Saroj Giri: End of ‘1989’?
[Saroj Giri is a lecturer in Political Science, University of Delhi, Delhi. He writes on contemporary social and political issues and is an activist.]
The people of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya have spoken truth to power with fantastic spirit and solidarity (not to forget struggles in Madison and elsewhere). Beyond particular demands, a general rebelliousness and a loosening of the hardened status quo has swept through the Arab political regimes and social life in general. El-Abidine and Mubarak are gone, Gaddafi is nearing his end – and yet there is a general unease and deep mistrust of what is next in store. The need to continue the revolution is widely felt, particularly in Egypt. But the question today is how, how does one grant some kind of a longer life and effective power to the truth that the masses have spoken in such exemplary ways?
Let us refer to Vaclav Havel, who is a major reference point for proponents of civil resistance right since the days of the Prague Spring and the velvet revolutions in 1989. What is often overlooked is that for him it was clear that civil resistance and speaking truth to power are forms of struggle that must be understood in the context of the kind of regime in place – in his case, the socialist regimes. In The Power of the Powerless he explains that in socialist regimes, “truth in the widest sense of the word has a very special import, one unknown in other contexts. In this system, truth plays a far greater (and, above all, a far different) role as a factor of power, or as an outright political force.” He instances the greengrocer who puts up a board announcing ‘workers of the world unite’ beside the onions and the carrots. Public rituals such as these meant the creation of an elaborate false appearance, ‘a panorama’, a pseudo-reality of ‘socialism’ and ‘revolution’ sustained by everybody acting and behaving as though it were all true. Truth here, he argued, had an immensely explosive power, such that “a single civilian could disarm an entire division”.
Speaking truth to power could have a far more powerful effect rattling regimes in Eastern Europe during the 1989 civil resistance, than on today’s dictatorships or multi-party democracies whose idioms of rule and internal constitution are different. In Egypt, the Mubarak dictatorship, or now army rule, relies on use of force unmediated by any pseudo-reality, least of all of ‘socialism’ – instead they work through the distribution of benefits to vested interests, class power and the maintenance of related social inequalities. Big business, the old guard within the army like Tantawi, Mubarak’s son’s business empire, NDP leader and billionaire steel magnate Ahmad Ezz, billionaire ministers of Interior and Housing - all populate this network of crony capitalism, neoliberalism and political patronage. Can crony capitalism have truth claims?..
Read entire article at openDemocracy (UK)
The people of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya have spoken truth to power with fantastic spirit and solidarity (not to forget struggles in Madison and elsewhere). Beyond particular demands, a general rebelliousness and a loosening of the hardened status quo has swept through the Arab political regimes and social life in general. El-Abidine and Mubarak are gone, Gaddafi is nearing his end – and yet there is a general unease and deep mistrust of what is next in store. The need to continue the revolution is widely felt, particularly in Egypt. But the question today is how, how does one grant some kind of a longer life and effective power to the truth that the masses have spoken in such exemplary ways?
Let us refer to Vaclav Havel, who is a major reference point for proponents of civil resistance right since the days of the Prague Spring and the velvet revolutions in 1989. What is often overlooked is that for him it was clear that civil resistance and speaking truth to power are forms of struggle that must be understood in the context of the kind of regime in place – in his case, the socialist regimes. In The Power of the Powerless he explains that in socialist regimes, “truth in the widest sense of the word has a very special import, one unknown in other contexts. In this system, truth plays a far greater (and, above all, a far different) role as a factor of power, or as an outright political force.” He instances the greengrocer who puts up a board announcing ‘workers of the world unite’ beside the onions and the carrots. Public rituals such as these meant the creation of an elaborate false appearance, ‘a panorama’, a pseudo-reality of ‘socialism’ and ‘revolution’ sustained by everybody acting and behaving as though it were all true. Truth here, he argued, had an immensely explosive power, such that “a single civilian could disarm an entire division”.
Speaking truth to power could have a far more powerful effect rattling regimes in Eastern Europe during the 1989 civil resistance, than on today’s dictatorships or multi-party democracies whose idioms of rule and internal constitution are different. In Egypt, the Mubarak dictatorship, or now army rule, relies on use of force unmediated by any pseudo-reality, least of all of ‘socialism’ – instead they work through the distribution of benefits to vested interests, class power and the maintenance of related social inequalities. Big business, the old guard within the army like Tantawi, Mubarak’s son’s business empire, NDP leader and billionaire steel magnate Ahmad Ezz, billionaire ministers of Interior and Housing - all populate this network of crony capitalism, neoliberalism and political patronage. Can crony capitalism have truth claims?..