Re: [PEN-L] May Day 2005 in Caracas: the revolution advances
On 5/3/05, michael a. lebowitz wrote: I don't remember the experience in Algeria, though, and am away from my books. Can you (or anyone else) expand on that point? it's been a long time since I read this material, so I can't add anything beyond that what initially seemed like a good thing on the micro level (workers' control) turned out to divide the Algerian working class. -- Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine
Re: [PEN-L] May Day 2005 in Caracas: the revolution advances
it's been a long time since I read this material, so I can't add anything beyond that what initially seemed like a good thing on the micro level (workers' control) turned out to divide the Algerian working class. -- Jim Devine I think there were bigger problems than that. http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/algeria.htm The development model chosen by the new revolutionary government had been conceived by Belgian economist Destane de Bernis whose goal it was to address Algerian needs specifically and the Third World in general. The FLN turned these ideas into a doctrine. The basic premise was that a modernized Algerian economy that achieved rapid industrialization would achieve a high degree of growth that would enable the peasant masses to be absorbed into the new economy. To reach this goal, the most advanced technology would have to be utilized. Not much analysis was done on the impact this path would have on the working-class or peasantry of the nation. It was the nation as nation that took precedent. Bernis would not let anything stand in the way of this modernizing model. He said, We have decided that our equipment has to be ultra-modern, because it is more profitable in the middle term. We cannot accept machines dating from the 1940s, even if their use would provide jobs for a greater number of workers. The lack of sensitivity to the needs of the working-class has to be understood in terms of the character of the new state which is composed of bureaucratic-military cadre of the FLN and officials from the colonial administration. While gestures toward self-management of firms and farms were made, the socialist government of Algeria appeared more interested in the quantity of growth rather than its quality. In this respect, it shared many of the characteristics of less progressive states in the region that were following a modernizing agenda, such as Iran and Iraq. Simultaneous with the technocratic approach to economic development that was taking shape in huge oil and chemical state-owned enterprises, Algeria began to witness the emergence of a private sector. The state sector actually began to fuel the growth of the private sector. Capitalism had never been abolished in Algeria, as it was in Cuba, so there ample opportunities for it to grow in the booming energy-based economy. An Algerian radical newspaper commented in 1983 that Not only old agrarian and commercial capitalists have invested, but also party cadres, veterans of the liberation war, and even public sector cadres. Colonel Boumedienne hailed this process. National capital must play its role and accomplish its duty to the nation, the state is disposed, on its part, to supply it with all guarantees in a defined framework. It is not in the interest of the country that (private) capital remain unproductive. The private sector has grown steadily in Algeria. Charts available in Rachid Tlemcani's book State and Revolution in Algeria, the source of the information in this post, end prior to 1986, the publication year. The trend is obvious, however. In 1982, private industry accounted for 40% of all jobs in transportation, 70% in agriculture and 75% in commerce. The US embassy in Algiers published a report the same year that pointed to the existence of 315,000 capitalist firms. There are class loyalties between the bourgeoisie who run these firms and the petty-bourgeois bureaucrats who run state industry. Both tend to view labor as inputs to an economy that will produce growth for the nation rather than as an end in itself. Not only does the state sector have a compromised relationship to the domestic private sector, it is linked to international capital in a way totally unlike state firms have been in Cuba up until recently. The state firms in Algeria owe their existence to loans advanced by imperialist banks. The class relationship that underlies this debt is entirely different from those that Cuba owed to the former Soviet Union. -- www.marxmail.org
Re: [PEN-L] May Day 2005 in Caracas: the revolution advances
I agree with your analysis (and wasn't trying to propose anything as complete a picture). One thing behind the technocratic/capitalist tilt of the Algerian revolution was that the French strategy and tactics in the war for independence led to a decimation of the grass roots of the domestically-based FLN (and of its own cadres), shifting power to the foreign-based and (not surprisingly) military-style ALN, which had little grass-roots support. Thus, working-class and peasant interests were given short shrift, including the workers' management movement. (Some attention was given to those, but hardly enough.) JD On 5/4/05, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: it's been a long time since I read this material, so I can't add anything beyond that what initially seemed like a good thing on the micro level (workers' control) turned out to divide the Algerian working class. -- Jim Devine I think there were bigger problems than that. http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/algeria.htm The development model chosen by the new revolutionary government had been conceived by Belgian economist Destane de Bernis whose goal it was to address Algerian needs specifically and the Third World in general. The FLN ...
Re: [PEN-L] May Day 2005 in Caracas: the revolution advances
a lot of my references appear in my review of _The Emergence of Classes in Algeria: A Study of Colonialism and Socio-Political Change_ (Westview Press, 1976), by Marnia Lazreg, that appeared in the _Review of Radical Political Economics_, volume 12(1), Spring 1980: pp. 64-67. On 5/4/05, Hans G. Ehrbar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jim wrote: it's been a long time since I read this material, so I can't add anything beyond that what initially seemed like a good thing on the micro level (workers' control) turned out to divide the Algerian working class. Can you give references? On the socialism list we are collecting this kind of literature. We are trying to put it on the www so that it is available for activists who go this route. Hans Ehrbar http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/socialism -- Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine
Re: [PEN-L] May Day 2005 in Caracas: the revolution advances
great report! Are people conscious of the problem of co-management being instituted only for the more elite workers, leaving the rest in the dust? (something like that happened in revolution-era Algeria.) -- Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine
Re: [PEN-L] May Day 2005 in Caracas: the revolution advances
At 14:32 03/05/2005, Jim Devine wrote: great report! Are people conscious of the problem of co-management being instituted only for the more elite workers, leaving the rest in the dust? (something like that happened in revolution-era Algeria.) Thanks. A friend tells me, though, that the best part is how well I evoke the image of being hit on the head by a banner (with a good slogan, though.) My own presentation at the Workers Table raised the spectre of co-management for an aristocracy of labour while 80% of the population was poor and 50% of the working class was in the informal sector. I know that some ministers are concerned about this very point and some trade union leaders also. But not all workers (including some who are in recently nationalised firms). The conclusions of the Table rejected this perspective and included: 4. Experiences up until now teach us that it is only possible to develop the knowledge of the running of companies by workers, when these belong to the state. The workers rejected any idea of turning workers of the co-managed or managed factories into small proprietors. It corresponds to those in the factories, to exert their role as guarantors of the sovereignty of the people established in the constitution, so that the profits of these companies become part of the social funds which help reverse the poverty of wide sections of the Venezuelan population and not directed towards stimulating new business ventures. 5. The participation of the community is fundamental in all of the process of workers co-management and management and in the development of the alternative model, in order to obtain the means towards the transformation of the production model and end social exclusion. I don't remember the experience in Algeria, though, and am away from my books. Can you (or anyone else) expand on that point? in solidarity, michael Michael A. Lebowitz Professor Emeritus Economics Department Simon Fraser University Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6 Currently based in Venezuela. Can be reached at Residencias Anauco Suites Departamento 601 Parque Central, Zona Postal 1010, Oficina 1 Caracas, Venezuela (58-212) 573-4111 fax: (58-212) 573-7724
