LILIT HARUTYUNYAN
barely restrained economic liberalism led to the rise of predominantly Muslim popular leftist movements . 6 Together with the Palestine Liberation Organization ( PLO ), they eventually challenged the power of the Maronites . On the other side of the ideological divide , popular Maronite parties such as Kataeb and later the front of Lebanese rightists , Lebanese Forces , undermined the ability of Christian zuama to compromise with their Muslim counterparts .
During the Second Civil War ( 1975-1990 ), bourgeois families lost their role as the dominant capitalist class to the new contractors . This was due to domestic developments and wider changes in the world economy . With the demise of the Bretton Woods system and the rise of the Wall Streetcentric global financial system , the Gulf countries started recycling their oil income directly into US banks . In Lebanon , the civil war led to the dominance of militias in the economy , affecting trade and finance . 7 These internal and external developments did not completely destroy the pre-war bourgeoisie but broke its economic and political dominance . The stage was set for the rise of the new business elite . The oil boom in the Gulf had led to large-scale emigration of Lebanese to the Gulf States . The oil boom increased the number of Lebanese workers in the Gulf from 50,000 in 1970 to 210,000 in 1979-1980 , representing slightly more than a third of the nation ’ s workforce . 8 A small but not insignificant number of Lebanese emigrants managed to accumulate great wealth as contractors in the Gulf . Their success was due to a mixture of personal entrepreneurial flair and connections to key individuals with access to royal contracts . In the late 1970s and early 1980s , this new contractor bourgeoisie returned to Lebanon to invest and to seek political influence . As the heads of transnational enterprises , the new businessmen belong to a faction of the “ transnational capitalist class ” that promotes neoliberal globalization . 9
Class analysis is thus a crucial and neglected element in understanding post-civil war Lebanese politics . However , its exclusive focus on the actors ’ relationship to the means of production tends to be too crude an instrument to understand the behavior of business elites in specific domestic contexts . 10 It
6
See Salim Nasr , “ Backdrop to Civil War : The Crisis of Lebanese Capitalism ”, MERIP Middle East Report , no . 73 , ( 1978 ): 3-13 .
7
On the civil war economy see Corm George , “ The War System : Militia Hegemony and Reestablishment of the State ”, in Peace for Lebanon ? From War to Reconstruction , ed . D . Colling ( Boulder : Lynne Rienner , 1994 ), 215-230 , Elizabeth Picard , The Political Economy of Civil War in Lebanon , in War , Institutions and Social Change in the Middle East , ed . Steven Heydemann ( Berkeley : University of Californian Press , 2000 ), 292-322 .
8
Salim Nasr , “ The Political Economy of the Lebanese Conflict ” in Politics and the Economy in Lebanon , ed . Nadim Shehadi , Bridget Harney ( Oxford : Centre for Lebanese Studies , 1989 ), 44 .
9
See Leslie Sklair , The Transnational Capitalist Class ( Malden : Blackwell , 2000 ).
10
Batty Hindess , Politics and Class Analysis ( Oxford : Blackwell , 1987 ), 16 . 7