The independence of Algeria is an irreversible fact. French imperialism, defeated in seven years of military struggles in North Africa, is now trying to limit and control this independence by means of negotiations. It wants to keep control over the country's principal sources of wealth, and at the same time to impose conditions about its future form of government, and its national and international policies. By means of a possible alliance or understanding with the revolution's right wing, French imperialism wants to ensure that it can stay in North Africa, check the drive of the Algerian fighting masses toward a socialist reorganization of the country, and maintain there a key control post over the development of the new African states as a whole.
The Tunisian and Moroccan bourgeoisies, even when their interests do not cöincide with those of imperialism, are at present interested in the success of the operation to limit the influence of an independent and revolutionary Algeria on the North African masses as a whole.
U S imperialism, while manœuvring to replace France in the alliance with the African colonial bourgeoisies, is not, however, backing unrestricted independence for Algeria, which would leave its destiny largely in the hands of the peasant and urban forces which made the revolution and kept up the long war.
Both world imperialism and its bourgeois or pro-bourgeois allies in Africa are aware that Algerian independence raises the question of the country's government and social organization, and that the revolution has developed powerful peasant, worker, trade-union, youth, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist forces, for whom the revolution against imperialism is a synonym for the socialist revolution in Algeria. Those imperialist and capitalist forces, just as heretofore they tried to block or delay Algerian independence, are now proposing to prevent the masses of Algeria from deciding the destiny of their own country.
This is the essential basis for the manœuvres, delays, and indefinite dragging-out of the negotiations, aimed at discouraging the determination of the masses and at giving greater weight within the Algerian forces, not to such ghosts as the M N A, but to the more conciliatory and pro-bourgeois wing of the F L N itself, to the sector most inclined to make concessions to French imperialism for the principal purpose of checking its own masses.
The organizations of the African masses, of the colonial and semi-colonial masses of the entire world, of the French, European and North American workers, and of the workers' states, must intervene and help the Algerian revolution to defeat imperialism's manœuvres and pressures, demanding more forcefully than ever an immediate end to French military intervention in Algeria, and immediate and unconditional Algerian independence.
The independence of Algeria, peace in Algeria, mean:
The withdrawal of all French troops from Algerian territory, and the concession of no military base — such as that of Mers El Kebir — from which pressure on or control over the Algerian Republic could be exercised.
The post-independence solution of the problems raised about the rights of minorities, to be discussed by the Algerians themselves within the framework of the independent Algerian state. The first of all is the right of the Algerian majority to be independent and to govern its own territory.
The rejection of any attempt to impose economic conditions (French control of the Sahara, French rights to petroleum and natural gas, guarantees to the French settlers against the agrarian reform, etc). All "rights" arising from the French occupation must be considered null-and-void. The Algerian people are the only ones to decide, according to their needs and advantage.
The rejection of any attempt to impose political conditions (independent Algeria's form of government, joining the Western bloc, etc).
The organization of the Algerian Republic on the basis of the worker, rural and urban masses who have kept up the war of liberation and who controlled the cities in the historic demonstrations from the 11th to the 14th of December. The Algerian Republic must be a socialist republic, based on people's committees, on the trade unions, on the plebeian forces of the Army of Liberation, on the people in arms, which will, immediately after independence, get the reconstruction of Algeria going on the basis of a nationalized and planned economy, with an orientation towards a Socialist Federation of the Maghreb, and a Federation of Arab Socialist Republics.
The Fourth International, which has unconditionally supported and continues to support the struggle of the Algerian masses, led by the F L N, for their national and social liberation, which has turned its forces in all countries to the support of the Algerian revolution, which has undergone, as a result of this struggle, bourgeois and imperialist repression whose plainest example is the jailing of Michel Pablo, its general secretary, and Sal Santen, member of the International Secretariat, imprisoned for nearly a year for their labor of help and support to the Algerian revolution, calls on the colonial and semi-colonial masses of Asia, Africa, Latin America, on the French, European and U S workers, on the masses of the workers' states, to mobilize to demand the independence of Algeria and the unrestricted right of the Algerian masses to decide the destiny, the government, and the organization of their country.
Trade unions, workers' parties, labor and anti-imperialist organizations, student's and people's organizations, must hold meetings, demonstrations, and mass-meetings, where the whole weight and force of the collective resolution is turned on support to the inmediate and unconditional independence of Algeria. They must send their resolutions to the French embassies, to the French government, to the G P R A (Provisional Goverment of the Algerian Republic) and the F L N, and to the Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan trade unions. In the African states of the ex-"Communauté", they must impose on their governments a break of any link with or dependence on French imperialism, which is relying on them to maintain its influence in Africa and counter the influence of the Algerian and African revolution.
Against the manœuvres of imperialism to postpone or pose conditions in the peace negotiations with the G P R A!
For the immediate and unconditional independence of Algeria!
For an Algerian socialist republic!
THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
12 April 1961.