#ben bella

[deadassdiaspore]

Ben Bella and four other FLN leaders arrested after their plane was intercepted on October 22 1956

[mohandyou]

«Ce 19 juin, Pelé marqua un but de la tête, Boumediene réussit son coup d’État. Ben Bella eut un coup de sang. L’Algérie un coup de froid.» «En 1965, le colonel Boumediene, alors ministre de la Défense, organisa un coup d'État contre Ben Bella.

[levant]

Quand un musulman dit 'sale juif', il se salit lui-même.

Ahmed Ben Bella

[trovaloteunnome]

 sei la migliore rima

[fuckyeahsocialists]

Che Guevara & Ben Bella

[fuckyeahsocialists]

Ben Bella (Algerie) © Christian Rausch

[somexblood]

Stumbled across this brief interview with Ben Bella, the first President of Algeria.  He discusses his disillusionment with national liberation projects and "actually existing socialism."  His critiques parallel some of what Frantz Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth -- a book held up by supporters of national liberation, which I've never understood, considering its incredibly pessimistic outlook regarding them.  This interview was published in 1984.

Q: What are the main lessons you've learned from your experience? A: These days I use a formula which summarize what I've come to: The single party is the single evil. Earlier I didn't have the tools for understanding this evil. The FLN had become a monster. The organization formed in the struggle for independence was not the same as the one ruling Algeria. The whole superstructure, the Party, the Parliament, et cetera, had become a hindrance.

It was during my 1962 tour of the country, after the decrees on self-management of land by peasants, that I realized this change. There was great energy among the peasants and the workers. We would have had to set aside the bureaucracy, form revolutionary committees and expand self-management to take advantage of this dynamism. The Parliament and all those structures - excuse me, but they're all bullshit.

Unfortunately, I chose the wrong camp. I hesitated in sweeping aside all that hindered these possibilities.

Q: I heard you say earlier that socialism existed nowhere in the world... A: That's true. I'm not talking about what's in the blueprints. I'm talking about living socialism. You see what's happened since 1917. Do you see socialism? Still, I'm faithful to the ideals of socialism, to the struggle against the exploitation of man by man. But it should be understood that there's not just one form of exploitation. There is also exploitation by bureaucratic apparatus.

Q: This is a very negative view of the achievements of national revolutions... A: They have all failed. As long as we have not broken the world capitalist order, we remain exploited by the mercantile relations of production. Even in the "socialist" world you find these types of relations. Inside COMECON (The Council for Mutual Economic Aid of the Soviet bloc countries), for example, or between the Soviet Union and the Algeria that I was President of.

[un-equilibriosopralafollia]

Ti guardo e so che sei quella che voglio, tu sei la meglio cosa che abbia mai incontrato prima, m'hai rubato il cuore dolce signorina con occhi grandi grandi sei la migliore rima.

Dj Gruff