Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. Benjamin Franklin

Monday, March 31, 2014

Arab revolutions and neoliberal illusions

It is naive to assume that the Arab people in face of setbacks have retreated from their democratic aspirations.

By Seif Dana 

Al-Jazeera - 13 Jan 2014 

Words “are witnesses which often speak louder than documents”, wrote Eric Hobsbawm in "The Age of Revolution 1789-1848".  And in an age of Arab revolutions (2010- ), words have become effective lethal weapons of counter-revolutions. No such common word may capture this wisdom of the brilliant historian these days than the Western category of liberal democracy preached by neoliberal Arab intellectuals as their people struggle for uprooting the neo-colonial system of oppression and the alliance between global capital and Arab economic elite.
The democracy concept illuminates not only the dynamics of the on-going social and historical confrontations in the Arab homeland, but also highlights the failure of this concept, in the non-Western world, to address either the socio-economic root-causes of the Arab uprisings or address the critical question of democratising (or transforming the structure of) the Arab state, and not simply "peacefully" organise the intra-elite transfer of power.

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