Shane Mage's position is not a new one. It is based on the position of the Lambertiste group in France during the period of the International Committee wing of the Fourth International, which included Gerry Healy's group in Britain. The MTLD he refers to, and which those wicked narrow bourgeois nationalists in Algeria rejected when they started the armed struggle which actually led to liberation from France, was an organization that began by advocating independence and ended up in collaboration with France.
The International Secretariat, the other faction of the Fourth International, strongly supported the FLN. People like Ernest Mandel, Pierre Frank, and Michel Pablo organized solidarity in all ways, and Pablo landed in jail for some of his more adventurous efforts in this area. In 1957, the Militant published a series of articles by Phillip Magri, the pen-name of an author whose name I dare not reveal lest I assist the police, supported the integrationist position of the MTLD with France, in the name of "unity of the working class." Jaques Soustelle, whose "integration" proposal Mage hails, was a leader of the military-rightist coup that brought DeGaulle, that brought the Bonapartist-type regime of DeGaulle to power. Despite the Bonapartist aspects of his regime, DeGaulle basically maintained the framework of bourgeois democracy in France, which of course he could not do without eventually yielding ground to the demand for independence. Soustelle was one of the leaders of the military-fascist attempts to topple DeGaulle and establish a real military dictatorship. Mage blames the Bonapartist takeover on the FLN, as well as most of the other bad things that have happened since 1956. Mage says independence was the cause of the Boumedienne dictatorship. Boumedienne's military coup in 1965 actually represented a bourgeois counterrevolution against the initial gains of the victory over French rule. The rightists did have a strong base in Algeria among the French population which provided the popular base for the brutal French "battle of Algiers" and later for the attempt coups and terrorist actions carried out by the ultra-rightist Secret Army Organization. The attachment and alienation, love and hatred of the French settlers from the land they lived in, their privileged status, and their fear and hatred and, of course, paternalist kindness toward the Algerians arel captured in some of the writings of Albert Camus, who was one of them and basically supported "his country" (France of course} in the war. The Militant later rejected the line of the Magri articles and came to agree with the basic position of the International Secretariat. (An article from the IS dissecting the factual and political errors in the series by Patrick O'Daniel, a close collaborator of Michel Pablo, played an important role in this). This played a part in preparing the SWP US to take a better position than the Magri example when the Cuban revolution took place. And it prepared the reunification of the Fourth International and the split with Healy and Lambert, which really was a progressive development. Algeria did show the tendency of the SWP to get off on the wrong foot on struggles in the semicolonial and colonized world. This was repeated in Nicaragua, the Portuguese colonies in Africa and even South Africa (where the SWP was initially opposed to the ANC and Mandela and favored the more narrow and sectarian nationalism of the Pan African Congress. I think there are other historical examples. Back in those days the SWP could reconsider positions (as it did re Cuba and Nicaragua) -- but that was before "political homogeneity" and "revolutionary centralism" rose far above real politics as the over-arching considerations. That's one reason why I am not too critical of the strong and un-nuanced way the SWP came down in support of the Iranian revolution. This was one of the times -- not that frequent unfortunately -- where the SWP came down came down correctly from the start on the anti-imperialist fundamentals. They still have yet to accomplish this not unimportant task vis a vis Iraq and Venezuela. Basically Mage's argument -- how much worse things have gotten in Algeria -- is an argument against the entire colonial revolution from Iran in 1906 and China in 1911. And it can be taken further back, as an argument for slavery and feudalism and any system where elements of patriarchalism and paternalism of various types can soften the situation, in contrast to the blind accumulation and destructiveness dictated by the laws of capitalism. The misery in Algeria and the rest of Asia, Africa, and Latin America stems from the international spread and decline of capitalist relations, and the continuing domination and deepening decay of imperialism, not from the much-touted "failure" of independence. LeRoi Jones "Blues People" opens with a powerful portrayal of what his grandparents or great-grandparents felt they had gained from the end of slavery, despite the fact that they now had to fend entirely for themselves as relatively "free labor", and that under conditions of Jim Crow segregation. They "owned" themselves. They had their own family,. their own miserable little home. They had their privacy and their own time. They were "free" -- and not just in quotation marks. And the fact that their straight up food and security situation might be worse, and the predictability of their lives and even their safety might have been reduced overall. Mage speaks with the same voice as Genovese and other historians (never Black) who find things to praise and even models to emulate in "the world the slaveholders made." The US imperialists clearly believed that the misery and wreckage that had spread in Iraq over the years of the decline of the great 1958 had made the Iraqi nation ready to accept reconstruction in the interests of US imperialism. But they misread not the misery, but the human beings. Iraqi society -- the whole society -- is organically rejecting the occupation. Will getting rid of the occupiers solve the effects of the crisis of world imperialism in Iraq. I very much doubt it, and I very much doubt that people of any class in Iraq thinks this. But they want the occupation to end, and all the problems that have accumulated since they killed Britain's monarch and set off more on their own have not convinced them that independence is not worth having. There are leftists who cannot accept this phenomenon. They insist that the battle against the occupation must take the form of a battle for socialism or at least for workers' and peasants' rule against the traditional ruling classes in Iraq. I think there would be more of that going on if it were not for the betrayal of the Communist parties, who have to one degree or another staked their future on the "democratic" occupation. But the Iraqi nation -- under the leadership of a bourgeoisie that is itself an instrument and transmission belt of imperialist domination -- is fighting to take back its independence. The Iraqi people do not want the real or alleged "benefits" of the past (which cannot be restored because capitalist relations have spread and imperialist domination has spread and decayed). U.S. out of Iraq! And U.S. out of Puerto Rico, too, while we're on the subject)! Britain out of the Malvinas! And imperialism out of all the related situations! I thank Mage for reminding us of an important and usually ignored anniversary. Let us celebrate and hail the annivesary of the real beginning of Algeria's war of national liberation! Fred Feldman
