Worker’s self management in Algeria

249 Pages·1971·7.455 MB·English

by  iann clegg

Workers’ Self-Management in Algeria
WORKERS’
SELF-MANAGEMENT
IN ALGERIA
Ian Clegg
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Copyright © 1971 by Ian Clegg
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-178709
First Printing
Monthly Review Press
116 West 14th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011
33/37 Moreland Street, London, E.C. 1
Manufactured in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Glossary 6
1 Workers’ Councils: A Historical Perspective 7
2 A Colonial Prehistory 23
3 The Formation of the Comités de Gestion 39
4 The Décrets de Mars 57
5 The Economy: The Heritage of Colonialism 75
6 Class and Ideology in Algeria 95
7 The Political Stage, 1963-8 116
8 The Bureaucratic Emprise on the Comités 142
9 Workers and Managers 162
10 The Lessons of Algeria : Workers’ Councils in Advanced
Economies 177
Appendix I: The Décrets de Mars 201
Appendix II: La Charte d’Alger 210
Appendix III: Economie Indices 221
References 225
Index 237
GLOSSARY
In order to help the reader, who may become confused by the prolifera­
tion of abbreviations, a short glossary is included. It is divided into two
sections: the first dealing with political and military bodies, the second
with post-independence economic bodies.
ALN Armée de Libération Nationale
ANP Armée Nationale et Populaire (ex ALN)
CCE Comité de Coordination et d’Exécution (of the FLN)
CNRA Conseil National de la Révolution Algérienne
CRUA Comité Révolutionnaire pour V Unité et VAction
FFS Front des Forces Socialistes
FLN Front de Libération Nationale
GPRA Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne
MTLD Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques
OAS Organisation de TArmée Secréte
OS Organisation Spéciale
PCA Parti Communiste Algérien
PPA Parti du Peuple Algérien
PRS Parti de la Révolution Socialiste
UDMA Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien
UGTA Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens
*
BCA Banque Centrale d’Algérie
BNA Banque Nationale d’Algérie
BNASS Bureau National d’Animation du Secteur Socialiste
CCAA Conseil Communal d’Animation d’Autogestion
CCRA Centres Coopératifs de la Réforme Agraire
CORA Coopératives de la Réforme Agraire
CRC Caisses Régionales de Crédit
ONACO Office National de Commercialisation
ONP Office National de la Pêche
ONRA Office National de la Réforme Agraire
ONT Office National des Transports
SAP Sociétés Agricoles de Prévoyance
*
Translations in this book, unless otherwise indicated, are those of the
author. In the transliteration of Arabic or Kabylie names, the French
system has been used.
6
I
WORKERS COUNCILS:
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
T he slow demise of classical colonialism in the 1950s and early 60s
witnessed the largely peaceful surrender of the institutions of politi­
cal power by metropolitan governments to indigenous political élites.
In only two areas was there a protracted and violent struggle for
liberation from the colonial emprise. For over ten years France was
involved, first in Indochina and then in Algeria, in attempting to
crush movements for national independence by the large-scale use
of armed force. The passions inspired inside France by this struggle
caused the end of the Fourth Republic and emphasized political
divisions with a violence that is still clearly manifested. For many of
the French, Vietnam and Algeria came to symbolize the extension
and the actuality of the conflict between colonialism and national
liberation, capitalism and socialism. Ho Chi Minh and Ben Bella
joined Mao and Castro as the personifications of this revolt and
became heroes of the left. The modes of economic and social
organization of these revolutions became a source of identification
between the socialist theory of the industrialized West and the chance
of practice in the Third World.
This book is not a history of the Algerian revolution. It is con­
cerned with a specific product of that revolution: the workers’
committees set up to manage the agricultural estates and factories
of the colonial bourgeoisie in the summer of independence, 1962.
These committees were formalized as a system of economic
management known as autogestion (self-management). Autogestion,
with its emphasis on decentralization and democracy, its opposition
to the rigid forms of bureaucratic socialism, came to be regarded as
the real revolutionary achievement of independence. For many
socialists autogestion came to symbolize not only an escape from the
authoritarian Russian model but a clear example of the possibilities
of developing a libertarian and revolutionary socialism in the Third
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Workers’ Self-Management in Algeria
World. Yet within five years the hero, Ben Bella, had been removed
from power and autogestion in practice all but replaced by cen­
tralized state control.
The following description of autogestion in Algeria must not be
regarded as the analysis of an isolated experience. Outside its own
specific history Algerian self-management must be clearly situated
within the wider history of attempts to create socialist modes of
economic, social and political organization. It is part of the ex­
perience of the international revolutionary movement. In par­
ticular it is relevant to the whole problem of the forms of socialism
in the Third World and the transplanting of a theory and practice
developed mainly in the West. The development of a socialist
ideology centred round self-management is mainly the work of the
more libertarian sections of the Western left. These ideas have de­
veloped within the context of advanced industrial society. The
question is whether, in terms of the present problems of the ex­
colonial countries, the solutions implied by self-management are
immediately relevant. Algerian autogestion thus assumes the pro­
portions of an experiment in modes of revolutionary organization.
The comités de gestión (workers’ management committees) set up
in Algeria in 1962 were not, as will be made clear later, the practice
of a conscious socialist theory. The elaboration of a theory to
correspond with that practice emerged during 1963 and 1964, cul­
minating in the Charte d’Alger - the official political programme of
the Algerian revolution. The architects of this programme were
clearly influenced by the experience of West and East European
socialism, as well as China, Vietnam and Cuba. It is with this history
that they sought identification.
Two distinct theoretical traditions, which often blend in practice,
can be seen behind the formation of workers’ councils in a revolu­
tionary situation. Both are concerned not only with the destruction
of capitalism and the disposition of power in the revolution but also
with the question of work as a mediating factor in man’s relation to
his environment. These can be termed anarcho-syndicalism and
the more orthodox Marxism-socialism.
The early nineteenth century saw the emergence of utopian
socialist ideas that the worker should exert some form of control
over the process of production. These ideas are clearly seen in Le
Nouveau Monde Industriel et Sociétaire and La Fausse Industrie by
8
Workers’ Councils: A Historical Perspective
Charles Fourier and the practical experiments of Robert Owen.
Common to most of the utopian socialists was the feeling that work
communities were an answer to the increasing degradation of man
in the conditions of the industrial revolution. Their generalized
ideal was a return to the small artisan communities existing before
the industrial revolution; even though this golden age existed mostly
in their own romantic vision of the past.1 Beneath this rather efful­
gent romanticism lay the firm conviction that work could be made
meaningful; that it was large-scale industry as well as capitalism
that made it slavery. This basic hostility to industrialization and the
emphasis on decentralized, small-scale economic and political units
became the common factor for a whole current of utopian anarchist
thought. It was expressed in America by Thoreau and Thorsten
Veblen and in England by Ruskin and William Morris. Morris’s
News from Nowhere is probably the clearest expression of the form
of such a utopian society. Kropotkin was perhaps the only one to
place this utopianism within a strictly anarchist perspective in
Fields, Factories and Workshops and Mutual Aid: A Factor in
Evolution.
Utopian anarchism of this type is distinguished by its commit­
ment to education rather than revolutionary violence as a means of
destroying the twin evils of capitalism and the state. The more
violent and opportunistic side of anarchist theory and practice
stems from Bakunin, whose clashes with Marx split the First
International. By the turn of the century this current had split
into two clearly identifiable parts. The activities of the Bonnot
gang in Paris, the Nihilists in Russia, the use of terrorism and
assassination became the political outlet of the desperation of Euro­
pean romanticism which found its final cultural expression in Dada
and Surrealism. The more orthodox current of revolutionary an­
archism developed into anarcho-syndicalism.
Anarcho-syndicalism saw the workers’ seizure of power in in­
dustry as an essential protection against the coercive power of the
state. Achievement of their aims was most frequently seen as com­
ing through a revolutionary general strike when the workers would
occupy the factories. Their attitude to the state distinguished the
anarcho-syndicalists from the orthodox socialist ideologues.
Syndicalism and anarchism are marked by their clear hostility to the
state: thus the revolution did not mean the seizure of the state but
9
Workers' Self-Management in Algeria
its replacement by freely associated communities of workers. The
clearest examples of this anarchist-syndicalist tradition in practice
can be seen in the Paris Commune, the Kronstadt commune during
the Russian revolution, the Industrial Workers of the World in
North America,2 and the activities of the FAI and CNT in the
Spanish Civil War. The ideological effect of syndicalism was much
wider than this and affected the thinking and action of sections of
the European trade-union movement until well after the First
World War.*
These theories are, for the most part, situated in a revolutionary
tradition that developed before Marx elaborated his theories and
continued to develop parallel to them, though with a certain amount
of cross-fertilization. They often lacked the total view of the
mechanisms of capitalist society that marxism provided. Frequently,
as Malatesta himself pointed out,3 they did not appreciate the
difficulties involved in the creation of a revolutionary praxis in the
complexities of industrial society. What they did possess was a
clear and definite hostility to all forms of authoritarian and bureau­
cratic organization. This led to the historical enmity between Bol­
shevism and libertarian socialism which found expression in Russia,
the Spanish Civil War, Hungary and which preoccupies the left today.
For Marx and Engels, utopian communities, formed within
capitalism, though important as experiments, were essentially
mystifying. They did not tackle the problem of capitalism as a total
system but merely ignored and were finally overwhelmed by it. For
marxists, the liberation of the proletariat could only begin with the
seizure of the means of production and the consequent overthrow
not only of the capitalist economic system but its political, social
and cultural superstructures. The proletarian revolution, as the
negation of capitalism, was a historical and dialectical possibility
that could only become actuality through the conscious action of
the proletariat. For Marx the dictatorship of the proletariat was the
first stage in the organization of revolutionary power. It is at this
point that Marxism split from Bakuninist anarchism. Both Marx and
Bakunin agreed on the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat;
but for Bakunin this implied an occult élite while Marx advocated
the development of a highly conscious proletarian vanguard.4
* The General Strike of 1926 witnessed the final effort of syndicalism in
England.
10
Workers' Councils: A Historical Perspective
Until the widespread series of revolutionary actions at the end of
the First World War, the Paris Commune and the 1905 revolution
in Russia were the first revolutionary attempts at the institution of a
socialist society. There is no space here to go into the history of the
Commune, but it had an important effect on prevailing socialist
economic and political thought. The communards were basically
inspired by the economic theories of Proudhon and the political
theories of Blanqui, both of which were radically altered in face of
the experience of the Commune. Proudhon had expressed profound
opposition to the idea of ‘association’, stressing that it was as much
in conflict with the freedom of the worker as with the ‘economy of
labour’. However, by 1870 even Paris had begun to experience an
economy of scale and the individualist theories of Proudhon were
jettisoned in face of the need to organize large-scale industry. This
was done in the form of a grand union of all the separate factory
councils. The Blanquists who favoured insurrectionism - the
seizure of the state by a small disciplined body who would then
swing the masses behind the revolution - ended up by creating a
free communal federation to cover the whole of France.
In The Civil War in France Marx and Engels gave their approval
to the conversion of the communards to the necessity of retaining
some elements of state power until capitalism had been smashed
finally. The experience of 1905 in Russia led Lenin and the Bol­
sheviks eventually to emphasize the necessity for a tight, disciplined
party as the guiding force of the revolution.5 The spontaneous
forms of economic and political organization - the Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Councils - which appeared in 1905 and again in 1917,
owed little to the action of the Bolsheviks. They represented a loose
federalized structure which was seen as a revolutionary alternative
to the centralized and autocratic tsarist state. The internal pressures
on the revolution soon came into conflict with the libertarian
mode of organization represented by the councils. In November
1917 the councils were given complete managerial control of the
factories but the following year they were turned into trade-union
branches and became one part of the management troika of plant
director, party cell secretary and secretary of the union branch.
Impelled by the struggle to preserve the revolution, the Bolsheviks
accepted the necessity of retaining some aspects of the bourgeois
state.6 Ensuing developments led to the crushing of the Kronstadt
11