Excerpts
“The ideological character of the uprisings went through a similar evolution. In the early stages, the revolutionaries fashioned themselves as belonging to a post-ideological movement. In reality, though, they were as ideological as any political movement — but their worldview simply mirrored international liberal norms, a doctrine so thoroughly internalized that it seemed like common sense. The movements for democracy were articulated through an individualistic, rights-based discourse, with a special emphasis on human rights. Among the revolutionary leadership, there was almost no talk of substantive equality, wealth redistribution, or property relations. The liberal revolutionaries appealed to the “international community,” which usually meant the Western powers.
To understand what happened, we must grapple with the changing social structure in the Arab world over the previous four decades. Both liberal and left explanations fall short because they ignore the role of class in explaining the outcome of the uprisings. They miss the profound shifts in class structure that have taken place in recent years, a transformation that shaped the patterns of mobilization and, ultimately, sealed the revolutions’ fate. Only by bringing class analysis back in can we begin to see that the challenges the revolutionaries faced ran much deeper than lacking foreign support or the correct strategy.
The revolutions that failed did so because the movements lacked the structural power to overthrow the regimes. This power resides in the ability of subaltern actors to engage in collective action that threatens the underlying basis of elite power. Until the 1990s, the Arab world was organized around a social contract wherein the masses were incorporated into state-run bodies, through which they received basic protections from the market as well as a means of representing their interests. In exchange, they surrendered all democratic freedoms, along with the right to independent organization and collective bargaining. The region-wide neoliberal turn, beginning in the early 1990s, unraveled this social contract.
Though the movement lacked formal leaders, an informal leadership emerged, comprised of middle- and upper-middle-class individuals who had been excluded by crony capitalist liberalization. Early on, these individuals were pivotal in giving the movements a liberal orientation. Later, as their liberal ideas became discredited, Islamists and strongmen won mass support.
This article will provide a broad historical overview of the rise of the social contract across the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It will then detail how the neoliberal turn undid this contract and restructured the Arab working class, which both propelled and doomed the uprisings. Finally, it will examine these dynamics in depth through an analysis of the Syrian and Tunisian revolutions.”
The full article is accessed via an institutional subscription
Comments