INTERVENTION OF THE LEFT IN THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR by S. JABER
From the sociological standpoint, confessionalism corresponds to the bourgeois interests mentioned above; but it also corresponds to the interests of some well-off petty-bourgeois layers frightened by the dynamic of social and national struggles, particularly by the agrarian reforms undertaken by the nationalist Arab regimes. For the rest, for the Maronite proletariat and poor petty-bourgeois layers, confessionalism is nothing but the ruling ideology, whose domination is facilitated by the opposite confessional ism of the Muslim masses and by the absence of a left movement capable of promoting genuine class consciousness, which is different from Stalinist ideological compromises. Thus, Maronite confessional ism was considerably bolstered by the confessional turn of the reprisals taken by the Palestinian Resistance after the Phalangist massacre of April 13, 1975, the massacre that set the match to the powderkeg. This sort of reprisals. which made no distinction between Phalangists in particular and Christians in general, directly resulted in a rapid intensification of Phalangist influence among the Maronites, which mounted tenfold and more, Taking advantage of the support of masses who were convinced that they were represented by the reactionary Maronite bourgeois parties, primarily the Phalangist party, these parties were perfectly able to organize and train this support. On the basis of confessionalist ideology, they were able to create the framework for an effective and efficient popular mobilization. They were able to transform the sympathy and solidarity of the Maronite masses with their reactionary battle into a genuine striking force; in very large measure, they were able to make use of their full potential support. In fact, the reactionary parties built up an important network of social services: aid to the needy, teaching, dispensaries and ambulances, a supply system, hygiene services, and so on. They organized intense ideological propaganda: leaflets, various kinds of publications, sound-truck brigades, explanatory meetings (most often held in church on Sunday, after mass), and so on. They broadly profited from the various forms
of assistance the population was prepared to furnish them: from plates of food for the combattants to the military participation of volunteers, both men and women.
In the anti-reactionary camp, the militarily dominant force was the Palestinian Resistance. Now, within the refugee camps themselves, the sort of relations the organizations of the Palestinian Resistance have established with the population are eminently bureaucratic, those of a bourgeois state apparatus under a nationalist regime in a colonial country, in this case a state apparatus in search of a territory.
It follows that the relations established by the organizations of the Palestinian Resistance with the population of the Lebanese regions and neighborhoods were even more bureaucratic; these relations may even be characterized as substitutionist.
The organizctions of the Palestinian Resistance did not really seek to organize mass contributions to the battle, on the one hand because of their "congenital" incapacity to stimulate genuine popular mobilization, but also, and this is deliberate, because they insist on their character as Palestinian organizations, attributing the task of organizing the Lebanese masses solely to the Lebanese organizations, In itself this indicates the conception the bureaucrats of the Palestinian Resistance have of their role in relation to the Arab masses. And this is true even though the Palestinian Resistance was not at all a minority force among the Lebanese combattants; on the contrary, it was the major military force of the antireactionary camp. Moreover, a great number of the Fighters of the Palestinian Resistance had been recruited among Lebanese; in fact, the proportion of Lebanese militonts within the Palestinian Resistance had increased during the final phase of the civil war, under the combined effects of forced unemployment and the attraction of the salaries paid by some of the organizations of the Palestinian Resistance. (Occasionally, the Palestinian organizations pay the Lebanese minimum wage for quite insignificant "jobs. " This was the main type of relationship the Palestinian Resistance maintained with the Lebanese population, a relationship of recruitment, on a basis that was much more material than ideological. On the whole, the choice the Palestinian Resistance offered this population was this: either join the Palestinian organizations individually or stay home as a spectator of the ongoing combat in which the Resistance was charged with defending the Muslim regions. Those who joined the Resistance organizations lost their identity as inhabitants of a particular neighborhood or region; they were politically removed from their living places and dissolved into the "professional" mass of the Palestinian Resistance. Obviously, the Muslim masses were nonetheless not indifferent to the battle. Just as the Maronite masses were motivated by confessionalism, this ideology also permeated the Muslim milieus, although with a different political content. Here Arab nationalism generally corresponded to the aspirations of the popular and petty-bourgeois layers; hostility to the army and to the Maronite bourgeois government had obvious class origins, although this hostility was diverted in a confessional direction. Thus, these masses had no alternative but to support the Palestinian Resistance; but this support, warm and enthusiastic at the outset, gradually diminished in intensity to border on indifference or saturation in certain milieus toward the and of the civil war.
The most "popular" organizations, the circles with the greatest base in the anti-reactionary camp, were the petty-bourgeois nationalist organizations of the
Sunni neighborhoods of the Lebanese cities ("Independent Nasserites, * "October 24, " etc.). The reason for this was that these organizations best reflected the dominant confessionalist ideology. The Stalinists, on the other hand, tried to straddle two chairs. Stalinists: respect for tradition
On the one hand, the Stalinists (the Lebanese Communist party and its satellite, the OACL) did not fully dissolve into the Muslim confessionalist current, for the very democratic ideology of the Stalinists compelled them to stress their secular outlook. On the other hand, however, they did not fundamentally distinguish themselves from the Muslim bourgeoisie. Completely tail-endist toward Kemal Jumblatt, the bourgeois reformist and confessional leader of the Muslim Druzes, they constituted the most important elements of a "leftist" chorus extending support to the Muslim big bourgeoisie, although if must be said that this support was timidly crifical: The one and only program put forward by the Stalinists during the civil war was the "program of national reform" of the entire "left, " reformist, as the very name implies, but different from what one might assume it to be. In reality, within a generally democratic context, this program presented demands that actually represented only the interests of the Muslim bourgeoisie: election of the prime minister by parliament, national (that is, confessional) balance in the leadership of the army, etc. Trailing in Jumblatt's wake, the Stalinists gave support to Rashid Karameh, candidate of the Muslim bourgeois opposifion for president of the council, and continued to support him after he was designated and even after he had formed one of the most reactionary governments in the history of Lebanon. All this was in the best tradition of the Stalinist "tactic" of supporting the "secondary contradiction." This political attitude of the Stalinists, completely tail-endist toward the bourgeoisie, accounts for their behavior toward the masses; in fact it determined that behavior. Far From promoting forms of self-organization of the masses, far from creating channels for the expression of the initiative of the masses, the Stalinists, like the Resistance, maintained a
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quite bureaucratic relationship with the population; they had learned these relations in the school of the party and the trade unions. There was no policy of arming the masses, but instead organizational recruitment; "popular committees" were set up to provide for supplies, but in reality these were structures isolated from the masses and maintaining bureaucratic relations with them, structures composed of party militants and designated notables. The Stalinists became sugar and rice merchants! They replaced the absent state apparatus, copying its method of functioning, not even improving that functioning in the interests of "efficiency." As for political agitation and the development of class consciousness, the Stalinists simply did not bother. The result of this sort of action by the Palestinian Resistance and the Stalinists was that the popular neighborhoods in the suburbs of Beirut were emptied. The great majority of their inhabitants preferred to return to their villages of origin and wait for the clashes to end and economic life to start up again. Moreover, the CP militants were the most affected by the outcome of the civil war. Deluded by illusions about the democratic character of their struggle, they suddenly discovered that they had fought in order to allow the Syrian regime to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. And the Lebanese Communist party continues to hail the "Syrian mediation. " Consequently, a good number of CP militants have prefered to walk out of the party. The revolutionary Marxist intervention The Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG), section of the Fourth International in Lebanon, shares the grouplet condition of the whole far left in Lebanon. (The broad vanguard in this country, previously represented by the OAL, has been reabsorbed by Stafinism during the past three years.) Nevertheless, in spite of its limited resources and forces in a politico-military field dominated by large apparatuses with no financial problems, the RCG, which stood out among the revolutionary left in Lebanon, intervened in the civil war in various ways. Militarily, the RCG participated in the fighting in the anti-reactionary camp. Its participation in the fighting was dictated by the fact that it could not remain indifferent to the outcome of the conflict: Revolutionary Marxists had an interest - the interest of the toiling masses - in contributing to the defeat of the reactionary plan. The emergence of a strong state in the pay of American imperialism would have represented a disastrous defeat for the mass movement. But while participating in the fighting on the same side as some factions of the bourgeoisie, the REG did not in any way extend political support to these factions (as the Stalinists did), but instead constantly explained that in a future that will not be long in 20 coming these same bourgeois factions will stand on the side of the reactionaries, opening fire against the toiling masses. Conscious of the real nature of the conflict and refusing to disguise it, the RCG chose to participate essentially in the task of defending the popular neighborhoods. It took charge of some of the advanced defense posts. *Politically, the RCG put forward a series of slogans adapted to the situation; against bourgeois wheeling and dealing, for the election of a constituent assembly on a non-confessional basis; against the bourgeois government and other calls for "national unity," the propagandist slogan of workers and peasants government; for the organization of logistical tasks in the popular neighborhoods; for the creation of a popular militia to which the inhabitants could contribute by rotation, etc. In addition, the RCG engaged in a campaign to denounce the settlement worked out by Syria, which consisted of political denunciation and concrete acts that have already created problems for the revolutionary Marxists with the Syrian forces. The sales of Ma-l'amal (What Is to Be Done), the fortnightly of the RCG, have more than doubled; in addition, the RCG distributes a weekly agitation sheet in one of the popular neighborhoods (2, 000 copies a week). *Finally, socially, the RCG concretized certain of its slogans, pn a reduced but exemplary scale. It stimulated the creation of an elected popular committee in a section of a popular neighborhood in order to distribute supplies that had been requisitioned; within the same framework, it stimulated the creation of a popular militia. It also operated an infirmary. One of the comrades, a medical student who was working in this infirmary, was murdered by the reacfionary militias in the Qaranting neighborhood. Obviously, these activities, modest in relation to the gravity of the situation, were able to modify that situation only slightly. But when the time comes to draw the balance-sheet - and this hour has already begun to sound - the revolutionary Marxists will find themselves in a much better position than the Stalinists. They have the advantage of never having lied to the masses, but of having told them the whole truth, of seeing their analyses fully confirmed by the course of events. The Trotskyists in Lebanon will have to make this political capital bear fruit. The ground already seems to be fertile. The toiling masses, of all religions, feel frustrated by the leaderships that led them astray during this civil war. In the most recent period, this frustration has been expressed in a wave of robberies, which is also an expression of resentment against the bourgeoisie on the part of the poor. But a long struggle will be required before the slogan placed on the masthead of the RCG's weekly agitational sheet is realized in proctice: Toilers of all confessions, unite! March 6, 1976
dossier THE SOVIET UNION