For a number of leftist intellectuals, the 2011 Arab Spring belongs to a rare category of historical events: a series of political disturbances, each one igniting the other, across an entire region of the world. There have been only three comparable examples in history: the South American wars of liberation from Spanish colonialism between 1818 and 1825; the European revolutions in the period 1848-1849; and the fall of the regimes in the Soviet bloc in the period 1989-1991.
For example, the British Pakistani intellectual Tariq Ali compares the current Arab uprisings to the European events of 1848, when the revolutionary upheavals covered all of Europe, with the exception of Britain and Spain. Ali observes that the Arabs today, like the Europeans in 1848, “are fighting against foreign domination; against the violation of their democratic rights; against an elite blinded by its own illegitimate wealth – and in favor of economic justice”. Ali goes on to differentiate between this and the first wave of Arab nationalism, whose chief concern was “driving the remnants of the British empire out of the region”. This manifested itself clearly in the nationalization of Egyptians, under Gamal Abdel Nasser, of the Suez Canal, after which Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt in 1956.
Indeed, two characteristics have long distinguished the Arab world within contemporary global politics. The first is the longevity and strength of authoritarian regimes – be they nominal republics or monarchies – since formal decolonization, in a manner unparalleled anywhere else in the contemporary world. And the second is the exceptional longevity and intensity of Western hegemony over the region throughout the past century. Colonization arrived late in much of the Arab world, compared to other areas of the world, such as Southeast Asia or Latin America. However, unlike any of these regions, formal decolonization in the Arab world has been accompanied by an almost continuous cycle of Western imperial wars and interventions in the post-colonial period.
Since the Second World War, almost each decade has witnessed its share of violence, whether civil or inter-state wars: the Palestinian nakbah, or catastrophe, in the 1940s, which was erected on the graveyard of the Great Palestinian Revolt which erupted in 1936 and was subsequently crushed militarily by Great Britain in the period 1938–39; in the 1950s, the Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt; in the 1960s, the June 1967 war launched by Israel against Egypt, Syria and Jordan; in the 1970s, the October 1973 war and the containment of its results by the US; in the 1980s, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and crushing of the Palestinian intifada; the Gulf War in the 1990s, leading up to the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. However, violent conflicts of local origin were also widespread in the Arab world through the decades: the Yemeni civil war in the 1960s; the Lebanese civil wars in the 1970s and 1980s; the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s; and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in the 1990s. But Western involvement or collusion in these wars was rarely absent, whether in terms of tacit support or financing.
The reasons for this extraordinary Western interference in the Arab world are obvious. On the one hand, the region contains the largest concentration of oil reserves in the world, so vital for the Western economies. On the other hand, it is the location in which Israel was established and is currently protected by the U.S., home to Zionist lobbies which no president or party dare upset, and by Europe which still bears the guilt of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews during the Second World War.
The two basic characteristics of the Arab world, the ongoing Western hegemony over it and its long-lasting lack of democratic institutions, have been connected over the decades, which is not to say that there is a direct causative relationship between them. The Western historical record regarding democracy speaks for itself: When democracy was seen to pose a threat to Western economic interests, the Unites States and its allies have never hesitated to overthrow it, as evidenced by the fates Muhammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, and most recently Jean–Bertrand Aristide in Haiti. And conversely, when Western powers deem the presence of autocracies as necessary, they will support and protect them, beginning with the American president Franklin Roosevelt’s deal with the Saudi family in the 1940s, leading up to the current US support for Ali Abdallah Saleh’s regime in Yemen. Of course, this doesn’t mean that these regimes are creations of the U.S, or the West, as each of them has indigenous roots in its local society, regardless of Western support.
Thus, in such an Arab landscape, it is not surprising that freedom is the principal demand of the peaceful mass demonstration that raised, in one Arab country after another, the slogan of al-sha’b yurid isqat al-nizam [the people want the downfall of the regime].
But the current Arab uprisings also demonstrated the firm connection between freedom and equality, as the popular classes played a basic role in the call for the downfall of the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.
In fact, there is a need to re-connect political freedom to social justice and equality. For without the unification between these two values, the current Arab uprisings may prove no more able than the previous authoritarian regimes in responding to the explosive social issues and tensions, including widespread unemployment, poverty and illiteracy, in addition to the generalized sense, among the Arab youth, of frustrated productive and expressive capacities. All this requires, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri rightly notice, “a radical constitutional response” that “must invent a common plan to manage natural resources and social production. And both men continue: “This is a threshold through which neoliberalism cannot pass and capitalism is put to question”.
Hence, the priority for any renewed and catalytic role for the Left in the Arab world must be struggling for political freedoms that will allow the demands of social justice to find their best possible expressions, that is safeguarding the process of (political and legal) democratic change through enhancing it with its social content. Such a role would involve no less then the following:
Defending the current Arab uprisings against the counter-revolutionary forces that want to preserve the institutions and constitutions of the old regime.
Bringing to justice the leaders of the old regime; pushing the process of democratic change to its final stage through substituting the institutions and constitutions of the old regime with the institutions and constitutions of a civil democratic state which legally and politically makes equal both men and women.
Embodying the choosing of citizens for their rulers in a parliamentary democratic system that guarantees them the right and ability to question the rulers, hold them accountable, and change them when necessary.
In addition to the above, and equally necessary, such a role of the Left must include working attentively to ensure that the new constitutions enshrine social needs and the rights of the least advantaged to adequate public welfare.
This renewed and catalytic role is a priority that acquires greater significance in the midst of the absence of serious discussion on social and economic rights. This absence is made even more apparent by the almost-unanimous anticipation that the future electoral battles will be contests between Arab liberalism and conservatism. Such a framing, of liberalism vs. conservatism, let alone a struggle between the two forces, does not address the issue of social and economic rights. We need only look to the AKP in Turkey, which is currently lauded as a potential model for Arab Islamist groups, to see the overlap between liberal and conservative forces in their loyalty to neoliberal policies.
[This article is a self-translation by the author of the original Arabic version, which appeared in al-Akhbar.]