[Marxism] learning from Hezbollah

[Andrew Pollack <acpollack2@xxxxxxxxx>]

In the Times today is a piece on the military efficiency of Hezbollah,  
contrasting it to Arab armies and Palestinian guerrilla forces:
  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07hezbollah.html?ref=world
  
  There's also a parallel piece on Nasrallah's popularity, again  counterposed 
to others in the Arab world past and present, at least  implicitly:  
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07nasrallah.html?ref=world
  
  Finally, in today's Haaretz is an encouraging piece on supply and training 
problems of the Zionist army:
  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/747356.html
  
  Now here's the question, especially with reference to the first: What  are 
the social forces and their subjective reflection giving Hezbollah  such 
efficiency? Obviously their social base among Lebanon's most  exploited -- as 
opposed to being the army of a neocolonial Arab regime  or a quisling 
Palestinian bureaucracy -- is the start, but by no means  the end of the 
explanation. 
  
  And one could say the willingness of the Iranian regime to fight and to  
train allies  can be traced back (although through many more  intermediate 
steps) to a similar social base, i.e. it reflects the  vestiges, however slim 
and twisted, of the 1979 revolution. Here too  though this is barely the 
beginning of the analysis.
  
  And a social analysis of the weaknesses of the Israeli army and its US  
counterpart, both of which are unwilling to commit massive ground  forces, is 
also needed.
  
  We have ready to hand the "ideal type" (to use the bourgeois  sociological 
term) of proletarian armies, i.e. Trotsky's and Castro's.  But Hezbollah's is 
obviously a very particular and distorted variant of  that type. HOW variant is 
what we need to figure out.
  
  All of which is so we can spread the positive aspects of their example in 
fighting imperialism, and overcome the negative.
  
                
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