Yemen

Following the regime’s brutal massacre of protestors on Friday, March 18, the revolution has moved forward in Yemen. The state apparatus has split, and most of the army has turned against President Saleh. After the repression failed to achieve its objectives, the ruling elite and the imperialist powers are desperately trying to find a “safe” alternative. But that will not stop the revolution.

These days, there are a lot of reports on Yemen in the mainstream media in the West. Most of these reports really don’t say anything about the desperate situation inside Yemen. Furthermore, they say nothing about the class struggle and the revolutionary traditions in Yemen.

This is a reprint of an article originally written by Ted Grant in 1986. It analyses the civil war in the South Yemen in that period illustrating the processes that were taking place in the colonial countries at that time, the processes of the colonial revolution. The degeneration of Stalinism and the peculiar character of proletarian bonapartism, i.e. a move to military-police dictatorship on the basis of state ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange were shown clearly during the course of the revolution in South Yemen after 1967.