From Workers Vanguard No. 993- 6 January 2012-Tunisian Elections: Victory for Islamic Reactionaries-Workers Must Fight for Their Own Class Rule!
"...For Permanent Revolution in Tunisia
Tunisia is a neocolonial country whose bourgeoisie, including after the fall of Ben Ali, is tied by a million threads to world imperialism. France, the former colonial ruler, continues to benefit from the deep oppression of Tunisia’s masses. Indeed, the subordination of Tunisia to imperialism serves to ensure the brutal exploitation and oppression of its people. In order to win real national and social liberation, the proletariat must be mobilized against both the imperialists and the domestic bourgeoisie, the deadly enemies of Tunisia’s workers and oppressed.
In countries of belated capitalist development like Tunisia, the inherent weakness of the national bourgeoisie ties it so strongly to imperialism that even the most elementary democratic tasks, such as legal equality for women, complete separation of religion and state and agrarian revolution to give land to the peasants, cannot be achieved without the overthrow of the capitalist order. Moreover, the consolidation of proletarian rule requires its international extension to the imperialist centers, particularly France, the former colonial oppressor. This is at bottom what Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution is all about.
In an October 29 statement (La Forge, November 2011), the PCOT whined that the dismal results of the left in the recent elections were due to the role of money in the form of corruption, vote-buying and partiality of the mass media, as well as voting instructions given in the mosques. The truth is that bourgeois elections serve to bolster bourgeois rule; they cannot actually express the will of the masses, particularly in a period of social turmoil and upheaval. This was once again proven in a spectacular fashion in the Tunisian elections.
The call for a constituent assembly was a popular demand following the overthrow of the Ben Ali regime. It was argued that this was the way that democratic demands could be addressed. In fact, only proletarian power can satisfy these demands. We insisted in our propaganda on the need for the working class to establish “factory committees, organs of dual power at the point of production, and from there setting up workers militias, drawing in the urban poor and unemployed, for self-defense against the state’s thugs” (supplement to Le Bolchévik, 4 February 2011 [see “Tunisia: Dictator Flees, Protests Continue,” WV No. 973, 4 February 2011]). However, we also raised the call for a revolutionary constituent assembly in the immediate aftermath of Ben Ali’s removal, as well as in Egypt shortly thereafter. In examining this question more deeply, we in the International Communist League have changed our position. While we have called for a constituent assembly numerous times in the past in other circumstances, as did our forebears in the Trotskyist movement (including Trotsky himself), we felt it necessary to question whether, in light of historical experience, this call is valid or principled from the standpoint of the proletarian revolution. A resolution recently adopted by the International Executive Committee of the ICL pointed out:
“While the Constituent Assembly played a progressive role in the great French bourgeois revolution of 1789, historical experience since has demonstrated that this ceased to be the case thereafter. Beginning with the revolutions of 1848, in every situation where a constituent assembly or similar bourgeois legislative body was convened in the context of a proletarian insurgency its aim was to rally the forces of counterrevolution against the proletariat and to liquidate proletarian power. This was evident in the Paris Commune of 1871, the October Revolution of 1917 and the German Revolution of 1918-19. Though never subsequently codified by the CI [Communist International] as a general statement of principle, the thrust of the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky’s leadership following the October Revolution was to treat the constituent assembly as a counterrevolutionary agency.”
The ICL has thus rejected on principle the call for a constituent assembly. We have insisted in our propaganda on Tunisia on the need to address the burning democratic demands of the masses after decades of dictatorial rule, as a lever to mobilize the working class and the oppressed behind it for socialist revolution. Such demands include freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, a real separation of church and state, etc. However, the call for a constituent assembly is not a democratic demand but a call for a capitalist government. Our rejection of such a call reflects both the historical experience of the proletariat and the extension of the Marxist program over the years. (This is a different question than that of running candidates in such elections with the aim of using the electoral campaign, as well as parliamentary seats if elected, as a platform to call on the workers to organize as a class for itself—that is, to struggle for their own class rule.)
Marx drew on the experience of the revolutions of 1848, in which the European bourgeoisies made common cause with the forces of aristocratic reaction, to propound the “revolution in permanence.” Pointing to the treachery of the democratic petty bourgeoisie, Marx argued that the task was to “make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, the proletariat has conquered state power” and the revolution spread internationally (“Address of the Central Authority to the Communist League,” March 1850). Trotsky extended this understanding to tsarist Russia in his writings of 1904-06 and then, at the time of the Second Chinese Revolution, generalized the program of permanent revolution to countries of combined and uneven development globally. Our understanding of the reactionary character of the bourgeoisie, in the semicolonial countries as well as the advanced capitalist states, means that there can be no revolutionary bourgeois parliament. The call for a constituent assembly consequently runs counter to the permanent revolution.
In the revolt in Tunisia, the anger of the masses, as well as their hopes for real change, were channeled into calls for elections that would simply change the names and faces of the capitalist oppressors. In fact, from its inception, the Tunisian bourgeoisie has always wrapped its rule in the envelope of a (bourgeois) constitution. That has been the case from the demand for a constitution against the colonial-feudalist beylicat [Tunisian monarchy prior to independence] to the constitution later crafted by Habib Bourguiba, the strongman of the early years of the Tunisian republic, and to the recent efforts to prevent a proletarian upheaval. The historic party of the Tunisian bourgeoisie was long called Neo-Destour (“destour” means “constitution” in Arabic). The full name of the party was the “New Tunisian Constitutional Liberal Party”; it was renamed the “Destourian Socialist Party” in 1964. Years later, Ben Ali renamed it…the “Democratic-Constitutional Rally.”
A workers revolution in Tunisia, tearing state power from the capitalist class in an Arab country, would have tremendous impact throughout the region. It would immediately reverberate in the imperialist countries, notably in France, where several million people of North African origin live, concentrated in the proletariat and the most oppressed layers of the population. They constitute a living bridge for socialist revolution on both sides of the Mediterranean. To fight for the overthrow of the capitalist order, the working class needs a proletarian revolutionary party, which can be built only in an intransigent struggle against all bourgeois forces. We fight to reforge the Fourth International founded by Trotsky on the basis of the legacy of the October Revolution."
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Markin comment on this article:
I admit that I was taken aback a little while reading this article concerning the ICL line change proposed for countries, mainly third-world countries, especially those which have just come out of popular movements against dictatorial regimes, around the call for revolutionary constituent assemblies. I have always been somewhat queasy about the simple call for constituent assemblies in these cases because it seemed too similar to the French revolutionary model that has long ago had its day. But as a transitional slogan, and as an affirmation of Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution for more economically backward countries, it made more programmatic sense.
Some of the argumentation for the line change does make sense (the perfidy of the bourgeoisies in secondary, semi-colonial and colonial countries, as noted even in Marx’s time, popular frontism, two-stage revolution, etc.) but I am still left with an odd feeling that calling (as I have in my headline for this post) a workers republic in some of these places (although not Tunisia) like Afghanistan, Nepal and Tibet just seems too far out to be programmatically sound. This one is harder to figure out that the question of a revolutionary attitude to the running for executive offices of the bourgeois state. Another long held position of the common orthodox Trotskyist movement. More, much more later.
Showing posts with label revolutionary constituent assembly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label revolutionary constituent assembly. Show all posts
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
From The Renegade Eye Blog-The Arab Revolution - Manifesto of the International Marxist Tendency. Part Three: The Revolution is not finished
The Arab Revolution - Manifesto of the International Marxist Tendency. Part Three: The Revolution is not finished
Written by International Marxist Tendency
Thursday, 17 March 2011
To say that a revolution has begun is not to say that it has been completed, much less that victory is assured. It is a struggle of living forces. Revolution is not a one-act drama. It is a complicated process with many ebbs and flows. The overthrow of Mubarak, Ben Ali and Gannouchi marks the end of the first stages, but the Revolution has not yet succeeded in completely overthrowing the old regime, while the latter has not yet succeeded in re-establishing control.
In Russia in 1917 the Revolution lasted for nine months, from February to October, when the workers finally took power under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party. However, the Russian Revolution was not a straight line and proceeded through all kinds of vicissitudes and contradictions. There was a period of open reaction in July and August. Lenin had to flee to Finland and the Bolshevik Party was virtually illegalised. But this merely prepared the way for a new advance of the Revolution, culminating in the October insurrection.
In Spain we saw a similar process, starting with the fall of the monarchy in 1931, followed by a big upsurge of the class struggle. But the defeat of the Asturian Commune in October 1934 led to a period of reaction, the Biennio Negro, or two black years in 1935-6. But this proved to be only the prelude to a new upsurge of the Revolution, starting with the victory of the Popular Front in the elections of 1936, leading to the Civil War and ending in defeat and fascism.
After the fall of Mubarak, the Egyptian Revolution is like a big carnival. But the masses are fighting for things no bourgeois government can give them. Like the Russian workers in February 1917, the workers of Egypt have succeeded in overthrowing a tyrant but they have not won their main objectives. The real struggle is still ahead. What has been solved by Mubarak's overthrow? What was achieved by Ben Ali fleeing to Saudi Arabia? Nothing fundamental has been solved. The workers are fighting for bread, jobs and houses, not for some kind of charade of formal bourgeois democracy in which everything changes so that everything can remain the same.
Through painful experience the masses are learning some serious lessons. Sooner or later they will draw the conclusion that the working class must take power. There will be an extended learning process, a process of inner differentiation. This has already begun. In the revolutionary committees the more moderate elements who led the movement in its early stages, and who have illusions in the army, are being challenged by new layers of workers and youth who are opposed to compromise. They fear that what they have conquered with their blood can be taken away from them by subterfuge. This suspicion is well founded.
With the fall of Mubarak the Egyptian Revolution won its first great victory. But none of the fundamental problems of Egyptian society have been solved. Prices continue to rise, homeless people sleep in cemeteries and about 10 percent of the workforce is unemployed according to official statistics, though the real figure is much higher.
There is a burning anger against inequality and the all-pervading corruption that is the chief characteristic of the old regime. Billions of dollars of public money have gone missing. The amounts looted by the Mubarak family alone are estimated at between $40 billion and $80 billion. This has provoked anger and disgust, in a country where 40 percent of the people are living below the poverty line.
It is impossible to say for sure what will follow. However, we can say that the Revolution will be protracted in time and will experience all manner of ups and downs. At the present time, the masses are intoxicated with the idea of democracy. The feeling of euphoria affects even the most advanced and revolutionary elements. This period of democratic and constitutional illusions is an inevitable phase but it will not last. The Revolution stirs society to the bottom. It awakens new, previously inert and “backward” layers to political life. They are demanding their rights. When these people say "thawra hatta'l nasr" (revolution until victory), they mean it.
All attempts to restore the political equilibrium will come to nothing because the crisis of capitalism does not permit any solution to the most basic needs of the population. There will be a series of unstable bourgeois regimes. One unstable ministry after another will fall. This presents a danger. When the class struggle reaches the point of deadlock, the state tends to rise above society and acquire a relative independence. The result is an unstable military regime, or, to give it its correct name, a Bonapartist regime. The very fact of the existence of such a regime indicates that the Revolution that began on 25 January is not finished. It will experience many new turns before the final denouement can be written.
Despite all the appeals for “national unity”, Egyptian society is becoming sharply polarized. The Revolution still has considerable reserves of support in the population. Students are agitating on the campuses. Workers are staging strikes and factory occupations, driving out hated managers and corrupt trade union leaders. The strike of the Egyptian oil workers won all their demands, including the resignation of the oil minister, in just three days. This shows where the real power lies.
The military regime in Egypt cannot maintain itself for long. All the attempts to restore “order” (that is, the rule of the rich and powerful) have failed. The army has tried to stop strikes, but the strikes continue. Far from subsiding, the movement of the workers is increasing. What can the generals do? If they were unable to use their tanks to crush the insurrection, still less can they use them to crush strikes in what is supposed to be a democratic regime.
The generals will have to pass power to a civilian (i.e. bourgeois) government. This will be counterrevolution in a democratic disguise. But it will not be easy for to the counterrevolution to restore stability. For the workers, democracy is not an empty word. If it does not lead to an improvement in living standards, jobs and houses, what was the point of fighting in the first place?
If all this had happened ten years ago, they might have been able to consolidate some form of bourgeois democratic regimes. The boom in world capitalism would have given them some margin for manoeuvre. But now there is a profound crisis on a world scale. This is both the reason for the revolutionary ferment and the reason why it cannot easily be brought to an end. The capitalist system cannot offer anything to the masses. It can't even provide jobs and a decent living standard in the USA and Europe. How can they hope to do it in Egypt?
The actions of the workers striking, occupying the factories and kicking out the managers are of tremendous importance. They mean that the Revolution is entering the factories and workplaces. They signify that the workers of Egypt are proceeding from the struggle for democracy in society to the struggle for economic democracy in the workplace. It means that the Egyptian working class is beginning to participate in the Revolution under its own banner, fighting for its own class demands. This is a decisive factor for the future of the Revolution.
The workers are protesting against corruption and low salaries. They are rebelling against state-appointed managements and setting up revolutionary committees to run factories and other workplaces. That is the correct line to take.
Bourgeois commentators have emphasized that many of these strikes are of an economic nature. Of course! The working class is pressing its immediate demands. That is to say, they see the Revolution as a means of fighting not just for formal democracy but for better wages, for better working conditions – for a better life. They are fighting for their own class demands. And this struggle cannot cease just because Hosni Mubarak is no longer sitting in the Presidential Palace.
For a workers’ democracy!
In Suez, the state collapsed completely for four or five days. Like in Tunisia earlier, revolutionary committees and armed checkpoints were established to defend the people. These facts demonstrate beyond question that soviets (i.e. workers’ councils) are not an arbitrary invention of the Marxists but emerge spontaneously in any genuine revolution.
This poses the central question, that of the state. The old state power has been brought to its knees by the Revolution. It must be replaced with a new power. There is a power in society that is stronger than any state. That power is the revolutionary people. But it must be organized. In both Egypt and Tunisia there are elements of dual power in the revolutionary committees. Entire cities and regions were taken over by these committees.
In Tunisia, the revolutionary organisation of the people went even further than in Egypt. These bodies, in many cases organised around the local structures of the UGTT trade unions, took over the running of all aspects of society in towns and cities and even in whole regions, after expelling the old, RCD regime, authorities. For all the talk of "chaos" and "lack of security" on the part of the ruling class, the fact is that working people organised themselves to guarantee order and safety, but this was a different type of order, a revolutionary order.
In Egypt, following the collapse of the police force on January 28th, people stepped in to protect their neighbourhoods. They set up checkpoints, armed with knives, swords, machetes and sticks to inspect cars that were coming in and out. In some areas, the popular committees virtually took over the running of the town, even organizing the traffic. Here we have the embryo of a people’s militia – of an alternative state power.
And just as the people set up committees to protect their areas from criminal elements when the police were taken off the streets in order to cause chaos and disorder, now in order to organize the Revolution in the most effective manner, the same idea must be taken up and generalized. In order to defend and extend the Revolution, we must form defence committees everywhere!
Elected Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, which already exist in some areas, should be established in every factory, street and village. The revolutionary committees should link up on a local, regional and national level. This would be the starting point for a future democratic workers’ and peasants’ government – a real alternative to the rotten dictatorial regime.
The IMT demands:
•A complete purge and democratization of the army
•For the setting up of soldiers- committees and committees of revolutionary-minded lower ranking officers
•Out with the corrupt and reactionary generals
•Immediate disbandment of all repressive bodies
•All those guilty of acts of terror against the people must be put on trial and punished
•The general arming of the people
•The establishment of a people’s militia
•For a workers’ and peasants’ government!
Revolution knows no frontiers
The international character of the revolution has been clear from the very beginnings. Other Arab countries face many similar problems to those in Tunisia and Egypt: rising food prices, sharply deteriorating economic conditions, unemployment and rampant official corruption. Many millions of people are struggling to exist. And in society as in nature, similar conditions produce similar results. What has happened in Tunisia and Egypt can happen in many other countries, and not only in the Arab world.
The imperialists have been trying to console themselves with the thought that there is no domino effect. But the dominoes are already beginning to fall: Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Iraq, Djibouti, Yemen, Bahrain and Oman – all are entering the revolutionary maelstrom. As in Tunisia and Egypt, the people of Algeria, Jordan and Yemen were living in poverty under dictatorial ruling elites which lived a luxurious life by plundering the nation.
In the case of Iraq, the Revolution is linked to the struggle against imperialism and foreign domination and the right to self-determination of the Kurdish people. At the same time, one characteristic of the protest movement in Iraq is that it has cut across the sectarian divide between Shiites and Sunnis, between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens, which has been the basis for the domination of reactionary politicians.
Among the main issues raised by the protesters are rising living costs, partly caused by the government’s withdrawal of subsidies for petrol and sugar—an explosive issue across the Arab world. The leaders of Jordan, Algeria and Libya all reduced taxes on imported food or lowered the prices of staples in an attempt to avoid unrest. In Algeria the regime has made concessions in an attempt to prevent an explosion that would be even bigger than the insurrection in the Berber areas in 2001.
Even the oil-rich monarchs of the Gulf are worried. Kuwait has distributed £4,000 (€4600 or US$4600) to all its citizens to keep the population quiet. But such measures can at best succeed only in postponing the inevitable revolutionary upsurge.
The Western media shamelessly portrayed the movement in Bahrain as a religious-sectarian struggle of the Shiite majority and the Sunnis. That is a lie. The Bahrainis are fighting against corruption, for free elections, against discrimination and for rights for immigrants and women, for equitable distribution of wealth and against unemployment. Everywhere we see the same courage of the masses in face of fire. In Bahrain the army was forced to withdraw from Pearl Square. Once again, the role of the working class was crucial, as it was the threat of a general strike on the part of the Bahraini trade unions which forced the regime to make some concessions
In all the Gulf Sates there is brutal exploitation of labour, largely immigrant labour. There are 1.1 million Pakistanis working in Saudi Arabia alone. A similar situation exists throughout the Gulf. There have been strikes and uprisings there in the past that have not been reported, such as the strike of 8,000 building workers in Dubai.
The Saudi regime itself, that bastion of reaction in the Middle East, resembles a pressure cooker without a safety valve. In such a regime, when the explosion comes, it will occur without warning and with extreme violence. The Saudi royal family is corrupt, degenerate and rotten to the core. It is split over the succession and there is growing resentment and discontent in the population. When the moment comes, all the oil in the kingdom will not save them. It is significant that now even the Wahhabi clergy is turning against them.
The Arab Revolution has revived the revolutionary movement in Iran, where officers in the Revolutionary Guard have said they are not prepared to fire on the people and warned the Basij to leave their truncheons at home. Rifts in the state apparatus reveal the deep crisis of the regime which is split from top to bottom.
Because each case is somewhat different, it is hard to say what kinds of regimes will emerge in each case. What kinds of political tendencies and regimes will emerge depends on many factors and will differ from one country to another. The processes in Tunisia and Egypt were almost identical. But in Libya the situation is different. The regime had more of a base, particularly around Tripoli. The uprising was largely confined to the eastern part and the Revolution has been transformed into a civil war, the outcome of which is still uncertain.
Gaddafi doesn’t care if the whole country goes down with him. Having lost control of the whole of the east including the second biggest city, Benghazi, he decided to fight to the last, plunging Libya into a bloody conflict. There have been wide ranging defections in the Libyan army, even at the top level. But it did not have the same effect as in Egypt because of the different nature of the army and the regime.
One thing is clear: everything has been thrown into the melting pot. Not one of these regimes will survive in the end. There are different possibilities, depending on the class balance of forces and a whole series of internal and external factors that are impossible to foresee. But one thing is clear: no matter what regime is installed, it will not be able to satisfy even the most minimal demands of the masses.
Impotence of imperialism
The imperialists are worried about where all this will go, and how far it will spread. They did not expect these events and do not know how to react. Obama did not dare call on Mubarak publicly to resign because of the effects in these other states. He was obliged to speak in carefully calculated code. The very words “democracy” and “human rights” in the mouth of Obama and his European counterparts stink of hypocrisy.
The cynicism of Western governments stands exposed in all its crudity. After decades of backing the vicious dictatorship in Tunisia, suddenly they are all in favour of democracy and human rights. Yet Sarkozy had praised Ben Ali as a friend of democracy and human rights even when he was torturing his opponents in the prisons. And Washington covered up the barbarous acts of all the other pro-western dictators. Now they are getting their just reward.
Politics affects the economy and vice-versa. Oil prices have climbed on fears the unrest could spread to other Arab states including oil giant Saudi Arabia or interfere with oil supplies from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal. Brent crude surpassed the $120 a barrel mark and is still hovering over the $110 mark. This threatens to undermine the weak and fragile recovery of the world economy.
For economic, political and military reasons the imperialists need stability in the Middle East. But how are they to get it? That is the question! From the beginning the US has been struggling to find a coherent response to events that are changing by the day, even by the hour. In reality the strongest power in the world has been reduced to the role of a helpless onlooker. An article in The Independent by their correspondent in Washington, Rupert Cornwell, carried the interesting title: Washington's strong words underline US impotence. That expresses the real position.
Some “clever” people, however, think that the Arab Revolution is all part of an imperialist conspiracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The bourgeoisie was taken completely by surprise by all this. These revolutions are completely destabilizing one of their most important regions. This is far from welcome to them. And it has repercussions far beyond the Arab world.
The Middle East is a key area for the imperialists. The Americans have spent four decades establishing their position there. Egypt was a key piece in their calculations. Now all this has been swept away before their eyes in a few weeks. The richest and most powerful state on earth was completely paralyzed. Obama could not intervene, and even found it difficult to say anything about it for fear of offending their Saudi allies.
Eight percent of world trade passes through the Suez Canal, and the Americans were terrified that would be closed, but they could do nothing about it. All that Obama could say was that it was the Egyptian people's choice. The Americans did not say that when it came to Iraq or Afghanistan, where US imperialism did not think twice about invading.
US warships were in fact sent to Suez but did nothing. This was intended to reveal the mailed fist that is concealed within the velvet glove of Obama’s “democracy”. But in reality it was an empty gesture. The US burned its fingers in Iraq. A new military adventure in Egypt would have provoked a storm in the USA and on a world scale. There would not have been a single US embassy left standing in the Middle East and all the other pro-US Arab regimes would be faced with overthrow
The USA has a special interest in Bahrain because of its important strategic position next door to Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is the base of the Fifth Fleet, the most important US naval base in the whole region. Yet they were powerless to intervene against the revolutionary movement in Bahrain. If this was all part of an imperialist plan, nobody told Obama about it!
[Edited 29 March 2011:]
In the case of Libya they did not hesitate to denounce Gaddafi and call for his overthrow – which they signally failed to do in the case of Mubarak. This is yet another example of their duplicity, cynicism and double standards. Although initially they hinted that military action was not ruled out, they hesitated to act. Hilary Clinton said that a no-fly zone would have to be approved by the UN. This is a complete contrast to the conduct of the USA in Iraq, when they completely by-passed the UN.
In the end, under pressure from the French and the British, the USA agreed to a no-fly zone. We now have open imperialist aggression in Libya. This has nothing to do with defending the people of Libya and even less with defending the revolution. The opposite is the case. Their aim is to get a foothold in the region in order to strangle the revolutions that have begun.
We oppose this imperialist bullying. The task of overthrowing Gaddafi belongs to the Libyan people. The truth is that the initial revolutionary impetus that began in the east has been sidetracked and taken over by counter-revolutionary elements on the Interim Council who have now handed over the fate of the Libyan people to western imperialism.
The IMT says:
•No to foreign intervention!
•End the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan!
•Stop the bombing of Libya!
•Down with imperialism!
•Hands off the Arab Revolution!
Israel and the Palestinians
Nowhere has the Arab Revolution caused greater panic than in Israel. The strongest military force in the region was paralysed in the face of the events in Egypt. The Israeli ruling clique even had to be careful about what they said about the situation in Egypt. Binyamin Netanyahu ordered ministers not to talk about it in public. Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries to curb their criticism of President Hosni Mubarak. Jerusalem tried desperately to convince its allies that it was in the West's interest to back Mubarak in order to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime. This flew in the face of the efforts of the United States and European Union to remove him so that they could guarantee an “orderly transition” and avoid a revolutionary overthrow.
Marx pointed out that no people could ever be free if it enslaved another people. Israel rules over a large and disaffected population of Palestinians who are learning on their televisions how to overthrow tyranny. On the West Bank the Palestinians are held down with the help of the Palestinian Authority’s police. But it is open to question whether Palestinian police units, or Israeli security forces, would be able to crush a mass democracy movement, after Egypt’s powerful army refused to fire on the people.
The separate peace signed by Israel and Egypt in 1979 was a betrayal of the Palestinian cause and is deeply unpopular in most of the Arab world. The backing of Egypt has been an important element in helping the continuing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories conquered in 1967.
The Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993 was a new betrayal. The so-called Palestinian territories are nothing more than a version of the South African Bantustans. It was a cruel mockery of a homeland and none of the basic demands of the Palestinians were conceded. Israel continued to rule the roost. Since then things have gone from bad to worse.
Now the fall of Israel’s most powerful regional ally has radically altered the whole equation. It has shaken the Israeli government and called into question the deep-seated belief that the occupation of the Palestinian territories can be sustained indefinitely. Overnight the carefully prepared plans of the imperialists are in ruins.
Decades of so-called armed struggle and negotiations have led nowhere. But the revolutionary movement poses the Palestinian question in a completely different light. The ruling clique in Israel is not at all worried about Hamas’ rockets and suicide bombers. On the contrary, every rocket that falls on an Israeli village serves to push Israeli public opinion behind the government. But a Palestinian Intifada, combined with the Arab Revolution in Egypt and Jordan, is another matter altogether.
As a military power, Israel may be unbeatable. In the event of a war with Egypt, Israel would probably win again. But could it win against masses of protesters in town squares across the West Bank, Gaza and Israel too, demanding political rights for Palestinians? This is a question that must keep the Israeli generals and politicians awake at night.
The fall of Mubarak has very serious implications for Israel. In the best case, Israel’s defence spending will have to rise still further, as its rulers contemplate the threat of a war in the south. This will put further strains on an economy that was already in crisis. New cuts and attacks on living standards will be the result, putting an intensification of the class struggle on the order of the day in Israel.
Netanyahu imagined that his country was an island of stability and democracy that could not be affected by revolution. But basically, Israel is just another Middle Eastern country that is threatened by the revolutionary wave emanating from Tunisia and Egypt. There are new contradictions inside Israel. The increase in fuel and water has made Israel one of the most expensive countries to live in the world. The Histadrut (Israeli trade unions) leadership has been playing with the idea of a national strike.
The events in Tunisia and Egypt will have profound consequences for the Palestinians. The Palestinians have been betrayed by everyone they put their trust in, beginning with the supposedly friendly Arab regimes and ending with their own leaders. The latest revelations by Wikileaks had exposed the scandalous collusion of Abbas with the Israelis and Americans. This will have a big effect on the psychology of the Palestinian masses.
For forty years, the PLO leadership has betrayed the Palestinian cause. The PLO could have taken power in Jordan in 1970. Then the whole history of the region would have been different. But the petty bourgeois nationalist leadership refused to attack their "Arab brothers". So the Jordanian monarch mobilized the Bedouins who (with the help of the Pakistani Army) slaughtered thousands of Palestinians. It is a fact that many more Palestinians have been killed by Arab "brothers" than by the Israelis.
The same Bedouins who attacked the Palestinians in 1970 are now protesting against the King. Former army officers are warning the regime that unless it makes concessions it will face the same fate as that of Ben Ali and Mubarak. This shows that the Hashemite monarchy is fast losing its base and is hanging by a thread. The movement has spread from the Bedouin areas to Amman and the Palestinians, who make up the majority of the population of Jordan.
It is time to reassess the tactics and strategy of the Palestinian struggle. The Wikileaks revelations have exposed the Palestinian leaders as little more than Israeli stooges. The mood of the Palestinians is angry and bitter. There have been a number of attempts to organise mobilisations both against Abbas in the West Bank and against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which have been met with heavy repression. Even demonstrations in solidarity with the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions have been banned by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
Now a united movement against the current leadership of the Palestinian movement, against Israeli occupation and for the unity of the Palestinian struggle has been set up, attracting the support of tens of thousands on Facebook and calling for demonstrations and protests. For Palestinians, an Intifada in Egypt was part of their dreams for decades. Now it is a reality. The overthrow of the reactionary Arab regimes by the masses will deal a serious blow against Israel and US imperialism and transform the whole situation. Now for the first time the Palestinians can see who are their only real friends: the workers and peasants of the whole Arab world.
This represents a fundamental turning point. The Palestinians have seen how it is possible to fight against the oppressors, not with bombs and rockets, but by revolutionary mass action. The whole mood will be different now. There will be new stirrings in the youth, movements against Hamas in Gaza, and against the PLO leaders in the West Bank. There is growing pressure for something different than what has existed heretofore. The idea of a new Intifada will rapidly gain ground among the Palestinians. This would change everything.
For a Socialist Federation!
After the First World War the so-called Arab nation states were created artificially by imperialism. This division was not based on any natural or historical criterion but purely on the interests of imperialism. The Sykes-Picot agreement divided Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan between Britain and France. Under the Balfour Declaration in 1918, the British gave permission for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
In the Gulf, small states with huge reserves of oil were established so they could be controlled by imperialism easily, for access to resources. The Saudi monarchy consisted of desert bandits, raised to power by the British agent Wilson Cox. Imperialism has divided the living body of the Great Arab Nation.
The Arab Revolution can never succeed until it has put an end to the shameful Balkanization of the Arab world. The only way to break the chains forged by imperialism is to place on our banner the slogan of a Socialist Federation of the Arab world. This would create a mighty Socialist Commonwealth, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Euphrates.
On the basis of a nationalized planned economy, unemployment would be immediately abolished. A vast reservoir of unused labour power would be mobilized to solve the problems of housing, health, education and the infrastructure. By pooling the huge resources of all these countries on the basis of a common plan of production, deserts could be made to bloom and a new cultural revolution would put all the gains of the past in the shade.
A Socialist Federation, with full autonomy for all the peoples, is the only way to solve the national and religious strife that has poisoned the lives of the peoples for decades, leading to one war after another. Muslims and Copts, Sunnis and Shiites, Palestinians and Jews, Arabs, Amazigh (Berbers), Maronites, Kurds, Turkmens, Armenians, Druzes – all will find a place in a Federation based on the principle of absolute equality.
The IMT says:
•Defend the rights of the Palestinian people and all oppressed nationalities to self-determination!
•Down with the imperialist and Israeli aggressors! End the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine!
•Drive out the collaborators! For the revolutionary overthrow of all the Arab puppets of imperialism!
•Expropriate the property of the imperialists and their Arab stooges! The wealth of the Arab lands must be returned to the people!
•For the revolutionary unity of the peoples! For the Socialist Federation of the Middle East and North Africa, on the basis of a free, equal and fraternal union, with full autonomy to every nationality!
Leaps in consciousness
The Egyptian Revolution is the final answer to all those sceptics and intellectual snobs who constantly harp on the alleged “low level of consciousness” of the masses. Those western “experts” who talked contemptuously of the Egyptians as “apathetic” and “passive” and “indifferent to politics” must eat their words.
Marxists understand that human consciousness in general is not progressive or revolutionary but profoundly conservative. Resistance to change is deeply rooted in the human mind as part of a survival mechanism that comes from the remote past of our species. As a general rule, therefore, consciousness lags behind events. It does not change gradually, today more revolutionary than yesterday and tomorrow more than today, any more than water that is cooled from 100 to 0 degrees first becomes a paste, then a jelly and finally a solid.
This view of consciousness is metaphysical and mechanical, not materialist and dialectical. Dialectics teaches us that things change into their opposite, and that small, apparently insignificant changes can at a certain point, known in physics as a critical point, produce explosive transformations on a gigantic scale. The change in consciousness happens suddenly, when it is compelled by great events to change. When this occurs, consciousness is swiftly brought into line with reality. This leap of consciousness is precisely what a revolution is.
The masses, whether in Egypt, Iran, Britain or the USA, do not learn from books but from experience. In a revolution, they learn much faster than in other circumstances. The Egyptian workers and youth have learnt more in a few days of struggle than in thirty years of “normal” existence. On the streets the masses developed a sense of their own power. They lost the deadening fear of the uniformed riot police backed up by water cannons and thousands of plain-clothes thugs, who they pushed back and defeated.
In a revolution the learning process is enormously speeded up. We see exactly the same process in Egypt and Tunisia. Here is a vast laboratory where the different vague, competing lists of demands issued by different organisers are put to the test. On the streets the masses decide which slogans are appropriate and which are not. We will see the same process repeated time and time again, and not just in the Middle East and North Africa but everywhere.
From Cairo to Madison
In 1917 it took about a week for people in India to learn that there had been a Revolution in Russia. Today everyone can see the revolution live on their television screens. The situation in the Middle East is having a tremendous effect around the world. In India, for the first time in 32 years, the unions and left parties recently organised a general strike over wages and prices. There was a march of 200,000 on the streets in New Delhi, over food price rises. Although India is growing at an annual rate of nine percent, this increases inequality by concentrating wealth at the top.
In Tunisia and Egypt the capitalist system is beginning to break at its weakest links. The bourgeois will tell us that such things cannot happen in the advanced capitalist countries, that the situation is different and so on and so forth. Yes, the situation is different, but only in degree. Everywhere the working class and the youth will be faced with the same alternative: either we accept the systematic destruction of our living standards and rights – or we fight.
The argument “it cannot happen here” is without any scientific or rational basis. The same thing was said of Tunisia only a couple of months ago, when that country was considered to be the most stable in North Africa. And the same argument was repeated in relation to Egypt even after Ben Ali was overthrown. Just a few weeks were sufficient to expose the hollowness of those words. Such is the speed of events in our epoch. Sooner or later the same question will be posed in every country in Europe, in Japan, in Canada, and also in the United States.
Inflation is rising. Food prices are rising. This will have the most serious effects everywhere, particularly in poor countries. According to the World Bank, 44 million more people will be thrust into extreme poverty in the coming period, pushing the figure to over one billion worldwide. Millions of people are fighting for food, jobs and housing – that is, for the most basic conditions of a semi-civilized existence. These conditions ought to be freely available to everybody in the first decade of the twenty-first century. But the decrepit capitalist system is no longer able to guarantee these things even in Europe and North America. This is why there are riots and uprisings. It is a life and death question.
The present crisis is not a normal cyclical crisis of capitalism. The recovery also is not normal. The capitalists are trying to squeeze the workers more than ever in an attempt to re-establish the economic equilibrium: to pay off their debts, reduce cost of labour, etc. But by so doing, they destabilize the entire situation. This partly explains both the Arab revolution and the upsurge of the class struggle in Europe
Every country in the world has been affected. It is no accident that China added its voice to the chorus calling for a return to “order “in Egypt. In part it is a question of economic interest. The Chinese regime is interested in global economic stability because it wants to continue to earn a lot of money from exports. But above all, Beijing is afraid of anything that could provide an impetus for strikes and protests in China itself. They have clamped down on all protest and blocked any reference to Egypt on the Internet.
By contrast, every class conscious worker in the world will rejoice at the marvellous movement of the workers and youth in Tunisia and Egypt. The psychological effects of this cannot be underestimated. For many, especially in the advanced capitalist countries, the idea of revolution appeared as something abstract and remote. Now the events that have unfolded before their eyes on television show that revolution is not just possible but necessary.
In Europe and the USA there is a seething hatred of the bankers and fat cats who are rewarding themselves obscene bonuses while the rest of society suffers continuous attacks on their living standards. This fact is strikingly reflected in the dramatic events in Wisconsin. It is no accident that the workers of Madison, Wisconsin chanted things like “fight like an Egyptian”. This is the effect of the vicious policies being imposed on the working class during an economic recovery in the US.
Suddenly the world has woken up to the fact that there has been an explosion of the class struggle in Wisconsin, with 100,000 people on the streets. We see images of workers holding placards calling the governor Hosni Walker and chanting: "Wisconsin Dictator Must Go". Egyptian workers even sent solidarity messages to the Wisconsin workers. There have been student walkouts, campouts at the state Capitol and spontaneous rallies. The police who were sent to disperse the demonstrators went over to the people, joined the occupation wearing jackets that carried slogans like “cops for labour”. This is an extremely important development.
In Europe we have seen big movements of the workers and youth: eight general strikes in Greece in the last twelve months; a huge strike movement in France bringing three and a half million workers out onto the streets; the movement of the British students; a general strike in Spain; in Italy the movement of the metal workers. Recently there was the biggest general strike in Portugal since the fall of the dictatorship in 1974. Even in the Netherlands there were 15,000 students protesting at the Hague. In Eastern Europe as well we have seen big movements in Albania and Romania. In Bulgaria, even the police have been out on strike.
Twenty years ago, the bourgeoisie was overjoyed at the overthrow of “communism”. But their rejoicing was premature. In retrospect the fall of Stalinism will be seen as only the prelude to a far more dramatic development: the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Everywhere, including the United States, the system is in crisis. Everywhere the ruling class is trying to place the full burden of the crisis of its system on the shoulders of the poorest layers of society.
These movements have striking similarities to the mass movements that led to the overthrow of the regimes in Eastern Europe. On paper these governments had a powerful state apparatus, big armies, police, and secret police. But that did not save them. Nor will all the money, police and armies in the world save the rulers of Europe and the United States once the workers move to change society.
The masses have shown again and again determination and willingness to struggle. In order to achieve victory they need to be armed with a clear programme and leadership. The ideas of Marxism are the only ones that can provide it. The future is ours.
•Long live the Arab Revolution!
•Workers of the world unite!
•Long live socialism, the only hope for the future of humankind!
•Thawra hatta'l nasr!
London, March 14, 2011
Written by International Marxist Tendency
Thursday, 17 March 2011
To say that a revolution has begun is not to say that it has been completed, much less that victory is assured. It is a struggle of living forces. Revolution is not a one-act drama. It is a complicated process with many ebbs and flows. The overthrow of Mubarak, Ben Ali and Gannouchi marks the end of the first stages, but the Revolution has not yet succeeded in completely overthrowing the old regime, while the latter has not yet succeeded in re-establishing control.
In Russia in 1917 the Revolution lasted for nine months, from February to October, when the workers finally took power under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party. However, the Russian Revolution was not a straight line and proceeded through all kinds of vicissitudes and contradictions. There was a period of open reaction in July and August. Lenin had to flee to Finland and the Bolshevik Party was virtually illegalised. But this merely prepared the way for a new advance of the Revolution, culminating in the October insurrection.
In Spain we saw a similar process, starting with the fall of the monarchy in 1931, followed by a big upsurge of the class struggle. But the defeat of the Asturian Commune in October 1934 led to a period of reaction, the Biennio Negro, or two black years in 1935-6. But this proved to be only the prelude to a new upsurge of the Revolution, starting with the victory of the Popular Front in the elections of 1936, leading to the Civil War and ending in defeat and fascism.
After the fall of Mubarak, the Egyptian Revolution is like a big carnival. But the masses are fighting for things no bourgeois government can give them. Like the Russian workers in February 1917, the workers of Egypt have succeeded in overthrowing a tyrant but they have not won their main objectives. The real struggle is still ahead. What has been solved by Mubarak's overthrow? What was achieved by Ben Ali fleeing to Saudi Arabia? Nothing fundamental has been solved. The workers are fighting for bread, jobs and houses, not for some kind of charade of formal bourgeois democracy in which everything changes so that everything can remain the same.
Through painful experience the masses are learning some serious lessons. Sooner or later they will draw the conclusion that the working class must take power. There will be an extended learning process, a process of inner differentiation. This has already begun. In the revolutionary committees the more moderate elements who led the movement in its early stages, and who have illusions in the army, are being challenged by new layers of workers and youth who are opposed to compromise. They fear that what they have conquered with their blood can be taken away from them by subterfuge. This suspicion is well founded.
With the fall of Mubarak the Egyptian Revolution won its first great victory. But none of the fundamental problems of Egyptian society have been solved. Prices continue to rise, homeless people sleep in cemeteries and about 10 percent of the workforce is unemployed according to official statistics, though the real figure is much higher.
There is a burning anger against inequality and the all-pervading corruption that is the chief characteristic of the old regime. Billions of dollars of public money have gone missing. The amounts looted by the Mubarak family alone are estimated at between $40 billion and $80 billion. This has provoked anger and disgust, in a country where 40 percent of the people are living below the poverty line.
It is impossible to say for sure what will follow. However, we can say that the Revolution will be protracted in time and will experience all manner of ups and downs. At the present time, the masses are intoxicated with the idea of democracy. The feeling of euphoria affects even the most advanced and revolutionary elements. This period of democratic and constitutional illusions is an inevitable phase but it will not last. The Revolution stirs society to the bottom. It awakens new, previously inert and “backward” layers to political life. They are demanding their rights. When these people say "thawra hatta'l nasr" (revolution until victory), they mean it.
All attempts to restore the political equilibrium will come to nothing because the crisis of capitalism does not permit any solution to the most basic needs of the population. There will be a series of unstable bourgeois regimes. One unstable ministry after another will fall. This presents a danger. When the class struggle reaches the point of deadlock, the state tends to rise above society and acquire a relative independence. The result is an unstable military regime, or, to give it its correct name, a Bonapartist regime. The very fact of the existence of such a regime indicates that the Revolution that began on 25 January is not finished. It will experience many new turns before the final denouement can be written.
Despite all the appeals for “national unity”, Egyptian society is becoming sharply polarized. The Revolution still has considerable reserves of support in the population. Students are agitating on the campuses. Workers are staging strikes and factory occupations, driving out hated managers and corrupt trade union leaders. The strike of the Egyptian oil workers won all their demands, including the resignation of the oil minister, in just three days. This shows where the real power lies.
The military regime in Egypt cannot maintain itself for long. All the attempts to restore “order” (that is, the rule of the rich and powerful) have failed. The army has tried to stop strikes, but the strikes continue. Far from subsiding, the movement of the workers is increasing. What can the generals do? If they were unable to use their tanks to crush the insurrection, still less can they use them to crush strikes in what is supposed to be a democratic regime.
The generals will have to pass power to a civilian (i.e. bourgeois) government. This will be counterrevolution in a democratic disguise. But it will not be easy for to the counterrevolution to restore stability. For the workers, democracy is not an empty word. If it does not lead to an improvement in living standards, jobs and houses, what was the point of fighting in the first place?
If all this had happened ten years ago, they might have been able to consolidate some form of bourgeois democratic regimes. The boom in world capitalism would have given them some margin for manoeuvre. But now there is a profound crisis on a world scale. This is both the reason for the revolutionary ferment and the reason why it cannot easily be brought to an end. The capitalist system cannot offer anything to the masses. It can't even provide jobs and a decent living standard in the USA and Europe. How can they hope to do it in Egypt?
The actions of the workers striking, occupying the factories and kicking out the managers are of tremendous importance. They mean that the Revolution is entering the factories and workplaces. They signify that the workers of Egypt are proceeding from the struggle for democracy in society to the struggle for economic democracy in the workplace. It means that the Egyptian working class is beginning to participate in the Revolution under its own banner, fighting for its own class demands. This is a decisive factor for the future of the Revolution.
The workers are protesting against corruption and low salaries. They are rebelling against state-appointed managements and setting up revolutionary committees to run factories and other workplaces. That is the correct line to take.
Bourgeois commentators have emphasized that many of these strikes are of an economic nature. Of course! The working class is pressing its immediate demands. That is to say, they see the Revolution as a means of fighting not just for formal democracy but for better wages, for better working conditions – for a better life. They are fighting for their own class demands. And this struggle cannot cease just because Hosni Mubarak is no longer sitting in the Presidential Palace.
For a workers’ democracy!
In Suez, the state collapsed completely for four or five days. Like in Tunisia earlier, revolutionary committees and armed checkpoints were established to defend the people. These facts demonstrate beyond question that soviets (i.e. workers’ councils) are not an arbitrary invention of the Marxists but emerge spontaneously in any genuine revolution.
This poses the central question, that of the state. The old state power has been brought to its knees by the Revolution. It must be replaced with a new power. There is a power in society that is stronger than any state. That power is the revolutionary people. But it must be organized. In both Egypt and Tunisia there are elements of dual power in the revolutionary committees. Entire cities and regions were taken over by these committees.
In Tunisia, the revolutionary organisation of the people went even further than in Egypt. These bodies, in many cases organised around the local structures of the UGTT trade unions, took over the running of all aspects of society in towns and cities and even in whole regions, after expelling the old, RCD regime, authorities. For all the talk of "chaos" and "lack of security" on the part of the ruling class, the fact is that working people organised themselves to guarantee order and safety, but this was a different type of order, a revolutionary order.
In Egypt, following the collapse of the police force on January 28th, people stepped in to protect their neighbourhoods. They set up checkpoints, armed with knives, swords, machetes and sticks to inspect cars that were coming in and out. In some areas, the popular committees virtually took over the running of the town, even organizing the traffic. Here we have the embryo of a people’s militia – of an alternative state power.
And just as the people set up committees to protect their areas from criminal elements when the police were taken off the streets in order to cause chaos and disorder, now in order to organize the Revolution in the most effective manner, the same idea must be taken up and generalized. In order to defend and extend the Revolution, we must form defence committees everywhere!
Elected Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, which already exist in some areas, should be established in every factory, street and village. The revolutionary committees should link up on a local, regional and national level. This would be the starting point for a future democratic workers’ and peasants’ government – a real alternative to the rotten dictatorial regime.
The IMT demands:
•A complete purge and democratization of the army
•For the setting up of soldiers- committees and committees of revolutionary-minded lower ranking officers
•Out with the corrupt and reactionary generals
•Immediate disbandment of all repressive bodies
•All those guilty of acts of terror against the people must be put on trial and punished
•The general arming of the people
•The establishment of a people’s militia
•For a workers’ and peasants’ government!
Revolution knows no frontiers
The international character of the revolution has been clear from the very beginnings. Other Arab countries face many similar problems to those in Tunisia and Egypt: rising food prices, sharply deteriorating economic conditions, unemployment and rampant official corruption. Many millions of people are struggling to exist. And in society as in nature, similar conditions produce similar results. What has happened in Tunisia and Egypt can happen in many other countries, and not only in the Arab world.
The imperialists have been trying to console themselves with the thought that there is no domino effect. But the dominoes are already beginning to fall: Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Iraq, Djibouti, Yemen, Bahrain and Oman – all are entering the revolutionary maelstrom. As in Tunisia and Egypt, the people of Algeria, Jordan and Yemen were living in poverty under dictatorial ruling elites which lived a luxurious life by plundering the nation.
In the case of Iraq, the Revolution is linked to the struggle against imperialism and foreign domination and the right to self-determination of the Kurdish people. At the same time, one characteristic of the protest movement in Iraq is that it has cut across the sectarian divide between Shiites and Sunnis, between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens, which has been the basis for the domination of reactionary politicians.
Among the main issues raised by the protesters are rising living costs, partly caused by the government’s withdrawal of subsidies for petrol and sugar—an explosive issue across the Arab world. The leaders of Jordan, Algeria and Libya all reduced taxes on imported food or lowered the prices of staples in an attempt to avoid unrest. In Algeria the regime has made concessions in an attempt to prevent an explosion that would be even bigger than the insurrection in the Berber areas in 2001.
Even the oil-rich monarchs of the Gulf are worried. Kuwait has distributed £4,000 (€4600 or US$4600) to all its citizens to keep the population quiet. But such measures can at best succeed only in postponing the inevitable revolutionary upsurge.
The Western media shamelessly portrayed the movement in Bahrain as a religious-sectarian struggle of the Shiite majority and the Sunnis. That is a lie. The Bahrainis are fighting against corruption, for free elections, against discrimination and for rights for immigrants and women, for equitable distribution of wealth and against unemployment. Everywhere we see the same courage of the masses in face of fire. In Bahrain the army was forced to withdraw from Pearl Square. Once again, the role of the working class was crucial, as it was the threat of a general strike on the part of the Bahraini trade unions which forced the regime to make some concessions
In all the Gulf Sates there is brutal exploitation of labour, largely immigrant labour. There are 1.1 million Pakistanis working in Saudi Arabia alone. A similar situation exists throughout the Gulf. There have been strikes and uprisings there in the past that have not been reported, such as the strike of 8,000 building workers in Dubai.
The Saudi regime itself, that bastion of reaction in the Middle East, resembles a pressure cooker without a safety valve. In such a regime, when the explosion comes, it will occur without warning and with extreme violence. The Saudi royal family is corrupt, degenerate and rotten to the core. It is split over the succession and there is growing resentment and discontent in the population. When the moment comes, all the oil in the kingdom will not save them. It is significant that now even the Wahhabi clergy is turning against them.
The Arab Revolution has revived the revolutionary movement in Iran, where officers in the Revolutionary Guard have said they are not prepared to fire on the people and warned the Basij to leave their truncheons at home. Rifts in the state apparatus reveal the deep crisis of the regime which is split from top to bottom.
Because each case is somewhat different, it is hard to say what kinds of regimes will emerge in each case. What kinds of political tendencies and regimes will emerge depends on many factors and will differ from one country to another. The processes in Tunisia and Egypt were almost identical. But in Libya the situation is different. The regime had more of a base, particularly around Tripoli. The uprising was largely confined to the eastern part and the Revolution has been transformed into a civil war, the outcome of which is still uncertain.
Gaddafi doesn’t care if the whole country goes down with him. Having lost control of the whole of the east including the second biggest city, Benghazi, he decided to fight to the last, plunging Libya into a bloody conflict. There have been wide ranging defections in the Libyan army, even at the top level. But it did not have the same effect as in Egypt because of the different nature of the army and the regime.
One thing is clear: everything has been thrown into the melting pot. Not one of these regimes will survive in the end. There are different possibilities, depending on the class balance of forces and a whole series of internal and external factors that are impossible to foresee. But one thing is clear: no matter what regime is installed, it will not be able to satisfy even the most minimal demands of the masses.
Impotence of imperialism
The imperialists are worried about where all this will go, and how far it will spread. They did not expect these events and do not know how to react. Obama did not dare call on Mubarak publicly to resign because of the effects in these other states. He was obliged to speak in carefully calculated code. The very words “democracy” and “human rights” in the mouth of Obama and his European counterparts stink of hypocrisy.
The cynicism of Western governments stands exposed in all its crudity. After decades of backing the vicious dictatorship in Tunisia, suddenly they are all in favour of democracy and human rights. Yet Sarkozy had praised Ben Ali as a friend of democracy and human rights even when he was torturing his opponents in the prisons. And Washington covered up the barbarous acts of all the other pro-western dictators. Now they are getting their just reward.
Politics affects the economy and vice-versa. Oil prices have climbed on fears the unrest could spread to other Arab states including oil giant Saudi Arabia or interfere with oil supplies from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal. Brent crude surpassed the $120 a barrel mark and is still hovering over the $110 mark. This threatens to undermine the weak and fragile recovery of the world economy.
For economic, political and military reasons the imperialists need stability in the Middle East. But how are they to get it? That is the question! From the beginning the US has been struggling to find a coherent response to events that are changing by the day, even by the hour. In reality the strongest power in the world has been reduced to the role of a helpless onlooker. An article in The Independent by their correspondent in Washington, Rupert Cornwell, carried the interesting title: Washington's strong words underline US impotence. That expresses the real position.
Some “clever” people, however, think that the Arab Revolution is all part of an imperialist conspiracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The bourgeoisie was taken completely by surprise by all this. These revolutions are completely destabilizing one of their most important regions. This is far from welcome to them. And it has repercussions far beyond the Arab world.
The Middle East is a key area for the imperialists. The Americans have spent four decades establishing their position there. Egypt was a key piece in their calculations. Now all this has been swept away before their eyes in a few weeks. The richest and most powerful state on earth was completely paralyzed. Obama could not intervene, and even found it difficult to say anything about it for fear of offending their Saudi allies.
Eight percent of world trade passes through the Suez Canal, and the Americans were terrified that would be closed, but they could do nothing about it. All that Obama could say was that it was the Egyptian people's choice. The Americans did not say that when it came to Iraq or Afghanistan, where US imperialism did not think twice about invading.
US warships were in fact sent to Suez but did nothing. This was intended to reveal the mailed fist that is concealed within the velvet glove of Obama’s “democracy”. But in reality it was an empty gesture. The US burned its fingers in Iraq. A new military adventure in Egypt would have provoked a storm in the USA and on a world scale. There would not have been a single US embassy left standing in the Middle East and all the other pro-US Arab regimes would be faced with overthrow
The USA has a special interest in Bahrain because of its important strategic position next door to Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is the base of the Fifth Fleet, the most important US naval base in the whole region. Yet they were powerless to intervene against the revolutionary movement in Bahrain. If this was all part of an imperialist plan, nobody told Obama about it!
[Edited 29 March 2011:]
In the case of Libya they did not hesitate to denounce Gaddafi and call for his overthrow – which they signally failed to do in the case of Mubarak. This is yet another example of their duplicity, cynicism and double standards. Although initially they hinted that military action was not ruled out, they hesitated to act. Hilary Clinton said that a no-fly zone would have to be approved by the UN. This is a complete contrast to the conduct of the USA in Iraq, when they completely by-passed the UN.
In the end, under pressure from the French and the British, the USA agreed to a no-fly zone. We now have open imperialist aggression in Libya. This has nothing to do with defending the people of Libya and even less with defending the revolution. The opposite is the case. Their aim is to get a foothold in the region in order to strangle the revolutions that have begun.
We oppose this imperialist bullying. The task of overthrowing Gaddafi belongs to the Libyan people. The truth is that the initial revolutionary impetus that began in the east has been sidetracked and taken over by counter-revolutionary elements on the Interim Council who have now handed over the fate of the Libyan people to western imperialism.
The IMT says:
•No to foreign intervention!
•End the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan!
•Stop the bombing of Libya!
•Down with imperialism!
•Hands off the Arab Revolution!
Israel and the Palestinians
Nowhere has the Arab Revolution caused greater panic than in Israel. The strongest military force in the region was paralysed in the face of the events in Egypt. The Israeli ruling clique even had to be careful about what they said about the situation in Egypt. Binyamin Netanyahu ordered ministers not to talk about it in public. Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries to curb their criticism of President Hosni Mubarak. Jerusalem tried desperately to convince its allies that it was in the West's interest to back Mubarak in order to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime. This flew in the face of the efforts of the United States and European Union to remove him so that they could guarantee an “orderly transition” and avoid a revolutionary overthrow.
Marx pointed out that no people could ever be free if it enslaved another people. Israel rules over a large and disaffected population of Palestinians who are learning on their televisions how to overthrow tyranny. On the West Bank the Palestinians are held down with the help of the Palestinian Authority’s police. But it is open to question whether Palestinian police units, or Israeli security forces, would be able to crush a mass democracy movement, after Egypt’s powerful army refused to fire on the people.
The separate peace signed by Israel and Egypt in 1979 was a betrayal of the Palestinian cause and is deeply unpopular in most of the Arab world. The backing of Egypt has been an important element in helping the continuing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories conquered in 1967.
The Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993 was a new betrayal. The so-called Palestinian territories are nothing more than a version of the South African Bantustans. It was a cruel mockery of a homeland and none of the basic demands of the Palestinians were conceded. Israel continued to rule the roost. Since then things have gone from bad to worse.
Now the fall of Israel’s most powerful regional ally has radically altered the whole equation. It has shaken the Israeli government and called into question the deep-seated belief that the occupation of the Palestinian territories can be sustained indefinitely. Overnight the carefully prepared plans of the imperialists are in ruins.
Decades of so-called armed struggle and negotiations have led nowhere. But the revolutionary movement poses the Palestinian question in a completely different light. The ruling clique in Israel is not at all worried about Hamas’ rockets and suicide bombers. On the contrary, every rocket that falls on an Israeli village serves to push Israeli public opinion behind the government. But a Palestinian Intifada, combined with the Arab Revolution in Egypt and Jordan, is another matter altogether.
As a military power, Israel may be unbeatable. In the event of a war with Egypt, Israel would probably win again. But could it win against masses of protesters in town squares across the West Bank, Gaza and Israel too, demanding political rights for Palestinians? This is a question that must keep the Israeli generals and politicians awake at night.
The fall of Mubarak has very serious implications for Israel. In the best case, Israel’s defence spending will have to rise still further, as its rulers contemplate the threat of a war in the south. This will put further strains on an economy that was already in crisis. New cuts and attacks on living standards will be the result, putting an intensification of the class struggle on the order of the day in Israel.
Netanyahu imagined that his country was an island of stability and democracy that could not be affected by revolution. But basically, Israel is just another Middle Eastern country that is threatened by the revolutionary wave emanating from Tunisia and Egypt. There are new contradictions inside Israel. The increase in fuel and water has made Israel one of the most expensive countries to live in the world. The Histadrut (Israeli trade unions) leadership has been playing with the idea of a national strike.
The events in Tunisia and Egypt will have profound consequences for the Palestinians. The Palestinians have been betrayed by everyone they put their trust in, beginning with the supposedly friendly Arab regimes and ending with their own leaders. The latest revelations by Wikileaks had exposed the scandalous collusion of Abbas with the Israelis and Americans. This will have a big effect on the psychology of the Palestinian masses.
For forty years, the PLO leadership has betrayed the Palestinian cause. The PLO could have taken power in Jordan in 1970. Then the whole history of the region would have been different. But the petty bourgeois nationalist leadership refused to attack their "Arab brothers". So the Jordanian monarch mobilized the Bedouins who (with the help of the Pakistani Army) slaughtered thousands of Palestinians. It is a fact that many more Palestinians have been killed by Arab "brothers" than by the Israelis.
The same Bedouins who attacked the Palestinians in 1970 are now protesting against the King. Former army officers are warning the regime that unless it makes concessions it will face the same fate as that of Ben Ali and Mubarak. This shows that the Hashemite monarchy is fast losing its base and is hanging by a thread. The movement has spread from the Bedouin areas to Amman and the Palestinians, who make up the majority of the population of Jordan.
It is time to reassess the tactics and strategy of the Palestinian struggle. The Wikileaks revelations have exposed the Palestinian leaders as little more than Israeli stooges. The mood of the Palestinians is angry and bitter. There have been a number of attempts to organise mobilisations both against Abbas in the West Bank and against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which have been met with heavy repression. Even demonstrations in solidarity with the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions have been banned by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
Now a united movement against the current leadership of the Palestinian movement, against Israeli occupation and for the unity of the Palestinian struggle has been set up, attracting the support of tens of thousands on Facebook and calling for demonstrations and protests. For Palestinians, an Intifada in Egypt was part of their dreams for decades. Now it is a reality. The overthrow of the reactionary Arab regimes by the masses will deal a serious blow against Israel and US imperialism and transform the whole situation. Now for the first time the Palestinians can see who are their only real friends: the workers and peasants of the whole Arab world.
This represents a fundamental turning point. The Palestinians have seen how it is possible to fight against the oppressors, not with bombs and rockets, but by revolutionary mass action. The whole mood will be different now. There will be new stirrings in the youth, movements against Hamas in Gaza, and against the PLO leaders in the West Bank. There is growing pressure for something different than what has existed heretofore. The idea of a new Intifada will rapidly gain ground among the Palestinians. This would change everything.
For a Socialist Federation!
After the First World War the so-called Arab nation states were created artificially by imperialism. This division was not based on any natural or historical criterion but purely on the interests of imperialism. The Sykes-Picot agreement divided Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan between Britain and France. Under the Balfour Declaration in 1918, the British gave permission for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
In the Gulf, small states with huge reserves of oil were established so they could be controlled by imperialism easily, for access to resources. The Saudi monarchy consisted of desert bandits, raised to power by the British agent Wilson Cox. Imperialism has divided the living body of the Great Arab Nation.
The Arab Revolution can never succeed until it has put an end to the shameful Balkanization of the Arab world. The only way to break the chains forged by imperialism is to place on our banner the slogan of a Socialist Federation of the Arab world. This would create a mighty Socialist Commonwealth, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Euphrates.
On the basis of a nationalized planned economy, unemployment would be immediately abolished. A vast reservoir of unused labour power would be mobilized to solve the problems of housing, health, education and the infrastructure. By pooling the huge resources of all these countries on the basis of a common plan of production, deserts could be made to bloom and a new cultural revolution would put all the gains of the past in the shade.
A Socialist Federation, with full autonomy for all the peoples, is the only way to solve the national and religious strife that has poisoned the lives of the peoples for decades, leading to one war after another. Muslims and Copts, Sunnis and Shiites, Palestinians and Jews, Arabs, Amazigh (Berbers), Maronites, Kurds, Turkmens, Armenians, Druzes – all will find a place in a Federation based on the principle of absolute equality.
The IMT says:
•Defend the rights of the Palestinian people and all oppressed nationalities to self-determination!
•Down with the imperialist and Israeli aggressors! End the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine!
•Drive out the collaborators! For the revolutionary overthrow of all the Arab puppets of imperialism!
•Expropriate the property of the imperialists and their Arab stooges! The wealth of the Arab lands must be returned to the people!
•For the revolutionary unity of the peoples! For the Socialist Federation of the Middle East and North Africa, on the basis of a free, equal and fraternal union, with full autonomy to every nationality!
Leaps in consciousness
The Egyptian Revolution is the final answer to all those sceptics and intellectual snobs who constantly harp on the alleged “low level of consciousness” of the masses. Those western “experts” who talked contemptuously of the Egyptians as “apathetic” and “passive” and “indifferent to politics” must eat their words.
Marxists understand that human consciousness in general is not progressive or revolutionary but profoundly conservative. Resistance to change is deeply rooted in the human mind as part of a survival mechanism that comes from the remote past of our species. As a general rule, therefore, consciousness lags behind events. It does not change gradually, today more revolutionary than yesterday and tomorrow more than today, any more than water that is cooled from 100 to 0 degrees first becomes a paste, then a jelly and finally a solid.
This view of consciousness is metaphysical and mechanical, not materialist and dialectical. Dialectics teaches us that things change into their opposite, and that small, apparently insignificant changes can at a certain point, known in physics as a critical point, produce explosive transformations on a gigantic scale. The change in consciousness happens suddenly, when it is compelled by great events to change. When this occurs, consciousness is swiftly brought into line with reality. This leap of consciousness is precisely what a revolution is.
The masses, whether in Egypt, Iran, Britain or the USA, do not learn from books but from experience. In a revolution, they learn much faster than in other circumstances. The Egyptian workers and youth have learnt more in a few days of struggle than in thirty years of “normal” existence. On the streets the masses developed a sense of their own power. They lost the deadening fear of the uniformed riot police backed up by water cannons and thousands of plain-clothes thugs, who they pushed back and defeated.
In a revolution the learning process is enormously speeded up. We see exactly the same process in Egypt and Tunisia. Here is a vast laboratory where the different vague, competing lists of demands issued by different organisers are put to the test. On the streets the masses decide which slogans are appropriate and which are not. We will see the same process repeated time and time again, and not just in the Middle East and North Africa but everywhere.
From Cairo to Madison
In 1917 it took about a week for people in India to learn that there had been a Revolution in Russia. Today everyone can see the revolution live on their television screens. The situation in the Middle East is having a tremendous effect around the world. In India, for the first time in 32 years, the unions and left parties recently organised a general strike over wages and prices. There was a march of 200,000 on the streets in New Delhi, over food price rises. Although India is growing at an annual rate of nine percent, this increases inequality by concentrating wealth at the top.
In Tunisia and Egypt the capitalist system is beginning to break at its weakest links. The bourgeois will tell us that such things cannot happen in the advanced capitalist countries, that the situation is different and so on and so forth. Yes, the situation is different, but only in degree. Everywhere the working class and the youth will be faced with the same alternative: either we accept the systematic destruction of our living standards and rights – or we fight.
The argument “it cannot happen here” is without any scientific or rational basis. The same thing was said of Tunisia only a couple of months ago, when that country was considered to be the most stable in North Africa. And the same argument was repeated in relation to Egypt even after Ben Ali was overthrown. Just a few weeks were sufficient to expose the hollowness of those words. Such is the speed of events in our epoch. Sooner or later the same question will be posed in every country in Europe, in Japan, in Canada, and also in the United States.
Inflation is rising. Food prices are rising. This will have the most serious effects everywhere, particularly in poor countries. According to the World Bank, 44 million more people will be thrust into extreme poverty in the coming period, pushing the figure to over one billion worldwide. Millions of people are fighting for food, jobs and housing – that is, for the most basic conditions of a semi-civilized existence. These conditions ought to be freely available to everybody in the first decade of the twenty-first century. But the decrepit capitalist system is no longer able to guarantee these things even in Europe and North America. This is why there are riots and uprisings. It is a life and death question.
The present crisis is not a normal cyclical crisis of capitalism. The recovery also is not normal. The capitalists are trying to squeeze the workers more than ever in an attempt to re-establish the economic equilibrium: to pay off their debts, reduce cost of labour, etc. But by so doing, they destabilize the entire situation. This partly explains both the Arab revolution and the upsurge of the class struggle in Europe
Every country in the world has been affected. It is no accident that China added its voice to the chorus calling for a return to “order “in Egypt. In part it is a question of economic interest. The Chinese regime is interested in global economic stability because it wants to continue to earn a lot of money from exports. But above all, Beijing is afraid of anything that could provide an impetus for strikes and protests in China itself. They have clamped down on all protest and blocked any reference to Egypt on the Internet.
By contrast, every class conscious worker in the world will rejoice at the marvellous movement of the workers and youth in Tunisia and Egypt. The psychological effects of this cannot be underestimated. For many, especially in the advanced capitalist countries, the idea of revolution appeared as something abstract and remote. Now the events that have unfolded before their eyes on television show that revolution is not just possible but necessary.
In Europe and the USA there is a seething hatred of the bankers and fat cats who are rewarding themselves obscene bonuses while the rest of society suffers continuous attacks on their living standards. This fact is strikingly reflected in the dramatic events in Wisconsin. It is no accident that the workers of Madison, Wisconsin chanted things like “fight like an Egyptian”. This is the effect of the vicious policies being imposed on the working class during an economic recovery in the US.
Suddenly the world has woken up to the fact that there has been an explosion of the class struggle in Wisconsin, with 100,000 people on the streets. We see images of workers holding placards calling the governor Hosni Walker and chanting: "Wisconsin Dictator Must Go". Egyptian workers even sent solidarity messages to the Wisconsin workers. There have been student walkouts, campouts at the state Capitol and spontaneous rallies. The police who were sent to disperse the demonstrators went over to the people, joined the occupation wearing jackets that carried slogans like “cops for labour”. This is an extremely important development.
In Europe we have seen big movements of the workers and youth: eight general strikes in Greece in the last twelve months; a huge strike movement in France bringing three and a half million workers out onto the streets; the movement of the British students; a general strike in Spain; in Italy the movement of the metal workers. Recently there was the biggest general strike in Portugal since the fall of the dictatorship in 1974. Even in the Netherlands there were 15,000 students protesting at the Hague. In Eastern Europe as well we have seen big movements in Albania and Romania. In Bulgaria, even the police have been out on strike.
Twenty years ago, the bourgeoisie was overjoyed at the overthrow of “communism”. But their rejoicing was premature. In retrospect the fall of Stalinism will be seen as only the prelude to a far more dramatic development: the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Everywhere, including the United States, the system is in crisis. Everywhere the ruling class is trying to place the full burden of the crisis of its system on the shoulders of the poorest layers of society.
These movements have striking similarities to the mass movements that led to the overthrow of the regimes in Eastern Europe. On paper these governments had a powerful state apparatus, big armies, police, and secret police. But that did not save them. Nor will all the money, police and armies in the world save the rulers of Europe and the United States once the workers move to change society.
The masses have shown again and again determination and willingness to struggle. In order to achieve victory they need to be armed with a clear programme and leadership. The ideas of Marxism are the only ones that can provide it. The future is ours.
•Long live the Arab Revolution!
•Workers of the world unite!
•Long live socialism, the only hope for the future of humankind!
•Thawra hatta'l nasr!
London, March 14, 2011
From The Renegade Eye Blog-The Arab Revolution - Manifesto of the International Marxist Tendency. Part Two: Democratic demands
The Arab Revolution - Manifesto of the International Marxist Tendency. Part Two: Democratic demands
Written by International Marxist Tendency
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
In the first instance the demands of the Revolution are democratic. Of course! After 30 years of a brutal dictatorship the youth long for freedom. Naturally, their desire for democracy can be abused by bourgeois politicians who are only interested in their future careers in a “democratic” parliament. But we are obliged to take up the democratic demands and give them a sharply revolutionary content. This will inevitably lead on to the demand for an even more fundamental change in society.
Tunis, 23 January. Photo: Nasser NouriDuring a strike or a revolution people feel like human beings with dignity and rights. After a lifetime of enforced silence, they discover that they have a voice. The interviews of people on the streets were a wonderful expression of this. Poor, illiterate people are saying: we are going to fight, we will not leave the streets; we demand our rights and we demand that we be treated with respect. This is a profoundly progressive thing. It is the very essence of a real revolution.
It goes without saying that Marxists always subordinate the democratic demands to the socialist revolution. But in practice the most consistent and advanced revolutionary demands will necessarily lead to the posing of workers’ power and socialist revolution. The Russian Revolution is the best example of this. In 1917 the Bolsheviks took power on the basis of the slogan “Peace, bread and land”, none of which has a socialist content. In theory, all three demands could be achieved under capitalism. In practice, however, they could only be achieved by breaking with the bourgeoisie and by power passing into the hands of the working class.
Some people say that this is nothing more than a bourgeois nationalist movement, not a real revolution. They merely reveal ignorance on the important role of democratic demands in a revolution under these conditions. The experience of the Russian Revolution itself shows the importance of the correct (revolutionary) utilization of democratic demands. The demand for a Constituent Assembly played a very important role in mobilizing the broadest layers of the population behind the revolutionary cause.
While fighting for the most advanced democratic demands, Marxists do not regard these demands as an end in themselves, but as part of the fight for a fundamental change in society. That is what distinguishes the Marxist outlook from that of vulgar petty bourgeois democrats.
The immediate task in Egypt was to carry out the overthrow of Mubarak and his rotten regime. But this is only the first step. It has opened the floodgates and allowed the revolutionary people to push their way through. They are daily discovering their strength on the streets, the importance of organization and mass mobilization. That is already a tremendous conquest. Having gone through the experience of a thirty year dictatorship, they will not allow the imposition of a new one, or any intrigue to recreate the old regime with a new name. Tunisia is sufficient proof of this.
Now they have had a taste of their own power, the masses will not be satisfied with half-measures. They know that what they have achieved they have conquered with their own hands. The struggle for complete democracy will permit the construction of genuine trade unions and workers’ parties. But it will also pose the question of economic democracy and the fight against inequality.
Slogans and tactics must be concrete. They must reflect the real situation and the real concerns of the masses. The objective tasks of the Russian Revolution were democratic and national: overthrow of the tsar, formal democracy, freedom from imperialism, freedom of press, etc. We demand complete democracy, immediate abolition of all reactionary laws, and a constituent assembly.
Yes, we must overthrow the old regime, not just Ben Ali and Mubarak, but all the "little Mubaraks" and the “little Ben Alis”. There must be a thorough purge of the state. And there must not be a single figure in the government who played any part in the old regime. Why should the revolutionary people, who sacrificed all in the struggle, allow those who played no part in the revolution to be in power, even in the form of an interim government? Take a big broom and sweep them all out! That is our first demand. We will accept nothing less than this.
But this is also insufficient. For decades these men robbed and looted the wealth of society. They lived in luxury while the people were reduced to poverty. Now we must get back every cent that they stole from the people. We demand the immediate confiscation of the wealth and property of these parasites, and the expropriation of the property of the imperialists who supported them.
This shows how the revolutionary democratic demands must lead directly to socialist demands. Whoever is incapable of correctly utilizing democratic demands in a revolutionary way will forever be doomed to the role of an impotent sectarian. Such a person will never be capable of connecting with the real movement of the masses.
Democracy, however, means different things to different people. The poor people of Egypt do not fight for democracy in order to provide ministerial positions for careerists but as a means of solving their most pressing problems: the lack of jobs and houses, the high cost of living. These economic and social problems are too deep to be solved by any bourgeois government.
Democracy would be an empty phrase if it refused to lay hands on the obscene wealth of the ruling elite. Confiscate the property of the ruling clique! Expropriate the property of the imperialists who backed the old regime and exploited the people of Egypt! The fight for democracy, if it is pursued to the end, must inevitably lead to the expropriation of the bankers and capitalists and the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’’ government. Under Mubarak's regime the Egyptian capitalists have favoured foreign business and assisted imperialism in looting the wealth of the country and exploiting the Egyptian workers. We demand the expropriation of the property of the imperialists for the benefit of the people.
The IMT says:
•For the immediate abolition of all reactionary laws!
•For complete freedom of assembly and the right to organize and strike!
•For a revolutionary constituent assembly!
•For the confiscation of all the money stolen by the old regime!
•For the expropriation of the property of the imperialists!
The Constituent Assembly slogan
If there was a party in Egypt like the Bolshevik Party, the question of power would be posed. But in the absence of a leadership with a clear plan, the Revolution can pass through all manner of vicissitudes. At present the revolutionary wave has still not subsided. But the masses cannot remain permanently in a state of ebullition. They must work and earn money to eat. The revolutionary lava will cool for a time. Eventually the revolution will be pushed toward some form of bourgeois democracy.
In such a situation democratic demands have an immense importance. In a situation like Mubarak’s Egypt, democratic demands are a powerful lever for mobilizing the broadest layers of the masses for the revolution. We must fight for the maximum democratic rights – the right to vote, strike, etc. – because it is in the interests of the workers to have the freest possible scope to develop the class struggle. It is not a matter of indifference for a worker to live under a totalitarian regime than to have these basic rights. Democratic demands must therefore occupy a key place in our programme.
Some people are puzzled by the fact that whereas we now advocate a Constituent Assembly for these countries, we opposed it in the cases of Bolivia and Argentina. The explanation is really very simple. Slogans do not exist outside of time and place. They must reflect concrete conditions of the class struggle at a given stage of the development of a particular country.
In Bolivia, during the revolutionary uprisings of October 2003 and May-June 2005 the slogan of a constituent assembly was counterrevolutionary. Why? At the time, the Bolivian workers had staged two general strikes and two insurrections. They had set up soviet-like bodies in the form of the Neighbourhood Juntas, the Popular Assemblies and the cabildos abiertos (mass meetings).
The Bolivian workers could have easily taken power. It would have been sufficient for the leaders of the COB (trade unions) to proclaim themselves as the government. Under these concrete conditions, to advance the slogan of a constituent assembly was a betrayal. It diverted the attention of the workers from the central task – the seizure of power – and into parliamentary channels.
The counterrevolutionary nature of this slogan was confirmed by the fact that the World Bank and the US funded Office for Transition Initiatives promoted the idea of a constituent assembly. One might add the small detail that at this time Bolivia was already a bourgeois democracy. In the case of Argentina, the slogan was raised by certain left groups after the Argentinazo uprising in December 2001. In the context of an already existing bourgeois democracy, the slogan of a constituent assembly was completely wrong and it amounted to saying: “We don't like the bourgeois parliament that we have. We want another bourgeois parliament instead.”
One has to be completely blind not to see that these cases have nothing at all in common with the situation in Tunisia and Egypt. After decades of dictatorship, there will inevitably be big illusions in democracy, not just in the petty bourgeoisie but among the masses. This conditions our attitude. We are for democracy, but it must be complete democracy. One of the democratic demands is, ‘we need a new constitution, and therefore a constituent assembly, but we don’t trust the Egyptian army to convene it and therefore the struggle must go on in the streets.’
Of course, Marxists cannot have a mechanical attitude to democratic slogans, which are always subordinate to the general interests of the socialist revolution. We do not share the superstitious attitude of the petty bourgeois towards formal democracy. The deepening of the Revolution will expose the limitations of bourgeois democracy. Through experience the workers will come to understand the need to take power into their own hands. But in order to understand the limits of bourgeois democracy, the workers must first pass through the school of democracy. This presupposes a serious fight for the most advanced democratic slogans.
After decades of authoritarian rule in Egypt, we cannot be indifferent to the question of the Constitution. The current proposal by the Army Council is that some constitutional amendments, drafted by experts appointed by the Army, will be put to a referendum. This is completely undemocratic. Mubarak's constitution cannot be amended, it should be thrown out and a democratic and revolutionary Constituent Assembly convened in order to discuss a completely new constitution. The reactionary role of the generals was shown by the army’s violent disbanding of the Tahrir Square camp.
Having overthrown a dictatorship through struggle, the revolutionary people cannot hand power to the same generals who supported Mubarak till the very last minute. The workers cannot trust the army chiefs or any council of "experts" appointed by them to write a genuinely democratic constitution. We are for a constituent assembly: a democratically elected body to work out the constitution. This is an elementary democratic demand.
But the question remains: who will convene the Constituent Assembly? We cannot entrust this task to the Egyptian Army, either. Therefore, the struggle must continue on the streets, in the factories, in the youth, among the unemployed, until the battle for democracy is complete.
The situation in Egypt is analogous, not to Bolivia in 2003 and 2006 or to Argentina in 2001, but to Russia in 1905 or 1917. We must make use of the most advanced democratic slogans to pose the central question of workers' power. We say to the workers and youth: "You want democracy? We do too! But don't trust the Army or El Baradei – let's fight for real democracy!" In Egypt, Tunisia and Iran today, the slogan of a Constituent Assembly is very relevant indeed.
The workers of Egypt have already drawn the correct conclusion. This is strikingly revealed in the statement of the Iron and steel workers in Helwan, who, during the struggle, advanced the following demands:
1.the immediate stepping down of Mubarak and all the figures of the regime and its symbols;
2.the confiscation of wealth and property of all the regime's symbols and all those to be proven to be corrupt, on behalf of the interest of the masses;
3.the immediate resignation of all workers from the trade unions controlled by or affiliated to the regime and declaring their independent unions now preparing their general conference to elect and form their syndicate;
4.the acquisition of public sector companies that have been sold or closed and the declaration of nationalizing them on behalf of the people and the formation of a new administration to run it, involving workers and technicians;
5.the formation of committees to supervise workers in all work sites and monitor the production and distribution of prices and wages;
6.call for a constituent assembly of all classes of people and trends for the drafting of a new constitution and the election of people's councils without waiting for the negotiations with the former regime.”
These demands are absolutely correct. They show a very high level of revolutionary consciousness and coincide completely with the programme advanced by the Marxists. This programme provides the Egyptian Revolution with all it needs to succeed.
Trade unions
The Revolution poses the need for organization. The trade unions are the most basic form of organization for the workers of all countries at all times. Without organization the working class will always be only raw material for exploitation. The task of building and strengthening the unions is therefore an urgent priority.
In Egypt and Tunisia the unions were closely linked with the old oppressive regime. To all intents and purposes they were part of the state. Their upper levels were corrupted and in many cases members of the ruling party. Their main role was to police the workers. However, at rank and file level they consisted of workers and honest militants.
Even in bourgeois democracies there is an organic tendency of the union tops to fuse with the state. But history shows that when the working class moves even the most corrupt and bureaucratized trade unions can come under the pressure of the working class and become transformed in the course of struggle. Either the old leaders will change and begin to reflect the pressure of the workers or they will be removed and replaced by others who are prepared to put themselves at the head of the movement.
In Tunisia the UGTT leaders were compromised with the Ben Ali regime. The old leaders were prepared to participate in a provisional government formed by Gannouchi but were forced to resign under the pressure of the workers. But at local and regional levels the UGTT played a leading role in the Revolution. In some areas, like in Redeyef, the UGTT actually took over the running of society. In others, the local unions played a key role in the organisation of the revolutionary movement through revolutionary committees. This shows the vital role of the unions as a vehicle for revolution.
What is needed is a through cleansing of the UGTT at all levels, removing all those bureaucrats which are linked to the old regime, starting with its general secretary Abdessalem Jerad, who is playing an openly strike-breaking role. The regional structures and national federations which are under the leadership of the left and democratic activists and which represent a majority of the membership of the UGTT should convene immediately an emergency national congress. A move to democratise the union and bring it in line with the revolutionary movement would have massive support amongst ordinary workers. If the workers and youth were able to remove Ben Ali and then Ghannouchi, it should be even easier for them to remove the corrupt trade union leaders who supported them.
In Egypt the corrupt union leaders were unable to prevent the wave of strikes that was a preparatory school for the Revolution. The Egyptian workers have moved against the old corrupt leaders and are fighting to create unions which are genuine democratic and militant organizations of the class. In so doing they have shown an unerring revolutionary class instinct. The fight for democracy is not confined to the political arena. It must enter the trade unions and the workplaces also.
The struggle seems to be moving in the direction of setting up a new Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions. In revolutionary conditions like the ones which exist now, this can become the main organisation of Egyptian workers. However, it would be a mistake to abandon altogether the struggle within the old official unions, which still claim to represent millions of workers. In some instances, whole workplaces and sectors will be unionised anew. In some other cases, democratic and militant unions will emerge through the workers taking control of the official structures.
The bourgeoisie and the imperialists understand the central importance of the unions. They will send their paid agents to corrupt and deceive workers in order to prevent them from drawing revolutionary and socialist ideas. The CIA has close links with the leaders of the AFL-CIO and the European Social Democracy and so-called International Trade Union bodies. They will try to bring the militant trade union movement under their control.
The workers must beware of such “friends” who come to corrupt them and undermine the Revolution from within. They must also beware of the so-called NGOs that are a disguised agency of imperialism. The role of the NGOs is to divert the workers from the revolutionary path, entangling them in a thousand trivial tasks, charities etc., turning former revolutionaries and militant workers into paid lackeys, office boys and bureaucrats. This is a poison that can corrode the workers’ movement.
The task of the unions is not to prop up capitalism but to overthrow it. Our first aim is to fight for improved living standards, better wages and conditions. We must fight for every improvement, no matter how small. But we must also understand that it will be impossible to obtain our basic demands as long as a parasitic oligarchy is the owner of the land, the banks and the major industries.
In the struggle against the old regime, the unions have linked up with other layers of society: the unemployed, the women, the youth, the peasants, the intellectuals. That is absolutely necessary. The working class must aspire to place itself at the head of the Nation and to lead the fight against all forms of injustice and oppression.
The revolutionary people are setting up popular committees of all sorts. That is a necessary step to provide the revolutionary movement with an organized and coherent form. Such broad committees do not, however, replace the trade unions, which must remain the basic organizational form of the workers’ movement.
The trade unions are a school of revolution that will play a key role in overthrowing the old regime and establishing a new, socialist society, in which the role of the unions will be expanded a thousand fold, playing a major part in the running of the nationalized industries, planning production and running society.
The IMT says:
•Build the trade unions and turn them into genuine fighting organizations!
•Purge the unions of all corrupt elements and bureaucrats!
•For democratic unions: elections at every level and right of recall of all officials!
•Against corruption! No union official must receive a wage higher than a skilled worker!
•No to state control of the unions! The unions must be in the hands of the workers!
•For workers’ control of industry! For the expropriation of the bankers, landlords and capitalists! For a democratic socialist plan of production!
Role of the youth
Karl Liebknecht, the great German revolutionary and martyr once said: “The youth is the flame of the Socialist Revolution”. These words could be emblazoned on the banner of the Arab Revolution. At every stage the youth has played the key role. The protestors who poured onto the streets of Tunisia and Egypt were mainly young people, unemployed and without any future. Some were university graduates, others poor people from the slums.
In all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, the majority of the population are young people. They are suffering the worst effects of the crisis of capitalism. 70% of youth under the age of 25 in Tunisia are unemployed. The figure is 75% in Algeria and 76% in Egypt. A similar situation exists in other countries.
University graduates have no jobs and therefore have no prospect of marriage, no home and no future. These facts show the impasse of capitalism. These countries need doctors, teachers, engineers, but there are no jobs. Millions of young people are unable to find work, and are therefore unable to marry and raise a family. They are motivated by a deep sense of injustice and a burning anger and resentment towards a system that denies them a future and a corrupt regime that has enriched itself at the people’s expense.
The only hope these young people have is to fight for a fundamental change in society. They have cast aside all fear and are prepared to risk their lives in the fight for freedom and justice. In Tunisia the revolutionary youth organised themselves and called a mass rally in Tunis, marching on the Prime Minister’s office and camping in front of it, in the Kasbah esplanade. Mass movements of the school students raised the demand for a constituent assembly, and demonstrated shouting “down with government”. They provided the catalyst for a movement which finally brought down the government of Ghannouchi at the end of February. In Egypt we again see the same thing. The protestors who led the way were mainly young Egyptians, unemployed and without any future.
History is repeating itself. In 1917 the Mensheviks accused the Bolsheviks of being just a “bunch of kids”, and they were not entirely wrong. The average age of the Bolshevik activists was very low. The first section to move is always the youth, who are free from the prejudices, fear and scepticism of the older generation.
The youth of every country are open to revolutionary ideas. We must go to the youth! If we go to the youth with the ideas of revolutionary Marxism and proletarian internationalism, we will get an enthusiastic response.
The IMT says:
•Jobs for all!
•Every young person must be guaranteed either a full-time job or free full-time education.
•Equal pay for work of equal value!
•An end to police harassment!
•Full democratic rights and votes at 16!
The role of women
The decisive factor is that the masses have acquired a sense of their collective strength and are losing their fear. Beginning with the youngest, most energetic and determined elements, the mood of defiance has transmitted itself to the older, more cautious and inert layers of the population.
One of the most inspiring aspects of the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, however, was the active participation of the women. The old submissiveness is disappearing. In Alexandria elderly housewives threw pots and pans onto the police from the balconies of their flats. On the demonstrations young female students in jeans fought side by side with other women wearing the hijab. It was the women workers played a key role in the massive strikes of textile workers in Mahalla al Kubra in recent years, strikes which prepared the present revolutionary upheaval.
Women have been to the forefront of every revolution in history. The images of the women of Bahrain, demonstrating fearlessly, some with veils, some without, are an inspiring picture of the Revolution in action. They are repeating the experience of the heroic women of Paris in October 1789 and in Petrograd in February 1917.
The awakening of the women is a sure sign of Revolution. Society cannot advance and prosper as long as women are enslaved. It is not by chance that reactionaries in Egypt, as well as fomenting religious pogroms, attacked the March 8th demonstration in Tahrir Square. The Arab Revolution will recruit its most determined and courageous fighters from the ranks of the women, and the complete emancipation of women is the first duty of the Revolution. The place of women is not in the kitchen but on the streets fighting alongside the men. They are the most fearless elements. And they have most to fight for.
The IMT says:
•Down with discrimination and inequality!
•Full recognition of women as equal citizens and human beings!
•Full social, political and economic equality for women!
•An end to all discriminatory laws!
•Organize the women workers in free and democratic trade unions, independent of the state!
•Equal pay for work of equal value!
Written by International Marxist Tendency
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
In the first instance the demands of the Revolution are democratic. Of course! After 30 years of a brutal dictatorship the youth long for freedom. Naturally, their desire for democracy can be abused by bourgeois politicians who are only interested in their future careers in a “democratic” parliament. But we are obliged to take up the democratic demands and give them a sharply revolutionary content. This will inevitably lead on to the demand for an even more fundamental change in society.
Tunis, 23 January. Photo: Nasser NouriDuring a strike or a revolution people feel like human beings with dignity and rights. After a lifetime of enforced silence, they discover that they have a voice. The interviews of people on the streets were a wonderful expression of this. Poor, illiterate people are saying: we are going to fight, we will not leave the streets; we demand our rights and we demand that we be treated with respect. This is a profoundly progressive thing. It is the very essence of a real revolution.
It goes without saying that Marxists always subordinate the democratic demands to the socialist revolution. But in practice the most consistent and advanced revolutionary demands will necessarily lead to the posing of workers’ power and socialist revolution. The Russian Revolution is the best example of this. In 1917 the Bolsheviks took power on the basis of the slogan “Peace, bread and land”, none of which has a socialist content. In theory, all three demands could be achieved under capitalism. In practice, however, they could only be achieved by breaking with the bourgeoisie and by power passing into the hands of the working class.
Some people say that this is nothing more than a bourgeois nationalist movement, not a real revolution. They merely reveal ignorance on the important role of democratic demands in a revolution under these conditions. The experience of the Russian Revolution itself shows the importance of the correct (revolutionary) utilization of democratic demands. The demand for a Constituent Assembly played a very important role in mobilizing the broadest layers of the population behind the revolutionary cause.
While fighting for the most advanced democratic demands, Marxists do not regard these demands as an end in themselves, but as part of the fight for a fundamental change in society. That is what distinguishes the Marxist outlook from that of vulgar petty bourgeois democrats.
The immediate task in Egypt was to carry out the overthrow of Mubarak and his rotten regime. But this is only the first step. It has opened the floodgates and allowed the revolutionary people to push their way through. They are daily discovering their strength on the streets, the importance of organization and mass mobilization. That is already a tremendous conquest. Having gone through the experience of a thirty year dictatorship, they will not allow the imposition of a new one, or any intrigue to recreate the old regime with a new name. Tunisia is sufficient proof of this.
Now they have had a taste of their own power, the masses will not be satisfied with half-measures. They know that what they have achieved they have conquered with their own hands. The struggle for complete democracy will permit the construction of genuine trade unions and workers’ parties. But it will also pose the question of economic democracy and the fight against inequality.
Slogans and tactics must be concrete. They must reflect the real situation and the real concerns of the masses. The objective tasks of the Russian Revolution were democratic and national: overthrow of the tsar, formal democracy, freedom from imperialism, freedom of press, etc. We demand complete democracy, immediate abolition of all reactionary laws, and a constituent assembly.
Yes, we must overthrow the old regime, not just Ben Ali and Mubarak, but all the "little Mubaraks" and the “little Ben Alis”. There must be a thorough purge of the state. And there must not be a single figure in the government who played any part in the old regime. Why should the revolutionary people, who sacrificed all in the struggle, allow those who played no part in the revolution to be in power, even in the form of an interim government? Take a big broom and sweep them all out! That is our first demand. We will accept nothing less than this.
But this is also insufficient. For decades these men robbed and looted the wealth of society. They lived in luxury while the people were reduced to poverty. Now we must get back every cent that they stole from the people. We demand the immediate confiscation of the wealth and property of these parasites, and the expropriation of the property of the imperialists who supported them.
This shows how the revolutionary democratic demands must lead directly to socialist demands. Whoever is incapable of correctly utilizing democratic demands in a revolutionary way will forever be doomed to the role of an impotent sectarian. Such a person will never be capable of connecting with the real movement of the masses.
Democracy, however, means different things to different people. The poor people of Egypt do not fight for democracy in order to provide ministerial positions for careerists but as a means of solving their most pressing problems: the lack of jobs and houses, the high cost of living. These economic and social problems are too deep to be solved by any bourgeois government.
Democracy would be an empty phrase if it refused to lay hands on the obscene wealth of the ruling elite. Confiscate the property of the ruling clique! Expropriate the property of the imperialists who backed the old regime and exploited the people of Egypt! The fight for democracy, if it is pursued to the end, must inevitably lead to the expropriation of the bankers and capitalists and the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’’ government. Under Mubarak's regime the Egyptian capitalists have favoured foreign business and assisted imperialism in looting the wealth of the country and exploiting the Egyptian workers. We demand the expropriation of the property of the imperialists for the benefit of the people.
The IMT says:
•For the immediate abolition of all reactionary laws!
•For complete freedom of assembly and the right to organize and strike!
•For a revolutionary constituent assembly!
•For the confiscation of all the money stolen by the old regime!
•For the expropriation of the property of the imperialists!
The Constituent Assembly slogan
If there was a party in Egypt like the Bolshevik Party, the question of power would be posed. But in the absence of a leadership with a clear plan, the Revolution can pass through all manner of vicissitudes. At present the revolutionary wave has still not subsided. But the masses cannot remain permanently in a state of ebullition. They must work and earn money to eat. The revolutionary lava will cool for a time. Eventually the revolution will be pushed toward some form of bourgeois democracy.
In such a situation democratic demands have an immense importance. In a situation like Mubarak’s Egypt, democratic demands are a powerful lever for mobilizing the broadest layers of the masses for the revolution. We must fight for the maximum democratic rights – the right to vote, strike, etc. – because it is in the interests of the workers to have the freest possible scope to develop the class struggle. It is not a matter of indifference for a worker to live under a totalitarian regime than to have these basic rights. Democratic demands must therefore occupy a key place in our programme.
Some people are puzzled by the fact that whereas we now advocate a Constituent Assembly for these countries, we opposed it in the cases of Bolivia and Argentina. The explanation is really very simple. Slogans do not exist outside of time and place. They must reflect concrete conditions of the class struggle at a given stage of the development of a particular country.
In Bolivia, during the revolutionary uprisings of October 2003 and May-June 2005 the slogan of a constituent assembly was counterrevolutionary. Why? At the time, the Bolivian workers had staged two general strikes and two insurrections. They had set up soviet-like bodies in the form of the Neighbourhood Juntas, the Popular Assemblies and the cabildos abiertos (mass meetings).
The Bolivian workers could have easily taken power. It would have been sufficient for the leaders of the COB (trade unions) to proclaim themselves as the government. Under these concrete conditions, to advance the slogan of a constituent assembly was a betrayal. It diverted the attention of the workers from the central task – the seizure of power – and into parliamentary channels.
The counterrevolutionary nature of this slogan was confirmed by the fact that the World Bank and the US funded Office for Transition Initiatives promoted the idea of a constituent assembly. One might add the small detail that at this time Bolivia was already a bourgeois democracy. In the case of Argentina, the slogan was raised by certain left groups after the Argentinazo uprising in December 2001. In the context of an already existing bourgeois democracy, the slogan of a constituent assembly was completely wrong and it amounted to saying: “We don't like the bourgeois parliament that we have. We want another bourgeois parliament instead.”
One has to be completely blind not to see that these cases have nothing at all in common with the situation in Tunisia and Egypt. After decades of dictatorship, there will inevitably be big illusions in democracy, not just in the petty bourgeoisie but among the masses. This conditions our attitude. We are for democracy, but it must be complete democracy. One of the democratic demands is, ‘we need a new constitution, and therefore a constituent assembly, but we don’t trust the Egyptian army to convene it and therefore the struggle must go on in the streets.’
Of course, Marxists cannot have a mechanical attitude to democratic slogans, which are always subordinate to the general interests of the socialist revolution. We do not share the superstitious attitude of the petty bourgeois towards formal democracy. The deepening of the Revolution will expose the limitations of bourgeois democracy. Through experience the workers will come to understand the need to take power into their own hands. But in order to understand the limits of bourgeois democracy, the workers must first pass through the school of democracy. This presupposes a serious fight for the most advanced democratic slogans.
After decades of authoritarian rule in Egypt, we cannot be indifferent to the question of the Constitution. The current proposal by the Army Council is that some constitutional amendments, drafted by experts appointed by the Army, will be put to a referendum. This is completely undemocratic. Mubarak's constitution cannot be amended, it should be thrown out and a democratic and revolutionary Constituent Assembly convened in order to discuss a completely new constitution. The reactionary role of the generals was shown by the army’s violent disbanding of the Tahrir Square camp.
Having overthrown a dictatorship through struggle, the revolutionary people cannot hand power to the same generals who supported Mubarak till the very last minute. The workers cannot trust the army chiefs or any council of "experts" appointed by them to write a genuinely democratic constitution. We are for a constituent assembly: a democratically elected body to work out the constitution. This is an elementary democratic demand.
But the question remains: who will convene the Constituent Assembly? We cannot entrust this task to the Egyptian Army, either. Therefore, the struggle must continue on the streets, in the factories, in the youth, among the unemployed, until the battle for democracy is complete.
The situation in Egypt is analogous, not to Bolivia in 2003 and 2006 or to Argentina in 2001, but to Russia in 1905 or 1917. We must make use of the most advanced democratic slogans to pose the central question of workers' power. We say to the workers and youth: "You want democracy? We do too! But don't trust the Army or El Baradei – let's fight for real democracy!" In Egypt, Tunisia and Iran today, the slogan of a Constituent Assembly is very relevant indeed.
The workers of Egypt have already drawn the correct conclusion. This is strikingly revealed in the statement of the Iron and steel workers in Helwan, who, during the struggle, advanced the following demands:
1.the immediate stepping down of Mubarak and all the figures of the regime and its symbols;
2.the confiscation of wealth and property of all the regime's symbols and all those to be proven to be corrupt, on behalf of the interest of the masses;
3.the immediate resignation of all workers from the trade unions controlled by or affiliated to the regime and declaring their independent unions now preparing their general conference to elect and form their syndicate;
4.the acquisition of public sector companies that have been sold or closed and the declaration of nationalizing them on behalf of the people and the formation of a new administration to run it, involving workers and technicians;
5.the formation of committees to supervise workers in all work sites and monitor the production and distribution of prices and wages;
6.call for a constituent assembly of all classes of people and trends for the drafting of a new constitution and the election of people's councils without waiting for the negotiations with the former regime.”
These demands are absolutely correct. They show a very high level of revolutionary consciousness and coincide completely with the programme advanced by the Marxists. This programme provides the Egyptian Revolution with all it needs to succeed.
Trade unions
The Revolution poses the need for organization. The trade unions are the most basic form of organization for the workers of all countries at all times. Without organization the working class will always be only raw material for exploitation. The task of building and strengthening the unions is therefore an urgent priority.
In Egypt and Tunisia the unions were closely linked with the old oppressive regime. To all intents and purposes they were part of the state. Their upper levels were corrupted and in many cases members of the ruling party. Their main role was to police the workers. However, at rank and file level they consisted of workers and honest militants.
Even in bourgeois democracies there is an organic tendency of the union tops to fuse with the state. But history shows that when the working class moves even the most corrupt and bureaucratized trade unions can come under the pressure of the working class and become transformed in the course of struggle. Either the old leaders will change and begin to reflect the pressure of the workers or they will be removed and replaced by others who are prepared to put themselves at the head of the movement.
In Tunisia the UGTT leaders were compromised with the Ben Ali regime. The old leaders were prepared to participate in a provisional government formed by Gannouchi but were forced to resign under the pressure of the workers. But at local and regional levels the UGTT played a leading role in the Revolution. In some areas, like in Redeyef, the UGTT actually took over the running of society. In others, the local unions played a key role in the organisation of the revolutionary movement through revolutionary committees. This shows the vital role of the unions as a vehicle for revolution.
What is needed is a through cleansing of the UGTT at all levels, removing all those bureaucrats which are linked to the old regime, starting with its general secretary Abdessalem Jerad, who is playing an openly strike-breaking role. The regional structures and national federations which are under the leadership of the left and democratic activists and which represent a majority of the membership of the UGTT should convene immediately an emergency national congress. A move to democratise the union and bring it in line with the revolutionary movement would have massive support amongst ordinary workers. If the workers and youth were able to remove Ben Ali and then Ghannouchi, it should be even easier for them to remove the corrupt trade union leaders who supported them.
In Egypt the corrupt union leaders were unable to prevent the wave of strikes that was a preparatory school for the Revolution. The Egyptian workers have moved against the old corrupt leaders and are fighting to create unions which are genuine democratic and militant organizations of the class. In so doing they have shown an unerring revolutionary class instinct. The fight for democracy is not confined to the political arena. It must enter the trade unions and the workplaces also.
The struggle seems to be moving in the direction of setting up a new Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions. In revolutionary conditions like the ones which exist now, this can become the main organisation of Egyptian workers. However, it would be a mistake to abandon altogether the struggle within the old official unions, which still claim to represent millions of workers. In some instances, whole workplaces and sectors will be unionised anew. In some other cases, democratic and militant unions will emerge through the workers taking control of the official structures.
The bourgeoisie and the imperialists understand the central importance of the unions. They will send their paid agents to corrupt and deceive workers in order to prevent them from drawing revolutionary and socialist ideas. The CIA has close links with the leaders of the AFL-CIO and the European Social Democracy and so-called International Trade Union bodies. They will try to bring the militant trade union movement under their control.
The workers must beware of such “friends” who come to corrupt them and undermine the Revolution from within. They must also beware of the so-called NGOs that are a disguised agency of imperialism. The role of the NGOs is to divert the workers from the revolutionary path, entangling them in a thousand trivial tasks, charities etc., turning former revolutionaries and militant workers into paid lackeys, office boys and bureaucrats. This is a poison that can corrode the workers’ movement.
The task of the unions is not to prop up capitalism but to overthrow it. Our first aim is to fight for improved living standards, better wages and conditions. We must fight for every improvement, no matter how small. But we must also understand that it will be impossible to obtain our basic demands as long as a parasitic oligarchy is the owner of the land, the banks and the major industries.
In the struggle against the old regime, the unions have linked up with other layers of society: the unemployed, the women, the youth, the peasants, the intellectuals. That is absolutely necessary. The working class must aspire to place itself at the head of the Nation and to lead the fight against all forms of injustice and oppression.
The revolutionary people are setting up popular committees of all sorts. That is a necessary step to provide the revolutionary movement with an organized and coherent form. Such broad committees do not, however, replace the trade unions, which must remain the basic organizational form of the workers’ movement.
The trade unions are a school of revolution that will play a key role in overthrowing the old regime and establishing a new, socialist society, in which the role of the unions will be expanded a thousand fold, playing a major part in the running of the nationalized industries, planning production and running society.
The IMT says:
•Build the trade unions and turn them into genuine fighting organizations!
•Purge the unions of all corrupt elements and bureaucrats!
•For democratic unions: elections at every level and right of recall of all officials!
•Against corruption! No union official must receive a wage higher than a skilled worker!
•No to state control of the unions! The unions must be in the hands of the workers!
•For workers’ control of industry! For the expropriation of the bankers, landlords and capitalists! For a democratic socialist plan of production!
Role of the youth
Karl Liebknecht, the great German revolutionary and martyr once said: “The youth is the flame of the Socialist Revolution”. These words could be emblazoned on the banner of the Arab Revolution. At every stage the youth has played the key role. The protestors who poured onto the streets of Tunisia and Egypt were mainly young people, unemployed and without any future. Some were university graduates, others poor people from the slums.
In all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, the majority of the population are young people. They are suffering the worst effects of the crisis of capitalism. 70% of youth under the age of 25 in Tunisia are unemployed. The figure is 75% in Algeria and 76% in Egypt. A similar situation exists in other countries.
University graduates have no jobs and therefore have no prospect of marriage, no home and no future. These facts show the impasse of capitalism. These countries need doctors, teachers, engineers, but there are no jobs. Millions of young people are unable to find work, and are therefore unable to marry and raise a family. They are motivated by a deep sense of injustice and a burning anger and resentment towards a system that denies them a future and a corrupt regime that has enriched itself at the people’s expense.
The only hope these young people have is to fight for a fundamental change in society. They have cast aside all fear and are prepared to risk their lives in the fight for freedom and justice. In Tunisia the revolutionary youth organised themselves and called a mass rally in Tunis, marching on the Prime Minister’s office and camping in front of it, in the Kasbah esplanade. Mass movements of the school students raised the demand for a constituent assembly, and demonstrated shouting “down with government”. They provided the catalyst for a movement which finally brought down the government of Ghannouchi at the end of February. In Egypt we again see the same thing. The protestors who led the way were mainly young Egyptians, unemployed and without any future.
History is repeating itself. In 1917 the Mensheviks accused the Bolsheviks of being just a “bunch of kids”, and they were not entirely wrong. The average age of the Bolshevik activists was very low. The first section to move is always the youth, who are free from the prejudices, fear and scepticism of the older generation.
The youth of every country are open to revolutionary ideas. We must go to the youth! If we go to the youth with the ideas of revolutionary Marxism and proletarian internationalism, we will get an enthusiastic response.
The IMT says:
•Jobs for all!
•Every young person must be guaranteed either a full-time job or free full-time education.
•Equal pay for work of equal value!
•An end to police harassment!
•Full democratic rights and votes at 16!
The role of women
The decisive factor is that the masses have acquired a sense of their collective strength and are losing their fear. Beginning with the youngest, most energetic and determined elements, the mood of defiance has transmitted itself to the older, more cautious and inert layers of the population.
One of the most inspiring aspects of the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, however, was the active participation of the women. The old submissiveness is disappearing. In Alexandria elderly housewives threw pots and pans onto the police from the balconies of their flats. On the demonstrations young female students in jeans fought side by side with other women wearing the hijab. It was the women workers played a key role in the massive strikes of textile workers in Mahalla al Kubra in recent years, strikes which prepared the present revolutionary upheaval.
Women have been to the forefront of every revolution in history. The images of the women of Bahrain, demonstrating fearlessly, some with veils, some without, are an inspiring picture of the Revolution in action. They are repeating the experience of the heroic women of Paris in October 1789 and in Petrograd in February 1917.
The awakening of the women is a sure sign of Revolution. Society cannot advance and prosper as long as women are enslaved. It is not by chance that reactionaries in Egypt, as well as fomenting religious pogroms, attacked the March 8th demonstration in Tahrir Square. The Arab Revolution will recruit its most determined and courageous fighters from the ranks of the women, and the complete emancipation of women is the first duty of the Revolution. The place of women is not in the kitchen but on the streets fighting alongside the men. They are the most fearless elements. And they have most to fight for.
The IMT says:
•Down with discrimination and inequality!
•Full recognition of women as equal citizens and human beings!
•Full social, political and economic equality for women!
•An end to all discriminatory laws!
•Organize the women workers in free and democratic trade unions, independent of the state!
•Equal pay for work of equal value!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
*Victory To The Egyptian Workers' Strikes-Fight For A Revolutionary Constituent Assembly Now-Fight For A Workers Party That Fights For Workers And Peasants Government For The Future!
Markin comment:
As noted in the comment reposted below the events in Egypt are moving very swiftly with Mubarak apparently being pushed out on the plank. Nevertheless with Egyptian workers going on massive, although apparently unco-ordinated strikes, now is the time to go full throttle and fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly on the road to a socialist future. I have posted that demand as presented in the the Leon Trotsky-led Fourth International's Transitional Program of 1938 for consideration. Clearly the masses in Egypt are in revolutionary motion. Which way they go and how far depends on better organization, and political direction. Army rule under any guise (remember that is where Mubarak came from) is not what people have fought and died for in the streets of Egypt's cities. More later.
****
Reposted From Wednesday February 9, 2011
Markin comment:
The fast moving events in Egypt (and across the Middle East) cry out, cry out desperately, for the formation of a revolutionary workers party basing itself on democratic and socialist demands (the Transitional Program demands outlined by Leon Trotsky in the late 1930s, yes 1930s, as applicable to belated developed countries-the key immediate demand being the fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly) to gather around it workers, peasants and other allies to fight to the finish for a workers and peasants government. Can anything less be on the order of the day? I think not. Such situations, as the 30 plus years survival of the Mubarak regime testify to, show how rare such opportunities are and one better take maximum advantage, if not for the immediate struggle for power, then for the ability to fight later with the masses readily behind you.
****
From The Transitional Program Of The Fourth International (1938)- For the Complete Program Google The Leon Trotsky Internet Archives click on Written Archives and then click on 1938.
Backward Countries and the
Program of Transitional Demands
Colonial and semi-colonial countries are backward countries by their very essence. But backward countries are part of a world dominated by imperialism. Their development, therefore, has a combined character: the most primitive economic forms are combined with the last word in capitalist technique and culture. In like manner are defined the political strivings of the proletariat of backward countries: the struggle for the most elementary achievements of national independence and bourgeois democracy is combined with the socialist struggle against world imperialism. Democratic slogans, transitional demands and the problems of the socialist revolution are not divided into separate historical epochs in this struggle, but stem directly from one another. The Chinese proletariat had barely begun to organize trade unions before it had to provide for soviets. In this sense, the present program is completely applicable to colonial and semi-colonial countries, at least to those where the proletariat has become capable of carrying on independent politics.
The central task of the colonial and semi-colonial countries is the agrarian revolution, i.e., liquidation of feudal heritages, and national independence, i.e., the overthrow of the imperialist yoke. Both tasks are closely linked with each other.
It is impossible merely to reject the democratic program; it is imperative that in the struggle the masses outgrow it. The slogan for a National (or Constituent) Assembly preserves its full force for such countries as China or India. This slogan must be indissolubly tied up with the problem of national liberation and agrarian reform. As a primary step, the workers must be armed with this democratic program. Only they will be able to summon and unite the farmers. On the basis of the revolutionary democratic program, it is necessary to oppose the workers to the “national” bourgeoisie. Then, at a certain stage in the mobilization of the masses under the slogans of revolutionary democracy, soviets can and should arise. Their historical role in each given period, particularly their relation to the National Assembly, will be determined by the political level of the proletariat, the bond between them and the peasantry, and the character of the proletarian party policies. Sooner or later, the soviets should overthrow bourgeois democracy. Only they are capable of bringing the democratic revolution to a conclusion and likewise opening an era of socialist revolution.
The relative weight of the individual democratic and transitional demands in the proletariat’s struggle, their mutual ties and their order of presentation, is determined by the peculiarities and specific conditions of each backward country and to a considerable extent by the degree of its backwardness. Nevertheless, the general trend of revolutionary development in all backward countries can be determined by the formula of the permanent revolution in the sense definitely imparted to it by the three revolutions in Russia (1905, February 1917, October 1917).
The Comintern has provided backward countries with a classic example of how it is possible to ruin a powerful and promising revolution. During the stormy mass upsurge in China in 1925-27, the Comintern failed to advance the slogan for a National Assembly, and at the same time forbade the creation of soviets. (The bourgeois party, the Kuomintang, was to replace, according to Stalin’s plan, both the National Assembly and soviets.) After the masses had been smashed by the Kuomintang, the Comintern organized a caricature of a soviet in Canton. Following the inevitable collapse of the Canton uprising, the Comintern took the road of guerrilla warfare a peasant soviets with complete passivity on the part of the industrial proletariat. Landing thus in a blind alley, the Comintern took advantage of the Sino-Japanese War to liquidate “Soviet China” with a stroke of the pen, subordinating not only the peasant “Red Army” but also the so-called “Communist” Party to the identical Kuomintang, i.e., the bourgeoisie.
Having betrayed the international proletarian revolution for the sake of friendship with the “democratic” slavemasters, the Comintern could not help betraying simultaneously also the struggle for liberation of the colonial masses, and, indeed, with even greater cynicism than did the Second International before it. One of the tasks of People’s Front and “national defense” politics is to turn hundreds of millions of the colonial population into cannon fodder for “democratic” imperialism. The banner on which is emblazoned the struggle for the liberation of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples, i.e., a good half of mankind, has definitely passed into the hands of the Fourth International.
As noted in the comment reposted below the events in Egypt are moving very swiftly with Mubarak apparently being pushed out on the plank. Nevertheless with Egyptian workers going on massive, although apparently unco-ordinated strikes, now is the time to go full throttle and fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly on the road to a socialist future. I have posted that demand as presented in the the Leon Trotsky-led Fourth International's Transitional Program of 1938 for consideration. Clearly the masses in Egypt are in revolutionary motion. Which way they go and how far depends on better organization, and political direction. Army rule under any guise (remember that is where Mubarak came from) is not what people have fought and died for in the streets of Egypt's cities. More later.
****
Reposted From Wednesday February 9, 2011
Markin comment:
The fast moving events in Egypt (and across the Middle East) cry out, cry out desperately, for the formation of a revolutionary workers party basing itself on democratic and socialist demands (the Transitional Program demands outlined by Leon Trotsky in the late 1930s, yes 1930s, as applicable to belated developed countries-the key immediate demand being the fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly) to gather around it workers, peasants and other allies to fight to the finish for a workers and peasants government. Can anything less be on the order of the day? I think not. Such situations, as the 30 plus years survival of the Mubarak regime testify to, show how rare such opportunities are and one better take maximum advantage, if not for the immediate struggle for power, then for the ability to fight later with the masses readily behind you.
****
From The Transitional Program Of The Fourth International (1938)- For the Complete Program Google The Leon Trotsky Internet Archives click on Written Archives and then click on 1938.
Backward Countries and the
Program of Transitional Demands
Colonial and semi-colonial countries are backward countries by their very essence. But backward countries are part of a world dominated by imperialism. Their development, therefore, has a combined character: the most primitive economic forms are combined with the last word in capitalist technique and culture. In like manner are defined the political strivings of the proletariat of backward countries: the struggle for the most elementary achievements of national independence and bourgeois democracy is combined with the socialist struggle against world imperialism. Democratic slogans, transitional demands and the problems of the socialist revolution are not divided into separate historical epochs in this struggle, but stem directly from one another. The Chinese proletariat had barely begun to organize trade unions before it had to provide for soviets. In this sense, the present program is completely applicable to colonial and semi-colonial countries, at least to those where the proletariat has become capable of carrying on independent politics.
The central task of the colonial and semi-colonial countries is the agrarian revolution, i.e., liquidation of feudal heritages, and national independence, i.e., the overthrow of the imperialist yoke. Both tasks are closely linked with each other.
It is impossible merely to reject the democratic program; it is imperative that in the struggle the masses outgrow it. The slogan for a National (or Constituent) Assembly preserves its full force for such countries as China or India. This slogan must be indissolubly tied up with the problem of national liberation and agrarian reform. As a primary step, the workers must be armed with this democratic program. Only they will be able to summon and unite the farmers. On the basis of the revolutionary democratic program, it is necessary to oppose the workers to the “national” bourgeoisie. Then, at a certain stage in the mobilization of the masses under the slogans of revolutionary democracy, soviets can and should arise. Their historical role in each given period, particularly their relation to the National Assembly, will be determined by the political level of the proletariat, the bond between them and the peasantry, and the character of the proletarian party policies. Sooner or later, the soviets should overthrow bourgeois democracy. Only they are capable of bringing the democratic revolution to a conclusion and likewise opening an era of socialist revolution.
The relative weight of the individual democratic and transitional demands in the proletariat’s struggle, their mutual ties and their order of presentation, is determined by the peculiarities and specific conditions of each backward country and to a considerable extent by the degree of its backwardness. Nevertheless, the general trend of revolutionary development in all backward countries can be determined by the formula of the permanent revolution in the sense definitely imparted to it by the three revolutions in Russia (1905, February 1917, October 1917).
The Comintern has provided backward countries with a classic example of how it is possible to ruin a powerful and promising revolution. During the stormy mass upsurge in China in 1925-27, the Comintern failed to advance the slogan for a National Assembly, and at the same time forbade the creation of soviets. (The bourgeois party, the Kuomintang, was to replace, according to Stalin’s plan, both the National Assembly and soviets.) After the masses had been smashed by the Kuomintang, the Comintern organized a caricature of a soviet in Canton. Following the inevitable collapse of the Canton uprising, the Comintern took the road of guerrilla warfare a peasant soviets with complete passivity on the part of the industrial proletariat. Landing thus in a blind alley, the Comintern took advantage of the Sino-Japanese War to liquidate “Soviet China” with a stroke of the pen, subordinating not only the peasant “Red Army” but also the so-called “Communist” Party to the identical Kuomintang, i.e., the bourgeoisie.
Having betrayed the international proletarian revolution for the sake of friendship with the “democratic” slavemasters, the Comintern could not help betraying simultaneously also the struggle for liberation of the colonial masses, and, indeed, with even greater cynicism than did the Second International before it. One of the tasks of People’s Front and “national defense” politics is to turn hundreds of millions of the colonial population into cannon fodder for “democratic” imperialism. The banner on which is emblazoned the struggle for the liberation of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples, i.e., a good half of mankind, has definitely passed into the hands of the Fourth International.
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