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