Class struggle could tip Lebanon over the edge
I hate it when my people support America as the Gold standard of democracy. They seem to forget that America was never a true democracy, it was only ever a democracy for the wealthy and it was and remains a highly structured, ideologically rigid absolutist regime for the poor and for those who are ethnically and religiously different, i.e. not white Anglo Saxon protestants. The political system in the US is not easily accessible by the poor, running for election is not something an ordinary salaried person can contemplate without support from a wealthy patron. The concentration of wealth at the very top of society is increasing poverty across the board in the US. The US educational system and its justice system, which uses the law to send the poor to jail, keeps the working people beaten down and docile.
US democracy is increasing disaffection among the masses in the US and is actually a threat to global economic stability should a revolution break out in the US! And yet so many Lebanese admire the US system and its brand of democracy. I guess the Lebanese are just born with some right wing leanings and tendencies, their painfully stifling conservatism makes them vulnerable to such tendencies. Let us not forget that the war in Lebanon was never about Palestinian arms or about Muslims vs. Christians and which religion gets a bigger slice of the national pie, which is the generally accepted fiction, it was about class struggle, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few and increasing levels of poverty across the board, that is what pushed the country over the edge into civil war.
The Palestinians and their weapons and ample willing fighters were simply a means to an end, a dispossessed people exploited by the left in making war against the right in Lebanon. The myth that it was a war between Christians and Muslims was propagated by the right to distract attention away from the real root cause of the conflict: class struggle! With increasing poverty you have increasing powerlessness in society, democracy no longer works, in its place, selfishness and lack of compassion for one's fellow human beings takes over, clientelism and sectarianism and feudalism flourish and myriad social injustices are the result.
Its easy to accuse the poor of being lazy, as the right often does, but its harder to challenge a system that long served only the interests of the religious and business establishments and the super rich by taxing such institutions and persons as little as possible, while depriving the poor of access to opportunities, to education, to basic services, and then blaming them for their condition and attacking them brutally if they revolted against this system. Our civil war started as a war of revenge by the super poor against the super rich, who simply moved away from the country and took their wealth with them. Now, we are approaching another critical point in our history, the class struggle is even more intense, the wealthy elite are a smaller minority, the angry, disfranchised poor and powerless are a larger majority.
US democracy is increasing disaffection among the masses in the US and is actually a threat to global economic stability should a revolution break out in the US! And yet so many Lebanese admire the US system and its brand of democracy. I guess the Lebanese are just born with some right wing leanings and tendencies, their painfully stifling conservatism makes them vulnerable to such tendencies. Let us not forget that the war in Lebanon was never about Palestinian arms or about Muslims vs. Christians and which religion gets a bigger slice of the national pie, which is the generally accepted fiction, it was about class struggle, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few and increasing levels of poverty across the board, that is what pushed the country over the edge into civil war.
The Palestinians and their weapons and ample willing fighters were simply a means to an end, a dispossessed people exploited by the left in making war against the right in Lebanon. The myth that it was a war between Christians and Muslims was propagated by the right to distract attention away from the real root cause of the conflict: class struggle! With increasing poverty you have increasing powerlessness in society, democracy no longer works, in its place, selfishness and lack of compassion for one's fellow human beings takes over, clientelism and sectarianism and feudalism flourish and myriad social injustices are the result.
Its easy to accuse the poor of being lazy, as the right often does, but its harder to challenge a system that long served only the interests of the religious and business establishments and the super rich by taxing such institutions and persons as little as possible, while depriving the poor of access to opportunities, to education, to basic services, and then blaming them for their condition and attacking them brutally if they revolted against this system. Our civil war started as a war of revenge by the super poor against the super rich, who simply moved away from the country and took their wealth with them. Now, we are approaching another critical point in our history, the class struggle is even more intense, the wealthy elite are a smaller minority, the angry, disfranchised poor and powerless are a larger majority.
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