[lbo-talk] 50th Anniversary of a calamitous adventure

[Shane Mage]

Exactly 50 years ago, a dissident, secret, armed faction of
the Algerian mass party MTLD (Movement for the Triumph
of Democratic Freedoms) launched a series of armed attacks
against French government facilities in Algeria.  There followed
a long "liberation" war marked by a mounting series of atrocities
on both sides.  The result was separation of Algeria from the
French Republic, forcible expulsion of the whole "European"
(largely working class) population of Algeria, destruction of
France's Fourth Republic and installation of the semi-dictatorial
deGaulle regime, establishment in Algeria of a semi-fascist
military dictatorship (Boumedienne),  and an endless series of
calamities for the Algerian workers and peasants.  Who in
Algeria (except a handful of Officers, Bureaucrats, and Capitalists)
is not today much worse off from every point of view than
if Jacques Soustelle's offer of full integration had been
(per impossibile) accepted?

Shane Mage

   "Mortals immortals, immortals mortals,

   living their deaths, dying their lives"

Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62