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)….

I'd also like to find out...

I’d also like to find out…

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?

          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.

Answer: Bloody Hands

The circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Saudi monarchy. Since 1937 is not a long time for an hereditary monarch, but I bet being installed as a despot was not an option. It seems to be a case, like the ancient German kings, of the aristocracy choosing a first among equals – which would suggest that the aristocracy is still really the governing class except to the extent co-opted by the monarchy.

I mentioned the Hashemite dynasty (post of April 20) not because I thought it was one of the better examples of revolution in the Arab world, but really only to make a contrast with that of the Saudis.

This family has not hesitated to draw one another’s blood, or usurp one another’s powers, in its relatively short time as a royal dynasty. The Saudi princes, and their British allies, also liquidated the Ikhwan (the camel-riding army that brought them into power) when it became necessary to the consolidation of that power – Hitler stole a page from their book on the Night of the Long Knives. Next it seems the emirs of those families who weren’t liquidated were suffered to have their sisters and daughters marry into the now royal family. The resulting monarchy, which incidentally claims descent from an 18^th century dynasty in the Hejaz without – at least in my opinion – gaining any prestige thereby, appears to be absolute, as no other political institutions have been permitted to exist, but really it governs like an aristocracy, a formulation rendered only somewhat less dangerous to the monarch by the circumstance that all the nobility are also of his family.

The Arab world displays a truly fascinating variety of despotisms!

Fact is, the middle classes have on frequent historical occasion proven to be surer supports of a monarch’s throne than the nobility. We’d like it to be the case that Saudi Arabia is stable, which for good or ill entails that the throne be secure. To all appearances this is the case: an accommodation has been reached with conservative Islam regarding religious “liberty,” demands for political and civil liberty are voiced, if at all, inaudibly. The monarchy can afford to buy as much economic “justice” as it deems necessary, and still keep the eighth part of the nation’s wealth and income for itself.

What’s happened to the voices, not of discontent, but of the people who by rights ought to be discontented? Clearly the observation that a modern economy requires professionals to run it applies in spades to the Saudi oil economy and the proliferation of sophisticated financial arrangements that spring from it. So there are petit bourgeois professional classes that ought to have, and express, petit bourgeois interests.

But they don’t. I think there might be two explanations, or rather, two sides of the same explanation: first, they’re co-opted in cash – petty cash to the monarchy; second, they’re bosses, or their bosses’ bosses, are princes of the blood. That is, this whole class of potential revolutionaries is directly under the eyes of the state. The middle class thus disappears into the aristocracy as its creatures and dependants, making bourgeois revolution – even bourgeois class consciousness – impossible.

This phenomenon is not unique in the Arab world to Saudi Arabia, and will bear further investigation, and discussion in another post.

The Mass Murderer bin Laden

The impact of the assassination of the mass murderer bin Laden on the likelihood of the success of the Arab revolutions is out of scope for this blog because we are not dealing with personalities.

I can say that insofar as these revolutions are by and for the middle classes, they have not lost an ally, but instead are free of an enemy, by his death.

And moreover, that anyone seeking to reform their state along Western – or explicitly American – lines, has one fewer symbol to overcome.

And finally, that revolutions are always in favor of something, not just against something that has to be annihilated. Bin Laden on the contrary was a radical counter-revolutionary for the “restoration” of a state that never existed, anywhere, but in his own malignant imagination.

So, just as it's a good thing on general principles, it’s a good thing on revolutionary principles.