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Bolshevizing
Communist Parties —
the Algerian and South African experiences
‘The Comintern and the Colonies’:
A Communist History Network seminar, Manchester, November 2002
On Friday 15 November 2002, the Communist History Network — in conjunction with the Manchester University International Centre for Labour Studies — organised an afternoon seminar at around the theme ‘The Comintern and the Colonies’. The paper-givers were John Callaghan, Allison Drew and Sobhanlal Datta Gupta. Here Allison Drew summarises her paper: ‘Bolshevizing Communist Parties — the Algerian and South African experiences’.
The establishment of the Communist International (Comintern) inaugurated a period in which socialism was promoted as a path of development that could be exported and implemented through a general, scientific model. This model, according to the Comintern, could be applied to all societies and was believed to be the one means of making an effective revolution. Yet, this general model was applied in a variety of social conditions and refracted through diverse perspectives, inevitably producing distinctive reactions and outcomes. This research addresses the problem of why a general policy — specifically, the policy of bolshevization propagated by the Comintern in 1924 and 1925 — had strikingly diverse consequences in two African settler societies: Algeria and South Africa.
A goal of bolshevization was the creation of mass-based communist parties. In settler societies this necessarily meant that the local communist party should aim to be demographically representative of the entire population. While the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) was successful in this goal of indigenization, becoming an overwhelmingly black organization by the end of the 1920s, in Algeria, the Communist Party remained predominantly European in composition in the 1920s and 1930s. A standard explanation for the failure of indigenization in the Algeria case refers to the paternalistic and even racist attitudes of the numerically dominant European members. Yet, by comparison with the CPSA, it is difficult to sustain this argument. A comparative analysis shows that the difficulties in indigenizing faced by the Communist Party in Algeria were more complex than this claim suggests.
How then do we explain the differential success rates in Algeria and South Africa with regards to indigenization? This research examines four variables: the patterns of working class formation; the socialist tradition of each country; the relationship between the Comintern and the two affiliates; and the level of repression against communists in both societies. The cumulative weight of the variables in the Algerian case helps to explain why communist activity — including the Communist Party’s ability to indigenize — was far more difficult in Algeria than South Africa.
In broad strokes, Algeria and South Africa show striking parallels in their political economies. Yet, they also show striking contrasts in their patterns of proletarianization and urbanization, notably, Algeria’s displaced proletariat and South Africa’s migrant labour force. Classical marxist theory, on which these early communists largely based their analyses, assumes the primacy of the urban working class in social change. Whatever the difficulties faced by South African communists in this regard, the conditions facing communists in Algeria were more difficult. Their country was less urbanized than South Africa at comparable points in time, and a critical section of the Algerian working class had migrated to France. The contrasting patterns of proletarianization and urbanization in these two cases posed constraints both on the immediate prospects for organizational development in the respective working classes and, in turn, on the perceptions and attitudes of local communists.
South Africa’s lack of a well-rooted pre-existing socialist or social-democratic tradition may well have made the tasks of early communists very difficult and also made them more open to the Comintern’s influence. Nonetheless, the two revolutionary traditions inherited by communists in Algeria — that of France and that of the Bolsheviks — were a heavy burden. The two traditions loomed large in the local communist organ, Lutte Sociale. Its pages were weighted down with their influence, leaving little space for Algerian issues. In terms of creative editorial experimentation to attract the urban indigenous working class, Lutte Sociale lagged behind its South African counterpart, South African Worker, in those years. The existence of a social-democratic alternative in the form of the Socialist Party also presented difficulties for communist organizers in Algeria. Despite its minute size, the Socialist Party presented a credible left-wing alternative for European workers in Algeria that could also lay claim to the French revolutionary tradition.
The Comintern’s relationships with communists in Algeria and South Africa also differed markedly, posing serious challenges for the uni-dimensional ‘centre-periphery’ framework that has dominated communist studies. The Comintern prioritized those countries and regions that it believed to be of international geopolitical significance. This necessarily included the French Communist Party, whose relationship with the Comintern was frequently tense. The Comintern intervened in Algeria far earlier than it did in South Africa, and the impact of its policies was felt much sooner. Although Eurocentric and paternalistic views could be found amongst both European communists in Algeria and white South African communists, the Comintern made an example of the former in no small part to criticize the French Communist Party. Moreover, the Comintern’s increasing emphasis on assisting national liberation struggles was felt first in Algeria, coinciding with the first few years of bolshevization and with an intensification of state repression against communists. The CPSA, by contrast, confronted the issue of national liberation in 1928, after the party had made significant progress with indigenization; even then, national liberation was conceived in terms of full equality and never in terms of transformation of the state’s territorial boundaries.
Communist activity in Algeria in the mid-1920s took place during a repressive climate; in turn, it undoubtedly led to an intensification of repression. By all indications, the onslaught of repression against communists in Algeria was greater than in South Africa, reflecting both French colonial control and the geopolitics of the Rif War. Certainly, the different degrees of repression experienced by communist activists in Algeria and South Africa goes some way in explaining the contrasts in the abilities of the two parties to indigenize. In sum, communists in the two countries experienced each of these four variables differently. The cumulative weight of the variables in the Algerian case helps to explain why in the middle and late 1920s communist activity — including the Communist Party’s ability to indigenize — was far more difficult in Algeria than South Africa.
