REVIEW / TUNISIA Tunisian Marxists sentenced
TEN supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Organization (OCR -Tunisian section of the Fourth International) who were arrested in January of this year (see International Viewpoint 221, February 3, 1992) have just received prison sentences on charges of membership of an illegal organization, the distribution of leaflets without authorization and threatening public security. The ten were the following: Mohammed Kamel Charni — 13 months; Fathi Salawi - 11 months and a fine of 100 Tunisian dinars;
Nureddin Selmani - 11 months and a fine of 100 Tunisian dinars;
Nureddin Saidi - 11 months and a fine of 100 Tunisian dinars; Habib
Souihi - 11 months; Jelel Zoghlami - 11 months; Jelel Tlili - 11 months; Rafik Tlili - 11 months; Shaifeddin Mselmi - 3 months; Imad Zoghlami - 3 months. Two other defendants, Abdelmajid Mselmi and Hamadi Zoghlami, were acquitted. The defendants are all appealing but no date has as yet been set for the hearing and it is important to maintain pressure on the Tunisian government. Protests can be sent to the Ministry of the Interior, avenue Habib Bourguiba, Tunis, Tunisia - copies of protests should be sent to the Tunisian League of Human Rights, fax number:
216 1 79 54 66. * the viewpoint of the ruling class. To posit the impossibility of a return to authoritarian rule depends largely on the presumption of continued economic growth and stability.
It is hard to see how Fukuyama can explain the growth of the Front National in France and other European fascist movements, which have their roots precisely in economic crisis.
Blind optimism is also apparent in his approach to areas like the Middle East and the ex-Soviet Union. They will become economically developed and this will result in liberal democracy — because the theory says so. The prospect of a long period of authoritarian rule is simply discounted.
The appearance of Fukuyama's book coincides with the publication of a detailed historical and comparative study of many of the themes he raises — Capitalist Development and Democracy - written by three Canadian social democrats.
Landowners hostile to democracy
Their conclusion is that everywhere the most reactionary social layer and the one most hostile to democracy are the landowners. There is however no innate predilection of the bourgeoisie towards democracy; in every case, democracy is a product of the size and density of working class organization and of the history of the struggle for democratic rights.
Constitutional democracy, they find, is thus a product of class compromise. Such a way of viewing things is of course a closed book to Fukuyama.
Fukuyama's book introduces a new slant on the alleged impending victory of liberal capitalist democracy throughout the world Capitalist victory creates a "Last Man" who lives in a society in which all basic questions have been solved.
No longer is there the possibility of struggling for higher goals, but the danger of producing a society of bored consumers. Might they not, he speculates, revolt against their sublime zombie-like existence and resume the course of History?
Here Fukuyama has really skewered himself, making a series of admissions which undermine his whole case. The potentially unhappy state of the Last Man results from the "decline of community" and the growth of isolated consumer existence.
Fukuyama should have read a bit more Marx. Even if his whole case was justified, why is it that the final result must be such a bored, apathetic and alienated society? Might it not be something to do with the intrinsic nature of capitalism that the danger exists of the rebellion of the Last Man? Something to do with the commodity spectacle? With the logic of a society dedicated to the production of more and more useless things, to make more and more destructive profits?
Isn't humanity capable of something a bit more profound than the latest fashion in motor cars or the appalling, vulgar advertising campaign that masquerades as a presidential election in the United States?
Fukuyama is right. Even if the victory of the free market and constitutional democracy is at hand, this is an outrageous and catastrophic state of affairs against which it will be necessary to rebel. Even in the circumstances envisaged by Fukayama the course of history would be resumed. * 1. The End of History and the Last Man. Published in Britain by Hamish Hamilton and in the USA by the Free Press. 2. Op. cit, pp. 42-45. 3. See for example Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man, Garden City, Anchor Books, 1960. 4. Capitalist Development and Democracy, by Dietrich Rueschmeyer, Evelyne Huber Stevens and 27 John D. Stevens, Polity Press