Bayat - Revolution without Revolutionaries [42d5ea33]

Revolution without "revolutionary ideas"

• No shariati, Rousseau, etc

1970 Revolutions

• Reza Shah

  • Ali Shariati
  • Moderate Clerics and Islamic figures like Mehdi Bazagarn became leaders and evening lecturers
  • Oil refinery workers and nationwide strike brought down the regime

• Arab World

  • Nasserite anti-Imperialism

  • Maxism-Lenism

    • Victory for NLF in yemen opened the door for a People's Front for the Liberation of Oman in mid 1960's
    • palestine liberation organization (PLO)

Arab Spring

• Mohamed Bouazizi

• tunisia

  • Trade unionists played pivotal role

• egypt

  • Largely related to Tunisia
  • the "We are all Khaled Said" movement (April 6 Youth Movement)
  • Toppled Mubarak
• yemen brought down Ali Abudllah Saleh
• bahrain - thousands of Sunni and Shia occupied Pearl Roundable in Manama, three month Emergency law in response

Big differences between Arab Spring and 1970 Revolutions

• "Lacked any associated intellectual anchor" - pg 11

• "Unlike the revolutions of the 1970's that espoused a powerful socialist, anti-imperialist, anticapitalist, and social justice implulse, Arab revolutionaries were preoccupied more with the borad issues oif human rights, political accountability, and legal reform" - pg 11

  • How much of this is due to peripherialization? As the power of individual states fade on the global stage, does that mean our goals are similariy less defined?

"Occupy"

• Draws links to the occupy movement

  • "Almost all expressed dissent against the effects of neoliberal policies, notably staggering inequality, unemployment, precarious work, and uncertain life that had gripped a large segment of ordinary citizens" - pg 13
  • "Sociologists Manuel Castells and Sideny Tarrow suggest that the achievement of the Occupy movements was their very operation. Consdering the process as the product" - pg 13

  • "Philosphers Alain Badiuo and Slavoj Zizek imagined in these revolutionary arenas the propsect of a new social order…"

    • Matt Ford points out - "one cannot live in a cradle forever"

• Questionable linkage, given that they were temporally and capitally the same

  • One can ask, why did the same type of revolutions not play out as a result of the 1997 asian financial crisis
  • mid-way between 1970 and 2010
  • Why did the asian financial crisis coalese into protests? Massive looting, but less structural reform? Was that because many of the governements knew what to do?

  • "The protests of 2011, however, were neither for revolution nor for reform; rather, they expressed a rebellion against the insitutions of representative democracy without offering any alternative" - pg 17

    • What baggage does this claim bring?
  • Alternative political parties, Syriza in Greece, Pdemos in Spaim, Aam Aadmi Party in India gained support

"Refolutions"

• Complex mix of revolutions in the 20th century fashion and reform

• If we take the fact that these revolutions happened at all as the achievement, why did they not happen in 1997

  • "The arab revolutions occured at an ideaological time in post-cold war history, when the very idea of revolution had largely disappeared from social thought and political struggles, where the three major postcolonial ideaologies - anticolonial nationalism, maxism-leninism, and militant islam - that vigorously advocated revolution had vanished or had been undermined. In their place was the powerful neoliberal paradigm and its normative frame" - pg 18
• "Foucault's idea of entrapment in disciplinary power, as Edward Said contended, ended up replacing "insurrenctionary scholarship" with "quietism"
• Movemnts became more fluid, states become more intelligent

"Neoliberal Effect"

• 1974 military coup against Chile
• Argues that the diminishing of hte social contract with the IMF and World Bank, alongside structural adjustment policies and liberalization had initiaited this

Novel revolutions?

• Why did the 2011 revolutions turn out to be different?