Eyes to the South: French Anarchists and Algeria by David Porter (review)

The 2011 uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East make the publication of Eyes to the South: French Anarchists and Algeria particularly timely and relevant. Porter presents an alternative history of Modern Algeria by assessing how French anarchists understood the revolutionary changes that took place in that country from the 1950s to the present day. In addition to being of interest to scholars of Algerian history, this study offers important new insights into the evolution of French anarchist thought. Porter assesses major French anarchist thinkers, organizations, periodicals, and websites to show that events in Algeria, as well as French policies relating to Algeria, have shaped anarchist theory by compelling anarchists to think in new ways about revolution, violence, nationalism, workers’ self-management, and collaboration with statist movements.

As Porter shows in part one, at the start of the Algerian Revolution anarchists were unanimous in opposing the war but held divergent views about whether or not to support the revolutionaries. This division reflects a larger lack of consensus among anarchists about how to respond to national liberation movements more generally. Though such movements have the potential to lead to the kind of greater social revolution envisioned by anarchists, they frequently give birth to a new state that is oppressive in its own way. It was because of this concern that some organizations refused direct intervention, stating their opposition to the nationalist, statist, and hierarchical aims of the revolutionaries. Others, such as the Fédération Communiste Libertaire (FCL), directly supported rival groups of Algerian nationalists in a number of ways. For instance, they smuggled weapons, published tracts advocating desertion by those facing the draft or in the military, and provided false identity papers, transportation, and safe apartments for militants. Porter also details the activities and responses of prominent individuals, most notably Daniel Guérin and Albert Camus. Guérin, whom Porter describes as the most prolific anarchist writer on Algeria, was one of many public intellectuals facing legal action as a result of a manifesto they signed denouncing the conviction of the Jeanson network who had directly aided the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN). Porter states that this controversy was significant in terms of moving the antiwar movement further into mainstream public opinion.

With independence in 1962 came a mass exodus of European settlers, in many cases hastily abandoning their property as they fled to France. As a result, as Porter details in part two, Algerian workers began to occupy factories and farms, running these enterprises themselves. This eventually led the new government headed by Ben Bella to experiment with a system known as autogestion that represented a coordinated confederation of self-governing local workplaces. For French anarchists, this experiment was particularly interesting. Guérin, for instance, admired this effort and hoped that Algerian self-management would eventually inspire similar initiatives in other countries. Ultimately, however, autogestion in Algeria suffered from a number of weaknesses, including the fact that most workers had not been organized previously and generally lacked a commitment to revolutionary syndicalist ideology, the dependency of the system on a newly independent state that was not committed to its continued existence, and the lack of an organized anarchist movement to protect workers and help them develop their unions.

In 1965, Boumédienne removed Ben Bella from power in a coup that triggered only minimal public protest. Though not initially abandoning the socialist goals of Algeria, over time the new regime gradually turned the self-management sector into “state-run industrial enterprises, collectivized but hierarchical state farm units, more centralized and consolidated autogestion farms, or privatized farms and factories” (p. 131). In addition, the government appealed more directly to conservative forces, including those who sought to introduce “Islamic” definitions of socialism. In part three, Porter explains that following the 1965 coup, Algeria did not figure very prominently in the anarchist press. Anarchists during this period continued to discuss the idea of autogestion...