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In a remarkable shift, the police, previously the enforcers of Mr. Ben Ali’s rule, organized a protest of their own on the city’s central artery, Bourguiba Boulevard. They wore red armbands in solidarity with the revolution, complained that Mr. Ben Ali and his family had put cronies in charge of the security forces and demanded a trade union that could negotiate for higher wages. Tunisians were stunned to see police officers, once silent and terrifying, complaining about their working conditions in interviews with Al Jazeera.

“The most rapid revolution in history,” he wrote. “Because we are connected. Synchronized.”

plenty of commentators are drawing direct comparisons between the current events and the collapse of the eastern bloc. This approach performs an ideological function, in that it discursively integrates the current upheaval into a pre-existing approved ideological narrative – the dictatorships of the Middle East are merely the latest in a long line of tyrannies to have been undermined by the relentless march of progress and liberal democracy. Thus these upheavals represent further confirmation of the moral and organisational superiority of the western order.

The dynamic of change in countries such as Egypt is much more radical. In Marxist terms, the "political revolution" (reorganisation of the political institutions and changes among the leading state personnel) threatens to carry over into a "social revolution" (a more far-reaching reconfiguration of social relations and of the economic system). This can be seen in the way the focus of struggle, post-Mubarak, has shifted from Tahrir Square to the political-economic space of factories as workers organise strikes, articulate demands that are both political and economic, and start to challenge the power of Egypt's "little Mubaraks" – the country's economic elites. The revolution is deepening and taking on a definite class dynamic.

the pressures which are driving the revolts in north Africa are just as much systemic, economic ones as they are to do with political repression in Arab states

Outside the Rixos hotel we still don't believe the streets are safe. And Gaddafi men are outside with guns, waiting. We still can't leave. Elsewhere I can hear gunfire - not in celebration, but in battle.

it is more difficult to protect freedom from the proponents of freedom themselves than from the enemies

promises to be the first free and fair election of the Arab Spring

Through it all, many observers say, Tunisia appears to have stayed on track — especially in comparison with the muddle after the season’s second Arab revolution, in Egypt, where the interim military government is still ironing out a complicated multistage plan that could delay full civilian control until 2014