BUREAUCRATIC DANGER IN ALGERIA wn
[The following editorial, signed by Mohamed Harbi, which appeared in the December 21 issue of Révolution Africaine under the title "The Duty of the Press," is of special interest, we believe, in showing the awareness that exists in Algeria of one of the difficult problems the Revolution faces -~ how to mount an effective struggle against the threat of bureau-. eracy. Discussion of this problem ties in with. preparations for the FLN congress, We have translated the complete text of the editorial. ]
Algeria has decided on socialism. Nevertheless national independence has not been completely won$; the economic, social and political bases of socialism have not yet been assured and consolidated.
It is the duty of genuine revolutionists to locate in an exact way the forces whose action tends to aggravate the antagonisms and internal contradictions of our country.
The struggle conducted ‘by Révolution Africaine and other Algerian journals against changing the political line defined by the general secretary of the party helps to bring into view the dangers faced by our Revolution,
Since our country gained independence, a new social layer with a bourgeois mentality has formed within the state apparatus. It is this layer which, to further its own interests, consciously seeks to merge. the political power and the administration, It is this layer, too, that presses for the fusion of the state apparatus and the party in order to lift itself above the popular masses, It is this layer, finally, which in every essential problem places the activists and partisans of socialism | before the dilemma: "Shut up or be accused of antigovernmental. action. '
Because of its position in the machinery of the state and the economy, the bureaucracy can prove to be more dangerous for our evolution toward socialism than any other social force in the country. It is through this layer at the present time that imperialism as well as the bourgeoisie transmits its influence,
Its role is not autonomous. It is at one and the same time a transmission belt of the antisocialist forces and their vanguard. In the struggle against these negative tendencies, the national press in a general way, and the party press in a particular way, have enormous responsibilities, These responsibilities must be assumed without fail.
The difficulties of the period of transition from the colonial capitalist system to socialism require a permanent combat to reinforce the ties with the masses, a combat that is inseparable from the struggle against all the errors and all the deviations which tend to sow doubt and discouragement in their minds,
It is in this way that the fake revolutionists will be .unmasked, those who hide behind their positions and those who mask themselves with an abstract liberalism in order to avoid the front where the battle for socialism is being carried on,
CHOU