Uncle Acault had already introduced Camus to anarchist ideas and Jean Grenier would introduce revolutionary syndicalism and the idea of joining the Communist Party. Grenier believed that the most effective thing Camus could do with his socialist sympathies was to join with other intellectuals already working for the Party. Camus was never a Marxist and was against the ideas of Lenin and Stalin. However, it was true that to work with other socialist intellectuals it would have to be through the Algerian Communist Party. He would later be expelled from the Party for his postion of support for native Algerian nationalism. Native Algerians had little or no rights in Algeria at the time and were treated at best like second class citizens. At first, the communists were commited to the Algerian Nationalist cause but then back-peddled when Stalin realised he would need an ally in France if the Germans were to attack.
In 1938, Camus became a reporter for a recently founded left-wing newspaper Alger Republicain. He was responsible for covering Algiers. This job was useful to Camus in two ways; he now had a regular salaried income and a political platform (something lacking since his expulsion from the Communist Party). As well as writing reviews of contemporary literature, such as Sartre's Nausee and Le Mur, he published a series of articles on a falsely imprisoned adviser for an Arab insurance company (securing his release) and eleven articles on the famine in Kabylia.
