WORKERS’
(The following article has been translated from the February issue of the Bulletin de l’Autogestion (Bulletin of Self-management), published by the Frantz-Fanon Co-operative in Algiers. The article appeared under the title, “Le Controle Ouvrier Est Une Etape Necessaire a la Revolution Socialiste” (Workers Control Is a Necessary Stage in the Socialist Revolution.) (Translation by World Outlook.)
HE idea of workers control in the
capitalist sector of our economy is growing im popularity by leaps and bounds in the working class. The militants of the UGTA (Union Generale des Travailleurs Algeriens) and the party (the Front de Liberation Nationale) understand that self-management cannot really triumph unless the capitalist sector of the economy is controlled in such a way that the employers, in complicity with counterrevolutionaries hidden in the state apparatus, cannot block its march forward. Several months ago, our vanguard trade union sectors, particularly in the oil industry, asked for a broadening of the. powers of the enterprise committees which up to now have served as a transitional institution leaving the economic power of the bourgeoisie untouched. Since close to eighty per cent. of the national industry is in the hands of foreign and national capitalists, revolutionary measures must be undertaken if we expect to save industrial self-management from the terrible competition deriving from the capitalist industrial sector. That is why in No. 2 (January) of this Bulletin of Self-Management we drew attention to the idea of workers control. We are able to report with satisfaction that since then, this idea has been picked up by many militants, including an important part of the working class still exvloited by the industrial bourgeoisie. For several months some of the trade union sectors have stressed the necessity of organizing workers control in the private enterprises. The national press has published accounts of this which we cite below. The importance of this idea is evident to everyone, particularly in’
March 10, 1965 — THE WEEK