The workers! control movement in Britain has shown a great deal of interest in the agricultural and industrial enterprises under auto-gestion in Algeria. Yet most appreciations of this phenomenon have concentrated on its forms of organisation rather than its position within the state. This has led many, like Councillor John Spencer (The Week, 25th February, 1965 and Left special edition on workerst control, May 1965), to the conviction that self~ Management works in Algeria. My own conclusion is that it has ceased to exist in anything but a formal sense, Algerian independence in 1962 saw the departure of nearly 1,000,000 , Europeans who had formed the property-owning, admiristrative and technical Classes, At the level of individual factories: and farms this meant that the Algerian workers had to take control and continue production or starves Nobody, except perhaps the UGTA (Union General des Travailleurs Algeriens) and individual FLN members, made a conscious decision to institute autogestion as the possible base for a socialist society. Thus comparisons with Yugoslavia are not valid, as there workers! control was a conscious attempt to combat Stalinist centralism, Also in Algeria enterprises under autogestion comprise only 10% of industrial production and 60% of agricultural production = a reversal of the Yugoslavian situation. The decrets de mars were an attempt to formalise the existing situation in Algeria; laying down general rules on internal organisation and regulating financial and administrative connections between enterprises and Government ministries. It is often forgotten that only the part dealing with the appropriation of | -property left by Europeans (biens Vacants) was ever passed by the Assembly; the rest was promulgated by the Government and can be altered at any time. Thus since the Boumedienne coup several ministries have arrogated to themselves powers unforeseen in the decrets de marse Most of the new admiristrative class are petit-bourgeois who have no conscious identification with the Revolution or socialism. They represent that part of Algerian society that had the educational and financial means to get most posts in the Government departments, The Algerian bourgeoisie has in general moved into the professions and commerce; thus letting the potentially most reactionary class gain control of the state machine. The power of the bureaucrats is not threatened by the private sector but by the existence of self-management in the farms and factories, The process of regaining control for the state has been made easier by two factors: the existence of 3,000,000 (25% of the population) unemployed and the complete lack of educat= ion among the workers. So in most cases the state has been able to remove actual independence while retaining the formal structures of self-management, mystifying workers as to their actual relation to the state. The UGTA is aware of this but powerless in the face of © mass of unemployed who will work under any terms, Only through widespread sociglist education can the workers be made aware of their actual position. Some o them are beginning to realise how little power they now have but cannot confront a state backed by the army (ALN.)
To regard self-management as working in Algeria is to suffer gross mystification, It is too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the state in a revolutionary country will be progressive. * Written by Mr. Clegg on September 25th, 1965, soon after his return from Algeria. where he had made a special on-theespot study of the auestion.
STOF Tit, oT by Ken Coates The overall drift of Government action since October 1964 has been cataste rophic for socialism. The effect of the Government's majgr domestic and foreign policy decisions has been to create widespread apathy and demoralisation among Labour's active workers, considerable discontent in the unions, and a growing sense of apprehension among the party's keener supporterse These things in turn create the acute danger of a Tory reste oration, in spite of the apparent personal popularity of the Prime Minister, which is likely to prove transient for a number of reasonss The deflationary policies of the Treasury, based on a completely anti-= socialist reverence for the sanctity of the pound, are likely to lead to a considerable growth of short-time working and unemployment, The. imposition of qa resounding “stop" on the economy is in direct conflict with all our election pledges. The alternative, of socialist structural reform in the economy, and strict socialist control of financial operations, must be urgently imposed upon the Government, If it is not, then the Government will be compelled to evolve in a more and more technocratic direction, and to att ack, more and more openly all the interests it was elected to defend, In this context, the ttempt to give 'legal teeth! to the Prices and Incomes Board can only serve to create alarm in the unions and delight among the big employers and the Conservative leadership. It represents an inexcusable onslaught on trade union freedom, in a situation in which no © compensating powers are on offer to the workpeople in order to assist them to pretect themselves, It is a measure which will greatly help the Tories, first in the negative weight it will have on the support for the Labour Party in the polls as trade unionists become aware of its implic~ ations, and then in the positive assistance it will give any renewed «:~: Conservative administration in its attacks on trade union rights. Doubtless Mr. Heath will find ways to hold off the defeat of the Govern= ment until after these measures are carried, for these reasons. This means that they must be fought by every socialist, in the most relentless and vigorous waye A socialist incomes policy can only be framed in a context of overall socialist advance, in which it will require stern controls by the unions and the labour movement over the powers of capital, a significant extension of planned public enterprise, and the complete abolition of the practise of preserving ‘business secrets! from the workpeople. On the plane of social welfare provBions, if the Government's record is totally inadequate, its aspirations are even worse. Half a million houses a year is an acceptable commitment for instant action: but it is a derisory offer as 2 middle-term target figure, such as is set foreward in the 'Plant of the D.E.A. A visit to the squalid centres of our Midland ang industrial towns is enough to persuade any rational observer that such 2 plan is predicated on the indefinite continuance of huge and stifling areas of slumden. Subjection to banking interests has dictated the collapse of Labour's promised housing drive, 2 prolonzed slowdown of educational reform, and a moratorium on other welfare provisions. The fizht for a total reversal of priorities in this field is essential if even the most moderate reforms are to be accomplished. As a result of its failure to face these vital problems, the Government has found it expedient to capitulate to xenophobia in framing its Immigration White Paper. For nakedly opportunistic ressons it has
af
Stop the rot...continued espoused a Iacialist control-scheme which offers no solution ~hatever to the growth of ghettoes, but which fans prejudice and xenophobic reactions to a dangerous heat. This inexcusable policy will not win one extra labour vote, since the opposition can always easily outbid the Labour party in the field of racialist demagogy. What it will do is to convince all idealist, liberal radicals of its apparently unlimited perfidy. This in turn worsens its already appalling electoral prospects, Meanwhile the condition of the immigrants continuously worsens. In foreign affairs, the Government's policies have quite simply been disast-
‘rous. Their 'East of Suez! mysticism has been completely discredited by the breakdown of Malaysia and war on the Indian sub-continent. Complete subservience to American policy has fearfully escalated the new cold war, and prevented any effective solution to the terrible war in Vietnam, All Labour's anti-nuclear promises, including the elementary pledge to abandon the British deterrent, have been shamelessly betrayed. The fight to break Labour from the NATO alliance, for a genuinely independent and nonnuclear foreign policy, is a drastic imperative not only for every socialist but for every human being who wishes to survive, Labour cannot afford to tolerate the Government's invlovement in imperialism, whether native or American. Our alignment must be with the hungry peoples of the Third World, against their oppressors. Everybody in the labour movement should be against intolerance, bigotry and arbitrary dicatorship, wherever they exist. But this opposition cannot become a shield for anti-communism, because it then serves only to intensify the retrograde features of communist regimes, and to encourage forces which inhibit their development towards fully democratic and humanist forms of organisation, At the same time it is obvious their anti-communism produces a hysteria which tends to allow its advocates to support, and even to rely on, absolutely reationary and oppressive regimes and causese No honest radical can accept such a position today. We believe that these principles are of cardinal importance to the future of honest socialist politics, and must be advanced by all socialists. If such a commitment is to be more than platonic it is essential for the left to find ways to discuss the application of its doctrines, to elaborate an alternative strategy to the immoral and bankrupt course at present being pursued by the Government and to find ways to present it as a2 viable political option. This cannot be done if the left is not prepared, at every level from parliament down to the grass roots, to refuse to endorse retrogressive policies, to fight against them, oppose them, and demand alternatives. An organisational focus for the various left opinions must be organised, in which agreement can be reached about where the line of resistance to Government policy is to be draw, firmly and decisively. No socialist will support the Government's intention to emasculate the unions, its racialist immigration control measures, or its disgraceful foreign edventures. Abstention on such issues will not placate the New Left. From now on we shall say no, exposing the elements of reactionary coalition and posing the alternative of a genuinely socialist policy. In order to do so to the limit of our capabilities, we must join together and begin work at once. To delay is to condone wickedness and court catastrophe.
I.S.J. NUMBER 10
Is the prospect of socialism in the advanced European countries an affair of strugele over decades? Does “affluence” produce a satisfied working class, and inevitably sap the will to move on to a socialist society? Must trade unions in Western Europe always confine their tactics to partial and defensive battles? A Confident and exacting discussion of these problems by the brilliant Belgian marxist, Ernest Mandel, appears in the latest issue of International Socialist Journal (No. 10).
Mandel, after carefully assessing the difficulties posed by these questions, shows how they may come to be given a firm negative reply. "In the same way that the daily experience of the 19th century worker taught him how the net product of each enterprise was divided between wages and profits, the daily experience of the worker in the neo-capitalist period teaches him how the national income is divided between the total of earned and the total of unearned income, and how these mechanisms can only be mastered by the seizure of the means of production= the levers of power of the whole of economic life". In the context of intensified alienat~< ion as both producers and consumers, this perception is potentially revolutionary. Believing that "far from postponing the socialist revolution till the very distant future, neo-capitalism actually brings to fruition a series of circumstances which present revolution as an immediate and urgent necessity demanded by the facts", Mandel is able to discuss the role of the socialist movement itself in a vitally exciting way. He analyses the strategy of structural reforms, showing the dangers that are involved in advocating immediate policies which lend support to neo-capitalism, while showing the need for practical slogans upon which the socialist parties can base their work. This article is an absolute must for every seriously committed socialist, It will trigger off a discussion which will be of the very greatest importance for Labour. In the same issue of the journal there are valuable articles by Tony Topham and John Hughes, on Workers' Control and Compensation in Nationalised Industries. O'Connor Lysaght contributes a useful feature on Religion end Irish Labour, and Andre Gorz writes on students and skilled workers. There is also 4 symposium on planning in which De Santis! article on the Cuban debate, explaining the controversy between Che Guevara and Mora, and providing a summary of the debate, is of key value. From it there emerges a picture of Che Guevara which is little understood in Britain, where he is rightly seen as a her-~ oic figure, but in a somewhat romantic sense. De Santis reveals that Che is also a very profound revolutionary thinker. Here is a quotation from his summary, reporting Che's words: “We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting ageinst alienation. One of the fundamental objectives of Marxism is to remove interest, the factor of individual interest and gain from men's psychological motivations. Marx was preoccupied both with economic factors and with their repercussion on the spirit. If communism isn't interested in this too it may be a method of distributing goods, but it will never be a revolutionary way of life," This brave man is instinctively understood all over the world. Everywhere that men are fighting for freedom, he is reported in action. He has beentkilledtin the Congo, ‘arrested! in Peru, 'hunted' all over the Andes, ‘reported dead! in San Domingo. But ideas like those which Che has been advocating in this crucial Cuban debate will not die easily.