SEPTEMBER 2009
TYO - Canada
History (Continued from August)
Normative Structure of National Liberation Movements The archetypal organisational structure of armed national liberation movements is composed of: 1) The nation people who seek liberation 2) A political organisation or party 3) The guerrilla army The guerrilla army is, of course, always illegal or “underground,” but the political organisation is sometimes legal or quasi-legal. It’s purpose is to serve as the respectable facade of the armed movement, a civilian front, or, as the Cubans called it, resistencia civica: Made up of intellectuals, tradesmen, clerks, students, professionals, and the like - above all, of women - capable of promoting funds, circulating petitions, organizing boycotts, raising popular demonstrations, informing friendly journalists, spreading rumours, and in every way conceivable waging a massive propaganda campaign aimed at two objectives: the strengthening and brightening of the rebel “image”, and the discrediting of the regime (Taber 1965:332-33). It is also frequently the case that there are serious divisions within the liberation movement and more than one liberation organisation in a country. In this situation, these competing factions frequently fight each other as well as the oppressive government, and the government will employ “divide and rule” tactics against them. In fact, some of the most vicious fighting is not between the liberation movement and government forces, but between competing liberation factions struggling for dominance and support. There are two basic ways liberation movements seek to overcome this factionalism. First, the strongest faction can seek to destroy their competitors. Second, they can combine together to establish a higher-level organisation - a “national liberation front”. Fronts are umbrella organisations bringing together several independent insurgent groups. Sometimes they are formally organised as a “people’s liberation front” made up of organisations representing a number of nation-peoples. A successful recent example was the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) which represented nine Eritrean nationalities and won independence from Ethiopia in 1992 after 30 years of war. Inequality, Stratification and National Liberation Movements Earlier, I stressed the general connection between national liberation movements and the rise and spread of imperial states. To take this one step further, we can identify what it is about sates that produces this effect. The social causes of conflict and political violence in states can be traced directly to the correlates of social stratification - major institutionalized inequalities in access to wealth, status and power, or what the great social theorist Max Weber termed “life chances” 10. Stratification refers to the fact that some categories of people get more of the valued things in life and others get less; a few get most, and most get what’s left; some live well and long, more live poorly and briefly. Social stratification leads to such conflict inducing factors as ethnic, religious and ideological discrimination; socioeconomic deprivation; political inequality
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and its correlates such as infringement of rights, injustice, and oppression; the absence of effective channels of peaceful or systemic resolution of grievances and conflicts; and, of course, exploitation and alienation. Gerald Berreman, an anthropologist who has dedicated his professional life to the study of systems of social inequality, has noted that wherever there is significant disparities between social groups in access to life chances: There is suffering and conflict because these are systems which assure privilege to some at the expense of others, and people do not acquiesce easily to that situation.When they do, it is not because they agree to its legitimacy or inevitability, but because they know the uses of power (Berreman 1977:229). Berreman argues that systems of social stratification are “everywhere characterized by conformity rather than consensus, by conflict rather than tranquility, by enforcement rather than by endorsement, by resentment rather than contentment” (1977:229). This is worrying because what Berreman observed nearly twenty years ago seems to be even truer today: Naked power is being resorted to more unabashedly as the conflict becomes more evident . . . the incidence, the likelihood and the impact of overt conflict between unequals is increasing both within and between societies and nations . . . Present trends suggest a worldwide polarization in access to power, privilege and resources - the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” increases with a diminishing willingness among the poor to continue to suffer deprivation, and among the wealthy to ameliorate it (Berreman 1977:236). All of the major world problems are growing at an accelerated rate. The gap between the few who have much and the many who have little, between rich and poor, between “developed” nations and “developing” ones, is growing ever wider11. Karl Marx, who argued that this was the inevitable result of freemarket capitalism, referred to this as “progressive emiseration.”12 Put simply, stratification or gross forms of institutionalised social inequality are the “root cause” of revolution, including national liberation movements. That is why I emphasize social inequality here - and in my research, teaching, and writing - because I think it is the most dangerous feature of contemporary society. I think it worth focusing upon because it is an entirely cultural, human-made phenomenon which could be changed if people were to decide to do so. If it is not, the animosities it arouses may well be the end of us. The ultimate cause may the pattern of states, of accumulation, territoriality, bureaucracy, poverty and accumulation which define or accompany stratification, but the proximal cause is surely the greed and envy, excess and suffering that inequality causes, especially that kind of inequality among entire categories of people which we call stratification. It is inequality alone that can be blamed for armed liberation movements today. To be continued…
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