SEEKS A WAY OUT OF POLITICAL ISOLATION
By Henri Dumoulin
Algiers
Projects for agrarian reform, for community elections, industrialization -- these are the themes of the official propaganda of Colonel Boumédienne's military regime. These were also the objectives of the Ben Bella government in the spring of 1965, a few weeks before the coup d'état. Nevertheless isn't it an error, ascribable to superficial analysis, to view the Boumédienne regime as a mere continuation of the bonapartism of the ousted reginie?
With a leftist orientation, the Ben Bella government sought, often in an empiric way, to set sufficient popular forces in motion to create the means to concretize its socialist program. It succeeded in arousing considerable hopes among the disinherited rural masses.
The regime born in the June 19 coup is of qualitatively different nature. It has displayed resolute intention to block any further development of the revolution. Repress-
ing all the elements capable of forging a proletarian alternative, it has sought to find a base of support in the countryside among the middle layers standing above the poor peasants who constituted Ben Bella's base of support. ;
This is the framework within which must be placed the agrarian reform project and the community elections. They are efforts at breaking the political isolation threatening the men of June 19. The content of these projects is fundamentally different from the spirit of the Algiers Charter (the program of the Front de Libération Nationale passed at a congress of the party in the spring of 1964).
The projected agrarian reform would limit the area of big holdings according to the income of the owner, the criterion being that it must not be greater than that of a functionary at the highest administrative level. The nationalized farms will be operated by self-management committees or in the form of small individual holdings tied together by cooperatives. ;
The big landholders will thus retain a considerable income; they will keep their herds and can expand them; they will receive indemnity from the. state which will "buy" their nationalized land.
The government in this way hopes to foster the amassment of capital nationally. In this the Investment Code favors investments in private enterprises, protected by the state, or in mixed enterprises in which the state participates with capital and protec-— tion. : -
Instead of expropriating and breaking the economic and political power of landed property, a reform of this kind seeks to change over the big landholders, pressuring them into becoming reinforcements for the native bourgeoisie in process of developing under the benevolent protection of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie of the state and party.
The Community Council of the Agrarian Reform [Conseil Communal de la Réforme Agraire] which will be in charge of carrying out this project, beginning with the...end of 1967, will be composed of the chairman of the Community Council elected in the February 1967 elections, representatives of the local administrations, and peasants of modest incomes chosen by the FIN party. The chairman of this council will be the regional secretary of the party. Thus the decisions will be made by the bureaucratic bourgeoisie that is now solidly installed in the party and the state.
The bureaucrats, separated from the workers, feel the influence of the owners whom they are supposed to expropriate. In the absence of direct intervention by the workers, the bureaucrats can arbitrarily decide on the evaluation of the land, the determination of indemnities and disbursements, thus opening the door to favoritism, nepotism, the formation of cliques and circles. ;
This so-called agrarian reform, judiciously thought out, limited and controlled by the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, will vainly seek to give a little satisfaction to the poor peasants while it maintains the power of the landowners.
The February 5 community elections were calculated in the same way. The slates were made up by the party, the top brass of the administration and the Armée Nationale Populaire [National People's Army]. The slates were often the outcome of extensive bargaining. The single slate system, offering two candidates for each post, does not permit the proletarian forces in the towns and the countryside to distinguish between the old liberal bourgeoisie and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie of the state. In addition, the stamp of approval given to these elections by the Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens [General Union of Algerian Workers] -- at least by its leadership -- while more than one union militant is in prison, the victim of repression by the military regime, can only sow confusion among the popular masses.
The degree of participation in the elections will indicate whether the new regime, while remaining unpopular, has succeeded in becoming accepted.
The various oppositional currents opposing Boumédienne from outside the country are confused and scattered. Some of them like the Organisation Clandestine de la Révolution Algérienne [OCRA] are preparing a bourgeois alternative to the bonapartist regime while others, like at least a wing of the Organisation de la Résistance Populaire [ORP] are ready to compromise with the military power. In face of this it is more important than ever to work for the crystallization of a workers party in Algeria itself, a party based on the workers in the cities and countryside, the only sector with sufficient potential strength to win the disinherited peasants from the influence and power of the rural bourgeoisie and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie of the state. This is the only means of leading the disinherited rural masses onto the road of a genuine agrarian reform and the socialist revolution.