Algeria and the Arab Revolution

Algeria largely missed out on the Arab Spring in 2010 when Tunisia exploded, followed rapidly by Libya, Egypt and Syria. It’s president, Bouteflika was able to stifle the 2011 uprising with concessions to the masses. Today, after 6 weeks of growing mass protests the Algerian masses are making up for it forcing Bouteflika to stand down and delay the elections. But this grudging concession is not satisfying the masses, they are aiming higher at ‘regime change’ and the ‘ruling class’ and are threatening to rekindle the Arab Revolution.

Algeria has all the features of a semi-colony like the rest of MENA oppressed by imperialism. Algeria never escaped the rule of imperialism as its ruling class became its agents in the exploitation and oppression of the people. The crisis of capitalism today demands that the workers’ pay with mass austerity and poverty. Bouteflika claims the legacy of the revolutionary independence war, but like other ‘left’ nationalists, Gaddafi, Saddam, Assad etc, their loyalty is to imperialism not the working people.

This means that the Arab Revolution must be reactivated by the insurgent masses to break from both imperialism and its local political lackeys. This is what we mean by permanent revolution – the fight for national independence becomes the task of the revolutionary party leading the workers and poor peasants to the socialist revolution and a united socialist federation of Arab workers’ states.

The failure of the Libyan and Egyptian masses in 2011 to arm themselves independently of the bourgeoisie accounts for their failure to break from imperialism. In Syria the armed revolution could have defeated Assad had it not been for the armed invasion of Russia and Iran. Can the uprising in Algeria learn these lessons and raise a program that will see workers and poor farmers come to power showing the way forward for the other Arab states? 

There are good signs. The massive demonstrations made up of rural poor, industrial workers and radical youth. The workers can’t live in the old way and are searching for a new way. Workers and poor peasants must organise their own councils and militias now against state repression. The planned general strike must be coordinated and defended to bring down the regime and create a Workers’ Government. However, unless they rapidly build a revolutionary Marxist party and program to guide them on the struggle, they are in danger of being betrayed and defeated by the class enemy posing as reformists, nationalists and fake Marxists.

There will be many diversions ahead. Bouteflika’s party must be thrown out. The opposition are no better. They cannot make concessions to the masses.  Nor is there a national solution since the Algerian masses cannot succeed without the victory of the Egyptian and Syrian masses and the rest of MENA states. The Arab Revolution stands or falls as a totality.  Calls for any compromise with the national bourgeoisie or imperialism, such as a Constituent Assembly (CA), fall well short of victory and must lead to defeat.

The RCIT makes the mistake of calling for a workers’ and poor peasants government based on workers and poor peasants’ councils to ‘convene’ a “revolutionary constituent assembly”. This is putting the revolution into reverse. Workers and Peasants councils are the political base for armed workers power in government.  A CA is a bourgeois parliament. In other words, a popular front. Such a CA would become the focus for counter-revolutionary attempts to destroy a new Workers and Poor Peasants Government. Attaching the word “revolutionary” does not change the class composition of the popular front.

For a revolutionary Marxist party!

Forward to the Algerian socialist revolution!

For a socialist federation of Arab Republics of MENA!