by Rosa Luxemburg (1913)
Extract from the accumulation of capital, by Rosa Luxemburg. It is probably this excerpt that was published in The Flame (No. 5, November 1945) (transplanted on the site The Battle Socialist)
Besides British India and his martyrdom, Algeria French politics under the rule has a place of honor in the annals of colonial capitalist economy. When the French conquered Algeria, the mass of the Kabyle population was dominated by social and economic institutions very old and, through the turbulent history of the country, continued into the nineteenth century and in part to today. Doubtless it was private property in cities among the Moors and Jews, among merchants, artisans and moneylenders. Without doubt the Turkish suzerainty had it confiscated in the campaign of large stretches of land ¬ due as areas of state. However almost half of the cultivated land remained collectively owned Kabyle Arab tribes who guarded the ancient patriarchal customs. Many Arab tribes in the nineteenth century were leading the same nomadic life they had always led, and that seems unstable and disorderly at a superficial glance, but which in reality is strictly regulated and often monotonous, each summer, with women and children, taking the herds and tents, they emigrated to the coastal region of Tell, the climate cooled by the wind, and brought them back each winter to heat protector of the desert. Every tribe and every family had their specific routes, and stations in winter or summer when they pitched their tents were fixed. Similarly, in the Arab farmers, the land was mostly owned collective tribes. The family also had Kabyle patriarchal customs and lived according to traditional rules under the leadership of its elected leaders.
In this large family circle, the common direction of domestic affairs was entrusted to the oldest woman, who could be elected by the other family members, or to each woman in turn. The organiza ¬ tion of the great family Kabyle along the African desert like curious ¬ ment to "zadruga" South Slavic countries, the family had in common not only the land but all the tools, weapons and money necessary professional activities of its members and purchased by them. Each man had his own a single dress, and every woman just clothing and jewelry she had received as a wedding gift. But all the clothes and most precious jewels were considered joint property of the family and could be worn by each member with the permission of all. If the family was small, she took his meals at a communal table, the women were cooking in turns, and older women were responsible for serving dishes. If the family circle was too large, chief of the tribe distributes a monthly ration of food not prepared, dividing them with a strict equality between the various families, who were responsible for preparing them. These communities were united by ties of equality, solidarity and mutual assistance, and patriarchs were accustomed to recommend to their dying son to remain faithful to the community [1].
The Turkish rule in Algeria who had settled in the sixteenth century had already made serious cuts in the social organization. However it was the French who invented the legend that the Turks have confiscated all land for the benefit of the treasury. Only Europeans could imagine an idea as absurd, which is in contradiction with all the economic foundations of Islam and believers. Instead the Turks generally respected the collective ownership of villages and large families. Are resumed only families with a large proportion of uncultivated lands and transform them into areas of State (beyliks) which, under the guidance of local Turkish administrators were either managed directly by the state with the help of a hand -Manpower native or farmed in exchange for a lease or royalty in kind. In addition Turks took advantage of every rebel tribes submitted and each disorder in the country to see more tax areas by land confiscations, and founded colonies military or selling at public auction the goods seized, which generally fell into the hands of Turkish or other moneylenders. To escape the forfeiture or the tax burden. many peasants placed themselves, as in the Middle Ages in Germany, under the protection of the Church, who thus became owner of huge estates. Finally, the distribution of properties in Algeria presented itself, after all these vicissitudes, as follows: areas of State included 1.5 million hectares of land of 3 million hectares of uncultivated land also belonged to the state as "common property of all believers" (corn el Islam); 3,000,000 hectares were the private property of the Berbers, since Roman times, in addition, under Turkish rule, 1.5 million hectares had become private property. Arab tribes guarding indivisio 5,000,000 hectares. As for the Sahara, it comprised about 3 million hectares of farmland in the oasis, which belonged either to fields managed collectively by large families, or private domains. The 23 million hectares remaining were virtually deserted.
After the conquest of Algeria the French made big noise about their work of civilization. We know that Algeria, which was issued in the early eighteenth century from Turkish rule, had become a den of pirates infesting the Mediterranean and engaged in the slave trade Christians. Spain and the North American Union, which themselves at the time could boast of achievements in the field of the slave trade, declared a war without thank you the infamy of the Muslims. The French Revolution also preached a crusade against lawlessness in Algeria. France had therefore undertaken the conquest of Algeria in proclaiming the slogans of the struggle against slavery and the establishment of civilization. The practice was soon to show what lay behind these words. We know that during the forty years since the conquest of Algeria, no European state has changed as often in political regime than France. At the Restoration had replaced the July Revolution and the bourgeois monarchy, it was driven by February Revolution, which was followed by the Second Republic, Second Empire, and finally to the debacle of 1870 and the Third Republic. The nobility, high finance, the petty bourgeoisie, the broad strata of the middle class is yielded successive ¬ ment political power. But French policy in Algeria remained unchanged throughout these vicissitudes, she remained focused from beginning to end towards the same goal: at the edge of the African desert she found the focus of all the political upheavals in France in the nineteenth century: domination of the bourgeoisie and its capitalist form of ownership.
June 30, 1873 MP Humbert, Rapporteur of the Commission for the rule ¬ ment of the agricultural situation in Algeria, told a meeting of the Board: "The bill we are proposing for your consideration is nothing but the culmination of building whose foundation was laid by a series of orders, decrees, laws and senatus consulta, which all together and each individual the same goal: the establishment of private property among the Arabs. "The destruction
and sharing systematic and conscious of collective ownership is the goal and pole orientation of French colonial policy for half a century, whatever storms that rocked domestic politics. It served a dual purpose in that clearly recognized.
He had to destroy the collective ownership primarily to kill the power of Arab families as social organizations, and break the stubborn resistance against French rule, this resistance manifested itself, despite the superiority of French military power, by constant tribal revolts , resulting in a permanent state of war in the colony [2]. In addition
ruin of collective ownership was a prerequisite economic domination of the conquered country, it was necessary to wrest from the Arab lands they owned for a millennium to entrust the hands of the French capitalists. To this end we played this same fiction, we already know that the earth belongs, in accordance with Muslim law, holders of political power. Like the British in India, Governors of Louis Philippe in Algeria declared "impossible" the existence of collective property of large families. On the basis of this fiction, most cultivated land, particularly ¬ tion commons, forests and grasslands were declared state property and used for purposes of colonization. We built a whole system of quarters by which the French colonists settled in the midst of indigenous territories, while the tribes themselves found themselves parked in a territory minimized. The decrees of 1830, 1831, 1840, 1844, 1845 and 1846, "legalized" theft of these lands belonging to Arab tribes. But this system does nothing cantonments colonization. He simply gave free rein to speculation and usury. Most of the time, arranged for the Arabs to buy land they were stolen, which of course forced them into debt. The tax burden French accentuated this trend. In particular the Act of June 16, 1851, which declared state forest areas, and flew 2.4 million hectares of grassland and scrub depriving tribes of herders livelihood. This avalanche of laws, decrees, orders and gave rise to an indescribable confusion in the regulations of the property. To exploit the fever of speculation in land and hope soon to recover their land, many natives sold their lands to the French, but they often sold the same land to two or three buyers at a time, sometimes it was an area that was not their own, but was the common and inalienable property of their tribe. Thus a company for speculative thought he had bought at Rouen 20 000 hectares of land, whereas in reality it had a title - questionable - property for a batch of 1 370 hectares. Another time, a plot of 1230 hectares was reduced after the sale and sharing of 2 hectares. There followed an endless series of trials, where the courts were right in principle to all claims buyers and met all the shares. The insecurity of the situation, speculation, usury and anarchy spread universally. But the plan of the French government, which wanted to ensure the support of a powerful mass of French settlers in the middle of the Arab population, failed miserably. That is why the French policy under the Second Empire changed tactics: the government, after thirty years denied the collective ownership of tribes, was obliged, under the pressure of events, to officially recognize the existence, but a single stroke of the pen he proclaimed the need to share power. The senatus-consulte of April 22, 1863 has this double meaning: "The government, said the Allard in the Senate, do not overlook the common goal of policy is to weaken the influence of tribal leaders and dissolve these tribes. In this way the last remnants of feudalism (!) Will be removed, opponents of the government project are the defenders of feudalism ... The institution of private property, installation of French settlers in the mid-Arab tribes will be the means ... safer to accelerate the process of dissolution of the tribes [3]. "For
to partition the land, the law of 1863 established special committees composed as follows: a brigadier general or capi ¬ tain as president, then a sub-prefect, an employee of Arab military authorities and an official of the Administration Areas. These experts all designated African economic and social issues had a threefold task: he must first delimit the borders of the territories of the tribes, then spread the domain of each tribe among the various branches of large families, then divide the land their family themselves into small individual plots. The expedition of Generals Brigadier was punctually executed inside Algeria. The commission went on site. They played both the role of surveyors, distributors plots, in addition, judges in all disputes which arose over land. It was the governor general of Algeria confirm ultimately allocation plan. Ten years of hard work of commissions resulted in the following result: from 1863 to 1873, 700 properties on the Arab tribes, 400 were distributed among the major families. Here was already the seeds of future inequality between the great land and small subdivisions, because according to the size of the lots and the number of tribal members, each member was assigned earlier plots of 1 to 4 hectares of land sometimes 100 and sometimes even 180 hectares. The division of land, however did not go any further. Despite the generals of brigade, the manners of Arabs offered insurmountable resistance subsequent sharing of family land. The goal of French policy: the establishment of private property and transfer of this property to the French, was thus once again failed in all. Only the Third
Republic, official regime of the bourgeoisie, found the courage and cynicism to the point and attack the problem head on without the burden of preliminary steps. In 1873, the Assembly drafted a law whose stated goal was the immediate sharing of land of 700 Arab tribes into individual plots, the introduction of private property by force. The pretext of this law was the desperate situation that prevailed in the colony. He had formerly been the great famine of 1866 to illuminate Indian public opinion in England on the beautiful results of the English colonial policy and cause the establishment of a parliamentary commission to investigate the disastrous situation in India. Similarly, in the late 1860s, Europe was alarmed by the cries of distress of Algeria, where forty years of French rule were reflected in the collective starvation and a staggeringly high mortality rates among Arabs. It brings together a commission to study the causes and impact of new laws on the Arab population and the investigation led to the unanimous conclusion that the only measure that could save the Arabs was the establishment of property private. Indeed, private property would only sell to every Arab and mortgaging his land and thus save it from ruin. It was declared as the only way to relieve the misery of the Arabs who were indebted because the French had stolen their land and were subject to heavy tax system was to deliver the hands of usurers. This farce was exposed to the House with the utmost seriousness and worthy members of the Assembly welcomed him with equal severity. The winners of the Paris Commune triumphed without shame.
The House relied primarily on two arguments in support the new law. Lawyers for the government bill tirelessly repeated that the Arabs themselves were eager introduction of private property. In the end they wanted, especially land speculators and usurers Algerian, who had the greatest interest to "liberate" their victims protecting tribal ties and solidarity. As long as Islamic law in force in Algeria, the properties of tribes and families remained inalienable, which pitted insurmountable difficulties in the mortgage of land. It was now completely abolish the obstacle to give free rein to wear. The second argument was of a "scientific". It was part of the intellectual arsenal when the Honourable James Mill drew when spread out the evidence of his ignorance of Indian property system: the classical English political economy. The disciples of Smith and Ricardo proclaimed emphatically that private property is the necessary condition of any intensive cultivation of the soil in Algeria, which alone would be able to suppress hunger and it is indeed obvious that nobody wants to invest its capital or make a expense of intensive work in a land that does not belong and he can only taste the products. But the facts speak another language. They showed that speculators were using French private property, established by them in Algeria, to any purpose other than more intensive cultivation and improved land use. In 1873, about 400,000 hectares of land belonging to the French, 120,000 hectares were in the hands of capitalist companies, the Algerian company and the Society of Setif, they, far from cultivating their own land, farmed out to the natives , who cultivated by traditional methods. A quarter of the remaining French owners were not interested equal ¬ ment of Agriculture. It was impossible to create artificially capital investment and intensive methods of cultivation, as it is impossible to create conditions capitalists from scratch. These were dreams born of the imagination greedy speculators French doctrinal confusion and their ideologues, the classical economists. Leaving aside excuses and ornaments by which they wanted to justify the act of 1873, it was just the undisguised desire to strip the Arabs of their land, which was the basis of their existence. Despite all the poverty of argument and the apparent hypocrisy of its justification, the law that would ruin the Algerian population and destroy its material prosperity was voted almost unanimously July 26, 1873.
However, this policy of brigandage would fail before long. The Third Republic was not able to carry out the difficult policy which was to substitute a blow to the ancestral family ties communist bourgeois private property. The Second Empire had also failed. In 1890, the Act of 1873, completed by 28 April 1887, having been used for seventeen years, we had the following result: they had spent 14 million francs to develop 1.6 million hectares of land. It was calculated that this method should be continued until 1950 and would have cost 60 million francs. However, the aim was to abolish the tribal communism, has not yet been reached. The only result we reached was clearly rampant land speculation, usury and the destruction of flourishing native. Since
had failed to establish by force of private property, they tried a new experience. Although by 1890, laws of 1873 and 1887 have been studied and condemned by a commission established by the general government of Algeria, seven years passed before lawmakers on the banks of the Seine had the courage to undertake a reform in the interests of the country ruined. The new policy abandoned the principle of the introduction of private property enforced through administrative methods. The Act of February 27, 1897 and the statement of the general government of Algeria from March 7, 1898 provide for the establishment of private property will be primarily at the request of owners or purchasers [4]. However, some
clause allowed only one home-owner private property without needing the consent of the owners of the land, in addition, at all times, the pressure could be exerted on the usurer owners indebted push for accession to the "voluntary" on the property, so the new Act provided weapons to the French and native capitalists continue to decay and plunder the territories of the tribes and large families.
The mutilation of Algeria lasted for eighty years, the Arabs oppose today the less resistance they have since the submission of Tunisia in 1881 and more recently in Morocco, increasingly surrounded by the French capital and is delivered to him bound hand and foot. The final impact of French policy in Algeria is the mass emigration of Arabs in Turkey in Asia [5].
Notes:
[1] "Almost always the father dying recommends his descendants live in the ownership, following the example of their ancestors: that is his final exhortation and his dearest wish. "(A. Hanotaux and A. Letourneux, La Kabylie Kabyle and customs, 1873, Volume 2, Civil Law, pp. 468-473.) Authors have the gall to preface this description the following comment: "In the laborious hive family all associated together for a common purpose, all work in a general interest but no abdicate its freedom and renouncing his hereditary rights. In no nation are found only combination that is closer to equality and further away from communism! "
[2]" We must hurry - the member said Didier, Rapporteur of the Commission at a meeting of the House in 1851 - to dissolve the family associations, because they are the lever all opposition against black domination. "
[3] Quoted by Kowalesky, op. cit., p. 217. As is known, it is customary in France since the revolution of branding all opposition to the government as an open apology or indirect "feudalism."
[4] See GK Anton, Neuere und Tunesien Algerien Agrarpolitik in, Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft, 1900, p. 1341 et seq.
[5] In his speech of July 20, 1912 before the Chamber of Deputies, the rapporteur of the commission for the reform of citizenship (that is to say, the administrative justice) in Algeria, Albin Rozet, bed state of emigration of thousands of Algerians in Setif district. He reported that last year, a month, 1,200 natives had emigrated from Tlemcen. The purpose of emigration is Syria. One emigrant wrote of his new homeland: "I am determined now to Damascus and I am perfectly happy. We are here in Syria, many Algerians, migrants like myself, the government gives us land and the means to cultivate it. The Government of Algeria's fight against emigration as follows: he refused passports (see Official Journal of 21 May 1912, p. 1594 et seq.).
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