lecture 2, "the paris commune and its legacy"
john merriman

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hung over Europe for 20, 30 years following it -- "in my view," the massacre that followed the commune anticipated the 20th century, where you became guilty for simply who you were (you were guilty if you were left in paris)

it was the largest massacre until the armenian genocide (in europe, only?)

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what was it?

has to be placed in two contexts

(1) in the context of the regime of napoleon the third -- which lasted from 1852-1870 (when he was rounded up by the Prussians). in the late 1860s, there was a revival of republican, socialist, and anarchist organizations -- in 1868, the emperor legalizes public meetings, and you had these in cafes and large warehouses. people were agitating for democratization, etc. -- so, a wave of political mobilzation.

in 1870s, there was a wave of strikes, which had previously been illegal--unions would in fact be illegal until 1881.

(2) the franco-prussian war, napoleon the third gets suckered into a war without any allies at all, against otto von bismarck (the prussian chancellor). it involves the candidacy of a royal family member for the candidacy of france, which would have left the empire surrounded by the prussians. napoleon protests vigorously, and his ambassador abuses bismarck's envoy(!). bismarck reveals to the european world that napoleon had earlier tried to make a deal, intolerable to the british.

so, in sum, they go to war, in the summer of 1870 against prussia, expecting to win. he was, though, "blown out"

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on september 4th, 1870, a crowd storms down town hall, and want to prolong resistance against the prussian army, which is routing the french. napoleon the third is very sick anyway, soon to die, he is captured in the battle of sedan and sent packing to britain.

there are those who want to keep fighting--one of the demands of prussia (german empire will be proclaimed in late january, in versailles) is that there be a huge indemnity that the french will have to pay. and that alsace and loren, the eastern, german-speaking provinces, would be annexed by germany (and these were two of the most prosperous, industrialized provinces of france)

so, in sum, people in paris find themselves surrounded. there is a wall around the city, keeping out the german troops. elsewhere, resistance is sparse--in metz, in october, a general capitulates to bismarck.

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to be sure, there were lots of crowds in paris who were shouting for war, which was surprising, in a sense. but the siege goes on, and on.

paris changes appearences--military dress, uniforms become increasingly visible.

there is the problem of food, how to feed all these people. you have enough for only a month, or so (you are fine in terms of drink, b/c of wine cellars). they use balloons! a symbol of liberty, but presumably this is not exactly sufficient. (there were 65 baloon flights, carrying about 20,000 pounds. pigeons are used to fly messages out, germans bring in falcons to munch the pigeons!)

there were some massacres, in the north-east, but nothing like paris would see in 1914, or 1939-1940.

the national guard from the outskirts took refuge, so a bit like a medieval siege.

you have 2,000,000 people, in total (a smattering of foreigners). the population begins to eat animals--dogs, rats and cats. canine butchers replace horse butchers, animals in the zoo were eaten, etc.

bismark had projected that the siege would end, eventually -- but paris creates a committee of sobriety, and encourages people to eat healthy!? these are the fancy folk.

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it ceased being funny, of course. hunger sets in, even if it was nothing like the siege of leningrad, where 1,000,000 died -- but there were people dying, etc. and venereal disease was rampant, as was drukenness, mental illnessess.

attempts to break out do not work. (there is a contest to see "how we get out"? two suggestions: (1) prostitutes are a resource for paris, they should be used to seduce and poision prussian soldiers. (2) take the orchestras of paris and teach them to play german music--one day they would march out and play this music, with a huge trojan horse behind it!)

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as things are going downhill, people start to say we must fight, but we need to unite to imagine a new world. in january 1871, a red sign is put up (red was illegal between 1849 and 1851, because it was believed to excite people!), saying "make way for the commune."

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france capitulates at the end of january 1871 -- the prussian cavalry trot down the champs d'elysses symbolically clean up the stones, etc., and france is all set to lose the war. france has a provisional government, much of the provinces return a monarchist assembly. the landlords come back to paris, and tell the people to pay back money with interest (pay back the indemnity).

and so people are incredibly angry.

theirs, expecting paris to rise, possbily, sends troops to mon matre(sp.?), because the national guard of paris has still got its guns. these troops go to disarm the national guard, but the guard is alerted--they take two commanders from the troops, and they shoot them.

thiers is now ready to "get these bastards."

and now, paris is surrounded again, but by troops of the provisional government.

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and so the commune begins (march 18, 1871). it will last until the 2nd of may, 1871. (lenin calls this the "festival of the oppressed")

so, for the first time, ordinary parisians find themselves masters of their own lives (the population of the city is swollen with political refugees). as in the french revolution, and 1848, clubs of women begin to form, demanding their rights.

all sorts of impressive social legislation is passed. (secular education system, nurseries for women workers, uniform contracts for female unions, ban night-baking).

this also explains, in part, the viciousness of the massacre of ordinary working women. they were seen as "uppity." many of the important communards are women.

you have the jacobins (republican socialists from the revolutionary tradition), you have the anarchists, you have moderat republicans (who simply desire more liberty vis-a-vis the centralized state), you have moderate socialists.

there are debates, meetings, arguments, etc., as the guns draw nearer.

there were communes in other cities, as well, with a variety of demands. paris keeps waiting for these armies of citizens to come and rescue it.

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within paris, you have poorer people invading the fancy areas, for the first time as independent citizens.

an artist calls for the tearing down of the statue of napoleon, as a symbol of centralized oppression.

for once they had won.

they had to defend paris, of course. cannons, they have. they build these huge barricades, a tradition that stretched back to the 16th century (of course, you can build barricades across smaller streets, but not really across big boulevards--and that was part of the rebuilding of paris in the 1850s and 1860s).

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who were the communards?

when revolutions are victorious, of course, everyone says "i was there!"

here, you have a body count, of more than 15,000 people. they were the ordinary parisians who couldn't get out, basically -- they were the poor socialists, anarchists, republicans, etc. their defence of paris reflects tensions between urban and conservative, rural france--the army that they were fighting was largely recruited from rural areas.

and so the commune is basically proletarian--people from the working quarters. artisans, craftsmen, domestic servants, etc. and they were trying to imagine a world in which they could rule.

prof argues it reflects the artisinal base of the french economy at that time.

the myth of the commune--for the conservatives, this was the "fury of hell", those who rose up to slay their social betters. for the republicans, this was a defense of the republic against the monarchy, restored (which is partly true, of course).

for marx, lenin--this was armageddon for the ruling class. though not marx's industrial working-class, of course, but a very different kind of working-class (semi-proletarianized, prof is arguing). this of course informs the "breaking of the chains" argument; testing the "dictatorship of the proletariat"

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the most important result, however, in prof's opinion, was the massacre itself.

the troops came in through the western gate--they use the boulevards that had been built by napoleon the third as a way of getting to the working-class areas (those areas that had always risen up). hausmann, of course, was the man who had plowed through working-class neighborhoods, that had once lain where those boulevards now are. he did it to bring more light, to bring more air, to free the flow for capital, and because you can't build barricades across the boulevards.

so the troops come pouring in, across boulevards that had been built in the 1850s and 1860s. and the damage was staggering.

and then the women were put on trial--there was a rumor that women had been burning down fancy houses. and so this rumor was part of the fear of "uppity women." and they squished them like grapes.

they shot them all.

in the end, there was a paris in which everybody had been guilty.

chimney sweepers were executed because they had charcoal on their cheeks; they would rip of your shirts, to see if you had any bruises from recoiling rifles; it wasn't a "neutral" massacre, they went to the radical areas, and that's where they went in and massacred the populations.

"why don't you get over this?" this was the ultimate lesson of the commune, which would hang over europe. it was a sign that the state was strong, and can be vicious. don't let anyone tell you that the victims of terrorism are equal, in number, to the victims of state terrorism. but this was the real lesson--the state was growing in power with napoleon, unification. the state could strike back with unparalleled savagery. and that's what happened at the commune.

minimum 15,000 died, probably closer to 25,000. (when they did the census in 1872, in paris, there were 10,000 less shoemakers than there had been before--an extraordinarily radical trade, don't forget). flames engulfed the bodies, they were gone, lost to history.

amnesty for the communards would come in 1879. but the massacre hung like a shadow over french and european politics, for years and years.

ALGERIA

NUMBERS

population: 33,769,668 (July 2008 est.)
land use: arable land, 3.17%; permanent crops, 0.28%; other, 96.55% (2005)
ethnic groups: Arab-Berber 99%, European less than 1% (NB: almost all Algerians are Berber in origin, not Arab; the minority who identify themselves as Berber live mostly in the mountainous region of Kabylie east of Algiers; the Berbers are also Muslim but identify with their Berber rather than Arab cultural heritage; Berbers have long agitated, sometimes violently, for autonomy; the government is unlikely to grant autonomy but has offered to begin sponsoring teaching Berber language in schools)
religions: Sunni Muslim (state religion) 99%, Christian and Jewish 1%
literacy: total population, 69.9%; male, 79.6%; female, 60.1% (2002 est.)
economy: The hydrocarbons sector is the backbone of the economy, accounting for roughly 60% of budget revenues, 30% of GDP, and over 95% of export earnings. Algeria has the eighth-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and is the fourth-largest gas exporter; it ranks 15th in oil reserves. Sustained high oil prices in recent years have helped improve Algeria's financial and macroeconomic indicators.
GDP composition, by sector: agriculture, 8.1%; industry, 62.5%; services, 29.4%
labor force: 9.44 million (or, about 28% of the total population)
labor force by occupation: agriculture 14%, industry 13.4%, construction and public works 10%, trade 14.6%, government 32%, other 16%

HISTORY

THE PRE-COLONIAL PERIOD (-1830)

1000BC-642AD(appx.): The indigenous Berbers (who had inhabited the region since at least 10,000BC) of the area repelled, were subjugated, and/or coexisted with successive invasions and settlement: (1) the Carthaginians, who arrived around 900BC, established Carthage in 814BC (in present-day Tunisia), incompletely subjugated the Berbers to their South, but fell apart after the Punic Wars (264-146BC) --as a result, "by the second century B.C., several large but loosely administered Berber kingdoms had emerged. Two of them were established in Numidia, behind the coastal areas controlled by Carthage" (2) the Romans, who retained a tenuous grip on the Berbers (their lands were the "breadbasket" of the Empire, allegedly) until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476AD; (3) the Byzantines, who under the leadership of Justinian I, in the mid-500s (AD), expelled the Vandal tribes who had settled in and around Carthage after the fall of the Romans. They exercised a "precarious grip" over the Berbers until the Arab invasions: "Local opposition delayed full Byzantine control of the region for twelve years, however, and imperial control, when it came, was but a shadow of the control exercised by Rome. Although an impressive series of fortifications were built, Byzantine rule was compromised by official corruption, incompetence, military weakness, and lack of concern in Constantinople for African affairs. As a result, many rural areas reverted to Berber rule."

642-909: From 642 to 669, a series of sporadic, almost mercenary Arab invasions first spread Islam to these areas. The Ummayads (661-750) launched a more systematic campaign in 670, recognizing the strategic import of these territories. "By 711 Umayyad forces helped by Berber converts to Islam had conquered all of North Africa." However resistance to the heavy-handedness of the ruling Arabs (taxation, discrimination, and even enslavement) soon took the form of an open revolt from 739-740, under the banner of Kharijite Islam (which was, in contrast to Ummayad doctrine, egalitarian and anti-racist). The Ummayads were succeeded by the Abbasids (750-1258) in 750, and exercised control over North Africa by proxy: the East was governed by Al Aghab; in the West, the Rustumid Imamate prevailed from (761-909), notable for the fact that its rulers were elected by "leading citizens."

909-1518: The Fatimids, a Shia caliphate organized by missionaries to North Africa over the course of the 800s, overthrew the Sunni rulers of the region. Though they expanded westward from the site of their first victory at Kairouan (in modern-day Tunisia) in 909, their ultimate ambitions lay in the Mashreq. As a result, they appointed a Berber dynasty (the Zirids: 972-1148) to rule in their stead. Despite these measures, "this period was marked by constant conflict, political instability, and economic decline." "For the first time, the extensive use of Arabic spread to the countryside."

For the latter half of this period, the Almoravids (1106-1147) ruled the Western portion of North Africa, after conquering "Morocco, the Maghrib as far east as Algiers, and Spain up to the Ebro River by 1106". They acknowledged the spiritual authority of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad; under their rule, "Muslim Spain (Andalus in Arabic) was a great source of artistic and intellectual inspiration." The Almoravids were toppled by the Almohads (so-called for their emphasis on the unity of God), who "took control of Morocco in 1146, captured Algiers around 1151, and by 1160 had completed the conquest of the central Maghrib and advanced to Tripolitania." Their dynasty, which hosted two of this region's most famous thinkers, Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), fell eventually in 1271.

The following three hundred years (ca. 1200-1500) saw the Western territories ruled by the Almohads in the hands of the Hafsid dynasty, which was based in Tunis. In the central Maghrib, the Zayanids exercised a tenuous hold. For much of this period, effective authority was less centralized: "Many coastal cities defied the ruling dynasties and asserted their autonomy as municipal republics. They were governed by their merchant oligarchies, by tribal chieftains from the surrounding countryside, or by the privateers who operated out of their ports. " Furthermore, the "aridity of official Islam had little appeal outside the mosques and schools of the cities"--as a result, marabouts were strong influences in rural areas, inspiring numerous uprisings and small autonomous republics.

1518-1830: In the early 1500s, after the reconquest of Grenada in 1492, the Spanish had moved to establish their authority on the Maghribi coast, "taking control of Mers el Kebir in 1505, Oran in 1509, and Tlemcen, Mostaganem, and Ténès, all west of Algiers, in 1510." However, despite the relative "ease" of these campaigns (of course they were brutal), Christian Spain never attempted to establish their authority south of these preliminary (and costly) outposts--perhaps because they sought to concentrate their efforts around the Mediterranean. Their failure to do this made it possible for the Ottomans to assert their control, instead.

In 1518, the prominent Barbary pirate Khair ad Din (aka "Redbeard" or "Barbossa"), who, together with his brother Aruj, had been operating under the Hafsids from Tunis, began a campaign to subdue the coastal region around Algeria (more-or-less establishing the modern, northern boundaries of Algeria). He did this with the patronage of the Ottomans, who in 1533 made him admiral of their fleet. "Under Khair ad Din's regency, Algiers became the center of Ottoman authority in the Maghrib, from which Tunis, Tripoli, and Tlemcen would be overcome and Morocco's independence would be threatened."

By 1587, 44 years after Khair ad Din's son had succeeded his father as beylerbey (provincial governor), the Ottomans instituted a more regular form of administration, relying upon pashas (governors) who served three-year terms (who were assisted by janissaries, recruited from Anatolian peasants, and known in Algeria as the ojaq). Turkish was the official language of the court; Arabs and Berbers were prohibited from government posts.

Over the course of the next two hundred and fifty years, this system ran into trouble on numerous occasions, and was re-formed accordingly (not by design, but by those victorious in the various feuds). From 1671-1830, for example, a dey exercised power; he was chosen by a divan, comprised of sixty nobles (at first this was the ojaq, more or less, but it gradually evolved into a group of the dey's lackeys). Remarkably, "[though] the dey was elected for a life term, ...in the 159 years (1671-1830) that the system survived, fourteen of the twenty-nine deys were removed from office by assassination."

The exact details are perhaps relatively unimportant (see, though, the block quote that follows)--the most salient fact was that the administration, like any other pre-capitalist Empire, depended heavily on the local powers that presided over any number of effectively autonomous provinces under its nominal control. In that sense, effective authority for the average citizen rested not in Constantinople, but in institutions that were entirely more local.

"The dey had direct administrative control only in the regent's enclave, the Dar as Sultan (Domain of the Sultan), which included the city of Algiers and its environs and the fertile Mitidja Plain. The rest of the territory under the regency was divided into three provinces (beyliks): Constantine in the east; Titteri in the central region, with its capital at Médéa; and a western province that after 1791 had its seat at Oran, abandoned that year by Spain when the city was destroyed in an earthquake. Each province was governed by a bey appointed by the dey, usually from the same circle of families. A contingent of the ojaq was assigned to each bey, who also had at his disposal the provincial auxiliaries provided by the privileged makhzen tribes, traditionally exempted from paying taxes on condition that they collect them from other tribes. Tax revenues were conveyed from the provinces to Algiers twice yearly, but the beys were otherwise left to their own devices. Although the regency patronized the tribal chieftains, it never had the unanimous allegiance of the countryside, where heavy taxation frequently provoked unrest. Autonomous tribal states were tolerated, and the regency's authority was seldom applied in the Kabylie."

THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1830-1962)

1830-1954: In the aftermath of decades-long tensions over piracy in the Mediterranean (eventually settled by superior European technology, ending in the Barbary Treaties; this defeat for the Dey preceded heightening tensions between him and the French), the French captured Algeria in a three-week campaign in 1930. The war pitted 34,000 of their soldiers against "7,000 janissaries, 19,000 troops from the beys of Constantine and Oran, and about 17,000 Kabyles." The invasion was violent and vicious (allegedly "disappearing" one-third of the entire Algerian population?). Almost as soon as French troops took Algiers, Charles X (of the Bourbon Restoration), who had authorized the military invasion in order to counter his declining domestic popularity, was deposed. He was replaced by Louis Philippe, the "citizen-king," who was surrounded by opponents to Charles X's decision to invade--nonetheless, withdrawing proved more difficult than invading, and in 1834 it was decided to annex the occupied population (about 3 million Muslims at that time) as a colony.

Intensive French settlement, encouraged by a nexus of private and official commercial interests, resulted in the influx of tens of thousands of European settlers (pied noirs) in the first decades of colonial rule.

the European settlers were largely of peasant farmer or working-class origin from the poor southern areas of Italy, Spain, and France. Others were criminal and political deportees from France, transported under sentence in large numbers to Algeria. In the 1840s and 1850s, to encourage settlement in rural areas official policy was to offer grants of land for a fee and a promise that improvements would be made. A distinction soon developed between the grands colons (great colonists) at one end of the scale, often self-made men who had accumulated large estates or built successful businesses, and the petits blancs (little whites), smallholders and workers at the other end, whose lot was often not much better than that of their Muslim counterparts. According to historian John Ruedy, although by 1848 only 15,000 of the 109,000 European settlers were in rural areas, "by systematically expropriating both pastoralists and farmers, rural colonization was the most important single factor in the destructuring of traditional society."

By 1848, nearly all of Northern Algeria was under French control, though not without encountering significant resistance (most notably the establishment of a Muslim state by Abd Al Qadir (he had fought the Ottomans, as well), who controlled two-thirds of Algeria in 1839; he eventually surrendered in 1847 when fully one-third of the French Army was employed, brutally and indiscriminately, against him and his rural support base).

The system of colonial administration employed by the French is best assessed in the context of the shifting contours of the mainland government: (1) till 1848, Algeria remained under military control, with the exception of pockets of civil administration in those areas where settlement was most intense (while the colons argued for full legal rights and integration with mainland France, the military argued that such measures would jeopardize colonial authority); (2) after the Revolution of 1848 till the advent of the Second Empire in 1852, some moves were made in this direction in three "civil" territories (Algiers, Oran, and Constantine), which were organized as French provinces under civil administration; (3) from 1852 to 1870, Napoleon III, who returned the colony to military rule, instituted a motley set of reforms that antagonized the colons while also not properly attending to the concerns of the bulk of the indigenous population. Though he imagined that European settlement would remain confined to the coast, his intentions were defied by the effects of his 1863 and 1865 decrees, which, it seems, accelerated the break-up of traditional institutions (like communal property) by allowing the individuals to whom they'd been given to sell to speculators; (4) from the birth of the Third Republic in 1870 onwards, civil administration was returned to Algeria; the gov't confirmed its intention to assimilate the colony into France. Over time, an "apartheid" system congealed (not that what went before was any distinct, conceptually), premised on the enfranchisement of the colons, and founded on the suppression, discrimination, and immiseration of the indigenous Muslim population (the Jews, against the will of the colons, were made citizens in 1870).

In 1871, in the aftermath of famines following from grain shortages owing to the Crimean War of 1854-1856 (in a three year period, an estimated 20% of the Muslim population of Constantine had perished), but in direct response to the 1870 order extending civil authority to previously self-governing tribal regions, rebellion racked the Kabyle region. It was suppressed in standard fashion, by collectively punishing the whole Muslim population.

Some assorted statistics relating to French apartheid:

• Because of the many restrictions imposed by the authorities, by 1915 only 50,000 Muslims were eligible to vote in elections in the civil communes.
• The bulk of Algeria's wealth in manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and trade was controlled by the grands colons. The modern European-owned and -managed sector of the economy centered around small industry and a highly developed export trade, designed to provide food and raw materials to France in return for capital and consumer goods. Europeans held about 30% of the total arable land, including the bulk of the most fertile land and most of the areas under irrigation. By 1900, Europeans produced more than two-thirds of the value of output in agriculture and practically all agricultural exports.
• In 1909... Muslims, who made up almost 90% of the population but produced 20% of Algeria's income, paid 70% of direct taxes and 45% of the total taxes collected. And colons controlled how these revenues would be spent. As a result, colon towns had handsome municipal buildings, paved streets lined with trees, fountains and statues, while Algerian villages and rural areas benefited little if at all from tax revenues.

Through the 1920s and 1930s, national consciousness had brewed in a new Muslim leadership: "It consisted of a small but influential class of évolués, other Algerians whose perception of themselves and their country had been shaped by wartime experiences, and a body of religious reformers and teachers." There were, correspondingly, various forms of anti-colonial agitation unfolding during this period (the Young Algerians, who were liberal integrationists active in the reformist movement, which was active from the 1890s to WWI; the Star of North Africa, the first group to call for Algerian independence (in 1927, it was banned in 1929), led by Ahmed Messali Hadj; AUMA, which, under the leadership of Shaykh Abd al Hamid Ben Badis, began in the 1920s to call for a return to the Islamic roots of Algeria). Any inclinations the French government may have had towards negotiating with these groups were nipped in the bud by the intransigence and influence of the white minority, who exercised almost total control over the local administration and had friends in high places in Paris. (It came closs to happening in 1936, when the FEI (comprised of evolues, led by Ferhat Abbas) and the ulema gave their approval to the Violette Plan, which would have given citizenship to a number of Muslims; however, it failed due to opposition from the colons).

1954-1962: In various forms, the struggle for independence had continued, through the events of WWII (Algeria had been governed by the Vichy regime from 1940 to 1942, of course)--after the 1945 massacre at Setif (of anywhere between 6,000 to 45,000 civilians, after a march organized by Abbas's AML, which had the support of Hadj and the ulema, for national liberation had turned violent and killed 103 Europeans), affairs had arguably become irreversibly polarized. On November 1, 1954, the FLN launched an uprising which marked the beginning of the Algerian War of Independence. Their increasing success over the next two years was met with very harsh repression by the French (which began, in particular, after the FLN killed 123 Pied Noir civilians in August 1955). By 1956, many nationalist groups, spurred by the repression of the colonial state, had joined the FLN, (with the notable exception of Messali Hadj, whose feud with the FLN resulted in almost 5,000 deaths in "Cafe Wars" in France.) 1956 also saw the Battle of Algiers, as the FLN sought to take the fight to the cities. Though General Jacques Massu employed "whatever means necessary" to dismantle the FLN infrastructure in Algiers, the battle had demonstrated the fact of their popular support.

By 1957, the FLN had evolved into a force of 40,000--in general, they fought as a guerrilla force, and were hardly engaged conventionally. Even still, by 1956, the French had committed almost 400,000 troops against them (including about 170,000 Muslim Algerians)--counterinsurgency tactics, as expected, ranged from napalm and aerial bombardment to the mass relocation of Algerian peasants to "safe zones" (almost 2 million, in all!).

In 1958, the crisis in Algeria led to the overthrow of the French Fourth Republic in a coup d'etat--De Gaulle took over on May 29, 1958, after Parliament approved his candidacy. The idea was that he was the only man who could give direction to the French government (the French feared a repeat of the 1954 debacle in Indochina). Though upon taking power, he had reassured the pied noir population of his support (and had proposed a new constitution for the French Fifth Republic that included an integrated Algeria), events turned in the FLN's favor by 1959. De Gaulle, in September of that year, spoke of self-determination for the Algerian population.

In January 1960, the pieds noir in Algeria, feeling betrayed, launched an insurrection as the police and army stood by. Though it was eventually pacified, another insurrection in April 1961 (this time a "general's putsch", organized by some renegade units and colons vigilantes) threatened the government's writ in a very serious way. De Gaulle was now ready to abandon the pieds noirs. From this, independence became an inevitability: talks with the FLN re-opened in May 1961, a ceasefire was agreed to, effective March 19, 1962--in their final form, these Evian Accords legislated Algerian independence. A vicious three month campaign of pro-pieds noir terrorism notwithstanding (120 bombs a day planted by the OAS), on July 1, 1962, Algerians held a referendum on independence. The vote was nearly unanimous. A few days later, independent Algeria was established.

INDEPENDENCE AND AFTER (1962-2009)

1962-1965: In the immediate aftermath of independence, almost 10% of the population fled for Paris (" most of the 1,025,000 Pieds-Noirs, as well as 81,000 Harkis (pro-French Algerians serving in the French Army"). Appended to the devastation of war, this exodus left Algeria in tatters: "the exodus of the colons deprived the country of most of its managers, civil servants, engineers, teachers, physicians, and skilled workers--all occupations from which the Muslim population had been excluded or discouraged from pursuing by colonial policy. The homeless and displaced numbered in the hundreds of thousands, many suffering from illness, and some 70 percent of the work force was unemployed. Distribution of goods was at a standstill. Departing colons destroyed or carried off public records and utility plans, leaving public services in a shambles. "

FLN leader Ahmed Ben Bella took over as independent Algeria's first president. In his March Decrees of 1963, he announced a program to bring the abandoned land, houses, factories, etc., under state control; additionally, however, the spontaneous cooperatives that had emerged amidst the chaos were to be supported.

At the same time, under Ben Bella's authority, bureaucratic and dictatorial tendencies were clearly in evidence. As Vijay Prashad writes, "The 1963 Constitution of Algeria abolished all political parities except the FLN, and elevated the president of the FLN to the sole formulator of State policy. The energy of the Algerian Revolution would now be concentrated in the body of the president, who for the moment was Ben Bella."

Similarly, the FLN's somewhat opportunistic seizure of the leadership of the anti-colonial struggle reflected the tenuous nature of the alliances that had formed in opposition to the French. It was unsurprising, then, that these began to come apart at the seams, as the FLN one-party state congealed. Indeed, talk of securing the power of the vanguard party against those defying the "general interest" are best situated in the context of these anxieties. Thus, though Ben Bella had support in the National Assembly, he moved to repress other resistance to his rule (in the form of an opposition group eventually led by Ait Ahmed (the FFS-- a Berber Socialist party founded in 1963, and still in existence today); general opposition included also the communists, Messali Hadj, Mohamed Boudiaf of the PRS (or Socialist Revolution Party)). There were also regional insurgencies that needed supressing--in the Kabylie and Southern Sahara (These partly merged with what was left of the general resistance led by Ait Ahmed and Boudiaf).

Ben Bella attempted to further establish his authority by purging figures who were loyal to then minister of defense, Boumediene. Up until this point, it seems, Boumediene had been complicit in the construction of a one-party State, who sought to command the national liberation project in the name of the people (and, of course, against their explicit politics). Nonetheless, Ben Bella went too far, his attempts eventually backfiring in a bloodless military coup, on June 9, 1965. (According to Prashad, however, it was actually Ben Bella's rapproachment with the organized left, perhaps threatening the Army, that inspired to Boumediene to action).

1965-1978: Under Boumediene's authority, "the state dominated society and ruled in the name of socialism." Nationalization increasingly stood for anti-democratic control by the State. "The military played a larger role in society." Revenue from oil and gas reserves played a significant role in the charade of socialism from above. Politically, he cracked down further on the organized left. In all these senses and more, Prashad argues, by the late 1960s Algeria "had moved from an attempt to create a socialist state to a state capitalist one, with a parasitic bourgeoisie confident beside the strong arms of the military."

1978-1992: Boumediene died in December 1978, after which a struggle for succession ensued. As a compromise to the two principal candidates, a relative outsider (but also army man), Chadli Bendjedid, took power in February 1979. He moved to liberalize the economy; in his first Five Year Plan (1980-1984), for example, which turned many state-controlled industries over to private hands. Nonetheless, Algeria suffered from a serious economic crisis throughout the 80's--a state of affairs which deteriorated after a dramatic 1986 fall in the price of oil (oil prices had been declining throughout the decade).

Benjdedid also had to confront an increasingly militant Islamist opposition (can this be theorized as the inevitable outcome of the failure to meaningfully politicize the public?)--he did so by a combination of appeasement and repression: arresting prominent activists but also modifying family law in patriarchal ways. A wave of general outrage from 1985 to 1988 culminated in the the riots of October 1988 (which began as student and worker strikes). In the State's effort to re-assert its control through declaring a State of Emergency, about 500 were estimated killed and 3,000 arrested.

Widespread public agitation in the wake of this incident prompted Benjedid to move towards reform. A new constitution was promulgated in February 1989 (dropping "socialist" from the description of the Algerian state), liberalizing the political sphere but also curtailing women's rights. Local and provincial elections in June 1990 were won by the Islamists (the FIS), but largely because secular parties boycotted--in the aftermath, the FLN attempted to curb electoral laws in their favor, and declared martial law from June to September 1991 under a gov't of national reconciliation, after the FIS responded with a general strike and general agitation.

Nonetheless, the FIS contested the first round of the December 1991 elections, and won handily, trouncing the FLN. This prompted panic amongst the ruling elite, who feared an FIS takeover--on January 11, 1992, members of Benjedid's cabinet dissolved parliament and declared the elections null and void, cancelling the second round and banning all religious parties. Both the FIS and FLN clamored for a return to the electoral process, but police and troops countered with arrests and repression. On February 9th, 1992, a one year state of emergency was announced--Mohammed Boudiaf returned from exile to head the caretaker government.
Massive demonstrations erupted in cities.

1992-2009: All this, of course, set the stage for the Algerian civil war, a conflict which claimed more than 160,000 lives between 1992 and 2002, and pitted the MIA (guerillas in mountains) and the GIA (guerillas in towns)--whose stregnth peaked at 40,000 in 1994, which is also when the GIA and MIA split (which became the AIS), over the question of the latter's loyalty to the FIS (who were locked in soon-to-fail peace talks)--against the military. It was notoriously brutal, claiming the lives of significant numbers of civilians. Nonetheless, it began to subside in intensity after 1997, when the AIS opted for a unilateral ceasefire; the GIA was rent apart by internal divisions, though sporadic fighting continued until about 2002.

Elections in Algeria resumed in 1995 (parliamentary elections were held in 1997). Both of these were won by the Army's party, the National Democratic Rally (RND). In 1999, however, the FLN candidate, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had allied himself with Boumedienne at the time of Ben Bella's overthrow, won the presidency in ultimately uncontested elections (opposition candidates had pulled out, citing fraud concerns). Even still, in April 2004, he was re-elected, with 85% of the vote in an election deemed free and fair (though his opponents cite State control of the media). He is seeking a constitutional amendment, which would allow him to seek a third term.

the course of naxalism:
The Naxalite movement is mostly active in the tribal areas spreading from Bihar to Andhra Pradesh and Maharastra, and also covering parts of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. This spread is linked only to the inaccessible hilly terrain of these regions, but a conscious decision by the Naxalites to take up the issues affecting the tribal people, who are among the most exploited in society. India's development process has led to commercialisation of forest resources, reducing the traditional access to forest produce. Alienation of tribal land to non-tribals has been a steady trend despite legal strictures. Mining-based industries and the construction of large dams have caused extensive displacement of the tribals, besides destroying their natural environment. A central Naxalite agenda is for tribal self-determination, asserting the rights of the tribals over local resources.
(...) Overall, therefore, the Naxalite challenge rests upon the issues of agrarian transformation, tribal people's rights, the nationality movement and resisting imperialism and globalisation. All this adds up to what they characterise as the people's democratic revolution to change the very character of the Indian state. Because of the issues they pursue, the Naxalites have a social base which sustains them despite a variety of repressive measures pursued by the state. In fact, over the past decade the movement has spread to new areas such as southern districts of Orissa and West Bengal as well as parts of Uttar Padesh and Rajasthan.
(...) The oft-repeated plea that there is no place for violence in a democracy indicates a desirable norm for seeking peaceful constitutional response to fulfil a people's aspirations. But when the coercive power of the state is used to defend the interest of the rich and the powerful or to eliminate resistance to injustice, the same can sound like a hollow claim. Social violence has grown in India with landlords' armies in Bihar, factional murders in Andhra's Rayalseema, and upper caste atrocities on dalits all over – to mention but a few examples.
(...) Democracy is indeed meant for bringing about peaceful change through people's representatives. But the fact is that existing power centres in society do not allow that to easily happen. Groups fighting for democratic rights have been pointing this out for over three decades now. The state response to the Naxalite movement was to capture and kill activists them by staging 'false encounters'. Human rights groups which go under the acronyms APCLC, PUDR and PUCL, have investigated many such incidents in Andhra, Bihar and elsewhere. They have demanded that rule of law be applied to all such cases, and all persons suspected should be tried according to law rather than be eliminated. When the state itself violates the constitutional obligations with impunity, then the violation of law and civic norms becomes widespread.
(...) During the peace talks and press conferences, the Maoists were confronted with many issues raised by democratic rights groups in the recent years. Could the Maoists be said to be respecting the norms of revolutionary violence when the common people were subjected to killings and torture by them, or when public property was destroyed? How did they explain individual annihilations by their squads, and did this reflect the Maoist norm of 'mass line'?
(...) Human rights activists have also challenged the Maoists, asking whether they practice democracy and civil liberties within their movement, which should after all be the embryo of their 'ideal society'. Factionalism and splits have famously characterised the Naxalite movement, which is why there are over two dozen groups in existence at any given time. And so the natural question, are the comrades guilty of sectarian politics when they should be developing a united front? There was a time the intolerance of divergent opinion within the party was so stark that it led to killings – a tendency that seems to have subsided in recent years. The communist groups seem to resort all too easily to the mechanical understanding of revisionism and dogmatism. The revolutionary tradition of inner-party democracy – the minority accepting the decision of the majority while the majority respects the point of view of the minority – seems a fragile heritage.
(...) The common people whose cause the Naxalites claim to represent confront day-to-day livelihood issues – of making a living out of agriculture and forestry, of finding water for their fields, access to affordable credit, market for their produce, and ways and means to access education and health. Such ground-level issues do not seem to figure prominently in the Maoists' formulation of political strategy. Many of these activities which concretely help the poor are dismissed with terms such as 'reformism', 'welfare work' or even 'ngo action'. The idea that cultural and educational work form an integral part of revolutionary strategy, together with political and military tasks, seems to have been relegated to the background. In the recent years, the Naxalite leadership has indeed tried to respond to these issues, but not entirely satisfactorily.
(...) The issue of revolutionary creativity – the ability to assess the emerging national, local and global environment and adjusting to the evolving while pursuing one's ideological goals – thus remains a challenge for the Naxalite movement in India. It is important not only to learn from the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions, but also from the experience of the Philippines, Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela and Nepal.
(...) Indeed, the policy makers, be it in Delhi or Hyderabad, are now guided by a unified understanding of global terrorism. They are excitedly formulating a strategy of counter-terrorism US software, Israeli hardware and some Indian brands added. This strategy cannot see the difference between the CPI-Maoist operating in Andhra and Bihar, from the CPN-Maoist currently fighting the autocratic monarchy in Nepal. No doubt, they are revolutionary communists in solidarity with one another, but they are fighting different battles in their own countries. After all, these are Maoists who believed the great helmsman when he said that the people of each country must formulate their own strategy derived from their unique local conditions. Leaders of the Indian state must try and comprehend the nature of the Maoist challenge and address the socio-economic issues at its heart, so that another spiral of intensified violence in India can be avoided and prospects of peace and democracy enhanced.

Amilcar Cabral on class, colonization, and reclaiming the march of history (1966):
This leads us to pose the following question: does history begin only with the development of the phenomenon of ‘class’, and consequently of class struggle? To reply in the affirmative would be to place outside history the whole period of life of human groups from the discovery of hunting, and later of nomadic and sedentary agriculture, to the organization of herds and the private appropriation of land. It would also be to consider — and this we refuse to accept — that various human groups in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were living without history, or outside history, at the time when they were subjected to the yoke of imperialism.
(...) This means that before the class struggle — and necessarily after it, since in this world there is no before without an after — one or several factors was and will be the motive force of history. It is not difficult to see that this factor in the history of each human group is the mode of production — the level of productive forces and the pattern of ownership — characteristic of that group.
(...) If we accept this conclusion, then the doubts in our minds are cleared away. Because if on the one hand we can see that the existence of history before the class struggle is guaranteed, and thus avoid for some human groups in our countries — and perhaps in our continent — the sad position of being peoples without any history, then on the other hand we can see that history has continuity, even after the disappearance of class struggle or of classes themselves.
(...) [the three stages of history - and the end of agriculture?] In politico-economic language, the first stage would correspond to the communal agricultural and cattle-raising society, in which the social structure is horizontal, without any state; the second to feudal or assimilated agricultural or agro-industrial bourgeois societies, with a vertical social structure and a state; the third to socialist or communist societies, in which the economy is mainly, if not exclusively, industrial (since agriculture itself becomes a form of industry) and in which the state tends to progressively disappear, or actually disappears, and where the social structure returns to horizontality, at a higher level of productive forces, social relations and appreciation of human values.
(...) [imperialism: colonialism and neo-colonialism] On the question of the effects of imperialist domination on the social structure and historical process of our peoples, we should first of all examine the general forms of imperialist domination. There are at least two forms: the first is direct domination, by means of a power made up of people foreign to the dominated people (armed forces police, administrative agents and settlers); this is generally called classical colonialism or colonialism is indirect domination, by a political power made up mainly or completely of native agents; this is called neocolonialism.
(...) [on imperialism arresting the march of history] While in classical colonialism this process is paralyzed, neo-colonialist domination, by allowing the social dynamic to awaken (conflicts of interests between native social strata or class struggles), creates the illusion that the historical process is returning to its normal evolution. This illusion will be reinforced by the existence of a political power (national state) composed of native elements. In reality it is scarcely even an illusion, since the submission of the local ‘ruling’ class to the ruling class of the dominating country limits or prevents the development of the national productive forces.
(...) [nationalism as that which reorients, by reinvigorating, this 'march'] On the basis of this, we can state that national liberation is the phenomenon in which a given socio-economic whole rejects the negation of its historical process. In other words, the national liberation of a people is the regaining of the historical personality of that people, its return to history through the destruction of the imperialist domination to which it was subjected.
(...) [nationalism based in this march of history] ...for us the basis of national liberation, whatever the formulas adopted on the level of international law, is the inalienable right of every people to have its own history...
(...) [on 'backwardness' and where it fits] By saying this we do not wish to diminish the importance of other internal factors which are unfavorable to national liberation, such as economic under-development, the consequent social and cultural backwardness of the popular masses, tribalism and other contradictions of lesser importance. It should however be pointed out that the existence of tribes only manifests itself as an important contradiction as a function of opportunistic attitudes, generally on the part of detribalised individuals or groups, within the national liberation movements. Contradictions between classes, even when only embryonic, are of far greater importance than contradictions between tribes.
(...) [like fanon, nationalism on the basis of shared experience] But on the other hand the necessarily repressive nature of the neo-colonial state against the national liberation forces, the sharpening of contradictions between classes, the objective permanence of signs and agents of foreign domination (settlers who retain their privileges, armed forces, racial discrimination), the growing poverty of the peasantry and the more or less notorious influence of external factors all contribute towards keeping the flame of nationalism alive, towards progressively raising the consciousness of wide popular sectors and towards reuniting the majority of the population, on the very basis of awareness of neo-colonialist frustration, around the ideal of national liberation.
(...) [in colonial situation, nationalism is to socialism, as bourgeois revolution is to revolution] The colonial situation (in which the nation class fights the repressive forces of the bourgeoisie of the colonizing country) can lead, apparently at least, to a nationalist solution (national revolution); the nation gains its independence and theoretically adopts the economic structure which best suits it. The neo-colonial situation (in which the working classes and their allies struggle simultaneously against the imperialist bourgeoisie and the native ruling class) is not resolved by a nationalist solution; it demands the destruction of the capitalist structure implanted in the national territory by imperialism, and correctly postulates a socialist solution.
(...) [on violence] We do not think we will shock this assembly by stating that the only effective way of definitively fulfilling the aspirations of the peoples, that is to say of attaining national liberation, is by armed struggle. This is the great lesson which the contemporary history of liberation struggle teaches all those who are truly committed to the effort of liberating their peoples.