The following is a rebuttal of "The Case Against the Libyan Rebellion" by Will Richardson. Link:http://redsociology101.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-case-against-the-libyan-rebellion/
Basic Premises.
LIBYA IS PART OF THE ARAB SPRING. To deny this is comically stupid. It just so happened to happen at exactly the same by total fucking coincidence? Come off it...
QADAFI IS A DICTATOR. Unelected. To say he's a figurehead w/ no power is like saying the President of the US doesn't legislate, he just executes acts of Congress. This may be true on paper, but the reality is different. Qaddafi is clearly not Hitler. Whoever said that is a jackass. Abuses in Libya under the current regime are extensively documented by Al Jazeera (one of the best independent news sources in the world). CNN is a strawman. And the kneejerk reaction of the Stalinists, to say “if the bad guys say it it's bad then it must be good” is the logic of a toddler.
Responses to Will.
“I respond by saying if Qadaffi is a dictator than so in the Queen of England seeing as they occupy the same position in their societies.” No they don't occupy even remotely similar positions in society. Again, this is picture-book reasoning. The Queen of England has very little real power anymore. Qaddafi has significant power. No comparison. Also, the standard of living is beside the point as far as being a dictator or not. One can impose x,y, and z progressive policies and still be a dictator. These are different questions.
“There’s the other minor issue of using the Libyan monarchy flag as protest flag of the rebellion.” Libya's only ever had the so-called monarchist flag and Qaddafi's flag. Before that, the Italian colonial flag flew in Libya. So the flag of the monarchy is also the flag of independence as well as the only non-Qaddafi flag Libya's ever had. In any case I'm far less concerned with the flag than the real actions of people. A working class revolution could fly the American flag for all I care so long as their actions are good.
“Because of this situation [racism by NATO forces] as far as I’m concerned their free Libya and if I was in Libya i’d have to pick a gun up for the government, at least they don’t want me dead.” This gives in to the racist divide-and-conquer. Will, do you think the Libyan govt doesn't factor oppressed african minorities into the equation of their economy? All governments/industries use racism to create an extra-low wage sector of workers to provide cheap labor and undermine the wages of all workers. Racism is never an accident. If it's there it's because it's profitable to those in charge.
“Even under much more brutal resistance by the Tunisian, Bahrianian, and Egyptian government their people largely stayed peaceful and won so what made the Libyan protesters so different?” Pro-western dictators had to blue-ball their repression to a degree because brutality on their part undermined the US et al's ability to maintain support for them, politically. There may also have been uncertainty about how the Obama administration would react (that's purely speculation, though). Qaddafi (while plenty in bed with US, UK and France) wasn't so exclusively dependent on it that repression was too risky. Plus Qaddafi's more than a little bit crazy. Remember when he said the protesters were just students tripping on LSD from Al Qaeda? Lmfao!
“Its not about the working class anymore when It comes to building socialism." THE WORKING CLASS IS SOCIALISM, by definition. Rural workers, the unemployed, and those in the informal economy are all still workers; it's not just white men in construction or steel mills. And fyi, there has been incredible success of class-based movements of these sectors throughout the 3rd world, especially in Latin America.
“In Africa and through most of the world there is no traditional working class to speak of nor do people identify themselves based on that.” I assume that by “traditional” you mean factories, hard hats, etc. See above comment. As to “nor do people identify themselves based on that,” 1) I first have to question how you could possibly know that? 2) Even if that's true it's only partly relevant. People can be part of a class without “identifying” with that class or even knowing it. Lots of Americans don't think we even have classes – doesn't make it so. Classes exist objectively. Now in order to make revolution, we need to foster class consciousness. So if you're right, then it just means further action is needed to develop that consciousness. It doesn't mean we abandon the working class.
My Analysis.
All the Arab Spring revolts have been democratic political revolution not proletarian social revolution. As such, there has been some class collaboration w/ the bourgeoisie in every single one, especially early on. The question now is whether or not the proletarian forces can continue to wage class revolution. In Egypt they seem to be doing so in a way that's very exciting. In Egypt, the working class forces realized, to some degree, that through strikes and exercising their power at the point of production they brought down a dictator. So they don't need the bourgeois elements anymore. The tragedy (not that there's only one) of NATO intervention in Libya is that 1) They've managed to keep the revolutionary forces fighting militarily instead of economically, thereby keeping the working class rebels totally dependent on bourgeois “leaders” who can secure the aid of the west. 2) They've split the popular forces to some degree. At first, it was an Arab Spring revolt and it was the people v. the dictator. But now there's the specter of western imperialism to frighten some Libyans back into the arms of Qaddafi as the supposed lesser of two evils. Same way we get tricked into voting for Democrats cause we don't want Republicans to win.
Another thing: Qaddafi may even have great, panafricanist socialist intentions in his head – I don't think he does, but that's beside the point. Even if Qaddafi had genuinely good intentions, his efforts would suffer from a fatal flaw in his methods. This is the flaw of 20th century so-called socialist regimes the world over. It's the mistake made by apologists for the “communist” tyranny of the USSR, China, N. Korea, etc. A MINORITY CADRE CANNOT IMPOSE SOCIALISM FROM ABOVE. Marx wrote, “The emancipation of the working class must be the task of the working class itself.” And he was right about that. All efforts where a party or an individual seized state power and tried to whip the population into socialism inevitably end in horror. Socialism = democratic workers control over production. And it must be gotten through the struggle of revolutionary democratic workers organizations, not party elites.
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