ABSTRACT
To understand the social structure of post-colonial Algeria it is necessary to refute the basic assumptions that, first, Algerian society is in a state of transition toward socialism and, second, Algerian society is involved in a process of nation-building and cultural revival in which the collective search for unity overrides class cleavages. Immanuel Wallerstein's interpretation of the concept of class raises the problem of its applicability to non-Western societies that have to achieve industrialization. A review of Karl Marx's treatment of social classs and of some of the selective ways in which the concept has been elaborated upon by neo-Marxists will make it possible to assess the applicability of a class model to post-colonial societies. In his Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx notes that, on the methodological level, the "real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head just as before; namely, as long as the head's conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical.
