Nizar Hassan MSc Labour Social Movements and Development Supervisor: Professor Gilbert Achcar 15 September 2017 Word Count: 10,040 This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MSc in Labour, Social Movements & Development of SOAS, University of London  1 Declaration: I undertake that all material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other persons(s). I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. I give permission for a copy of my dissertation to be held for reference, at the School's discretion. Nizar Hassan ID number: 642411  2 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgments 4 1. Introduction and Context 5 2. Methodology and Theoretical framework 10 2.1 Capitalism and social movement literature 10 2.2 Power and Disruption 13 3. Postwar Neoliberalism and Working-Class Power 16 3.1 The vicious war on organised labour 17 3.2 The class politics of economic transformation 18 4. Class and Power in Beirut’s Harak 24 4.1 Relative absence of the working class 24 4.2 An exclusionary civil society 26 4.3 Middle-class dominance in the Harak 27 4.4 Ramifications of middle-class dominance 29 On dynamics and priorities 29 On disruptive capacities and strategies 30 Concluding Remarks 37 Bibliography 39 Appendices 44  3 Abstract Since the end of its civil war, Lebanon has been ruled by a political elite that maintains a sectarian clientelist hegemony characterised by corruption and public services deterioration. The 2015 protest movement (Harak) was provoked by a waste-management crisis but soon evolved to challenge the totalit of this order. This resear h as oti ated the o e e t s failure to i pose i ediate compromise on the elite. Going beyond the reactionary role of the ruling elite, this analysis focuses o the stru tural aspe ts i pedi g protest o e e ts. Li ki g Pi e s o epts of disruptio a d i terdepe de e to Wright s u dersta di g of stru tural po er , it investigates how the lass o positio of the Harak s leadership i pa ted the disrupti e apa ities a d therefore limited the potential of the movement. It begins by exploring how the context of post-war neoliberal transformation has weakened the forces of organised labour, which explains the relative absence of working- lass represe tati es fro the Harak s leadership. Based o se i-structured interviews and re e t literature, it the a al ses the e sui g do i a e of iddle- lass a tors o er the movement, focusing on implications for priorities, dynamics, strategies and disruptive capacities. By e a i i g the i pa t of apitalis s tra sfor atio o orki g lass po er hapter a d the limited disruptive power of middle-class activism (chapter 4), this study joins the recent academic all for ri gi g a k apitalis Della Porta, i to the a al sis of so ial o e e ts, li ki g class and the economy to the potential and limitations of protest.  4 Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to Alessandra Mezzadri, Tim Pringle and all those who have worked on building the LSMD program; it was indeed a transformative experience. Special thanks to Tim for being a great course convenor and showing an example of extraordinary modesty combined with unique passion and intellect. Sincere thanks to professor Gilbert Achcar for endorsing my excitement for this project at its early stage, and for his support and guidance. Thanks to Fawwaz Traboulsi, George Saadeh, Gilbert Doumit, Walid Slaiby, Assaad Thebian, and Castro Abdallah for freeing up time for the interviews; to Nabil Abdo for the interview and the continuous feedback and orientation during the past months; and to Erik Olin Wright for being an inspiration for this paper, showing unprecedented camaraderie by making all his works open-access, and responding to my conceptual inquiry with care and promptness. I cannot thank enough six very special comrades for their feedback on early and late drafts and their priceless friendships: Leonie Von Hammerstein, Sascha Radl, Marta Music, Achille Marotta, Nizar Aouad and my sister Rana Hassan. My eternal gratitude to my siblings Rana, Nour and Hisham, my late father Iyad, and the activist I met at day one, my mother Sanaa, for their uncalculated love and generosity; and to my dearest friends Diala, Leyla, Joane and Noura, the nonbiological family without whom this year in London would have been unimaginable. Another special thank you to Samer Hassan for supporting my intellectual and personal development at every step of the way, and most importantly for reactivating in me, through care and example, both the vaccine against cynicism and the belief in humanity and its struggle for justice and freedom. Finally, I dedicate this and any future works to all those who have not given up on the struggle for an alternative world free of exploitation and oppression.  5 1. Introduction and Context “It’s not the garbage that stinks, you stink”. When activist Assaad Thebian said these words addressing the ruling elite in a short video uploaded on his Facebook account (Thebian, 2015), it is unlikely he expected them to become the slogan of Lebanon’s largest recent anti- establishment protest movement. However, before exploring the movement itself and its eventual fate, an intuitive question would be: what stinks? Lebanon, a country once described as a “merchants republic” (Gates, 1998), emerged from a 15-year-long civil war with a semi-fresh set of political elites that includes pre-war zu‘ama, warlords, and rising businessmen (Leenders, 2004). After initial tensions, the members of these elites gradually reached a consensus over their respective shares of dominance. This new dynamic has allowed their coexistence in a game of power-sharing where the flexible boundaries between the private and public domains form the battlefield for contention over crony interests (ibid). The result has been the formation of a highly corrupt system1 where a few politicians rule over a fragmented population through a sectarian-clientelist establishment and a sensitive consociational democracy (Salloukh et al., 2015:pp.32-51). In this power-sharing system, political seats and public sector jobs are assigned by sectarian affiliation (ibid:pp.24,93,95), and nation-wide networks of welfare services connected to political and religious elites reinforce the sectarian hegemony2 (Cammett, 2014). Meanwhile, the political elite’s alliance with the country’s “commercial-financial oligarchy” (Salloukh et al.:p.7) has exploited sectarianism to maintain a deeply unequal class structure both in gradational and relational terms3 (Joseph, 1983; Traboulsi 2014/2016). It is not surprising, therefore, that sectarian modes of subjectification and mobilisation would dominate the country’s politics, preventing class or interest-based progressive social change (Salloukh et 1 Transparency International classified Lebanon (2016) as the 136th country on its Corruption Perception Index. 2 He e hege o efe s to A to io G a s i’s theory, rather than its academic appropriation as a synonym for ideology or consensus - see Crehan (2002:199-205). 3 See Wright (2015) for the difference between the two approaches  6 al.:p.7). However, numerous initiatives have sprung up over the last decades to challenge this hegemony (Ibid); and recently, the series of Arab uprisings starting in 2011 did not leave the country intact. In Beirut, activists mobilised thousands to “overthrow the sectarian regime” in 2011; and although the movement was soon to abate, its legacy was manifested across the following years through a number of direct actions by civil society groups (Abi Yaghi et al., 2016:p.76). By summer 2015, a re-emerging waste-management crisis and an accumulation of severe socioeconomic deterioration harshly affecting youths (ibid:p.77,79), had put the country in a “historical moment” (Bekdache, 2015); and groups of emerging and experienced activists were there to seize it. Protests against the government's incapacity to find a viable solution to the garbage crisis soon turned into a full-fledged movement against crony, ineffective and corrupt governance.4 After developing on a trend similar to previous limited-scope protests, the movement took an upward turn when police cracked down violently on a dozen activists assembled in Riad al-Solh Square near the executive branch’s headquarters (Lebanon Support, 2016a & 2016b). Three days later, thousands had flooded the square in protest, and the movement turned into a nation-wide phenomenon (ibid). For the next month, the country would witness some form of protest virtually every day. When an estimated hundred thousand (Kreichati, 2016:p.39) protesters brought back the revolutionary character of Beirut’s central Martyrs’ Square,5 a common impression was that a new major social force was in the making.6 However, similarly to its smaller scale predecessors, the movement was soon to fade away: Participation in protests, and by extension pressure on the elites, gradually decreased until the streets became empty again. This does not imply the definite failure of the movement historically, since the popular momentum was manifested less than a year later in the independent campaign that won 40% of votes in Beirut’s municipal 4 For a timeline and overview of the movement and its main actors, see: Leba o “uppo t’s epo ts a/ . 5 The s ua e had ee the lo atio of ost ajo p otests si e , the ea of the Ceda s Re olutio that helped e pel the “ ia egi e’s t oops f o Le a o . 6 Participant observation  7 elections against a coalition of most major ruling parties (Reuters, 2016); and in the victory of a progressive figure at the Order of Engineers elections in 2017 (The Daily Star, 2017). However, the Harak’s civilian insurgency was not powerful enough to force the ruling elite to meet any of its major demands (Thebian, 2017). Several explanations have dominated discourse over this decline, commonly emphasising the lack of clear, shared demands (Saadeh, 2017), the absence of consistent leadership (Abdallah, 2017; Thebian, 2017), and the internal tensions among the different protest groups. Other perspectives give the ruling elite the credit of thwarting the movement through counter-revolutionary strategies. Indeed, many leaders first attempted to coopt the protest wave by declaring support for its demands (al-Zein, 2015). However, the forces of repression were soon unleashed, especially as the Harak’s widening masses and escalating rhetoric proved the cooptation attempt unsuccessful. Repressive interventions took various forms; some were orchestrated directly by governmental institutions, such as the police’s excessive violence against protesters (Amnesty International, 2015) and the detention of organisers (al-Zein). Another was ‘outsourced’ to young men loyal to Nabih Berri, house speaker and head of the Amal Movement, who attacked hunger strikers and destroyed their protest camp (Hassan, 2015). There was also a strategic attack by mainstream media channels against the movement’s image; including spreading rumors that the so-called Islamic State had infiltrated the movement’s ranks (al-Atrash, 2015), and accusing organisers of being global regime-toppling experts (al-Zein) or being funded by Qatar (Abi Yaghi et al.:p.85). Finally, perhaps the most predictable of the elite’s strategies was the attempt to sectarianise the movement, depicting the targeting of the prime minister and the ministers of interior and environment- for their respective responsibilities in the environmental and policing scandals- to be an attack against the Sunni Muslim components of the cabinet. This sectarianisation even influenced the strategy of protest organisers, forcing them to maintain a sectarian balance among their targets by focusing on occupying the Parliament since its house speaker Berri is a major Shiite political figure (Traboulsi, 2017; Thebian, 2017).  8 While this major role of reactionary forces must be acknowledged, it exclusively focuses on the ruling elite’s agency; whereas this paper’s main question was whether other fundamental reasons preventing movements from forcing the elite into defeat or even compromise could be identified. Analysing these reasons requires going beyond conventional social movement and contentious politics literature for reasons discussed in chapter 2. From this literature, however, the concept of ‘disruption’ is borrowed from Frances Fox Piven (2006) and theorised within a framework of class analysis inspired by Erik Olin Wright’s (1984) and his notion of “structural power” (2000). In this vein, two foundational arguments will be made: that analysing the potential of protest movements against hegemonic elites requires an examination of the capacity to disrupt the regimes of accumulation and governance; and that this disruptive capacity, which itself is a direct product of social relations of interdependence (Piven, 2006), is determined by the structural power possessed by the social forces protesting. As for the case-specific analysis, chapter 3 argues that the power of Lebanon’s working class has been severely damaged by the country’s post-war economic transformation and the parallel attack on labour union movements. Chapter 4 offers the main analysis of class and power in the Harak. It examines the absence of working-class forces from the Harak’s leadership (4.1) and the exclusionary definition of civil society in Lebanon (4.2). Wright’s relational framework (1984) is then used to define the middle class and explain its widely- acknowledged dominance over the movement (4.3). This builds up to central argument that middle-class activists lack structural disruptive capacities, and their dominance over the Harak influenced not only its priorities, but also its strategies and therefore its disruptive potential (4.4). The final remarks elaborate on the analysis’s implications for questions of interdependence and structural power in the Lebanese context and the need for reconsidering mobilisation frameworks. With the hope of distilling the analytical findings into contributions to further intellectual query and strategy, this paper has two main aims: presenting one possible method of connecting economic transformation and labour relations  9 to the potential of protest movements, and emphasising how any analysis of such potential needs to be midwifed by an understanding of the peculiarity of the actually-existing capitalism in a given context.  10 2. Methodology & Theoretical Framework The study is mainly based on recent secondary literature, in addition to a series of semi- structured interviews conducted in june 2017 with activists, unionists and academics who were either participants in or closely following the 2015 movement.7 Some insights were also drawn from personal observation while participating in the movement and covering it as a journalist; they were however kept to a minimum since the participation itself was not a planned research engagement. On this note, it is worth disclaiming that the research does not claim any neutral attitude towards the situation; it is rather a contribution to the ‘activist research’ literature that is aligned with those resisting injustice and shaped by their insights (Hale, 2006), based on the belief in movements as “incubators of new knowledge” (Graeber & Shukaitis, 2007:p.11). 2.1 Capitalism and social movement literature (SML) Given this research’s focus on the power of protest, it required a survey of the literature on contentious politics and social movements. However, with very few exceptions, this scholarship offers little theoretical or empirical propositions that provide insight on the dynamics of social forces in economic systems and their consequences for movements. Following is a brief overview of how social movement literature has gradually lost the approaches that focus on class relations and political economy. SML’s rise in the 1970s signaled the decline of previously dominant psychoanalytical understandings of movements, and manifested an academic reflection on the movements of the time (Flacks, 2004:p.136). It focused on strategy, resources, power and opportunity and included a tendency to examine the correlation between movements and the little- 7 Appendix 1 offers the list of interviewees and the authority on which they were selected.  11 appreciated capitalist system (Hetland & Goodwin, 2013:p.84-86). Among SML’s earliest pioneers were Charles Tilly, Sidney Tarrow and Piven (ibid:p.84). However, Hetland and Goodwin’s content analysis demonstrates that the term ‘capitalism’ or even ‘economy’ almost disappeared from the most prominent journals,8 let alone ‘class struggle’ or ‘class conflict’ (ibid:p.87). This lack of concern with class and political economy extended to articles and even textbooks (ibid:p.88). Perhaps the most noticeable was a similar gap in Contentious Politics, a book by Tilly and Tarrow (2007), which although inspired by their previous critical work, failed to include any real mention of the political economy of capitalism and its processes (Hetland & Goodwin:p.88). According to Barker et al., what fed this trend and helped bury marxist understandings of social relations was the european disillusionment with Stalinist-style socialism as the only de-facto alternative to capitalist democracy, as well as the rise of identity politics in the Anglo-Saxon world (2003:p.3). New theorists claimed that in “post-industrial societies”, the working class ceases to be the major social force of change (ibid:p.5). This perspective was mainstreamed due to the rise of what has been termed “new social movements” (NSMs)- second-wave feminist, environmentalist, gay liberationist and anti-war as examples-, as well as the decline of the political role of trade unions (ibid:p.5). While trade union decline is a major feature of the neoliberal order and a logical result of the delocalisation of production to the global periphery and the re-informalisation of labour relations (Standing, 1999), it is still insufficient as the basis of a claim that the working class in general ceased to be a potential agent of structural change, since its mobilisation can take non-traditional forms (Moody, 1997). Another controversial step in scholarship has been the dismissal of labour and class relations from the analyses of movements. These aspects were left for “labour process specialists” to examine, while the focus was overwhelmingly turned to “everyday resistance” 8 Social Movement Studies and Mobilization  12 and away from examining the possibility of structural economic change (Barker et al., 2013:p.6). Underlying was an observation that the “class-based interest politics of yesteryear” were less relevant to contemporary movements than identities such as “race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality” (ibid:p.5). Flacks argues that this intellectual turn was caused by the rise of the “culturalist” trend that took over large portions of SML dealing with so-called NSMs, according to which strategy and power are less central than consciousness and identity (Flacks, 2004:137). These perspectives were modestly and temporarily labeled as “new social movement theory,” despite an absence of any theory being proposed (ibid:p.137). Even resource mobilisation theorists, who were the target of culturalist critique, were soon influenced, and cultural analytical terms such as framing (ibid:p.137) became most prominent in SML (Hetland & Goodwin, 2013:p.87). The result has been a new “kind of hegemony” (Flacks, 2004:p.137) where capitalism has disappeared from SML (Hetland & Goodwin, 2013). By that is meant the understanding of the significance of dominant social relations for the nature, forms and potentials of social movements that emerge within them. However, the global wave of post-financial crisis social movements and the recent deepening of austerity policies have contributed to challenging this intellectual trend (Cini, 2015). Most notably, acclaimed theorist Della Porta made a call (2015) for “bringing back capitalism” into social movement theory by examining the impact of neoliberalism’s dynamics on protest (Rojas, 2017). Hetland and Goodwin (2013:p.91) identify four reasons why “the dynamics of capitalism and political-economic factors potentially matter for all movements”. Among those is that “the balance of class forces in a society powerfully shapes the way movements evolve over time and what they can win for their constituents” (ibid). This is indeed the realisation on which the whole of this paper is founded. Moreover, they emphasize that “class divisions generated by capitalism may unevenly penetrate and fracture movements” and “shape movement goals and strategies”; which chapter 4 explores in the case of Lebanon.  13 Moreover, while the impact of deindustrialisation on labour movements has been widely examined, this essay looks at the impact of changes in capitalism (especially neoliberal trends) on the forms, strategies and most importantly the potential of protest movements that are neither industrial nor class-based in their nature. In other words, it is not a study of labour movements, but a study of labour in movements, and more generally a hypothesis on the strategic weight of class in contemporary protest movements. By borrowing the analytical concept of structural power from class relations literature (Wright, 2000) and using it to complement the notion of disruption from SML (Piven, 2006), this paper aims to contribute to bridging the abovementioned theoretical gap between the two fields. 2.2 Power and disruption Disruption To establish the centrality of Piven’s concept of disruption for a protest movement’s potential, it is necessary to start with her understanding of power. For Piven, power is “rooted in the control of resources, especially in control of wealth and force, or in the institutional positions that yield control over wealth and force” (ibid:p.19). This, in the marxian sense, could refer to the position directly in the relations of production or in the state as a mediator of those relations (Marx & Engels, 1972). Piven’s definition thus helps demystify power exercised by elites and reassert that its manifestation is above all material. But more importantly, it asserts that while material realities concentrate wealth and force, they do not automatically make power exclusive to ruling elites. Instead, they also offer power leverage for populations to activate “from below” (Piven, 2006:p.20), and this activation is indeed what is hereby referred to as disruption. In Piven’s words, disruption is a “power strategy” (Ibid:p.23) that is performed through “the withdrawal of contributions to social cooperation by people at the lower end of the hierarchical social relations” (Ibid:p.20). This withdrawal is powerful due to “interdependencies” that exist between ruling classes and their populations; which she compared to the interdependence between workers and capitalists (ibid). Her  14 main hypothesis, also supported by her survey of protest and reform in the United States’ history, is that the principal way of forcing an elite into reform is through disruption (ibid:p.21). In Gonzalez-Vaillant and Schwartz’ words (2012), Piven establishes “the fact or threat of disruption to large institutions (...) [as] the chief mechanism for coercing concessions from those in command.” Structural power In Wright’s (2000) visualisation of power dynamics in a capitalist society, two kinds of power exist for workers. First is the associational power, which results from “the formation of collective organisations of workers” such as “unions and parties” (2000:p.962). Second comes “structural power,” i.e. the power attached to “the location of workers within the economic system” (ibid). Silver adds that this power takes two forms: “marketplace bargaining power”, which results for example from a tight labour market (2003:pp.13-14); and “workplace bargaining power”, which refers to workers’ leverage derived from their location within a production line or an economic sector (ibid:pp.13-14). When this form of structural power is high, “small disruptions can have disproportionate impacts” (Selwyn, 2007:p.549). In his very brief elaboration on what was later coined workplace-bargaining power, Wright gave as an example “the strategic location of a particular group of workers within a key industrial sector” (2000:962). Although both Silver and Wright were theorising on the power of the working class, their description of this notion seems to be focused on worker’s disruptive capacity within one economic sector. However, the keyness of this specific sector in the overall regime of capital accumulation is itself a core matter. Any social group’s capacity to force ruling elites into compromise requires the capacity to disrupt the overall regime of accumulation, and through it that of governance. Therefore, for the impact to be beyond the limits of the firm or sector, the sector itself must have high structural importance. This is why Chapter 3 will discuss how the selectivity in Lebanon’s post-war economic  15 reconstruction policy had direct impact on working-class power. Finally, if one accepts Piven’s statement that disruptive power is activated through “the withdrawal of contributions to social cooperation,” i.e. the withdrawal from social relations, then disruptive capacities should indeed be measured according to the structural significance of these relations and the interdependencies they imply.  16 3. Post-war Neoliberalism & Working-Class Power Lebanon’s civil war had tragic consequences on the country’s demographics and economy: 131,000 people lost their lives, between 500 and 895 thousands emigrated while economic losses amounted to $25 billion in capital stocks and two thirds of the Gross Domestic Product (Abdo et al., 2017; Dibeh 2005:p.1). The humanitarian disaster also caused the fragmentation of the working class through internal displacement and a reconstruction process that altered the historical geography of union organisation (Makdisi, 2004 as cited in Abdo et al.:p.10). The first post-war government resigned in 1992 after a wave of popular protests incited by an extraordinary currency depreciation where the Lebanese Lira lost 200% of its value in four months (Abdo et al.:p.10). These events have been described as a “financially-driven coup” (Traboulsi, 2014:p.26) against the “guards” of the pre-war political system, in the aim of bringing Rafik Hariri, a main sponsor of the 1989 Ta’ef Accord, to premiership (Abdo et. al:p.10). Then a businessman and political mediator who leveraged his strong connections with the Saudi royal family to accumulate enormous wealth (Baumann, 2016), Hariri soon launched an economic reconstruction plan titled Horizon 2000. It was no secret that Hariri’s reconstruction project had much in common with the neoliberal globalization which informed the policies and directives of international financial institutions: a leading role for the financial and construction sectors at the expense of industry and agriculture; substituting reliance on market movement for development; privatization; prioritizing imports over protecting local industries; the state withdrawing from its distributive role and from the provision of subsidies, etc. (Traboulsi, 2014:p.26) Horizon 2000 adopted a “trickle-down” approach to economic development (Baroudi:536), which required years of worker-suppression as a strategy to freeze wages and therefore socialise parts of the reconstruction costs (Perthes, 1997 as cited by Dibeh, 2005:p.23).  17 3.1 The vicious war on organised labour: containment, repression, and conquest Since its independence in 1943, Lebanon has had a history of pro-business, fiscally conservative governments (Petran, 1987:p.36). However, the end of the civil war offered the central state more credibility and room for assertive action (Baroudi:p.544). Hariri, who held office from 1992 to 1998, and then from 2000 to 2004, had a vision that diverted from the developmentalist aspects of the Ta’ef Accord.9 Soon after his term started, the General Labour Confederation (GLC) elected strong leftist candidate Elias Abu Rizq against a government-backed list (Baroudi:p.536). After two years of stability maintained by soon-to-be broken promises from the labour minister,10 tensions escalated into a general strike in 1995 (ibid:p.538). This moment signalled the end of containment and the beginning of repression, most clearly manifested in the bans on demonstrations and public gatherings (ibid:p.538). Two years later, the post-war elite used the GLC leadership election to launch a ‘cooptation-through-conquest’ approach: opposing parties united in one list against Abu Rizq. However, as this was insufficient, they gerrymandered the results by creating five new union federations and adding their representatives to the executive council which elects the board (Salloukh et al., 2015:p.74). After the elections , Abu Rizq was indeed defeated, but returned to leadership in 1998 when his opponent resigned upon his disillusionment with the government (Baroudi:p.550). However, his tenure ended two years later with a politically- orchestrated no-confidence vote; and he was replaced by Ghassan Ghosn, known for his loyalty to then-and-now house Speaker Nabih Berri (Salloukh et al.:p.74). Since then, ruling parties have succeeded in dominating the GLC by creating new loyal federations, which although representing very few workers, still get two representatives each on the executive 9 The pre-1975 uneven development had a major role in the emergence of the civil war. See Traboulsi (2007) and Nasr (1978). 10 Hariri even claimed he was unaware of those promises (Baroud:537).  18 committee (Bou Khater, 2015:p.131). Hence, after these multi-tactical attacks, the state finally succeeded to neutralise the GLC and even turn it into a force against workers (Salloukh et al.:pp.78-80). The GLC has since allied not only with the ruling elite, but also with the bourgeoisie’s lobby The Economic Committees, to prevent pro-labour policies and movements (Ibid; Traboulsi, 2014:64). The story was no different in 2014, after the Union Coordination Committee (UCC) had stolen spotlights by mobilising teachers and civil servants for better wages and benefits in a long series of nationwide strikes and demonstrations. The ruling elite united again in one list and eventually succeeded to overthrow Hanna Gharib,11 an enthusiastic UCC radical leftist figure (Salloukh et al.:p.86). Dominating and neutralising organised labour forces has hence become a pillar of the post- war ruling elite’s hegemonic system. By this, the ‘associational power’ (Wright, 2000) of already-unionised workers has been dismantled, while as much as 93% of unionisable workers remain non-unionised (Bou Khater:p.131). 3.2 The class politics of economic transformation While failing to achieve its overambitious economic objectives (Gaspard, 2004:pp.211-212), Horizon 2000 “contributed to a new change in the nature of capitalist accumulation in Lebanon” (Abdo et. al:p.11). It was built on the notion that restoring Lebanon’s infrastructure would automatically lead to outstanding economic recovery, due to the country’s historical role as a regional hub for commerce and finance (Gaspard:p.212). This was naturally followed by a number of policy implications: opening up trade, relying on private sector investment, and an excessive focus on the financial and real-estate sectors. 11 Elected as Secretary General of the Lebanese Communist Party two years later.  19 Indeed, custom duties were scrapped, in many cases to less than one third of the average for World Trade Organisation members (Traboulsi, 2014:p.30). Consequently, the trade deficit reached a catastrophic 8 to 1 ratio (Ibid:p.28); but the measure was still not enough to convince the WTO to offer Lebanon full membership (ibid:p.30) since import has remained ‘oligopolised’ by a group of merchants through state-issued import licenses (ibid:p.102). This import policy was unsurprisingly paralleled by a negative attitude towards industrial policy in general. From the plan’s inauguration in 1994, to 1997, investment in the industrial and agricultural sectors declined from 24% to 16% of total spending, later reaching its lowest at 3.6% in 2001 (Abdo et al.:p.12). Overall, the shares of both sectors in the GDP have been cut in half (ILO, 2016:p.14), and the deindustrialization trend has been consistent: After losing an average of 1.8% of its added value from 1993 to 2003 (Dibeh:p.17),12 the industrial sector lost 42% of its share of GDP from 1997 to 2010 (ILO:p.17). This was no surprise given the government’s dogmatic rejection of protectionism: when 1,250 workers were sacked from a steel factory causing wide uproar, the government refused to intervene (Abdo et al.:p.12). Instead, Hariri emphasized that importing the same products would be cheaper13 (Traboulsi, 2014:p.28), thereby establishing the state’s surrender to the neoliberal globalised market. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the reconstruction programme showed clear bias for the financial and real estate sectors. Despite the reconstruction requirements, Banque Du Liban was explicitly exempted from any developmentalist role that central banks can potentially perform (Epstein 2005 as cited by Dibeh 2005:p.14). Instead, along neoliberal lines, its role was reduced to battling inflation, stabilising the currency, and servicing the debt, which was performed through offering treasury bills for very high interest rates, thereby giving bankers a chance to make super profits (ibid). And indeed they did; the total capital of commercial banks went from $123 million in 1990 to $7 billion in 2008, while deposits grew from 6.6 12 Check appendices 2 and 3 for the development of the industrial and agricultural sectors. 13 Traboulsi (2014:endnote 2) and Abdo et al. also st essed that Ha i i’s ha d Fouad “i io a as benefiting from steel imports.  20 billion in 1992 to $58 billion in 2005 (Traboulsi, 2016:p.58). However, this high interest policy had a dramatic crowding out effect on the incentives for private investment, which was hoped to cover 75% of total investments as per Horizon 2000 (Dibeh 2005:pp.14-16). Apart from low investment, this specifically harmed the manufacturers of tradables, whose competitiveness was damaged by the appreciation of the real exchange rate (Bolbol 1999 as cited by Dibeh 2005:p.16). The real estate sector was the other winner in the game of post-war economic priority; with built areas increasing by 129% from 1993 to 1995 (Abdo et al.:p.12). When the sector nearly collapsed in 1996 after a drop in demand, the government intervened by exempting housing loans from specific taxes (ibid); i.e. helping banks drain excesses of liquidity while boosting real-estate activity. The centrality of real estate goes beyond the interests of politically- connected local beneficiaries; the sector in fact attracted around 90% of total direct investments from Arab countries in Lebanon (Ibid). Instead of targeting local demand, the supply was oriented towards upper-class buyers specifically from oil-rich Gulf countries (ibid:p.11). To maximize accumulation in the sector, the government had lifted in 1992 the majority of restrictions on speculation, and rent prices were left up to the market (Ibid). This also created micro-economic incentives for families to buy and use properties for speculation, “introducing the culture of rent into most of the social components, including workers” (ibid). Beyond mere bias, these policies established the banking and real-estate sectors as the focus of investments, i.e. major competitors to the neglected productive sectors (ibid). In other words, the accumulation of added value through productive investment was replaced by rent-based accumulation. Traboulsi estimates that rents reached 23% of the GDP by 1998, “one of the highest in the world” (2014:p.28), and Dibeh, focusing only on rents in the financial sector, also identified a clear upward trend from 1995 to 2000 (2005:p.18). Rentierisation as negative effect of macroeconomic policy was even acknowledged by the  21 UNDP, which also stated that the government’s macro-economic “successes” came at “a high social cost”(UNDP, 1997:p.12). Another major pillar of rentierisation was the central economic expectation attached to foreign capital inflows, especially remittances and foreign aid in form of overseas development assistance (ODA) (Dibeh, 2005:p.17). ODA was not particularly high, but still played the central political role in preventing crises and currency collapses, while also being an excuse for postponing necessary public reforms (ibid). Remittances, averaging around $2.5 billion per year from 1993 to 2002, once made Lebanon the world’s third country in remittances/GDP ratio (ibid), peaking at 26.6% in 2004 when the world average was 0.5% (World Bank Database, 2017; Appendix 4). Therefore, apart from covering trade deficit, remittances contributed with ODA and financial policies to the “creation of a non-productive rentier economy” (Dibeh, 2005:p.17). So how did this economic transformation, and rentierisation in particular, affect the working class? To begin with, the shares of profit and wages evolved in line with most neoliberal trends: profits and rents came to form three quarters of national income (Traboulsi, 2014:p.58), while wages’ share of the GDP dropped from 55% before the civil war to 12-20% in 2012 (Abdo et al.:p.8) despite an increase in GDP and productivity by 50% and 75% respectively (Traboulsi, 2014:p.58). Income and wealth distribution also saw regressive change, with half of total bank deposits now concentrated in the hands of less than 1% of depositors (IMF, 2017). Beyond matters of livelihood and inequality, this macroeconomic behavior had four implications for workers: First, it harmed the two private sectors where they had been most active before and during the war, i.e. agriculture and manufacturing (Traboulsi, 2007:pp.166-170). Secondly, it meant that the Lebanese state would from now on contribute to- rather than try to prevent- the commodification of labour, approaching its workforce as “input costs” as opposed to a major pillar of the production process (Slavnic, 2010 as cited in Abdo et al.:p.12). Thirdly, remittances-based consumption becoming a  22 major characteristic of the system could be seen as an opium for working and middle-class families that would otherwise seek to acquire social welfare through class struggle, including via the state. Fourthly, the structure of the Lebanese economy and job market now directly reflects the weakness of private investment and virtual absence of public investments in economies of scale. Indeed, 91% of all firms employ one to four individuals (ILO, 2016:p.15), and informalisation has swept through, leaving only 25% of Lebanese workers with formal jobs (Traboulsi, 2014:p.58). There is little need to elaborate on the impact of this fragmented market structure on workers’ capacity to organise. But most importantly, this rentierisation process transformed the interdependency link between the regime of accumulation, and en- suite that of governance, and the working class. Workers and employees became excluded from this process [of capital accumulation], not only due to their own organisational issues and the fierce war waged by the regime against them in parallel, but also because of the transformation in the nature of added-value production in the Lebanese economy in the last two decades (Abdo et al.:p.11). The Lebanese state’s postwar economic behavior is another example of how neoliberal development implies not a “retreat of the state,” but a transformation of its role. It also demonstrates that rentierisation, in Baumann’s words, should not be perceived “as an unfortunate aberration of capitalism brought about by malfunctioning markets, but as ubiquitous in the politicised spaces that are markets” (2016:p.11). Moreover, it signaled the composition of a new system of political-economic governance hallmarked by the convergence of the political elite and specific factions of the bourgeoisie: importers, real estate investors and bankers. Traboulsi calls this a “partnership” (2016:p.54), while Abdo et al. describe it as “Lebanon’s Management Board” (2017:p.20). Finally, this overview reveals how the post-war elite has substituted unproductive capital accumulation for actual economic development, thereby reducing the structural power of workers through a number of mechanisms: marginalising the sectors where they were militant, side-lining them from the major processes of capital accumulation, and contributing  23 to their disintegration through the informalisation of employment and the fragmentation of the job market. In addition to the direct attacks on labour movements, this pictures facilitates the understanding of organised labour’s absence from the 2015 Harak and similar movements.  24 4. Class and Power in Beirut’s Harak 4.1 Relative absence of the working class Given this context of weakened working-class power, the relative absence of labour unions from the 2015 Harak, and especially its leadership, is not surprising, and was confirmed by the interviewees for this research. Activist Gilbert Doumit acknowledged that more involvement of unions would have widened the movement’s reach, but questioned how far independent unionists could go against a ruling elite with large influence on union bodies. Thebian, co-founder of the You Stink campaign and a main figure in the Harak, also emphasised this problem, saying that the vast majority of union bodies were politically- controlled, and the ones that are not (such as Saadeh’s Independent Unionist Movement in Lebanon) took part in the movement. But while Saadeh asserted that his organisation was represented both by individuals in the Harak and in coordination-committee meetings, he confirmed that the participation of workers (usually active in union actions) was “relatively low,” and that some unionists including himself received backlash for taking part in political actions during the protest waves. Moreover, he confirmed the observation (Krechati, 2016; Kerbage, 2017) that two campaigns, You Stink and We Want Accountability, dominated the Harak and its mobilisation national approaches. He also said that some leading activists had very strong views against the participation of the Lebanese Communist Party, which enjoys support among union bases. Castro Abdallah, who presides over The National Federation of Worker and Employee Trade Unions, discussed issues of monopolised decision-making and absence of “real collaboration”. He also fiercely criticised the exclusion of leftist figures and parties that represent the “older” generation of activists, saying the new “young” leaders had little appreciation for their leadership potential and past experience. Abdallah also highlighted instances of classist attitude by activists against those representing working- class organisations, claiming that prestige connected with occupation and high social capital  25 among youths and urban middle-classes played a role. Complementing the context explored in Chapter 3, these accounts and testimonies emphasise the inter-group dynamics as a factor in labour unions’ relative absence from the Harak. Against this backdrop, one can argue that the absence of any powerful organised labour presence deprived the movement of a potential historic bloc that ties its different class components, which was arguably present in the 2011 uprisings of Tunisia and Egypt (Alexander & Bassiouny, 2014; Allinson, 2015; Beinin, 2015). The non-unionised urban poor, which can include members of both the proletariat and lumpenproletariat in marxian terms, seemed also relatively absent. “I think the most deprived did not take to the streets,” Doumit says, adding that those who usually resort to riot-like actions were not the among the dominant groups. Piven’s earlier work (1979) provides deep insights on the reasons “poor people” choose riots as the main instrument of struggle, how they can be disruptive, and how middle-class activists tend to stand in the way of such action and therefore harm its disruptive effect. This indeed was witnessed in the at-best hesitant and at-worst classist attitude by activists against members of the urban poor who participated in the Harak (Kerbage, 2017). Many of those first-timers from impoverished backgrounds chose rioting as the way to protest. When clashes erupted between protesters and overtly violent police forces, and following several rumors about “infiltrators” (mundassīn), You Stink called on its followers to quit the square and allow police to deal with those. They were accused of being “thugs” sent by members of the political elite to thwart the movement from within.14 However, adopting the term “infiltrators”, and contrasting violent protestors to the ‘peaceful and civilised’ movement, was nothing less than a fatal misstep. Leftist activists dismissed the connotations given to different protest behaviours and “mocked the exclusion dynamics”, some “wearing T-shirts stamped with indisās (infiltration)” (Abi Yaghi et al.: 86), a satirical syllabic reference to the term inḍibāṭ (discipline) typically stamped on gilets worn by some political parties’ private security forces or protest-control 14 Participant observation  26 teams. The issue ended up causing divisions within the movement and possibly harmed its momentum; not to mention the exclusionary effect, since many of those protesters were discouraged from participating in future actions (Kerbage:p.26). 4.2 An exclusionary civil society The 2015 movements, among most others in the previous 10 years, were characterised- and publicised- as battles between “civil society” and the ruling elite. However, there should be no doubt around the incomprehensiveness of this civil society. The general understanding of civil society in Lebanon, and arguably the most predominant in current public discourse, follows the mainstream associational15 definition of the World Bank (2013); which notably excludes political parties (Kreichati:p.55). However, for reasons discussed above, the ‘Lebanese definition’ has come to also exclude labour unions. This exclusion of parties and unions carries significant connotations in line with the neoliberal way of doing activism (Kamat, 2004); i.e. the acceptance of established capitalist property relations, and the increasing focus on project-based action rather than policy and macro- management of society. Rubinstein describes this form of civil society activism that has dominated developing countries as a “democratic substitute for political action”, more “voluntary” and less “political” than earlier labour and leftist movements (Rubinstein, 2000). This has indeed been the pattern in Lebanon, with civil society increasingly dominated by the structure of small and medium NGOs whose operation depends on funding from foreign states and non-governmental donors (Salloukh et al., 2015:pp.56-60). This has implications on the vision, scope and method of activism - but also on the demographics: civil society has become synonymous with a large social circle of highly educated youths, overwhelmingly concentrated in the capital. This is part of the“NGO-isation” and “professionalisation” patterns, which are not unique to Lebanon (Kamat 2004; Choudry, 2010) and have major 15 Termed so for its institutional focus on modern associations.  27 implications16. It has created a new work destination for young university-educated youths who possess passion for social causes; in other words a ‘middle-class’ job market where dreams of social change converge with individual careers. 4.3 Middle-class dominance in the Harak The few academic works conducted on the Harak share one particular observation on its leadership: Kreichati says it was “composed mostly of young, educated, urban, and middle- class activists” (page 41); Abi Yaghi speaks of “a predominantly middle-class, Beirut-based circle that has been active in a certain entre-soi” (2016:p.87); and Kerbage mentions a “minority of educated middle-class youth claiming the representation of others and the full- time defence of their rights” (2016:p.16). Assaad Thebian’s words during the interview do not seem to contradict: “Here [in Beirut], we connect with 5% of the society: civil society and the middle class.” What middle class? Although fitting the context discussed in section 4.2, these statements are rarely supported by a clear understanding of what the middle class is and whom it entails. Indeed, the term itself has been described as an “embarrassment” for the ambiguity it presents to analysts of class structure and formation in capitalism (Wright, 1984). Income-based approaches offer little contribution to class-power analysis; but marxists are also far from reaching a consensus (ibid). Society members who do not completely fit into the polarised duality of capitalists-versus-proletariat have either been ignored or theorised as a new class or a fraction of one of the two classes; while there is little reason to call them a class in the first place (Wright, 1984:p.384). Therefore, enough for this essay’s purpose would be Wright’s framework (ibid) which emphasises that exploitation- rather than domination- should be “the center of class analysis” if the latter is to “accommodate the empirical complexities of the 16 See Mitri (2015) for an example of the ramifications of NGOisation for feminist activism in Lebanon.  28 middle class within capitalism” (ibid:p.386). Building on Roemer’s theoretical work (1982), Wright (1984:p.391-399) identifies four modes of exploitation, each based on the unequal distribution of one production asset: feudal exploitation (labour power), capitalist exploitation (capital), socialist exploitation (skill) and state-socialist exploitation (organisation, i.e. the coordination of production across the economy). However, these modes of exploitation intersect in capitalist societies (ibid). For instance, a high-skilled wage earner enjoys the unequal distribution of skills and suffers that of capital. Therefore, the middle class in contemporary capitalism would include those professionals, in addition to the “traditional” (ibid:p.399) middle classes consisting of petty bourgeois, self-employed producers. In his analysis of social classes in Lebanon, Traboulsi (2014/2016) divides the middle class into “lower”, “intermediary” and “upper categories”, using both income and access to productive assets as criteria (2014:p.47). While there is no room to dissect and assess Traboulsi’s methodologically-hybrid class analysis, the examples he gives on what constitutes the middle class in general seem to be in line with Wright’s analysis. Citing C. Wright Mills, Traboulsi describes the middle class as a “professional salad” that includes self-employed and salaried professionals from various domains and with varying income levels, decisionmaking roles and sizes of “economic and cultural capital” (ibid:p.46). What is common among them is the possession of skills, the limited access to economic capital, the small size or absence of a workplace and a “disproportionate amount of self-employed labour and limited manual labour” (ibid). This category fits well the eleven founders and main figures of the You Stink campaign, who according to a television report consisted of: two bloggers/communication-consultants, three actors/directors, two full-time NGO employees, two university students, one lawyer and one academic (Halabi 2015). Little further elaboration is required to confirm their middle-class affiliation, and studies confirm the composition of other groups’ leaderships was similar (Kreichati; Kerbage; Abi Yaghi et al.).  29 Clearly, these social relations that the movement’s leaders possess cannot be assumed to extend to its mass participants; and therefore neither can the analysis of disruptive capacities. However, the focus on the social relations of the movements’ leaders is meaningful for two reasons: First, there is no available data on the social class backgrounds of participants in the Harak. Traboulsi (Interview, 2017) emphasized the need for such research, saying that the task for researchers now is to understand who was in the movement, and not project abstract assumptions. Secondly, analysing the class relations of the Harak’s leaders, as the next section shows, offers insight not only on their own structural power, but also on their priorities and choice of strategy, which eventually influenced the movement’s fate. 4.4 Ramifications of middle-class dominance On dynamics and priorities Several accounts have noted the divergence between the grievances expressed by the Harak’s protesters and the priorities of the campaigners (Kreichati; Kerbage; Nakhal, 2015). Studying footage of protesters speaking to press and comparing them to activist groups’ statements, Kreichati concluded that while most protesters were expressing socio-economic grievances, activists remained focused on the waste management crisis (p.61). This was despite the protest movement’s transformation into a wider space for contention. A member of the short-lived leftist activist group Ash-shaʿb yurīd (The People Want) told Kerbage (p.18): Members of the Coordination Committee were middle class activists (...). This was the background of the people making decisions. Some of them claimed that they ‘knew what people wanted,’ others would say ‘what they want is not important.’ (...) Practically, liberal and leftist slogans were imposed. Unfortunately (...) [there were no] serious discussions, such as thinking who we, as a movement, should form alliances with and which classes we should target.  30 The research of Abi Yaghi et al. (2016:p.78) and al-Zein’s account (2015) also confirm the priority gap, although perhaps disagreeing on its interpretation. Moreover, the middle-class character was apparent in You Stink’s statements; one of which identified movement participants as “university students, teachers, activists, employees, employers, artists... and home-children”, with the latter term (awlād byūt) used for its contrast to street-children (awlād shāreʿ) (Kerbage:p.13). On several occasion, this terminology served to legitimise the movement and delegitimise the violence against it by police; creating moments tensions among protesters (Kerbage:p.17). On disruptive capacities and strategies More important for this analysis, however, are the implications of this middle-class dominance over the movement’s capacity for structural disruption. Building on Piven’s disruption concept, Gonzalez-Vaillant and Schwartz (2012) discuss two forms of disruption: “structural” and “invasive.” The former is derived from the concept of structural power that has been discussed above: “in large structures, different categories of participants have differing roles and therefore have differing abilities to disrupt operations” (ibid). But when such power leverage is not present or not satisfyingly so, activists need to resort to acts of “invasive” disruption (ibid); whereby they target the operations of entities that they are individually not part of. The argument here is that the middle-class background of movement leaders had two sets of negative effects on the capacity of disruption. The first is direct and theoretically deduced, the second is strategic and based on observation. In Wright’s framework (1984) explored in section 4.3, the productive asset that the predominantly self-employed middle-class individuals use to contribute to social production is skill, as opposed to workers’ labour power or capitalists’ capital. One conclusion could be that the major processes of capital accumulation does not directly depend on the middle  31 class’s cooperation for its continuity, at least not the same way it requires the cooperation of capitalists (and by extension technology) or workers- i.e. the two pillars of production. Therefore, having relatively little weight attached to their cooperation implies that middle- class groups possess relatively low disruptive power; since disruption has been defined as the withdrawal from social cooperation (Piven, 2006). Hence, middle-class actors cannot fill the vacuum left by the sidelining of workers from capital accumulation and the drainage of their structural power (explored in chapter 3), because they lack this power in the first place. Admittedly, this hypothesis can be countered by two arguments, the first being that it focuses on the self-employed without accommodating for the wage earners, such as NGO employees. However, even these wage earners possess little disruptive capacities for several reasons. First, the small size of their workplace implies little motivation or common sense for collective action; especially that 80% of civil society organisations in Lebanon have less than 10 staff members (Beyond Reform and Development, 2015). So while, on one hand, the above-mentioned convergence between activism and labour due to the professionalisation/NGO-isation of social struggle could be seen as a reconciliation between labour and its performer, i.e. a trend against alienation, it is also a transformation of labour relations away from class struggle dynamics and towards further personalisation of employment relations. In other words, the convergence of labour and activism indirectly insulates the performance of wage labour from class struggle or any sort of industrial action. Additionally, the fact that workplaces are mostly non-profit institutions further alienates the acceptability of strike-like action, since the traditional struggle over surplus extraction is absent.17 Furthermore, should they resort to industrial action, these individuals are not workers in any key economic sector in Lebanon, and therefore cannot influence directly the regime of capital accumulation.18 To sum up, both the self-employed and the wage-earners 17 Not-for-p ofit NGOs’ ages a ide ag ee e ts ith do o age ies hi h also di tate the staff’s o ki g ti e. While it is still possi le to ea h those ag ee e ts ithout do o s’ k o ledge, the t pi al p o ess does not include the direct extraction of surplus. 18 See chapter 3 for insight on the key economic sectors in postwar Lebanon.  32 among the Harak’s leaders suffer a deficiency in structural power coming from their class coordinates. Another counter-argument is that middle-class professionals working for public institutions and organised in union movements such as the above-mentioned UCC participated in the movement. In other words, had they taken nation-wide disruptive action, the Harak could arguably have paralysed large portions of the state institutions. However, three different factors should be considered here. First, the elite’s success in controlling the body (see section 3.2) naturally prevents it from mobilising for an anti-establishment movement. Secondly, as confirmed by Saadeh, whose movement is strongest among UCC’s ranks, unionists received backlash from participating. One public school director was even threatened with losing his job; a tale that best manifests the centrality of public sector jobs in the mechanisms of sectarian clientelism (see chapter 1). This is a direct reflection of Piven’s emphasis on the significance of “reprisal”; i.e. how the elites are expected to react to disruption and the capacity of populations to withstand their harms (2006:p.30). The third factor, elaborated below, relates to mobilisation strategy: The above-discussed class characteristics of the movement leaders does not only limit the power of their own withdrawal, but also determines their “repertoire of action” (Piven:31), or what Tilly had called “inventory of available means of collective action” (ibid). For any social force, including groups of middle-class youths, this repertoire must match class characteristics: the choice of strategy cannot be understood outside the context of what is possible from leaders’ class positions. Kerbage noted, and Saadeh and Abdallah confirmed, that the mobilisational model strategy advanced by the You Stink campaign dominated the movement. And different strategies employ different forms of disruption. Charles Tripp19 speaks of three forms: spatial (disrupting or transforming the social function of spaces in accordance with the contention strategy), imaginative (altering popular 19 From an informal conversation at his office at SOAS, University of London.  33 perceptions, the imagination of the current situation, and what should be changed), and institutional (blocking the usual operation of institutions key to the continuity of the system). The following discussion argues that strategies aiming at institutional disruption, the most effective accepting Piven’s approach, were not employed by the Harak’s leaders due to their class characteristics. Instead, they resorted to the first two forms: spatial and imaginative. By that, the focus was more on the “spectacle” (Kerbage:p.20) than the system’s actual operation. The focus on spatial disruption confirms Gonzalez-Vaillant and Schwartz’s suggestion that activists who possess little structural power must resort to invasive disruption. It was manifested in several ways. First, there was an insistence on the occupation of the parliament’s square as a larger goal for the Harak20. Moreover, at the peak of the Harak’s momentum, organisers gave the government a 72-hour ultimatum to meet a series of demands or risk escalated action (Dakroub, 2015). The government took its chances, and its punishment was the civilian invasion and occupation of the environment ministry that lasted a few hours only.21 While the ministry itself is a significant institution to disrupt, the purpose was instead the occupation of the space and the “spectacle” it produces. This was also manifested in the temporary occupation of Riad al-Solh square and the spontaneous attacks on the upper-class nature of Downtown Beirut, from the extensive graffiti on the walls to using the streets to hold working-class markets of foods and second-hand items22. The population’s imagination, meaning consciousness and perception of the situation and how it can be changed, was also a major target for disruption. The clearest manifestation is in the choice of campaign titles, which all focused on the question of consciousness and possibility: ‘You Stink’, ‘We Want Accountability’, ‘Change is Coming’, ‘To the Streets’, ‘The 20 In the interviews, both Traboulsi and Thebian confirmed that there was strong insistence on this goal. Traboulsi criticised it as means with no clear ends, while Thebian emphasized the significance of the square and the political dimensions of its targeting. Slaiby (2017) also expressed support for this goal, saying it would have large impact had it been achieved. 21 For coverage of the event, see Aboulmona and Hassan (2015) 22 Participant observation  34 People Want’ etc. But more importantly, it was manifested in the organisational and mobilisation strategies of the main campaigns. First, there was a dogmatic rejection of “organisation”, meaning the construction of leadership and mobilisation structures for activist groups, due to its association to corrupt establishment parties (ibid:p.14). Instead, the strategy was one of “open mobilisation” that seeks the recruitment of all members of the “audience” regardless of demands or ideology (Walgrave and Klandermans, 2010 as cited in Karbage:p.16). Additionally, while reliance on mass media and emotional shock (Verhulst & Walgrave 2006:p.275 as cited in Kerbage:p.8) succeeded in mobilising “first timers” (Kerbage:p.17), it did not allow the construction of strong and sustainable networks between participants and activists (ibid:16). This rejection of organisation, accompanied by the exclusion of unions and leftist parties (see section 4.1), hid rather than prevented the de- facto monopolisation of decision-making by core activists (Kerbage:p.14-16). Moreover, it was arguably behind the failure of reaching a common agenda- often referred to as the most significant reason for the movement’s decline. Closely connected is the second strategic feature; the apparent absolute commitment to nonviolent means of protest (al-Zein, Kreichati, Kerbage, Abi yaghi et al.). Apart from causing the rupture discussed in section 4.1, this decision was based on a controversial understanding of the change process. This is because it involved a high degree of moralism, rather than being discussed as a question of strategy (Piven, 2006, 24-25), and because it relied on an assumption that increasing crowds and the occupation of public spaces would lead to victories (Traboulsi, interview, 2017). Traboulsi (ibid) associates this approach with the “American notion of ‘soft revolution’” where “form is enough” and “content is unimportant”. Thebian confirmed that it was inspired by the writings of Gene Sharp. Many of the activists who led the movements had also received trainings inspired by the latter’s  35 nonviolent philosophy, strategy and action23; which offer little emphasis on the political- economic or class aspects of disruption.24 What these two features, and generally the two forms of disruption employed have in common is their connection to a strategy of symbolic “spectacle” that fit the “open mobilisation,” “emotional movement” approach. It not only replaced, but distorted methods of actual disruption: The symbolic actions evolved as phrases such as “civil disobedience” and “general strike”, which are tools for disrupting the accumulation of profit and threatening authorities, also became “symbolic” and devoid of their meaning. Protests were reduced to wearing a white t-shirt or a white band (…) and civil disobedience was limited to partial road closures... (Kerbage:p.20) While spectacles can achieve short-term mobilisation, real disruption is about hindering the operation of regimes of governance and accumulation. For that, any act of strike or civil disobedience must target the interdependencies that exist between the angered/oppressed masses and the ruling elite. And since these interdependencies are largely material, this requires an understanding of the elite’s points of political-economic vulnerability. Future research will hopefully help identify these key institutions in Lebanon and the possibility of their disruption. To conclude, the class composition of the Harak’s leadership affected its disruptive capacity in two main ways: directly, by depriving leaders of structural disruptive power, and indirectly by orienting the movement’s strategy toward imaginative and spatial forms of disruption, as opposed to their institutional counterpart. The theoretical framework (section 2.2) acknowledges the material basis of power. Therefore, the lack of institutional disruptive capacity is a burden on all attempts to force compromise or concession on the hegemonic ruling elite since it does not challenge its source of power. 23 Until 2016, the author was an executive board member of an activist group that has organised dozens of trainings on these subjects. 24 See for instance Sharp (2012) 36  37 Concluding Remarks Bringing analytical discussions from various disciplinary fields, this research has aimed to challenge a dominant trend in the study of social movements literature of avoiding the analysis of structural environments in which movements are born and operate. More importantly, it aims to emphasise that understanding the potential of these movements against ruling elites requires an analysis of disruptive capacities, which are directly linked to class and structural power. In this sense, the analysis in section 4.4 offered one example of how the choice of strategy can be traced to class characteristics, while avoiding ideological orthodoxy. In Lebanon, both working and middle classes have interests in struggling for more social justice, including more civil and political rights, better public services, and less corruption and cronyism. But as chapter 3 has shown, the country’s recent neoliberal economic transformation (especially rentierisation) has drained the working class of its structural power, while its associational power has been diminished by the regime’s attack on labour. In this regard, the paper also attempts to contribute to understanding the links between rentierisation in capitalism and working-class power, especially when the usual theories of rentier states do not apply because the transaction of rent is mostly in the private domain. Future research ought to elaborate on the details and repercussions of this state of the working class and its implications for the fate of unionism. Abdo et al. (2017) hint at the need for Lebanon’s labour movements to adopt the approach of “social movement unionism”, which has been theorised by Moody (1997) among others, as a way of taking struggle beyond factory walls. Indeed, when the associational and structural power of Lebanon’s unionised workers is at a historical low, it seems fit to suggest that struggles should take more grassroots forms.  38 What is evident, however, is that these factors have led to the relative absence of organised labour forces from the “civil society” scene and thus the leadership of the 2015 Harak. On the other hand, middle-class actors who have filled the vacuum possess class characteristics that do not carry significant structural power. Moreover, their dominance over the movement had repercussions beyond classist tensions and movement priorities: it influenced the strategy and therefore the disruptive capacity of the Harak. While normative and orthodox considerations often dominate socialist revolutionary approaches to the role of middle classes in social movements, this paper rather aimed to make a structuralist case for the problematisation of this role. In other words, acknowledging that making the claim of the middle classes being short of revolutionary is not a novel revelation (Traboulsi, 2017), the dissertation’s purpose was to argue that regardless of ultimate interest or motivation, middle- class activism has structural limitations that should be contextually analysed for the purpose of strategy. Strategy is indeed both the original motive and the ultimate ambition behind this research. The central point presented is that catalysing social change in Lebanon requires first an understanding of the material foundations of the sectarian crony-capitalist hegemony and what sort of disruptive leverage can be activated from below. Hence, this research is a call on local activists and intellectuals to embrace the journey of identifying this system’s Achilles Heel, and develop strategy-oriented frameworks that match the structural reality.  39 Bibliography Interviews Abdallah, C., (2017). Interview with N. Hassan on June 21 2017. Beirut. [Recording in possession of author]. Abdo, N. (2017). Interview with N. Hassan on June 22 2017. Beirut. [Recording in possession of author]. Doumit, G., (2017). Interview with N. Hassan on June 21 2017. Beirut. [Recording in possession of author]. Saadeh, G., (2017). Interview with N. Hassan on June 21 2017. Beirut. [Recording in possession of author]. Slaiby, W., (2017). Interview with N. Hassan on June 28 2017. Beirut. 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Verso Books.  44 Appendices Appendix 1: Interviewees The list of interviewees by date of interview goes as follows: Fawwaz Traboulsi on his authority as a prominent Lebanese Marxist historian and intellectual who has been involved in the movements both in practice and theorisation; Castro Abdallah as the president of the The National Federation of Worker and Employee Trade Unions in Lebanon; Georges Saadeh as a leader in the Independent Unionist Movement in Lebanon; Gilbert Doumit as an influential and experienced civil society activist; Assaad Thebian as the initiator and most prominent figure of the You Stink campaign that launched the 2015 movement; and Walid Slaiby as a longtime activist and intellectual who has written extensively on nonviolent struggle and civil disobedience in Lebanon. Appendix 2: Manufacturing value added: Percentage of Growth (1995-2015) Source: World Bank Database  45 Appendix 3: Agriculture, value added (growth %) from 1995 to 2015 (ibid). Appendix 4: Remittances/GDP ratios for Lebanon and world average (2002-2016) (ibid).