The Algeria of Daniel Guérin,
Libertarian
In December 1965 Daniel Guérin published a
pamphlet entitled L’Algérie caporalisée? which contains a
rather bizarre analysis of Boumédienne’s regime. According to Guérin,
nothing happened in June. Faithful to an old schema, he sees only a
“Bonapartism” in power both before and after the coup d’état,
struggling classically on two fronts: against the “counterrevolution
of the indigenous propertied classes” and against the threatening
enthusiasm of the workers striving for self-management. And in
foreign affairs he finds “the same desire on the part of both
regimes for an adroit balancing act between capitalist and socialist
countries” (p. 6). “None of the declarations of the so-called
‘Council of the Revolution’ contains any innovations whatsoever or
any hints of an original program” (p. 10). However, when he drafted
his main text, dated November 5, Guérin thought he detected some
potential new developments as the putchists were being pushed,
as if despite themselves, to the “right” — developments that “seem
to foreshadow an antisocialist policy” (p. 11, our emphasis).
One might suppose that Guérin disregards the considerable
differences between the two regimes because he is carried away by
the equal contempt that Ben Bella and Boumédienne might well arouse
in a revolutionary who is a declared partisan of “libertarian
socialism” and self-management. Unfortunately, this is not at all
the case! He has no other revolutionary solution to recommend than
the restoration of Ben Bella: “To rally a popular opposition to the
colonels’ regime in Algeria today without reference to Ben Bella, or
while making a total political critique of Ben-Bellaism, would be an
undertaking doomed to failure” (p. 17). And before June 19 the Ben
Bella regime’s numerous attacks on the workers, the exploits of its
police and army — the same police and army that are still in place
today, in fact — were for Guérin only “mistakes, weaknesses and
omissions” of an acceptable orientation. The king was badly advised
or misinformed; never responsible. Since Guérin cannot be unaware of
the open struggles of Ben Bella’s regime against the masses (he
himself provides some excellent documentation of them, notably
apropos of the Congress of Agricultural Workers), he has to
reconstruct history by totally separating Ben Bella from his regime.
Page 12: “The sabotage of self-management, organized, of course,
without Ben Bella’s knowledge.” Page 2: “As we can see more clearly
today, Ben Bella never had his hands free: for nearly three years he
was the tool, the prisoner, the hostage of Boumédienne.” In other
words, people thought Ben Bella was in power, but his downfall has
shown that he wasn’t. Such an astonishing retroactive demonstration
could just as well be applied to the Czar, who was believed to be an
autocrat before 1917. But Guérin overlooks this question: Who
besides Ben Bella made Boumédienne, by hoisting himself
into power with the aid of Boumédienne’s arms? That Ben Bella later
made some half-hearted and very inept attempts to get rid of his
tool is another matter. It is because he was above all a bureaucrat
that he was at first essentially in solidarity with, and eventually
the victim of, bureaucrats more rational than he.
What, then, is the secret of this aberration
of one of our famous leftist intellectuals, and one of the most
ostensibly “libertarian” among them at that? With him it is no
different than with all the others: it is the decisive influence of
their vainglorious participation in high society; their
common tendency, even more servile than a lackey’s, to be swept off
their feet with joy because they have spoken with the greats of this
world; and the imbecility that makes them attribute such greatness
to those who have condescended to talk to them. Whether they are
partisans of the self-managing masses or of police-state
bureaucracies, the “leftist intellectuals” of the period from which
we are just emerging always have the same rapt admiration for power
and government. The closer they are to a governmental position, the
more the leaders of the “underdeveloped” countries fascinate these
ridiculous professors of leftist museology. In Simone de Beauvoir’s
memoirs, so revealing of the fundamental degradation of a whole
generation of intellectuals, her narration of a dinner at the Soviet
Embassy exposes a pettiness so irremediable and so shameless that
she isn’t even aware of it.
So here is the secret: Guérin “knew” Ben
Bella. He “listened” to him from time to time: “When I had the
privilege, at the beginning of December 1963, of a brief audience at
the Villa Joly in order to present to the President a report
resulting from my month of traveling around the country observing
the self-managed enterprises, I had the impression that he had been
prejudiced against my conclusions by Ali Mahsas and the Minister of
Industry and Commerce, Bachir Boumaza” (p. 7).
Guérin really is for self-management, but,
like Mohammed Harbi, it is in the pure form of its Spirit incarnated
as a privileged hero that he prefers to meet it, recognize it and
aid it with his sage advice. Daniel Guérin met the Weltgeist
of self-management over a cup of tea, and everything else follows.
SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL
1966
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