Lebanon, Chile, Ecuador: There is Reason to Be Cheerful

Chileans protest in Valparaiso as government introduces reforms to end them.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I have finally found some time to catch up on world news and what I read confirms the optimism I have felt over developments the past couple of years. We are witnessing a worldwide movement of youth rising up in response to the global assault of capitalism on humanity and the environment. Climate change has taken a rightful position as one of the main concerns but we are also seeing new movements in opposition to austerity and economic warfare. The events in Chile and Lebanon are two examples and in both of them, the state has made concessions to mass street protests and in both cases, the movement wants more.

In Chile, the youth, since joined by workers, have fought pitched battles with the state that began on October 18^th with a protest against an increase in subway fares. This was the spark that set off nationwide protests against austerity in general, electricity prices, deteriorating public health services, a failing pension system and more. Reports in the media have detailed sexual abuse against some of the arrested protestors and there have been numerous deaths. Both the Dockworkers and Miners unions have called for a general Strike to support the youth protests against the right wing US supported government of the billionaire Sebastian Piñera. As I write, I see that homicide charges have been filed against one state official.

Throughout the world we can see that these movements arise in response to austerity measures forced on what the capitalist media refers to as, “developing nations” that cannot get access to capital without forcing the workers and middle class to pay for it and the accompanying debt.

In Ecuador, the government was forced to relocate in the face of protests against austerity measures including removing fuel subsidies demanded by the IMF in return for a $4.2 billion loan. In Ecuador, like Brazil, the indigenous population is in the forefront of the struggles against global capitalism’s war on the environment.

In an effort to halt the protests and prevent them spreading, the Piñera government in Chile has offered to increase wages, social payments and subsidies in energy and medicine. He has issued apologies for the government’s “lack of vision” in dealing with the frustration among Chileans. (Financial Times 10-25-19). But these concessions costing $1.2bn a year, about .4% of the of GDP are not likely to calm the storm. 

More is needed to head off further protests and the possibility of a political shift in the 20121 elections say some Chilean economists; “we are living through a social earthquake so it should be treated as such. Reconstruction, bringing back confidence and harmony -----that’s costly”, says Chile’s former central bank governor.

Eduardo Engel, a respected Chilean economist argues that with a budget deficit of just 2% of GDP plus a “relatively low” debt to GDP ratio, Chile can afford it and satisfy most of the protesters demands. Whether this is possible at this point or how far the movement will go is unclear.

The situation in Lebanon is somewhat similar and is threatening to topple the corrupt government there. Following the pattern in the Arab Spring of 2011, Lebanon’s youth took to the streets of Beirut on October 17^th spreading to the rest of the country the following day. The spark that lit the fuse was a tax on free phone call applications like WhatsApp, a government effort to raise money to fix the deficit. Unlike Chile, Lebanon is one of the most indebted countries in the world with public debt over 150% of GDP and servicing that debt consumes around 50 per cent of state revenues.

Adding to the anger is that a significant amount of Lebanon’s public debt is held by the country’s private commercial banks and many banks are owned by the country’s politicians and their relatives. So the attempt to tax free phone calls or instituting any other measures to tackle the deficit is seen by many as simply putting more money in corrupt leaders pockets.

As with the Arab spring and indeed the successful teachers/educators strikes and protests in the US, social media networking has played a crucial role. Much criticism of social media is valid, but we must not allow that to negate its positive aspects including in the Arab Spring of 2011, and remind ourselves that like all aspects of life it is a dialectical question.

Lebanon is extremely important in that it shows the tendency of the working class to seek unity and class allies when it moves in to struggle in a serious way. Lebanese Christians, Druze, as well as Sunni and Shia Muslims are united in their opposition to the government and religious sectarianism. Lebanon is a religious state with 18 officially recognized religious groups with the leadership of these groups jockeying for power and promoting sectarianism in the process. Divide and rule is the name of the game.

But the present protests consisting of some quarter of the country’s population, have so far overcome religious sectarian divides and made a conscious effort to do so despite efforts by some sectarian forces to promote them. “The politicians told us that we hate each other, but we don’t, I’m from a specific sect. My friend is from a specific sect. But we’re all here together for our futures and our children’s futures. We don’t want to live the way our parents lived.” said one protestor.

It’s easy to see why the religious leaders of the competing forces in the government want to halt the protests as a united class offensive brings results. Today’s Financial Times points out that, “The prime minister, Saad Hariri, announced a package of economic reforms on Monday evening meant to defuse the protests, including halving the salaries of current and former members of Parliament and requiring the banks to contribute $3.4 billion toward the national debt. The WhatsApp tax had already been scratched last week” New York Times 10-23-2109.

As with Chile, Ecuador and throughout the world, international moneylenders are waiting in the wings with money if the right conditions are met. The Lebanese government hopes these small steps will get things back to normal and, as the Financial Times puts it, “unblock $11bn from donors.”. Donors is an interesting euphemism for these parasites.

The response from the streets has been an emphatic no, demanding that the entire government must go. “The people have lost confidence in the government.”, says one protester. University teacher Rania al-Masry makes it clear, “The sectarian parties and their leaders brought us to this economic crisis and certainly they can’t be the ones to pull us out from it.”

As I absorb what is happening in Chile, Lebanon and around the world I cannot help reminding myself of what I was told once about politics and struggle, namely that consciousness always lags behind events and this is what we are seeing here, particularly in regards to Lebanon and also in neighboring Iraq where similar protests against a rotten regime are taking place. These events are related to the years of madness and war in that region, particularly since the murderous invasion of Iraq by US imperialism and its support for the Zionists and the Saudi’s and every rotten regime in the area. US and Russian imperialism, and their various allied regimes are locked in competition for influence in the region and the plundering of the regions resources so there can be no peace in the long run under these conditions.

We hear and read about the chaos in the Middle East in the western media although the immigration or economic refugees fleeing north in to Europe often referred to as a crisis, is never linked to the historical interference and colonial violence waged by European powers and more recently US imperialism. The same applies to the immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The role of US imperialism in Latin America is never discussed in the US mass media.

The anti-sectarian nature of the Lebanese protests is proof positive that neither Islam or religion in general is the root cause of the crisis in the Middle East but a result of it. We can be sure that the religious authorities from all sects will use sectarianism to undermine the movement if they can.

The demand of the movement to “change the system” refers to the introduction of a more democratic regime, and as one woman puts it in the video above, the building of a wall between religion and politics. In repressive religious regimes no matter which religion it is, women are always among the most severely oppressed, victims of patriarchal violence and excluded from important positions in society.



On all these situations there is considerable confusion and naïve expectations but this is to be expected.  It is also natural that the middle class will also have significant influence and play important roles, particularly in the early stages of a movement. But workers learn through struggle and in particular the struggle for reforms. But major reforms are not possible in this period and any minor changes will not be permanent.

The same forces that are holding the workers of Chile, Lebanon, Iraq and Ecuador hostage are the same forces that drove the GM workers out on strike. Here in the US we must let it sink in to our consciousness that the cuts GM management demanded from its workers were met with glee by Wall Street.

We are in a new era. There is a lot to be positive about in these recent developments but it is a volatile period and I for one can’t say exactly how things will progress, but I’m uplifted by it. A major cause of the confusion as well as the delay in the rise of a global movement against global capitalism is the absence of a leadership that has an understanding of the present nature of the period through which we are passing and the need for the socialist alternative to a global capitalism world. Socialist globalism and international solidarity is the alternative to the madness of capitalist globalism.

These are economic struggles they are not religious in nature and behind them there is always politics or political conclusions that will be drawn by some and the understanding that changing the system doesn’t mean changing the composition of the government, but the capitalist system of production and the superstructure that supports it.

Socialist traditions, that have been strong in the Middle East and also Latin America will re-emerge as the working class rises more to its feet and recognizes that only a democratic socialist world, a global federation of democratic states, can provide the answers people are seeking today by trying to reform a social system that, if left intact, will end life as we know it.