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Worker's Self Management in Algeria

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Worker's Self Management in Algeria Workers’ Self- Management in Algeria .95 • PB—212 (M \ ) MODERN READER 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 A L N ) 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 VArmée 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 WORKERS5 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 elites. 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 7 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 Citarte 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
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