After six long months of bloody, protracted struggle the overthrow of the dictatorial Gaddafi regime was greeted with rejoicing by large numbers of, but by no means all, Libyans. Another autocratic ruler, surrounded by his privileged family and cronies, has been overthrown. If this had been purely the result of struggle by the Libyan working masses it would have been widely acclaimed but the direct involvement of imperialism casts a dark shadow over the revolution’s future. The continuing battles in Tripoli and elsewhere indicate the instability of the current situation in Libya and also how the revolution that began there last February has, in many ways, been thrown off course.
By Robert Bechert from the Committee for a Workers International (to which the Socialist Party is affiliated)
I think comaparing Libya to Egypt is Naive at best. The Egyptian army were not shelling the protesters were gadaffi was.
ReplyDeleteIm quite sure that the people of Libya would be much happier if NATO dropped a bomb on a tank that was shelling you than having to rely on the small arms they had avalibale. All you would have left is a lot of dead protesters and commentaors saying "why did we not help the people rise up?"
This article is full of lots of rhetoric and very little appreciation of what is actually happening
Why is it naive to compare Egypt, or Tunisia with Libya? Yes, there are big differences between these countries, the article doesn't avoid those differences, neither does our analysis elsewhere. However the key question for the mainly youthful uprising against Gadaffi was 'how can we defeat the dictatorship?'
ReplyDeleteOne example was Egypt and Tunisia, where mass protests but crucially the role of the organised working-class in the final days of the protests, paralysed the state and the armed forces, leading to a change in the leadership of the country. The motivations behind all of these revolutions were social as much if not more than their immediate aim of getting rid of the figurehead of the regime.
The question of cleansing society of the regime of Ben-Ali and Mubarak is a point of conflict as so much of the ruling-class, business leaders etc were tied to the dictatorships.
The questions of poverty, unemployment and under-development, distribution of the national wealth, wages, working conditions, housing and so on will develop very strongly. The process is nowhere near complete.
A similar process is developing in Libya. The issues of the politics of the National Transitional Council will become a lot more important, and the class conflicts within the movement will come to the fore.
NATO and its backers have a very selective attitude to intervening in the region. The foundations of American, British, French, Italian, Israeli etc imperialism, have been violently shaken over the past months. Their intervention now has been hypocritical on the one hand, but also aimed at (not just via military means) supporting the pro-capitalist, pro-western elements within the rebel movement.
You seem to suggest the armed forces were not an issue in Egypt. True, it did not develop towards a civil war in Egypt. That is partly due to the make-up of Libya, but also due to the lack of a clear programme by the rebel movement (they used the flag of the monarchy after the initial stages, limiting their appeal, and have next to no social demands or programme). However the armed forces were an issue in Egypt, they split along class lines to an extent (and in Libya, sections of the army were deemed 'unuseable', either refusing to attack or joining the rebels). War is a continuation of social processes. All revolutionary situations have to deal at one point or another with breaking the chain of command of the armed forces and splitting it along class lines. It is important to present a mass movement with clear economic and social demands and a way to implement them to the armed forces, to help develop those splits. A movement based on establishing a more pro-western imperialist government is not going to address the underlying social issues that are faced by ordinary Libyan people, only a movement based on the working-class with a clear socialist programme can do that.
So how is it naïve/irrelevant to pose these questions?