategy of the war, a war limited to Algeria or one including the whole Maghreb; in the latter case an adequate policy by the Algerian revolution toward the Tunisian and Moroccan populations who would be able to be really won over to such perspectives only on the basis of the hardened social physiognomy of the Algerian revolution; propositions of a transitional solution to be presented to French imperialism, backed up by an increased war effort, etc.
For example, imperialism's interest in the petroleum and other wealth of the Sahara is unquestionably at the present time at the basis of its obstinacy about keeping Algeria under its effective control. To make it easier for it to back off this position, the Algerian government might visualize for a whole period the setting up of a joint company for the exploitation of the Sahara, with participation by the Algerian state, French capital, and possibly also Moroccan and Tunisian participation, the sine qua non precondition being that the Algerian state hold the absolute majority of the shares. Furthermore, though we are opposed to indemnization of imperialist enterprises, the Algerian government may be forced thereto in a transitional solution; and in this case the profits of this exploitation might be able to cover the indemnizations to be envisaged to the European agriculturists and industrialists to be expropriated in
It is here a question, naturally, only of some indications, simply by way of example, for a concrete policy to be worked up in order to facilitate the extrication of French imperialism from its present blind refusal to negotiate seriously, as long as an overwhelming decision cannot occur on the strictly military plane.
The future of the Algerian revolution now depends also on its capacity to produce an adequate leadership and to politicize itself in its entirety to a maximum