DE GAULLE AND ALGERIA
When de Gaulle reached power, an idea that was widespread - even outside Gaullist circles - in France and elsewhere in the world was that he had a solution for bringing about peace in Algeria. That explains in part the fact that in the referendum he obtained so many votes from Communist voters. Even in the FLN there were tendencies to credit de Gaulle with liberal
More than a year has passed. He has perhaps made some rather resounding verbal demonstrations (the "peace of brave men"), but nothing else.! And the idea is developing that he has not been able to do any better than Mollet or Gaillard.
In any case, the question of Algeria, which, after de Gaulle's arrival at power, was no longer in the foreground of the political scene in France, is returning thereto - and very seriously.
Unfortunately, this is nowise the result of a mass movement against the continuation of the war. The apathy and political indifference in France are appalling.
The Algerian question comes back into the foreground first of all as a result of the heroic fight of the Algerian revolutionaries, whom nothing - tortures, sufferings, scanty equipment - has been able to force to give way, and who will continue inexorably to fight until victory.
The Algerian question comes back into the foreground also because of developments in Negro Africa, have taken on a speeded-up rhythm during this last under the influence of various factors (among which not the least are the Algerian revolution itself on the one hand, and, on the other, the policy of Gaullist "grandeur" that wants to explode an atomic bomb in the heart of Africa).
Algeria is back on the agenda also because American imperialism would like to avoid having the desperate resistance of the old-time imperialisms drive the underdeveloped countries toward the workers' which the masses of those countries have a natural tendency to turn.
And lastly, the policy of "grandeur" has to be paid 1 This editorial note was written before de Gaulle's 16 September propositions or the reaction of the FLN thereto. For updating comment thereon, see p 82.
for, and Pinay, watchman over French tinances, representing sectors of capitalists who know how.to count, has pointed out to de Gaulle that it is impossible to do everything that he is proclaiming as long as the Algerian war lasts.
Here then are many factors to spur de Gaulle to do something to stop the war in Algeria. But, if he is in power, it is because the French army in Algeria and its general staff (General Ely et al) refused to obey the civil power which seemed to have inclinations toward making concessions in Algeria. It is possible that the colonels and captains - in Algeria - want no more of the Algeria of the settlers, but in any case they want Algeria, one way or another, to remain French. And de Gaulle's authority over them is more than limited. On May 13th 1958 the French army tasted a dish that is dangerous for any army, the coup d'état. On that day the army was still kept in hand by its highest commanders, some of whom went along with the movement so as not to be swept away by it. De Gaulle fears that a new operation might not be so simple and so easy to make use of, that it might be made not in his favor but against him.
And so he has to give an appearance of doing something without doing anything whatsoever. The Paris weekly, 'Express, recently reproduced the remarks made by de Gaulle at a press conference on 17 November 1947, on the subject of the Vietnamese war, which had then been going on for two years and which was to continue until Dien Bien-Phu in 1954. Let us quote these words of de Gaulle:
The genuine rule to be observed at present in Indochina is not to rush anything. It is neces sary to know how to have time. It is necessary to last out. Why should we be the more hurried ones? One day or another the French solution will be imposed, the solution which, as early as March 1945, I had myself proposed: to deal, whenever we might be able, with whatever there might be in Indo-China that is truly representative, provided that it is not a question of enemies of France.
He has the same programme for Algeria, but he is
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL now in power. So, to the army, he gives the substance: continue pacification, i e, the war, until victory. And, to get around the rocky headland of the United Nations meeting, he has found a verbal expedient: neither independence nor integration, but self-determination. This last term has obviously no real meaning at all in face of the continuation of hostilities.
We have no reason to make prognoses about what will happen at the UN O, whether a resolution in favor f Algeria will get the two-thirds vote, or whether deals nd promises of all sorts will head off such a vote. That is far from decisive. What counts and will count more and more is the will to independence of the Algerian people, supported more every day by the peoples of the Arab and African countries and by the peoples of all underdeveloped countries. French imperialism, even with the support of American imperialism, is waging a strug-
9 gle that affords it no way out. The shortcomings and betrayals of the leadership of the French workers, and the resultant paralysis of the toilers of France, run the risk of leaving the field open in France itself, for yet a while, to still more reactionary and savage forces; that will be grave and costly, but not very viable, and finally cannot turn back the march of history.
We have no reason to despair of the French working class, which showed itself ready in 1955 and 1956 to struggle for peace in Algeria; but at the present moment it is hard for it by itself to regain the initiative in the matter of the struggle against the Algerian war. That renders all the more imperative an international aid to the Algerian revolution, an aid that will also serve as a stimulus for a renewal on the part of the toilers of France.