The Spring Revolution: Age Of Hope And Time For Disappointment
By Tahir M. Qazi, MD
08 July, 2011
Countercurrents.org
Introduction
A tide of revolutions is sweeping across the Middle East. It is the newest unfolding chapter in the history of revolutions that historians and political and social scientists alike are looking at with awe. Unfortunately, with the exception of a few peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe, history has not seen revolutionary social changes without violence. In this article, I will try to explore the “Arab Spring” under the light of various theories of revolutions.
The rockets landed at the Yemen’s presidential palace on the 3rd of June, 2011 were an impolite reminder of the fall of Bastille on July 14, 1789 during the French Revolution. King Louis XVI’s trusted servant, Liancourt approached the king about the events of that fateful day. The King, already aware of the events, had retired for the day. He interposed; so it is a revolt. The courtier slowly shook his head, “No Sire, it’s a revolution.” History confirmed that the servant had a better sense of social change than the King. The servant perfectly understood the difference between revolt and a revolution. Beyond the real truth of this story, monarchs, dictators, autocrats and semi-legitimate rulers have always been oblivious to the verdict of history – they have to go.
Crises and Social Change
Revolutions, “the locomotives of history” are not small events. They are sweeping phenomena and drawn out processes. Revolutions vary widely in the timing of their occurrence. Even though every revolution is unique given the specific history, culture and the context, there is a family resemblance. Conspicuously, revolutions are hard to manufacture. Actually, “Revolutions are not made; they come.”
The mystery that they come has been the subject of study for a long time.
Why do revolutions come? Rhetorically, they do not come to awaken people from tranquility when they are well-fed, living in peace and enjoying personal freedoms. Revolutions come when people are left with no option but to cast off oppression and they are willing to accept uncertainty and dangers lying ahead. Once people realize that they can defeat despair with resolve and create hope for a new future - at that mysterious moment on the stage of history, revolution is a rational outcome of an irrational preceding history. In the flow of history, revolutionary violence is the rapture of the oppressed masses.
Revolutions are extremely complex social phenomena. If history is a guide, revolutions occurred when state as an institution weakened, power struggle broke out within the ruling elites and a broad coalition of even divergent ideological and social streams came together. These crises in the existing systems provide an opening called revolutionary situation. The necessary ingredients of a revolution do not align easily. Therefore, revolutions are rare in history and their predictability is even more difficult.
Studying Revolution
Every revolution is made up of at least three components: causes, process and outcomes. Theories of revolution variously focus on one or more of these components. A unified theory of revolution is yet to be formulated because there are several outstanding questions about revolutions: What triggers a revolution? Are there hidden causes of revolutions? What will be the outcome of a revolution? Will it broaden freedoms for the people and how will it shape the future society?
These questions have stirred the imaginations of intellectuals from many disciplines. The approach to the study of revolutions used to be historic-narratives in the early twentieth century and is also known as the natural history approach. In the middle of the last century, sociologists took up analyzing revolutions. They employed the comparative-history technique. Lately, analytical sociology has forwarded many new credible theories of revolution, none of which is accepted as perfect. Nonetheless, these intellectual endeavors have added to the perceptive and perspective dimensions of the study of revolutions. Long before that, scholars from every discipline owe a great deal to Karl Marx who pioneered this subject.
Ideology in a Revolution
Ideologies are usually misconceived as the protagonist of a revolution. Interestingly, ideologies are never the underlying cause of a revolution in any society. Ideologies only ride on the revolutionary tide.
Still, it is important to note that religious ideologies thrive in gloomy existential conditions. When revolutionary situations arise, ideologues are ready to roll their sleeves to reorganize society according to their vision. Paradoxically, when social structures are crumbling, religious groups are better organized.
It may not be out of place to point out that Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia and Al-Qaida in Yemen and Libya may come out as winners in the current turmoil just because of their resource-mobilization capacities. Hardened ideologues come out as winners at the end of a revolution. A narrow vision of winner-ideologues constricts social freedoms at the end of a revolutionary process. It poses a challenge for revolutionaries how to be liberators without being authoritarian. Historic revolutions have not been able to resolve this paradox.
There are many variables in the process of a revolution. Specifically, in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria, an intact military will exert influence on the outcome. The end result in these countries may not be as liberating as one would hope to see.
As a historic parallel, British, French, Russian, Chinese, Cuban and Iranian revolution, all of them ended up in dictatorships of General Cromwell, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Castro and Mullahs respectively. While proffered intentions of all revolutionaries were to restore freedoms, in the face of recurring history, it is hard to think of oppression after the revolution as a coincidence of history. It is an important problem about the natural history of revolutionary outcomes.
Social Revolution or Political Revolution
Before moving on, it would be instructive to clarify basic terminology of social change for better understanding. Revolts and rebellions are a limited phenomenon of unrest carried out by pressure groups. They help solve a few issues but they do not bring about basic social change. Ideologies have a role neither in the causation of a crisis nor in material solutions to the issues at hand.
Revolution, on the other hand, is a basic transformation in the state structure, society’s institutions, rights and privileges and social relations. This understanding has evolved in the past century owing to the scholarly works of many theorists, particularly Theda Skocpol. She makes a distinction between social revolutions and political revolutions. She suggests that social change that comes from the bottom by the people is “Social Revolution” as in France, Russia, China, Cuba and Iran among others. Distinctly, political revolutions come from the top and are mostly aimed at securing elite-rights and masses reap a few benefits, if at all, due to trickle-down effect. As an exception, Meiji Reformation in Japan certainly started from the top about 150 years ago. It altered the fundamentals of the Japanese society like a social revolution.
From Theory to Reality - Pyramid of Injustice
From self-immolation of a young man that triggered uprising in Tunisia, the fire of revolts has engulfed Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. Everyone is wondering whether these revolts against autocracy will be able to transform the basic fabric of their respective societies. History will fathom the social change and decide whether the struggle of masses in the contemporary “Arab Spring” would be worthy of the title “Revolution” or sacrifices and dreams of people will go down in history as a footnote - revolts.
Regardless, people have started to stand up to their rulers. There are similarities in the ruling class of the Middle Eastern societies: Zine el-Abidine in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt, Qaddafi in Libya, Saleh in Yemen and Assad’s in Syria have all ruled in an autocratic manner like their cohorts in the other parts of the world. Jack Goldstone draws a parallel that these rulers have enjoyed powers for almost the same number of decades as the previous generation of autocrats and dictators in Mexico, Iran, Nicaragua and Philippines etc.
As a rule, autocracy fosters a few elites and creates a social pyramid where power, wealth and opportunities are concentrated at the top. In reality, it can be better termed as Pyramid of Injustice. The autocratic rulers with the help of their foreign sponsors create dependent states. In the world-system paradigm, the nexus between the foreign sponsors and dependent-states has important ramifications for the local population and its institutions for overt and covert reasons.
Globalization and Revolutions
Globalization is not a revolution in the classical sense but it is revolutionizing social relations in every country in the world. It is knitting every nation-state in a financial meta-structure that has the ability to operate on the top of nation-state system. Globalization process has four aspects that influence every country to a varying degree – resource globalization, financial globalization, political globalization and cultural globalization. A detailed discussion on this topic is beyond the purview of this article but mechanics of globalization has an intense interest in those places where there are natural resources and potential for financial marketing.
Following this logic, the Middle East is unfortunate for it has “Resource Curse” and strategic interests of many foreign states, transnational corporations and international financial institutions. Principles of social change good for the past revolutions are not sufficient to explain social change in the third world. Theories of revolution in the third world need to factor in the following: dependent development, globalization, foreign military interventions, political manipulations and the effect of conditions imposed by international lenders on the local social policies.
Egypt as a Case Study
In this respect, Egypt is a good case study. Historically, Egypt has received a lot of US financial support. In 2010, for instance, the US funneled 1.3 billion dollars for the military and 250 million dollars for the civil society for a population of 82 million. It translates into 3 dollars per civilian per year. The apparent ratio of financial aid for military to civil society tells us that the aid helped reinforce oppression of masses more than stabilizing the civil society.
As a direct result of the financial aid over the years, military in Egypt has evolved as the biggest entrepreneur. It manufactures virtually everything. It stands to reason that military would have a strong interest in the industrial workers’ relations and rights. There were many strikes by the industrial workers in the past few years in Egypt. Those strikes were brutally put down and remained unreported in the mass media for obvious reasons. Egyptian elites have been thriving on, like other oppressive regimes, a corrupt mechanism for the distribution of resources from top to bottom. Inevitably, the paltry services that trickle to the bottom of the pyramid are insufficient to sustain it.
Disenfranchised commoners who gradually lose rights, freedoms and wellbeing under the growing burden of ruling-elites cannot make a stable social foundation for the pyramid of injustice forever. In the due course of time, disenfranchised masses, widespread that they generally are, become part of rulers’ vulnerabilities too when economic crises strike or when the foreign sponsors withdraw financial or diplomatic support.
Demographic Theory of Revolutions
Social fragmentation also worsens if demographic pressures build over time. Rise in the rate of urbanization is, among other things, a product of demographic shifts. The old classical revolutions were all agrarian and rural that simmered at the periphery and coalesced towards the urban centers. Current uprising in every country in the Middle East is urban partly because of demographic changes and partly due to rapid unplanned urbanization. Cairo is surrounded by millions of people living in extreme poverty. There are huge neighborhoods made up of garbage. Shanty urbanization blends well with other revolutionary situations.
This situation is not exclusive to the Middle East. Many other countries in the world are facing similar pressures but for a revolution to roll out it takes more than that. Obviously, the necessary protagonists of a revolution have not coalesced at many places that are vulnerable. In the 3rd world countries, open or covert foreign interventions can interfere with the natural history of public discontent and mass uprising. It allows many states to breathe on an artificial life support system for a long time.
Theda Skocpol addressed state breakdown as a measure of revolution. This assertion furthers structuralist underpinning of revolutions. It is very profound in its own right but the collapse of state occurs for many added reasons. It takes us to the demographic theory of revolutions forwarded by Jack Goldstone and I shall try to apply it to the current reality of the Middle East.
It bears historical credibility that demographic pressure disturbs the balance of existing social structures, institutions and resources. It fractures infrastructures, impoverishes people, deteriorates living conditions and decreases employment potentials, particularly for the young. Education and the health care always come under strain with population pressures.
Therefore, swelling young population and the pressures that it generates may be one of the best indicators of an impending revolution about two decades down the road. It really boils down to the fact how well a state is prepared to absorb new stresses in the society. Where a state is weak, economically dependent, autocratic and unjust; vulnerabilities are high. This holds true from the British Revolution of 1600’s to the wave of spring-uprising of 2011.
World Bank data shows strikingly similar peaks of population growth in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Syria and Libya from 80’s to 90’s. Population growth peaked in Egypt in 1987, Syria and Libya in 1982, Yemen in the early 1990’s and Bahrain showed a rather flattened peak in 1990’s.
This generation 15-29 year age “… ranges from 38 percent in Bahrain and Tunisia to 50 percent of the total population in Yemen compared to 26 percent in the US. … Since 1990, youth population aged 15-29 has grown by 50 percent in Libya and Tunisia, 65 percent in Egypt, and 125 percent in Yemen” (Borrowed with thanks from Jack Goldstone’s article in Foreign Affairs). Recent unemployment in Tunisia ranged 13-15%, Egypt around 12%, Libya 30% and Yemen at 35%. High unemployment rate also adds to the revolutionary discontent.
Discontented youth in the Middle East who are unemployed or those who failed to land on proper opportunities are equal victims of the future uncertainty. What will they do? They will rise one day and they have done so – The Spring Revolution of 2011 in the Middle East.
Outcome in the Middle East
From theory to the current reality, Libya is in under daily NATO bombardment. It will break the back of Mr. Qaddafi Sooner or later. At that point, one would be deluded to imagine a sudden peace and birth of a modern western democracy in an oil rich country with a tribal culture. There are huge perils in the way of Libya’s future for a long time to come. The future of Libya, shall we say balkanization?
In Egypt military is still at the helm. Military would find it hard to give up bounties that it has been enjoying for decades. If elections were to be held, religious parties, most notably Muslim Brotherhood could provide the proof of revolution theorist Charles Tilly’s assertion: resource-mobilization. Like I said earlier, religious ideologies are strong when social systems are in crises. Muslim Brotherhood may turn out to be the future political winner. Their agenda as inclusive as it might sound at this time is not a word carved in stone. It may find creative interpretation necessary in the future in the sacred name of faith and the Egyptian military may find Muslim Brotherhoods social attitude quite helpful.
Yemen’s population has the highest shift towards the youth in the whole Middle East. Yemen has a fairly recent history of north-south divide thanks to the oil-politics. The south is oil rich. Yemen is also close to the busiest sea-lanes in the world. The geopolitical location, tribal conflicts and a history riddled with foreign interests and interventions while youth population is ripe for action is a fertile soil for a militant religious ideology in the future. Yemen may become a hotspot for long term anarchy.
Syria may be able to suppress the revolt because demographic predictors are not in the favor of protesters. Elites and military in Syria appear to be glued together even though the key players of the world-system are opposed to the existing regime rather aggressive towards it.
In any event, The Spring Revolution brewing on the streets of Middle East is neither a Facebook nor a Twitter revolution as the popular media has projected. Nor is it caused by internet. It is a mass uprising of those who have been oppressed for a long time. The spring revolution is an uprising of masses. It is a desire for freedom by the disenfranchised masses. It is an outcry of the frustrated youth against the self-centered and myopic autocrats. The “Arab Spring” is their hope and their dream for a better future. Like the revolutions of the past, its natural history is going to be a complex sum of many known and hidden factors. But where is a liberal democracy in the end? One needs a very far sighted optimism and a telescopic lens to see it.
The author Dr. Tahir M. Qazi is a US based neurophysiologist and neuromuscular diseases specialist. His areas of interest are society, religions, social justice and global revolutions. Dr. Qazi can be reached at:[email protected]
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