Contribution to the 8th International Communist Seminar, Brussels, 2-4 May 1999
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org
Algeria still threatened by the islamo-fascist danger
and by the imperialist pressures
Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism (PADS)
On 15 April 1999, the republic of Algeria will have a new president, as a result of Zeroual's decision to shorten his mandate, that should normally have ended in November 2000. The reasons invoked to explain this hurried departure didn't convince anybody. We think they are to be found in the disastrous outcome of a policy that wreaked havoc in all domains and in the growing contradictions between the various fractions of the compradore bourgeoisie, that are looking for the best way to carry on this anti-national and anti-popular policy, a policy the communists have been denouncing for years. Our country is facing a deep crisis. Although a similar crisis is affecting many countries because of the structural crisis of the world capitalist system, it has its own specificities in Algeria.
International imperialism, which has always taken a considerable interest in our country because of its natural wealth and its geostrategic position, has been working for a long time to support the various reactionary forces (including the Islamic fascists), that have never stopped taking advantage of all the possibilities to reinforce themselves in society and in the regime itself in order to create the conditions which allowed them since the 80s to completely challenge the progressist orientations of the first twenty years of our independence. This change of direction became still more perceptible since 91 when the Islamic fascism began openly to attack our people and its progressist forces and to destroy many economic infrastructures. Meanwhile the international imperialism imposed through the IMF and the World Bank its structural adjustments, which result today in the liquidation of more than a thousand of companies and a more and more massive unemployment, which affects more than 30% of the population.
The ideology, the crimes and the causes of the rise of the Islamic fascists
These crimes have resulted in tens of thousands of dead. They have first hit thousands of trade-unionists, progressist intellectuals or democrats, artists, well-known playwrights, writers or journalists. These barbarians are attacking now modest isolated peasants including simple shepherds that they meet as they went by. They didn't hesitate to burn one thousand of schools and to murder hundreds of teachers. These crimes, which make indignant the whole world opinion didn't begin with the break in the electoral process in January 1992, contrary to the well-known propaganda distilled by their Algerian or foreign lawyers, which tend so to present themselves as democrats concerned about the respect of the popular will. Well before that date, these fascists have terrorised the progressists and all the women who refused to bend to their retrograde laws in the name of an ultra-reactionary ideology. This ideology is not only fundamentally anticommunist. It is violently opposed to all the social acquirements and to the very concept of social protection. For them, all the social laws, like the social security, the family allowances, the retirement pensions or paid holidays belong to the imported western model, incompatible with the Islamic religion.
In their conceptions, all this must be replaced by the Islamic solidarity, which, in their mind, is nothing else but the charity that the richs owe the poors at some periods of the years, corresponding to religious celebrations. This medieval conception is nothing else but the expression of the wildest capitalism one can conceive. In practice these integrists were on the side of the landowners, that they encouraged to oppose the agrarian revolution in the 70s; they opposed the struggles of the working class and have always warned that the strikes will be forbidden once they will have conquered power. It is first that ideology which interests the multinationals and explains the support given by various circles of imperialism to the Islamic fundamentalism, including to the currents which pretend to refuse to use terrorism but don't hide their will to establish a so-called islamic state, which doesn't differ at all from the one that the criminal gangs want to establish. These criminal gangs are all led by members of the former FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), of which many leaders are free to move either outside Algeria, either in the country itself where they openly act to demand the rehabilitation of the dissolved party. These forces of the integrist islamism represent the interests of the exploiting social classes which mask their class objectives behind religion and are using many charity associations to achieve their goals.
Thanks to the swift economic development, which took place in the country in the 70s, these classes have grown rich by using speculative commercial activities. While drawing profit from the substantial possibilities, which were given to them, they never stopped canalizing the discontent of the popular classes, victims of the authoritarianism of the power of the single party and of the fall in the standard of living resulting from the brutal drop in the oil revenue in 1986. Much better prepared than the progressist forces to the revolt of 1988, they have perverted it thanks to their demagogy and to the refusal of the power to take into account the true aspirations of the workers, poor peasants, youths and women, who were challenging not only the single party but were demanding a real democracy and not an unbridled pluralism which allowed the Islamic fascists of the FIS to organize themselves openly and to claim the direction of public affairs.
The fractions of the compradore bourgeoisie have turned their back on national interest
The various fractions of the compradore bourgeoisie, which have led the country since the 80s, have not only favoured with several means the rise of the Islamic fascism, to which they gave up the 10,000 mosques of the country, the education sector, the television... but they have completely turned their back on national interest with the economic and social policy that they began to undertake immediately after the disappearance of the mourned president Boumedienne. Immediately after he came to power, his successor Chadli embarked progressively on the liberalism. All his action resulted in a brutal halt of industrial development, the disorganisation of the public sector and agricultural co-operatives, the extension of idle parasitical activities, the peculation of the resources in foreign currencies of the country and the recourse to indebtedness, which has asphyxiated the country and served as a pretext to his successors to have resort to the IMF and the World Bank. The latter impose since 1994 their famous plans of structural adjustment and a complete liberalisation, which ensures that today half of our population lives below the poverty threshold. The reforms imposed by these institutions always go in the same direction. According to them one must either destroy the companies, of which the production risks to hinder the one of the multinationals, which dump in Algeria all kind of merchandises often of dubious quality, either privatise the juicy sectors in favour of the Algerian or foreign capitalists. No sector is safe from the privatisation, which is opposed courageously by the workers, which are fighting to defend their job. The national production is falling year after year. It is today inferior to the one of 1986 for a population which has increased meanwhile by 30%. The sectors which have collapsed are the ones which produce iron and steel, the lorries and the tractors, the machine-tools and electric engines, the gates and the pumps, the television sets and iron-works. All these sectors have seen their production in 97 decreasing by 27% compared to 96. The rate of use of the production capacities by these sectors don't exceed today 15% of their potential. For the whole industry that rate reaches hardly 30%. This fall of the production, if it first concerns the public sector, doesn't however spare the private productive sector, which looses more and more its delusions. The only sector of which the production has increased by 25% is the one of the hydrocarbons, but a barrel of oil or a cubic meter of gas yield today two times less than in 86.
The social consequences of this policy are visible in all the domains. In addition to unemployment, all the social acquirements are reduced. The IMF and our leaders consider that one spends too much for education, for health and that one must ceaselessly cut down the funds dedicated to these sectors in the national budget. But the speculators don't have to worry. It is to them that are granted the currencies of the country, with which they import consumer goods that they resell without paying neither duties or taxes. Since the signature of the agreements with the IMF, the corruption, which was already important, has considerably increased and parallel to the growing pauperisation of a majority of Algerians, a minority of exploiters, of speculators and of corrupts grow rich at an accelerated pace. Little worried about the national interests, these social strata and their political representatives want to create the conditions which will limit still more the decision capabilities of the country. With the mouth full of the words globalisation and world-wide expansion, they want to bind still more the destiny of our country to the one of the various centres of imperialism by pretending that no other policy is possible. They are in a hurry to adhere to the World Trade Organisation or to the organisation of free-exchange with the European Union. By their own admission, such adhesions will have severe consequences on the national economy but that doesn't prevent them at all to keep on submitting to the diktats of the imperialist circles. Some of these forces even dream to moor our country to the political-military block of NATO, which shows these days with a particular brightness the role that it is intended to play in the Mediterranean basin at the service of the American imperialism.
What are the other political forces in our country?
Beside the various tendencies of Islamism and the fractions of the bourgeoisie which dominate the power, there are in our country fractions of the bourgeoisie that we call modernist. These bourgeois political currents oppose integrism to various extent and are favourable to some extent to the democratic freedoms but share mainly the economic and social policy undertaken for several years and in particular since the signature of the agreements with the IMF and the World Bank. Refusing systematically to take into account the popular aspirations and the interests of the workers for class motives, theses forces refuse to understand (or can not understand!) that in the concrete case of our country it has become impossible to eliminate the terrorism if one doesn't attack the root of this cancer by a resolutly new policy which breaks in all fields with the one which impoverishes day after day a large majority of our people, which destroys the most elementary social acquirements, which doesn't offer any perspective to our youth.
Some political forces of this bourgeoisie even denigrate all the positive aspects of the policy of the 70s, that the popular masses regret however, because the people ate their fill, because the education and the health care were free, because the future was not blocked. Some of these forces even accuse that period for all current pains of our people in contempt of the most elementary common sense. We, communists, who have yet suffered the repression during these years because of our adherence to the liberties, we refuse to cry with wolves and we fight these attempts to disguise the truth. This attitude from us doesn't mean of course that we ignore the serious weaknesses and the authoritarianism which allowed the forces of the right of that power, supported by the imperialist circles, to break with these orientations, not to correct the weaknesses but to embark on a liberalism, which has driven our country into the crisis. The same are even outbiding in the application of the structural adjustment plans; they ask to go even quicker in the privatizations, including the ones of the public lands, in the liquidations of companies, in a forward flight to satisfy the aims of the imperialist circles, of which they are also looking for the support with the delusion that these circles will give up the islamists. They act in this realm exactly like the forces of the power that they pretend to fight. But there is something more serious. Their blindness and their constant refusal to recognize the class character of integrism and terrorism and consequently to propose a policy, which, without being frankly progressist, would have a democratic content such that it breaks with the authoritarianism of the power and its tendencies to share more and more power with the islamists. The absence of these fractions of the modernist bourgeoisie from the current electoral campaign and the call to boycott from some part of these fractions is maybe to look for in the deadlock where their own conceptions led them.
The struggles of the workers, peasants and progressist intellectuals and the position of communists
The atrocious crimes committed by the Islamic fascists are known. They have exceeded in their horror all what a sensible human being can imagine. The struggle led against these criminal hordes and against their plans of destruction of the very basis of our economy, against the will of the international capitalism and of the ruling circles eager to make our country only a reservoir of oil and gas, the resources of which will be shared between the multinationals and a thin layer of speculators and corrupts in the middle of a desert of poverty is much less mediatised.
Many peasants and workers are fighting with arms in their hands against the fascist gangs and are protecting their families and villages on side with the security forces. The workers of all branches, including the civil servants, are fighting daily against companies closures and the safeguard of the public services essential to the life of the nation. The wage-earners fight also for their purchasing power, the regular payment of their salaries, against the privatisations. The honest executives of the economy who oppose the plans of liquidation suffer under repression. More than 2000 of them are in jail. Let's not forget neither the courageous struggle of the Algerian women, neither the positions of the democrats and progressist intellectuals, who refuse to bend to the injunctions of the Islamists and demand the respect of the democratic liberties, also to get definitively outside the fascist danger. Let us not forget either the actions led in order that all the components of our personality are respected and in particular that the amazigh language has the same rights as the Arabic language. All these struggles didn't stop developing and take more and more importance and it is these struggles which worry the imperialist circles and our leaders who are trying to create the conditions, which could oppose these struggles efficiently, in particular through their decision to have recourse to an anticipatory presidential election. These struggles are nevertheless not easy. The insecurity, the authoritarianism of the power, the growing unemployment, the betrayal of the leadership of the main trade-union (UGTA), the repression against the trade-unions, the defeatism distilled by some opportunist currents which see the safety only by an action from above and contempt the masses, all that doesn't favour a convergence absolutely indispensable to get outside a policy which can even threaten our very existence as a nation.
The current presidential elections are not intended to improve the situation. On the contrary, they can worsen the political situation. The seven candidates can be assigned to two camps. The first ones are known to be stubborn supporters of the rehabilitation of the former FIS. The others are making demagogic promises but will only carry on the current strategy: keep on stalking the terrorist groups, while enlarging the alliance to all the so-called moderate Islamic tendencies. All are decided to carry on the policy imposed by the IMF.
In these elections we have called to vote null for three reasons: we are opposed to the Islamo-fascist danger, we refuse to guarantee the blackmail strategy of the regime in power, which uses and misuses the 'useful' vote by speculating on our people’s desire for peace and finally we want to express our refusal of the demobilizing boycott. Organised in the Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism, the Algerian communists are aimed at rebuilding the communist party while assuming their historical responsibilities in standing up to Islamic fascism. Their step hinged on the construction: 1) of a large communist party rooted in the working class and in the laborious peasantry. 2) of a democratic and popular antifascist front, mobilising the masses to bar the road to Islamic fascism, to defend the democratic freedoms and to fight the dictatorial power, to defend social and economic acquirements and national independence threatened by the agreements with the IMF.
On the basis of this strategy, the communists strive to create alliances with the modernist democratic fraction of the bourgeoisie including the anti-integrist currents of the regime, while continuing to denounce their conservative conceptions of the free market economy or their methods of bargaining with the other fractions of the bourgeoisie, where, instead, the support of the masses is necessary to force success.
13 April 1999
Contribution to the 8th International Communist Seminar, Brussels, 2-4 May 1999
Theme: Imperialism means War