14/12 The Arab revolutions: Alain Baron

Outline of lecture

1.Introduction: Revolutionary wave, double break with dominant discourse

• 1.1. Orientalist vision from colonial tradition:
  “people from the Arab region doomed to authoritarianism and obscurantism”
  
• 1.2. Dominant discourse since thirty years. “The end of history”:
  the will to prolong for eternity the period starting with the end of the seventies
  

These revolutions do not appear out of the blue or out of the Internet magic:
counter tendencies were already at work and accelerated during the last years.

2. The revolutionary crises in Tunisia and in Egypt

• 2.1. Global context of crisis of capitalism financial, economic and ecological crisis.
• 2.2. Crisis of the dominant oligarchies in power in Tunisia and in Egypt:
  “those from above can not rule anymore like before”
  
• 2.3. “Those from below don’t want to be rules like before anymore”:
  revolt of the youth, mobilisations by the workers and the “intermediary layers”
  
• 2.4. The major phases since January-February in both countries (rather long part)
  
• 2.5. An unstable situation, globally the relationship of forces is maintained,
  the process started at the beginning of 2011 is not closed
  
• 2.6. A chaotic dynamic of extension to the whole of the region
  

3. The limits of these processes

• 3.1. Weakness of self organisation
• 3.2. Absence of revolutionary mass party : a small and fragmented radical left
• 3.3. A difficult link between youth and organisations of adults
• 3.4. In Tunisia, a difficult link between the people of the most developed cities and the poor regions of the interior of the country
• 3.5. Le weight of decades of dictatorship
• 3.6. Mass islamist parties
• 3.7. The essential parts of the previous State apparatus is kept in place
• 3.8. Capacity of the dominant classes and of imperialism to regain the initiative:
• Tunisia:
  • the High Council is installed, they use for their own agenda
    the popular demand for a constituent Assembly
  • attacks against women’s rights
• Egypt:
  • referendum in February
  • legislation against the right to strike
  • attacks against freedom of speech
  • elections in November

4. What Prospects?

• 4.1. A break with capitalism and imperialism: on what conditions
  ( declaration of the Fourth International, interview Hamma Hammami …)
  
• 4.2. Towards a “democratisation at the level of the Maghreb-Machrek region”? (Gus)
  
• 4.3. Towards the stabilisation of religious and conservative regimes?
  (the “Turkish model”)?
  
• 4.4. Towards totalitarian religious regimes?
  

5. Build international solidarity

• Campaign against the debt
• Support for mobilisations of workers, trade-unions,
  defence of women’s rights,
  mobilisations of the youth and for freedom
  
• Help with the building of a revolutionary vanguard