The inane politics of Newt Gingrich and his ilk is a symptom of the degeneration of U.S. capitalism, which has created a danger to humanity — Editors

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Answer: no, he is a real idiot. What to say of a man who, a few decades ago as leader of the Republicans, was able to shut down Washington, succeeding in paralyzing government agencies in a political dispute with the Democrats and the White House as a (rather delusional) show of political power? As a consequence, Mr. Gingrich, the “anti-government” ideologue, made everybody, that is, the public at large — contractors, veterans, retired people, businesses, school children, hospital workers and patients, etc. — keenly aware of how much the daily work of the government was vital for the everyday life of the whole nation. I don’t know of a worse piece of political “strategy” than that.

Now, in an interview for a pro-Israel political group, Mr. Gingrich calls the Palestinians an “invented” people. Not only is the man shameless in displaying his profound ignorance and bad faith in public, which is no surprise at all considering Mr. Gingrich himself and the party of the late Ronald Reagan and Bush, but he opens the way to the questioning of Israel itself as an “invented” state. Invented in fact in 1948!

One might begin to think that Mr. Gingrich is an “invented” candidate, invented by the Obama party to facilitate the reelection of a president whose politics of defending the interests of finance capital at all costs has alienated an important part of his support base.

Beyond the episodic nature of the opinions of an ignorant right wing politician (certainly a redundant phrase nowadays), the occurrence is a reminder of the pitiful state of the American political scene, where a man like Newt Gingrich, with his history of private and public scandals and demonstrated incompetence, is at this time a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination.

“When it rains, it pours”, as the saying goes. It appears that the current troubles of the U.S. are only in their initial stages: a general crisis of leadership is ever more patent. It is a crisis of the quality, intelligence and vision of those in positions of power, inside the state apparatuses, inside the party machines, etc, but also within the more restricted or “selective” power circles of the ruling class, right and “left,” conservative or liberal. And when compounded with the structural crisis, it is accelerating the debasement of the once “sole superpower.”

U.S. neoliberal capitalism has created its own Nomenklatura: Closed groups and closed circuits of economic, political and media power are alienated from society at large, from the daily troubles and struggles, from the hopes and needs of the working people. And it is more grave and dangerous that this Nomenklatura increasingly believes in its own fabrications and lies.

This is indeed a sign of a group of people that has exhausted its usefulness. The U.S. ruling circles show more and more signs that they are about to or have already exhausted their capacity to master the crises they are compelled to eternally produce and reproduce in order to sustain their power and the structures of power they depend upon. This is a ruling class clearly condemned – in the long run, if not sooner — to the “dustbin of history.” As the creator of instability for all and of insecurity and misery for the many, it wants to make sure by all means necessary that we all will go down with it.

Just as Mr. Gingrich once paralyzed a Democratic administration, they will act out their fantasies of omnipotence in the same “paranoid-schizophrenic” fashion as the present Republican candidate for the presidential nomination; that is, with acts of violence against a reality that stubbornly frustrates the final realization of their desires: the absolute and universal empire of the commodity form.

In fact, they have already deepened the economic crisis as a matter of policy or strategy: profit at all cost is both the means and the goal. Individuals, social groups and social classes, institutions, countries, and states must all serve the dictatorship of global capital or be disciplined and/or eliminated. Their unchecked power is more and more clearly a danger to us all. Their dream they are acting out is our collective nightmare.

– Paulo Morel is a Latin American writer

The Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, London in 1848.

The Chartist movement of the 1830s and 1840s went beyond 18th century popular radicalism toward socialism.  Leaders like George Julian Harney not only called for social revolution but also published Helen Macfarlane’s first English translation of the Communist Manifesto. This article was first published in The Platypus Review No. 42 (Dec. 2011-Jan. 2012) – Editors

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•  George Karavas
• Dave Eden
• Sandra Rein
• Kevin Anderson

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The 2011 Arab revolutions targeted economic oppression as much as political oppression, focusing not only on real democracy, but also on disparities of wealth, on youth unemployment, and on economic corruption.  In the early months of 2011, this already had an effect in the USA, as seen in the Wisconsin protests to defend labor rights against a very conservative state government.   Over the spring and summer, political protests that targeted economic inequality and oppression sprung up in various countries, especially Spain and Israel, while London experienced serious rioting by urban poor youth.

The Wall Street protests are in the context of the above events, and an outgrowth of them. What is new is that in the fall of 2011 these types of grievances — over economic inequality, unemployment, money politics, and criminality in the finance sector — have finally found a vehicle through which to express themselves in the Occupation movement. The 2011 Arab revolutions, especially in Egypt, showed the world that it is possible for idealistic young people to build a movement, to gain mass support, and then to actually overthrow a government. The sense of hope, the sense that radical change is really possible, was the precipitating factor for the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has succeeded far beyond what its initial organizers hoped.

The Occupy movement involves mainly younger people, most of them with university education, but not from elite backgrounds. This group has seen its own economic situation decline drastically in the last few years.  Many of the core people in the movement have socialist or anarchist beliefs, but its reach among young people is far wider than those relatively small circles.  The Occupiers have created a youth movement — or at least a predominantly youth movement — that has great appeal also to far larger sectors of the population, not only the working class but also large sectors of the middle class as well. This is a very new phenomenon for the USA.  Previous youth movements have not had such wide support from the working classes or the general population.  The fact that they were able to shut down the port in Oakland, the fifth largest one in the USA, on Nov. 2, shows that this is a movement that has already, in less than two months, gained some serious labor support, well beyond its largely youthful base.

The Democratic and Republican factions of neoliberalism now have a third force with which to contend:  a new youth and labor movement that is considerably to the left of either. Moreover, some within this movement are questioning the capitalist system itself.  This is a very new situation for the USA, a type of mass leftist politics not seen since the 1960s.

As the momentum of ‘Anti-Capitalist’ mobilizations gather pace we present a number of reports from our international correspondence, beginning with Miriam Qamar’s from Oakland.

Kevin Anderson and David Black

OAKLAND, 4 November 2011

I have been pretty plugged-in to Occupy Oakland and more generally work around police brutality and other forms of state violence in Oakland and San Francisco, so I thought I would give a brief report back of my analysis/experience. Before the raid (on what we now refer as the Oakland Commune), there was criticism in regards to the space retaining a political integrity and direction. However, the self-organizing was impressive, with a free school/library, a kitchen, first aid, etc. General Assemblies had been convened almost every evening and the night before the raid we were starting to adopt more tangible proposals (which could only passed with a 90% consensus) such as working with parents and school workers in an action to stop the closure of 5 Oakland schools. The Tuesday night after the raid, people reconvened and took back the camp after being hit with tear gas (note the tear gas canisters are exported from the same manufacturer that provides for Israel,) paint balls, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. A comrade arrested that night and taken (as overflow) to Santa Rita jail, recalled to me being beat by 4 correctional officers and than being visited by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)  several times after his release. The space was successfully reclaimed and workshops and committees meet as part of an ongoing schedule (http://www.occupyoakland.org/). The General Assembly the day after this initial confrontation with police, voted on a General Strike. We had a teach-in on the historical context of what a General Strike had looked like in Oakland in 1946, where transportation workers had been instrumental. The outreach effort was pretty well done prior to the strike, and given the support of the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) Local 10 in the past, there was an effort made from that end to encourage workers to not cross the picket line. They ended up shutting down their own port in the day, and when people marched to the docks that evening, we stopped that shift too. There were so many people I cannot fathom the number but I think 10,000 is probably an understatement. There was an anti-capitalist march that circled the larger downtown area at 2 pm that day. We had a good red flag contingent going with signs like “Seize the means of production” : ) There was minimal police presence (visible presence at least) throughout the day. Around 11:30 pm, another action was taken up (that had been passed in a previous General Assembly) to occupy bank owned property across from the plaza where the occupy Oakland commune was. I was in favor of this as it was a directed action, and reclaiming bank owned property seemed like part of a larger end goal and strategy. However, there are always agent provocateurs, opportunist or insurrectionist forces that come into play and deviate from a strategic occupation. There have been divisive moments in political organizing in oakland both ideologically and tactically, especially between black nationalists and anarchists, but a lot of work has been done to reconcile this, as I believe people have a general understanding that when the cops show up it is an effort to control the narrative and shape the situation regardless of what is happening at the time. Anyway, the police came with 8 rows of 60 cops, let out the tear gas and all, arrested about 70 people, and nearly raided the camp again. People held their ground, fought back, and will reconvene for a General Assembly tomorrow night at 7 pm. Now the real organizing work has to be done, with engaging the militant allies we have in the union if we want to reclaim the port again (while simultaneously challenging the union economism), building trust with local small business owners and workers so to not lose the support of the community despite the property destruction from last night, and maybe occupy one of the 5 schools that Oakland shut down last week. In all, Occupy Oakland is a very dynamic but organized space, with a growing political consciousness. It is assertively anti-capitalist, therefore expanding the narrow ‘corporate greed’, ‘rebuild the middle class’ rhetoric which seems to dominate many other Occupy(Wall street) protests. There are committees working towards expanding the discourse even further to better encompass internationalism, a decolonize framework, foreign occupation and aid, war, as well as highlight how people of color and immigrant communities should be at the forefront of an analysis of economic disparities. 

 Miriam Qamar

DENVER, 7 November 2011

For the last three Saturdays I have taken part in the Occupy Denver protests and marches against the growth of immoral and profit-driven inequalities around the country and throughout the world. Upwards to two thousand of us marched through the streets of downtown Denver. The weather for the Saturday rallies and marches has been great, but during the week the Occupy Denver “Occupation” Protestors have to deal with major snow storms. These next statements are from occupydenver.org; “We’re not going anywhere!” ‘Tents stood for barely an hour when Denver Police ordered the removal of all shelter from the snow storm. Disabled veteran William Hall was forcibly removed from his tent by Denver Police Department (DPD) officers and dragged off for arrest. There is a continued heavy Denver Police presence at Civic Center Park, and DPD officers have vowed to use their resources to destroy an igloo built by Occupy Denver at 11 PM MST.’ This threat and several other police actions were carried out by the DPD.

DPD is known for its brutality toward protestors. During the last Democratic National Convention, the DPD allowed their horses to trample a protesting Iraq War Veteran, seriously injuring him. Of course we see the same treatment of protestors in other cities, e.g. Oakland where Iraq War Veteran, Scott Olsen was critically injured by a tear gas canister fired by the Oakland Police and hitting Scott Olsen in the head.

I believe police brutality is inevitable in a society that allows the torture and murder of political prisoners and prefers the assassinations of American citizens by unmanned drones to due process under the law. This leads to the empowerment of the police, which is a dangerous development, especially for existing society. All the major rebellions from “Watts 1965” through the recent revolts in France and England have been instigated by police actions.

The last two Saturday Occupy Denver marches were routed down 17^th Street in downtown Denver, a man made canyon where all the regional “banksters” have their skyscraper office buildings. It was definitely exhilarating to hear our chant “’Banks’ got bailed out, ‘We’ got sold out” echo back to us in what is literally a corridor of corporate power. Some of the other chants we recited that I know are used at most other Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Protests, “’Whose’ street, ‘Our’ street”, “We are ‘all’ Scott Olsen”, “’We’ ‘are’ the 99 Percent”. The march stopped briefly at the Denver Federal Reserve Building, where we chanted “The ‘Fed’ is enemy number ‘One’” and at predatory financial institutions e.g. Wells Fargo, Citibank and Chase where an impromptu assembly urged customers to transfer their funds to local credit unions. This was an action to coincide with the bank boycott known as “Bank Transfer Day”. The march concluded back where it started at the Greek Amphitheatre in Civic Center Park with a General Assembly. General Assemblies (GA’s) are held twice a day.

Occupy Denver was endorsed by the Denver Area Labor Federation, AFL CIO; occupydenver.org. The OWS Movement is just beginning in my opinion and it’s too early to tell how it will self-develop. Recently, leather workers in Turkey temporarily occupied a factory in Istanbul. Is this an indication of what is to come, the occupation of factories and work places? Are we going to revisit what happened in Argentina, but hopefully on a higher level?

Numerous topics and issues are taken up by the GA’s which are communicated between various OWS Occupations. The following list includes most, but not all issues; http://www.nycga.net/resources/declaration/. The topic I want to close with is the desire for what OWS calls “horizontal” Democracy, or what is usually referred to as direct or participatory democracy. I believe the OWS Occupations are going to challenge us in the International Marxist-Humanist Organization to follow through with our development of the “Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy” for which Peter Hudis’ forthcoming book ‘Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism’ will provide an essential contribution.

Dale Parsons

LONDON, 31 October 2011

One thing leads to another, often in unexpected ways. As far as I know, no one planned in advance to set up camp outside St. Paul’s cathedral. It just happened to be the closest accessible piece of land to the financial district of the City of London. However, it had the effect of drawing the Church of England (already divided over gay rights) into the controversy. The cathedral authorities are seeking an injunction that would require the protesters to leave (while refusing to say whether they would sanction a forced removal).

However, the days when the Church of England was described as “the Tory Party at prayer” are long gone, and there are many in this and other churches who are sympathetic to the protests and in particular opposed to a forced removal. Two of the cathedral’s own clerics have resigned in protest. Some Christian groups, including the Student Christian Movement, have said they will form a “prayer cordon” to protect the camp from eviction. So the movement is widening.

Richard Abernethy

LONDON, 29 October 2011

The current occupying of St Pauls – some 200 tents – has been highlighted by three events: one, by the resignation of two senior clerics who disagreed with moves to evict the protestors; two, moves for a court injunction to be implemented by City of London and the Church authorities; and three, (not so well known or publicised) was the on incident of a raid Thursday night by City police on the Kurdish tent where some of the inhabitants were harassed and arrested — the only one tent out of 200 to get such treatment. Whilst on the surface the vast number of the protestors appear to be liberals/greens, mainly interested in making “capitalism more human”, underlying this a far more radical complexion,  as displayed in the many hand printed banners and notices posted, striking a more direct anti-capitalist stance. The general meetings/assemblies have been relatively mild in contrast. Both this site and that of the Finsbury Square encampment are linked up with the wider international movement. Here it does not appear to be effectively translated to the Trades Union or wider left movement, but there may be a possibility that this may well be effectively linked politically to the day of the forthcoming 30 November public sector workers’ strike and demonstration.

George Shaw

CHICAGO, 25 October 2011

On Saturday I got to spend a good deal of time at the Occupy Chicago site and protest in downtown Chicago, part of a national (and indeed worldwide) movement that began with the Occupy Wall Street Movement in New York City. The corner of Lsallle and Jackson, in the heart of the financial district, has been occupied for some 3 weeks now, and hundreds of youth and activists from around the Chicago area are taking part. It is a genuine movement with no group or groups in control, even though it need not be said, the various leftist groups have descended upon it. But the movement is far too broad and large to be dominated by any particular group, and the range of opinions from those I spoke with ranged from left of center moderates to liberals to radicalized youth who are quite disgusted with the way the country is going and want to do something about it. Indeed, one of the most impressive aspects of the event on Saturday especially was the number of home made signs, often made on cardboard by students and youth, many of them saying they are disgusted with capitalism.

Several thousand attended the march on Saturday, where an effort was made to set up a permanent encampment in Grant Park, site of the protests at the 1968 democratic convention. Dozens were arrested, and this time (175 were arrested a week before) the police acted rather brutally, holding many of those arrested for at least 24 hours. But that is not going to tamp down this movement; despite the onset of winter, I have every reason to think this movement will continue for some time.

Peter Hudis

OAKLAND, Oct 25th, 2011 8:00 AM

“The camp looks like a tornado went through it. Everything is destroyed, and it is currently occupied by hundreds of police.”

IndyBay spoke with Tim, an organizer with Occupy Oakland, at 7:45 am on Tuesday, just a few hours after numerous police agencies raided the encampment, using rubber bullets, tear gas and flash-bang grenades against activists, before arresting dozens of them. 

This is what he said: 

“Around 2 am word spread that riot police were massing in around the area where Occupy Oakland has been for more than two weeks. Hundreds of people gathered and began to make non-violent barricades at all the entrances to the plaza.

At about 4:30 am, riot police appeared on all corners of the encampment. There were roughly 500 to 700 riot police in total.

The entire plaza was completely barricaded on all sides, with palates, trash cans, chairs, a gigantic christmas wreath, police barricades from a neighboring street.

Occupiers began chanting ‘go home’ as they always do when police show up at Occupy Oakland, but it quickly became clear that there was an overwhelming number of police from at least four different jurisdictions.

As people continued to chant and fell back within the barricade, off of the street, the police announced that we would be arrested within the encampment. They said [they'd use force to disperse demonstrators within] five minutes, and within a minute they fired the first rounds of flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets, and then tear gas into the camp, hitting and injuring multiple people.

At this point much of the crowd began to flee through an area the police had opened up to flush the crowd out. All those who remained were arrested. 

We know of roughly 70 arrests and multiple injuries, none of them extremely serious, but many for sure.

At this time people are still standing up to the police line. The camp looks like a tornado went through it. Everything is destroyed, and it is currently occupied by hundreds of police.

We’re asking for public condemnations of police repression of the occupy movement in Oakland and we’re also saying that people should re-converge at 14th and Madison at the public library for an emergency demonstration at 4 pm today (Tuesday).”

Jesse S

DENVER, 22 October 2011

There is a lot of communication between various occupations that has resulted in their sharing common features. At the same time, there are unique features to each location e.g. the near fatal incident At Occupy Oakland where an Iraq War Veteran, Scott Olsen, was hit in the head with what was believed to be a tear gas canister. Scott Olsen remains in critical condition at an area hospital, and this incident has only strengthened the Occupy Oakland Movement.

Last Saturday in Denver, approximately 1000 of us marched through the streets in downtown Denver in unseasonably warm weather, but now the Occupy Denver Protestors are having to deal with the first major snow storm of the season. These next statements are from occupydenver.org;  ”We’re not going anywhere!” ‘Tents stood for barely an hour when Denver Police ordered the removal of all shelter from the snow storm. Disabled veteran William Hall was forcibly removed from his tent by DPD officers and dragged off for arrest. There is a continued heavy Denver Police presence at Civic Center Park, and DPD officers have vowed to use their resources to destroy an igloo built by Occupy Denver at 11 PM MST.’

Dale Parsons

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With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dominant Western paradigm for interpreting international conflict underwent something of a transformation. No longer seen as a death match between capitalist “freedom” and communist “slavery,” international conflict instead came to be understood by many as stemming from cultural differences. That is, the world was seen as being enveloped by a “clash of civilizations.” With the intellectual backing of influential academics in the West like Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, this worldview has served as a new bunker mentality, especially in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.[1] According to this view, the United States is not at war because of its policies. Rather, what is under siege is Western culture itself, the barbarians mercilessly pounding at the gates.[2]

From its outset, the notion of a clash of civilizations encountered critics on the Left—thinkers like Edward Said who dismissed it as nothing more than a foolish delusion, as “a gimmick like ‘The War of the Worlds.’”[3] More recently, Gilbert Achcar turned this infamous thesis completely on its head, suggesting that what we have before us in the age of the global “War on Terror” is not a clash of civilizations, but rather a clash of barbarisms—the barbarism of the strong (the United States and its military, the transnational capitalist class, and the neoliberal agenda) versus the barbarism of the weak (reactionary theocrats and fundamentalist terrorists).[4] Thus, the world is not ensconced in a battle between primordially opposed civilizations, a kind of tribal feud gone global. Rather, a war is being waged between the oppressors in power and the underdog oppressors out of power, between the warmongers in Washington and their equally reactionary adversaries abroad. Meanwhile, the rest of humanity is held hostage, standing on the sidelines and serving only as innocent casualties as the deadly doppelgangers remained locked in their perpetual war of attrition. Obama and Osama, then, share more in common than a mere similarity in name. They represent mirror images of each other, two sides of the same atrocious coin—one symbolizing the barbarism of the strong and the other, though dead, symbolizing the barbarism of the weak. The major difference between them is just one of killing power. It is the difference suggested in Saint Augustine’s lesson of the pirate and the emperor; while the former simply molests the sea, the latter molests the whole world.[5]

But neither of these paradigms is sufficient to make sense of the Arab Spring. While one may still detect lingering traces of the old antagonism at play—i.e., the clash of barbarisms in Libya between NATO and the forces of the late Muammar Qaddafi—the Arab Spring is operating at an entirely different level. It is as if the “silent majority”—to borrow a rather clumsy phrase popularized by an even clumsier president—has come together in acts of sustained, collective rebellion throughout the region to oppose the twin barbarisms of our age. Thus, the Arab Spring came as a surprise not only to the dictators in power but also to the old guard—Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. The protests that have swept across North Africa and the Middle East, from the Maghreb to Mesopotamia and beyond, are not the collective expression of the barbarian hordes venting their rage and fury against the symbols of civilized stability, law, and order. Rather, quite the opposite is true. The mass upheavals represent a kind of people’s spring cleaning, an attempt to oust the barbarians from their tyrannical seats of power—the Ben Alis and Mubaraks, the Qaddafis and Assads, the neoliberal dictators and totalitarian thugs. Thus, the barbarians are not at the gates; they are already in them.

But just how revolutionary are these protests? Indeed, can they even justifiably be described as revolutions at all? Karl Marx, writing in 1844, understood revolution to be a phenomenon which transformed all of society—not just a change of the person in power, but a radical transformation of a society in its entirety. As he put it, “Every revolution dissolves the old order of society; to that extent it is social. Every revolution brings down the old ruling power; to that extent it is political.”[6] In other words, according to Marx, a revolution must have both social and political components.

An examination of the revolts of the Arab Spring indicates that thus far they still fall short of Marx’s standard. While in some cases dictators have been toppled, state power and the greater nexus of social relations have hardly been transformed at all. Thus, even the most promising revolts of the Arab Spring still occupy that nebulous gray zone existing somewhere between reform and revolution. This unsettled nature of the revolts is precisely what Asef Bayat was referring to when he suggested that we use the term “refo-lutions” to describe the Arab Spring—something more than mere reform but less than full revolution.[7]

The primary reason for this state of limbo can perhaps be found in the mixed intentions of the protesters themselves. It is ironic as it is unfortunate that one of the uprisings’ greatest attributes, their seemingly leaderless, almost anarchic nature, might just prove in the end to be their single most fatal flaw. While there is great unity in protest, even this unity may quickly dissolve as soon as the dust begins to settle. Bringing down a regime is no easy feat, but compared to the challenges of building a new society, it is child’s play.

While Western media portrayals of the events have typically concentrated on the question of democracy, it is clear that these protests did not merely represent calls for Western-style democratic rights. None of the protests can be understood properly without also taking into consideration the class element—that is, the widespread economic injustice that was experienced in both the neoliberal autocracies (i.e., Egypt and Tunisia) and the totalitarian fiefdoms (i.e., Libya and Syria). Nevertheless, a collective rebellion against kleptocratic injustice alone by no means indicates that we are about to witness the coming of a new, socialist dawn. The peoples’ uprisings have indeed had their fair share of working class resisters and socialist activists, but this description hardly applies to everyone who shouted slogans in the streets.

Bereft of a single, unifying vision for a future socialist society, it is quite probable that the people of North Africa and the Middle East who have lived so long under repression will have, at the very best, gained certain political rights, but at the price of remaining in subservient economic bondage. On this point, the example of South Africa casts a long, ominous shadow. There, the people who fought with all their mind, body, and soul to end political apartheid woke up the next day only to discover that their newly liberated limbs remained shackled by the heavy chains of economic apartheid. In South Africa, the long walk to freedom continues. A similar situation may very well come about as the result of the Arab Spring, and the protesters may eventually find that even though they put their lives on the line for revolution, all they got in the end was piecemeal reform.

While such a development is indeed lamentable, the winning of political rights should not be callously belittled as nothing more than a meaningless exercise in bourgeois theater. Simple reforms guaranteeing such things as new elections (Egypt) or the abolition of the secret police (Tunisia) are indeed real advances even if the larger issue of economic injustice is left unresolved. As Max Horkheimer once put it, “[T]here is no possible way of getting to know a penitentiary unless one is really locked up in it,”[8] and it is entirely too easy for those living lives of relative comfort and luxury in the West to fail to understand just how miserable the conditions are on the ground in those places that do not have such “bourgeois” rights. As Leo Huberman, responding to the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring, put it more than four decades ago,

They wanted freedom of speech and freedom of the press. What’s wrong with that? […] [T]ry living for a while in a society where you are afraid to say what you think, or print what you believe, and you will be convinced very quickly that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are indeed precious and absolutely essential to a sane society.[9]

If the uprisings in the Arab world do not yet constitute a total social revolution, this does not mean that they are unimportant or that they represent nothing more than distractions from the class struggle. Not only does such a position reek of callousness and cold indifference towards the suffering of others, but it also runs counter to the historical claims of Marxist socialism. As V.I. Lenin acknowledged, “We are in favour of a democratic republic as the best form of the state for the proletariat under capitalism; but we have no right to forget that wage slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic.”[10] In other words, Lenin approved of reform on the condition that it was part of the larger revolutionary struggle. He was in favor of a democratic republic even though he knew this political form was not the one-stop, magic cure-all solution to all of the ills of capitalist injustice. Political reform was not an end in itself but rather a means to an end. This was precisely the position articulated by Rosa Luxemburg who famously argued that “there exists an indissoluble tie between social reforms and revolution. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its goal.”[11]

Even with these precedents, however, it is not entirely surprising that this debate is occurring within the Left over whether or not to support the not-quite-socialist, not-quite-reformist, and not-quite-revolutionary uprisings of the Arab Spring. Indeed, this debate has been waged before. During the American Civil War, Friedrich Engels voiced his frustration with the Unionists for failing to exhibit signs of class consciousness. “Where, amongst the people, is there any revolutionary energy?” he wrote in a letter to Marx. “If only there were some evidence, some indication, that the masses in the North were beginning to act as in France in 1792 and 1793, everything would be splendid.”[12]

Despite Engels’ disenchantment, however, Marx remained steadfast in his commitment to the North, recognizing that a Union victory would mean the end of American slavery. Marx harbored no illusions about the Union Army, and he understood that it represented no proletarian class. However, Marx hoped that with his support, he could encourage the radicalization of the North, thereby helping to bring out its concealed revolutionary potential. When Marx saw evidence of such radicalization, he was overjoyed. Thus, after receiving news of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Marx was compelled to quote in Italian the legendary—and probably apocryphal—words that were defiantly muttered by a recalcitrant Galileo when he appeared before the Inquisition and was forced to renounce his discovery that the earth rotates around the sun: “E pur si muove”—and still it moves.[13] That is, Marx greeted the news as a confirmation that his position was indeed the right one and that radical progress in the United States—including the end of primitive slavery—was possible.

Marx’s position of extending critical support to an imperfect party presents us with an example for how to approach the events of the Arab Spring. That the uprisings represent something less than an ideal socialist utopian revolution is without question. But to wait for the rise of the perfect proletarian class is to wait for something that will never come. It is to hang one’s hopes on a fairy tale, to behave no differently than those religious zealots who pine away for the Second Coming of Christ. We are dealing here with real people and real problems, not abstract ideals and neat theoretical models. Revolutions—or even mere uprisings—are a messy business indeed. Thus, rather than waiting for a pure revolution that will never materialize, the correct position vis-à-vis the Arab Spring would be precisely the one adopted by Marx towards the Civil War. The less-than-perfect uprisings comprised of less-than-perfect rebels should be critically supported, and in so doing, those revolutionary elements within them should be encouraged to reach their full potential.

In his debate with Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Zizek suggested that, given a choice between class struggle and postmodernism, one should answer with a bold exclamation: “Yes, please!”[14] In other words, Zizek rejects the binary logic and zero-sum mentality of the question and instead proposes an all-encompassing solution, a third way. He wants to have his cake and eat it, too. A similar choice presents itself with the Arab Spring. Do we meekly accept the reformist tendencies or do we insist on the development of a full-blown, class conscious, proletarian revolution? Given a choice between the two, we should do like Zizek and happily take both.

There is still a great risk that the Arab Spring will end badly. The chances of cooptation are great, and the street power that has taken the region by storm may very well lead to nothing more than the replacement of one dictator with another—only this time, perhaps one with less of a Mubarak-like grimace and more of a King Abdallah-like grin. Indeed, we can already discern certain trends that testify to the probability of this grim possibility being realized. When protesters surrounded the tanks of the Egyptian military with their bodies, the drivers emerged only to be greeted with cheers and handshakes. It was as if the protesters had managed to coopt the military, to bring them to their side or, at the very least, to neutralize them in the simmering conflict with the Mubarak regime. It is perhaps out of this atmosphere of optimistic idealism that some Egyptians did not think twice about temporarily handing the reins of power over to the military upon Mubarak’s forced ejection. Such hopes soon proved naïve, and the Egyptian military immediately began replicating some of the old repressive tactics of intimidation and control that the people had fought against, cracking down on workers’ strikes and administering intrusive virginity tests to detained female activists. Thus, the historic groundswell of protests in Egypt initially seemed to have only succeeded in removing the figurehead of oppression from power and not the oppressive system itself. Mubarak was gone, but the structures of repressive authority remained.

It is also possible and even probable that the mass upheavals will do nothing more than create the conditions for a complete capitalist takeover. Though the uprisings were clearly not a preplanned part of the neoliberal agenda, these revolts might yet function to further consolidate capitalism’s stranglehold over the region. While the neoliberal remolding of Iraq came at an enormous domestic political price in the United States, the Libyan masses have already done much of the initial work themselves. All that was required to put the imperialists’ foot in the door was just a little push by NATO forces. Here, one should resist the fiction so often peddled by Qaddafi’s various defenders who claim that his regime represented a stalwart refuge of anti-capitalist politics; in point of fact, international conglomerates were already operative in Libya long before the revolution began. Thus, the chances of the resistance movement’s actions merely paving a path for new oppressors—the transnational capitalist class and their multinational corporations—are great indeed. Hamid Dabashi, who nonetheless supported the toppling of Qaddafi, is thus completely justified in expressing his fear regarding Libya’s future. “I […] am far more scared of neoliberalism than I am scared of tribalism or Islamism.”[15]

There is thus no guarantee that the optimism of the Arab Spring will not end in bitter failure, no certainty that the overthrowing of Ben Ali or Qaddafi will not eventually give rise to new Ben Alis and new Qaddafis. Just as in the ill-fated outcome of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the barbarians could still win the day.

Despite these risks, the Arab Spring still has great potential. As much as many on both the Left and the Right may insist otherwise, history never unfolds the same way twice. Economic models and algorithms, whether formulated by Milton Friedman or by some old Soviet theoretician, are not the crystal balls they are made out to be. It is impossible to know how these events will turn out, and there is always that slight chance, that fleeting glimmer of hope, that these protests will give way to new, liberating possibilities, that the reforms won today will eventually lead to dramatic revolutionary changes in the distant future. In other words, these reforms could signify just the beginning of a far broader social transformation. One is reminded here of those reports of neighborhood patrols and roadblocks that were sporadically set up and erected in Cairo for protection and safety during the turbulent weeks in which Mubarak was still desperately clinging to power. Overnight, neighbors that had barely known each other became comrades. These bonds are still there, and their existence could help facilitate future coordinated actions.

There is also the possibility that the zeal of the protests in one place could sow the seeds of revolution somewhere else. Indeed, the rebellious energy of the Arab Spring quickly spread throughout the region and even inspired events in some of the most unexpected of places—places like Israel and Madison, Wisconsin. Here, one should not overlook the ties between the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement. The first issue of the so-called Occupied Wall Street Journal released by protesters in New York featured on its front page a story with the title “Learning from the World” which connected the dots between the Tunisian uprising against Ben Ali and the growing protest movement in the United States. Thus, even if an uprising in one country fails, it might inspire success elsewhere. One never knows when a street demonstration in the Middle East might spur on a protest even in the Middle West.

The Arab Spring has not yet run its full course. The embers of revolutionary fire that were first ignited by the desperate act of a desperate person in Tunisia have not yet burned out, even if the spring has changed into summer and even if the summer has given way to fall. As the Arab Spring continues, the Left would do well to watch, learn, and extend critical support. And with every advance made and every story of success, the Left should rejoice and recall those four words, “e pur si muove.”

Greg Burris is a former instructor at Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey and a current graduate student in the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This essay is based on remarks he delivered at a roundtable discussion held by the West Coast Marxist-Humanists in Los Angeles.