Once upon a time, in the early 1970′s, many
people, including myself, thought that all the “struggles” of that
period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerillas in
Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European “dissidents”, May
68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and
the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia. We
also thought that the “fascist” regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece,
by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle,
very likely protracted.
None of these assumptions were correct. The
Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with the anti-authoritarian
movements in the West, the Eastern European dissidents were, in general,
pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist, and often fanatically so, the Latin
American guerrillas were a pipe dream (except in Central America) and
the national liberation movements were just that: they (quite rightly)
aimed at national liberation and called themselves socialist or
communist only because of the support offered to them by the Soviet
Union or China. The southern European “fascist” regimes transformed
themselves without offering a serious resistance, let alone an armed
struggle. Many other authoritarian regimes followed suit: in Eastern
Europe, in Latin America, in Indonesia, Africa and now in part of the
Arab world. Some collapsed from inside, other crumbled after a few
demonstrations.
I was reminded of these youthful illusions when I read a petition
“in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling
for dignity and freedom since March 2011”, whose list of signatories
includes a veritable who’s who of the Western Left. The petition claims
that “The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African
revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in
Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American
revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian,
Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.”
