REALIGNMENT TOWARD THE RIGHT IN ALGERIA
By Pierre Clerbaut
[The following article appeared in the October 1 issue of the Belgian socialist weekly La Gauche (The Left). The translation is by World Outlook. ]
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The recent regroupment of the Boumedienne government provided fresh proof of the hostility in practice of the June 19 crew toward workers self-management and its democratic and socialist content.
In 1963 at the height of the development of self-management, Aldenour Ali Yahia,. former deputy from Tizi-Ouzou, went over to the opposition constituted by the Front des Forces Socialistes [Front of Socialist. Forces] headed by Mohan Ou El Hadj and Ait Ahmed.
_A few weeks after the March 196% decrees that converted self-management into an institution, at a time when the Ben Bellist leadership was mobilizing the masses and throwing all its weight (in an empirical and improvised way, naturally!) toward socialist solutions, the FFS opposition, in failing to give-critical support. to the positive measures of the government, had to move toward a sterile rightist opposition lacking any perspectives.
Today, three years later, Ali Yahia is replacing Ali Mahsas, an old comrade of Ben Bella, at the head of the Ministry of Agriculture.
This is a reminder of the long. struggle that Ali Mahsas, who was a partisan of solutions along bureaucratic lines and particularly alarmed over the effectiveness of Mohamed Harbi. -~ former editor of the weekly Révolution Africaine now in prison because of his opposition to the Boumedienne regime -- in advocating a rigorously democratic application of the "March Decrees" which sought to give maximum voice and power to the workers on the farms and in the plants.
The fact that the elimination of Ali Mahsas represents a shift to the right. testifies to the extent of the overall recession of the Algerian Revolution.
' Because, despite the highly germane criticisms which the nonbureaucratic left levelled at the Mahsas tendency, he was ousted as a defender of the collectivization of the land and consolidation of the nationalized sector of agriculture.
Less spectacular, but of similar significance, was the recent shift of Omar Ouzegane to the opposition. Despite his obsession over Islam, this former minister of agriculture in the first Ben Bella government was considered by his political foes to be a man of the left.
He remained editor of Révolution Africaine for a few weeks after the June 19 coup d'état, becoming a member of the Boumedienne government. This did not prevent the former secretary of the Algerian Communist party* from calling attention to
* In his interesting book Le Meilleur Combat [The Best Battle], Omar Ouzegane explains the motives that led him to break with the Algerian Communist: party and to join the nationalists of the Front de Libération Nationale.
himself during the summer of 1965 through several spectacular declarations sharply attacking the feudalists and big landowners.
This year in April and May feelings ran high in Algeria when first the trade unionists and then the students denounced the restoration of land in the self-managed sector of agriculture, particularly.in the Orléansville region, to some private owners, former collaborators with the French. The opposition was such that Boumedienne was obliged to return the land to the self-management committees.
And the main slogan at the 1966 May Day celebration was the struggle to defend the gains of the Revolution a to safeguard self-management.
But in other regions, in Oranie, particularly in the Siai Bel- Abbés and Mohammedia areas, some land was returned to private ownership.
The liquidation of self-management had begun. In the absence of a popular reaction it was not widely known and the government took a "hands off" attitude.
Under pretext of doing justice to the former moudjahidines [fighters] who were not satisfied upon returning to civilian life, land held by self-management. committees was taken for conversion into "cooperatives" headed by a committee of former moudjahidines.
But these former fighters who want to take over millions of hectares of ‘good land are small proprietors in the bud. Their move is a camouflaged way of strengthening the private sector at the expense of the nationalized sector.
The government is conducting a “propaganda campaign for the. "agrarian revolution" and swears that self-management will remain a fundamental principle of the Revolution; but in practice what is being born in Algeria is an agrarian counterreform,
The ministerial regroupment and the reorganization of the functions of the Ministry of Agriculture parallel the recent: projects to "enrich": the texts on selfmanagement.
The responsibilities of the Ministry of Agriculture have been limited to:thelevel of production. All. prerogatives have been taken away in such matters as the . industrial transformation of agricultural products (oil presses, cooperatives handling fruits, vegetables, fruit juices, jams, etc.), marketing of agricultural products and training of cadres in agriculture. Thus the possibility has been eliminated for agricultural workers and self-management committees to:constitute a united bloc against the capitalist circles and the private sector:and to-control all the stages of the circuit of production, transformation. and marketing: of products. :
Thus self-management has been dislocated!
In addition, the projects for decentralization and for increasing the power of the basic economic units (farms and plants) are turning.the latter over to the free play of the market economy.
The - recently created National. Bank of Algeria now has: the right ‘to look over the accounts: of the existing self-management | committees and, if it considers them Las be running a deficit, to-cut off all finances toa self-managed enterprise.
To nibble away, dismantle,. ‘smother self-management ~- this.is the policy in practice of. those who:claim to be- applying the principles of the | March Decrees in an efficient way. ie
» . UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE WEEK:
"World opinion has’ never shared: the. enthusiasm of “the: White :House* and State. Department for Premier -Ky.".-- From an editorial in the October: 20 New York Times: .<
FIDEL CASTRO ON