Revolution in Flux

A redaction in part of my last post on the Egyptian revolution is in order, as events and evidence of their causes have been reported from the scene.

First, is the military really planning to supplant the revolution? If so, only for a time – but the time is not theirs to spend. Do they really seek to split the revolutionary parties, hoping to profit by aligning themselves with one revolutionary faction, to the disadvantage of the others? There is evidence of that, because going ahead with the elections now is thought to favor the Islamist parties. The secularists aren’t even sure whether they will vote, though they are sure they’d like the vote to be delayed.

And if the vote does take place, and the Islamists win, but the secularists sit out, wouldn’t that split the revolution? The people who occupy Tahrir Square would then be in revolution against the winners of the election.

It’s right opportunism pitted against left adventurism all over again. The right hand of the revolution sees the opportunity of political gain, even a majority in the lower house of parliament for Islamist principles. It’s partial, immediate, therefore opportunist victory; political liberties may alone be in sight (and there may even be a hidden agenda against certain forms of civil liberty).

So the adventure in left adventurism is whether to vote. And if you don’t, whether to create a definite split in the revolution. Which leads where? to another adventure?

There’re signs cooler heads will prevail. One report says the Islamists have sent their cadres to the Square. Whether to give their support to the secular left of the revolution, or just to keep an eye on them, who can say? And certainly whether to vote is not a closed question on the left, though compelling the military to step back is the preferred option.

I can see pretty clearly now that any potential for cleavage is grounded in class differences between the two groups of parties: the right representing an underclass that is not quite proletarian; and the left representing a petit bourgeois who will not be satisfied by anything less than the full range of political and civil liberties. Since the vote of the underclass demographic, if cast, would predominate in the Arab world, elections can pretty much be expected largely to go their way. That’s why constitution framing is so important.

Revolutionists: Save the splits for the constitutional convention itself!

The physical situation also poses dangers. One of the things that makes it look like the military caretaker government is, or feels like it could be, allied with the revolutionary right is their common concern, for example, for the Palestinian state: the one because it enhances their prestige as a card for Egypt to play in any disagreement with Israel; the other because of religious and nationalist sympathies and hostilities. Here the two political programs coincide.

But perhaps I gave the military too much credit when I said “guardians of the constitution” has a subtext. Really both the phrase, and the overall political touch, now seem just clumsy. Their appeal to a putative “silent majority” is lame. The Field Marshall in charge would have moved much faster if he had anything personally in common with Mubarak, or Sadat, or Nasser.

The physical fact is, the army stands between the revolution – the left revolution – and a more open and perhaps more serious threat. The black-shirted police have the looks of the horse and camel riders who had their butts handed to them last winter in Tahrir Square. (I thought I recognized one or two of them in recent video.) They, rather than the military, explicitly constitute the physical projection of counter-revolutionary interests.

The question is: whose interests? Who gives them orders? Who bankrolls their pay and equipment? It’s clever that they use U.S.-made tear gas. Nominally, the police are within the Ministry of the Interior. Nominally the military is the caretaker government. Who’s taking care of the Ministry? There’s intelligence and purpose here that reeks of the big bourgeoisie. Are they really in a position to defy the military?

Anyway, the revolution already beat the thugs once. Are the latter any stronger now? How does the revolutionary right, not confronting them in the Square, feel about them?

Things will change again soon enough. But the revolution in Egypt is strong. And now it knows for sure its work is just begun…

…and supposedly, the elections are starting tomorrow.

Questions about Egypt

What if you ask the same series of questions about Egypt?

You don’t get very far, do you? Because…

1.       Did the interim government really behave as an interim government?

A: The interim government is more or less openly exercising and consolidating its power at the expense of the revolution and its principles.

2.       Did the parties so organized have platforms? or programs? If so, what’s in them?

A: I’m certainly having trouble understanding the class orientation of the Islamist parties. But it’s clear in Egypt they’re just as alarmed by the attitudes and action of the military as any of the secular revolutionary parties are. This means they feel the danger to the political liberties they’d like to exercise. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’d like to exercise those liberties in favor of the full range of civil liberties, for the full range of citizens – not excluding women and non-believers. But…

3.       Did they have a fair chance to campaign on their programs?

A: …before we could find out, they’d have to start exercising them first. Elections draw near. Has anybody made the actual, threatened, potential, or imaginary encroachments of the military an issue? Demonstrations are a fact; are parties soliciting votes on that ground?

4.       Do the parties or programs have any identifiable class orientation or content? 5. How strong politically are the classes the (secular) revolutionary parties represent

A: To answer these questions with a question: Is there any evidence the military is playing class-oriented politics? Or again, have they any real basis of support other than the mere fact of power? I suspect the answer to both is: no.

6.       The leading Islamist party is thought to be the strongest of all the parties. Can they be considered tolerant?

A: At least, and probably at most, it’s clear the military is secularist. So…

7.       We are afraid of Sharia. Should we be afraid of Egypt on that account?

A: …they would not be comfortable within a state organized along fundamentalist lines. And maybe we can say they would not allow that to happen – but unfortunately that would be saying too much. Government by secular despotism founded on military power has become a tradition in Egypt. Yet the notion Islamist democracy is fractured with contradictions. Are these really the only two choices?

8.       What are the parties’ attitudes towards the West?

A: I’d like to reserve this question, because it remains to be seen what the attitude of the military towards Egypt is. It’s a very short step from protecting one’s interests to projecting them. Someone led the military from defending the revolution to monitoring it. Look for an identifiable figure, with an identifiable program, to come forward.

In the meantime, what’s really missing is any acknowledgement of the subordination of the military to the civil power. On the contrary, the military wants to be the “guardian of the constitution.” Since there is none at this point, one could ask what they would be willing to guard.

But it’s not that difficult a statement to unpack, is it? The military could be the guardian, say in a democracy, of the “people.” Or, in a despotism, of the state. It might be termed the guardian of the “country” or the “nation,” by which both the people and their lands are meant. But to be guardian of the “constitution” could mean nothing but to take strictly civil or political threats under their guard: in short, to substitute the judgment of military for civilian authorities on what constitutes such a threat. Once allowed that standing, in nearly all cases, the first step, or the last step, is the appointment of a dictator from the ranks. Napoleon is only the most prominent example.

The Egyptian revolution would have been better served to write a constitution that places the civil over the military power first, and deal with the malefactors afterwards. Now they must confront the military if they wish to recover that ground. Meantime the military has not been taught to obey the civil power (that’s a Western idea anyway, isn’t it?), which puts its commitment to protect the revolution into question. Or again, the revolution never made itself a power (except in and through the courts), and so there was nothing for the military (who cannot be, or at least have not been, brought before the courts) to obey.

In today’s paper it says the military want to go forward with the elections. And they intend to see they are not disturbed by unrest. This could easily be made an excuse to put them off, and place the blame on the revolution.

And whose orders are the police following anyway?

Questions about Tunisia

Tunisia appears to have gone about things in a manner calculated to secure the revolution. They allowed parties time to organize and campaign, and elected in the first instance a constitutional convention, rather than putting something or someone in place, to whom the convention would become more or less a threat. And who would find plenty of reasons to interfere with its deliberations.

So the questions are:

1.       Did the interim government really behave as an interim government?

A: It focused on making the elections possible, not on stealing the outcomes. At least that was the outcome.

2.       Did the parties so organized have platforms? or programs? If so, what’s in them?

A: They campaigned – and given the amount of time allowed, meaningfully – on recognizably different platforms, and even against each other’s platforms so recognized.

3.       Did they have a fair chance to campaign on their programs?

A: Yes, “impartial” international observers thought so, and those people do seem to know the difference.

4.       Do the parties or programs have any identifiable class orientation or content?

A: There were explicitly revolutionary parties on the ballot. The parties criticized each other’s relative standing and role in the revolution…

5.       How strong politically are the classes the (secular) revolutionary parties represent?

A: …so there is enough strength to contend for the principles of the revolution themselves…

6.       The leading Islamist party has proven to be the strongest of all the parties. Can they be considered tolerant?

A: …and enough strength to earn a place in the governing coalition. So the government will include a party with specifically revolutionary credentials even as opposed to Islamic credentials. To that extent, the plurality party is behaving with tolerance…

7.       We are afraid of Sharia. Should we be afraid of Tunisia on that account?

A: …and they have to recognize specifically bourgeois expectations. The question of women, for example, is open and near the top of the agenda. Under these circumstances, Sharia could be realized, if at all, only to limited extent.

8.       What are the parties’ attitudes towards the West? That is, and specifically, their neighbors across the Mediterranean?

A: Of course it would be counter-productive to run on a platform to adopt Western values, but neither could the unemployed rationally support a platform that rejects Western capital (in spite of the strings attached). There is nothing in the result to make me abandon my view that Tunisia is naturally and geographically a Mediterranean state rather than an Arab state.

The result is that the revolution goes well. No element has come forward openly against the hope of the people for civil and political liberty. They can still rely, justifiably, on what they already have to prevent it from being taken away.

Between Iraq and Tunisia lies the ground where the Arab Spring was sown. The whole region, with one or two notable exceptions, had been subject to despots. Now, it may be, the path of democracy will follow the path of revolution.

How the revolutions are going

[Drafted: October 26, 2011. Certain propositions in the draft have been overtaken by events.]

After a hiatus occasioned by family obligations, I am pleased to be able to return to my blog on the Arab Spring.

The progress of the revolutionary classes since summer is mixed. In no case can one say that the revolution has been won and secured, but neither can one say that in any case it has been irretrievably lost.

In chronological order, it was…

·         Tunisia

·         Egypt

·         Libya

·         Yemen

·         Syria

…roughly. Countries ruled by despots or strongmen with no lineage.

The Arab Spring has not touched Arab royalty or aristocracy – at least not with its heavy hand. So as it now appears…

·         Jordan

·         Bahrain

…are not part of the same calculus.

Don’t forget that Iraq is something very nearly resembling a democracy. And soon there will be no army of occupation whatever.

The prospects for democracy – well, let’s not make sweeping, vacuous, or overly optimistic generalizations. Let’s just say what we are looking for:

·         Political liberties. Even the Islamist parties will not settle for less. Not just the right to vote, but the other freedoms relating to the exercise of that right. Including – we’d like to say – that there be no litmus test for the legitimacy of a party or voter, including religious litmus tests. Which indicates…

·         Civil liberties. And in particular freedom of religion, of conscience; religious tolerance and the absence of state religion. And, again, the civil liberties the exercise of political liberties presupposes.

·         Freedom to do business. On something like the Western model: free entry and exit, property rights enforceable at law. With oversight of the big bourgeoisie, and, through independent agencies or checks and balances, of the government, executive and legislative, itself. Plus unions. Plus consumer and workplace protection.

That’s what would be on the list if it is to be, as I’ve assumed, petit bourgeois revolution, in which the leading elements are middle class.

There must be other agendas, and among them, counter-revolutionists will find levers to manipulate. For example, we know there are demands for accountings, in money or blood. I’ve already shown this to be such a lever.

More important, even to superficial observers, is the fundamentalist element in the opposition. This poses a difficulty to the class analysis because it is not easy to identify fundamental Islam with a consistent set of economic class interests. It shares in the overall conservatism of Arab society, a conservatism that still respects royalty and aristocracy even when it is able to overthrow mere despots. Even the middle class are, by and large, social conservatives, aren’t they?

It’s in the lowest classes that the strain is most keenly felt. For them, the revolution has been about economic justice. It’s in their interest to organize the economy around the creation of jobs – that is their freedom to do business. And to that extent they are aligned with middle class revolution, which would like nothing better than, by putting them to work, to profit.

But Islamic fundamentalism arose as a reaction to the influence and values of the West, and this happened before it took up the cries for economic justice and the accounting with the thieves. To make matters more difficult, the two attitudes are incommensurable. What happens when economic justice looks itself in the mirror and sees religious conservatism? Could the latter become a lever for counter-revolution?

Class analysis, on its own, cannot pretend to answer. And there’s another reason the matter escapes pure class analysis: the entities in question are not self-determining. The results will depend on still more powerful entities of the same order, i.e., other states, and in particular Western states. To be more precise, in Syria, as in Egypt, the revolution wants to win the state on its own merits, without outside help. But the state being won, as in Libya, other states have an interest in how the revolutionary state gets formulated, and their state interests, again as in Libya because if its oil, may become decisive. These kinds of interests, like religious “interests,” are not commensurable directly with class interests, and here too that analysis finds a limit.

So the answer is: that’s what elections are for….

The Slain

 [Composed October 26, 2011]

Gaddafi didn’t look any better dead than Hussein did when they caught him alive. Both cowards hiding in holes in the ground. Maybe they didn’t start out that way.

Which makes me wonder whether Mubarak is subject or will be sentenced to the death penalty.

It’s probably fortunate the world was spared the sight of the dead bin Laden. Not sure how many of his confederates were photographed. It’s a big success. The revolution will have to proceed without them. They were counter-revolutionaries one and all.

It hasn’t been a good season for Arab despots and ringleaders.

Who’s next? The people know.

They (not sure who) tried at Saleh and missed. He’s not likely to give them another chance.

My (metaphorical) money says the juvenile Bashar won’t live long enough to mature. But I wouldn’t bet any real money on it. He’s been doing better (growing?) as a counter-revolutionary lately.

The smartest one was Ben Ali, who left the country when he still had his life, his health…and his money.

And so, apart from royalty and aristocracy, the way has been largely cleared for democratic revolution in the Arab world – at least of the persons who stood in the way.

Revolutionary Vengeance

What a lot of ways there are to go wrong when a revolution begins seeking vengeance! And most of them just clear the path for the next strongman.

So why would this be the first thing a revolution would want to do once it had got control of the state?

The people one would initially like to punish are normally, as in the current Egyptian case, charged with specific, notorious crimes: economic crimes that occurred before, and occasioned, the revolution, or crimes of violence, etc., in the attempt to suppress it. Those who commit the former crimes place themselves above the laws they violate; those who commit the latter, use a lawful power wrongly.

It’s easy for a revolution to identify its principal opponents and specify the crimes of these individuals. What’s difficult is to decide when, and with which individuals, the passion for vengeance must stop. The difference between a high-official thief and the people he does business with is only a matter of degree, as is the difference between the general who gives orders and the officers and soldiers who obey them.

The question is, how far will revolutionary vengeance pursue the accomplices of the principal criminals – not just the willing accomplices who are thieves or brutes themselves, but also the unwilling accomplices, and those who are merely similarly situated and are guilty only by association?

There are two questions really, and the second one is, how many enemies, real or imagined, does the revolution want to make? Because if you imagine an enemy where there is none, not only does that one become a real enemy, but anyone who can imagine you making the same mistake about them might too. That is the tendency of fears, and people begin with a certain natural fear of revolutions.

It’s at this point that the vengeance of revolutions begins a dialectical movement, one that can be fatal to the revolution if it is weak.

A few historical instances may help to illustrate the principle.

Many a tumult goes by the name of revolution until the capital is taken and it gains control of the state, but that is when the strongman comes forth and, beginning with the formal enemies of the “revolution” (those who were in power), continues to practice revolutionary vengeance until all his rivals (including some of his former colleagues) are consumed by it. This doesn’t happen in Latin America much anymore, but it still happens in Africa. I’m afraid Che Guevara himself was involved in one such revolution, until he realized it was a fake and went home to Cuba. They’ve had any number of fake revolutions and real purges in the Congo since then.

In these cases revolutionary vengeance leads directly to the establishment of the strongman as despot, and so it is not really “revolutionary” at all, but rather personal.

The Terror of the French Revolution epitomizes another species of revolutionary vengeance, in which, starting with regicide, and having disposed of all the real criminals, the revolution begins to dispose of other supposed criminals on the basis of status alone, that is, revolutionary vengeance as an extension or instrument of class war. And so, aristocrats or high churchmen might be sent to the guillotine without ever having raised a hand against the revolution.

Some aristocrats, like Lafayette, were immune on grounds of their revolutionary credentials; others were condemned merely because their near relations were in exile and known to be negotiating combinations and raising troops among foreign powers. It got so that all the aristocrats were suspect, if only because their forebears had profited from the arrangements under the Ancien Regime for as many generations as they themselves could claim noble birth. At length the Terror began consuming the Revolution itself – Danton, for example – and finally, when Robespierre was executed, the Terror itself.

And so vengeance passed from the notoriously guilty, to the possibly guilty, to those guilty by inference, to those guilty by association, to those who at first were not guilty at all, but later became guilty in the eyes of the revengers, who themselves became liable to the same judgment.

It’s a dangerous path, and not just a slippery slope, but a law of dialectics. For it leads to…

…the reappearance of the strongman as the only remedy for fear and uncertainty – though to be sure, Napoleon was more than that besides.

In the example of the Russian Revolution, revolutionary vengeance becomes a state institution, and political acts become crimes, crimes against the state, or merely against the interests of the individual strongman who happens to be at the head of the state, rather than the laws. This includes:

·         Stalin and the NEPmen – in which the privileged position certain businessmen enjoyed under Lenin to rebuild the Russian economy became a status crime under Stalin, who was rebuilding it again as a centrally-planned Soviet economy.

·         Stalin and the army – a purge, if I’m not mistaken, of left-opposition elements in the Red Army still loyal to their commander in the civil war of the Reds and the Whites, the exiled Trotsky.

On the other hand, we also know how the Radical Republications punished the leaders, military and political, of the Confederacy. Truly they – and not the Confederates, who were merely rebels – were the revolutionaries of that epoch. But they did not take their vengeance in blood, and took it only after the power to resist of the class being punished had been destroyed.

Nor did the Fathers of the first American Revolution, unlike the Radical Republications, find it necessary to deprive Tory Loyalists even of ordinary political rights, much less life and property.

For this is the dialectical risk of revolutionary vengeance: as an object of fear, it tends to make enemies for the revolution among any class whose members are being punished. When a revolution is weak, the difference between a passive enemy and an active counter-revolutionary can be very small. When a revolution is strong, can it have any real need to punish the mere accomplices of the biggest thieves? Those guilty by association? Those guilty only of what I have called “status crimes”?

The institutionalization of revolutionary vengeance in Stalinist and Maoist states is only a symptom of more fundamental contradictions in such states – contradictions that are out-of-scope for this blog. But the consequences of pressing vengeance too prematurely or too hard is not.

The big bourgeoisie makes a good example. They are, most of them, very likely the accomplices of the Arab despots. (One such is ready to be tried in Egypt.) They also have resources sufficient to make them formidable if they were to instigate or join a counter-revolution. Moreover, they are influential with people who would like to think they are or might become big bourgeoisie, and those people are susceptible to fear – the more so as they are the weaker.

The further you work down the list, from known accomplices, to people who fit the same description as the people who associate with possible accomplices, the greater the risk of adding to the possibility or strength of the counter-revolution. It is still worse too do this before the objects of the revolution – civil and political liberties – are well in hand, because in that case people who might worry about being subjected to revolutionary vengeance have two fewer reasons to side with the revolution.

Vengeance on the persons of those even notoriously guilty of crimes against the revolution is not, strictly speaking, a class interest of the revolutionary classes: it has no direct bearing on their economic activity. Getting the money back from the thieves, on the other hand, does.

And so does securing the political and civil liberties the middle classes have always found necessary to their growth as economic beings. Anything that damages the prospects for these gains should in principle be put off until they are won.

Bashar's Latest Tantrum

Bashar’s latest tantrum – calling out lumpenproletarians to vandalize the United States and French embassies in Damascus – is doubtless his most juvenile action yet. A bully is only as big as the schoolyard he terrorizes. He forgot our embassy is not in his schoolyard – either metaphorically or legally.

What was he thinking? Are his mobs a substitute for diplomacy? Whom did he think he would be able to frighten? Did he think he could induce the Administration to change its policy in favor of revolutionary values?

He must have forgotten that they are American values: civil and political liberty. French values too.

About the best result he could expect is what he got: that the Ambassador, and his superiors in the State Department, did not call for his immediate resignation unconditionally…

…I guess there are still a few more diplomatic steps between here and there. But what’s the point? This child needs to have his ears boxed.

And today this tantrum is not the latest news from Syria. Seems Bashar is growing…devious. A juvenile bully often matures to find more subtle ways to turn his brutality to his advantage. There is more to be learned about the mutilated Alawites whose corpses set off the latest round of killings.

It’s summer…

…and the Arab Spring draws to its close.

An item some weeks ago informed that the former finance minister of Egypt got 30 years for malfeasance in office. Does this mean their judicial system is “not broken”? that the army is keeping its hands off? that the mood for punishment is still strong, but the action not precipitate?

For a time, this was the only kind of report coming out of Egypt: the abasement of the Mubarak family before the law – that sort of thing. But don’t the people need a bill of rights? Seems as if they did have  one, they’d have a functioning judiciary that might have the courage to enforce it.

Then the last round of demonstrations expressed suspicions both of the judiciary and the military: the pace of prosecutions is too slow; the police have been allowed to reorganize. The demonstrations were broken up with some considerable force.

And this raises the question of the passion for revolutionary vengeance. The pace of justice does not seem to me too fast or too slow. But of course my passions are not involved. Not knowing which class elements participated in the demonstrations, it is difficult to find a starting point for dialectical analysis of this particular case. But there are historical instances that shed some light, and I have another such post in the works.

There is evidence that the revolution in Tunisia can succeed – is succeeding.

I am thinking mostly of the report that elections have been delayed from summer to the fall. This is good for the newer parties, as they will have longer to organize and proselytize. And the newer parties are presumably those born in and through the revolution, and therefore the ones most likely to hold revolutionary values and carry forward the revolutionary agenda.

The former despot Ben Ali has been convicted with what appears to be all deliberate speed – a sign as in Egypt of an independent and functional judiciary. That there is “unrest” might indicate only that the right of assembly is being tolerated.

Now Jordan is carrying out changes that advance the constitutional side of the constitutional monarchy at the expense of the monarchical. And this without upheaval, and under the compulsion only of wanting to do what’s right at a suitable time – and the friendly suasion of the American President.

But Bahrain will do no such thing and instead hands out sentences for merely political crimes, like Mao or Stalin. Our government has talked to the Khalifa oligarchs too.

The revolution in Libya has been stalled internally pending the outcome of the civil war. Though its external relations and prospects are improving.

It remains to be seen whether the bomb blast that wounded Saleh will be decisive in Yemen. It doesn’t seem to have produced movement yet, though it has put a stop to that despot’s restless activity. It’s difficult to say which of the parties, al Qaida excepted, will be able to take advantage of this circumstance.

And that leaves Syria….

“Chaos in his wake”

…at least that’s what some people would like to believe or make others believe the juvenile Bashar would leave behind if he felt compelled to give up his despotism. Certainly, at any rate, chaos runs before him.

How does this sound to the Syrian middle class? To whomsoever of the big bourgeoisie as are not connected to the regime by blood or marriage?

In his speech last week, the juvenile Bashar bragged that 64,000 “saboteurs” were known by name to the government, and that a third of them had already been apprehended. Not only did this give the lie to the journalists who thought only 10,000 perhaps were imprisoned, it ought to make anyone who isn’t yet nervous, oughtn’t it? – including those who might think they hadn’t even performed any acts of “sabotage.”

Of course the terms are at best undefined and at worst cruelly distorted. Strictly speaking, there aren’t 64,000 professionally trained “saboteurs” in the whole world. But if they are just people who would like to reform the government –and revolution entails dialectical negation – why then, yes, revolutionaries are saboteurs.

Really, Bashar, you make it sound like it’s a bad thing.

Then what of the “concessions” up to now? They render the current round of promises meaningless.

Item: One of the juvenile Bashar’s concessions is to change a preposition in the constitution, so that, instead of his party being given “leadership of state and society,” it would be given merely “leadership in state and society.”

But who would take the trouble to organize a political party – assuming that is what the new preposition authorizes – if one were assured in advance that the party could never come to power?

Meantime…

…the revolution is stronger numerically – by all observations it gains adherents faster than Bashar can kill or frighten them – but is it becoming broader-based?

Specifically, what would make the petit bourgeoisie flip to the opposition?

Or again, when does the momentum of the revolutionary opposition begin to look like a winning bet to those who have been sitting on the sidelines and probably feel like they have a lot to lose?

What they have to lose

I’ve been impressed by the consistent inability of this revolution, unlike others in the Arab Spring, to reach the streets of the capital. It’s always and only – but now more frequently – no further in than the suburbs.

There are reports of opposition action in Aleppo, by some measures the largest city in Syria. This wouldn’t threaten the operation of the government directly, but if continued would threaten the ability of the regime to run the economy – wouldn’t it?

The former U.S. ambassador too Morocco told the BBC that the Syrian economy was about as big as Pittsburgh’s. Though I’m not in a position to contradict him, I’m not sure what lesson he would like to draw from that fact. Also not sure whether that means the Syrian middle class is too small to make a middle class revolution.

His more interesting observation was that Damascus is to Aleppo as London is to Birmingham, or Washington to New York: the one the seat of government, the other a center of industry and commerce. It takes petit bourgeoisie to run both types of places; that is where they live. So it’s my impression that the relative size of the economy will not be decisive, but the final decision of the middle classes will. They perhaps have more to fear personally from arrest without charges or trial than from the actions of saboteurs, and Bashar’s concessions are as meaningless to them as they are to everyone else. Yet, if the revolution keeps going, the so far unmoved or perhaps just paralyzed petit bourgeoisie will begin wishing it would end. All they want is the comfort and convenience of making and enjoying their own money in peace. Even though the revolution is a threat to that, the bigger threat is having it go on indefinitely.

And so, the failure to offer concessions worth bargaining over may be perceived as a failure to do what the regime is supposed to be doing for its middle class allies: ensure stability and a chance to make money. Worse still for Bashar, the concessions it would take to restore calm to the situation are precisely those that would benefit, of all the classes, the petit bourgeoisie most.

What they have to gain

Surely the petit bourgeoisie have the most to gain from ordinary political freedoms like parties, votes, and elected officials. They have the education, leisure, and cash to make the most of these opportunities. It’s always been so. I suppose in Syria there are as many people like this – petit bourgeoisie properly speaking: professionals, middle managers, officials, small businessmen, small farmers, teachers, merchants, small investors – as there are anywhere else in the Arab world. That’s one of the reasons it’s considered the lynchpin of stability there, and not just because of the Assad family and the juvenile currently at its head.

And now it appears that the failure to make credible and substantial concessions – and really only fundamental ones would now be perceived to be substantial – is dialectically speaking a double-edged sword the juvenile Bashar is holding over his own head. Clinging to power is a nasty position to be in – not a position of strength. But that is the tendency of the despot’s current tactics. There’s no evidence he has a strategy.

Postscript: Why Bashar is a juvenile

…because he doesn’t know, as Prime Minister Putin observes, “In the modern world it is impossible to use political instruments of 40 years ago,” a sentence in which the term “political instruments” is a euphemism, and the validity of which Putin himself probably learned the hard way himself, rather less than 40 years ago.

“We are not afraid anymore”

Though speculative philosophy would not normally or properly concern itself with anecdotal evidence, much less take it as a starting point, I can say this statement of a Syrian who finds himself aligned with the revolution ought to be alarming to the despot. For it strikes at the foundation of a regime based on fear.

The negative moment during which using force makes one’s opponent initially stronger is dialectically linked to the corresponding positive moment of the movement in two ways.

·         The use of force is inevitably, if only in isolated instances, carried to excess, usually by people of low understanding – that is, those who are charged with carrying out the policy physically. Thus a 13-year-old boy is beaten to death and mutilated, and the revolution gains adherents through his martyrdom.

·         Any form of resistance, however futile or even brutal in itself, is automatically reflected in the light of courage when it overcomes fear to rise against superior, oppressive force. As courage is admirable, it too draws adherents.

These two corollaries may be summed up by saying, a revolution gains both by its opponents’ excess, and by its adherents’ success.

Numerous other facts – that townsmen are willing to snipe with rifles at armored vehicles, that soldiers and police are in mutiny, that the only “reliable” soldiers must be Alawite and commanded by the despot’s close relations – demonstrate that the regime has wielded strength too strongly. Soon it may appear, and later may actually be, relatively weak.

It’s clear at any rate that the juvenile Bashar still figures to make the revolution suffer for whatever it gains.

A Redaction

My post “So Long, Saleh!” requires a redaction. For one thing, the original news report indicated his injury was perhaps due to rocket fire, and I assumed this meant there had been combats between his forces and those of the armed  tribes. Not only was the report likely incorrect, but the assumption was too much.

Though fighting has continued, the tribes are nowhere near so close to controlling the situation as an injury to the opposition’s leading figure would have indicated. Instead the injury appears to have been inflicted by a hidden bomb, which any of the parties, or even a traitor, might have arranged to plant.

And so the situation is not so simple as I made it out to be – which is not to say it will not become or actually is becoming that simple. This is what has to be redacted.

The two parties, the tribes on the one hand and the students and their allies on the other, are not nearly “face-to-face” as I surmised. Saleh’s apparatus still stands between them as their common enemy. A sign that the parties are acting in concert to take advantage of Saleh’s absence would be favorable. Signs that they have begun to feel the lack of common interests that the class analysis indicates must exist would be unfavorable.

Similarly, the emergence of a strong man on the left would also be a favorable sign for the development of institutions based on revolutionary values. If a strong man emerged from the tribes, he would likely become to the nation what he is to his tribe: a strongman.

Answer: It’s Not That Different

The extent to which the Gulf States really are aristocracies, and whether and how they’ve co-opted the rest of the citizens. All is silent except in Bahrain. So why is Bahrain different?

You know a revolution if over when News Hour’s Margaret Warner interviews a country’s foreign minister about it, and he makes it a virtue that the revolutionists will, in the main, suffer only relatively modest, but still criminal penalties. I wasn’t paying terribly close attention, but it didn’t seem to me that Margaret asked, and certainly she didn’t force, the question about what the Bahraini regime intended to do about the revolutionary values that up to then had been at stake. At any rate, the answer, had it been honestly given, would have been “Nothing,” and that is how matters stand.

I looked very briefly into the demographics, and even more briefly into the dynastic history, of Bahrain, and found little enough to show that the revolution might have been successful, or have become strong enough to compel the regime to listen to its demands. The law against forming political parties belies the official claim that the form of government is constitutional monarchy. If it really were constitutional monarchy, a revolution would not be required to change political, social, and economic conditions, nor would the government be compelled to treat demonstrations as if they represented a revolution. The regime is really an oligarchy in which all the ministers (the ones I know of) have the same last name, but that just might happen to be, or at any rate pretend to be, on the way to constitutional monarchy.

For one thing, the proportion between foreign-born to native-born populations is roughly equivalent to that between the industrial and service economies in Bahrain: 40/60%. This indicates the proletarians there as elsewhere in the Arab world are not citizens, and thus they have no standing to revolt, nor would they be likely to gain adherents from the other (citizen) classes if they tried. It’s the functional equivalent of slave revolt, which historically has never been, and probably in principle can never be, directed toward the overthrow and reformation of the state.

As for the middle classes, it’s clear that, to run the Bahraini service economy, the skills of many professionals, including financial professionals, are required. The export agricultural economy has actually shrunk since they found oil, so there can be no petit bourgeois peasantry. Yet on the whole, the weight of numbers favors bourgeois revolution there.

So why did it fail? Or, it might be more pertinent to ask, how did it get a start, however feeble, in Bahrain, when nothing at all happened in any of the other, similarly situated, Gulf States?

I don’t have a principled answer.

Then last month, with the revolution well over, and King Khalifa having decided there was no more emergency, the people, permission restored, rallied again, proving there still is revolutionary, or at least democratic, energy in Bahrain.

And, by all applicable principles, there should be. It’s just that in a country that geographically small, these energies are easier to contain and control than to extinguish. Saudi troops and the Fifth Fleet, the one by their presence and the other by their absence, had something to do with the result so far. If the opposition who still want to rally can hold strictly to non-violent tactics, better to say, if the people who want to rally could form covert parties and formulate specific programs of demands, more can be looked for in Bahrain…

…and if in Bahrain, why not in the other Gulf States? They also must have numerous, if not politically self-aware, middle classes. Yet despotism, whether lodged in a monarch, in a family, or in a close oligarchy, is easier to maintain if it has a lot of money. As Baron de Montesquieu observed, the tendency of despotism, because it governs through fear, is to make the people poorer. Fear or not, that does not apply in the Gulf States now, nor will it in the foreseeable future.

It probably safe to say: the more oil, the less revolution, in states, particularly geographically small ones, where the oil economy pays the salaries of the middle classes. But seemingly Bahrain has the least oil of all.

So long, Saleh!

Seemingly, the tribes woke up and found they were strong – strong enough to strike a mortal blow, not as chance would have it to Saleh personally, but to his physical ability to maintain his regime. With Saleh in a Saudi hospital, is there anyone left to carry on the civil war in his name? That seems doubtful. The Vice President says he will, but I suppose he’s got a job and would like to keep it.

Power that is built on the weakness of and divisions between one’s enemies rather than the strength of one’s support tends to evaporate in one’s absence.

That leaves the tribes face-to-face with the students and their allies in the capital. We’ll see if they can find common revolutionary ground.

Of course, U.S. insistence on hunting down al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula would tend to resolve this conundrum in favor of another, new strongman in Yemen, someone capable of carrying on the hunt. The choice is between our fears for ourselves, and the bare possibility, slim in itself but scarcely able to resist outside pressure, that the revolution in Yemen might actually be able to gain something for the political and civil liberty of its people.

In the past, confronted with a similar choice, we’ve taken counsel of our fears – more than once in Vietnam, for example.

“the quitter former Governor Palin”

"the quitter former Governor Palin" has been moved to:

http://marxspoliticaleconomy.blogspot.com/2011/07/quitter-former-governor-palin.html

The Outlaw is Disappointed

The Outlaw is Disappointed has been moved to:

http://marxspoliticaleconomy.blogspot.com/2011/07/outlaw-is-disappointed.html

A Law of Dialectics Applied

The fact that there are laws of dialectics means it’s possible for historical actors to make mistakes, not just from, say, a political or military standpoint, but from a dialectical standpoint. Just so, the counter-revolution in Syria has seized upon a position that appears to be one of strength, its control of the army, and employed it as its principal weapon in the fight. Even if one’s only objective were to maintain oneself in power, it’s by no means clear that grasping this possibility is the surest path to success.

On the one hand, there is no civil war in Syria – that is, the army is entirely in the hands of the regime. It’s a sure weapon, for political as well as, seemingly, ethnic and sectarian reasons.

But on the other hand, what are armies for? Finally, the destruction of things. The law of dialectics, that if you would destroy something, you will first make it stronger, at this point comes into play.

People who don’t understand dialectics may tend to think the quickest way to end a threat is to destroy it openly and physically. I am thinking, not just of the juvenile Assad, but also of the U.S. administration that wanted to make war on al-Qaida, but ended as an occupier of foreign nations. Al-Qaida got stronger for a time, just because we declared a war, and in a war there are two sides, and people can be induced to take one side or another, and therefore both sides get incrementally stronger.

This is just an instance, but as I say it is a law of dialectics.

Just as a human entity has, an historical entity slated for destruction has awareness of the danger and freedom to resist it; it also has objective possibilities – no matter how few or weak – for resolving favorably to itself the contradiction with the forces seeking its destruction. These it immediately grasps and wields by every available means, as its very existence is at stake. Inevitably, before it can be destroyed, it becomes stronger in this way.

Sensible people do not push too hard when they want to destroy something that, however dangerous, is still relatively weak. And here, for another instance, I could point out the successes of the current administration against al-Qaida, and how they were achieved, in contrast to the failures of the previous, which only led to occupations of nations we would really prefer to give back to their true owners.

Now, the juvenile Assad, even if he can assure the revolution will not arm itself, is nevertheless assuring it the maximum possible number of adherents. On this path, there is only one remaining question: how much blood does he want on his hands?

The other day, after a particularly bloody one, he was reported to be sending emissaries to the revolution – but then it was already too late, and anyhow, there’s been no news since even of the emissaries’ existence, much less of their success. But the revolution always was against the despot – Daraa might have been bought off by a promise of jobs, but it wasn’t, and things shortly became personal. Even if it weren’t always against him, the despot acted so as to ensure it would be. So: not only more adherents, but more adherents firmly against him personally, his family, and his whole crowd of dependants.

If they were sent, would his emissaries met with…

…cries for mercy? No, the revolution is not nearly destroyed yet.

…moderate offers of compromise? No, he’s started the movement the other way.

…further resistance? intransigence? And then he will have to rely on the army again, until the army is the only thing left to him. But only then could he really and actually destroy the revolution.

It’s better for counter-revolutionaries if they wait their time…and then peacefully and easily break up the bloc of revolutionary parties by separating the one from the other – along cleavages that pre-exist their temporary alliances – just as Saleh is doing in Yemen.

As for Syria, while journalists can report that the revolution is or may be getting stronger, dialectics can say it is and will be getting stronger – and necessarily so.

A Law of Dialectics Explained

There’s a law of historical dialectics that says, if you try to destroy something, the first thing that happens is you make it stronger.

It’s a little like the law of motion that says, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, but it applies to historical and not merely physical entities.

The law can be derived from certain characteristics of subjectivity: it is aware when its destruction is threatened, and it is free to avoid or overcome the threat. Just as this is true of individual subjective beings, it is also true of the larger historical entities – classes, parties, nations – made up in part of these beings.

The law also has objective grounds, but they are a bit harder to express.

Dialectical movement begins with the working out of a contradiction within the entity thereby put in motion. It ends in the negation of the entity in favor of a new unity. The new unity is realized as one among the possibilities for the old – specifically the possibilities for resolving the contradictions of the old.

All of this, the old contradiction, the possibilities for resolving it, and what, having been negated, is now absent, belongs to objectivity as real moments of historical existence.

We’d like to see the necessity of this; and if we could, that would confirm what we would like to believe about the tendency of human history as a whole.

But really, at the time the contradiction is felt strongly enough to begin the dialectical movement, there is no guarantee which of the equally objectively existing possibilities the movement will begin with, or subjectivity will seize upon.

That’s why it’s possible to make mistakes, not just from, say, a political or military standpoint, but from a dialectical standpoint. Because we do know that the tendency of human history is progressive, and in favor of the many rather than, or finally at the expense, morally, politically and economically, of the few.

Thus, when there is an open threat, subjectivity puts things in motion, and when the threat is destruction, seizes upon every possibility.

Just so…

…and here follows the application of the law, in my next post.

Answer: Tribal Lands

Now that it seems the president of Yemen has tribal connections, maybe the tribes will turn out to be decisive. Certainly they can outvote the middle classes, which makes democracy ill-advised for the latter. I’d like to know the form of land-ownership in the countryside – I’m guessing it’s comparatively primitive and that none of the farmers could ever be considered petit bourgeoisie.

The events in Yemen seemed to have passed me by. The outcome for the despot had already been pronounced, but desperate measures were taken that changed the equation. The revolution is stalled, unable to pass into that more advanced but still uncertain stage it reached for the Egyptians more than two months ago: constitution making.

In both Egypt and Yemen, the decisive event has been the military (part of it in Yemen’s case) taking the side of the revolution. It’s clear now that in Egypt the middle classes were strong enough to depose the despot so long as the army did not take the despot’s side. In Yemen, family loyalties kept part of the military on Saleh’s side. That was not nearly enough even to stalemate the revolution, but for reasons that do not apply in Egypt.

A numerically strong and well-armed tribal element not at all organized along modern economic or political lines has joined with students and urban professional classes in the call for Saleh’s ouster. This is what I was wanting to find out. Had the land passed into the hands of rentiers, petit bourgeois or corporate farmers, or a manorial aristocracy? Or did it remain tribal property administered by the elders and sheiks? In the former case, the urban middle class might find a natural and permanent ally in the countryside. In the latter, any alliance, in the absence of shared economic interests and forms of activity, could only be temporary.

If any facts were necessary to demonstrate this tendency, one by itself would probably be sufficient: that Yemen is the kind of impoverished and politically naïve nation where Al Qaida could hope to thrive. I wondered why Saleh, with his own tribal ties, didn’t remove himself to the countryside, consolidate his strengths there, manipulate divisions among the revolutionary classes in the capital, and await a moment favorable for his return. But it seems the larger tribes were already aligned against him very early on. He was actually safer in the capital.

The reason of it seems to be services: clean water, electricity, health care. Water makes the best example. The sheiks and elders have not hesitated to send parties of well-armed youths to gain or defend sources of water, any less than their Native American counterparts would have hesitated to fight over hunting grounds. Seeing an opportunity to end this zero-sum game, tribal leadership is seeking, not just resources from, but an expanded role in, government – one that the master manipulator Saleh, left to his own devices, would never have given them.

And so the right-opportunist tribes have entered into an alliance with, among others, the left-adventurist students.

The students have chosen a dangerous path, one also being tread by certain elements in the Egyptian revolution. It’s wrong to put vengeance against the individuals who made up the previous regime ahead of concrete steps to establish the new regime. It’s only slightly less wrong first to seek punishment for crimes committed during the revolution itself. And one thing that’s wrong with U.S policy towards these revolutions, that we will consider interfering only to prevent crimes against humanity, is that punishment is the logical next step when prevention has failed – and whom would we like to punish?

If revolution were against the persons who happen to administer a state, it might be considered a success merely to replace these persons without replacing the state. This is the false position, and real risk, reached by calls for vengeance. Again, students do not have a real, but only a potential, interest in the outcomes of revolutions, and that allows them to be led by passions that do not necessarily comport with the real interests of the other revolutionary parties. I am reminded that the Terror did not so much preserve the revolution in France, as make the nation ripe for the return of despotism – of the imperial kind.

So the students who rejected the deal with Saleh because it does not ensure he will be tried for whatever thieveries or murders he has committed, have put the actual reformation of the state, for the time being, on the back burner. And that I call “adventurism.”

At the same time, co-existence with a pre-capitalist economy and society poses some problems for the builders of the revolutionary state. How can the urban middle classes demand rights for women from elders who pass capital judgment on them in their absence and without a hearing? How will the secret ballot fare when the elders dictate their votes to the male members of the tribe? The “temporary alliance” is sure eventually to break down in a nation where the tension between city and country is amplified by the tension between modern and pre-modern societies.

But the prospects for state-building in Yemen I reserve for a future post (maybe after the problem Saleh poses has been resolved)….