Karen Pfeifer, Agrarian Reform Under State Capitalism in Algeria (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985).
The analysis of contemporary Algerian politics is a matter of considerable controversy. [1] Karen Pfeifer’s excellent study will certainly not put an end to argument; indeed it contributes to the debate. She provides useful and hitherto not accessible empirical evidence concerning agrarian change in Algeria during the 1970s in constructing a more general analysis of the dynamics of “state capitalism.”
Ellis Goldberg, Tinker, Tailor and Textile Worker: Class and Politics in Egypt, 1930-1952 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986).
The critique of modernization theory that began in the late 1960s had an especially significant impact on a new generation of Western scholars who rejected the prevailing academic focus on political elites to the exclusion of other political forces. Not only were elites largely studied in isolation from the masses they dominated, but the masses themselves were not attributed any role in the political process. Today, this younger generation of scholars, working in the political economy paradigm, is beginning to publish the results of its research on the role of the masses in politics.
When King Hussein announced last July that Jordan was severing its political ties with the West Bank, he implicitly acknowledged that his strategy of 20 years, to broaden and deepen his political base there, had been overtaken by the Palestinian uprising. The Palestinian revolt has asserted an independent political identity with such clarity and force as to make it impossible for Jordan to continue to claim to represent the Occupied Territories politically.
The communiqués issued by the Unified National Leadership did not conceal the accumulating enmity towards the regime. They apparently had a personal effect on the king himself, who was deeply disappointed by the “hostile” attitude they expressed.
Passing the Test On October 13, 1988, the Nobel Prize committee in Stockholm announced that the 1988 prize in literature had been awarded to Egyptian novelist and playwright Naguib Mahfouz — the first time an Arab writer had received this honor. In its front-page story on the award, the New York Times hastened to reassure its readers that all was well, because Mahfouz was a “good Arab” — that is, not overly critical of Israel or of US Middle East policy.
A largely ignored byproduct of the Iranian revolution and the Gulf war has been the large influx of refugees into Turkey. The economic benefits of Turkish neutrality during the Gulf war led Ankara to downplay the problem, but the recent arrival of Kurdish refugees has strained regional ties and clouded Turkish hopes for lucrative post-war reconstruction deals. The large Iranian refugee population of a million or more is also causing worries, as struggles among Iranian political groups spill over into Turkey.
By the beginning of the first week of October 1988, as the Palestinian uprising moved into its eleventh month, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, known by its Arabic acronym Hamas) had issued its thirtieth communiqué. Hamas appears to be engaged in a competitive race with the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising for direction of the daily struggle of the people of the Occupied Territories. Yet despite the fact that Hamas is six communiqués ahead of the Unified Leadership, it is another matter altogether whether it can command the kind of legitimacy and influence required to direct the Palestinian struggle against occupation.
Dear Comrade,
Surprising as it may be, an Iraqi citizen addresses you through the Western press. I have no guarantees that, if my letter reaches your media, its contents would be passed to the Soviet people.
My message is quite plain: A people in the Middle East is being exterminated. The Soviet public is unaware of what is going on because your press is totally silent on the tragedy and your party and government have not even issued a declaration on the issue. In brief — utter silence in the era of glasnost.
“Roya” is how she wants to be known. She was arrested in Iran in the fall of 1982. She was released four years later and lived in Tehran for 15 months before coming to the US in early 1988. Eric Hooglund spoke with her in Washington in October 1988.
Can you describe the circumstances of your arrest?
One day I was at home alone. Four armed men in civilian clothes came looking for me. They showed me a card from the Revolutionary Prosecutor’s office. They shoved their way in and confiscated all our tapes, books, letters and other personal papers. Then they ordered me to come with them. They pushed me into their car, forced me onto the floor and took me to Evin Prison.
Within weeks of Iran’s surprise acceptance of a ceasefire in its war with Iraq last July, perceptions of the regime in Tehran on the Arab side of the Gulf underwent a radical transformation. Governments in Kuwait, Riyadh and Bahrain pledged to forget past clashes, restore full diplomatic ties and launch a new era of political cooperation. Dollar signs danced in traders’ eyes as they saw a revival of a once booming reexport business with ports on the Persian coast.
What are current relations between Iran and Lebanon? What has been the import of Iran’s revolution on Lebanon’s Shi‘i community? These were the questions we put to Ahmad Baydoun, poet, man of letters and professor of history at the Lebanese University, in Boston in late October.
It is now ten years since the triumph of the Iranian revolution and the assumption of power by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his forces on February 11, 1979. If the revolution itself was a surprise, destroying an apparently strong and capable regime and bringing a most unexpected clerical leadership to power, its subsequent course has also contained quite a few unanticipated elements. In the first place, the Islamic Republic of Iran has survived: The clerical regime has consolidated its hold on the country, crushed its many opponents, greatly reduced external political and economic influence within Iran, and overcome the supreme test of foreign invasion.
Ahmad Ashraf is an Iranian sociologist currently teaching in the United States. He is presently working on a book with Ali Banuazizi on social classes and the state in contemporary Iran. Ervand Abrahamian and James Paul spoke with him in New York City in late October.
How would you describe the regime’s social base of support?
The regime consists of different factions, and each of them has certain social bases among the populace. The bazaar, for instance, is no longer the social base of the government in general, but rather of a group collaborating with the regime.
What are the main currents, and which social bases are aligned with them?
Ten years after the Iranian revolution swept the Shah from power, and contrary to innumerable prophecies of its demise, the Islamic Republic endures. Many of the revolution’s original leaders remain in power and many of their goals, although not yet fulfilled, continue to be policy objectives.
As President-elect George Bush sits down to lunch with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in early December 1988 to discuss the modalities of Detente II, we wonder what the prospects are for any similar sort of US rapprochement with the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It took 16 years, from 1917 to 1933, for the United States to come to diplomatic terms with the Bolshevik Revolution, and the half-century since then has been marked by periods of deep hostility, none more pronounced than the first half of the Reagan-Bush administration.
For years, economic analysts of all political persuasions have been commenting on the protracted economic crisis which began with the global recession of 1974-75 and continues to be the defining feature of world capitalism today. Most have restricted themselves to those manifestations of the crisis which have been particularly acute at various moments: the oil price shocks of the 1970s, Third World debt, African famine and the inability of the market to ensure adequate food supply, the US balance of payments deficit, and so forth. By contrast, Joyce Kolko’s Restructuring the World Economy (New York: Pantheon, 1988) links these and other issues in a comprehensive analysis of the crisis.
“This Week in The Holy Land,” ABC Nightline’ week-long series of broadcasts from Jerusalem between April 25 and April 29, 1988, was a major television event. The length of the series (seven hours of air time), its form and content, and its impact across a wide range of opinion in the United States, make it worth a closer look.
Decline and Fall
Europe’s attitude could influence the decisions of the next Palestine National Council, Yasir Arafat told members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on September 14, 1988. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairperson urged Europeans to assume their share of “international responsibility” for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The prospect of European recognition of a Palestinian state and provisional government, he said, would powerfully support Palestinian moves to abandon armed struggle for diplomacy.
The Palestinian uprising has put the Palestinian-Israeli conflict onto the agendas of progressive organizations nationwide. It has ignited a broad range of activities, including coalition-building, referendums, conferences and teach-ins, demonstrations, petitions, letter-writing campaigns, lobbying and sister-city projects.
This intensified activity has promoted a newfound unity and direction of purpose in some circles, but it has also highlighted the obstacles to changing official US policies and public opinion vis-a-vis the Palestine conflict. No coordinated national strategy has emerged, and the broad range of responses reflects both the increased need to take action and the persistent differences among individuals and groups organizing around the issue.
Beyond the cameras, outside the glare of the kleig lights of television talk shows, a quiet but potentially very significant campaign for economic disengagement is developing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
From the Boston Tea Party to Gandhi’s Salt March, struggles over economic issues have historically had great importance in anticolonial movements. It is too soon to quantify the actual economic impact or to assess the long-term political significance of this campaign, but clearly it has already eroded the profitability of the occupation for the Israeli government and various economic sectors.
