DEFEATISM ON BOTH SIDES?
By Joseph Hansen
The editors of The Newsletter, a London socialist publication, seem to have felt some embarrassment over the extremely equivocal position on the Algerian Revolution expressed in their issues of October 5 and October 12. An entire page of the October 19 issue was used to publish a letter from Denis Anderson protesting their errors and unwarranted attacks against the Ben Bella government, together with a reply by Eric Neilson, author of one of the equivocal articles, clarifying where The Newsletter stands.
"Denis Anderson criticises us for supporting Ait Ahmed and Mohamed [sic] Oul.el-Hadj. Nothing could be further from the truth," writes Neilson,
"At no time has The Newsletter supported, overtly or covertly the aims of Ait Ahmed,'
We are glad to report that The Newsletter is not in favor of the counterrevolution centered in Kabylie, although it would never have been uessed from reading the articles in the issues of October 5 and October 12. See the extensive quotations in World Outlook October 25,.] - . - In apologizing for the many errors _in the article bearing his signa-~ “ture, | Neilson writes:
"admittedly, our information is limited, fragmentary, even episodic. That is in the nature of things.
But our criticts quotations from 'Candide!, reproduced from the - Pabloite bulletin 'World Outlook', are not helpful, since the Bulletin was not published till October 11; that is, two days after our article was writtent™ .
- One could wish that The Newsletter had published a notice in its issues of October 5 and October 12 warning its readers that its informa~ tion was “limited, fragmentary, even episodic." Unfortunately, the impres- Sion conveyed was just the opposite,
Is it in "the nature of things" for The Newsletter to offer its read- .ers this kind of information? Perhaps. But we call Neilson's attention to the fact that the article in World Outlook which he cites was dated October 8, a day before his error-packed article was written! (If our arithmetic is correct, Neilson claims his article was written October 9, )
‘The matter would scarcely be worth pursuing ifwe could be sure that. The Newsletter had really rectified its attitude toward the Algerian Revolution, Unfortunately this is not the case. In referring to the con= flict between Algeria and Morocco, Neilson offers us the following gem:
. "In the event of war between the two states, the attitude of Marxists must be one of inflexible opposition, i.e., of revolutionary defeatism, in relation to their respective regimes on both sides of the frontier,"
‘This position is a little different from that taken by Ait Ahmed who announced that his "revolutionary defeatism" would be suspended until
we, after the conflict with Morocco was over, From this we can conclude that some socialists in London are more intransigeant than some "socialists" in Algeria. |
We can also note that it is different from the position of the radical political opposition in Morocco which called for defeatism in Morocco. and for full support to the Algerians in defending their revolution,
However, Neilson's declaration continues to leave a big question mark over the pretension of The Newsletter that it represents revolutionary socialism -- at least so far as the Algerian Revolution is concerned.
Morocco is governed by e neocolonialist monarchy whose territorial . ambitions are viewed not unsympathetically by the imperialist powers including the fascist butcher Franco who is a friend of Hassan II. (The Moroccan potentate listed Spain as one of his first choices for a congenial place to hold cease~fire talks with Ben Bella} )
The government of the plebian Ben Bella, on the other hand, has instituted the most profound agrarian reform in all of Africa, has fostered and legalized democratic self-management and Workers Councils, has opposed the neocolonialist tendency represented by such figures as Ferhat Abbas, and is regarded by the Moroccan monarchy as a contagious: source of sociale ist ideas and the potential Cuba of North Africa,
The editors of The Newsletter can see no difference between these two regimes, They advocate revolutionary defeatism in both cases, and since they scarcely have the forces to put such a policy into effect, their practical. course is to stand aside, disdaining to take sides in a conflict in which "Nothing less than the whole orientation of North Africa may be. at stake,” if we are_to believe an imperialist mouthpiece like the New York Herald Tribune [Oct, 30]. oo
--The editors of The Newsletter evidently felt themselves to be in the frying pan for inadvertently displaying too much sympathy with the counterrevolutionaries of Kabylie. Perhaps they would have done better to stay there than to land where they are now.
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