A Communist Hope for Lebanon’s Protests

1 Sept

Written By: Joseph Pallas

The recent explosion that devastated the coastal capital of Beirut, coupled with the nation already being under exceeding strain from COVID-19 and an increasingly grave monetary crisis, has brought a large amount of international attention to the ineffectual and corrupt government of Lebanon. That explosion was far from the first to impact the city and modern Lebanese history is littered with incidents caused by both internal and external factors that have wrought similar havoc amongst its populace. However it may end up being the final slight the populace is willing to endure.

Some have even turned back to the idea of colonialism; following French president Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Beirut a public petition to reimpose the French mandate made headlines when it garnered 60,000 signatures, though it’s unknown how many of these originated within the country (1). Lebanon was already experiencing a wave of marches that were initially sparked by a proposed tax on Voice over IP services like Whatsapp and quickly morphed into near constant protests against a government that was widely considered to be deeply corrupt. The proposed tax was eventually scrapped (2) and Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned, but the protests would continue with varying levels of intensity until they began to die down at the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, only for tensions to again be inflamed by the currency crisis and the Beirut explosion.

“The final decay of bourgeois parliamentarianism and capitalism along with it, illustrated in the clashes between the populace and the current authorities on the streets of Beirut”

Lebanon’s situation, much like the current situation in the United States, should be of particular interest to communists because of the spontaneity and massive groundswell of the protests and the fact that they are in opposition to decades of neo-liberal mismanagement under the thumb of colonial power structures. While they are not strictly leftist led protests, Socialist and Communist parties, such as the Lebanese Communist Party who recently published a call for armed revolution (3), have played significant roles in their organisation.

A notable aspect of these protests, as it is in the case of the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, is their formation without any guiding party or uniting ideology behind them, with people organically forming a semi-consistent class unity in the face of the unfettered corruption of their leaders. This phenomenon of spontaneous action before the development of a capable leadership is the historical norm and there are positive and negative elements to such a force. The independence of the movement from compromised political forces that dominated in the past is a strength, but the lack of a coherent leadership, set of demands, and a clear idea of what the movement is progressing towards is a weakness.

There is a unified and concerted opposition to the protests in the United States however no such opposition exists in Lebanon outside of the police and armed forces. What we are seeing here now may be the very first signs of the final decay of bourgeois parliamentarianism and capitalism along with it, illustrated in the clashes between the populace and the current authorities on the streets of Beirut.

The logo of the Lebanese National Resistance Front

The Lebanese government could very well reform itself with large loans from the IMF and its major allies, and the country is certainly no stranger to being in a state of chaos. Sharing its southern border with Palestine saw the country inundated with refugees when Israeli occupation began in 1948, and tensions between the various ethnic and religious groups would grow until the start of a nearly two decades long civil war in 1975. The war saw Lebanon torn apart by sectarian groups with hefty foreign support in attempts to uphold the corrupt system, they included right-wing groups such as the Falangist Kataeb party who were backed by Israel, France and the United States. Those fighting against the genocide of Palestinians in Lebanon and for a Socialist revolution were the Lebanese National Movement, a coalition of left wing and pan-Arab groups, which was founded in 1969 and dissolved in 1982 after the invasion of Lebanon by Israel. The Lebanese National Resistance Front was founded 1982, succeeding the LNM in continuing the struggle during the civil war and its communist leadership provided a more militant and revolutionary program than that of the LNM. The LNRM was under the general command of Elias Atallah who was a leading member of the LCP. The LCP itself was led by George Hawi at the time, who would later be assassinated by a remote control bomb placed under the seat of his car in 2005, 15 years after the official end of the civil war.

Even now, the Lebanese government is split between its long term economic ties to France and the United States and its more emergent ties to Syria and Iran centred through the Hezbollah dominated south. When the war ended, the government that formed was no less divided than its wartime components, with local powers using the country as a proxy with which to enforce their own foreign policies. The country experienced a similar series of events resulting from the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri that played a part in ending Syrian occupation, despite the elder Hariri’s own corrupt tendencies that saw his net worth valued at $16 billion USD by the time of his death.(4)

"If Lebanon is to successfully free itself from the shackles of its own corrupt governance and the imperialist powers that have supported it, then the people must identify their shared strengths and common class enemies"

One could easily look at this record and reason that these protests will not result in any changes in governance and will likely be hijacked by religious and imperial interests in a manner similar to many of the Arab Spring uprisings, but the economic factor of the Lebanese protests may be their most incendiary one. Both the political structures and economic mechanisms of the country are in focus, with the links between them and their shared failings becoming indisputably clear. The currency crisis has seen the Lebanese Pound (or Lira as it’s commonly known) become inflated to the degree where the entire populace, besides its richest members, has been deeply and immediately affected.(5)

As bad as this situation is for those already living in and close to poverty, particularly the Syrian and Palestinian refugee populations, there could be no clearer illustration of the grand class divide between the wealthy bourgeois and disenfranchised proletariat. If Lebanon is to successfully free itself from the shackles of its own corrupt governance and the imperialist powers that have supported it, then the people must identify their shared strengths and common class enemies, and while the heavy possibility of a return to the status quo looms, there remains, as always, a chance for true progress to be made.