MER Article Egyptian Labor Abroad Hardly more than a decade has passed since Egypt’s pioneering emigrants first offered their skills to the nascent development of neighboring Arab countries. Measured against the volume and impact of its labor contributions, this seems a short time indeed. In that time, the limited opportunities once Robert LaTowsky • 21 min read
MER Article Labor Migration in the Arab World The Arab world comprises 18 states and was inhabited, in 1980, by more than 150 million people. [1] Two factors vital to economic development—population and oil—are, however, distributed in an extremely uneven manner among these states. The abstract possibility of mutually beneficial cooperation bet Fred Halliday • 20 min read
MER Article From the Editors (May 1984) One of the great achievements of the capitalist class in the United States has been its ability to enlist the enthusiastic support of the trade union leadership in this country for a foreign policy of intervention and counterrevolution, a policy clearly against the interests of the organized working The Editors • 4 min read
MER Article "Please Don't Use My Name" This interview was conducted by Karen Pfeifer in Ankara during November 1983. How would you like to be identified? I have been in prison five times since the 1980 coup, so please don’t use my name. I was an activist in the construction workers’ union, a shop steward in one of the most progressive (Author not identified) • 5 min read
MER Article "The Traditional Middle in Turkish Politics Disintegrated" Ahmet (a pseudonym) was a founder of the Turkish People’s Liberation Front Party in 1971. He was imprisoned from 1972 to 1974, and released during the general amnesty. He worked with Türk-Iş (the state-endorsed trade union confederation) in the 1970s and helped publish the political journal Birikim. (Author not identified) • 6 min read
MER Article "The Workers as a Class Were Defeated" Metin Kara (a pseudonym) worked on the staff of DISK, the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions. He now lives in exile in Brussels, and he works with the DISK liaison bureau there. His trade union work dates back to 1967, when he was a member of a DISK-affiliated union. From 1975 to 1978, he wor (Author not identified) • 13 min read
MER Article Trade Unions and Turkey's Working Class The emergence of the working class as a force on Turkey’s political scene is essentially a phenomenon of the years since World War II. The organized expression of this class, trade unions, also made their appearance in these years. Both these developments were closely related to the process of rapid Ronnie Margulies, Ergin Yildizoğlu • 16 min read
MER Article New Data on Palestinian Workers in Israel A survey covering the inhabitants of the territories who work inside Israel, conducted by the manpower planning section of the Department of Employment, reveals that in 1981 some 76,000 of them were working in Israel. In 1971, the equivalent figure had been 21,000 and in 1975 it had been 66,000. Acc (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article Workers' Control After the Revolution In the months preceeding the February armed insurrection which led to the downfall of the Pahlavi regime, the term shura (council) appeared frequently in the speeches and literature of various political tendencies ranging from the Islamic right to the leftist organizations. The most ardent advocates Asef Bayat • 19 min read
MER Article The Syrian Labor Movement ‘Abdallah Hanna, al-Haraka al-‘Ummaliyya fi Suriya wa Lubnan, 1900-1945 [The Labor Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1900-1945] (Damascus: Dar Dimashq, 1973). Elisabeth Longuenesse • 6 min read
MER Article Social Bases for the Hama Revolt During the first week of February 1982, serious fighting broke out in Syria between residents of the north-central city of Hamah and the government’s armed forces. A Syrian army raid on a number of buildings that were suspected of being hideouts for local cells of the Muslim Brothers precipitated th Fred H. Lawson • 18 min read
MER Article A New International Division of Labor? A number of theorists have recently put forth the notion of a “new international division of labor” in which the old colonial division of labor involving Third World exports of raw materials and imports of finished goods has been transcended. [1] According to this thesis, Third World countries have James Petras • 7 min read
