A Plan for Defence (and Attack)
The situation in Lebanon is continuously worsening with no end in sight. The everyday depreciation of the currency has forced shops to close and reduced the minimum wage in Lebanon, something barely adhered to in the best of times, to 60 USD a month. Government subsidies on essential foodstuffs and fuel are being slowly removed, leading to scuffles at supermarkets as people fight over limited supply and opportunism among sellers who are repackaging subsidized goods to sell at market rates. Bakeries are threatening to close, and blackouts, a norm in the country, are getting longer and longer. This is barely an exhaustive list, and it must be added to the other long list of crimes that continue to be committed against the Lebanese population. Army and Security force suppression of the media and critics. Bank imposed capital controls leaving depositors with no access to their money. And, of course, the port explosion of August 4th, 2020 which killed close to 200 people.
The above events have all provided fuel to mass protests, now remerging once again after they first started on October 17, 2019 and subsided due to the global pandemic. Yet, even though it has been more than a year since this “revolution” has begun, no clear political actor or solution has emerged to lead the country out of its predicament. The state itself continues to waffle, unable, as usual, to do anything meaningful and remains paralysed by its own quibbles, quibbles that have left Lebanon without a government and with a caretaker government that has, ironically, enjoyed more time in power as caretakers than as governors.
The fact that mass protests have been unable to unseat and displace the government and replace it with a new revolutionary option has left many disoriented, reluctant to participate in more collective action, or simply unable to due to their worsening conditions. The question on everyone’s minds is, what more will it take for something to actually change?
This disorientation can be attributed to a misunderstanding of how revolutions themselves work. Mass protests, although they strongly indicate dissatisfaction with a government or ruling class, are not enough to remove them from power. Especially as long as they continue to be integrated with the institutions that legitimate or allow for them to stay in power, the financial system, armed power, international support, and control of other resources and the means of their distribution. Even romantic ideas of storming a parliament or a presidential palace, traditional symbols of the state, mean nothing if an alternative is unavailable to occupy them after people have departed. In such a light, any achievements brought about by “the people” is symbolic at best and easily ignored, as we have seen with the rotating door of prime ministers.
Revolutions then can’t be understood simply as negative motions, movements built on a rejection of a certain class, ruler, or government system. They also need to provide a positive program, an alternative which “the people” can invest their support in after they have withdrawn their support from the current system. Only then can a real transfer of power take place and a revolution have the chance to be completed. Any program also needs a movement, a party, or a coalition of parties, to be able to carry it out and, more importantly, to help focus and direct the frustration of “the people” to chip away at the ruling class and force them to concede power. This is not something that can happen spontaneously and needs to be consciously built, especially in a place like Lebanon where traditional structures of resistance have long been broken up by the state. More importantly, this is not something that the state itself can or will do. During the early days of an uprising and today, the call continues to be for a smaller transitional government that will call early elections. As much of a worthwhile goal as that may be, the ruling class will not simply carry out a course of action that will lead to its own extinction. We need to build the power and alternative structures that can force that decision through, against the wishes of the ruling class. Until then, the state will continue to be able to ignore, suppress, diffuse, or coopt the popular movement.
Since the beginning of the uprising, I have posed the argument that this needs to be done in a decentralised and peripheral way through the use of local revolutionary councils. One of the major successes of this uprising is that it was nationwide and did not concentrate exclusively in the capital city as previous movements have. So long as there is a lack of clarity of who the future politicians of the country are, that is to say, so long as we don’t know who will or can replace the current ruling class in the capital, it is unwise to focus our energies there. Not only will any kind of success be short-lived, but efforts focused on the centre will also sideline suffering on the periphery which has great organisational potential.
The objective of this article then is twofold. First, to elaborate on what this resistance from the periphery can look like. Second, how this resistance can be used to create and push for a positive revolutionary program.
Before doing that we must reflect on an important achievement of the uprising so far and one that no revolution is successful without. Problem definition.
Problem definition
The uprising has had great success in identifying and popularising a definition that points to the culprits that led Lebanon to its current predicament. The “Killoun Ya’ni Killoun” (all of them means all of them) has rightfully made it clear that the problem in Lebanon is not due to one or another politician or political party, but the cabal of political parties sustained by the confessional system. It is the confessional system that is the root of corruption, underdevelopment, poverty, and lack of social justice. It is the confessional system that empowers politicians to divvy up the country and its resources among themselves robbing the people of public spaces or the benefits of public institutions that should be run in the interest of the people and the ability to conduct commerce and regular day to day activities without legal order or recourse to bribes or “wasta” (favouritism). This has been made clear by the political parties themselves who whenever threatened rallied around each other proving the truth of the slogan and have swatted down any popular initiative that threatens their power or profits from environmental causes to women’s liberation.
The identification of these problems has naturally led to possible solutions being put forward. The one most repeated during the uprising has been the creation of a new secular voting law and the holding of new elections. Other proposed solutions have ranged from nationalising the banks, freezing politician’s accounts and seizing their assets to recoup illegitimately gained profits, a public healthcare system and many others.
Unfortunately, the uprising’s failure to bring about any of the above changes have led to some abandoning the revolutionary path altogether in favour of an electoral solution. With 2022 being a year in which, theoretically, municipal and parliamentary elections are meant to be held, as well as the selection of a new president, many have invested their hopes into a change brought about by the ballot box. This is a major error, the attempt at displacing the political ruling class by the ballot box in 2018 failed miserably. In part, this was due to the inability of the opposition to unify, but mostly it was a result of bribery, “missing” voting boxes, and countless other violations that taint the entire electoral process. The trust in the electoral system in Lebanon is so abysmally low that almost 50% of the population does not even bother voting. Electoralism remains a pipedream helmed by well to do liberal-minded elites who believe in the power of the ballot if only we’re able to change the outlook of the people. This, in turn, also provides an easy scapegoat in “the people” should elections fail to change anything.
The absurdity of this position becomes even greater in the face of a ruling class that has been able to hold out for more than a year under revolutionary conditions. The ruling class and their political parties will under no circumstance allow themselves to be voted out. They have the ability to better mobilise a voting base, cheat, and even postpone the elections altogether. Those still hoping for an electoral solution will do well to listen to the 50% of the population who has abandoned it as a meaningful path.
Others have stuck to the revolutionary ethos of October 17. After the port explosion on August 4, several small organisations released statements of defiance claiming that all legitimacy of the system has now disappeared. One of these statements read:
“On August 4, 2020, any legitimacy for this authority has been lost and we have entered the stage of open war.
There is no longer any legitimacy for this regime, its politicians, institutions, parties, banks, and media. This legitimacy will not be restored by investigation committees, ballot boxes, and rescue governments. Legitimacy today is ours, simply because we are not you. Legitimacy today is for those who clean the streets, care for the wounded, and mourn the dead.”
Another claimed:
“It is now time for rage. For revenge. For justice. It is time to obliterate this regime, by any means necessary.”
These calls for total war are very welcome, yet how this war should be fought was only mentioned in passing. Like my proposal, one of them urged “We must form neighbourhood committees, and workers must control their own destiny, both in the production and reproduction of wealth.” But the question remains, how do you form these committees? And what exactly should they do?
The peripheral battle
I have already described why this battle needs to be waged peripherally. It is only there, outside of a focus on traditional centres of power, that solutions to the needs of the people can be found. These solutions should not suffer the fate of NGO’ization which we’ve seen in much of the response after the explosion where relief efforts quickly transformed into organizations run for the people instead of by them, creating a class of professional emergency response teams simultaneously depoliticising the response to catastrophe by framing it as a “humanitarian” issue and buffering the government by substituting itself for it in regards to the provision of services.
Instead, solutions should seek to alter the very relations of production, distribution, and consumption in the country which have led us here. They should focus on building collective action instead of service-oriented provisions. They should seek to put power directly in the people’s hand instead of opportunistically secure employment for a new class of “saviours”. This is where local revolutionary committees come into place.
These types of committees already made an appearance during the uprising. They were close nit groups of people raising funds, organising and directing actions and protests, confronting politicians, propagandizing. They were found in most major cities and towns. In this way, they already exist. A lack of resources and coordination, however, has meant that they could not develop into the alternate centres of power they should become.
In an ideal situation, these committees would be first and foremost advocating and propagandizing for this “total war” against the state. In a negative sense, they should be calling for boycotts on paying taxes, utility fees, adhering to the “law”, payments of rents for those who cannot afford it. They should also be looking to loosen the power of state institutions agitating among security and army personnel. In a positive sense, they can divert tax and utility payments to themselves, occupy spaces needed for housing, break up propertied interests in public spaces or interests that can be run in the interest of the people and developing relationships that can help secure the resources needed to survive, be that appropriating plots of land to cultivate, taking stock and managing inventories in shops themselves, or building relationships with committees in more productive areas of the country.
This requires that protestors stop seeing themselves simply as opposers to a ruling class but as empowered agents with control over the assets and resources that the state is barring people access from. These local committees should institute themselves as the local authorities. In short, instead of one national revolution, we should be looking to make thousands of local ones.
Many new organizations have embedded themselves in local communities but are still relying on outbreaks of mass mobilization to become active. They should instead be focusing on agitation and propaganda work which can be undertaken by smaller groups with great efficiency. They can also draw on popular support by calling and holding mass or neighbourhood open meetings to encourage agency and gather information. They should also be looking to link with other groups active in their area and seek the support of those who have traditional or longstanding social ties.
Finally, it’s at this local level where direct problem solving will help build the solidarity needed to overcome some of the social divisions that have stood in the way of the revolution. It is through “rubbing shoulders” with people from all walks of life in the project of rebuilding society that will help create an understanding and practice of the social justice we are looking for.
It’s important to note that these local committees will be unable to survive on their own. The state still maintains strong coercive powers and can effectively mobilize to shut down these forms of resistance. Any opposition from the state will only serve to further delegitimize it and reveal it to be the oppressor that it is. To survive they will not only need to coordinate with and support each other but will also need a national force to unify it.
The national image
One of the great things that was revealed by October 17 and August 4 was the mobilizing potential of Lebanon’s diaspora. Protests and marches were organized around the world in support of the October uprising and millions of dollars were raised in response to the port explosion. One can only imagine what is possible if this potential was unified into supporting the establishment of local committees and helping them meet their needs.
To be able to do this we would need one national organization, or alliance/coalition, to help coordinate resources and provide support to all of these committees. An organization that does not sit above these committees, that is, an organization that doesn’t control the committees, but rather acts as its public face. An organization that does not constitute a new party, but a movement.
By envisaging such a movement, we can see how it can become fertile ground for the production of a new and unified set of political actors and representatives who can directly struggle towards securing power. We can see how such a movement can slowly chip away at remaining neutral or state-supportive non-state institutions and bring them over to the side of the revolution. Both things have been difficult to accomplish due to the fragmented nature of the opposition.
The fragmented nature of the opposition has been reinforced by the electoral focus they each hold. After all, most of them found their inception in preparing for the electoral battles of 2018. That history has meant that these new parties are posing undue emphasis on comprehensive political programs. It’s these programs that will, these parties hope, change the mind of electors and help unseat the ruling class. As we’ve mentioned before, no program is worth the paper it’s printed on if it is not accompanied by powerful street pressure to get it implemented, especially in Lebanon’s current revolutionary situation. On top of these policy divisions, a major cleavage has emerged regarding the revolution’s relationship with the “Resistance”.
All these discussions however serve only to divide the movement at this stage which must remain broad, focusing on meeting the needs of people on the ground and building the power needed to unseat the ruling class. It is in the process of this project and based on the real distribution of power on the ground that it might lead to, that a clearer political program can emerge. By focusing on the struggle itself, it will also be other political movements and civil organizations who will be forced to clarify their position in relation to the revolution and the project of meeting the people’s immediate needs and the people engaged in this struggle themselves will be able to draw conclusions based on their own experiences instead of some prefabricated political position.
Conclusion
It is imperative that actors in the Lebanese Uprising stop depending on the spontaneous rising of “the people” to displace Lebanon’s ruling class and bring forward a new political and economic system. They must also abandon any illusions of change through the ballot box and embrace a revolutionary and militant conception of “total war”.
This war should be waged by establishing local committees that help meet the immediate needs and demands of the people and challenge the authority of the state at a local level. These committees should be accompanied by a national level that seeks to mobilize the diaspora in their support and begins to put forward a leadership that can act on its power once the ruling class is unsated and create a political program that reflects the balance of power on the ground — a program that expands and becomes more concrete the more the balance of power shifts in the favour of the revolution.
The existence of several revolutionary parties and groups presents a promising opportunity for both the local committees and the national body to be formed through a coalition. However, this suggested plan does not require one to succeed.
