Development in Algeria * 6 Irish Labour Party

by: Ian Clegg The Algerian experience of self-management (autogestion) created great interest among socialists during the years 1962-65. Yet since the Boumedienne coup of 19th June 1965 there has been a long silence on the future of the experiment, accompanied by a general reluctance to analyse the Boumedienne regime in anything but the crudest terms as yet another African military coup. This article attempts to show how socialist ideas in Algeria have developed in two separate directions: the technocratic, central control ideology of Boumedienne, and the workers! control based ideology of the union, At independence in July 1962 almost all the 1,000,000 European colonists, representing most of the entrepreneurs, administrators, technicians and skilled workers, beft Algeria. Faced with the closure of many of the factories and big colonial, agricultural estates, the workers formed management committees in an attempt to keep production going. This was largely a spontaneous movement, aided only by the union - Union Generale des Travailleurs Algeriens (UGTA) and some FLN militants, This situation was legalised by Ben Bella in March 1963 and autogestion became one of the basic tenets of 'Algerian socialism’. The left abroad misguidedly judged Ben Bella, on external appearances, as a militant socialist. In the three years of his rule he became isolated from most of the power groups in the country, playing one off against another in an attempt to weaken them all. The UGTA, broken in early 1963 took time to recover; the FLN, evolving neither as a mass nor as an avant-garde party, became a mechanism for his personal power; only the Army remained. Boumedienne and the army, having placed Ben Bella in power, had always remained behind the throne. In 1965 it became obvious that Ben Bella was manoeuvering to oust army men from the government, aiming to bolster his exposed position with a staged reconciliation with exiled right-wing figures like Ferhat Abbas. The coup met with little resistance: the workers had become disillusioned with ‘verbal socialism' and the lack of socialist measures; the peasants had not received the promised land reform; and the middle classes felt that Army rule would bring stability. Since 1965 there has been a definite attempt to deal with economic problems ~ mines, insurance, road transport, key banks and some oil companies have been nationalised, and the economy shows signs of recovery. However, incipient in this is an explicit swing towards 'state-capitalism', State-financed and directed companies, required to make profits, and with minimal worker participation are in line with the regime's desire for efficient central control of the economy. Autogestion in industry is stigmatised for economic failure - due largely to lack of government aid. In some cases it is being absorbed in to the new structures. Under the recent nationalisation of road transport, those firms under autogestion will become part of the state transport company, their management committees becoming mere factory committees, Autogestion in the agricultural sector remains, as the lack of qualified technicians makes it impossible for the state to replace the workers as management. The UGTA, from the start the only representative organ of the workers, is regaining its strength and is the only organised opposition to the government, In its attack on the technocratic, state-capitalist policies of the Ministry of Industry and Energy it is tacitally supported by the Ministry of Labour, run by the more left-wing administrators who went there after the coup. Boumedienne faced with an incipient split in his ministries was unable to intervene decisively in this summer's labour unrest that lead to the threat of a general strike. The UGTA with its definite marxist, internationalist policy sees itself as a potential basis for a new left-wing party replacing the discredited FLN - a war time front that failed, in 1962, to split into its constituent parts. The Palestine crisis, means, however, that any real confrontation will be delayed Fan anme time.