Power in the Middle East

We all watched with joy and a certain amount of trepidation as the citizens of Egypt rose up in revolt against the Mubarak dictatorship. Seeing, and listening to, so many articulate (speaking English, no less) and passionate people from all walks of life demanding an end to the corruption and poverty that pervades Egypt after thirty years of totalitarian rule allowed us to focus on hopeful feelings rather than fearful ones.

Now that the military has reasserted its control (remember, since 1952 the military has essentially ruled the country), promising a transition to a freely elected government, the fearful feelings start creeping in. As much as I try to ignore what I’ve learned regarding institutionalized power, I can’t help but worry about how that transition will take place, who or what will be the beneficiary, and whether it will translate to a “democratic” government. I put “democratic” in quotes because I’m not sure what that means. If the U.S. is taken as an example of a functioning democracy, where citizens participate in “free” and “fair” elections, we’re in trouble. All you have to do is look at the incomes of our elected officials, or the billions of corporate dollars used to elect them, to remember that it’s the elites who run the country.

Michel Foucault is the go to guy about how society has transitioned from sovereignty, the rule over a territory, to governmentality, or the rule within our institutions, or “micro-power structures.” Unfortunately, in modern western democracies, this form of governmentality often takes the form of neoliberalism, based on the predominance of market mechanisms and of the restriction of the action of the state. We now live in a globalized society, and the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and perhaps the entire Middle East, will unfold in that context.

There is no comparison, of course, between the lack of personal freedom and dire economic situations in the Middle East and the U.S. If the people there achieve freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, and slave wages and benefits are improved, their lives will be enormously better. But if the revolution is “highjacked” by the neoliberals, rather than the Islamists, we will see, just as we are seeing in this country and in Europe, an institutionalized divide between the rich and the poor and an assault on government’s basic function in society, that of providing access to basic needs and services. While the divide between the rich and poor in Egypt is already enormous (and already neoliberal, to a certain extent), will global capitalism just allow better access to a more efficient system of exploitation than the one perpetrated by the U.S., which has long worked behind the scenes in that country to ensure both political and economic dependency.

I went to the rally on February 22 at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe to show solidarity with the public employees and teachers in Madison, Wisconsin who are under assault by their Republican governor who wants to do away with collective bargaining. Private unions in this country have already been eviscerated, so now the neoliberalists are after the public unions like AFSMCE and teachers unions. The ultimate goal is to put more money in the hands of the corporate elite, and unfortunately, they’ve not only been successful in this goal but through the “power of consent” have convinced many of the working class that their interests are the same as the capitalists.

But the thousands of protesters in Wisconsin, those of us supporting them on the streets of Santa Fe, and many of the protesters all over the Middle East, understand that it is power imposed by economic coercion. We must break free of that control in the western world if there is to be any hope of breaking free in the Middle East. But in the meantime, off with their heads!