A Revolution Derailed, Lebanon in the 1960s and 1970s

by Georges Mehrabian

 The Athens based publishing house Diethnes Vima / International Forum and the Beirut based publishing house Dar Al Mousawar Al Arabi are pleased to announce the publication of their joint book A Revolution Derailed, Lebanon in the 1960s and 1970s by Georges Mehrabian. The author argues that the 1960s and 1970s in Lebanon were decades pregnant in revolutionary possibilities. Working people, across Lebanon’s confessional divide, were resisting what was an intensifying capitalist crisis, accompanied by assaults on the livelihood of millions of workers, peasants, and middle-class layers. It was one of those moments in history where the question was posed: Which class will rule? Would the capitalists, regardless of their religious confession, remain at the helm?  Or would the workers and peasants be able to unite in joint struggles, establish a government of workers and farmers, carry out land reform and begin the process of overthrowing capitalist social relations? Would they gain real national sovereignty from imperialist and neocolonial domination in the process, and forge a Lebanese nation as they rid themselves of the confessional system of rule? In the pages of this book the human potential which existed among toilers and youth in the country of all religious affiliations, Lebanese and Palestinian, to take the second road comes alive – the road which the toilers of Cuba had taken less than twenty years earlier showing that it is possible. The author argues that this potential was squandered by the leading elements of the Lebanese National Movement. Their perspective of allying themselves with liberal factions of the ruling capitalist class and pass power on to them resulted in a derailing of the mass upsurge, a train wreck whose consequences continue to reverberate. Today, Lebanon is in the midst of its gravest economic crisis in over a century. Working people are driven into poverty as the capitalist rulers push the cost of the crisis unto them. Lessons from the proud struggles by the ordinary working people of town and country in the past are invaluable as a new generation looks to the struggles ahead.