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On the situation in the Arab world: While revolutionary processes are always some dialectical combination of democratic and social revolution, rather than a "staged" counter-position of one versus the other, I'd agree that at present this is a predominantly democratic revolutionary process, with an objective undercurrent of social revolution centered in Egypt. The subjective element - parties of socialist revolutionaries - is obviously mostly missing, therefore this cannot possibly be analogous to, say, 1917; Instead the period of democratic revolution is likely to have a prolonged life depending upon the rapidity with which a meaningful socialist opposition can be constructed as the only means to guarantee its permanence. That much is obvious. However it is just as obvious that the Arab world is overdetermined by two peculiarities of its superstructure for which even a democratic revolutionary process poses a uniquely grave danger to imperialism. These are the existence of a feudal relic in the form of the House of Saud and its princely Persian Gulf satellites, the ultimate "tribal Arabs" so beloved of imperialist orientalism and the axial template it wishes to impose on the whole region; And, closely related in structure to this, the American Zionist settler regime, an integral part of the United States projected into the Middle East. Both these features place sharp restraints on imperialism's capacity to maneuver within and against the democratic revolution, these peculiarities on top of an increasing volatile world situation due fundamentally to the deepening capitalist crisis and posing the need to contain "contagion" (for example see "The Global Political Awakening and the New World Order" by Andrew Gavin Marshall, inspired by the ever watchful Zbigniew Brzezinski http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19873 - alas our latter-day Wilsonian liberals don't stand a chance despite their man Obama being in the White House). Imperialism might give up the first in extremis but never the second - unless the U.S. is dethroned as leader of imperialism. But the fate of U.S. domination of the imperialist world is itself bound up with the fate of the Arab world and its revolution. Even the progress of a purely "democratic" revolution here could lead to that dethronement, an event that would mark a sort of "democratic revolutionary" progress in the imperialist world itself, and especially within the United States. On historical analogies: Though they formally seek to identify commonalities between different historical events, the real usefulness of analogies is to identify the differences, and therefore what is new and different in the present. The analogy with 1848 highlights the expansive and synchronous global character of the mass movements as well as the political weakness of the socialist element. But it is the powerful global synchronicity that stands out as new and different in the present. It's an internationalists dream, a great time to be alive. -Matt ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
