Tunisia, Egypt: when an east wind sweeps the arrogance of the West 
was right to rebel. As in politics, our states and those who invoke it (parties, unions and servile intellectuals) prefer the management, even revolt, they prefer to claim, and any breach of an "orderly transition". That the Egyptian and Tunisian peoples remind us is that the only action that is commensurate with a shared sense of outrageous occupation of state power is the mass uprising. And in this case, the one slogan that can unite the disparate elements of the crowd is: "you who is here, go away." The exceptional importance of the revolt, in which case its critical power, is that the slogan repeated by millions of people is the measure of what will, no doubt, irreversible, first victory: the flight of The man named. And whatever happens next, this triumph illegal by nature, popular action, have been forever victorious. However, a revolt against state power can absolutely be successful is a teaching of universal significance. This victory shows still on the horizon which stands for collective action exempt from the rule of law, whom Marx called "the withering away of the state" .
to know that one day, freely associated in the deployment of the creative power that is theirs, people can do without the funereal state coercion. That is why, for that ultimate idea, in a worldwide revolt throwing down an authority installed triggers enthusiasm boundless.
A spark can set fire to the plain. Everything begins with the suicide by fire of a man reduced to unemployment, which is to prohibit the miserable trade allowing it to survive, and that a woman cop-slap to make him understand that in this world is real. This gesture is expanding in a few days, weeks, up to millions of people shouting their joy over a distant place and departing disaster potentates. Where does this expansion fabulous? The spread of an epidemic of freedom? No. As stated poetically Jean-Marie Gleize , "a revolutionary movement does not spread by contamination. But resonance. Something is here that resonates with the shock wave emitted by something that has been the below. This resonance, call-there "event." The event is the sudden creation, not a new reality, but a myriad of new opportunities.
None of them is a repetition of what is already known. Therefore it is obscurantist to say "this movement calls for democracy" (meaning, that we enjoy in the West), or "This movement calls for social improvement" (meaning, prosperity average philistine from us). From almost nothing, resonant throughout, the uprising created for the world of unknown possibilities. The word "democracy" is virtually not spoken in Egypt. It talks about "new Egypt", "real Egyptian people," a constituent assembly, the absolute change of life, with opportunity and previously unknown. This is the new plain where no longer will that to which the spark of the uprising was eventually fired. She stands, the plain ahead, between the declaration of a reversal of the forces and a grip of new tasks. Between what was said by a young Tunisian: "We, the son of workers and peasants, are stronger than the criminals" , and what was said by a young Egyptian "From today , January 25, I take over the affairs of my country. "
The people, the people alone, is the creator of universal history. It is very surprising that in our western governments and the media believe that the rebels a square in Cairo to be "the Egyptian people." Why? The people, the only people reasonable and legal for these people, it is usually not reduced either by a majority of survey or to that of an election? How is it that suddenly, hundreds of thousands of rebels are representative of a nation of eighty million people? It's a lesson not to forget that we will not forget.
Past a certain threshold determination, persistence and courage, the people can indeed concentrate its existence in a square, avenue, a few factories, a university ... It is that the world will witness the courage and especially stunning creations that accompany it. These creations are proof that people stand there. As one protester told heavily Egyptian "before I was watching television, now it's the television looking at me."
SOLVE PROBLEMS WITHOUT THE HELP OF THE STATE
In the wake of an event, the people consists of those who can solve problems they encounter in the event. Thus the occupation of a place: food, sleeping, guard, flags, prayers, defensive battles, so that the place where everything happens, the place which is a symbol, or kept his people at any price. Problems that scale of hundreds of thousands of people from everywhere seem insoluble, and especially since, in this square, the state has disappeared. Solve without the help of the State of insoluble problems, that is, the fate of an event. And that's what makes a people suddenly, and for an indefinite period exists, where he decided to come together. Without
communist movement, not communism. The popular uprising which we speak is obviously unbiased, without hegemonic organization without a recognized leader. There will be time to assess whether this feature is a strength or a weakness. In any case what he has done, in a very pure form, probably the purest since the Paris Commune, all the features of what is called a communist movement. "Communism" here means: joint creation of collective destiny. This "common" has two special features. First, it is generic, representing, in a place of all humanity. In this place, there are all sorts of people a people is composed, is heard every word, any proposal under consideration, any difficulties treated for what it is. Then, he overcomes all the major contradictions in which the state claims that only he can never manage to break them: between intellectual and manual, between men and women, between rich and poor, between Muslims and Copts, among people of the province and people in the capital ...
Thousands of new possibilities concerning these contradictions arise at any moment, which the State - any State - is fully blind. We see young female doctor came to treat the province Wounded sleep in the middle of a circle of fierce young men, and they are quieter than they ever were, they know that nobody will touch a piece of their hair. We see both an organization of young engineers go begging for commuters to take place, to protect the movement of their energy to fight. We still see a row of Christians to watch, standing, to watch over the Muslims bowed in prayer. We see traders feed the unemployed and poor. We see neighbors talking to each unknown. We read placards miles where the life of each mixes seamless to the great story of all. All of these situations, these inventions constitute the communism movement. Two centuries ago that the unique political problem is this: how to establish over time the inventions of communism movement? And the only reactionary statement remains: "It is impossible and even harmful. Let us trust in the state." Glory to the Tunisian and Egyptian peoples remind us of the true and only political task: facing the state, the fidelity of organized communism movement.
We do not want war, but we do not fear. It was everywhere talked of the calm peaceful demonstrations huge, and that calm has been linked to the ideal of elective democracy they lent to the movement. Note however that there were deaths in the hundreds, and there are still daily. In many cases, the dead were fighters and martyrs of the initiative and the protection of the movement itself. Political and symbolic places of the uprising had to be kept at the cost of fierce fighting against the militia and police regimes threatened. And there, who paid with his person, if young people from the poorest populations? That the "middle classes", which our unexpected Michele Alliot-Marie said that the democratic outcome of the sequence being dependent on them and alone, remember that crucial time, the duration of the uprising has been guaranteed by the wholehearted commitment of detachments popular. Defensive violence is inevitable. It continues the rest, in difficult conditions in Tunisia, after being returned to their misery provincial youth activists.
Can anyone seriously believe that these initiatives and many sacrifices were cruel to that fundamental goal of leading people to "choose" between Suleiman and El Baradei, as we do we resign ourselves to mediate between Mr. piteously. Sarkozy and Strauss-Kahn? That would be the only lesson of this wonderful episode ?
No, a thousand times no! The Tunisian and Egyptian peoples tell us rise up, build the public place of communism movement, defend by all means including inventing the successive stages of the action, this is the real politics of popular emancipation. There is certainly not the Arab states that are anti-people and, in essence, elections or not, illegitimate. Whatever its fate, Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have universal significance. They prescribe new opportunities valued internationally.
Alain Badiou, philosopher
http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2011/02/18/tunisie-egypte-quand-un-vent-d-est-balaie-l -arrogance-of-the-occident_1481712_3232.html
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