MDMD American Revolution (& the Afghani Revolution)

[Doug Millison]

During the first Pynchon-L reading of M&D, we had some talk about the
relative "absence" of the American Revolution from the novel, "lost" in
between the story of Mason and Dixon in America in the 1760s and Cherrycoke
telling the story in the 1780s. It's a rather pregnant "absence", and that
may not be the best descriptor since the novel is not free of direct
references to the Revolution, similar in some ways to what some readers
call the "absence" of the Holocaust from GR, which does of course include
numerous direct references to same.  M&D presents the argument that the
"revolution" only served to replace one property-owning elite class with
another and that the nation-building programs of genocide and slavery
seriously undercut the claims that all people have God-given rights to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  At any rate, some of you may
be interested in this brief essay which seeks to situate Afghanistan in the
context of revolutions since 1775.


http://www.pacificnews.org/content/pns/2001/nov/1108afghanistan.html
Afghanistan - The World's Sixth Great Revolutionary Current Since 1775
By Franz Schurmann, Pacific News Service, Nov 8, 2001

The American Revolution was the first of five great revolutionary currents
that are still unfolding on the world stage. Could what we're witnessing in
Afghanistan today represent a sixth current? PNS associate editor Franz
Schurmann, emeritus professor of UC Berkeley, is author of numerous books
on foreign politics, including "The Mongols of Afghanistan", "The Ideology
and Organization of Communist China," and "The Logic of World Power."

The world's people have lived in a revolutionary age since America broke
loose from Britain and thrilled the world. The American Revolution, like
four later revolutions, the French (1789--), Chinese (1911--), Russian
(1917--), and Iranian Islamic, (1989 --), is still playing itself out on
the world stage.

Now, Afghanistan is trying to break loose from American civilization and in
the process has acquired a revolutionary voice that, like it or not,
thrills many people in the world. Is what we're witnessing in Afghanistan
merely the machinations of a worldwide terrorist network, as George W. Bush
argues, or are we witnessing something far bigger -- a sixth revolutionary
current -- as Osama Bin Laden claims?

Each of the five revolutionary currents has been red with blood. Thomas
Jefferson, America's third president, hailing the French Revolution, said
"every 20 years the tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of
tyrants." G.F. W. Hegel taught his students, including Karl Marx, that the
"end of history" had come with the French Revolution. Franklin Roosevelt
was moved by the bloody Chinese and bloody Russian revolutions and loathed
their enemies, notably Japan and Germany. Richard N. Frye, Harvard emeritus
professor and noted scholar of the Iranian world, as early as November 1978
predicted that the Iranian Islamic Revolution would be seen as another
French Revolution sweeping the Muslim world.

Every revolution has roused fierce resistance from great powers -- and
Afghanistan is no exception. Britain fought the American rebels and then
sought to quash the revolutionary French. Britain and Japan both fought the
Chinese Revolution, while America befriended it. America, Britain and Japan
were the nemeses of the Russian Revolution. America and Britain were the
nemeses of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. And now America, Britain,
Russia, China and Iran are the nemeses of what bin Laden calls the global
confrontation between the West and Islam.

Certain events become revolutionary when people far and wide become
inspired by their messages. From populous Indonesia to huge Nigeria,
popular sentiment hails bin Laden while ridiculing the "War on Terrorism."
Thousands of Pakistani Pathans rally to the Taliban not just because of
tribal solidarity but because they sense a revolutionary message coming
from bin Laden and Mullah Omar, Afghanistan's reclusive leader.

Every one of the five revolutions send simple but moving messages to the
world. The message of the American Revolution is that all people have
God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The
revolutionary slogan of the French Revolution is that in addition to
liberty, all people also have rights to equality and fraternity. The
revolutionary message of the Chinese Revolution is that revolution is not a
unique privilege of the West and the white man. The message of the Russian
Revolution is that the state owes a debt to the poor to give them
prosperity, a condition that turned out to be realized far more in America
than in Russia. The message of the Iranian Islamic Revolution is that God
must be the source of all state power.

Bin Laden and the Mullah Omar are now sending out different messages. Bin
Laden preaches a long struggle between Islam and the West. A Chinese
essayist writing under a pen-name in the Sing Tao Daily of Oct. 30 compared
him to Mao Zedong. Like Mao, bin Laden is indifferent to how many must die
so that his vision can be realized. He is similar to Lenin, who also had
one great ambition: to see Soviet socialism triumph over Western
capitalism, whatever the human cost.

But Mullah Omar's ideas march to a different drummer than bin Laden's, much
as did those of Lenin's successors Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky called for
"a permanent revolution" that would only be halted when all capitalism had
been wiped out. But Stalin preached building socialism in one state.
Politically, the difference soon led to a split that persists to this day.

The Mullah Omar, like Stalin, thinks only of Afghanistan, where he
envisions piety, peace and prosperity will prevail. Similarly, in China
after Mao died, the new leaders restricted their visions to China alone.
Just as Trotsky was forced to leave Russia shortly after Lenin's death, the
Taliban have expressed the opinion that bin Laden should "voluntarily"
leave Afghanistan.

While Stalin hated Trotsky and vice-versa, their influence still guides
Russia's new power holders. And if one or both bin Laden and Mullah Omar
should die, that will not end the revolutionary views each espouse.

The core message underlying both is of a back-to-the-future kind. The
Taliban have neither a government nor an army. Yet the country is marked by
hundreds of ethnic, tribal and sectarian differences. The basis of Taliban
rule is what the great Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
called "asabiya," an Arabic word meaning strong bonds among people forged
from the ground up. When these bonds are linked to God, Mullah Omar
believes, all these differences can be overcome and revolutionary power
becomes irresistible.


..... Schurmann's article at
http://www.tbwt.com/content/article.asp?articleid=1824
is also worth a look.