Revolutions in Review: Syria

I blogged some months ago that it appeared the opposition had been able to force a stalemate with the Syrian regime. Even in a stalemate, Bashar’s days would be numbered. But now it appears the rebels are winning. At any rate, even the journalists can see that at best for Bashar, it’s already a stalemate.

My view can be demonstrated with some confidence by matching up accepted principles of military science with news from the front. Let’s begin with some Che would recognize.

·         The opposition forces have the support of the people in the countryside. This confers several military advantages. For one, they will never starve unless the people themselves are starving. For another, spontaneous, immediate intelligence of enemy movements in the controlled territory. Lastly a source of recruits.

·         They are arming themselves with the weapons of the regime. That is, weapons taken from the soldiers of the regime by movement or combat.

·         They have the initiative against enemy columns penetrating the countryside. The columns are subject to ambush – rather they were subject to ambush. It’s doubtful the regime has sufficient resource to pursue this line of attack – the penetration of opposition-held territory – at all anymore. And this indicates it’s no longer a guerilla war anymore.

All the foregoing has been true for some time now. Which brings us beyond the principles of guerilla warfare to more general principles of military science.

·         Because now the opposition forces have the initiative at the point of attack. That is, not only the ability to attack enemy bases, but also to dictate the strategic focus of combat – I mean the struggle for Aleppo. And this suggests further…

·         …that lines for purely military supplies have been established and are in regular operation. The first step in this direction was to acquire border posts along lines of transportation – a step of great strategic importance that the regime could not prevent and cannot recover (even by expanding the war, qv). Clearly a strategic offensive of some weeks’ duration could not have been undertaken without reasonably secure lines of supply.

·         It’s equally true the offensive could not have been sustained without command and control resources significantly better – seemingly by an order of magnitude – than those the Libyan opposition was able to defeat Gaddafi with. Insofar as they’ve contributed to this result, the defections are striking the regime where it hurts.

·         On the flip side, the regime’s resources of heavy weapons can hardly be increasing. The opposition’s monitors would have noticed if more tanks, helicopters, fighter-bombers were being brought in. Each one lost, one-by-one, is irreplaceable. So for the same reason and to the same extent that the opposition’s supply of ordnance is improving – territorial control of entry points and routes – the regime’s situation must be deteriorating.

·         Anecdotal evidence also suggests the regime forces face morale problems. I suppose a man would fight desperately rather than face his accusers with blood on his hands. But desperation is its own morale problem.

Speaking of desperation, mistakes have been made. On still another set of general principles, they tend to weaken the position of the party that makes them.

·         Use of auxiliaries. The Hezbollah from Lebanon have a strategic interest in Syria: it’s on the line of supply from Iran. So they’re not fighting for the regime. Moreover, as soon as they conceive the line of supply to be lost, they’ll abandon the fight. This kind of conflict of interest, as Machiavelli knew, makes auxiliary troops unreliable.

·         Use of mercenaries. The Chechens have no strategic interest in Syria. If they’re fighting there, most likely, it’s only to obtain money and arms for their own struggles, which, as Machiavelli knew, is even more unreliable for the employer.

·         Expanding the war – especially one you are losing. Shelling Turkey was a bad mistake. Though their response has been measured, it has been persistent, and they determine the measure. If you wanted to shell the opposition’s supply lines, why choose one that comes through your border with a member of NATO?

·         Dispersal of forces. It remains to be seen, but my hunch is the late barrage on Homs is a diversion intended to draw troops out of Aleppo. If so, first of all, it’s an admission that the opposition troops are free to move, cannot be prevented from moving, from front to front, combat to combat. Second, an artillery barrage is one thing, armor is another. The former has destructive power, the latter has striking power. If it’s a diversion, it’s recklessly, and if it has no striking power uselessly, destructive.

It’s too bad the U.S. won’t let the Saudis and Qataris give the opposition weapons effective against aircraft. The military leaders of the opposition think this kind of thing would be decisive. Of course, a rocket that can shoot down a helicopter or fighter can, in the wrong hands, also shoot down an airliner. But that is the policy of fear; we’ve been following it too long.

What if the Free Syrian Army had taken counsel of their fears? Obviously they haven’t.

Revolutions in Review

From the Mahgrib…

…to the Persian Gulf

The revolutionary time is over and – the furor over the movie notwithstanding – things generally move at the slower pace of domestic politics. It’s becoming clear that the demonstrations were organized and carried out by counter-revolutionary elements – at least those that were not spontaneous, and only to the extent they were not. They bothered some people more than they bother me. How can a revolution expect to get rid of spontaneity? Counter-revolutionary spontaneity is just one price a revolution pays for its own spontaneity.

It’s also becoming clear that they (the counter-revolutionary elements) haven’t gained any real traction against the revolutions this way. They (the demonstrations) are dying out, aren’t they? Nothing of any importance was gained against the United States of America either. Though today the perpetrator is under arrest, I believe, because how he made the movie involved a probation violation. That’s justice!

At any rate it’s now possible to proceed with a review of what the revolutions have achieved, the reaction on the side of Salafism, etc., having proven, if persistent, comparatively weak.

One could say metaphorically that the face of the Arab world has changed. But speculative philosophy can do better. It can say that the prospects of the Arab world have changed. And so by way of summary, with an individual post projected for each of the bullets in the list:

·         Tunisia. Last I heard, they managed to write a constitution without institutionalizing the Sharia. So this is possible to be done in the absence of a secular despotism.

·         Libya. Represents, like Yemen, an instance to prove that strongmen can successfully preserve the national existence of countries that would otherwise come apart at the seams. Not that the strongman has come forth again, but that the seams are bursting. Yet in late news, the revolution has used its strength against provincial and fundamentalist militias. Even if central government cannot be restored on the same footing (but absent the strongman), there is nothing profoundly undemocratic about federalism.

·         Egypt. President Morsi behaves as though he’s already gained control of the state, in both its inward and outward aspects. Who’s to say he hasn’t? It’s far too early to say whether he will betray the revolution either for personal aggrandizement or for Islamic fundamentalism. Yet there’s been no sign whatever he’s tried. On the contrary, he has kept a politic balance. So why worry?

·         Palestine. Ever notice that the Arab Spring never seemed to touch Palestine? To me this means it was already an effective democracy. A nation in arms can still be a democratic nation.

·         Jordan. More constitution, less monarchy. The Hashemites have not tread this path at a revolutionary pace, but they’re not free to leave it either. The King really ought to provide a better example to the aristocracies and monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula.

·         Syria. Did you know that military science, like the theory of revolutions, is also a dialectical science? I could explain that in another post, but to analyze the civil war as such might be out of scope for this blog.

·         Lebanon. Like Palestine, relatively untouched by the Arab Spring, and also possessing beforehand a discernable, if tumultuous, political life. The abasement of the Assad despotism can only strengthen democracy in this country.

·         Iraq. You could ask the same question about al-Maliki that some would like to ask (prematurely) about Morsi. But the American people didn’t spend blood and treasure to set up a despot in Iraq they way they did once or twice in Vietnam.

·         Bahrain. Where agitation for democracy is still a criminal act. The successes of the Arab Spring seem to have stopped at the headwaters of the Gulf and the geographical (and political) frontier of the Arabian Peninsula.

·         Yemen. Both like and unlike Libya. The new president Hadi has restored the former authority of the government without perceptibly making a revolution in the state. Reforms only, but reforms that seem to enjoy a measure of popular support. Meanwhile, Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has been reduced to making war on Moslems.

The decision lies with Egypt and Iraq, the one wealthy in population, the other in oil. (Both of which, by the way, have verbally aligned themselves against the current regime in Syria.) If these centers of gravity are shifted permanently to democracy, the rest are that much more likely to continue in that path or to follow. If that happens in this generation, what will happen in the next? and where?

…Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

It’s not Left Adventurism…

…but it’s not right opportunism either. The revolution in Egypt is passing into the hand s of an individual who, it may be hoped, occasionally asks himself, “What would Lenin do?”

Though the circumstances differ greatly, Morsi’s task of getting rid of the “interim” government does not differ in principle from Lenin’s task of getting rid of the Kerensky government.

The longer the secular liberal parties sit on their hands, the smaller their influence on the result. Morsi is steering the middle course as well as any revolutionary who ever had a chance to gain control of the state. It’s time for them to get on board.

Narrowing Visions

Speculative philosophy’s field of vision over Syria is narrowing.

From the one side, the actions of the great powers, not-so-great powers, and international and regional organizations of states, have limited Syria’s power of self-determination. Both sides in the struggle have asked for help, but with help necessarily comes interference. More precisely, bringing in outside entities subjects the struggling parties to the interests and determinations of those entities, and limits their freedom to act just to that extent.

From the other side, nothing seems to matter to the outcome of the revolution so much as how long Bashar can manage to continue to live. It could be months; it could be many months; it could be years; but it won’t be many years.

Here’s why….

·         Alawite disaffection. Such reports started coming some weeks past. Thus even his natural sources of strength are drying up.

·         Middle class/administrative class disaffection and agitation in Aleppo and Damascus. Formerly a source of strength, if only negative strength, now some of them are willing to express positive disagreements with the regime.

·         The continuous defection of men and officers of every rank, including the very highest, from the military. Somebody said on TV the other day he’d counted 13 general officers among the defectors.

·         The traditional, and now renewed, enmity of the Turks.

And that’s just lately. I didn’t think Bashar could make himself any stronger by pursuing his course of violence, but he certainly made himself more alone. Is it at all possible be could leave anything resembling a regime behind him? No: what’s left of his apparatus will evaporate in a cloud of disassociation.

Thus the determinations of individual subjectivity place another limit on speculative philosophy. How does Bashar manage to deal with it all? What sort of man is he really? …but who cares?

The revolution cannot rely on a purely military solution via either the occupation of territory or the annihilation of Bashar’s forces in the field. Similarly, one of the points of shooting down the Turkish jet was to warn the West about intervention with air power. But the revolution can force, maybe are near to forcing, a stalemate. And that gives time, though it may be a very bloody time, for the indicated result.

The Crisis

In a crisis, a revolutionary must know what to do. One of the things to know is whether it is really a crisis, and not to be panicked by an unexpected reverse or mere threat. This much speculative philosophy can also know. But to predict the result is beyond its power, precisely because it is the time for individuals to act, and philosophy cannot predict even the action, much less the result, of the determinations of individual subjectivity.

It’s good to know that, even in the time of crisis, the Egyptian revolution is still behaving like a revolution. And more particularly that it recognizes the counter-revolution for what it is, and is able to see the courts and the military as the face or maybe the agent of the counter-revolution.

It’s a crisis because the counter-revolution brought it on. Consider their actions, words, and decrees:

·    The courts dissolved the body that was charged with making a new constitution, on grounds of what is left of the old constitution. Logically, to say nothing of the political meaning of the decree, it’s begging the question, which is what the constitution and the state should and will be. (I understand the convention had already become frustrated with itself, and so nothing was done at the time.)

·    The military too are using what is left of the old constitution, that is, the instrument created by the state the revolution was against, to justify their efforts to crush the revolution.

·    The courts have dissolved parliament. What if parliament dissolves the courts? Seems to me the French solved a similar problem in a similar way.

·    Meanwhile, all the functions the courts have taken away from the revolution, including the legislative power, they have given to the military.

·    Thus the military will appoint the constitutional convention, they say. What if the president appoints his own? Suppose further two constitutions are drawn up. Then who decides?

·    And the military want to write themselves an existence separate from and alongside the civil state into the constitution, to include their own budget under their sole control. How will they fund it? Why don’t they give themselves the power of taxation to boot?

All that’s left undone is “firmness,” fraud, arrests, violent confrontation, and a coup – in that order. There’s no reason a really efficient despotism can’t be oligarchic. Burma, for instance.

All this – the counter-revolution putting forth its strength – suddenly makes the revolution seem rather weak. It once looked (to me at least) as if the Brotherhood might be able to leverage the parliament and the presidency together to complete the revolution. It’s now apparent that the revolution never gained control over the state apparatus, nor any part of it. Even if parliament refuses to dissolve itself, it has no physical assets with which to oppose the counter-revolution.

So now the only thing to do is return to the Square. Unfortunately the police are one of the state elements that did not come under the revolution’s control. Thus begins the cycle of fraud, arrests, violence.

Someone could ask, will the secular revolutionaries go to the Square? Maybe they have gone. Or does the counter-revolution seem to them the lesser of two evils? At least some of them must have voted for Shafiq. Poor fools! Soon they may find their reward.

Unfortunately, you can’t dissolve the military. But sweeping the courts out of existence, or at least denying that they exist, is the right thing to do. The revolution can judge through its own tribunals. It’s been done. Here’s a case in which, in order to take the state into its own hands, the revolution has to take the law into its own hands.

Moving to the Left

The liberal/secular vote, split in the first presidential round between two candidates with about 20% each, from here looks now to be the largest bloc of uncommitted voters in Egypt. One can’t say simply they are the largest bloc of voters, for that would mean they should have outpolled the Brotherhood for control of parliament. Neither can one say whether some of them will sit out the election either, even though that would resemble left adventurism.

Yet, had these parties settled on a single candidate, that candidate would be running against Morsi, rather than the counter-revolutionary Shafiq. It’s a typical failing of liberal revolutionists – allowing relatively minor differences of policy to create a split, rather than pursuing a sounder, unified political and electoral strategy. I am thinking of the German parliament after the 1848.

As it is, their opportunities are not entirely lost, as both remaining candidates are moving to the left in order to gain adherents in their bloc. For Morsi, this means less Sharia, more civil liberty. For Shafiq, it means dissembling, as he can have no real intention other than to govern in behalf of the big bourgeoisie.

Meanwhile the courts continue to display their alignment with counter-revolutionary elements. Acquitting the police, letting Mubarak and his family – just barely – live, failing to punish the despoliation of Egypt by Mubarak’s big bourgeois friends: this just energizes the revolution. A revolution with energy is not likely to be defeated if allowed to go to the polls.

Then what? Even the Western journalists are beginning to see how difficult it will be for Morsi to govern. And without a new constitution, the revolution itself will not have been won.

The vision of the Arab Spring perhaps out shines this reality – but that’s what visions do, don’t they? It’s harder to envision the courts taking Shafiq off the ballot than it is to envision people in the Square agitating against a ballot with his name on it. But if the courts did, and the name weren’t, the whole election would take a giant step leftward.

The People of Egypt Cast Their Votes

[Draft completed May 24, but I did not post it because I thought it might take a few days to count the votes. Posted now without further comment.]

I could wait until after the votes are counted and post on the results, but since this is speculative philosophy…. Anyway, a lot of anecdotal evidence is ready to hand. A few things it suggests follow.

·    Many of the Brotherhood’s voters are poor, and some are voting specifically economic interests. Overall this is favorable to the revolution. The fact that a few of them think Allah will provide jobs just illustrates the contradiction analyzed in an earlier post.

·    Just guessing, but about half the Brotherhood’s voters among the poor are women. So have no fear they would ever curtail the political liberties of women. What party would ever disenfranchise its own political base?

·    Given the choice of candidates, the vote can be expected to reveal splits in the Brotherhood bloc. This gives the liberal/secular parties an opportunity to gain concessions, possibly in matters of civil liberty and religious law. There’s still a constitution to be written.

·    It’s unclear how the individual elected through this process will govern. There is no new constitution, nor a proposal that can be put to a vote, nor even it appears a process for drafting one anymore – this latter thanks in part to the interference of the courts. So the revolution is incomplete, and the election of a president, even a revolutionary one, will do comparatively little in itself to complete it.

·    If you want to complete the revolution, you also have to reduce the military to obedience to the revolution via a constitution. Certain candidates won’t do this. Others might, but I can’t say from here whether any of them are on the record in this sense. The military’s claim to a special role or status under the constitution has an historical basis, but that is one of the things the revolution was made against. Without a constitution, this battle will be the president’s to fight – or not.

·    And so it’s easy to see that the people of Egypt have a choice between a president who will personally fight the courts and military, and one who will not. In other words, a choice between revolution and counter-revolution. I continue to maintain the Brotherhood is a sound revolutionary party on these points, a little Islamic law more or less not to the contrary.

·    Yes, they have a party plank for making Islamic law one of the principles of the constitution. This causes a great deal of hand-wringing among Western journalists. But their wishes are not under consideration.

All this presupposes a result in which the Brotherhood have not split so much they cannot elect their candidate in the next round. You can’t rule out a run-off between the leading liberal/secular candidate and a Brotherhood candidate either until they count the votes in the current round. One can say the revolution will roundly defeat any of the candidates from the former regime in the run-off, or it will look and feel like fraud – whatever Mr. Carter happens to observe – and the revolution will have to start over from Square one.

Egyptians in Parliament: The Moslem Brotherhood

The misperception that the Moslem Brotherhood is somehow not a revolutionary party has been addressed in these posts, but despite my best efforts, it persists in the American press. The Brotherhood’s new demonstrations in Tahrir Square have as their ultimate object the transfer of political power…to themselves. And this would complete their revolution, which began by legalizing the party and thus giving it political rights, with the transfer of the state itself.

People who think this somehow doesn’t count as revolution, just because the party has associated itself with a certain set of religious beliefs, don’t seem to have a working definition of revolution. Perhaps they are guided rather by prejudices peculiar to the West. In particular, they can’t tell the difference between the Brotherhood and the Salafists – I say, between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries – preferring to lump them together over against the seculars, who, to the extent they embrace the same set of values (or maybe prejudices) as the Westerners passing judgment, are considered the true revolutionaries.

This is not a balanced view. The Brotherhood occupies the center of the Egyptian revolution, and in great strength. Yet, like all historical entities, it is carrying contradictions within itself and as its own.

The problem (for these journalists and pundits) gets started because the Brotherhood is measurably right of center on civil liberties, and maybe on political liberties, as they are conceived (and sometimes realized) in the West.

Actually, it starts before that, maybe a generation before. What made militant Islam? Distrust tending toward hatred of the West. The rejection of Western values and along with them the liberties we are concerned with here. Then substituting for secular despotism, not liberty, but a throwback state. In some circles the rejection is so complete, the caliphate looks to them like a “revolutionary” state.

To reach that point, a point the Salafists have reached , objective class interests have to be overlooked, actively ignored, or in any event left unformulated – articulated, if at all, as religious sentiments. Mere belief supplants, can supplant, objective class interests just to the extent real economic life is absent. The former continues to move subjectivity because the latter can itself appear as merely a belief. Or again, one can be more certain of the existence of Allah than of the possibility of steady, well-paid work. Once you blink the latter as a possibility, mere belief, even as religious militancy, becomes a substitute for it, the more so because the values economic activity creates – surplus income, leisure, luxury – are simultaneously imagined as enemies of religion.

First, notice that the phenomenon Marx and Engels confronted was, perhaps fundamentally, different. For their proletariat, the interests in question were objectively real. Mere belief tended to suppress consciousness of them: hence religion as opiate, not as agitation. The religious “illusion” was seized upon, if not rebuilt, by the big bourgeoisie to serve their own narrow interests. In Egypt, the big bourgeoisie and their friends in the former regime had preferred instead a secular state in which the Brotherhood were proscribed. Correspondingly, religious militancy was also militancy against that state.

Am I mistaken to believe Islamic militancy is strongest among, say, day-laborers and peasants? Stronger than among the petit bourgeois elements who populate the secular parties? A heightened sensibility to the deprivation of certain liberties, especially civil liberties, is more generally found among people with education and leisure. For people who have to wonder about whether and how they and their children will be able to survive, faith easily supplants this sensibility. To be sure, in that case obtaining the means of survival is an objective class interest.

I submit that the Brotherhood has broken through this contradiction. Their presidential candidate is articulating an economic program, based in part on privatization of state industry. While it’s not clear how this might affect the casual laborer, if you’re making the structure of the economy a campaign issue, you have to have something in it for your voters en masse. Maybe a little land reform too, for the peasants. That is what this man, Mohamed Morsi, who made himself richer still while a prisoner of the former regime and in spite of contributing to the Brotherhood and its affiliates for their programs of political liberty, is all about.

What’s most important is not the individual, but that the dialectical movement he evidences aligns the Brotherhood more closely with the seculars. Just to the extent it adopts a class-oriented economic program, and takes objective class interests explicitly as an issue, it is a movement away from the militancy of mere religious belief.

It turned out the seculars do not have enough unity to generate splits in their favor within the Brotherhood. They did have enough dialectical gravity – the way of the many is the path of progress, after all – to become the pole of attraction toward a new synthesis, one that may yet negate the contradictions of the old Islamic militancy.

Tunisia got to that place too. It kept its secular constitution; it did not make Sharia explicitly civil as well as religious law. And its president, Moncef Marzouk, for an experienced revolutionary, seems like a mellow dude…

…meanwhile, the wavering Egyptian courts seem to think they can suspend the activity of the committee of parliament charged with formulating the new constitution. Stay tuned.

The Revolution is Over…

…or it might as well be. I wonder what the people of Yemen will have gotten for their trouble.

The dialectical analysis of an historical entity fails when a larger such entity intervenes, to some degree removing its possibility of self-determination. The smaller entity is no longer free to work out its own contradictions – among other things redoubling the difficulty of dialectical analysis. Now any movement for changes in the state is or may be at the instance, or subject to the approval, of the larger entity and its interests. It’s not a new pattern. What usually happens when the United States, or any other such power, feel they have something to fear about, or gain from, the goings on in a sovereign, independent nation?

So when I posted that the revolution in Yemen was in a dangerous place, the devolution into tribal, prerevolutionary conflict was one danger. The result is worse still, because the first success of that phase was won by al Qaida, when forces under their influence gained control of some provincial capital in the south.

Since then, the U.S. has been exploring the resumption of military aid to the regime, which, apart from procuring the absence of Saleh, gives no appearance whatever of having a revolutionary agenda. It’s too busy struggling with al Qaida, and the tribes who think al Qaida represents their interests – though, to be sure, not their economic interests.

Next, the regime managed to drive al Qaida out of some of the positions they had captured. But at a philosophical distance, the action resembles nothing more than the historical norm of tribal conflict.

So the internal forces are pushing the country backward, and so is the external force majeure being applied by the U.S. To an extent, Yemen still is self-determining, but in a movement that is fundamentally counter-revolutionary. At the end of this movement lies another strongman – at least one strong enough to alternately conciliate and cow the tribes, if not to make himself universally feared.

The revolution in Libya is not in much better condition, though the retrograde movement has not been so rapid. Things seem to have stabilized at a point short of more or less continuous armed conflict. There are reasons to think someone with strong political, nationalist instincts could still overcome a provincialism that cannot be in the interest of the Libyan people as a whole.

There Be Dragons and There Be Waverings

Even though it did not display the clarity and insight of Mr. Shadid’s writing, a brief Associated Press notice last month revealed the causes behind one sequence of waverings in the Egyptian courts.

There were waverings, I claimed in the below post about Mr. Friedman’s piece, on the arrest and then release of certain foreign nationals affiliated with or employed by non-governmental organizations. But now the causes pushing in different directions no longer have entirely to be speculated upon. The AP found out the Moslem Brotherhood was cross with the military caretaker government for allowing – or maybe arranging – the release.

The interests in question don’t have to be guessed at either. The Brotherhood does not like foreign nationals “agitating” for reforms they themselves may or may not be prepared to endorse – particularly when the NGOs are aligned with the Brotherhood’s political rivals on the issues in question. But they are correct to insist that the right of political agitation over the form and substance of the Egyptian constitution belongs to the Egyptian people alone.

The military have their own reasons for accommodation with the United States, which has since affirmed the then-pending promise of military and economic aid – in the full amount. Between the military as caretaker government and the Brotherhood, it now appears, there was already sufficient tension to create the dialectical movement I was trying to explain.

So, even though the “specific causes, effects, and explanations to be made for these [waverings]… are not directly material to speculative philosophy,” it was wrong for me to attribute them to the influence of the big bourgeoisie. Or again, in this particular case, the conclusions of speculative philosophy were falsified by the facts. But that doesn’t make Mr. Friedman right about the “dragons.” On the contrary, subsequent events tends to confirm that the revolution in Egypt, among others is the Arab Spring, are bourgeois, and not Islamic, in nature and effect.

Some are succeeding and others are failing – have failed. The dialectical tally for the day might come as a surprise.

“There be Dragons” …or not

[From the New York Times editorial, reprinted March 1, 2012, in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Mr. Friedman of the Times has lost hope for the Arab Spring. He should have consulted with Mr. Shadid first, if he’d had the chance. Instead his attitude is more petulant than skeptical, and his judgments, if not superficial, at best partial.

I’ll make an example of just one matter on which speculative philosophy can draw the correct, but Mr. Friedman has drawn the wrong, conclusion: the waverings of the Egyptian courts. He took the charges against foreign nationals as a sign the counter-revolution was winning or had won. On the contrary, this was just another instance of waverings, a counter-revolutionary movement that has since reversed course.

I suppose there might be any number of specific causes, effects, and explanations to be made for these movements, but they are not directly material to speculative philosophy. I am interested only in the structure of the movements. This is not an isolated, out-of pattern event. I posted Waverings in Egypt in January. The arrest and then release is part and parcel of the same dialectical tale. Not evidence that the entire Egyptian people are tired of or unable to complete their revolution, nor that they have handed it over to some body of men who would like to dispose of it.

The revolution is still strong and at least part of it knows that friendship with America is in its favor. And the hostages, or whatever they were, have made their way home – all but one, who like the Free Syrian Army is also brave.

Other revolutions are not doing so well. Speculative philosophy can tell the difference; maybe Mr. Friedman can’t.

Egyptians in Parliament: The Seculars

If the Salafists only became revolutionaries in order to launch a counter-revolution, and the secular parties still want a revolution, but one based on their own economic and political class interests, whom do you suppose the Muslim Brotherhood is more likely to choose for their coalition partners?

I guess the answer really depends on whether they need a partner at all. But that’s for the next post in this series.

After the first success of a revolution, at least three paths are open to a party in the opposition. In the first, a revolutionary party enters into negotiations with what is left of the state. The party seeks to realize whatever portion of its agenda it can, and the state seeks to preserve its existence. Call this the strict form of right opportunism, because it seeks opportunity from the state, at the expense of the revolution.

In the second, there is already more than one revolutionary party, and, as in the present case, which party or parties get to form the state is in question. What is possible for any given party depends on the relative strength of the parties. What then? The answer in a bourgeois democratic revolution is political: negotiate, compromise, accommodate. The answer in a proletarian revolution is to sweep away any moderate, petit bourgeois elements in the revolutionary movement and establish…well, that is not where Egypt is going. For the left wing of the revolution, playing politics is going to look like opportunism, because part of their agenda might be realized, but the other part will have to be bargained away.

In the third situation, the point of negotiation is to split the other revolutionary parties along lines favorable to the agenda of one’s own. In such cases, negotiation is accompanied by agitation, the former with a view to advance the agenda, and latter in order to change the balance of power among the parties. The more negotiation, the more opportunism; the more agitation, the more adventurism.

There’s no question the seculars are not as one with the Brotherhood, whose cadres some weeks ago linked arms to prevent the liberals from, let’s say, disturbing a session of parliament. It seems they were agitating to influence, perhaps, the membership of the constitutional convention, or the committee structure of parliament. But they are also in the forefront of confrontation with what I have called the waverings of the military and the courts.

I’m not sure what role the Brotherhood played in these confrontations, but it’s not necessarily left adventurism to get beyond what they would like to do. Yet the question about the current role of the military in the transitional state, and the role they might expect to play in the revolutionary state, opens the possibility of splits within the Brotherhood over that role.

Likewise with civil and political liberties in general, and the civil liberties of women in particular. Any one such issue, properly framed and brought forward at the right moment, might split the Brotherhood. Their difficulty is to overcome the contradiction between being a revolutionary party and sharing a religious attitude. The attitude towards women is especially difficult in this respect. They may well split eventually along one of those lines, adding the one part to the seculars, and moving the remainder to the right, closer to the Salafists. At that point, who knows which would be in the majority?

The splits between adventurism and opportunism on the left are comparatively easy to reconcile; they’re not grounded in fundamental contradictions. Yet even the Salafists have recently split, over whether it’s alright for a party member to have a nose job and then lie about it. It’s part of their struggle with hypocrisy – an even worse contradiction and one of many things that might make them an unattractive coalition partner for the Brotherhood.

My confidence in the outcome of the Egyptian revolution is thus based in part on the strength of the secularist position, as opposed to that of the Salafists. It’s particularly strong in the event of – or for engineering – a split in the center. Meanwhile, good economic times favor the agitation of the secular parties, and bad times that of Salafists.

The Brotherhood for the present is in the cat bird seat…if they can stay there. More about their contradictions next.

News from Syria

A number of items from Syria have been in the news lately, some but not all of which impinge more or less on the class analysis and speculative philosophy of the Arab Spring.

Mr. Shadid. I read the local paper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, not the New York Times. I’m not studying the journalism of the Arab Spring the way Marx studied that of the 1848 revolution, a study that helped him write his book on Louis Bonaparte and his missives to that self-same New York Times. I’m just mining some of it.

But I did find insight in a few of the articles the Journal Sentinel published, insights crucial to the operations of speculative philosophy. Seems these were mostly authored by Shadid, and reproduced locally by permission of the Times. Such insights are hard to come by, even as subtext, and usually have to be read into the journalism – a process that is prone to the errors I am well aware I have not avoided. So I will miss him personally.

Seems also there are a lot of ways to die that would look like an asthma attack….

If you wanted to assassinate the judges and officials of a despotic regime with which you were at war, you would do well to have inside information on their whereabouts. The elementary inference that this may already have happened has certainly been made by the juvenile Bashar. What is the upshot?

Well, now perhaps Bashar cannot trust, and therefore has to fear, even those close associates who have been deeply involved in his crimes. Whether they or their subordinates might be informants only affects the degree, not the subjective possibility, of suspicion and fear. Now, with that kind of help, even he could become the target of the Free Syrian Army. Worse still, anyone who would help your enemies assassinate your minions, might nearly as likely, in their own proper persons, try to assassinate you.

When I say “nearly” as likely, I am speaking of the merely subjective calculations of an individual, in this case an individual who is already under a lot of stress. Fear is coming back around. Maybe the despot will begin to purge his inner circle. Maybe some of them will purge him first, particularly if they fear to become a target in a purge. They can calculate too.

Concerns were expressed at as high a level as the Cabinet about how Al Qaida might profit by the “destabilization” of the Assad regime. But they’re not concerns about the revolutionary progress of the Syrian people, are they? Neither could Al Qaida hope to destabilize this distracted nation measurably more than it already is, and to profit thereby. Just fishing in troubled waters, without any real chance, as in, say, Yemen or Somalia, of obtaining a legal or quasi-legal status as an arm of or party to the (legitimate?) government.

No, just stealing weapons they’d try to use against the West in general and the U.S. in particular. Acts of terror of the kind Al Qaida is capable of are as flea bites on the Syrian revolution. They can hold no terror for people who no longer fear the physical power of a despot stronger by several orders of magnitude.

The fears expressed by U.S. officials are petty and pusillanimous by comparison.

Speaking of fear, how about Damascus? Is it really possible the middle classes are no longer afraid to demonstrate in the streets against the excesses of the regime?

Of all the bad news Bashar has had this month, this might be the worst – no, it’s a lot worse to know you have to fear even your partners in crime.

The last item is, where’d Bashar get the ordnance for the redoubled violence of this new assault? Were the journalists watching the ports? Did the ship come in from Russia? from Iran? Maybe all the buzz in the Straights of Hormuz was a cover for a shipment of death to the Syrian people. Yet, it’d be easier to get through the Bosporus than the Suez unnoticed, wouldn’t it? Don’t know how long it would take to go around by the Cape of Good Hope. Or sail from, say, Shanghai. How long has it been since Bashar has been able to loose so many shells per day, per hour, per household?

Egyptians in Parliament: The Salafists

The Muslim Brotherhood, even if the perception that it represents conservative Islam is true, is nevertheless by definition a revolutionary party. The same applies to the Salafists, though there can be no doubt about their deep ideological conservatism.

Having once been outlawed, the now legal position of these parties in the formation of the new sate represents a revolution in the old state. According to my working definition, a revolution is an extralegal (usually violent) action against the state for the purpose of obliterating it, replacing it, or changing it fundamentally. It differs from counter-revolution because the latter, even when it would like to obliterate the state, would do so in favor of the few, or for the restoration of the former state, or one essentially the same.

The Brotherhood, and with them the Salafists, achieved their revolution in the fundamental law of the legal status of parties: they helped establish a new political liberty. That makes them revolutionary parties. Maybe that’s as far in revolution as the Salafist ideology will allow them to go. As I understand it, it’s already hypocrisy for a Salafist even to vote. The only reason they could stoop to participate in such an innovation is that it gives them a chance to restore the Caliphate. Which makes them right opportunists, correct? And, if that’s the only reason for their revolution, counter-revolutionaries.

Now the people can vote for them, so they can restore the Caliphate – a condition under which it would be illegal to vote for anything else. Or indeed to vote at all, once the Caliphate had been reestablished.

Or again, there can be only one caliph, can’t there? A caliphate is, in other words, a despotism, and, worse still, a caliph is a religious as well as a political figure. Voting against the caliph, even if it were somehow possible, would be a sin as well as a crime.

The Shariah presents the same kind of difficulty. When one would like to appeal to the courts, who can appeal to a higher authority than God? Using priests for judges is the kind of category confusion that prevailed in simpler, but not necessarily more humane times.

If this is counter-revolution, how does it serve the few? For that is what the class analysis expects. In general, for a despot to become wealthy, he has to sell favors to someone. A caliph could become, and they did become, wealthy in the same way. (It helps too if people consider it a religious duty to give you money.) The previous Egyptian despot was a secular, but that would not prevent the few from…embracing the Shariah – unless they were concerned about their wives, daughters, and sisters for some reason.

The big bourgeoisie were comfortable with secular despotism. Could they get in bed with the caliph? The question answers itself. They’ve done worse things in the history of the modern world than manipulate bigoted religious sentiment. They’ve taken worse risks than the one they would take by backing a Salafist caliphate.

So…where are the levers by which the Salafists could be manipulated? But there’s no need; the contradictions are too great. There are other and likelier levers to pull – and they no doubt are being pulled.

Egyptians in Parliament

The media were not so interested in Egypt when the violence was only occasional and at a low level. Then came the soccer riot, with its aftermath, and so that got some attention – a lot more than their parliament, busy as it is with the comparatively mundane matters of forming a coalition to govern, and convening a body to write a constitution.

You could see the former as an extended metaphor for the latter, where the real interest lies. This is a vital passage for the revolution, so it’s a shame for the student of revolutions to have to speculate – not as in speculative philosophy, which reasons by the application of principles to a (usually fairly small) set of determinate facts – but just to wonder what the case might be as the Muslim Brotherhood goes about its business.

Enough has been reported to know that the initiative lies with them, and that they represent a centrist, near majority element between the (right opportunist?) Salafist party and the (left adventurist?) secular parties. Maybe we know there are waverings too, as I’ve already posted, and maybe we can speculate where party coalitions or splits might arise. So I’ve projected a series of three new posts, on the Salafists, the seculars, and the Brotherhood in parliament.

Hopefully the coverage will catch up with my speculations. Meanwhile, there are imponderables, including the discontinuity between objective economic and political interests, and the state as an instrument or expression of mere belief.

In a Dangerous Place

Libya is in a dangerous place. Some countries seem too need a strong man who is strong enough to keep them from flying apart from the outside in. That situation has been reached by the revolutionary militias and their rivals, which are local, in some cases tribal, and in the worst cases, still loyal to the family of the despot.

At least Libya has oil. Oil grounds the possibilities of the middle class, which in turn grounds the possibilities for political and civil liberties in Libya.

This much can’t be said for Yemen. It was chosen by al Qaida for the same reason they choose all their other bolt holes (Iraq excepted, but Iraq was a mistake): it has little or no economic life. Tribal and regional rivalries antedate the Saleh regime – by centuries, even millennia. They drove the very course of the revolution. Saleh’s mastery of those relations was the prime reason he was so difficult to oust.

Worse still, with Saleh gone, what does the revolution do next? Is there anything on its agenda, the demand for which is strong enough to overcome the tendency to relapse into conflicts based on ancient rivalries? The people still carry rifles so they can protect their water holes from rival bands and tribes. Even if the revolution could coalesce around principles and programs, would it be able to govern until they were achieved?

All of which just goes to show that the departure of the despot in normally closer to the beginning than the end of a revolution – particularly a successful one.

“The Strong Man is Strongest…”

It’s a good thing speculative philosophy is never of the person. It would quickly become lost in the infinite dialectics of the individual subject, and begin to resemble nothing more than the punditry of international politics.

The juvenile Bashar is a case in point. The process that began by strengthening his enemies could be understood dialectically. As the process nears its end, the strategy of the counter-revolution has become impenetrable, lacking under class analysis even the appearance of an objective basis. All that is left is empty words, and emptier, if increasingly reckless and violent, actions.

How can one understand his denunciation of the sanctions of the Arab League as the action of foreign agitators? He got one part right: they’re foreigners, Arab, Muslim foreigners. If that were not enough to alienate him from the League, his subsequent acts of violence before their very (so delegated) eyes ought to suffice.

It was also intriguing to learn through Ms. Walters some weeks ago that those who committed the political murders to that date acted without his authority. And what of the murders since? The lonely child is truly alone when even his police and army defy him.

So he’s alienated himself from the last supports of his regime, especially if they were just obeying orders – which leaves the excessively timid middle classes in the capital considerably less to fear. At the same time, the generals might reasonably consider they are best served by getting rid of their accuser.

It’s all very hard to understand. It’s bizarre.

“…when alone” completes the saying at the top, attributed to Adolf Hitler. Of course, Hitler ended up putting a bullet in his own head. Maybe Bashar will too. That would save his generals the trouble.

Waverings in Egypt

Dialectical movement can be detected in Egypt; there is wavering on the principal fronts of the revolution. The action of the revolutionary parties is in the open; they remain very strong.

What is behind the contrary action? The journalists don’t seem to know what it is; they may have suspicions, but nothing that can be proven. But it can scarcely hide from speculative philosophy.

Two examples: the stance of the army, and the trial of the former despot. There was also wavering about the elections, but the revolution itself shared in this.

The only sound result for the revolution is a military wholly subservient to the civil power. It’s only slightly better for a member of the military to become head of state than for the military to become the state itself. To ask whether the military should guard the constitution is the same as to ask whether it should interfere in politics at all. The answer to both questions is No, but to date, the army hasn’t unequivocally embraced this answer.

The army’s record is mixed. When only a few are found in the Square, it may try to disperse them. When there are many, it might defend them from thugs dressed as policemen. It might beat a woman alone, but fear to do the same to thousands or tens of thousands.

It’s not just the numbers. On the one hand, they punish the revolution and its values. Confronted with its strength, they tend actually to defend it.

Same with the courts. Do they intend to convict Mubarak or not? and of what? and on what evidence? Does he really have to be present in court? The fact is, a full hearing of the evidence, and maybe in particular the evidence of the defense, would implicate others in the crimes alleged against the despot. The revolution earnestly wants to truth to come out. These ”others,” perhaps, do not. But who are they?

We know through dialectics that they must belong to a class entity of some considerable strength, otherwise they could not cause state institutions – the military and the courts – to waver in the face of the revolution’s strength. I suggest, the whole argument suggests, the big bourgeoisie, operating in their typically clandestine manner, are that entity. The Islamist subclasses are the only other entity strong enough, and they might have similar interests, but they would act openly, wouldn’t they? And maybe their attitude is already apparent to observers on the scene.

So the counter-revolution has taken up arms. The fight is joined. Control of the state and its apparatus hangs in the balance.