1 April 2011 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – ZSpace

I. Wallerstein

The entire Libyan conflict of the last month — the civil war in Libya, the US-led military action against Gaddafi — is neither about humanitarian intervention nor about the immediate supply of world oil. It is in fact one big distraction — a deliberate distraction — from the principal political struggle in the Arab world. There is one thing on which Gaddafi and Western leaders of all political views are in total accord. They all want to slow down, channel, co-opt, limit the second Arab revolt and prevent it from changing the basic political realities of the Arab world and its role in the geopolitics of the world-system.To appreciate this, one has to follow what has been happening in chronological sequence. Although political rumblings in the various Arab states and the attempts by various outside forces to support one or another element within various states have been a constant for a long time, the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17, 2010 launched a very different process.

It was in my view the continuation of the spirit of the world revolution of 1968. In 1968, as in the last few months in the Arab world, the group that had the courage and the will to launch the protest against instituted authority were young people. They were motivated by many things: the arbitrariness and cruelty and corruption of those in authority, their own worsening economic situation, and above all the insistence on their moral and political right to be a major part of determining their own political and cultural destiny. They have also been protesting against the whole structure of the world-system and the ways in which their leaders have been subordinated to the pressures of outside forces.

These young people were not organised, at least at first. And they were not always totally cognisant of the political scene. But they have been courageous. And, as in 1968, their actions were contagious. Very soon, in virtually every Arab state, without distinction as to foreign policy, they have threatened the established order. When they showed their strength in Egypt, still the key Arab state, everyone began to take them seriously. There are two ways of taking such a revolt seriously. One is to join it and try thereby to control it. And one is to take strong measures to quash it. Both have been tried.

There were three groups who joined it, underlined by Samir Amin in his analysis of Egypt: the traditional and revived left, the middle-class professionals and the Islamists. The strength and character of these groups has varied in each of the Arab countries. Amin saw the left and the middle-class professionals (to the extent that they were nationalist and not transnational neoliberals) as positive elements and the Islamists, the last to get on the bandwagon, as negative elements. And then there is the army, always the bastion of order, which joined the Egyptian revolt late, precisely in order to limit its effect.

Libya and intervention

So, when the uprising began in Libya, it was the direct result of the success of the revolts in the two neighbouring countries, Tunisia and Egypt. Gaddafi is a particularly ruthless leader and has been making horrific statements about what he would do to traitors. If, very soon, there were strong voices in France, Great Britain and the United States to intervene militarily, it was scarcely because Gaddafi was an anti-imperialist thorn in their side. He sold his oil willingly to the West and he boasted of the fact that he helped Italy stem the tide of illegal immigration. He offered lucrative arrangements for Western business.

The intervention camp had two components: those for whom any and all military interventions by the West are irresistible, and those who argued the case for humanitarian intervention. They were opposed very strongly in the United States by the military, who saw a Libyan war as unwinnable and an enormous military strain on the United States. The latter group seemed to be winning out, when suddenly the resolution of the Arab League changed the balance of forces.

How did this happen? The Saudi government worked very hard and effectively to get a resolution passed endorsing the institution of a no-fly zone. In order to get unanimity among the Arab states, the Saudis made two concessions. The demand was only for a no-fly zone and a second resolution was adopted opposing the intrusion of any Western land forces.

Saudi role

What led the Saudis to push this through? Did someone from the United States telephone someone in Saudi Arabia and request this? I think it was quite the opposite. This was an instance of the Saudis trying to affect US policy rather than the other way around. And it worked. It tipped the balance.

What the Saudis wanted, and what they got, was a big distraction from what they thought most urgent, and what they were doing — a crackdown on the Arab revolt, as it affected first of all Saudi Arabia itself, then the Gulf states, then elsewhere in the Arab world.

As in 1968, this kind of anti-authority revolt creates strange splits in the countries affected, and creates unexpected alliances. The call for humanitarian intervention is particularly divisive. The problem I have with humanitarian intervention is that I’m never sure it is humanitarian. Advocates always point to the cases where such intervention didn’t occur, such as Rwanda. But they never look at the cases where it did occur. Yes, in the relatively short run, it can prevent what would otherwise be a slaughter of people. But in the longer run, does it really do this? To prevent Saddam Hussein’s short-run slaughters, the United States invaded Iraq. Have fewer people been slaughtered as a result over a 10-year period? It doesn’t seem so.

Advocates seem to have a quantitative criterion. If a government kills 10 protesters, this is ‘normal’ if perhaps worthy of verbal criticism. If it kills 10,000, this is criminal, and requires humanitarian intervention. How many people have to be killed before what is normal becomes criminal? 100, 1000?

Today, the Western powers are launched on a Libyan war, with an uncertain outcome. It will probably be a morass. Has it succeeded in distracting the world from the ongoing Arab revolt? Perhaps.We don’t know yet. Will it succeed in ousting Gaddafi? Perhaps.We don’t know yet. If Gaddafi goes, what will succeed him? Even US spokespeople are worrying about the possibility that he will be replaced either with his old cronies or with al Qaeda, or with both.

The US military action in Libya is a mistake, even from the narrow point of view of the United States, and even from the point of view of being humanitarian. It won’t end soon. President Obama has explained his actions in a very complicated, subtle way. What he has said essentially is that if the president of the United States, in his careful judgement, deems an intervention in the interests of the United States and the world, he can and should do it. I do not doubt that he agonised over his decision. But that is not good enough. It’s a terrible, ominous and ultimately self-defeating proposition.

In the meantime, the best hope of everyone is that the second Arab revolt renews steam — perhaps a long shot now — and shakes first of all the Saudis.”

Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (born September 28, 1930, New York City) is an American sociologist, historical social scientist, and world-systems analyst. His bimonthly commentaries on world affairs are syndicated[1].

The absence of revolutionary political leadership in the working class has enabled, at least for the time being, the Egyptian bourgeoisie to regroup.

By Joseph Kishore | 30 March 2011

Egyptian protesters.

The pace with which events follow each other is characteristic of a revolutionary period. On a global scale, there is an increasing polarization of society along class lines. Two and a half years after the financial crisis that erupted in the fall of 2008, the corporations and banks are escalating their war on the working class. At the same time, the first few months of the year have already produced a significant growth of popular resistance.

The initial struggles of the working class have made it clear that it faces immense and complex political challenges in every country, all of which are centered on the problem of revolutionary leadership.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the heroic battles of workers and youth have so far been unable to achieve any significant degree of democratization, let alone carry through a redistribution of wealth and restructuring of the national economies in the interests of the masses of the people. In Tunisia and Egypt, mass demonstrations and strikes brought down two US-backed dictators, but they have left in place the regimes that formed the backbone of their power.

In Egypt, the military government, hailed by the Obama administration as the guarantor of democracy, is attempting to ban strikes and demonstrations. It is responding no less brutally than its predecessor to the economic and political demands of the Egyptian masses. The absence of revolutionary political leadership in the working class has enabled, at least for the time being, the Egyptian bourgeoisie to regroup. The ruling class has been assisted by the official opposition organizations, which reject the fight for workers’ power and socialism, and have worked to subordinate the working class to the existing capitalist state.

The official unions worked systematically to subordinate opposition to the Democratic Party, which in states throughout the country, and at the federal level, is implementing cuts and austerity measures no less brutal than those demanded by Walker.

In Europe, workers face a new wave of austerity demands even more extreme than those implemented last year, with signs that spring will bring with it a resumption of the European debt crisis. As in the United States, governments have expended fortunes to bail out the banks and are now demanding that the working class pay. The one-day general strikes organized by the trade unions last year did little more than let off steam, giving the ruling class time to plan another offensive.

The war in Libya has exposed the consequences of the crisis of leadership. Popular opposition to the regime of Gaddafi, lacking an independent revolutionary democratic and anti-capitalist program, has been hijacked by imperialism to serve its own ends.

Moreover, the support for the dirty colonial war being waged by the United States and its European allies has laid bare the unbridgeable social and political chasm that separates the interests of the working class, on an international scale, from the liberal and “left” representatives of the bourgeoisie. In the name of “human rights”—a slogan selectively employed to justify neo-colonial wars—the old “left” protest movements and parties, representing the interests and views of the most affluent sections of the upper middle class, have aligned themselves with imperialism. Moreover, while endorsing “human rights” imperialism, these parties and organizations do everything in their power to block the development of working class struggles against the austerity policies of the ruling class in their own countries. In the United States, this takes the form of supporting the administration of Barack Obama, even as he continues and expands upon the reactionary policies, at home and abroad, of his hated predecessor.

—JOSEPH KISHORE is a senior political analyst with the World Socialist Web Site.

The Greanville Post, an independent socialist—but not a Trotskyst publication— is happy to reproduce materials from the World Socialist Web Site, a Trotskyst organization associated with the Socialist Equality Party for the simple reason reason we agree with many of its analyses.  As we both utilize undogmatic Marxian analysis in our work, we inevitably have a high degree of congruency in our positions. This, however, does not negate the fact we also have differences concerning aspects of tactics, priority, strategy and so on. With this caveat in mind, we post here the following announcement by the WSWS/SEP:

The Socialist Equality Party in the United States is holding a series of conferences this month on The Fight for Socialism Today. The first of these conferences will be held on April 9-10 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, followed by conferences in Los Angeles on April 16 and New York on April 30. Since these conferences were called in January, the events of the year have demonstrated their historical significance as a critical stage in the building of a socialist leadership in the United States.

The WSWS urges all its readers in the US to register and make plans to attend one of these conferences today. If you cannot attend, or live outside the US, contact the SEP and its youth organization, the International Students for Social Equality, and make the decision to join today. As the world enters a new era of revolutionary struggle, now is the time to take up the fight for socialism.

To register for the conference, click here.

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford