ARAB SPRING
A series of revolts, uprisings and mass demonstrations that have spread throughout the Arab
world (North Africa and the Middle East) in 2011 against corrupt and brutal tyrannies. The
event that initially sparked the movement was the death of a young Tunisian street vendor
named Mohamed Bouazizi, whose fruit stand was shut down by corrupt local officials in Tunis.
His self immolation and resultant death sparked the revolt that led to the ousting of the
dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Inspired by these events, as well as by its own local
outrage (this time the beating death of another young man, Khaled Mohamed Saeed, at the
hands of police) protestors in Egypt mobilized in their millions and ousted dictator Hosni
Mubarak, a long-time servant of US imperialism and collaborator with Israel. The revolts
have spread to Syria, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain, with ruthless subsequent crackdowns by the
authorities.
Where possible, imperialism has tried to
co-opt these movements to its own benefit, as seen most clearly in Libya with the NATO
operation aimed at ousting Gaddhafi and installing a more pliable regime. The region’s
dictators are clearly nervous at their prospects, and have offered a series of concessions
to try to maintain their rule. But these overtures have been seen (rightfully) as “too
little, too late”. On the other hand, the use of repression has only aggravated the
situation, by giving people the sense that they no longer have anything to lose by
protesting.
The uprisings have been largely
liberal-democratic, reformist and nationalist in orientation (with some Islamist elements
becoming more vocal and active as well, particularly in Yemen and Libya); Communist and
Socialist parties have played an active, though as yet relatively minor role (and one
certainly ignored by the mainstream media). Nothing approaching the
mass line method of revolutionary leadership has so far
transpired. The region, even if it does finally rid itself of the awful tyrannies that have
suffocated it for so long, and even if it does boot out imperialism and Zionist aggression,
still has a long way to go in terms of building up Communist mass-consciousness.
In spite of its severe political and
ideological limitations, the Arab Spring is an inspiration to the world proletariat. Even
while events threaten to see the whole process aborted, rebellions in the Middle East show
how, even with misguided politics, it is possible for people to rise up against the
cruelest dictatorships. —L.C.
ARBENZ GUZMÁN, Jacobo (1913-1971)
Guatemalan social democrat who was the democratically elected president of that country from
1950-1954. He was one of the main leaders of the Guatemalan bourgeois-democratic revolution
of 1944-45 which overthrew first the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico y Castaneda and then
overthrew one of his generals who had seized power. After becoming president, Arbenz
instituted large-scale land redistribution to the poor peasants, permitted the organization
of labor under nominally “Communist” leadership, and nationalized portions of the country’s
industry. The U.S. imperialists would not stand for this. In 1954 the CIA
organized a coup, with the support of the Guatemalan military and reactionary classes, and
ousted Arbenz. Thereafter he lived in exile, first in Uruguay, and later in Cuba.
ARBITRAGE
The simultaneous purchase and sale of the same asset in two different markets (such as in
two different countries) in order to profit from the price differential between them. This
is just one of the many ways that capitalist fianciers cheat each other, though in bourgeois
economic theory it is considered to be a necessary process, and even a “virtue”.
ARISTOTLE (384-322 BCE)
As Marx said, the greatest philosopher of antiquity. Engels commented that Aristotle
“was the most encyclopedic intellect” of all the ancient Greek philosophers [MECW 25:21].
He had a more down-to-earth outlook than did his teacher Plato, and
emphasized the observation of nature. Nevertheless he vacillated between materialism and
idealism. He defended slave society and its political economy, and “was the first to analyze
value and the two primitive forms of capital (merchant capital
and money-lending capital)”. In the year 335 BCE he established an important school called
the Lyceum in Athens.
Unfortunately, long after his death Aristotle
was enlisted as an authority by the Roman Catholic Church (with regard to “non-spiritual”
matters), and his ideas have often been considerably twisted because of this. As Lenin put it,
“Clericalism killed what was living in Aristotle and perpetuated what was dead.” [LCW 38:367]
See also below, and:
ENTELECHY, FINAL CAUSE,
and Philosophical doggerel
about Aristotle.
ARISTOTLE — and Logic
[Speaking of Aristotle’s book Metaphysics:] “Highly characteristic
in general, throughout the whole book..., are the living germs of dialectics and
inquiries about it....
“In Aristotle, objective logic is
everywhere confused with subjective logic and, moreover, in such a way that
everywhere objective logic is visible. There is no doubt as to the objectivity
of cognition. There is a naïve faith in the power of reason, in the force, power,
objective truth of cognition. And a naïve confusion, a dialectics of
the universal and the particular—of the concept and the sensuously perceptible reality
of individual objects, things, phenomena.
“Scholasticism and clericalism
took what was dead in Aristotle, but not what was living; the inquiries,
the searchings, the labyrinth, in which man lost his way.
“Aristotle’s logic is an inquiry,
a searching, an approach to the logic of Hegel—and it, the logic of Aristotle (who
everywhere, at every step raises precisely the question of dialectics),
has been made into a dead scholasticism by rejecting all the searchings, waverings and
modes of framing questions. What the Greeks had was precisely modes of framing questions,
as it were tentative systems, a naïve discordance of views, excellently
reflected by Aristotle.” —Lenin, “Conspectus on Aristotle’s Book Metaphysics”
(1915), LCW 38:368-9.
ARM
See: ADJUSTABLE RATE MORTGAGE
ART
See below and: AESTHETICS,
AESTHETIC OBJECT,
CONSTRUCTIVISM,
SOCIALIST REALISM
ART — and REVOLUTION
[Intro to be added... ]
“Politics, whether revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, is the struggle of class against class, not the activity of a few individuals. The revolutionary struggle on the ideological and artistic fronts must be subordinate to the political struggle because only through politics can the needs of the class and the masses find expression in concentrated form.” —Mao, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art” (May 1942), SW 3:86-87.
“ART FOR ART’S SAKE”
[To be added...]
ARTISTIC STANDARDS
See: STYLISTIC STANDARDS
ARTISTIC STYLE
Every work of art (including every piece of literature and music) is ordinarily viewed as
being in some style. A style, in this aesthetic sense, is a sub-category of works
in that area of art. In painting, for example, there are the styles known as socialist
realism, impressionism, expressionism, cubism, Chinese painting, classical Dutch genre
painting, and so forth. Styles come in hierarchies; thus within the broader style of
classical European painting there is Dutch painting of the 17th century, and within that
style there is the narrower style of Dutch genre painting of that period, and within that
there is the style of Frans Hals, and even within that there is the style of Hals’ painting
“Singing Boy with a Flute” (a style used by Hals in some of his other paintings, but
by no means all of them).
The concept of style is one of the
most important basic categories in aesthetics. Aesthetic criticism, for example, can only
be objective by comparing a work to the standards
appropriate to some particular style.
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