The people want : a radical exploration of the Arab uprising

318 Pages·2013·2.91 MB·English

by  Gilbert Achcar

THE PEOPLE WANT
A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising
Gilbert Achcar
Translated from French by G. M. Goshgarian

SAQI
ALSO BY GILBERT ACHCAR
The Arabs and the Holocaust:
The Arab–Israeli War of Narratives
Perilous Power:
The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy
(with Noam Chomsky)
The 33-Day War:
Israel’s War on Hezbollah in Lebanon and its Consequences
(with Michel Warschawski)
The Clash of Barbarisms:
The Making of the New World Disorder
The Israeli Dilemma:
A Debate between Two Left Wing Jews:
Letters between Marcel Liebman and Ralph Miliband
(selected with an introduction and epilogue by Gilbert Achcar)
Eastern Cauldron:
Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror
Gilbert Achcar, who grew up in Beirut, is Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London. His other works include the highly acclaimed The Arabs and the Holocaust: The
Arab–Israeli War of Narratives, The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder and,
with Noam Chomsky, Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Uprisings and Revolutions
1. FETTERED DEVELOPMENT
The Facts
Poverty, Inequality, Precarity
Informal Sector and Unemployment: The Bouazizi Syndrome
Youth Underemployment
Female Underemployment
Graduate Unemployment
Fetters on Development
2. THE PECULIAR MODALITIES OF CAPITALISM IN THE ARAB
REGION
The Problem of Investment
Public and Private Investment
A Specific Variant of the Capitalist Mode of Production
1. Rentier and Patrimonial States
2. A Politically Determined Capitalism: Nepotism and Risk
The Genesis of the Specific Regional Variant of Capitalism: An Overview
3. REGIONAL POLITICAL FACTORS
The Oil Curse
From “Arab Despotic Exception” to “Democracy Promotion”
The Muslim Brothers, Washington and the Saudis
The Muslim Brothers, Washington and Qatar
Al Jazeera and the Upheaval in the Arab Mediascape
4. ACTORS AND PARAMETERS OF THE REVOLUTION
Overdetermination and Subjective Conditions
The Workers’ Movement and Social Struggles
New Actors and New Information and Communication Technologies
States and Revolutions
5. A PROVISIONAL BALANCE SHEET OF THE ARAB UPRISING
Coups d’État and Revolutions
Provisional Balance Sheet No. 1: Tunisia
Provisional Balance Sheet No. 2: Egypt
Provisional Balance Sheet No. 3: Yemen
Provisional Balance Sheet No. 4: Bahrain
Provisional Balance Sheet No. 5: Libya
Provisional Balance Sheet No. 6: Syria
6. CO-OPTING THE UPRISING
Washington and the Muslim Brothers, Take Two
Nato, Libya, and Syria
The “Islamic Tsunami” and the Difference between Khomeini and Morsi
CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF THE ARAB UPRISING
The Difference between Erdogan and Ghannouchi ...
... And the Difference between Erdogan and Morsi
Conditions for a Genuine Solution
Notes
References and Sources
Index
Figures
Figure 1.1: GDP per capita average annual growth rate
Figure 1.2: Egypt – GDP per capita annual growth rate 1970-2010
Figure 1.3: Average annual population growth rate
Figure 1.4: GDP average annual growth rate
Figure 1.5: Human development index 1980-2010
Figure 1.6: Informality in labour force & employment
Figure 1.7: Unemployment rate
Figure 1.8: Unemployment rate youth & adults
Figure 1.9: Youth in total population 2010
Figure 1.10: Unemployment rate by sex 2010
Figure 1.11: Employment-to-population rate by sex, 2010
Figure 1.12: Population with advanced education
Figure 2.1: GDP per capita annual growth MENA – 1969-2010
Figure 2.2: Gross fixed capital formation 1969-2009
Figure 2.3: Gross capital formation annual growth MENA without GCC – 1969-
2007
Figure 2.4: Gross capital formation annual growth
Figure 2.5: Gross fixed capital formation, public sector 1995-2007
Figure 2.6: Net official financial flows
Figure 2.7: Gross fixed capital formation, private sector 1995-2007
Figure 2.8: Gross fixed capital formation, total and public Egypt – 1982-2010
Figure 2.9: Public sector revenue 2006
Tables
Table 1.1: Distribution of consumption
Table 1.2: GDP per capita 2008 (current US$)
Table 1.3: Gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education (2009)
Table 1.4: Graduate unemployment rates 1984–2010
Table 4.1: Percentage of individuals using the Internet (2010)
Acknowledgements
This book is the outcome of intensive work that started shortly after the
beginning of the revolutionary wave engulfing the Arabic-speaking region. It is
based, however, on the course on Problems of Development of the Middle East
and North Africa that I have taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS, University of London) since the academic year 2007–8. This means that
I owe much to my institution, which offers an ideal environment and one of the
richest libraries for the research on the region that is the object of this study. The
students who attended my lectures and who will remember them when they read
the following pages have contributed with their questions to forming the answers
this book provides.
Yet scholarly teaching and research are but two of the sources of this work.
My major debt is toward the great number of those whom I met and with whom I
had a chance to discuss during my travels in different countries of the region
over decades, and most particularly since the beginning of the uprising. I clearly
cannot name them all. Four key stages in this experience occurred in 2011, when
I was honoured to be invited to take part in the “Spring University” of ATTAC
Morocco in Casablanca, in April; the “Socialist Days” organised in Cairo after
the uprising by the Egyptian Center for Socialist Studies, in May; the meeting of
prominent members of the Syrian opposition, many of whom came directly from
Syria to the place near Stockholm where it was held, in October; and the
festivities celebrating the first anniversary of the beginning of the uprising in
Sidi Bouzid, the Tunisian town where it all started, in December. I thank here
one more time the organisers of these meetings, as well as the team of the Haus
der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin which gave me the opportunity to take part in a
gathering of persons involved in cultural activities in the Arab region in January
2012.
I am also grateful to all those who invited me to submit some of this book’s
theses to the critical attention of audiences including people knowledgeable
about the region in various academic institutions – in particular Henry Laurens at
the Collège de France, Robert Wade at the London School of Economics, Rashid
Khalidi and Bashir Abu-Manneh at Columbia University in New York, Joel
Beinin at Stanford University, Ronit Lentin at Trinity College in Dublin, Haideh
Moghissi and Saeed Rahnema at York University in Toronto, Farid al-Alibi at
the University of Kairouan, Tunisia, Tullo Vigevani at the Universidade
Estadual Paulista (UNESP) in São Paulo, and the Brazilian National Social
Science Postgraduate and Research Association (ANPOCS) at its annual
convention in Caxambu.
The friends whose names follow have read the manuscript of this book in part
or in whole and given me the benefit of their comments in finalising it: Henry
Bernstein, Ray Bush, Franck Mermier, Saleh Mosbah, Alfredo Saad-Filho,
Fawwaz Traboulsi and Lisa Wedeen. Very acute remarks by Omar El Shafei,
who translated this book into Arabic, were most useful. My collaboration for the
second time with Geoff Michael Goshgarian, who translated this book into
English most elegantly after my previous one, The Arabs and the Holocaust, was
equally an opportunity for useful exchanges between us. I beg those whom I
failed to mention in these acknowledgements to excuse me. None of the above-
mentioned persons can in any way be held responsible for the theses of this book
and the errors that it may include.