ALGERIAtS CONGRESS OF PEASANTS -- A REVOLUTIONARY GATHERING -
While the world press played its spotlight on the western borders of Algeria where the attack launched by Morocco's king might open up the pos~ sibility of intervention by.the United Nationa A la Congo, another, poten= tially much more significant event was occurring in Algiers. This was the three-day Congress of Peasants held October 2527, It became a milepost in the development of political consciousness among the Algerian masses, “We will return to this congress and its significance in future issues, for the moment we wish only to call attention to an article by David Rousset in the current number of Le Figaro Littéraire [November 7=13], His obser~ vations at the congress are of considerable interest,
First was the impression made on him by the delegates whom he estim-~ ated at three thousand. Coming from all over Algeria, they were genuinely of the soil, “rough” men "who had never in their lives spoken before a microphone or camera."
The first day when they approached the rostrum where government offi-~ cials sat, they were diffident and a little ill at ease. When they turned toward the audience, they felt at home, By the second day they knew that the congress was really theirs and they showed it in everything they did. "They spoke before the president of the Republic, before the ministers, before the nation, without any attention to manners, in their direct man= ner, crude, hard, the way they think,"
Rousset cites as an example of their directness "a simple worker from Tlemcen" who, speaking about the lack of medical facilities in his area, said, "It's necessary to declare the doctors vacant property." [Posses-
sions left by the French settlers when they fled from. Algiers were -declared "vacant property" as a preliminary step toward nationalization, ].
Rousset was: impressed by the obvious absence of any attempt to rig the meeting. The organizers had not even thought about heating the place. "No sergeants at arms. No parades. No songs. A few flat inscriptions: tLong live the decrees of March 221 'The land to those who till.it.!. The atmosphere was created by the delegates themselves, And by afternoon they heard the delegate from Aurés" declare: “All the officials must be elec~ ted by the workers." And the delegate from Zéralda: "The officials must be chosen in the light of their professional competency; they must remain close to the peasants; they must get rid of the bureaucratic spirit." ~~
On the second day when Ben Bella entered the hall while the delegates from Médéa was delivering an attack "against the new-born bureaucracy of the state," the delegates rose to give the president a tremendous ovation. "But, with the end of the applause, a number got up to demand that the delegate from Médéa repeat his erievances from the beginning. Which he did and in the same language." . These peasants discovered during the course of the meeting, that their problems were the same on a national scale, that they could be solved only on a national scale, and that they themselves represented an extremely powerful social force likewise on a national scale,
"One of them, moreover, explicitly said the next day during his speech: ‘'We have been able to get together among the delegations and com~ pare our points of view,! They understood, including in an almost physical way, that the six thousand self-management committees constitute a national force, The closed circle of their regional experience was broken, This shift in consciousness, which they had not really experienced until they were finally assembled, elbow to elbow, this exhibition of their power, | changed everything, transformed everything, made this congress an authentic congress of peasants,"
They got right down to business, First of all they talked about the. results of their work on the farms and the fact that production had not fallen down, ."This was visibly the point of honor among serious workers," They wanted the country to understand their new attitude. A peasant of Miliana said: "Before, we worked without understanding. Now we know the problem," They appeared "sure of themselves" but with great simplicity of manner, Thus the delegate from Tiaret began: "I!m going to say a few words, But if Itm mistaken, excuse me," —
"and then they began to talk about the obstacles, all the obstacles, Those concerning technical means, Those arising from administration. Like the conflicts with other peasants from barren lands, Like the difficulty former partisans have of adapting themselves. Like the irritating seasonal unemployment. And each one also explained how, in his sector, they had sought. to find solutions, to improvise palliatives., For the first-time it had ever occurred, the peasants were speaking, For the first time they were not letting someone else speak for them,"
The problems, including those tied in with their relations to the government, were thus placed in the open for the joint consideration of the.entire body. Not the slightest attempt was made from the rostrum to shut off discussion, On the contrary, although the officials were raked
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over the coals, they listened... When someone from the floor became repeti-= tious or took too much time, the other delegates shut him off. They wanted to hear from all sectors.
One of the most significant outcomes was the universal insistence that the only possible solution to the difficulties lies through the man-~ agement committees, These have now become part of the basic thinking of. the working masses of Algeria. :
"th one year, “the agricultural workers have learned much, The reports of the precongress and the resolutions adopted by the national congress are ae thousand leagues from the. generalities of the Tripoli pro= gram, The peasants have learned the vital importance of machines and their maintenance, They have recognized the role of bookkeeping and of investments, They have been initiated into the dangerous pitfalls of the commercial circuit.
"Tt would be an error to believe that they are satisfied with demanding higher wages, family allowances, paid vacations, They based their demands on a program of management. If many specified that one must not at a wait for the state, it was to grant themselves greater authority, a more genuine independence. Doing this, they ranged themselves as a social force distinct from the state and dealt as equal to equal with. the administration. This perhaps appears as the most cxtraordinary in their one~ year apprenticeship -~- the discovery they have made of the nature of the state,
Rousset deals with this at some length, explaining how “these agricul-. tural, workers view their situation and their relations with the state in the most palpable way.
"They have grasped that their social emancipation requires, to be enuine aes they themselves possess the means of production, the machines and the money, and that Ehey in consequence, control the commercial cir cuit. They have understood that the state is not at all the people even when it undertakes the defense of the interests of the people, and that they must not let the administration possess the machines and monopolize the funds, And that is why all of them without exception launched violent attacks against the Sap [Sociétés Agricoles de Prévoyance, the government agricultural benefits institution]. They.see very well that through the SAP the state could dispossess them, They therefore demanded that the tractors should be taken away from the SAP -- those belonging to it from the beginning as well as those seized as vdcant property -- and made into property of the self-management committees."
Here is the solution discussed by the delegates:
"They proposed that where the tractors are not very numerous they should be rationally divided among the farms, assembled at a single station, but under the control of the self-management committees concerned. And as they have learned the ruses of the administration, they posed the crucial problem of parts that are removed and of repairs, demanding the centrali~ zation of the shops and their being placed under the control of the com-= mittees, so that the agricultural workers themselves can fix the price of repairs, determine the order of priority in the jobs and know the status of: supplies,
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- "They denounced the bad handling of sales of their products because of being placed in charge of incompetent and dilatory officials, They — demanded that crops should be sold at the market price or at prices pub-+ licly fixed by the state and that the agricultural workers should know, with the least possible delay, the revenue received from products they have delivered, They proposed, in consequence, that the management com= mittees should be authorized to make sales themselves on the local markets or on an area level, that the books should be placed under their control and that comoperatives to handle sales should be set up. They demanded that the state fix as early as possible the rate of levies, Finally, to assure financial autonomy, they advocated that each self-management com=_ mittee should have a bank account,"
. In Rousset!s opinion, by confronting the administration in this way in the field of the technical administration of the big nationalized domains, the agricultural workers discovered their own social identity. . "This first national congress thus provided in a fundamental way the public expression of a new social force, conscious of itself. It follows that the agricultural workers are on the eve of achieving political conscious= — ness,
This is of great significance in the author's opinion. "The crucial importance of the event relates to the position which these agricultural . workers occupy in the national economy. It is a decisive position, They manage the richest and best equipped lands: 2,500,000 hectares, This gives them not only control of the food supply of the country, but of the . principal source for the formation of the national capital,
", strike unleashed by them could precipitate Algeria into ruin, Repression could resolve nothing, since as history has demonstrated, the peasant cannot be compelled to produce enough if he doesn't want to. That is why their genuine power is much ‘greater than their numbers. And they Bee. now cons¢ious of this," — : mo
- They “peturii ‘to their villages = swith ‘a-much~ different outtook than. ‘the one they had only days before when they set out for the congress, "In.-their discussions with the state, their firmness cm be based on texts that have the force of law, They therefore return to the villages with increased authority, and, in addition, more effective authority than is wielded | elsewhere in the ’ country,"
Before the congress, government circles were divided over how pest to approach these problems, A "centralist, statist" tendency argued for direct administration. This was centered around ONRA [National Office of Agrarian Reform], An opposite tendency, advocating greater autonomy for the peasants on the grounds that productivity cannot be ordered from above but depends on the social interest of the workers, was centered around the BNASS {National Bureau for Animation of the Socialist Sector].
The conflict lasted throughout the spring and summer. When the con» gress convened, the centralist tendency appeared to have won out. However in. the work panels of the congress which prepared the documents for adop= tion, the centralist tendency suffered a serious setback, "The motions which its partisans presented were rejected and the resolutions finally adopted essentially favored the self-management delegates. This victory was entirely due to the firmness of the peasants present in the panel commissions, iis agricultural workers thus showed thet power ahioh is considerable,"
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