WEBVTT - The Forgotten Algerian Revolution 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:08.719 Also media welcome TOI could out here the podcast being 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:10.639 recorded to were pays of pain killers. 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:16.320 I'm your host to be a wong I'm fucking dying. Yeah, 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:17.319 it would be. 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:21.439 Yeah, phantomal episode even waiting for it here it is. 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:27.319 Yeah. And the other thing that's dying was dying has 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:34.200 died sort of was a bunch of French colonists in Algeria. Yeah. 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:36.360 Yeah, the French Empire as a whole. 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:40.120 One could say, yeah, thank God Jesus Christ, why did 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:42.160 you let these people have an empire? Terrible idea? 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:47.919 Oh yeah, what's not an empire? The abroad France? Right, 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:50.920 like like the little parts of France which just happened 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:53.840 to be in Africa, totally a normal thing. Which particular 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:55.520 part of the French Empire? Are we talking about it? 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:58.680 Many many such cases of French French empire taking L's 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:01.280 not that that's unique to be also a British empire 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:03.440 to the load of els. 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:07.160 Yeah. So today we're talking about Algeria, and I think 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:12.080 one of the things that I sort of realized about 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:15.600 how the Algerian Revolution is you remembered in the West 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:21.200 is okay, So there's there's the kind of the Frank 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:26.720 Herbert reaction where they saw people who were Muslim in 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:29.440 the streets and were like, holy shit, it went insane 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:30.560 for seventy years. 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:32.000 Yeah, yeah, to. 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:34.480 Be fair, to be fair, that was also poorly partly 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:37.319 being driven mad by the Portland Dunes, which, like you know, 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:40.400 like I get sometimes sometimes you're driven you're driven completely 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:45.000 insane by dunes. But you know, so there's that's there's 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:47.360 there's a sort of reactionary memory of it. There's a 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:51.840 sort of memory that functions in inside of like the 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:55.880 American military where you know, Algeria's you remember it is 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:57.720 one of the sort of like examples of failed kind 0:01:57.760 --> 0:01:58.480 of insurgency. 0:01:59.360 --> 0:01:59.680 Yeah. 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:03.000 And then there's the memory inside of the American left, 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:07.720 which is largely confined to Finon and the movie The 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:12.560 Battle of Algiers. Yep, classic movie, to be fair, Yeah, 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:17.280 great movie, like nothing nothing, a good good movie. However, coma, 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:23.240 this is a real issue because the Battle of Algiers again, 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:27.600 great movie ends in nineteen fifty seven. Finan, great theorist, 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:33.079 dies in nineteen sixty one. Now notably, Algeria gains independence 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:37.240 nineteen sixty two. So okay. The issue with this is 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:41.200 that people kind of broadly know the outlines of the 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:45.040 first Algerian Revolution, but the second Algerian Revolution, the one 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:47.200 where the Algerian working class season is the control of 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:49.800 the means of production, attempts to run them autonomous league, 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:53.600 is just has completely faded into the mist of history. 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:55.640 I talk about it, no one has any idea what 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.160 the fuck I'm talking about. And this is kind of startling, 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:04.080 because you know, up until there's probably like there's like 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:07.600 a four year span where the Algerian Revolution is the 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:12.280 sort of like capital S capital R social revolution, like 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:14.720 it's the big one, is the one people all over 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:16.799 the world taking inspiration from, and then it kind of, 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:19.280 you know, it flounders out for reasons that we're going 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:21.400 to talk about, and also the culture revolution starts and 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:26.160 everyone lashes onto that. But it's sort of fascinating to 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:30.880 me that this the second part of the revolution, and 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.200 the part that everyone was really excited about, which is 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:39.480 the core of the revolution being workers self management, and 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:42.680 that being the sort of great theoretical innovation of Algeria 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:46.360 and socialism, that has just completely faded for memory. It's 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:52.880 just gone. And so today we're talking about that revolution. Unfortunately, 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:56.680 one of the most detailed studies on this I'm gonna 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.360 be citing from a lot is in Clegg's Worker Self 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:03.160 Management and AIA. Now this is a good book. However, 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:09.480 Comma Clegg is uh, he's he's a very specific kind 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.680 of Crimogeny Marxist guy. 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:14.840 Yeah, I'm familiar with that kind of guy. 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:17.640 Yeah, And so like the back third of this book 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:21.080 is him engaged in a protracted ideological war with phenomen 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:25.000 over the nature nature of revolutionary consciousness, which is largely 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:32.400 pointless and goes nowhere. So you know, but it is 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:35.120 a very very detailed and very useful account of what 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:39.400 actually happened after the First Revolution, like after the French 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:43.560 are forced to Pulo out of Algeria, and what happens 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:46.400 effectively is well, if we need to go back a 0:04:46.440 --> 0:04:52.160 little tiny bit, so there are you know, there is 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:57.599 a a staggering slaughter of people who attempt to resist 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:00.599 French colonialism. Like a lot of the sort of techniques 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:02.240 that are going to be used in Vietnam, they are 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:03.720 going to be used all over the world, and kind 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:07.760 of insurgencies are developed in Algeria in this period. I'm 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:09.600 going to read a quote from Clagg about what they 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:12.960 were doing the use of air power in napalm to 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:16.400 clear cover made movement inside the country almost impossible. The 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.520 construction of mind and electrified barriers along the border with 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:22.480 Tunisia and Morocco kept the better trained and armed elements 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:26.000 of the army Deliberation Nationale from coming to support the 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:28.839 gorillas and moving in supplies. One of the most successful 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:32.040 moves encounter in gerrilla activity was the policy of regroupment, 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:36.240 initiated by General Chalet. This strategy, learned from their British 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:39.480 and Malaysia, involved moving the rural population out of areas 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:42.159 favorable to the gorillas and resettling them in camps under 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:46.360 military guard, and estimated two million peasants were treated this way, 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.520 creating vast social and economic problems for the future. So, 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:51.840 like they put two million people in concentration camps. 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:55.560 Yeah, yeah, according it a very group more is a 0:05:56.320 --> 0:06:01.000 fucking exercise in like and marketing. Rarely have I seen 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:06.240 something so Nefario he named like, we're regrouping them parentheses 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:08.159 in a fucking concentration camp. 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:10.919 Yeah, and this is this is a strategy that you know. 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:13.600 So the British sort of start doing this in Malaysia. 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:17.200 A lot of it's derived from attempts to counter you know, 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:19.720 and this isn't really an episode about that utter and revolution, 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:21.760 but I won't talk about this a little bit. It's 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:24.400 it's it's designed as a way to counter sort of 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:27.880 MAOIs insurgency campaigns, which is the sort of you know, 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:32.679 the becomes the new template for like thees. Yeah, and 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:34.560 it's because it works really well, and you know, like 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:36.679 the key thing of MAOIs like well, I mean there's 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:38.040 a couple of things obviously, but like one of the 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:40.080 key elements of it is this is this line from Mao. 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:41.839 Is it like the gorilla moves to the people like 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:44.480 a fish moves through the sea. Right, So it's about 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:46.960 like it's about building social basis such that you know, 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:49.640 gorillas can move in and out of communities and not 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.360 get turned in and stuff and use them as terrain. 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:57.920 I've had that particular Mao phrase paraphrase to me. I 0:06:57.960 --> 0:06:59.800 think sometimes why people are where it comes from outs 0:06:59.839 --> 0:07:02.599 and people who probably have just sort of come to 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:06.880 it through their own understanding or or heard it but 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:09.440 not realize the source of it. People who are not 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:12.240 certainly not Maoists all over the world, like I've I've 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:14.560 heard it in in the Middle East. I've heard it 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.120 in Africa, I've heard it in Asia. It's it's it 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:20.360 is a very important thing, and like it. Yeah, it 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:23.320 does make Garrida war esier if you can rely on 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:23.920 the population. 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:27.200 This is something that's propagated through because because of the 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:31.560 success of sort of Mao's like gorilla insurgency, there's something 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:34.960 that's propagated through I mean through through obviously, like through 0:07:35.080 --> 0:07:37.960 through communist parties, but I mean like a lot of 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:40.280 Islamist groups also pick it, like pick up a lot 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:41.880 of elements of it, because a lot of those groups 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:48.120 are trained in the Plos camps in the valley in Jordan, 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:50.760 and so like a lot of groups like all over 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:54.040 the world of completely unrelated ideologies all sort of picked 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:55.960 this stuff up. And the British response to this is 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:58.720 the British are fighting a communist insurgency in Malaysia and 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:01.440 they're like, okay, we're gonna do conscer ration camps for 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.800 our purposes. So obviously this is a you know, this 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:08.800 is an unfathomable atrocity, but it has enormous effects even 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:12.000 after the war ends, because suddenly, you know, okay, like 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:15.320 the war ends, the French are gone. But you know, 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:18.800 two million people have been taken from their homes and 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:22.440 locked in and locked in camps. And this has enormous 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:25.120 you know, I mean, this is this is enormous economic effects. 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:28.480 And the second thing that has really sort of stunning 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:33.160 economic effects are the Sore. There's been a class of 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:36.520 people in Algeria called the Colognes who are basically there 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:39.079 the colonists. They're not actually all French, a lot of 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:42.199 them are from other European countries, but they come to 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:48.560 be this sort of hardcore French ultranationalist, sort of fascist 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:53.400 turbo racists. I guess they're they're they're not quite the Rhodesians, 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:58.280 but they're they're only not quite the Rhodesians because they 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.880 didn't stay to fight it out. And when when the 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:03.839 French lose the war and when the French pull out, 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:07.520 these people just flee, like all of them were talking, 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:11.720 hundreds of thousands of people just are gone. I'm going 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:14.200 to read another quote from Cleig, because you know, if 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:18.120 these people had merely left, I think a lot of 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:20.800 what's going to happen in this revolution goes a lot better. 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:25.840 But they didn't just leave. Quote in June, a policy 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:29.200 of scorched earth was declared, inaugurating an orgy of destruction. 0:09:29.880 --> 0:09:32.760 With his dream crumbling, the colonist's response was to destroy 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:36.760 this world, which I think is a really sort of elegant. 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.520 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's you very well written 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:44.000 and it's funny. It's this thing that again, like you 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:48.000 see replicated so often. There was this slogan that they 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:49.839 used at the start, the serience of a war like 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:51.360 asado wee been in the country. 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:55.120 Yeah, yeah, and it's it's this real you know. So, 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:57.079 so what the what the colins end up doing is 0:09:57.160 --> 0:10:01.240 they end up just destroying, Yes, everything they can get 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:04.280 their hands on. They're destroying houses, They're especially destroying any 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:06.800 kind of sort of factory of technical equipment, anything they 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:09.880 can find. They're burning their lighting on fire. And the 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:13.040 other thing about Okay, so Auxuria is a colonial economy, right, 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:16.880 and the structure of the colonial economy is such that 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:22.839 you know, if you are a anyone who has any 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:26.600 kind of technical or manager gerial experience are all colonists, right. 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:30.480 Everyone else in the country is either doing subsistence farming 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:33.319 or has been fed as like these this sort of 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:38.839 like seasonal workers or really really badly paid sort of 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:42.720 contract workers on the on these sort of like cash 0:10:42.760 --> 0:10:45.280 crap agricultural farms, a lot of orange production and stuff 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:49.480 like that. And so when the colonists flee the country, 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:55.080 suddenly like the entire technical managerial class, everyone with technical experience, 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:57.800 and also all of the bosses and the entire bourgeoisie 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.880 are just gone. And this takes everyone by surprise. The 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:06.040 Ethelen had assumed the Ethlens the the kind of like 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:11.679 umbrella organization that carried out the revolution. They it kind 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:14.199 of falls apart very quickly because it's it's not really 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:17.760 a coherent ideological group. It's just the sort of banner 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:21.559 that everyone who was fighting kind of attaches themselves to. 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.680 Yeah, this is quite common, right, like national friends, ye, 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.800 or like popular friends very often do this post fore. 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:30.920 Yeah, and these are disintegrated. But they had all expected 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:33.120 that the colonists were going to stick around, and they 0:11:33.200 --> 0:11:37.040 don't because they're turbo racists, right, And the thought of 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:39.480 having to live in an Algeria world by Algeria, this 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:42.040 was like nope, I will fucking literally light the world 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:45.920 on fire and flee to France. You know what else 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:47.920 is going to light the world on fire and cause 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:48.920 people to flee to France. 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:52.760 The products, products and services it's supporting to show. 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:55.440 Yeah, so how how fucking good they are. It's gonna 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:57.200 it's going to cause the world to burn and make 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:58.120 people flee to France. 0:11:58.360 --> 0:11:58.520 Yeah. 0:11:58.559 --> 0:11:59.960 I have to think about that. When I think about, 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:02.760 like how big my pile of gold is, I think 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:05.600 that that match it's too small. I better just bend 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:06.760 all down and moved to France. 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:22.360 And we are back now enter enter here. The heroes 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:26.679 of this episode, the workers Council, or very specifically, so 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:29.080 this is this is a French this is a French colony. 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:33.640 So in France and in Spain and in sort of 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:37.320 I guess the Romance languages. There, there was a concept 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:41.200 called autogiion. I'm pronouncing it really badly because I'm reading 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:42.880 the French version of it and trying to pronounce it 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:44.719 half in Spanish, the only one of these languages I 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:47.640 can even sort of speak. But it so it means 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:52.040 self management, and it basically it has this context of 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:54.840 of sort of like workers democratic self management. Right, if 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:59.040 you're if you're doing atostone, you're like the workers of 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:01.440 a factory have taken the factory and not running it themselves. 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:05.920 The most prominent example and at this point of self 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:10.920 management is Yugoslavia. Now this it's very the Uslavian version 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:14.439 is very, very weird, but as a way basically to 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:18.120 tell the Soviets to fuck off, Yugoslavia adopts a very 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:22.000 different kind of model of socialism than everyone else's. So 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:25.040 they're models based on the quote unquote the withering away 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:28.679 of the state. So they're you know, you have basically 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:35.400 these like reasonably democratic, like workers co ops that are 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:37.440 the sort of that are sort of their productive basis 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:41.280 of society. And these these co ops sort of compete 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:43.120 against each other on the market. But other hand, there 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:45.800 is a like a very large level of workers control 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.360 that's different from you know, like the US, which is 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:54.600 just a pure dictatorship of your boss in the workplace, 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:56.280 tells you what to do, and if you don't do what, 0:13:56.320 --> 0:14:02.199 you get fired. Yeah, And so Algeria that's there, has 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:06.760 their own version of of self management. But unlike Algeria, 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.640 which is sort of effectively imposed by the top down 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:13.800 from the Comnist party. In Algeria, what happens is you 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:18.400 have this this enormous mass of workers who used to 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:21.760 work on these plantations, used to work in factories. There's 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:27.400 these huge colonial agricultural estates. And what happens is with 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:30.520 with the entire ruling class gone. And when I say 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:33.200 the entire ruling class, we're we're talking from all the 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:36.360 way up from you know, the highest level government officials, 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:39.920 through all all of your sort of capitalist bosses, right 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:43.160 down to sort of the middle management guys are gone. Yeah, 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:46.680 all those people just have disappeared. So what happens is 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:51.160 workers start taking over all of their all of their workplaces, 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:56.800 and they start forming workers councils. Right now, this is 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:59.920 this is driven largely by I mean, there's there's there's 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:02.400 there's a few different drivers. There's we'll get to the 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:05.720 ideological aspect. A lot of it is that these people 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:08.520 have no money and no one else is going to 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:12.600 run it. So there the workers who have now sees 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:14.200 all of this stuff are like, Okay, well we're gonna 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:17.320 we're gonna get the money we need to survive by 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:19.480 running by running all the stuff ourselves. 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:20.160 Yeah. 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.880 And so this sort of starts in nineteen sixty two 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:26.680 and it sweeps across the country very quickly. I mean 0:15:26.680 --> 0:15:28.480 there's a lot of real regions where it never really 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:34.000 takes hold. But largely what's happening is that permanent workers 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:36.960 who had been who had been workers at these firms 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:41.560 seize control of them. This has benefits and downsize. The 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:44.320 benefit of it is so there's an attempt by the 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.280 sort of the new Algerian sort of bushwise either the 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:52.200 sort of like small faction of Algerian capitalists to buy 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:54.320 up all this land. And there's a bunch of really 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:56.760 funny stories of these guys buying these estates and showing 0:15:56.800 --> 0:16:00.520 up and the Workers Committee just kicking them out. Yeah, yes, eternities, 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:06.080 this is extremely funny. Yeah, there's also issues. So part 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:08.040 of what's going on is this is this is the 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:10.040 sort of this is the permanent workers taking over the 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:13.160 stuff with their people, right, and so a lot of 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:18.320 times like they'll they'll kick out seasonal workers because yeah, 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:20.720 so it's not it's not perfect, and there's a lot 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:22.480 of issues with it, right because this is this is 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:25.440 all being formed effectively, spontaneously about a bunch of extremely 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:26.040 desperate people. 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:29.560 That's what I'm just so obviously like because it's me 0:16:29.880 --> 0:16:32.000 the point of comparison, and I'm thinking of is the 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:35.200 Spanish Civil War, right yeah, and work is self management. 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:38.120 But there you have a workforce which is which has 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:41.840 been working towards collectivization for more than a decade in 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:45.000 some cases. And also, like this is the point actually 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:47.280 gets missed a lot in online discourse about the Spanish 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:49.320 Civil War, perhaps because people don't know as much as 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.800 they think they do that like there were anarchists in 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:57.120 all kinds of roles, Like when people talk about their 0:16:57.200 --> 0:16:59.760 rooty column or whatever, like, there were absolutely anarchists, non 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:02.040 com missioned officers from the military who they relied on 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:05.840 heavily for advice. And the same is true with the 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:09.760 collectivized workplaces, right that there were anarchists in many roles, 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:13.399 you know, in shop stewards and things like that. Obviously 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:15.920 not in like the higher management roles. I think, yeah, 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.280 doing that is kind of incompatible with anarchism, and obviously 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:22.359 what we're dealing here with is anarchosyndicalism. For the most 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:27.000 part of the fire was more of a purest anarchist group, 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:30.159 but there you had people who'd been working towards us 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:31.840 for a long time, who have been planning for it, 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:35.640 and who did have people with a variety of experiences 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:38.040 in I think oversight might be a better word than 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:43.520 the management preps or like sort of organization. But they 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:48.040 were very successful. But that didn't just happen overnight. It 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.159 often gets presented as if it did, as if on 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:52.680 the eighteenth of July these people were just sort of 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:55.600 going to work and by the twentieth they were fully 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.720 formed anarchists running their own workplaces. But that's absolutely not 0:17:58.840 --> 0:17:59.200 the case. 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:02.720 And jury is the exact opposite of this, which is, yeah, 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:06.280 there's there's a very low level of political consciousness. There's 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:11.520 organization is almost non existent, because so I mean the 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:14.240 kinds of organizations that it existed are you know, you 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.359 have these sort of vanguard cells, but those are largely rural. 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:21.240 And then you have there there are some unions, but 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:24.919 they're not very they're not very large because they've been outlawed. 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:31.280 Yeah, break ground, Yeah, like unbelievableression. Colonial context is extremely important. 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:31.600 Yeah. 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:36.760 Yeah, obviously Native mayor is blaming Algerian workers for not 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:37.760 being Catalanic. 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:39.359 No, yeah, like this is this is this is the 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:43.240 French's fault and and you know, but but any such cases. Yeah, 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:47.119 but this seizure really takes everyone by surprise, because all 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.720 of the sort of leaders of fl and all leaders 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:53.080 of the various factions that assumed that either they were 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:57.600 going to sort of do I don't know, there's a 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:02.480 ideological conflict, but they they they always assume that they're 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:04.480 going to do some kind of like giant state light 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:07.400 industrialization project, right, whether it's a socialist one, whether it's 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:11.639 more Islamist one. And then suddenly they are they are 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:14.640 now all you know, it's like, okay, well your economy 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:18.720 is now on the Yugoslavian uh self management model because 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:21.520 all of these workers have just seized all their workplaces. 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:25.040 Now that there are there are a few organizations that 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:28.679 are are politically very supportive of this. The the UGTA, 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:32.479 which is Algeria's big sort of trade union, are very 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:37.359 politically socialist and they they are really the only people 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:40.359 in this entire country who are who are an organized 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:42.680 political body who actually want to see this thing work. 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:45.520 And so they do a lot of work helping me, 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:49.320 helping workers set up their their committees and spreading the revolution. 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:53.480 Their plan is to use this against any attempt to 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:58.119 set up basically a dictatorship by uh, you know, it's okay, 0:19:58.119 --> 0:19:59.920 and this is where it gets sort of interesting because 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:03.440 very explicitly they are trying to stave off sort of 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:07.359 Soviet style socialisticatorship, right they are, And their plan is 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:08.880 we're going to use We're going to use the workers 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:12.000 councils as the as the basis of of an actual 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:15.760 sort of workers democracy against again against the sort of 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:19.480 orthodox like Marcus Leninist stuff. And this is another thing 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:21.400 that's going on too, is the army is a lot 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:25.520 more orthodox Marxist Leninists than either the workers committees or 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:27.040 the unions, and so a lot in a lot of 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:28.840 parts of the countries in the West, the army just 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:31.119 sort of rolls through, knocks off the workers committees and 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:35.440 seizes the land for itself. And that's a fiasco. But 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:39.160 now now pretty very quickly Ben Bella, who emerges as 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:41.480 as the sort of as the leader of Algeria after 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:45.639 a set of political maneuvering that we're not going to 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:49.399 get into here, is basically forced to and in nineteen 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.640 sixty three set a bunch of decrees saying that yeah, 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:55.120 these guys are people who run the economy, et cetera, 0:20:55.160 --> 0:21:00.280 et cetera, but there's there are I want to talk 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:03.520 I want to actually get into something that is really 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:07.600 not talked about in ninety nine percent of the accounts 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:09.680 of this stuff, which is how do these councils actually work? 0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:13.040 Because spoiler alert, this whole thing is going to fail 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:14.760 and all these people are going to be crushed, And 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:17.920 a lot of that has to do with how this 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:21.600 thing's set up, which is very badly because it is 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:25.560 a system designed by Marxists, and they're very sympathetic Marxist 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:29.600 to a broad extent. But unfortunately the way that these 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:32.280 that this is set up is that, Okay, so there's 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:34.639 an assembly, right, that's like all the workers in the 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:39.320 firm are in this assembly. The assembly elects this worker's council, 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:43.520 which has like ten people, and then that council elects 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:46.760 the management committee, which is the people who actually do 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:49.240 the management. So it has a president and there's also 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:51.600 a director supposed to represent the interest of the state 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:54.680 or whatever. And the issue with this is that it's 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:57.720 designed specifically to keep power out of the hands of 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:02.040 workers directly, right that that giant assembly it can't actually 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:04.360 make policy. The only thing they can do is approve 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:09.120 plans or disapproved plans set down by the management committee. 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:12.000 Got it, okay. And these people at the management committee 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.679 wire presumably like representatives as opposed to delegates. 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:17.240 Right, yeah, yeah, they're the representatives. They also have three 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:21.600 year terms and it may not I think they can, 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:24.560 but it's really hard. And and the other thing that 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:27.280 that that sort of destroys this is that they those 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:30.119