Author Archives: Shervin Malekzadeh

“For Allende, who is trying to obtain the same results by other means

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I think it was pretty clear that I was most fascinated by this question of “strategy or tactic,” and whether or not at some point the two become confused, both conceptually and in practice.  Debray repeatedly calls Allende’s tactic into question, the latter’s enduring faith in Chile’s “bourgeoisie legalism,” and although Debray acknowledges (perhaps out of politeness, as Ashwin suggested) that “objective conditions” demand that Chile follow the electoral path, Debray wonders whether there are limits to such a course. At some point a severe break will have to occur, one that by necessity must occur outside of legal and constitutional frameworks. Of course, such a break did occur, but it came from the right, not the left…

The question for a man of Debray’s ilk, an activist committed to action and perhaps convinced of the need for violence (he denies this), is whether the mutual entrapment of left and right within the logic of democracy can be sustained. See for example Debray’s question to Allende on pg. 80:  “Don’t you feel that you are gradually becoming institutionalized?”  Earlier, in his preamble, Debray writes:

“But ultimately, who has neutralized who…Who has tied whose hands? When one uses the legal system of the bourgeois State, is one not simultaneously used by it—in practice?…Such is the Chilean ambiguity—inevitable at the present, perhaps temporary stage. Here, crystallized and revealed in a crucial conjuncture, we rediscover the reciprocal conditioning of the terms of the contradiction to which the long coexistence of bourgeois-democratic institutions and the rising popular movement has led. Each of the terms present, imbricated together, acts both as a limit and a sanction with respect to the other…” (pg. 44)

Again, the question of “strategy versus tactic,” and whether or not at some point the two become confused, is the issue here.  Is Allende’s enduring faith in “bourgeoisie legalism” as a revolutionary course a strategic response to the particular historical circumstances of the Chilean people and the country’s “revolutionary situation,” as it were, or simply a tactical maneuver to avoid the intervention of reactionary forces in his country? Does, in other words, Allende really believe in democracy? Does it matter?

Similar questions might be asked of Ernest “Ché” Guevara and the role of violence. I’ve set Ché as Allende’s foil, though I’m not certain that it’s necessarily obvious that these two men are so different (“For Allende, who is trying to obtain the same results by other means.”). Ask yourself, is Ché’s insistence, with all of its echoes of Frantz Fanon, that violence is an unavoidable and inevitable reasoned adherence to a revolutionary strategy? Or has violence become, as perhaps we saw with the Baader Meinhof group, “the thing itself?”

The next question to ask, I suppose, is “So what?” If tactics and strategy merged in the Chilean and Cuban story, how did this affect the course of the revolutionary process in Chile, or in Cuba/Congo/Bolivia, countries exposed to Ché’s adventurism? Maybe a better question to ask is how did the revolutionary OUTCOMES in Chile and Cuba affect revolutionary struggle in the region and around the world, in the seventies and eighties? How did the catastrophe in Chile (here I’m referring to Sept. 11, 1973) influence what happened in 1989 and the peaceful velvet revolutions that broke out across Eastern Europe? Or, turning the example on its head, how did the Chilean failure to produce revolution-by-democracy inform the violent struggles that took place in places like Italy, Germany, Japan, and across Latin America?

Chile and Cuba, Allende and Ché, stand as oppositions, a choice between electoral and violent paths to revolution. I wonder, however, if this was, is, a false choice or dichotomy. What, ultimately, did the paths taken by Ché and Allende accomplish? If there were failures, could it be said that those failures were due to decisions made by the UP or by Ché and Castro? I’m thinking here, of course, of the role of US intervention…

Would Allende have eventually found a way to mobilize if not all of Chilean society behind his revolution, then at least a sufficient number by which to govern? What percentage would that have been?

Or was it the case that the key variable was ultimately the military, the boys with the toys, in determining how far this Chilean experiment would reach…?

Consider the implications of the following quote by Ché, as well as Allende’s insistence that the political leadership in Chile expresses more than guides the will of the people. These claims revisit the issue of structure vs. agency, the relationship of elite leadership and mass action. Think about what we learned with Mao, how it didn’t take much for Mao’s leadership, if you can call it that, his ad hoc and seemingly arbitrary interventions to send the country and her universities into a tumult. Who is leading whom?

“‘Whether the revolution takes place through peaceful passages or whether it will come into the world after a painful birth, does not depend on the revolutionaries, it depends on the reactionary forces of the old society, which refuse to allow the birth of the new society, engendered by the contradictions held by the old society. The revolution plays the same part in history as does the doctor who assists in the birth of a new life. He does not use instruments of force unless they are necessary, but he uses them without hesitation each time that they may be necessary to aid the birth. It is a birth which brings the hope of a better life to the enslaved and exploited masses.”

Our authors speak of ordinary people as being a bit lost, in need of direction from above, from the vanguard. Ché speaks of the masses seeing only “in halves.” What is the consequence of such self-appointment and, frankly, condescension?

Finally, note that Allende won the 1970 presidential election in Chile with a bare plurality of the vote, a vote split neatly into thirds between 3 (very different) candidates. Given this circumstance, would Allende have eventually found a way to mobilize Chilean society behind his revolution, a sufficient number by which to govern? I guess what I’m asking, for a revolutionary committed to the “legal path” of revolution, what percentage would that have been?

Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong direction. Is it the case that the key variable was not the “guidance” of the people, but the arbitration of the military, the boys with the toys, in determining how far the Chilean experiment would reach…?

 

Writer’s Choice: Civil War/Revolutions or Intellectuals Behaving Badly

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(Note:  This week’s blog gives you a choice—please pick from one of the two prompts below, and as always, keep it short and informal!  Engagement and conversation above all!)

Look again at your index cards.  Flip back and forth between its two sides.  Continue the incredible discussion that we started in class:  What distinguishes civil wars from revolutions?  If both phenomena have the capacity to produce transformations of polities and societies, why bother with separate terms, other than the assumption that one is somehow “better” than the other? 

“…No. 1 is all for potash; therefore B. and the thirty had to be liquidated as saboteurs.  In a nationally centralized agriculture the alternative of nitrate of potash is of enormous importance:  it can decide the issue of the next war.  If N. 1 was in the right, history will absolve him, and the execution of the thirty-one men will be a mere bagatelle.  If he was wrong…

…But how can the present decide what will be judged truth in the future?  We are doing the work of prophets without their gift.  We replaced vision by logical deduction; but although we all started from the same point of departure, we came to divergent results.  Proof disproved proof and finally we had to recur to faith—to axiomatic faith in the rightness of one’s own reasoning.”

We’ve encountered a rather grim picture these past few weeks of where “good ideas” might carry movements and struggles for freedom, whether it be the self-abnegation of Rubashov or the veritable orgy of violence and decadence of the Baader Meinhof gang.  Whereas Gramsci and Stuart Hall demand the inclusion of the intellectual in movement politics, and Mary Kay Vaughan demonstrates that even poorly educated rural school teachers can serve as “organic” mediators between an emerging state and members of society, a wide variety of authors, from Fanon to Havel and Miłosz, or most recently (and acutely), Mao, regard intellectuals as obstacles to change, even, in the case of Mao, counter-revolutionary.  Consider how revolutions might be tied to intellectual leadership, to the totalizing visions of a vanguard.  Must movements be rooted in a coherent set of ideas and values to be successful?  Gudrun Ensslin at one point tells Ulrike Meinhof that they must adopt a “new morality.”  What happens when this new morality encounters success, specifically, the formation of the state?  What happens when the inevitable divergencies from the glorious path begin to occur…?

Questions for Darkness at Noon

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1.  The motif of the “grammatical fiction” appears several times in Darkness at Noon.  What is meant by this?
2.  What is the role of the individual in Koestler’s story?  Who or what is the agent of historical change?  Who is the revolution’s beneficiary, who receives its fruits, as it were?
3.  Please pay attention to body and mind, to the physical and the rational.  What, if any, relationship is there between the two, and how is it made manifest (if at all!) in the narrative?
4. Why does Rubashov give in to the show trial?  What prevents him from using his superior intellect to denounce the party?  Is it simply that the interrogations wear him down, or is it something more regarding the ideology of the revolution?
5.  Finally, who was right?  Ivanov?  Gletkin?  Rubashov?  Poor 402, in his lonely confinement?
More broadly:
A. Did the Russian revolution have to devour its own?  Is this a process that has to happen in every revolution? Could the revolution survived without the purging of the “old-school?”
B. If we (perhaps arbitrarily) divide the revolutionaries into moderates and hard-liners, who won out (thinking across multiple phases of the revolution)?  Does the in-fighting of these groups follow similar patterns of other revolutions we’ve studied?

C. How was the Russian Revolution affected by the shadow of France in 1789 (specifically, the effects of the Bolsheviks looking to avoid Thermidor)?  How might the revolution have progressed differently if the Bolsheviks had not known about or cared about the French Revolution?

Hegemonic Culture in the Real World

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“…Gramsci understood and emphasized, more clearly than did his interpreters, the complex unity of coercion and consent in situations of domination.  Hegemony was a more material and political concept in Gramsci’s usage than it has since become.  For another thing, Gramsci well understood the fragility of hegemony…Let us explore hegemony not as a finished and monolithic ideological formation but as a problematic, contested, political process of domination and struggle.”  Roseberry, pg. 358

What do we mean when we say that a film, TV show, or album, is “revolutionary?”  Can culture be “counter-revolutionary?”

Provide an example of culture, high or low, that preserves or reproduces the “common sense” terms of domination.  Alternatively, present a cultural practice or phenomenon that represents a possible “counter-hegemonic” challenge to consensus and the integrity of “the horizon of the taken-for-granted.”  Examples can include books, poems, songs, movie or TV clips, myths and oral traditions.  Case selection and historical scope is up to you (it does not have to be from the US).  Have fun with this blog!

 

 

Revolutions: Dumb Luck or Destiny?

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Up until now we’ve seen revolutions depicted as contingent, even arbitrary events, the overthrow of kings and autocrats little more than happenstance, the unexpected, even unintended consequence of a fateful encounter between stumbling authority and a member of the crowd brave or exhausted enough to finally, definitively, say “no.”

This week’s readings presented us with nearly the opposite scenario:  Revolutions as performance (Furet and Arendt), as incurable pathology (Arendt), an irresistible novelty (again, Arendt, and to a certain extent, Tocqueville), or in the case of Camus’ rebel, as redemption of an irrepressible human spirit.  These accounts were met on the one hand by the skepticism of Burke (revolutions are bad) and Tocqueville (revolutions are unlikely in an era of equality), and on the other by the absolute certainty of Marx and Engels that (class) justice will be served (revolutions as historical necessity, the consequence of teleology).

Very briefly, between the two conceptual poles presented thus far in the course—revolutions as accidental affairs versus revolutions as destiny—where do you stand, and why?  Use this blog post as preparatory notes for next week’s discussion.

Below, I’ve listed a number of passages that may help you as you consider your answer:

“Civil wars have generally been assumed to be sterile, bringing only misery and disaster, while revolutions have often been seen as fertile ground for innovation and improvement…civil wars are local and time-bound, taking place within particular, usually national, communities, at particular moments.  By contrast, revolution seems almost a contagion, occurring when it does across the world, at least the modern world, which in a sense it defines, as an unfolding progress of human liberation.”  Armitage, Civil Wars:  A History in Ideas, pg. 122

“We insist that the part of man which cannot be reduced to mere ideas should be taken into consideration—the passionate side of his nature that serves no other purpose than to be part of the act of living…Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.”  Camus, The Rebel, pg. 19

“…a revolution is an attempt to shape actions to ideas, to fit the world into a theoretic frame.  That is why rebellion kills men while revolutions destroys both men and principles.”  Camus, The Rebel, pg. 106

“The modern concept of revolution, inextricably bound up with the notion that the course of history suddenly begins anew, that an entirely new story, a story never known or told before, is about to unfold, was unknown prior to the two great revolutions at the tend of the eighteenth century.  Before they were engaged in what then turned out to be a revolution, none of the actors had the slightest premonition of what the plot of the new drama was going to be.”  Arendt, On Revolution, pg. 21

“Only where this pathos of novelty is present and where novelty is connected with the idea of freedom are we entitled to speak of revolution.  This means of course that revolutions are more than successful insurrections and that we are not justified in calling every coup d’état a revolution or even in detecting one in each civil war…All these phenomena have in common with revolution that they are brought about by violence…but violence is no more adequate to describe the phenomenon of revolution than change; only where change occurs in the sense of a new beginning, where violence is used to constitute an altogether different form of government, to bring about the formation of a new body politics, where the liberation from oppression aims at least at the constitution of freedom can we speak of revolution.”  Arendt, On Revolution, pp. 27-28

To the Hone. Jno. Hancock Esqre. President of the Continental Congress; This Map of the Seat of Civil War in America is Respectfully Inscribed

 

 

First Blog Post: Why Revolutions?

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“I do not assert that men living in democratic communities are naturally stationary; I think, on the contrary, that a perpetual stir prevails in the bosom of those societies, and that rest is unknown there; but I think that men bestir themselves within certain limits, beyond which they hardly ever go. They are forever varying, altering, and restoring secondary matters; but they carefully abstain from touching what is fundamental. They love change, but they dread revolutions.”  Alexis de Tocqueville, “Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rare”

“In Benghazi itself, the evidence of upheaval becomes more apparent. Each day, the streets roar with the sounds of pep rallies staged by fighters heading for the front; they fire guns in the air and occasionally set off dynamite to prove their devotion to their cause. But then the rallies give way to traffic jams and the rhythms of normal life…On my first day in Libya, in the town of Derna, one meticulously drawn panel caught my eye: ‘WE WANT A COUNTRY OF INSTITUTIONS,’ it read. In how many revolutions have people marched to such a slogan?”  Tom Malinowski, “Jefferson in Benghazi”

“It is a mistaken assumption that nations wronged by history (and they are in the majority) live with the constant thought of revolution, that they see it as the simplest solution. Every revolution is a drama, and humanity instinctively avoids dramatic situations. Even if we find ourselves in such a situation we look feverishly for a way out, we seek calm and, most often, the commonplace. That is why revolutions never last long.”   Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs

Why revolutions, why the allure of this class, of its material?  If we are drawn to transformation and the emancipatory possibilities of change, then how is it possible, as several of you noted in class, that we are put off by the uncertainty that change brings, the unknown of the “and afterwards” that Kapuściński conjures in Shah of Shahs?

Please keep your answers short (no more than 250 words, if you can!).  Post your reply using the “New Post” feature (but title it using your own creativity).  Make sure to tag it as “First Blogging.”  Remember to post a reply-to-a-reply by Monday.  Simply scroll through the entries and reply to whichever one catches your eye!

The Air Force Salutes their Leader: The Turning Point in the 1979 Revolution

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Every successful revolution gives way to rituals, ceremonies and habits whose purpose is to reproduce the excitement and hope of those long-ago days of protest.  Outside of old statuary in places like Lexington and Concord, American fervor against the British has, for the most part, been tamed by family-friendly parades, fireworks, and an impossible array of fried food (see, for example, this:  https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/texas-state-fair-announces-10-finalists-2017-big-tex-choice-awards/081617).

In a country like Iran, however, fun has to contend with earnestness.  The revolution lies too close to the present, its fate still uncertain.

For this, the annual performance of the Air Force officers’ salute, now made for Khomeini’s less-charming successor Ali Khamanei, is not by accident. Like the numerous murals, print images, and porcelain plates (no kidding) of Khamanei and Khomeini in mutual profile, the IRI seeks to “bottle the magic” of Khomeini’s charismatic leadership in its current Leader.

Some historical background: On February 8, 1979—seven days a er Khomeini’s return to Iran a er more than 14 years of exile and three days before the final triumph of the 1979 Revolu- tion—a group of Air Force o icers declared their allegiance to the revolutionary cause, the first large-scale defection of military personnel to occur during the uprising against the Shah’s regime. What makes the event, captured in the first image above, particularly compelling is that the o icers went to visit Khomeini at his then-headquarters, housed in Alavi High School in central Tehran.

Khomeini’s remarks to the o icers on that day included the following: ”Till now you had been in the service of the wayward, but have now returned to the way of the holy Qur’an. May the holy Qur’an be your Guardian and Protector, and hopefully, with your support the people of Iran will succeed in forming the government of Islamic justice.”

The occasion proved to be a major turning point in the revolutionary process. The Royal Iran- ian Air Force, the Shah’s favored branch, in many ways embodied both the putative strength of the old regime and its excesses. The air wing of what was then the region’s largest (by far), its formidable arsenal of state-of-the-art weaponry included over 200 F-4′s, some 60 F-14′s, with at least 20 more F-14s and 160 new F-16s on the way, courtesy of the United States. If posses- sion of American-made fighter jets represented the modernity, both good and bad, of the Pahlavi regime, then it is perhaps fitting that the startling image of air force o icers saluting Khomeini before the end of the revolutionary process has since become one of the most iconic images of the revolution.

The Revolution Turns 39

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Iran celebrates the thirty-ninth anniversary of the overthrow of the Shah this month, ten days of celebration and remembrance to affirm that the revolution in Iran is a living revolution, the past a forever prelude to the present.

My thoughts on the annual celebrations follow, recorded less than a year after the suppression of the 2009 Green Movement. A little weathered, but I suspect that the many uses of the Revolution described below still hold true.

The View from Tehran

Iran turns 31 on Thursday, give or take a few thousand years. As part of the official commemorations for the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, or what is known in Iran as the “ten days of dawn” (daheye fajr), state television broadcasts archival footage from that period, including scenes and images unimaginable the rest of the year: There are men with Western ties and women without Islamic hijabs. Secular housewives march in the streets with Hezbollah university students. Jimmy Carter toasts the Iranian monarch in Tehran, and Ayatollah Khomeini meets with American journalists in France. Every year, the hapless Shah is brought back to life, resurrected by state media only to be chased out of Iran once again, while on another channel Khomeini descends from the sky and into our living rooms on the wings of an Air France passenger plane, returning to Iran after many years of exile. The footage reminds us that revolutions can produce strange combinations, and that our collective memory of those days will forever come in passé hues and sepia tones (will there ever again in history be revolutionaries decked out in wide-collar three-piece suits and feathered hair?).

We watch this history replayed every year on television, but the Revolution is not about history. It is a thirty-one-year old story cut out of sequence, edited back into the programming, made current. One thing that must be understood about Iran, about living here, is that the Revolution is never officially discussed as a finished event. Here, revolution is transitive, a work still in progress. Last year a reporter asked a young man-on-the-street regarding his opinion about the Revolution on the occasion of its 30th anniversary. The man replied that he wished to be around in 90 years to see the Revolution at 120. One hundred twenty. Such talk is surely dissonant to ears conditioned to think of revolutions as conclusions. It is perfectly normal here. Here, revolution is transitive.

There is purpose to this. There are those who argue that by permanently mobilizing the population the regime uses the Revolution as an instrument of rule. This may be true but I think that there is another way to look at the annual celebrations. Like the mourning rites of Ashura, the Revolution is treated as a sequence of events in history that must be retold and most importantly, re-enacted. Revelation comes but once, be it on the plains of Karbala thirteen centuries ago or in the streets of Tehran during the winter cold of 1979, but redemption requires that the faithful regularly reprise the moment of grace.

So every year we spool the story back to 1979 and over ten days the state leads society in public ritual. Public because salvation canʼt be achieved sitting alone in the confessional or in front of the television. Itʼs why turnout is important for this regime, be it at the ballot box or in an anniversary march. Having the masses show up somehow proves that the Islamic Republic is blessed. It all culminates with the great gathering on February 11, the 22nd of Bahman by the Iranian calendar. In Tehran the crowds converge on Freedom Square, the site of massive rallies during the 1979 Revolution and where most recently millions gathered last June to demand that their vote be recognized.

The state organizes the march but it cannot control the meanings that people attach to this day. After so many years, the 22nd of Bahman has become as much a national day of gathering as it is a political rally. Television shows the angry speeches denouncing the West, but out in the crowd the atmosphere is often festive. You are just as likely to run into bundled families out for a stroll as you are to find militant basijis marching in formation along the route. The streets are filled with vendors selling food and all along the route are the ubiquitous balloon sellers, men slowly floating through the crowd wrapped in globes of all shapes and colors. It is not uncommon to see people dressed as Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh, pausing to give hugs and take photos with the many children out in the crowd.

Just days ago former president Mohammad Khatami likened the Revolution to a train in motion. Defending the Green Movement against accusations of treason and supporting the right of the opposition to gather peacefully this coming Thursday (already there is word that security forces are preparing for some three million of the “Greens” will attend) Khatami stated that “Those who groundlessly accuse protesters of subversion are voluntarily or involuntarily derailing the Revolution from its correct track, and they call into question the principles of the Revolution.”

We should pay close attention to Khatami’s words. Like the 22nd of Bahman, the meaning of the 1979 Revolution belongs to no one person or group. 1979 is not a break in history, nor for that matter is 2009 its correction, but are rather constituent parts of a struggle for democracy that reaches back over 100 years. It is a mistake to think that the protestors that will show up tomorrow do so because they all reject the Revolution. Instead, many of these protestors will march because they too seek redemption. For them as it is for the authorities, the Revolution is not yet over but remains a work very much in progress.

“Condi the liar.”