The French Communist Approach to the Colonial Question in the Maghreb
By Mohamed Lotfi CHAIBI
The French communist approach to the colonial question in the Maghreb has been the subject of several historical studies (1). However, these studies have been fragmented and lacking in a comprehensive vision. Historian Chokri Ben Fradj has addressed this gap by clarifying "certain pages that have remained relatively confused".
A New Perspective
Ben Fradj's contribution, divided into four chapters (2), draws on the metropolitan press of the French Communist Party (L'Humanité, Cahiers du bolchévisme, Al Kasirna, Al Fabrika, Al Beyrak Al Ahmar, Al Rayat Hamra, El Amel, and Saout el Amel) as well as Al Ikdam and El Oumma, organs of Maghrebi nationalists in France during the interwar period and the Maghreb (La lutte sociale, L'Avenir Social, Habib El Omma, Habib Echâab, Ennacir, El Madhloum, Al Istibdad, l'Espoir, and le Maroc rouge) (3). This work argues for a highlighting of this particularly turbulent page of history.
A Missed Opportunity
More specifically, it analyzes and explains the contours of the missed appointment between "men and History at a time when the destiny of the Maghreb was not yet really traced and when a certain path could probably still be positively explored". Is this a singular ideological wandering between the anti-colonial policy of the Third International and, correlatively, the French Communist Party (PCF) of the pre-Popular Front years (1920-1934) and that favorable to the assimilation of indigenous populations advocated from the mid-1930s with the party's adherence to the Popular Front (1935-1939)? The first period saw the PCF (with its Maghrebi branches) make the anti-colonial struggle in the Maghreb a priority and the independence of the latter a constant objective.
A Lack of Tangible Results
Despite significant moments (such as during the Rif War in Morocco), this commitment (constantly proclaimed in communist newspapers) had little tangible results. Permanent police harassment combined with the persistence of a mentality largely refractory to anti-colonial discourse among Europeans in the Maghreb (including within the party), which the Communist International denounced on several occasions, contributed to this outcome. The ideological turning point that occurred during the Popular Front ultimately only confirmed this finding, reorienting French communists towards a consensus with the classical left.
A Pertinent Conclusion
The author's conclusion is all the more relevant as it establishes the reasons for the misunderstanding between communists and Maghrebi nationalists (elites and populations combined): "because it was associated by the large Maghrebi mass with an opaque foreign entity outside their cultural and mental universe, because it was also very largely carried by European militants whose clumsiness rivaled their ignorance of the languages and customs of the populations they were supposed to address, the communist ideology had, as such, little chance of succeeding in imbuing the anti-colonial struggle in the Maghreb and the party that claimed it even less likely to take the lead".
A Missed Opportunity
In short, the missed appointment between the anti-colonial communist ideology of the 1920s and the assimilationist ideology of the 1930s with Maghrebi nationalists, whose demands evolved from association to internal autonomy and then to independence, is more than a matter of representation whose responsibility is shared between the two parties, it is an antinomy between two different, if not opposing, visions and projects.
Potential for Convergence
They were not, however, thinks the author, totally irreconcilable. Potential factors of convergence could have, at a certain moment, brought the protagonists together around common objectives, an opportunity that was finally seized by neither side.
References
- Ben Fradj (Chokri): Le Parti communiste français face à la question coloniale: le cas du Maghreb. Militantisme politique et errance idéologique entre deux rives 1920-1939. Paris, L'Harmattan, 2025. [1] Cf. The works of Ageron (Charles-Robert)
- De "l'Algérie Française" à l'Algérie algérienne. Histoire du Maghreb. Paris, Editions Bouchène, 2005, pp. 345-346 (les communistes français devant la question algérienne 1921-1924).
- Dreure (Eloïse): Quelle histoire du communisme en Algérie coloniale?
- Etre communiste en Algérie dans les années 1920 et 1930.
- L'Internationale communiste, le Parti communiste et la question algérienne au début des années 20.
- Ruscio (Alain): Les communistes et l'Algérie. Des origines à la guerre d'indépendance 1920–1962. Paris, La Découverte, 2019.
- Nadi (Selim): Communisme, autonomie, anticolonialisme. 2018. [2] Dealing with: I) the diversity and convergence of the sinuous path of the French left in the face of the colonial question (1851-1939): II) the colonial question in the discourse of the French political class from the 19th century to the eve of the Second World War: III) Maghreb and Maghrebis in the communist gaze before the Second World War (1920-1939): IV) Communists and Maghrebi nationalists in the debates of the interwar period: from alliance to confrontation. [3] Arabophone communist newspapers that appeared ephemeral between October 1921 and February 1922.
