Markin comment:
The events of the past few weeks in the Middle East, especially in Tunisia and, more so, in Egypt point out the long known fact that when people are oppressed, and are ready to do something about it, it is a magnificent tribute to the human spirit. But that spirit, and that sacrifice, only makes sense if there is some kind of real change. Although the situation today, and I speak only of today, is frankly, disappointing from a socialist’s perspective it nevertheless points the way forward to those necessary socialist conclusions that have been addressed in this space. Clearly a purely democratic (in the old bourgeois European sense) solution is not in the cards. At least not for lasting measures. Leon Trotsky’s now old, very old, but still relevant theory of permanent revolution as an analytical tool has never been more necessary. Or, and here is the real crux of the matter, Lenin’s notion of a vanguard party (seconded, in the end, by Trotsky) to break the impasse has never been more desperately necessary. I have posted commentary from other left-wing sources today in order to stir the kettle on these issues.
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The return of revolution
When the uprisings happened in Tunisia and Egypt, they developed incredibly fast.
February 1, 2011
Massive crowds filling Cairo's Tahrir Square to call for the downfall of a dictator (Corentin Fohlen | Sipa)
MANY OF the great struggles of the past can be brought to mind by their year alone: 1917 and the Russian Revolution. 1968 and the French May. 1989 and the revolutions against Stalinism in Eastern Europe. 1979 and the fall of the Shah of Iran.
2011 is only a month old, but it already seems likely that it will be remembered as the year of the great revolt across the Arab world.
One dictator has been toppled already--Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia after 23 years of iron-fisted rule. Another may be gone by the time you read this--Hosni Mubarak's reign over Egypt hung by a thread at the end of January. In Jordan, Algeria, Yemen and elsewhere, other tyrants are facing their most serious challenge in decades.
No one can know the outcome of the struggles underway now. In Egypt, the ruling elite will try to find a new face to put in charge of a "peaceful transition," as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pointedly called for--but will the masses accept a new face on the old order? Mubarak might still try to order a bloodbath--but would the military and the regime's security apparatus follow those orders? Millions of Egyptians will rally around moderate opposition figures like Mohamed ElBaradei--but will the emerging working-class movement push to the fore a more radical alternative?
No one knows the answers to these questions now, but we do know this: The revolt against the tyrants has put the word "revolution" on the lips of people everywhere and reshaped the politics of the Middle East and the world.
The images from the streets of Cairo, Tunis and elsewhere are electrifying--even the U.S. cable news networks, so used to peddling celebrity gossip and Washington's political trivia, seemed to grasp the importance of the struggle before their eyes.
The scenes bring to mind Leon Trotsky's famous words about the revolution he was a part of making in Russia: "The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historic events. In ordinary times, the state--be it monarchical or democratic--elevates itself above the nation, and history is made by specialists in that line of business--kings, ministers, bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new regime."
The early stages of such a revolution are unfolding today, and they have much to teach people around the world who have been radicalized by the failures of capitalism and awakened to the hope that the struggle from below--whether it comes on the streets of Tunis and Cairo, or Paris and London, or more modestly in cities in the U.S.--has the potential to change the world for the better.
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ACCORDING TO just about every mainstream media analysis, the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia "came out of nowhere." Nothing could be further from the truth.
The struggles in these countries and elsewhere in the Arab world have been brewing for years, as Egyptian journalist and activist Hossam el-Hamalawy told an interviewer for Al Jazeera. "[R]evolt has been in the air over the past few years," he said. "Revolutions don't happen out of the blue."
In Tunisia, the wave of mobilizations that drove out Ben Ali are traced back to a single horrifying act. After police assaulted him and confiscated his stand, Mohamed Bouazizi, a university-educated resident of Sidi Bouzid who survived as a street vendor, set himself on fire. But this became the symbol for millions of people who felt their lives were pushed beyond endurance by a system of vast economic inequality and vicious repression.
This backdrop of grinding poverty made worse by the world economic crisis is as important to understanding events as the corruption of the regimes in Tunis and Cairo. In particular, rising prices for food--which have shot up several times in recent years not because of worldwide shortages, but because of financial speculation in rich countries--were tinder for revolt in Egypt in 2008 and again today.
Western political leaders now claim to be glad that Ben Ali was pushed out--and they sternly warn that reforms are necessary in Egypt. But the U.S. and other Western powers backed the dictators to the hilt before--and celebrated these countries, despite their vast gap between a wealthy elite and the impoverished majority, as economic "success stories" and models of stability.
But when the rebellions came in Tunisia and Egypt, they spread with incredible speed. So did the political questions they raised--anger over unemployment and high food prices quickly expanded into discontent over political freedoms long denied. In Tunisia, the chant of the demonstrators was "Bread, water and no Ben Ali."
Nadia Marzouki of the Middle East Research and Information Project described Tunisia's uprising as "an organic convergence of various currents of discontent," ranging from the unemployed and poor residents of the country's south to students, lawyers and professionals in the cities--with "each group harboring specific grievances and using its own symbolic vocabulary, but all united in overall purpose," Marzouki concluded.
Once Ben Ali was toppled, the political differences between these social forces--rooted above in social class--emerged in the form of conflicts over what should come next. But the virtually unanimous hatred of Ben Ali gave the rebellion its seemingly universal character.
Likewise in Egypt, where Tunisia's toppling of Ben Ali was the final inspiration for an upheaval that was years in the making, the determination to see Mubarak fall has been the heart of the mass protests. This turned the streets of Cairo and other cities into what the Russian revolutionary Lenin called the "festival of the oppressed"--as the images of struggle sent around the world by Internet make clear.
A wave of revolt that began with the self-immolation of a street vendor in a rural Tunisian town was crashing against a police state backed to the hilt by the U.S. government--one that had endured decades of previous challenges and seemed, just weeks before, to be firmly in control over a docile population.
In Tunisia, the Ben Ali regime recognized the threat represented by the mobilization and offered concessions, but too late. In Egypt, too, Mubarak dismissed the government and tried to install new figures not tainted by their association with his regime. But far from satisfying demonstrators, this only emboldened them to continue their protests. This is another echo of the great struggles of the past--the old order's offer of reform can inspire confidence among the masses of people to fight for revolution.
After Ben Ali fled for Saudi Arabia, the country's elite tried to impose a "unity government" that incorporated figures from the opposition, but left power in the hands of officials from the dictator's old ruling party. This opened up a new stage in the struggle, with the rural poor organizing a caravan to the capital of Tunis to demand that the government exclude Ben Ali's cronies.
Salem Ben Yahia, a filmmaker and former political prisoner in Tunisia, was surely speaking for the demonstrators on the streets of Cairo as well when he told the Guardian: "We don't want our revolution hijacked. We forced a dictator out the door, and now he's come back in the window...Police have already shot at us and beaten us to stop us protesting, but we come back again like a tide."
This dynamic illustrates a lesson that all great social movements of the past have learned: The struggle for freedom and democracy can't be left to those at the top. Capitalism is supposed to promote democracy, according to its defenders, but the business and political elite of the U.S. and other nations are perfectly willing to tolerate dictatorship if their interests are best served that way. Achieving genuine democracy--in Tunisia or Egypt or the U.S.--depends above all on the struggle from below.
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AS IN every previous social upheaval that has shaken the old order, a critical question asserted itself in Tunisia and Egypt: How to overcome the armed force of the state that the rulers use to maintain their grip on power?
Ben Ali's regime depended on a huge security apparatus--some 150,000 police out of a population of 10.6 million--and the dictator ordered these forces to put down the first protests by whatever means. But rather than be intimidated, demonstrators only became more determined. They battled police and confronted the military when it was deployed.
News footage of the protests in Tunis and elsewhere showed a scene common to every revolution--of protesters trying to engage with rank-and-file soldiers and convince them not to fire on them.
When the revolt spread to Egypt, the same scenes were repeated. Mubarak's police attacked demonstrators with their usual savagery, but they were pushed back--and eventually forced to retreat from the streets for days at a time.
Egypt's military has been armed to the teeth by the U.S., but here were the tanks manufactured in the U.S. and sent to Washington's most important Arab ally to bolster the imperialist order in the Middle East--now surrounded by a sea of protesters who reached out to poorly paid Egyptian soldiers to call on them to join the revolutionary movement.
The top brass of the Egyptian military recognized the threat. Their forces remained deployed through the last week of January, but seemingly with orders not to attack. Meanwhile, the top military officials were part of the scramble to find a façade for the "peaceful transition."
Of course, the Egyptian military is no ally of the struggle for democracy, and its forces may still be called upon to crack down. But no matter what follows, the scenes in Cairo and elsewhere at the end of January echo similar ones in Russia in 1917 and every other revolution--where the masses have confronted the rank and file of the army and convinced them to not turn their guns on the people.
As for the police, when they were defeated in the first street battles in Tunisia and Egypt, the regime gave them new orders--to act as terrorists, carrying out violence in the hopes of causing enough chaos to derail the revolution. In Tunis following Ben Ali's flight, witnesses described squads of security officers driving around the city, wreaking mayhem. In Egypt, reports suggested that at a large part of the looting and violence breathlessly reported by the media was instigated by security forces.
But here again, the movement from below responded. In Tunisia, according to blogger Dyab Abou Jahjah, "people have organized themselves in committees that have spread all across the country in every neighborhood and in every city, and started patrolling the streets and protecting the people."
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REVOLUTIONS CAN start with the toppling of a hated dictator, but they don't end there.
The fall of a U.S.-backed stooge like Ben Ali and the democratic changes won in the aftermath should be celebrated, but with the understanding that new questions will come to the fore. Those questions will reveal differences among the opponents of the old order--over how far the revolution should go and what comes next.
In Tunisia, the new government is promising to prosecute the kleptocracy around Ben Ali that looted the country, but it has no answers for the desperation of people like Mohamed Bouazizi, forced to scrape by in a country with great natural wealth. A government without Mubarak in Egypt may promise free elections, but it won't curb the power of the rest of the elite, much less respond to the demands of ordinary Egyptians for a better life.
How these next challenges are answered by the mass movement that shook the dictators will determine the future.
Demonstrations in the street can't be the only answer in confronting them--the movement will need organization that goes beyond this kind of mobilization. It will need to exercise economic power--the power of the working classes of Tunisia, Egypt and beyond to paralyze the production of wealth that their rulers depend on.
The working people of Tunisia and Egypt have confronted hated dictators, but they have an even greater power to challenge the whole system of exploitation and oppression. The demonstrations that rocked the tyrants can be the stepping-stones for the struggles of the future--the first taste of action that can give confidence that further change is possible.
The outcome of the struggles taking place now will determine the shape of the future Tunisia, the future Egypt and more besides. It will be important for every fighter for social change, everywhere in the world, to engage in the discussions to come--with the goal of building a movement to transform a society that can't provide a decent living standard for workers, whether they live in Detroit or the Nile Delta.
One more lesson of past struggles flows from this--the importance for socialists to be organized to make our voices heard in the struggles to come.
The socialist vision of a new society based on workers' power--a world where inequality and injustice are ended forever--shows the alternative to the crisis-ridden capitalist system, and how that system can be transformed. But that alternative needs to be made part of all the struggles in society, whether in Tunisia or Egypt or the U.S., if it is to become a guide for the future.
That's why it's important for socialists everywhere to be organizing and building our numbers--as part of waging the struggles of today, as well as looking ahead to the fight for a new world.
2011 will certainly be remembered as the year of rebellion in the Arab world. Right now, it's a year of possibilities that we can look forward to with a renewed sense of optimism, thanks to the struggles of the people of Tunisia and Egypt and across the Middle East.
Monday, February 14, 2011
From The "Internationalist Group" Website-Mass Revolts Against U.S.-Backed Arab Dictators
Markin comment:
The events of the past few weeks in the Middle East, especially in Tunisia and, more so, in Egypt point out the long known fact that when people are oppressed, and are ready to do something about it, it is a magnificent tribute to the human spirit. But that spirit, and that sacrifice, only makes sense if there is some kind of real change. Although the situation today, and I speak only of today, is frankly, disappointing from a socialist’s perspective it nevertheless points the way forward to those necessary socialist conclusions that have been addressed in this space. Clearly a purely democratic (in the old bourgeois European sense) solution is not in the cards. At least not for lasting measures. Leon Trotsky’s now old, very old, but still relevant theory of permanent revolution as an analytical tool has never been more necessary. Or, and here is the real crux of the matter, Lenin’s notion of a vanguard party (seconded, in the end, by Trotsky) to break the impasse has never been more desperately necessary. I have posted commentary from other left-wing sources today in order to stir the kettle on these issues.
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Mass Revolts Against U.S.-Backed Arab Dictators
Battle over Kasr al-Nil Bridge in Cairo raged for hours on January 28. Demonstrators confronted huge
numbers of riot police, braving water cannon and clouds of tear gas. As night fell, protesters broke
through police lines and took the bridge. (Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
An aging dictator toppled in Tunisia, another is tottering in Egypt: North Africa and the Near East are in turmoil, Washington is worried, Wall Street has the jitters. The world’s eyes are glued on Cairo as battles rage back and forth in the squares of the Egyptian capital and on the bridges across the Nile. With U.S. troops still occupying Iraq and bogged down in a losing war in Afghanistan, suddenly a new spectre is shaking the imperialist world order: revolution by the wage slaves held down by the modern pharaohs. But even the fall of Arab satraps of the U.S. empire will not bring democracy for the downtrodden and oppressed masses until the stranglehold of imperialism is broken. The key is to forge a revolutionary leadership to mobilize the working masses in the struggle to bring down the dictatorship of capital.
For almost a month, unemployed youth and workers in Tunisia demonstrated and struck against police terror. Then on the evening of January 14, only a few hours after thousands of protesters braved police clubs and tear gas in the streets of the capital, Tunis, word spread from cellphone to cellphone that President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had fled to Saudi Arabia. Signs calling for “Ben Ali dégage” (get lost) were replaced by one proclaiming (in English), “Game Over.” In 27 days of protest, they had driven out the tyrant who had ruled Tunisia with an iron fist for 23 years. More than 200 were killed by the regime, but the paralyzing spell of fear of repression was broken. The news raced across North Africa and the Near East at Internet speed: for the first time ever in this region dominated by imperialist-backed regimes, an Arab autocrat had been brought down by the Arab street. Presidents, kings, sheiks and emirs worried that “Tunisian fever” could spread. Millions of their long-suffering subjects hoped it would.
Shortly after, inspired by the Tunisian example, youthful Egyptian activists called a national “Day of Rage” for January 25. They were protesting the rule of President Hosni Mubarak, who has governed Egypt under an “emergency law” for the last 30 years. “Revolution day,” as it soon became known, brought out tens of thousands in Cairo, as well as the industrial cities of Suez and Mahalla, the port of Alexandria and cities around the country. The turnout far exceeded even the organizers’ expectations, the militancy unprecedented. Demonstrators fought riot cops, clambering onto the armored water cannons, blocking windows and turning the nozzles upward. Three days later, hundreds of thousands flooded into the streets, chanting “The people want the regime to fall” and “Overthrow Mubarak!” After a battle for the Kasr al-Nil Bridge that lasted for hours, as night fell the protesters finally broke through the police lines. Soon the nearby headquarters of the National Democratic Party went up in flames.
Leon Trotsky wrote in the preface to his magisterial History of the Russian Revolution, “The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historical events…. [A]t those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new régime.” Today the Tunisian and Egyptian masses have burst onto the scene of history. As we write they are still holding fast, thwarting every attempt by the rulers to return to “normalcy.” That is the first condition for revolution, but only the first. Whether the working people prevail is yet to be decided by the class struggle. The imperialists are trying to rob them of victory with rhetoric about “democracy” and plans for an “orderly transition.” We must mobilize to demand: U.S. imperialism out of the Middle East and Africa!
The mass uprisings (intifadas) are about more than the rule of one or another strongman. Millions throughout the region are fed up with the omnipresent police states and the grinding poverty they have enforced. From Algeria in the west to Jordan in the east and Yemen in the south, tens of thousands of demonstrators are literally defying death at the hands of entrenched regimes, emboldening many more to follow their lead. The pro-Western regimes sitting atop this seething volcano can hear the rumblings, and their imperialist patrons are worried – U.S. president Barack Obama first and foremost. So are the Zionist rulers in Israel, who together with Mubarak in Egypt have acted as Washington’s gendarmes in the Near East. With a population of over 80 million, Egypt is the largest Arab country and pivot to the region, which the Pentagon and White House have declared vital to “American interests.” Revolution in Egypt could shake U.S. imperialist world domination.
Washington Groping for Plan B
Many Tunisians talk proudly of “our revolution,” vowing to defend it against those who are trying to steal it. The Western media quickly dubbed it the “Jasmine Revolution,” recalling the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon that installed a pro-U.S. prime minister (since ousted). Parallels were made to the U.S.-engineered color-coded “revolutions” (orange in Ukraine, rose in Georgia) in countries of the former Soviet Union. By giving it a seal of approval, the imperialists sought to put an end to the agitation. In Egypt, too, demonstrators and Western media alike talk of a revolution, even as the police were beating protesters bloody. But neither feel-good labels nor tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets have stopped the surging crowds. Ruling-class hopes of rapid, cosmetic “regime change” have been dashed on the determination of tens of thousands unemployed and working-class youth who are refusing to quit the battle until the old regimes are gone. From Tunis to Cairo, militants have said, “we are prepared to die for the revolution.” So for the imperialists, it’s time for Plan B. Their problem is they haven’t got one, so they’re improvising.
Step One has been to bring in the military as alleged saviors against the hated police. In Tunisia, army chief General Rachid Ammar reputedly refused an order from Ben Ali to fire on protesters, for which he was cashiered. Within a day, Ammar was back and the Tunisian president and his avaricious wife were on a plane that spirited them off to Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, dumping ground for used-up dictators beginning with Uganda’s Idi Amin. A leading Tunis newspaper splashed a picture of General Rachid Ammar across its front page, the army stood between demonstrators and marauding cops, and marchers put flowers in the barrels of soldiers’ guns. Yet while posing as the guarantor of the “revolution,” the general called on protesters to leave the “new” government of Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi (Ben Ali’s former right-hand man) in peace. The protesters ignored his plea and camped out in downtown Tunis for a week, surrounded by soldiers. On January 29 the police drove them out.
In Egypt, too, the army was brought in after the Central Security Force (CSF) couldn’t control he 100,000-strong crowd in Cairo on January 28. Despite an orgy of violence from the riot cops, firing off volley after volley of tear gas grenades bearing the label “made in U.S.A.,” they were overwhelmed by youth fighting with nothing more than their bare hands and some rocks. In other cities, including Alexandria and Suez, the police were routed by unarmed demonstrators. When the tanks and soldiers arrived, they were often (but not universally) welcomed. But while protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir (Liberation) Square chant “The people and the army are one hand!” militants are worried as the army locks down key points in the Egyptian capital. Soon the police will be back. And everyone is acutely aware that the military has been the backbone of the hated regime throughout Mubarak’s 30-year “emergency” rule.
So in Egypt, Step Two in the plan to safeguard imperialist/capitalist interests is underway: find a “credible” replacement for Mubarak acceptable both to the imperialists and demonstrators. Currently (February 4) Washington is pushing for Oman Suleiman, who as intelligence chief presided over the clandestine “renditions” of prisoners to be tortured in Egypt’s dungeons. But at 75, with four heart attacks already, this Egyptian Dick Cheney may not do the job. The bourgeois opposition in Cairo has coalesced around the figure of Mohammed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who returned to Egypt last year proposing to run for president on a program of “free elections,” period. ElBaradei has been endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been anathema to Mubarak and the U.S., as well as by youthful leaders of the April 6 Movement. To gain “street credibility” in Egypt, this former U.N. bureaucrat has to appear independent of the U.S., so he duly criticized Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for clinging to Mubarak. But while Washington hesitates, it is far from clear that with either Suleiman or ElBaradei as figurehead the U.S. can get the “orderly transition” it seeks.
Obsessed with visions of falling dominoes, the imperialists have been hard at work for weeks redeploying their henchmen to put an end to any dreams of revolution, or even democracy. The liberal Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm (16 January) reported that in Tunisia: “Ahmed al-Khadrawi, an officer in the Tunisian National Guards, said that chief of staff Rasheed Ammar who was removed by Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali four days ago has received last-minute instructions via the US Embassy to take charge of Tunisian affairs if the situation gets out of control.” Which is exactly what Gen. Ammar did. In Egypt, most senior and mid-level military officers have received U.S. training. In fact, Egyptian chief of staff Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan and a delegation were in Washington when the protests broke out. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman Gen. James Cartwright “said he could not discount ‘hallway’ conversations about the protests between the Egyptian and American military commanders” (New York Times, 29 January). Duly briefed, the officers rushed back to Cairo to deal with the protests.
Opportunists Pursue Class Collaboration With Talk of Revolution
Leftists in the imperialist countries have demonstrated in solidarity with the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, justly denouncing Paris’s support up to the last minute for Ben Ali in the former French “protectorate” and calling for an end to Washington’s nearly $2 billion in annual aid to Egypt, mainly in the form of military hardware. At the same time, many pseudo-socialists blithely hailed the “Tunisian Revolution” and are now doing the same over Egypt, as if deposing the leader (which is a start) amounted to overthrowing the system. This recalls the hosannas for an “Arab Revolution” back in the 1960s, when that signified political support for nationalist colonels like Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser’s “socialist” pretensions were only a cover for accumulation of capital by the capitalist state on behalf of a weak bourgeoisie, and were soon abandoned. Mubarak’s military-based regime is in fact the heir of Nasser’s “state capitalism.” The bankruptcy of the bourgeois nationalists (and their leftist backers), unable to resist imperialism and even make a dent in the poverty of the masses, opened the way for Islamic fundamentalists to pose as defenders of the downtrodden.
Mindless cheerleading does not aid the Arab masses in a bitter struggle against their imperialist-backed oppressors and the substitute rulers that the U.S. is seeking to bring in. While liberal and leftist commentators lambaste the “hypocrisy” of U.S. mouthing “support for the legitimate aspirations” of the Egyptian people while clinging to its ally Mubarak, the crisis planners in the State Department, Pentagon and CIA are preparing the “option” of a “people power” operation like they pulled off when Ronald Reagan finally dumped Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. In that case, while the widow Corazon Aquino grabbed the limelight as the symbol of popular defiance of the U.S.-backed dictator, the reins of power passed to Marcos’s defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile and General Fidel Ramos, who saved capitalist rule and imperialist domination from potential revolutionary overthrow. The Filipino left capitulated to the bourgeois “democrat” Aquino behind whom stood the generals. In Tunisia and Egypt today, the army is being prepared for such a role, civilian figurehead to be determined.
While the media report the vast outpouring of opposition to Mubarak “from all walks of life” – rich and poor, Muslim and Copt, old and young, etc. – powerful forces are maneuvering for position. The idea that the military is or could be “friends of the people” is a deadly illusion which must be fought tooth and nail: it is the army which will impose a new “democratic” capitalist regime. The Muslim Brotherhood is biding its time, seeking to expand its influence over the mobilizations while keeping a lid on its slogans, in order to avoid confrontation with the U.S. at this point. Whether it would cooperate with imperialism to suppress Marxists, as it did after World War II, and even slaughter the left as Ayatollah Khomeini did in Iran in 1979 (despite opportunist leftists’ delusionary hailing of the Islamic “revolution”), or pretend to be “anti-imperialist,” the Brotherhood is an arch-reactionary anti-communist force. Washington uses the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism to justify its “global war on terror,” but it is quite prepared to deal with the Islamists – witness its long-standing alliance with the Wahabist Saudi monarchy – in the interests of counterrevolution.
In fact, all these bourgeois forces – the military, the Islamists, traditional conservatives and liberals – would maintain dictatorial rule over the Egyptian masses. It will take nothing less than a revolution that overthrows capitalism to sweep away these dictatorships, for any pretense of “democracy” in the semi-colonies can only be a sham. To pretend that what has already been achieved in Tunisia and Egypt amounts to a revolution is a swindle by the imperialists, who use such rhetoric to demobilize the masses. When this is pushed by leftists, it only demonstrates their inveterate tailism, chasing after whatever is popular. The dictator may be gone or leaving, but the dictatorship remains. These regimes rested on a whole edifice of corporatist rule – including omnipresent state “parties,” police, secret police, military and “union” apparatuses – all of which remain intact. The torturers are still in place, as is the army of police informers, etc. Yet the depth of the oppression and strength of the rage against decades of police-state domination is such that the masses have – so far – refused to go home until the regime is brought down.
This has opened a potentially revolutionary situation in Tunisia and Egypt, as the rulers are no longer able to rule in the old way and the ruled refuse to go on “living” in the old way. The uprisings could quickly turn into insurrectionary struggles. In Tunisia, which has been eclipsed in the headlines by events in Egypt, thousands demonstrated in the capital on January 27 against the “transitional” government, with general strikes in Sfax and other interior cities. For now, the holders of state power, however tenuous their hold, are counting on wearing down the masses in struggle. They were caught unawares by the determination of the youth, but historically, in the absence of a revolutionary leadership, such tactics often work, as the pressures of daily life and economic hardship eat away at the will to struggle. As the dictatorships begin to crumble, the protesters are crying out for leadership. The New York Times (30 January), not usually given to reporting such sentiment, quoted a “veteran dissident” in Jordan saying, “People want their freedom, people want their bread. People want to stop these lousy dictators from looting their countries. I’d follow anybody. I’d follow Vladimir Lenin if he came and led me.”
Revolutionary Leadership Requires a Revolutionary Program
The key issue of revolutionary leadership comes down to a question of program. Various would-be socialists talk of a “democratic revolution” throughout the region, in order to justify class-collaborationist alliances with “democratic” bourgeois forces. Other leftists talk of a “radical redistribution of wealth.” But neither democracy nor the elimination of poverty are possible without expropriating the ruling class and smashing the yoke of imperialism. In Tunisia there are widespread demands for a constituent assembly. In a country where the president won election by “votes” of 99.27%, 99.4%, 94.5% and (as a show of liberalism) by 89.6%, calls for a constitutional assembly are appropriate. But who shall convoke such an assembly? The present “transitional government” is nothing but the old regime in new clothes. For any semblance of democracy, it is necessary to first overthrow the dictatorship. Thus Trotskyists call for a revolutionary constituent assembly at the same time as we fight for the seizure of power by the working class, supported by the urban and rural poor.
In Egypt as well, where revolutionary democratic demands must likewise be part of a program for workers revolution, the struggle against the military-based regime must include shattering the structures of corporatist control which chained all sectors of society to the state. Thus the struggle for trade unions independent of state control is key. (How this is carried out may differ: in Egypt the official trade unions were simply government agencies, whereas in Tunisia there was significant opposition to the Ben Ali regime in certain unions and regional federations, which played a leading role in the uprising.) In a social/economic context where massive youth unemployment was a detonator of the upheaval, workers should demand jobs for all, by dividing up the available work among all those seeking it, drastically reducing the workweek with no loss in pay. The fact that university graduates were among the hardest-hit by joblessness underscores the need for a socialist planned economy.
Tunisia under Ben Ali and Egypt under Mubarak were real police states. As anti-regime demonstrators are subjected to murderous assault by police commandos and party militias, it is urgently necessary to form armed workers self-defense squads. The people’s committees which have arisen in both countries as the police disappeared could give rise in working-class areas to such bodies of proletarian democracy. The struggle to abolish the special police forces will be another key front in the struggle to dismantle the dictatorships. And a genuine struggle for democracy for the oppressed must include the formation of people’s tribunals to try the regime criminals, from those who looted the state treasury to the police torturers and murderers – and those who issued their orders. To hell with toothless “truth commissions” as in South Africa that let the murderers go free! But these struggles against the mechanisms and legacy of bonapartist, police-state rule can only be realized through revolutionary struggle against capitalism.
As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels underlined in the Communist Manifesto, every serious class struggle is a political struggle. It is vital to fight for the revolutionary independence of the working class from the bourgeoisie, opposing all political alliances with capitalist parties and politicians, not only with Islamic fundamentalists such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Ennahda in Tunisia, but also with liberals such as ElBaradei. Following the Stalinist dogmas of the “popular front” and “revolution in stages,” reformist Communist parties in both countries are desperately seeking to form such blocs – even, in the Tunisian case, where they can’t (so far) find a willing bourgeois partner. Such class-collaborationist coalitions will only serve to preserve semi-colonial capitalism and block genuine revolution. It is above all necessary to build a genuinely Bolshevik communist party, to lead the struggle for a workers and peasants government based on workers councils, proceeding from democratic tasks to socialist revolution.
This must be seen as an international struggle, to be extended throughout the region and to Europe as well. Nationalism, even in leftist and “socialist” garb, has been the downfall of revolutionary struggle in the Near East. The fight against the Egyptian and Tunisian dictatorships must include the struggle to defeat the imperialist war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – including closing the Suez Canal to the imperialists’ warships and supplies. Any revolution in Egypt must defend the Palestinian people under the Zionist jackboot, starting by dismantling the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza. While both the Palestinian nationalists of Fatah and the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas have prohibited demonstrations of solidarity with the uprising in Egypt, proletariat revolutionaries should fight for an Arab/Hebrew Palestinian workers state, as part of a socialist federation of the Near East. The fight for a socialist federation of the Maghreb (North Africa), can extend the struggle to Algeria, where jobless youth clashed with the military and police on January 7-8, and to Morocco, where support for independence of the Sahrawi people, will be key to bringing down the U.S.-backed monarchy.
You didn’t need a crystal ball to see this crisis coming. Egypt has been shaken by militant labor struggles since 2007 in the textile center of Mahalla al-Kubra and elsewhere (see “Egypt: Mubarak Regime Tottering,” The Internationalist No. 31, Summer 2010). Tunisia saw a revolt by unemployed workers in the mining region of Gafsa in 2008, which was brutally put down by Ben Ali. The upheaval in Tunisia and Egypt may indeed have begun a revolutionary overthrow of the old order of deeply corrupt imperialist-backed regimes – but only if the present intifadas are deepened into a struggle to sweep away neo-colonial capitalism through workers revolution. As we noted during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq:
“A successful workers revolution anywhere in the region would sound the death knell for tottering monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Morocco, nationalist military-dominated regimes (Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Algeria) and imperialist protected oil sheikdoms (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, etc.), while offering the prospect of liberation for Iranian working people who have smarted under the dictatorship of the shah and the mullahs.”
–“U.S. Prepares New Desert Slaughter – Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Iraq!” The Internationalist No. 14, September-October 2002
The key is to build genuinely Leninist communist parties of the working-class vanguard, forged on the Trotskyist program of permanent revolution. ■
The events of the past few weeks in the Middle East, especially in Tunisia and, more so, in Egypt point out the long known fact that when people are oppressed, and are ready to do something about it, it is a magnificent tribute to the human spirit. But that spirit, and that sacrifice, only makes sense if there is some kind of real change. Although the situation today, and I speak only of today, is frankly, disappointing from a socialist’s perspective it nevertheless points the way forward to those necessary socialist conclusions that have been addressed in this space. Clearly a purely democratic (in the old bourgeois European sense) solution is not in the cards. At least not for lasting measures. Leon Trotsky’s now old, very old, but still relevant theory of permanent revolution as an analytical tool has never been more necessary. Or, and here is the real crux of the matter, Lenin’s notion of a vanguard party (seconded, in the end, by Trotsky) to break the impasse has never been more desperately necessary. I have posted commentary from other left-wing sources today in order to stir the kettle on these issues.
********
Mass Revolts Against U.S.-Backed Arab Dictators
Battle over Kasr al-Nil Bridge in Cairo raged for hours on January 28. Demonstrators confronted huge
numbers of riot police, braving water cannon and clouds of tear gas. As night fell, protesters broke
through police lines and took the bridge. (Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
An aging dictator toppled in Tunisia, another is tottering in Egypt: North Africa and the Near East are in turmoil, Washington is worried, Wall Street has the jitters. The world’s eyes are glued on Cairo as battles rage back and forth in the squares of the Egyptian capital and on the bridges across the Nile. With U.S. troops still occupying Iraq and bogged down in a losing war in Afghanistan, suddenly a new spectre is shaking the imperialist world order: revolution by the wage slaves held down by the modern pharaohs. But even the fall of Arab satraps of the U.S. empire will not bring democracy for the downtrodden and oppressed masses until the stranglehold of imperialism is broken. The key is to forge a revolutionary leadership to mobilize the working masses in the struggle to bring down the dictatorship of capital.
For almost a month, unemployed youth and workers in Tunisia demonstrated and struck against police terror. Then on the evening of January 14, only a few hours after thousands of protesters braved police clubs and tear gas in the streets of the capital, Tunis, word spread from cellphone to cellphone that President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had fled to Saudi Arabia. Signs calling for “Ben Ali dégage” (get lost) were replaced by one proclaiming (in English), “Game Over.” In 27 days of protest, they had driven out the tyrant who had ruled Tunisia with an iron fist for 23 years. More than 200 were killed by the regime, but the paralyzing spell of fear of repression was broken. The news raced across North Africa and the Near East at Internet speed: for the first time ever in this region dominated by imperialist-backed regimes, an Arab autocrat had been brought down by the Arab street. Presidents, kings, sheiks and emirs worried that “Tunisian fever” could spread. Millions of their long-suffering subjects hoped it would.
Shortly after, inspired by the Tunisian example, youthful Egyptian activists called a national “Day of Rage” for January 25. They were protesting the rule of President Hosni Mubarak, who has governed Egypt under an “emergency law” for the last 30 years. “Revolution day,” as it soon became known, brought out tens of thousands in Cairo, as well as the industrial cities of Suez and Mahalla, the port of Alexandria and cities around the country. The turnout far exceeded even the organizers’ expectations, the militancy unprecedented. Demonstrators fought riot cops, clambering onto the armored water cannons, blocking windows and turning the nozzles upward. Three days later, hundreds of thousands flooded into the streets, chanting “The people want the regime to fall” and “Overthrow Mubarak!” After a battle for the Kasr al-Nil Bridge that lasted for hours, as night fell the protesters finally broke through the police lines. Soon the nearby headquarters of the National Democratic Party went up in flames.
Leon Trotsky wrote in the preface to his magisterial History of the Russian Revolution, “The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historical events…. [A]t those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new régime.” Today the Tunisian and Egyptian masses have burst onto the scene of history. As we write they are still holding fast, thwarting every attempt by the rulers to return to “normalcy.” That is the first condition for revolution, but only the first. Whether the working people prevail is yet to be decided by the class struggle. The imperialists are trying to rob them of victory with rhetoric about “democracy” and plans for an “orderly transition.” We must mobilize to demand: U.S. imperialism out of the Middle East and Africa!
The mass uprisings (intifadas) are about more than the rule of one or another strongman. Millions throughout the region are fed up with the omnipresent police states and the grinding poverty they have enforced. From Algeria in the west to Jordan in the east and Yemen in the south, tens of thousands of demonstrators are literally defying death at the hands of entrenched regimes, emboldening many more to follow their lead. The pro-Western regimes sitting atop this seething volcano can hear the rumblings, and their imperialist patrons are worried – U.S. president Barack Obama first and foremost. So are the Zionist rulers in Israel, who together with Mubarak in Egypt have acted as Washington’s gendarmes in the Near East. With a population of over 80 million, Egypt is the largest Arab country and pivot to the region, which the Pentagon and White House have declared vital to “American interests.” Revolution in Egypt could shake U.S. imperialist world domination.
Washington Groping for Plan B
Many Tunisians talk proudly of “our revolution,” vowing to defend it against those who are trying to steal it. The Western media quickly dubbed it the “Jasmine Revolution,” recalling the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon that installed a pro-U.S. prime minister (since ousted). Parallels were made to the U.S.-engineered color-coded “revolutions” (orange in Ukraine, rose in Georgia) in countries of the former Soviet Union. By giving it a seal of approval, the imperialists sought to put an end to the agitation. In Egypt, too, demonstrators and Western media alike talk of a revolution, even as the police were beating protesters bloody. But neither feel-good labels nor tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets have stopped the surging crowds. Ruling-class hopes of rapid, cosmetic “regime change” have been dashed on the determination of tens of thousands unemployed and working-class youth who are refusing to quit the battle until the old regimes are gone. From Tunis to Cairo, militants have said, “we are prepared to die for the revolution.” So for the imperialists, it’s time for Plan B. Their problem is they haven’t got one, so they’re improvising.
Step One has been to bring in the military as alleged saviors against the hated police. In Tunisia, army chief General Rachid Ammar reputedly refused an order from Ben Ali to fire on protesters, for which he was cashiered. Within a day, Ammar was back and the Tunisian president and his avaricious wife were on a plane that spirited them off to Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, dumping ground for used-up dictators beginning with Uganda’s Idi Amin. A leading Tunis newspaper splashed a picture of General Rachid Ammar across its front page, the army stood between demonstrators and marauding cops, and marchers put flowers in the barrels of soldiers’ guns. Yet while posing as the guarantor of the “revolution,” the general called on protesters to leave the “new” government of Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi (Ben Ali’s former right-hand man) in peace. The protesters ignored his plea and camped out in downtown Tunis for a week, surrounded by soldiers. On January 29 the police drove them out.
In Egypt, too, the army was brought in after the Central Security Force (CSF) couldn’t control he 100,000-strong crowd in Cairo on January 28. Despite an orgy of violence from the riot cops, firing off volley after volley of tear gas grenades bearing the label “made in U.S.A.,” they were overwhelmed by youth fighting with nothing more than their bare hands and some rocks. In other cities, including Alexandria and Suez, the police were routed by unarmed demonstrators. When the tanks and soldiers arrived, they were often (but not universally) welcomed. But while protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir (Liberation) Square chant “The people and the army are one hand!” militants are worried as the army locks down key points in the Egyptian capital. Soon the police will be back. And everyone is acutely aware that the military has been the backbone of the hated regime throughout Mubarak’s 30-year “emergency” rule.
So in Egypt, Step Two in the plan to safeguard imperialist/capitalist interests is underway: find a “credible” replacement for Mubarak acceptable both to the imperialists and demonstrators. Currently (February 4) Washington is pushing for Oman Suleiman, who as intelligence chief presided over the clandestine “renditions” of prisoners to be tortured in Egypt’s dungeons. But at 75, with four heart attacks already, this Egyptian Dick Cheney may not do the job. The bourgeois opposition in Cairo has coalesced around the figure of Mohammed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who returned to Egypt last year proposing to run for president on a program of “free elections,” period. ElBaradei has been endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been anathema to Mubarak and the U.S., as well as by youthful leaders of the April 6 Movement. To gain “street credibility” in Egypt, this former U.N. bureaucrat has to appear independent of the U.S., so he duly criticized Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for clinging to Mubarak. But while Washington hesitates, it is far from clear that with either Suleiman or ElBaradei as figurehead the U.S. can get the “orderly transition” it seeks.
Obsessed with visions of falling dominoes, the imperialists have been hard at work for weeks redeploying their henchmen to put an end to any dreams of revolution, or even democracy. The liberal Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm (16 January) reported that in Tunisia: “Ahmed al-Khadrawi, an officer in the Tunisian National Guards, said that chief of staff Rasheed Ammar who was removed by Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali four days ago has received last-minute instructions via the US Embassy to take charge of Tunisian affairs if the situation gets out of control.” Which is exactly what Gen. Ammar did. In Egypt, most senior and mid-level military officers have received U.S. training. In fact, Egyptian chief of staff Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan and a delegation were in Washington when the protests broke out. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman Gen. James Cartwright “said he could not discount ‘hallway’ conversations about the protests between the Egyptian and American military commanders” (New York Times, 29 January). Duly briefed, the officers rushed back to Cairo to deal with the protests.
Opportunists Pursue Class Collaboration With Talk of Revolution
Leftists in the imperialist countries have demonstrated in solidarity with the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, justly denouncing Paris’s support up to the last minute for Ben Ali in the former French “protectorate” and calling for an end to Washington’s nearly $2 billion in annual aid to Egypt, mainly in the form of military hardware. At the same time, many pseudo-socialists blithely hailed the “Tunisian Revolution” and are now doing the same over Egypt, as if deposing the leader (which is a start) amounted to overthrowing the system. This recalls the hosannas for an “Arab Revolution” back in the 1960s, when that signified political support for nationalist colonels like Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser’s “socialist” pretensions were only a cover for accumulation of capital by the capitalist state on behalf of a weak bourgeoisie, and were soon abandoned. Mubarak’s military-based regime is in fact the heir of Nasser’s “state capitalism.” The bankruptcy of the bourgeois nationalists (and their leftist backers), unable to resist imperialism and even make a dent in the poverty of the masses, opened the way for Islamic fundamentalists to pose as defenders of the downtrodden.
Mindless cheerleading does not aid the Arab masses in a bitter struggle against their imperialist-backed oppressors and the substitute rulers that the U.S. is seeking to bring in. While liberal and leftist commentators lambaste the “hypocrisy” of U.S. mouthing “support for the legitimate aspirations” of the Egyptian people while clinging to its ally Mubarak, the crisis planners in the State Department, Pentagon and CIA are preparing the “option” of a “people power” operation like they pulled off when Ronald Reagan finally dumped Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. In that case, while the widow Corazon Aquino grabbed the limelight as the symbol of popular defiance of the U.S.-backed dictator, the reins of power passed to Marcos’s defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile and General Fidel Ramos, who saved capitalist rule and imperialist domination from potential revolutionary overthrow. The Filipino left capitulated to the bourgeois “democrat” Aquino behind whom stood the generals. In Tunisia and Egypt today, the army is being prepared for such a role, civilian figurehead to be determined.
While the media report the vast outpouring of opposition to Mubarak “from all walks of life” – rich and poor, Muslim and Copt, old and young, etc. – powerful forces are maneuvering for position. The idea that the military is or could be “friends of the people” is a deadly illusion which must be fought tooth and nail: it is the army which will impose a new “democratic” capitalist regime. The Muslim Brotherhood is biding its time, seeking to expand its influence over the mobilizations while keeping a lid on its slogans, in order to avoid confrontation with the U.S. at this point. Whether it would cooperate with imperialism to suppress Marxists, as it did after World War II, and even slaughter the left as Ayatollah Khomeini did in Iran in 1979 (despite opportunist leftists’ delusionary hailing of the Islamic “revolution”), or pretend to be “anti-imperialist,” the Brotherhood is an arch-reactionary anti-communist force. Washington uses the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism to justify its “global war on terror,” but it is quite prepared to deal with the Islamists – witness its long-standing alliance with the Wahabist Saudi monarchy – in the interests of counterrevolution.
In fact, all these bourgeois forces – the military, the Islamists, traditional conservatives and liberals – would maintain dictatorial rule over the Egyptian masses. It will take nothing less than a revolution that overthrows capitalism to sweep away these dictatorships, for any pretense of “democracy” in the semi-colonies can only be a sham. To pretend that what has already been achieved in Tunisia and Egypt amounts to a revolution is a swindle by the imperialists, who use such rhetoric to demobilize the masses. When this is pushed by leftists, it only demonstrates their inveterate tailism, chasing after whatever is popular. The dictator may be gone or leaving, but the dictatorship remains. These regimes rested on a whole edifice of corporatist rule – including omnipresent state “parties,” police, secret police, military and “union” apparatuses – all of which remain intact. The torturers are still in place, as is the army of police informers, etc. Yet the depth of the oppression and strength of the rage against decades of police-state domination is such that the masses have – so far – refused to go home until the regime is brought down.
This has opened a potentially revolutionary situation in Tunisia and Egypt, as the rulers are no longer able to rule in the old way and the ruled refuse to go on “living” in the old way. The uprisings could quickly turn into insurrectionary struggles. In Tunisia, which has been eclipsed in the headlines by events in Egypt, thousands demonstrated in the capital on January 27 against the “transitional” government, with general strikes in Sfax and other interior cities. For now, the holders of state power, however tenuous their hold, are counting on wearing down the masses in struggle. They were caught unawares by the determination of the youth, but historically, in the absence of a revolutionary leadership, such tactics often work, as the pressures of daily life and economic hardship eat away at the will to struggle. As the dictatorships begin to crumble, the protesters are crying out for leadership. The New York Times (30 January), not usually given to reporting such sentiment, quoted a “veteran dissident” in Jordan saying, “People want their freedom, people want their bread. People want to stop these lousy dictators from looting their countries. I’d follow anybody. I’d follow Vladimir Lenin if he came and led me.”
Revolutionary Leadership Requires a Revolutionary Program
The key issue of revolutionary leadership comes down to a question of program. Various would-be socialists talk of a “democratic revolution” throughout the region, in order to justify class-collaborationist alliances with “democratic” bourgeois forces. Other leftists talk of a “radical redistribution of wealth.” But neither democracy nor the elimination of poverty are possible without expropriating the ruling class and smashing the yoke of imperialism. In Tunisia there are widespread demands for a constituent assembly. In a country where the president won election by “votes” of 99.27%, 99.4%, 94.5% and (as a show of liberalism) by 89.6%, calls for a constitutional assembly are appropriate. But who shall convoke such an assembly? The present “transitional government” is nothing but the old regime in new clothes. For any semblance of democracy, it is necessary to first overthrow the dictatorship. Thus Trotskyists call for a revolutionary constituent assembly at the same time as we fight for the seizure of power by the working class, supported by the urban and rural poor.
In Egypt as well, where revolutionary democratic demands must likewise be part of a program for workers revolution, the struggle against the military-based regime must include shattering the structures of corporatist control which chained all sectors of society to the state. Thus the struggle for trade unions independent of state control is key. (How this is carried out may differ: in Egypt the official trade unions were simply government agencies, whereas in Tunisia there was significant opposition to the Ben Ali regime in certain unions and regional federations, which played a leading role in the uprising.) In a social/economic context where massive youth unemployment was a detonator of the upheaval, workers should demand jobs for all, by dividing up the available work among all those seeking it, drastically reducing the workweek with no loss in pay. The fact that university graduates were among the hardest-hit by joblessness underscores the need for a socialist planned economy.
Tunisia under Ben Ali and Egypt under Mubarak were real police states. As anti-regime demonstrators are subjected to murderous assault by police commandos and party militias, it is urgently necessary to form armed workers self-defense squads. The people’s committees which have arisen in both countries as the police disappeared could give rise in working-class areas to such bodies of proletarian democracy. The struggle to abolish the special police forces will be another key front in the struggle to dismantle the dictatorships. And a genuine struggle for democracy for the oppressed must include the formation of people’s tribunals to try the regime criminals, from those who looted the state treasury to the police torturers and murderers – and those who issued their orders. To hell with toothless “truth commissions” as in South Africa that let the murderers go free! But these struggles against the mechanisms and legacy of bonapartist, police-state rule can only be realized through revolutionary struggle against capitalism.
As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels underlined in the Communist Manifesto, every serious class struggle is a political struggle. It is vital to fight for the revolutionary independence of the working class from the bourgeoisie, opposing all political alliances with capitalist parties and politicians, not only with Islamic fundamentalists such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Ennahda in Tunisia, but also with liberals such as ElBaradei. Following the Stalinist dogmas of the “popular front” and “revolution in stages,” reformist Communist parties in both countries are desperately seeking to form such blocs – even, in the Tunisian case, where they can’t (so far) find a willing bourgeois partner. Such class-collaborationist coalitions will only serve to preserve semi-colonial capitalism and block genuine revolution. It is above all necessary to build a genuinely Bolshevik communist party, to lead the struggle for a workers and peasants government based on workers councils, proceeding from democratic tasks to socialist revolution.
This must be seen as an international struggle, to be extended throughout the region and to Europe as well. Nationalism, even in leftist and “socialist” garb, has been the downfall of revolutionary struggle in the Near East. The fight against the Egyptian and Tunisian dictatorships must include the struggle to defeat the imperialist war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – including closing the Suez Canal to the imperialists’ warships and supplies. Any revolution in Egypt must defend the Palestinian people under the Zionist jackboot, starting by dismantling the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza. While both the Palestinian nationalists of Fatah and the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas have prohibited demonstrations of solidarity with the uprising in Egypt, proletariat revolutionaries should fight for an Arab/Hebrew Palestinian workers state, as part of a socialist federation of the Near East. The fight for a socialist federation of the Maghreb (North Africa), can extend the struggle to Algeria, where jobless youth clashed with the military and police on January 7-8, and to Morocco, where support for independence of the Sahrawi people, will be key to bringing down the U.S.-backed monarchy.
You didn’t need a crystal ball to see this crisis coming. Egypt has been shaken by militant labor struggles since 2007 in the textile center of Mahalla al-Kubra and elsewhere (see “Egypt: Mubarak Regime Tottering,” The Internationalist No. 31, Summer 2010). Tunisia saw a revolt by unemployed workers in the mining region of Gafsa in 2008, which was brutally put down by Ben Ali. The upheaval in Tunisia and Egypt may indeed have begun a revolutionary overthrow of the old order of deeply corrupt imperialist-backed regimes – but only if the present intifadas are deepened into a struggle to sweep away neo-colonial capitalism through workers revolution. As we noted during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq:
“A successful workers revolution anywhere in the region would sound the death knell for tottering monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Morocco, nationalist military-dominated regimes (Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Algeria) and imperialist protected oil sheikdoms (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, etc.), while offering the prospect of liberation for Iranian working people who have smarted under the dictatorship of the shah and the mullahs.”
–“U.S. Prepares New Desert Slaughter – Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Iraq!” The Internationalist No. 14, September-October 2002
The key is to build genuinely Leninist communist parties of the working-class vanguard, forged on the Trotskyist program of permanent revolution. ■
*Those Black Militants Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- The Soldiers Of The 2nd South Carolina Volunteers (American Civil War)
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for The 2nd South Carolina Volunteers.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
From "Workers Vanguard"-Egypt: Mass Upheaval Challenges Dictatorship
Markin comment:
The events of the past few weeks in the Middle East, especially in Tunisia and, more so, in Egypt point out the long known fact that when people are oppressed, and are ready to do something about it, it is a magnificent tribute to the human spirit. But that spirit, and that sacrifice, only makes sense if there is some kind of real change. Although the situation today, and I speak only of today, is frankly, disappointing from a socialist’s perspective it nevertheless points the way forward to those necessary socialist conclusions that have been addressed in this space. Clearly a purely democratic (in the old bourgeois European sense) solution is not in the cards. At least not for lasting measures. Leon Trotsky’s now old, very old, but still relevant theory of permanent revolution as an analytical tool has never been more necessary. Or, and here is the real crux of the matter, Lenin’s notion of a vanguard party (seconded, in the end, by Trotsky) to break the impasse has never been more desperately necessary. I have posted commentary from other left-wing sources today in order to stir the kettle on these issues.
*********
Workers Vanguard No. 973
4 February 2011
For Permanent Revolution Across North Africa!
Egypt: Mass Upheaval Challenges Dictatorship
For Revolutionary Workers Parties!
Down With U.S. Aid to Egypt, Israel!
FEBRUARY 1—As we go to press, the bonapartist capitalist regime of Hosni Mubarak—a strategically important client state of U.S. imperialism—is tottering in the face of an unprecedented wave of mass protests. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square and throughout the country, protesters chant: “The people demand the fall of the regime.” Mubarak’s appointment last week of a new set of ministers, naming longtime cronies and former military commanders as vice president and prime minister, only further inflamed opposition to his dictatorship.
Well over a million rallied in Tahrir Square today, while hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Alexandria, Suez and other cities in a nationwide stay-away strike. Tonight, Mubarak announced his “concession”: he will not seek re-election this fall(!). In response, crowds in Tahrir Square angrily chanted, “We won’t leave!”
One United Nations official estimates that as many as 300 have been killed and over 3,000 injured since protests broke out on January 25. Nevertheless, within days the massive demonstrations overwhelmed police lines in a number of cities. Countless police stations, as well as the Cairo headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), were reduced to burned-out rubble. The widely reviled police withdrew from the scene, although they have since been redeployed. The shaken government then mobilized the military—the core of Egypt’s bonapartist state apparatus—to try to control the streets. The army has officially declared that it will not fire on protesters. But make no mistake: there remains the dire threat that whatever happens to Mubarak, Egypt’s bourgeois rulers will demand fierce military repression to restore and maintain capitalist “order.”
The upheaval has drawn in virtually every layer of the society—unemployed youth, university students, workers, shopkeepers, professionals. Overwhelmingly, their demands are for Mubarak to go and for democratic elections and other reforms. The situation has also created an opening for the reactionary Muslim Brotherhood, which initially abstained from the protests but called for its followers to join them on Friday, January 28. With the ports, banks and other businesses closed, the economy has ground to a halt, while prices for scarce food supplies are soaring. As for the filthy rich at the top, they’re either hunkered down in their gated mansions or flying off to Dubai.
There is no question that the U.S. and other imperialist powers have been shaken by the dramatic events in Egypt, the most populous Arab country with the largest working-class concentration in North Africa and the Near East. The arrogant imperialists, who act as though nothing can stand in the way of their rampages around the world, are now faced with threats to the survival of crucial client regimes. The Obama administration desperately seeks to quell the upheavals in North Africa and prevent their further spread. Jordan and Yemen, an outpost in Washington’s “war on terror,” have already seen mass anti-government demonstrations (dominated by Islamic opposition movements). Today, Jordan’s King Abdullah fired his cabinet. Meanwhile, student demonstrations have begun in Sudan. What is particularly remarkable about the mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt is that in a region long dominated by religious and ethnic strife, they have centered on secular-democratic demands, spurred by increasingly intolerable conditions of life.
The immediate spark for the upsurge in Egypt was the mass protest movement that overthrew the Ben Ali dictatorship in Tunisia. But there was ample social tinder ready to be ignited. With nearly half the Egyptian population scraping by on $2 a day or less, the last few years have seen a wave of militant strike activity. Unemployment was massive even before the outbreak of the international financial crisis. Rural areas, especially in southern Egypt and the northern Nile Delta, are marked by excruciating poverty, with landless peasants at the mercy of ruthless landlords. Corruption among the ruling elite is notorious. Expressions of discontent are regularly met with brutal police beatings, torture and imprisonment.
The unraveling of the Mubarak dictatorship has thrown its U.S. imperialist patrons into crisis mode. Every year, Washington pumps $1.3 billion in military aid into the regime, the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel. Egypt has been a linchpin of U.S. imperialist interests in the Near East, especially since 1979 when it became the first Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel. The Egyptian regime has long served as an accomplice to the Zionist state in oppressing the Palestinian people, currently by policing the southern border of the Gaza Strip. Down with U.S. aid to Egypt, Israel! Defend the Palestinian people!
Having declared the Mubarak regime “stable” at the onset of the protests, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was compelled to shift her approach as the upheaval spread, intoning about “the universal rights of the Egyptian people.” Demonstrators were hardly assuaged, with many holding up tear gas canisters with “Made in the U.S.A.” labels for reporters. Washington is now talking about an “orderly transition.” Meanwhile, it’s finalizing “plans to evacuate thousands of US nationals to ‘safe havens’ in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus” (Financial Times, 31 January). A much-touted “transitional” figure is Mohamed ElBaradei, a bourgeois liberal who helped work out the 1978 Camp David Accords that normalized relations between Egypt and Israel and later headed the International Atomic Energy Agency, where he helped ensure that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was disarmed in the face of U.S. war preparations.
Working Class Must Take the Lead
What is urgently posed in Egypt today is that the powerful proletariat—the only class with the social power to overturn the brutal and decrepit capitalist order—emerge as the leader of all the oppressed masses. The current upsurge comes amid a years-long strike wave that historian Joel Beinin described as “the largest social movement Egypt has witnessed in more than half a century” (The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt, February 2010). His study tallied an average of 194 strikes and sit-ins per year from 2004 through 2008, nearly four times the rate of the previous three years.
The spike in factory occupations, strikes and demonstrations started in 2004 when the government stepped up the pace of privatization of state enterprises. The spearhead of this movement has been the workers at Mahalla al-Kobra textile mills, the country’s largest industrial complex with some 40,000 workers. In April 2008, as people groaned under soaring food prices, a planned strike was headed off by a massive show of police force. This touched off two days of rioting in which three people died by police fire. After the government granted the workers a bonus, a close adviser to Mubarak haughtily and fatuously told the Washington Post (27 September 2009): “Once you give more money to those people, it’s over.”
Mahalla al-Kobra workers walked out on the very first day of the current protests, directly opposing the regime for the first time since the start of the strike wave. Workers in Suez, a port city and oil refining center, have also been out from the beginning. Police there showed no mercy in trying to smash the protests. In an op-ed piece in the New York Times (31 January), Mansoura Ez-Eldin cites a message from a friend describing Suez as a war zone: “Its streets were burned and destroyed, dead bodies were strewn everywhere.” But the city’s working-class residents fought back.
The often exemplary militancy of Egyptian workers has repeatedly run up against the treachery of the regime’s bought-and-paid-for officials of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), who are integrated into the capitalist state apparatus. At the 1957 founding of the federation that would become the ETUF, its entire leadership was appointed by the regime of bourgeois-nationalist strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser. For over two decades, the president of the ETUF usually doubled as Minister of Labor. Today, virtually every member of the ETUF executive committee is a member of the ruling NDP; ETUF president Hussein Megawer was head of the NDP parliamentary bloc and currently chairs the parliamentary Committee on Manpower. Last week, he instructed union officials to head off any labor demonstrations. As police were shooting protesters down on January 25, the ETUF issued a statement congratulating the Interior Ministry in celebration of “Police Day”!
In the course of the recent strike wave, Egyptian workers have acted in defiance of the regime’s “labor lieutenants.” Because strikes must by law be approved by the ETUF leadership, every one that took place was illegal. Often the workers elected strike committees to provide leadership, commonly raising the demand for independent unions. This points to the potential for broad organs of working-class struggle to emerge out of the current political turmoil, such as factory committees and workers defense guards as well as neighborhood committees to oversee the distribution of food and to organize self-defense against the police thugs and their criminal accomplices. All this underscores the need to fight for the independence of the working class from the capitalist state and all bourgeois political forces.
For a Leninist Vanguard Party!
As in Tunisia, what is necessary in Egypt is the forging of a revolutionary party that can lead the fight for a workers and peasants government. Such a party would be, in the words of Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, a “tribune of the people,” fighting against the oppression of peasants, women, youth, homosexuals and ethnic and religious minorities.
A Leninist vanguard party would champion women’s emancipation in Egypt, where “honor killings” and female genital mutilation are common practices, especially in the rural areas where some 60 percent of the population lives. It would also actively defend the rights of the Coptic Christian minority, which suffers discrimination and violent persecution at the hands of the state, abetted by pogromist incitement by Islamic fundamentalists. In December, when Copts protested against the government’s refusal to allow them to set up a church in Cairo, two were shot dead by riot police. This gave a green light to the bombing of an Alexandria church on New Year’s Eve that killed 23 people. Joint protests by Copts and Muslims against the bombing were attacked by riot cops.
A key task for revolutionary Marxists is to combat the widespread nationalist ideology that is evident among the protesters waving Egyptian flags and embracing the army as the supposed friend of the exploited and the oppressed. Many rank-and-file soldiers of the conscript army have fraternized with demonstrators, even allowing them to paint anti-Mubarak graffiti on their tanks. But it is the military brass—subsidized and trained by the U.S. imperialists—that is calling the shots.
Illusions in the army run deep in Egypt, where military officers led by Nasser overthrew the despised British-backed monarchy in 1952. While Nasser, with the support of the Stalinist Communist Party, would lay claim to leadership of a mythical “Arab socialism,” he aimed from the beginning to crush the combative working class. One month after coming to power, Nasser seized on a textile workers strike in Kafr Al-Dawwar near Alexandria to deliver a dramatic blow to the workers movement. Two strike leaders were hanged on the factory grounds, the Communists were banned and strikes were outlawed. Subsequently, Nasser turned on his Communist supporters with a vengeance, rounding up almost every known leftist in the country.
Even as their comrades were beaten to death or left to die for lack of medical aid, the Stalinists maintained their political support to this bonapartist ruler, officially liquidating into his Arab Socialist Union in 1965. Stalinist parties throughout the Near East and North Africa sacrificed their proletarian bases on the altar of bourgeois nationalism, betraying historic opportunities for socialist revolution. This opened the door to reactionary Islamic fundamentalists like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood—a deadly enemy of women, Copts, secularists and leftists—to posture as the only firm opponents of the unbearable status quo. While suffering severe repression, the Muslim Brotherhood has also been tolerated, and at times promoted, by successive Egyptian regimes. Mubarak has often silenced his opponents by claiming that if not for him, the Brotherhood would rule Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood plays little role in the workers movement but is heavily entrenched in the lumpenproletariat of the impoverished slums and among professionals and other petty-bourgeois layers. Many protesters today say that they would oppose the Brotherhood coming to power. Nevertheless, its emergence in the protests points to the threat that it could win a hearing among the desperate masses. The need to politically combat the forces of Islamic reaction was highlighted by the events in Iran in 1978-79, when the Shi’ite clergy under Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded in subordinating to its reactionary agenda a powerful wave of opposition to the hated Shah that included the organizations of the working class.
After having been supported by virtually every left group in Iran, Khomeini unleashed a murderous wave of terror against worker militants, leftists, Kurds, unveiled women and homosexuals. Uniquely on the left, the international Spartacist tendency, predecessor to the International Communist League, declared: Down with the Shah! Don’t bow to Khomeini! For workers revolution in Iran! In regard to Egypt today, we say: Down with Mubarak! No to ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood! Workers to power!
It is vitally important for leftists and proletarian militants to study the example of the Bolshevik Party, which provided the necessary leadership for the working class in Russia in 1917. As soviets (workers councils) re-emerged with the fall of the tsar in the February Revolution, Lenin’s Bolsheviks raised the call “All power to the Soviets,” opposing any political support to the bourgeois Provisional Government. Amid rapidly growing opposition to the slaughter of working-class and peasant soldiers in the interimperialist World War I, soviets spread to the peasantry, which was in open rebellion against the landlords, and into the military as well. Under the influence of the organized working class, the soldiers councils served to set the worker and peasant ranks of the military against the bourgeois officer corps. Following the Bolshevik-led October Revolution, the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers deputies became the organs of the new proletarian state power.
As elaborated in the accompanying article on Tunisia, revolutionary Marxists, based on Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, must put forward transitional demands linking the masses’ democratic aspirations to the struggle for proletarian power and for its international extension. Out of the ferment in Egypt, the International Communist League seeks to cohere the nucleus of a Leninist-Trotskyist party, the indispensible instrument for the victory of proletarian revolution.
The events of the past few weeks in the Middle East, especially in Tunisia and, more so, in Egypt point out the long known fact that when people are oppressed, and are ready to do something about it, it is a magnificent tribute to the human spirit. But that spirit, and that sacrifice, only makes sense if there is some kind of real change. Although the situation today, and I speak only of today, is frankly, disappointing from a socialist’s perspective it nevertheless points the way forward to those necessary socialist conclusions that have been addressed in this space. Clearly a purely democratic (in the old bourgeois European sense) solution is not in the cards. At least not for lasting measures. Leon Trotsky’s now old, very old, but still relevant theory of permanent revolution as an analytical tool has never been more necessary. Or, and here is the real crux of the matter, Lenin’s notion of a vanguard party (seconded, in the end, by Trotsky) to break the impasse has never been more desperately necessary. I have posted commentary from other left-wing sources today in order to stir the kettle on these issues.
*********
Workers Vanguard No. 973
4 February 2011
For Permanent Revolution Across North Africa!
Egypt: Mass Upheaval Challenges Dictatorship
For Revolutionary Workers Parties!
Down With U.S. Aid to Egypt, Israel!
FEBRUARY 1—As we go to press, the bonapartist capitalist regime of Hosni Mubarak—a strategically important client state of U.S. imperialism—is tottering in the face of an unprecedented wave of mass protests. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square and throughout the country, protesters chant: “The people demand the fall of the regime.” Mubarak’s appointment last week of a new set of ministers, naming longtime cronies and former military commanders as vice president and prime minister, only further inflamed opposition to his dictatorship.
Well over a million rallied in Tahrir Square today, while hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Alexandria, Suez and other cities in a nationwide stay-away strike. Tonight, Mubarak announced his “concession”: he will not seek re-election this fall(!). In response, crowds in Tahrir Square angrily chanted, “We won’t leave!”
One United Nations official estimates that as many as 300 have been killed and over 3,000 injured since protests broke out on January 25. Nevertheless, within days the massive demonstrations overwhelmed police lines in a number of cities. Countless police stations, as well as the Cairo headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), were reduced to burned-out rubble. The widely reviled police withdrew from the scene, although they have since been redeployed. The shaken government then mobilized the military—the core of Egypt’s bonapartist state apparatus—to try to control the streets. The army has officially declared that it will not fire on protesters. But make no mistake: there remains the dire threat that whatever happens to Mubarak, Egypt’s bourgeois rulers will demand fierce military repression to restore and maintain capitalist “order.”
The upheaval has drawn in virtually every layer of the society—unemployed youth, university students, workers, shopkeepers, professionals. Overwhelmingly, their demands are for Mubarak to go and for democratic elections and other reforms. The situation has also created an opening for the reactionary Muslim Brotherhood, which initially abstained from the protests but called for its followers to join them on Friday, January 28. With the ports, banks and other businesses closed, the economy has ground to a halt, while prices for scarce food supplies are soaring. As for the filthy rich at the top, they’re either hunkered down in their gated mansions or flying off to Dubai.
There is no question that the U.S. and other imperialist powers have been shaken by the dramatic events in Egypt, the most populous Arab country with the largest working-class concentration in North Africa and the Near East. The arrogant imperialists, who act as though nothing can stand in the way of their rampages around the world, are now faced with threats to the survival of crucial client regimes. The Obama administration desperately seeks to quell the upheavals in North Africa and prevent their further spread. Jordan and Yemen, an outpost in Washington’s “war on terror,” have already seen mass anti-government demonstrations (dominated by Islamic opposition movements). Today, Jordan’s King Abdullah fired his cabinet. Meanwhile, student demonstrations have begun in Sudan. What is particularly remarkable about the mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt is that in a region long dominated by religious and ethnic strife, they have centered on secular-democratic demands, spurred by increasingly intolerable conditions of life.
The immediate spark for the upsurge in Egypt was the mass protest movement that overthrew the Ben Ali dictatorship in Tunisia. But there was ample social tinder ready to be ignited. With nearly half the Egyptian population scraping by on $2 a day or less, the last few years have seen a wave of militant strike activity. Unemployment was massive even before the outbreak of the international financial crisis. Rural areas, especially in southern Egypt and the northern Nile Delta, are marked by excruciating poverty, with landless peasants at the mercy of ruthless landlords. Corruption among the ruling elite is notorious. Expressions of discontent are regularly met with brutal police beatings, torture and imprisonment.
The unraveling of the Mubarak dictatorship has thrown its U.S. imperialist patrons into crisis mode. Every year, Washington pumps $1.3 billion in military aid into the regime, the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel. Egypt has been a linchpin of U.S. imperialist interests in the Near East, especially since 1979 when it became the first Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel. The Egyptian regime has long served as an accomplice to the Zionist state in oppressing the Palestinian people, currently by policing the southern border of the Gaza Strip. Down with U.S. aid to Egypt, Israel! Defend the Palestinian people!
Having declared the Mubarak regime “stable” at the onset of the protests, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was compelled to shift her approach as the upheaval spread, intoning about “the universal rights of the Egyptian people.” Demonstrators were hardly assuaged, with many holding up tear gas canisters with “Made in the U.S.A.” labels for reporters. Washington is now talking about an “orderly transition.” Meanwhile, it’s finalizing “plans to evacuate thousands of US nationals to ‘safe havens’ in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus” (Financial Times, 31 January). A much-touted “transitional” figure is Mohamed ElBaradei, a bourgeois liberal who helped work out the 1978 Camp David Accords that normalized relations between Egypt and Israel and later headed the International Atomic Energy Agency, where he helped ensure that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was disarmed in the face of U.S. war preparations.
Working Class Must Take the Lead
What is urgently posed in Egypt today is that the powerful proletariat—the only class with the social power to overturn the brutal and decrepit capitalist order—emerge as the leader of all the oppressed masses. The current upsurge comes amid a years-long strike wave that historian Joel Beinin described as “the largest social movement Egypt has witnessed in more than half a century” (The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt, February 2010). His study tallied an average of 194 strikes and sit-ins per year from 2004 through 2008, nearly four times the rate of the previous three years.
The spike in factory occupations, strikes and demonstrations started in 2004 when the government stepped up the pace of privatization of state enterprises. The spearhead of this movement has been the workers at Mahalla al-Kobra textile mills, the country’s largest industrial complex with some 40,000 workers. In April 2008, as people groaned under soaring food prices, a planned strike was headed off by a massive show of police force. This touched off two days of rioting in which three people died by police fire. After the government granted the workers a bonus, a close adviser to Mubarak haughtily and fatuously told the Washington Post (27 September 2009): “Once you give more money to those people, it’s over.”
Mahalla al-Kobra workers walked out on the very first day of the current protests, directly opposing the regime for the first time since the start of the strike wave. Workers in Suez, a port city and oil refining center, have also been out from the beginning. Police there showed no mercy in trying to smash the protests. In an op-ed piece in the New York Times (31 January), Mansoura Ez-Eldin cites a message from a friend describing Suez as a war zone: “Its streets were burned and destroyed, dead bodies were strewn everywhere.” But the city’s working-class residents fought back.
The often exemplary militancy of Egyptian workers has repeatedly run up against the treachery of the regime’s bought-and-paid-for officials of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), who are integrated into the capitalist state apparatus. At the 1957 founding of the federation that would become the ETUF, its entire leadership was appointed by the regime of bourgeois-nationalist strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser. For over two decades, the president of the ETUF usually doubled as Minister of Labor. Today, virtually every member of the ETUF executive committee is a member of the ruling NDP; ETUF president Hussein Megawer was head of the NDP parliamentary bloc and currently chairs the parliamentary Committee on Manpower. Last week, he instructed union officials to head off any labor demonstrations. As police were shooting protesters down on January 25, the ETUF issued a statement congratulating the Interior Ministry in celebration of “Police Day”!
In the course of the recent strike wave, Egyptian workers have acted in defiance of the regime’s “labor lieutenants.” Because strikes must by law be approved by the ETUF leadership, every one that took place was illegal. Often the workers elected strike committees to provide leadership, commonly raising the demand for independent unions. This points to the potential for broad organs of working-class struggle to emerge out of the current political turmoil, such as factory committees and workers defense guards as well as neighborhood committees to oversee the distribution of food and to organize self-defense against the police thugs and their criminal accomplices. All this underscores the need to fight for the independence of the working class from the capitalist state and all bourgeois political forces.
For a Leninist Vanguard Party!
As in Tunisia, what is necessary in Egypt is the forging of a revolutionary party that can lead the fight for a workers and peasants government. Such a party would be, in the words of Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, a “tribune of the people,” fighting against the oppression of peasants, women, youth, homosexuals and ethnic and religious minorities.
A Leninist vanguard party would champion women’s emancipation in Egypt, where “honor killings” and female genital mutilation are common practices, especially in the rural areas where some 60 percent of the population lives. It would also actively defend the rights of the Coptic Christian minority, which suffers discrimination and violent persecution at the hands of the state, abetted by pogromist incitement by Islamic fundamentalists. In December, when Copts protested against the government’s refusal to allow them to set up a church in Cairo, two were shot dead by riot police. This gave a green light to the bombing of an Alexandria church on New Year’s Eve that killed 23 people. Joint protests by Copts and Muslims against the bombing were attacked by riot cops.
A key task for revolutionary Marxists is to combat the widespread nationalist ideology that is evident among the protesters waving Egyptian flags and embracing the army as the supposed friend of the exploited and the oppressed. Many rank-and-file soldiers of the conscript army have fraternized with demonstrators, even allowing them to paint anti-Mubarak graffiti on their tanks. But it is the military brass—subsidized and trained by the U.S. imperialists—that is calling the shots.
Illusions in the army run deep in Egypt, where military officers led by Nasser overthrew the despised British-backed monarchy in 1952. While Nasser, with the support of the Stalinist Communist Party, would lay claim to leadership of a mythical “Arab socialism,” he aimed from the beginning to crush the combative working class. One month after coming to power, Nasser seized on a textile workers strike in Kafr Al-Dawwar near Alexandria to deliver a dramatic blow to the workers movement. Two strike leaders were hanged on the factory grounds, the Communists were banned and strikes were outlawed. Subsequently, Nasser turned on his Communist supporters with a vengeance, rounding up almost every known leftist in the country.
Even as their comrades were beaten to death or left to die for lack of medical aid, the Stalinists maintained their political support to this bonapartist ruler, officially liquidating into his Arab Socialist Union in 1965. Stalinist parties throughout the Near East and North Africa sacrificed their proletarian bases on the altar of bourgeois nationalism, betraying historic opportunities for socialist revolution. This opened the door to reactionary Islamic fundamentalists like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood—a deadly enemy of women, Copts, secularists and leftists—to posture as the only firm opponents of the unbearable status quo. While suffering severe repression, the Muslim Brotherhood has also been tolerated, and at times promoted, by successive Egyptian regimes. Mubarak has often silenced his opponents by claiming that if not for him, the Brotherhood would rule Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood plays little role in the workers movement but is heavily entrenched in the lumpenproletariat of the impoverished slums and among professionals and other petty-bourgeois layers. Many protesters today say that they would oppose the Brotherhood coming to power. Nevertheless, its emergence in the protests points to the threat that it could win a hearing among the desperate masses. The need to politically combat the forces of Islamic reaction was highlighted by the events in Iran in 1978-79, when the Shi’ite clergy under Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded in subordinating to its reactionary agenda a powerful wave of opposition to the hated Shah that included the organizations of the working class.
After having been supported by virtually every left group in Iran, Khomeini unleashed a murderous wave of terror against worker militants, leftists, Kurds, unveiled women and homosexuals. Uniquely on the left, the international Spartacist tendency, predecessor to the International Communist League, declared: Down with the Shah! Don’t bow to Khomeini! For workers revolution in Iran! In regard to Egypt today, we say: Down with Mubarak! No to ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood! Workers to power!
It is vitally important for leftists and proletarian militants to study the example of the Bolshevik Party, which provided the necessary leadership for the working class in Russia in 1917. As soviets (workers councils) re-emerged with the fall of the tsar in the February Revolution, Lenin’s Bolsheviks raised the call “All power to the Soviets,” opposing any political support to the bourgeois Provisional Government. Amid rapidly growing opposition to the slaughter of working-class and peasant soldiers in the interimperialist World War I, soviets spread to the peasantry, which was in open rebellion against the landlords, and into the military as well. Under the influence of the organized working class, the soldiers councils served to set the worker and peasant ranks of the military against the bourgeois officer corps. Following the Bolshevik-led October Revolution, the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers deputies became the organs of the new proletarian state power.
As elaborated in the accompanying article on Tunisia, revolutionary Marxists, based on Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, must put forward transitional demands linking the masses’ democratic aspirations to the struggle for proletarian power and for its international extension. Out of the ferment in Egypt, the International Communist League seeks to cohere the nucleus of a Leninist-Trotskyist party, the indispensible instrument for the victory of proletarian revolution.
From The "Renegade Eye" Blog- From In Defense Of Marxism On Egypt- Hands Off Egypt!
Markin comment:
The events of the past few weeks in the Middle East, especially in Tunisia and, more so, in Egypt point out the long known fact that when people are oppressed, and are ready to do something about it, it is a magnificent tribute to the human spirit. But that spirit, and that sacrifice, only makes sense if there is some kind of real change. Although the situation today, and I speak only of today, is frankly, disappointing from a socialist’s perspective it nevertheless points the way forward to those necessary socialist conclusions that have been addressed in this space. Clearly a purely democratic (in the old bourgeois European sense) solution is not in the cards. At least not for lasting measures. Leon Trotsky’s now old, very old, but still relevant theory of permanent revolution as an analytical tool has never been more necessary. Or, and here is the real crux of the matter, Lenin’s notion of a vanguard party (seconded, in the end, by Trotsky) to break the impasse has never been more desperately necessary. I have posted commentary from other left-wing sources today in order to stir the kettle on these issues.
******
Egyptian workers take the lead
Written by Alan Woods
Wednesday, 09 February 2011
There are situations in which mass demonstrations are sufficient to bring about the fall of a regime. But Egypt is not one of them. All the efforts of the masses to bring about the overthrow of Mubarak through demonstrations and street protests have so far failed to achieve their principal objective.
Tahrir Square, 8 February. Photo: omarroberthamiltonThe protests have left three hundred people dead and thousands more injured. They have forced the cabinet to resign, brought the army onto the streets and paralyzed Egypt’s economy. But it had not yet succeeded in overthrowing the government. On the other hand, the latter had not succeeded in re-establishing control. By Monday the situation in Egypt appeared to have reached a kind of stalemate.
But every time the regime thinks it has succeeded in regaining the initiative, their hopes are dashed by the masses on the streets. Contrary to all expectations, the movement is continuing to advance and is reaching a new high point. Far from subsiding, the fury against Mubarak is increasing. Egyptian society is becoming sharply polarised.
All the commentators were predicting that the movement was in decline. But the dramatic entry of the Egyptian proletariat on the stage of history marks a turning point in the destinies of the Revolution. Egypt is now being shaken to its very foundations by a mighty movement of the working class. In one city after another there are strikes and occupations. The revolution is moving onto a higher level.
Yesterday Ahram Onlin reported:
“Labour protests escalated in Suez with textile workers joining in and demonstrating with 2000 others demanding their right to work. Ali Fuad, a worker at the station, said: ‘We are having a sit-in today to demand our rights, which are in the text of the workers' law, our right to obtain the annual increase in salary which the management refuses to give us so we strike with all the laws that uphold the right of workers.’
“Mohamed Abdel-Hakam factory, head of the factory syndicate, confirmed workers have continued their sit-in for a third day.
“In the city of Suez itself, around 2000 youths demonstrated to demand the chance to work. Amid expectations of growing labour protests in Suez, officials from the local council have attempted to meet the protesters and end the crisis.
“In Mahalla, more than 1500 workers of the Abu El-Subaa company in Mahalla demonstrated this morning, cutting the road, demanding their salaries and stating that it is not the first time. The workers have staged repeated sit-ins for two years as they demand their rights and mediation between the workers and the company's owner, Ismail Abu El-Subaa.
“More than 2000 workers from the Sigma pharmaceutical company in the city of Quesna have gone on strike demanding higher wages and benefits that have been suspended for years. The workers are also calling for the dismissal of managers who have ill-treated workers.”
New layers are being drawn into the struggle not just by the day but by the hour. The same report says:
“Around 5000 unemployed youths demonstrated this morning in front of Aswan governorate building, which they tried to storm. The protesters chanted their demand that the governor be dismissed.
“In Kom Ombo, around 1000 protesters called for the president, Hosni Mubarak, as security remained absent.
“Dozens of liver patients gathered in the governorate of Menoufeya at noon today over the lateness of their vaccinations. They were due to receive their treatment from the Hilal hospital three days ago. Dr. Murhaf El-Mougy, Menoufeya's general director of medical insurance, stated that the governorate was late in receiving the vaccination from its manufacturer. He attributed the delay to the curfew imposed during the demonstrations in Egypt.
“In Cairo, more than 1500 public authority for cleaning and beauty workers demonstrated in front of the authority's headquarters in Dokki. According to a statement by the head of the authority on Egyptian television, their demands include an increase in their monthly wages, to LE1200, and a daily lunch meal. The workers are also demanding for permanent contracts and the dismissal of the authority's president.
“And in Menya, thousands demanded the removal of the ruling regime in Egypt and Mubarak's resignation. Amid heavy security, the demonstrators marched towards the governorate building.
“In recent days, Menya has witnessed several demonstrations, most of them opposed to the regime. However, demonstrations in favour of Mubarak have been staged. Violence as a result of these protests has lead to 72 people being injured, demonstrators and security personnel, according to Dr Adel Abu Ziad, deputy of the ministry of health in Menya.”
The regime hangs on
Up to this point the state was attempting to regroup its forces as the regime tried to capitalise on fears of insecurity. But the new upsurge in the movement has changed everything. Within sections of the army the belief was already growing that only Mubarak’s departure can calm Egypt’s streets. The latest developments will have strengthened this belief.
The ruling clique would be prepared to ditch Mubarak, but so far has not dared do so. They are under conflicting pressures. On the one hand, the Saudis and Israelis are demanding that Mubarak must stay. This is also the position of the CIA, which works in cahoots with the Saudis and Israelis. On the other hand, Obama and the State Department are pressing him to leave.
At the centre of this complex parallelogram of forces is Mubarak himself. He has lost power, yet he retains power. The balance of forces cancels itself out, leaving him where he was before. The proposed “compromise”, basically that he should stay in power while in practice relinquishing, is an expression of the impasse at the top, which in turn is a reflection of the impasse of the Revolution itself.
In Tunisia, a popular uprising forced Ben Ali into exile and overthrew the ruling party, although here also the fight is not finished. The Tunisian events convinced many Egyptians that their regime might prove equally fragile. The speed of Ben Ali’s flight to exile in Saudi Arabia persuaded Egypt’s dissidents that the correct demand was that Mubarak must go. The problem is that Mubarak refuses to go.
Mubarak has shown that he is made of sterner stuff than Ben Ali. He is still hanging on, although with two black eyes. He has also shown a certain amount of low animal cunning. Mubarak eventually said he would go—but only at the end of his term in September. He is resigned to his fate but wishes to leave office with dignity. This promise – which is rejected indignantly by the people on the streets, was accompanied by a subtle threat: accept my offer or prepare for the worst.
Hosni Mubarak reminds one of other figures in history: Charles I of England, Louis XVI of France and Tsar Nicholas of Russia. The poet Blok described the Tsar during the last months of the monarchy as follows: “Stubborn, but without will; nervous, but insensitive to everything; distrustful of people, taut and cautious in speech, he was no longer master of himself. He had ceased to understand the situation, and did not take one clearly conscious step, but gave himself over completely into the hands of those whom he himself had placed in power.” These lines could be applied precisely to Mubarak in the hour of his final eclipse.
For a man with not many cards in his hand, Mubarak has played his hand well. His calculations are quite astute. All the “concessions” offered by the regime have a fraudulent character. The “new” cabinet contained half the ministers of the previous government. Suleiman, the former head of Egyptian Intelligence, is his right hand man. As the French say: “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
By offering a bare minimum of concessions, Mubarak hoped to drive a wedge between the revolutionaries and the more inert layers of the population who fear chaos and want a return to “normality”. On February 2 the two sides were fighting for possession of Tahrir Square. Mubarak was hoping the counterrevolutionaries would clear the square, but they failed. The revolutionaries held their ground and grew in confidence.
Hosni Mubarak is fighting for his survival. Suleiman is fighting for the survival of the regime. But the imperialists are fighting for the survival of capitalism and their puppet regimes in the Arab world. The latter are worried about where Egypt’s revolt will go, and how far it will spread. These are the big questions, and they are still unanswered.
In the end the old man may announce an early retirement on health grounds. But so far Mubarak has shown himself to be extremely stubborn. He is placing his interests and those of the clique around, above those of the imperialists. Exactly thirty years ago Anwar Sadat was assassinated by his own guards. This could happen again. It would not be impossible to arrange for Mubarak to go in the same way. But the clique that controls the army and the state is afraid to resort to such measures. The removal of Mubarak would open the floodgates and they fear that the raging waters would sweep them all away.
“Negotiations”
The ruling class has many strategies for defeating a Revolution. If it cannot do so by force, it will resort to cunning. The old regime attempted to crush the uprising with force on Wednesday, 2 February, but it failed. The defeat in Tahrir Square unnerved the ruling clique completely. Mubarak has disappeared from the scene. Behind locked doors the rulers of Egypt argued about what was to be done. And all the time the phone was ringing. Washington is demanding action in increasingly imperious tones. And Washington pays the bills.
After Wednesday the regime was staring defeat in the face, and when the ruling class faces the prospect of losing everything they will always offer concessions. Belatedly, the ruling clique realized that it would be necessary to do a deal with the leaders of the opposition. Another face must be presented to the people. Mubarak was quietly pushed into a side room. Without a word, Suleiman took the reins of power. Facing the danger of losing everything, Suleiman and all his generals and ministers, are now for a compromise. But it must be a compromise that will maintain their power and privileges.
Suddenly the regime is willing to talk. Suleiman offered to negotiate with the opposition. Last week they were only prepared to talk the language of concrete slabs, clubs and Molotov cocktails, now it is all smiles, handshakes and conference tables. Following advice from Washington and London, they have not renewed the attempt to take the Square by force. Suleiman says: “We will not disperse them by force.” The tanks do not move. Nor do the pro-Mubarak mobs make an appearance. Their masters have ordered them to keep out of sight, as the owner of a dog calls it to come to heel.
Since they have been defeated on the streets they are trying to strike a bargain, that is, try to fool the leaders of the opposition, so that they in turn can fool the masses. The idea is that once the initiative is in the hands of the “negotiators”, the masses will become mere passive onlookers. The real decisions will be made elsewhere, behind locked doors, behind the backs of the people. And what can the people do? Remain on the Square shouting slogans? But the regime has already taken this into account.
Obama and the Europeans say to Suleiman: “Why go to the bother of using force? That has already failed and only creates public sympathy for the troublemakers. It can split the army down the middle and then you will be in serious trouble. Better leave them alone. Close off the Square and box the protesters in there. Then you only have to wait until they get tired. The movement will collapse like a balloon that runs out of air. After a while there will only be a handful left. Then you can do what you like with them.” The problem is that the movement is not prepared to give up the fight. What the regime is now counting on is that the so-called “leadership” of the protest movement may be able to rein in the masses for them.
What does the Muslim Brotherhood stand for?
The leadership of the protest movement, like the movement itself, contains diverse elements and different ideological tendencies. At this stage there is a lot of emphasis on unity. One of the leaders of the youth told Al Jazeera that the demands of the youth were not "classist," and that corruption and repression weigh on all layers of society. This is typical of the early stages of the Revolution.
Initially every revolution appears to be a great carnival of national unity, where the illusion is created that all classes are united in a common struggle for change. However, as the struggle proceeds, there will be changes. As the movement becomes more radicalized, some of the elements who played a leading role in the early stages will fall behind. Some will abandon it; others will go over to the enemy. This corresponds to different class interests.
The poor people, the unemployed, the workers, the “men of no property” have no interest in maintaining the old order. They want to sweep away not only Mubarak but the entire regime of oppression, exploitation and inequality. But the bourgeois Liberals see the struggle for democracy as the path to a comfortable career in parliament. They have no interest in carrying through the Revolution to the end or of disturbing existing property relations.
This process of inner differentiation has already begun. By offering to negotiate, Suleiman wished to win over the moderate (i.e. bourgeois) elements in the opposition. He even offered to negotiate with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a banned organization. The purpose of this is to gain time, to confuse and disorient the movement and to trick the opposition into making a deal with the oligarchy and preserve the system. There is an old saying: if you sup with the Devil, use a long spoon. But these gentlemen, in their indecent haste, fell right into the soup.
A serious revolutionary leadership would understand that this was a confession of extreme weakness. It would continue to attack until the regime fell. It would give it no time to recover its nerves and rally its forces. But a section of these leaders is neither revolutionary nor serious. For them the mass movement is only a convenient bargaining chip, something with which they can threaten the government to give them a few more crumbs.
The Muslim Brotherhood had declared that it would not negotiate with the government until Mubarak steps down. ElBaradei has described pro-Mubarak demonstrations as criminal acts by a criminal regime. But the moment the regime beckoned with its little finger the leaders of the “opposition” fell over themselves to accept Suleiman’s offer, forgetting all their brave words about “not negotiating until Mubarak goes.”
Significantly, the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, after initially refusing to negotiate, changed their minds and joined this pleasant little party. One of their leaders went onto Tahrir Square, where the protestors were standing firm and preventing the tanks from occupying the Square with their bodies, appealing to them not to clash with the army. Clearly, the “hard line” Islamists are as frightened of the revolutionary masses as the regime itself.
The poor people who support the Brotherhood are one thing. The leaders are another thing altogether. In the 1980s leaders of the Brotherhood were key beneficiaries of economic liberalization—the programme of infitah or “opening”—under which Sadat and then Mubarak dismantled the state sector, favouring private capital. One study of Brotherhood businessmen suggests that at this point they controlled 40 percent of all private economic ventures. They are part of the capitalist system and have every interest in defending it. Their conduct is not determined by the Holy Qur’an but by class interest.
Sitting next to the Muslim Brothers on the negotiating table are certain individuals who call themselves the “representatives of the youth on Tahrir Square”. Since nobody ever elected them, it is hard to see who they really represent, other than themselves. But their presence around the table is important for the regime, which can present itself before the television cameras as eminently reasonable and willing to listen to “all points of view”. In this way the people who remain on the Square can be presented to public opinion as “extremists”, people who are not willing to engage in dialogue to solve the nation’s problems.
The laws of revolution
The laws that govern revolution have many features in common with those that govern wars between nations. War is not a continuous battle. There are a series of battles, which are won or lost, or end inconclusively. But between battles there are long periods of inactivity when nothing seems to happen. But there is a constant ebb and flow. Certain layers get tired and drop out of activity. But they are constantly replenished with new, fresh layers moving into struggle. The Revolution still has considerable reserves. These reserves are now mobilizing for action.
February 8, Tahrir Square. Photo: monasoshTo say that a revolution has begun is not to say that it has been completed, or even that victory is assured. It goes without saying that revolution is a struggle of living forces. The counterrevolutionaries have a lot to lose and they are acting intelligently and with decision. But the leadership of the revolutionaries is divided and does not speak with one voice. That is the main problem. The enemy noticed this hesitation and began to recover its nerve. They began to feel more confident and redouble their manoeuvres and intrigues, basing themselves on the more moderate sections of the opposition.
This was a dangerous situation. If the movement had been allowed to stagnate the confidence of the streets would have begun to ebb and the initiative would have passed into the hands of the regime. That was the aim of Suleiman when he offered to negotiate with the opposition. These “negotiations” were only a trick of the regime to gain time and to deprive the demonstrators of the initiative. That could have been fatal to the Revolution.
On Monday, 7 February the banks were opened for the first time since the protests began but the stock exchange remained closed for fear that it would lead to a rush to sell. This pessimistic perspective was confirmed the very next day. Unwittingly, by ordering a resumption of business, the regime miscalculated. This has allowed workers and students to come together, hold mass meetings, discuss the situation and take collective action. As a result, students are agitating on the campuses. Workers are staging strikes and factory occupations, driving out hated managers and corrupt trade union leaders.
The sudden entry of the workers onto the scene as an independent revolutionary force has changed everything. On Tuesday, the protesters mounted their biggest demonstrations so far. Thousands again took to the streets and squares of Egyptian towns - from the Western desert on the Libyan border up to the northern Sinai town of El Arish in the east. In Cairo, Alexandria, the Delta Cities, the industrial belt around Mahalla-el-Kebir and the steel city of Heluan, the masses came onto the streets shouting "Death to Mubarak!" and "Hang Mubarak!"
The Revolution cannot stand still
A Revolution cannot stand still. It must constantly advance, striking blows against the enemy, capturing one position after another until the old order is utterly overthrown. If it hesitates, it is lost. Marx pointed out that the Paris Commune failed because it did not march on Versailles. This gave time for the counterrevolutionary forces to regroup and prepare a decisive counteroffensive against revolutionary Paris.
At several moments during the past two weeks power was in the streets. But having won power in the streets, the leaders of the movement did not know what to do with it. The idea that all that is necessary is to gather a large number of people in Tahrir Square was fatally flawed. Firstly, it leaves the question of state power out of account. But this is the central question that decides all other questions. Secondly, it is a passive strategy, whereas what is required is an active and offensive strategy.
It is true that in war defence can be transformed into offense. A decisive moment was on Thursday and Friday. After the revolutionaries had defeated the attacks of the counterrevolutionaries and regained the initiative, they should have gone onto the offensive. By confining the action on Friday to a mass demonstration in Tahrir Square, they allowed the initiative to slip from their hands and into those of the enemy.
Suleiman is playing for time because time is not necessarily on the side of the Revolution. Society cannot continue indefinitely in a chaotic situation. People must live. The economy is losing 300 million Euros a day in lost tourist revenues alone. Bread becomes scarce in the shops as time goes on, people cannot get to work. Wages are not paid. People can start to blame the protesters for provoking chaos. The call for order can get an echo in these conditions. There are certain indications that this process was beginning.
An Al Jazeera report summed up the situation thus:
“It was clear the government was attempting to return a sense of normalcy to the city; businesses and banks were set to open on Sunday, and the army was intent on clearing away all signs of discord but for the crowd in the square. Men in fluorescent vests even went about clearing debris and trash from the streets where protesters had died just nights before.”
Fortunately, the most revolutionary wing of the opposition realized the danger. The same report from Al Jazeera quoted one of the youth leaders as follows:
“But as high-ranking opposition figures negotiate a transition with Mubarak's right-hand man, former intelligence chief and newly appointed Vice-president Omar Suleiman, Mohammed Sohail and the men on the rooftops remain dug in, hoping for a complete overhaul. After the thugs' attack on Wednesday, they will not accept negotiation with Mubarak. He's hiding a dagger behind his back.”
These words express the real situation very well.
The problem of leadership
The Revolution in Tunisia and Egypt came from below. It was not organized by any of the existing political parties or leaders. All of them were left far behind by a movement they had not foreseen and for which they were completely unprepared. The “spontaneous” character of the Revolution has inclined some observers to believe that it in some way represents a confirmation of the theories of anarchism. But the opposite is rather the case.
The argument that “we do not need leaders” does not bear the slightest scrutiny. Even in a strike of half an hour in a factory there is always leadership. The workers will elect people from their number to represent them and to organize the strike. Those who are elected are not arbitrary or accidental elements, but generally the most courageous, experienced and intelligent workers. They are selected on that basis.
Leadership is a very important element in war. This is not to say that it is the only element. Even the most brilliant leaders cannot guarantee success if the objective conditions are unfavourable. In the American Civil War the South had far more capable generals than the North, and this was an important factor in its initial victory. The Northern generals were mostly very bad, but the North had a far bigger population and was more able to sustain heavy losses. Above all it had a powerful industrial base, which the agricultural slave states of the South lacked, and it had a lot of money. The combination of financial wealth, industry and manpower ultimately guaranteed success, in spite of poor generals.
In the end it is the most determined revolutionary elements that will remain standing: those who are not prepared to compromise and are willing to go to the end. And in this it is the youth who play a key role. 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.
In Egypt we again see the same thing. The protestors who have poured onto the streets all over Egypt are mainly young Egyptians, unemployed and without any future. One young Egyptian told the BBC: “We are poor. We have no work, no future. What should we do? Should we burn ourselves?” 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.
The youth and the most revolutionary elements do not want the movement to be hijacked by the “moderates” who are bargaining with the regime like merchants haggling in a bazaar. But the question remains: how to carry the Revolution forward? What needs to be done? The demonstrators have done everything possible. They have shown great courage and determination. But the limitation of the tactics pursued up till now are becoming clear by the hour.
In order to carry the Revolution to a higher level, another force is necessary. This can only be provided by the working class. An all-out general strike would transform the entire situation. It would demonstrate clearly who the real master of the house is.
The role of the proletariat
The economic growth of Egypt in the last years was a very positive development from the standpoint of the Marxists because it strengthened the working class. However, it did not solve any of the fundamental contradictions of Egyptian society. The last few years have seen a sharp upswing in strike activity in Egypt, notably the heroic struggle of textile workers of Mahalla. This reawakening of the proletariat was one of the main factors that prepared the present situation. It is also the key to the situation.
Workers from the militant independent union of real estate tax collectors. Photo: 3arabawyRecent reports speak of large groups of workers, mainly in Cairo, rebelling against state-appointed managements and setting up "Revolutionary Committees" to run factories and other work places, including Egyptian state TV and Egypt's biggest weekly "Ros el-Yusuf."
There is a wave of strikes, many of them involving different forms of sit-ins and factory occupations. The telecom workers in Cairo are on strike, and the strike seems to be spreading to other cities: Maadi, Opera, MisrElgedida, Ramsis, and Alexandria. The workers are protesting against corruption and low salaries.
In the key city of Suez, the workers have occupied the Suez Trust Textile plant. Around 1000 workers in the Lafarge cement factory in Suez are also on strike. Among their demands: the forming of a union and support for the revolution. The Tora cement workers have started a sit in to protest against their intolerable working conditions.
At the same time there is a movement to get rid of the old corrupt leaders of the unions (syndicates) who are agents of the ruling party and the bosses.
The employees at the Workers’ University in Nasr City are staging a sit in, and according to one report, there has been the kidnapping of the vice president of the official ETUF union, Mustapha Mungy, by employees of the Workers’ University, which is affiliated to the General Trade Union Federation "ETUF". In the course of a sit-in the workers detained him and demanded his removal and the opening of investigations into widespread corruption in the Workers’ University.
The official Al-Ahram news agency carried a report entitled: "Employees detain vice president of Egyptian workers union”, which reported: “The vice president of the Egyptian Workers Union, Mostafa Mongy, has been detained since Monday morning by employees demanding his immediate resignation.” (Ahram Online , Monday 7 Feb 2011)
The Center for Trade Union & Workers' Services (CTUWS) presented a Communication to the Public Prosecutor demanding the issue of an order against Hussein Megawer, president of the ETUF, preventing him from travelling abroad and investigating the sources of his wealth.
On Tuesday 8th university professors staged a march in support of the revolution, joining the protesters in Tahrir. Also at 12 noon, journalists will gather at their union HQ, in an emergency meeting to lobby for the impeachment of their state-backed union chief, Makram Mohamed Ahmed.
The journalists are also on the move. They have attacked the state backed head of the syndicate shouting: “murderer, murderer!” Journalists marched from their union HQ to Tahrir Square, denouncing the government. Journalists have started collecting signatures to impeach the state backed press syndicate head. In all the state run newspapers journalists are in revolt against their pro-government editors.
The movement is spreading like a forest fire. The railway technicians in Bani Suweif are on strike. At least two military production factories in Welwyn are on strike. Public transport workers in three garages are on strike. Thousands of oil workers are protesting in front of the oil ministry. Tomorrow more oil workers from the provinces will descend on Nasr City to join protests in front of the oil ministry, and the Ghazl Mahalla workers will also start a strike
Many of the strikes are economic, but others are political in character. An interview with Hossam El-Hamalawy on Sunday 6 stated:
"It's been two days since the workers said that they wouldn't return to work until the fall of the regime. There are four hotbeds of economic struggle: a [steel] mill in Suez, a fertilizer factory in Suez, a textile factory near Mansoura in Daqahlia (the Mansoura-España garment factory in the Nile Delta region) on strike they have fired their CEO and are self-managing their enterprise. There is also a print shop in southern Cairo called Dar al-Matabi: there, too, they fired their CEO and are self-managing the enterprise. But, while workers are participating in the demonstrations, they are not developing their own independent action as workers. We still have not seen workers independently organize themselves en masse. If that comes, all the equation of the struggle will change."(http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/hamalawy080211.html)
On Wednesday the three independent unions that exist in Egypt (Property Tax Collectors, Health Technicians and Pensioners’ Federation) demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the state backed Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions, in Galaa Street, calling for the prosecution of the federation chief on corruption charges, and demanding the lifting of all restrictions on establishing free unions. The civil servants then marched to Tahrir Square in support of the revolution. They are not the only ones. Delegation after delegation of workers is arriving on the Square to express their solidarity with the demonstrators and discuss the future of the Revolution.
These reports 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 idea of a general strike is in the air. The demands of the workers have a clear revolutionary and class character. The workers of Egypt are drawing the most advanced conclusions. This is strikingly revealed in the statement of the Iron and steel workers in Helwan, who are calling for a major workers’ rally next Friday to Tahrir Square. They are advancing 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.
What now?
These demands are absolutely correct. They show a very high level of revolutionary consciousness and coincide completely with the programme that has been advanced by the Marxists. This programme provides the Egyptian Revolution with all it needs to succeed.
The immediate demands are naturally democratic in character. But the fight for democratic demands, if it is pursued consistently, must lead directly to the demand for economic democracy. 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. The Economist writes:
“Some 40% of Egyptians still live on less than $2 a day. In recent years, even as Egypt’s overall economy has grown apace and more consumer goods have filled even lower-income households, the poor have won little relief from relentlessly rising food prices and sharper competition for secure jobs. Such anxieties have found expression in a growing number of strikes and local protests across the country. Yet in a sense, persistent poverty has helped prop up the regime. “People survive on a day-to-day basis,” says a young Cairo lawyer. ‘They can’t go for long without a daily wage and daily bread, so they can’t afford to make trouble’.”
The present movement cannot succeed unless it is taken to a new and higher level. This can only be done by the working class. Mass demonstrations are important because they are a way of bringing the formerly inert masses to their feet, giving them a sense of their own power. A new and higher level involves the calling of a general strike.
An all-Egyptian general strike would deal a mortal blow to the regime, which is already in crisis. The old state power is breaking up. It must be replaced with a new power. The workers of Egypt have a tremendous power in their hands but it must be organized. That can only be done through revolutionary committees. The general chaos and disorder and the persistent reports of security agents engaging in arson and thievery convinced people that the chaos was planned. This has now led to the organization of citizens' militias in many parts of the country.
Hossam el-Hamalawy, in the same interview quoted above, describes how they were formed:
"Following the collapse of the police force on January 28th, people stepped in to protect their neighbourhoods. They have set up checkpoints, armed with knives, swords, machetes and sticks and they are inspecting cars that are coming in and out. In some areas, such as the province of Sharqiya, the popular committees are more or less completely running the town, and organizing the traffic."
Here we have the embryo of a people's militia – of an alternative state power.
The latest reports indicate that, in desperation, Suleiman is considering a coup. The problem he faces is that the army is already split. In these conditions an open confrontation with the working class and the revolutionary masses would strain its internal cohesion to breaking point. If the Egyptian regime attempts to use the army, it can break in pieces in its hands. Suleiman, the new "strongman" may stand at the head of the army and the police. But if he went down the road of organising a coup he could find himself with no telephones, no electricity, no transport, no fuel, no food and no water.
The old state power is breaking up. It must be given a final push and replaced with a new power. Only the proletariat can show a way out by placing itself at the head of the Nation. The workers of Egypt have a tremendous power in their hands but it must be organized. That can only be done through the establishment of revolutionary committees. In some areas committees exist, but they must be extended to every workplace, neighbourhood, school and college, and they must be coordinated on a national scale.
Imperialist intimidation
Faced with a revolution that continues to march forward, all the plans of the imperialists are now in ruins. The situation that they hoped was under control is out of control. Ahram Online yesterday reported that the Suez Canal Company workers from the cities of Suez, Port Said, and Ismailia had begun an open-ended sit in. This threatens to disrupt shipping movements if the strike continues. Over 6000 protesters have agreed that they will continue their protest in front of the company's headquarters until their demands are met. They are protesting against poor wages and deteriorating health and working conditions.
In desperation, Washington has sent U.S. naval, marine and air forces to the Suez Canal's Greater Bitter Lake. This is the mailed fist that is concealed within the velvet glove of Obama’s “democracy”. The imperialists are worried about the effects of the Egyptian revolution on the Suez Canal through which about 40 percent of the world's marine freight passes. Should it be disrupted for any length of time it could have repercussions far beyond Egypt itself, directly affecting oil transportation and subsequently the price of oil.
In reality this is an empty gesture on the part of Washington. The U.S. burned its fingers in Iraq. A new military adventure in Egypt is highly unlikely. It would provoke a storm in the USA and on a world scale. There would not be a single U.S. embassy left standing in the Middle East and all the other pro-US Arab regimes would be faced with overthrow. However, it does represent an attempt to intimidate the people of Egypt. This attempt at imperialist bullying must receive a powerful rebuff by the international labour movement.
Let us raise our voice in support of our class brothers and sisters in Egypt:
•Hands off Egypt!
•Down with imperialism!
•Solidarity with the Egyptian Revolution!
Every class conscious worker in the world will rejoice at this marvellous movement of the Egyptian workers and youth. Whatever happens in the next days and weeks Egypt, the Middle East and the whole world will never be the same again.
The events of the past few weeks in the Middle East, especially in Tunisia and, more so, in Egypt point out the long known fact that when people are oppressed, and are ready to do something about it, it is a magnificent tribute to the human spirit. But that spirit, and that sacrifice, only makes sense if there is some kind of real change. Although the situation today, and I speak only of today, is frankly, disappointing from a socialist’s perspective it nevertheless points the way forward to those necessary socialist conclusions that have been addressed in this space. Clearly a purely democratic (in the old bourgeois European sense) solution is not in the cards. At least not for lasting measures. Leon Trotsky’s now old, very old, but still relevant theory of permanent revolution as an analytical tool has never been more necessary. Or, and here is the real crux of the matter, Lenin’s notion of a vanguard party (seconded, in the end, by Trotsky) to break the impasse has never been more desperately necessary. I have posted commentary from other left-wing sources today in order to stir the kettle on these issues.
******
Egyptian workers take the lead
Written by Alan Woods
Wednesday, 09 February 2011
There are situations in which mass demonstrations are sufficient to bring about the fall of a regime. But Egypt is not one of them. All the efforts of the masses to bring about the overthrow of Mubarak through demonstrations and street protests have so far failed to achieve their principal objective.
Tahrir Square, 8 February. Photo: omarroberthamiltonThe protests have left three hundred people dead and thousands more injured. They have forced the cabinet to resign, brought the army onto the streets and paralyzed Egypt’s economy. But it had not yet succeeded in overthrowing the government. On the other hand, the latter had not succeeded in re-establishing control. By Monday the situation in Egypt appeared to have reached a kind of stalemate.
But every time the regime thinks it has succeeded in regaining the initiative, their hopes are dashed by the masses on the streets. Contrary to all expectations, the movement is continuing to advance and is reaching a new high point. Far from subsiding, the fury against Mubarak is increasing. Egyptian society is becoming sharply polarised.
All the commentators were predicting that the movement was in decline. But the dramatic entry of the Egyptian proletariat on the stage of history marks a turning point in the destinies of the Revolution. Egypt is now being shaken to its very foundations by a mighty movement of the working class. In one city after another there are strikes and occupations. The revolution is moving onto a higher level.
Yesterday Ahram Onlin reported:
“Labour protests escalated in Suez with textile workers joining in and demonstrating with 2000 others demanding their right to work. Ali Fuad, a worker at the station, said: ‘We are having a sit-in today to demand our rights, which are in the text of the workers' law, our right to obtain the annual increase in salary which the management refuses to give us so we strike with all the laws that uphold the right of workers.’
“Mohamed Abdel-Hakam factory, head of the factory syndicate, confirmed workers have continued their sit-in for a third day.
“In the city of Suez itself, around 2000 youths demonstrated to demand the chance to work. Amid expectations of growing labour protests in Suez, officials from the local council have attempted to meet the protesters and end the crisis.
“In Mahalla, more than 1500 workers of the Abu El-Subaa company in Mahalla demonstrated this morning, cutting the road, demanding their salaries and stating that it is not the first time. The workers have staged repeated sit-ins for two years as they demand their rights and mediation between the workers and the company's owner, Ismail Abu El-Subaa.
“More than 2000 workers from the Sigma pharmaceutical company in the city of Quesna have gone on strike demanding higher wages and benefits that have been suspended for years. The workers are also calling for the dismissal of managers who have ill-treated workers.”
New layers are being drawn into the struggle not just by the day but by the hour. The same report says:
“Around 5000 unemployed youths demonstrated this morning in front of Aswan governorate building, which they tried to storm. The protesters chanted their demand that the governor be dismissed.
“In Kom Ombo, around 1000 protesters called for the president, Hosni Mubarak, as security remained absent.
“Dozens of liver patients gathered in the governorate of Menoufeya at noon today over the lateness of their vaccinations. They were due to receive their treatment from the Hilal hospital three days ago. Dr. Murhaf El-Mougy, Menoufeya's general director of medical insurance, stated that the governorate was late in receiving the vaccination from its manufacturer. He attributed the delay to the curfew imposed during the demonstrations in Egypt.
“In Cairo, more than 1500 public authority for cleaning and beauty workers demonstrated in front of the authority's headquarters in Dokki. According to a statement by the head of the authority on Egyptian television, their demands include an increase in their monthly wages, to LE1200, and a daily lunch meal. The workers are also demanding for permanent contracts and the dismissal of the authority's president.
“And in Menya, thousands demanded the removal of the ruling regime in Egypt and Mubarak's resignation. Amid heavy security, the demonstrators marched towards the governorate building.
“In recent days, Menya has witnessed several demonstrations, most of them opposed to the regime. However, demonstrations in favour of Mubarak have been staged. Violence as a result of these protests has lead to 72 people being injured, demonstrators and security personnel, according to Dr Adel Abu Ziad, deputy of the ministry of health in Menya.”
The regime hangs on
Up to this point the state was attempting to regroup its forces as the regime tried to capitalise on fears of insecurity. But the new upsurge in the movement has changed everything. Within sections of the army the belief was already growing that only Mubarak’s departure can calm Egypt’s streets. The latest developments will have strengthened this belief.
The ruling clique would be prepared to ditch Mubarak, but so far has not dared do so. They are under conflicting pressures. On the one hand, the Saudis and Israelis are demanding that Mubarak must stay. This is also the position of the CIA, which works in cahoots with the Saudis and Israelis. On the other hand, Obama and the State Department are pressing him to leave.
At the centre of this complex parallelogram of forces is Mubarak himself. He has lost power, yet he retains power. The balance of forces cancels itself out, leaving him where he was before. The proposed “compromise”, basically that he should stay in power while in practice relinquishing, is an expression of the impasse at the top, which in turn is a reflection of the impasse of the Revolution itself.
In Tunisia, a popular uprising forced Ben Ali into exile and overthrew the ruling party, although here also the fight is not finished. The Tunisian events convinced many Egyptians that their regime might prove equally fragile. The speed of Ben Ali’s flight to exile in Saudi Arabia persuaded Egypt’s dissidents that the correct demand was that Mubarak must go. The problem is that Mubarak refuses to go.
Mubarak has shown that he is made of sterner stuff than Ben Ali. He is still hanging on, although with two black eyes. He has also shown a certain amount of low animal cunning. Mubarak eventually said he would go—but only at the end of his term in September. He is resigned to his fate but wishes to leave office with dignity. This promise – which is rejected indignantly by the people on the streets, was accompanied by a subtle threat: accept my offer or prepare for the worst.
Hosni Mubarak reminds one of other figures in history: Charles I of England, Louis XVI of France and Tsar Nicholas of Russia. The poet Blok described the Tsar during the last months of the monarchy as follows: “Stubborn, but without will; nervous, but insensitive to everything; distrustful of people, taut and cautious in speech, he was no longer master of himself. He had ceased to understand the situation, and did not take one clearly conscious step, but gave himself over completely into the hands of those whom he himself had placed in power.” These lines could be applied precisely to Mubarak in the hour of his final eclipse.
For a man with not many cards in his hand, Mubarak has played his hand well. His calculations are quite astute. All the “concessions” offered by the regime have a fraudulent character. The “new” cabinet contained half the ministers of the previous government. Suleiman, the former head of Egyptian Intelligence, is his right hand man. As the French say: “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
By offering a bare minimum of concessions, Mubarak hoped to drive a wedge between the revolutionaries and the more inert layers of the population who fear chaos and want a return to “normality”. On February 2 the two sides were fighting for possession of Tahrir Square. Mubarak was hoping the counterrevolutionaries would clear the square, but they failed. The revolutionaries held their ground and grew in confidence.
Hosni Mubarak is fighting for his survival. Suleiman is fighting for the survival of the regime. But the imperialists are fighting for the survival of capitalism and their puppet regimes in the Arab world. The latter are worried about where Egypt’s revolt will go, and how far it will spread. These are the big questions, and they are still unanswered.
In the end the old man may announce an early retirement on health grounds. But so far Mubarak has shown himself to be extremely stubborn. He is placing his interests and those of the clique around, above those of the imperialists. Exactly thirty years ago Anwar Sadat was assassinated by his own guards. This could happen again. It would not be impossible to arrange for Mubarak to go in the same way. But the clique that controls the army and the state is afraid to resort to such measures. The removal of Mubarak would open the floodgates and they fear that the raging waters would sweep them all away.
“Negotiations”
The ruling class has many strategies for defeating a Revolution. If it cannot do so by force, it will resort to cunning. The old regime attempted to crush the uprising with force on Wednesday, 2 February, but it failed. The defeat in Tahrir Square unnerved the ruling clique completely. Mubarak has disappeared from the scene. Behind locked doors the rulers of Egypt argued about what was to be done. And all the time the phone was ringing. Washington is demanding action in increasingly imperious tones. And Washington pays the bills.
After Wednesday the regime was staring defeat in the face, and when the ruling class faces the prospect of losing everything they will always offer concessions. Belatedly, the ruling clique realized that it would be necessary to do a deal with the leaders of the opposition. Another face must be presented to the people. Mubarak was quietly pushed into a side room. Without a word, Suleiman took the reins of power. Facing the danger of losing everything, Suleiman and all his generals and ministers, are now for a compromise. But it must be a compromise that will maintain their power and privileges.
Suddenly the regime is willing to talk. Suleiman offered to negotiate with the opposition. Last week they were only prepared to talk the language of concrete slabs, clubs and Molotov cocktails, now it is all smiles, handshakes and conference tables. Following advice from Washington and London, they have not renewed the attempt to take the Square by force. Suleiman says: “We will not disperse them by force.” The tanks do not move. Nor do the pro-Mubarak mobs make an appearance. Their masters have ordered them to keep out of sight, as the owner of a dog calls it to come to heel.
Since they have been defeated on the streets they are trying to strike a bargain, that is, try to fool the leaders of the opposition, so that they in turn can fool the masses. The idea is that once the initiative is in the hands of the “negotiators”, the masses will become mere passive onlookers. The real decisions will be made elsewhere, behind locked doors, behind the backs of the people. And what can the people do? Remain on the Square shouting slogans? But the regime has already taken this into account.
Obama and the Europeans say to Suleiman: “Why go to the bother of using force? That has already failed and only creates public sympathy for the troublemakers. It can split the army down the middle and then you will be in serious trouble. Better leave them alone. Close off the Square and box the protesters in there. Then you only have to wait until they get tired. The movement will collapse like a balloon that runs out of air. After a while there will only be a handful left. Then you can do what you like with them.” The problem is that the movement is not prepared to give up the fight. What the regime is now counting on is that the so-called “leadership” of the protest movement may be able to rein in the masses for them.
What does the Muslim Brotherhood stand for?
The leadership of the protest movement, like the movement itself, contains diverse elements and different ideological tendencies. At this stage there is a lot of emphasis on unity. One of the leaders of the youth told Al Jazeera that the demands of the youth were not "classist," and that corruption and repression weigh on all layers of society. This is typical of the early stages of the Revolution.
Initially every revolution appears to be a great carnival of national unity, where the illusion is created that all classes are united in a common struggle for change. However, as the struggle proceeds, there will be changes. As the movement becomes more radicalized, some of the elements who played a leading role in the early stages will fall behind. Some will abandon it; others will go over to the enemy. This corresponds to different class interests.
The poor people, the unemployed, the workers, the “men of no property” have no interest in maintaining the old order. They want to sweep away not only Mubarak but the entire regime of oppression, exploitation and inequality. But the bourgeois Liberals see the struggle for democracy as the path to a comfortable career in parliament. They have no interest in carrying through the Revolution to the end or of disturbing existing property relations.
This process of inner differentiation has already begun. By offering to negotiate, Suleiman wished to win over the moderate (i.e. bourgeois) elements in the opposition. He even offered to negotiate with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a banned organization. The purpose of this is to gain time, to confuse and disorient the movement and to trick the opposition into making a deal with the oligarchy and preserve the system. There is an old saying: if you sup with the Devil, use a long spoon. But these gentlemen, in their indecent haste, fell right into the soup.
A serious revolutionary leadership would understand that this was a confession of extreme weakness. It would continue to attack until the regime fell. It would give it no time to recover its nerves and rally its forces. But a section of these leaders is neither revolutionary nor serious. For them the mass movement is only a convenient bargaining chip, something with which they can threaten the government to give them a few more crumbs.
The Muslim Brotherhood had declared that it would not negotiate with the government until Mubarak steps down. ElBaradei has described pro-Mubarak demonstrations as criminal acts by a criminal regime. But the moment the regime beckoned with its little finger the leaders of the “opposition” fell over themselves to accept Suleiman’s offer, forgetting all their brave words about “not negotiating until Mubarak goes.”
Significantly, the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, after initially refusing to negotiate, changed their minds and joined this pleasant little party. One of their leaders went onto Tahrir Square, where the protestors were standing firm and preventing the tanks from occupying the Square with their bodies, appealing to them not to clash with the army. Clearly, the “hard line” Islamists are as frightened of the revolutionary masses as the regime itself.
The poor people who support the Brotherhood are one thing. The leaders are another thing altogether. In the 1980s leaders of the Brotherhood were key beneficiaries of economic liberalization—the programme of infitah or “opening”—under which Sadat and then Mubarak dismantled the state sector, favouring private capital. One study of Brotherhood businessmen suggests that at this point they controlled 40 percent of all private economic ventures. They are part of the capitalist system and have every interest in defending it. Their conduct is not determined by the Holy Qur’an but by class interest.
Sitting next to the Muslim Brothers on the negotiating table are certain individuals who call themselves the “representatives of the youth on Tahrir Square”. Since nobody ever elected them, it is hard to see who they really represent, other than themselves. But their presence around the table is important for the regime, which can present itself before the television cameras as eminently reasonable and willing to listen to “all points of view”. In this way the people who remain on the Square can be presented to public opinion as “extremists”, people who are not willing to engage in dialogue to solve the nation’s problems.
The laws of revolution
The laws that govern revolution have many features in common with those that govern wars between nations. War is not a continuous battle. There are a series of battles, which are won or lost, or end inconclusively. But between battles there are long periods of inactivity when nothing seems to happen. But there is a constant ebb and flow. Certain layers get tired and drop out of activity. But they are constantly replenished with new, fresh layers moving into struggle. The Revolution still has considerable reserves. These reserves are now mobilizing for action.
February 8, Tahrir Square. Photo: monasoshTo say that a revolution has begun is not to say that it has been completed, or even that victory is assured. It goes without saying that revolution is a struggle of living forces. The counterrevolutionaries have a lot to lose and they are acting intelligently and with decision. But the leadership of the revolutionaries is divided and does not speak with one voice. That is the main problem. The enemy noticed this hesitation and began to recover its nerve. They began to feel more confident and redouble their manoeuvres and intrigues, basing themselves on the more moderate sections of the opposition.
This was a dangerous situation. If the movement had been allowed to stagnate the confidence of the streets would have begun to ebb and the initiative would have passed into the hands of the regime. That was the aim of Suleiman when he offered to negotiate with the opposition. These “negotiations” were only a trick of the regime to gain time and to deprive the demonstrators of the initiative. That could have been fatal to the Revolution.
On Monday, 7 February the banks were opened for the first time since the protests began but the stock exchange remained closed for fear that it would lead to a rush to sell. This pessimistic perspective was confirmed the very next day. Unwittingly, by ordering a resumption of business, the regime miscalculated. This has allowed workers and students to come together, hold mass meetings, discuss the situation and take collective action. As a result, students are agitating on the campuses. Workers are staging strikes and factory occupations, driving out hated managers and corrupt trade union leaders.
The sudden entry of the workers onto the scene as an independent revolutionary force has changed everything. On Tuesday, the protesters mounted their biggest demonstrations so far. Thousands again took to the streets and squares of Egyptian towns - from the Western desert on the Libyan border up to the northern Sinai town of El Arish in the east. In Cairo, Alexandria, the Delta Cities, the industrial belt around Mahalla-el-Kebir and the steel city of Heluan, the masses came onto the streets shouting "Death to Mubarak!" and "Hang Mubarak!"
The Revolution cannot stand still
A Revolution cannot stand still. It must constantly advance, striking blows against the enemy, capturing one position after another until the old order is utterly overthrown. If it hesitates, it is lost. Marx pointed out that the Paris Commune failed because it did not march on Versailles. This gave time for the counterrevolutionary forces to regroup and prepare a decisive counteroffensive against revolutionary Paris.
At several moments during the past two weeks power was in the streets. But having won power in the streets, the leaders of the movement did not know what to do with it. The idea that all that is necessary is to gather a large number of people in Tahrir Square was fatally flawed. Firstly, it leaves the question of state power out of account. But this is the central question that decides all other questions. Secondly, it is a passive strategy, whereas what is required is an active and offensive strategy.
It is true that in war defence can be transformed into offense. A decisive moment was on Thursday and Friday. After the revolutionaries had defeated the attacks of the counterrevolutionaries and regained the initiative, they should have gone onto the offensive. By confining the action on Friday to a mass demonstration in Tahrir Square, they allowed the initiative to slip from their hands and into those of the enemy.
Suleiman is playing for time because time is not necessarily on the side of the Revolution. Society cannot continue indefinitely in a chaotic situation. People must live. The economy is losing 300 million Euros a day in lost tourist revenues alone. Bread becomes scarce in the shops as time goes on, people cannot get to work. Wages are not paid. People can start to blame the protesters for provoking chaos. The call for order can get an echo in these conditions. There are certain indications that this process was beginning.
An Al Jazeera report summed up the situation thus:
“It was clear the government was attempting to return a sense of normalcy to the city; businesses and banks were set to open on Sunday, and the army was intent on clearing away all signs of discord but for the crowd in the square. Men in fluorescent vests even went about clearing debris and trash from the streets where protesters had died just nights before.”
Fortunately, the most revolutionary wing of the opposition realized the danger. The same report from Al Jazeera quoted one of the youth leaders as follows:
“But as high-ranking opposition figures negotiate a transition with Mubarak's right-hand man, former intelligence chief and newly appointed Vice-president Omar Suleiman, Mohammed Sohail and the men on the rooftops remain dug in, hoping for a complete overhaul. After the thugs' attack on Wednesday, they will not accept negotiation with Mubarak. He's hiding a dagger behind his back.”
These words express the real situation very well.
The problem of leadership
The Revolution in Tunisia and Egypt came from below. It was not organized by any of the existing political parties or leaders. All of them were left far behind by a movement they had not foreseen and for which they were completely unprepared. The “spontaneous” character of the Revolution has inclined some observers to believe that it in some way represents a confirmation of the theories of anarchism. But the opposite is rather the case.
The argument that “we do not need leaders” does not bear the slightest scrutiny. Even in a strike of half an hour in a factory there is always leadership. The workers will elect people from their number to represent them and to organize the strike. Those who are elected are not arbitrary or accidental elements, but generally the most courageous, experienced and intelligent workers. They are selected on that basis.
Leadership is a very important element in war. This is not to say that it is the only element. Even the most brilliant leaders cannot guarantee success if the objective conditions are unfavourable. In the American Civil War the South had far more capable generals than the North, and this was an important factor in its initial victory. The Northern generals were mostly very bad, but the North had a far bigger population and was more able to sustain heavy losses. Above all it had a powerful industrial base, which the agricultural slave states of the South lacked, and it had a lot of money. The combination of financial wealth, industry and manpower ultimately guaranteed success, in spite of poor generals.
In the end it is the most determined revolutionary elements that will remain standing: those who are not prepared to compromise and are willing to go to the end. And in this it is the youth who play a key role. 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.
In Egypt we again see the same thing. The protestors who have poured onto the streets all over Egypt are mainly young Egyptians, unemployed and without any future. One young Egyptian told the BBC: “We are poor. We have no work, no future. What should we do? Should we burn ourselves?” 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.
The youth and the most revolutionary elements do not want the movement to be hijacked by the “moderates” who are bargaining with the regime like merchants haggling in a bazaar. But the question remains: how to carry the Revolution forward? What needs to be done? The demonstrators have done everything possible. They have shown great courage and determination. But the limitation of the tactics pursued up till now are becoming clear by the hour.
In order to carry the Revolution to a higher level, another force is necessary. This can only be provided by the working class. An all-out general strike would transform the entire situation. It would demonstrate clearly who the real master of the house is.
The role of the proletariat
The economic growth of Egypt in the last years was a very positive development from the standpoint of the Marxists because it strengthened the working class. However, it did not solve any of the fundamental contradictions of Egyptian society. The last few years have seen a sharp upswing in strike activity in Egypt, notably the heroic struggle of textile workers of Mahalla. This reawakening of the proletariat was one of the main factors that prepared the present situation. It is also the key to the situation.
Workers from the militant independent union of real estate tax collectors. Photo: 3arabawyRecent reports speak of large groups of workers, mainly in Cairo, rebelling against state-appointed managements and setting up "Revolutionary Committees" to run factories and other work places, including Egyptian state TV and Egypt's biggest weekly "Ros el-Yusuf."
There is a wave of strikes, many of them involving different forms of sit-ins and factory occupations. The telecom workers in Cairo are on strike, and the strike seems to be spreading to other cities: Maadi, Opera, MisrElgedida, Ramsis, and Alexandria. The workers are protesting against corruption and low salaries.
In the key city of Suez, the workers have occupied the Suez Trust Textile plant. Around 1000 workers in the Lafarge cement factory in Suez are also on strike. Among their demands: the forming of a union and support for the revolution. The Tora cement workers have started a sit in to protest against their intolerable working conditions.
At the same time there is a movement to get rid of the old corrupt leaders of the unions (syndicates) who are agents of the ruling party and the bosses.
The employees at the Workers’ University in Nasr City are staging a sit in, and according to one report, there has been the kidnapping of the vice president of the official ETUF union, Mustapha Mungy, by employees of the Workers’ University, which is affiliated to the General Trade Union Federation "ETUF". In the course of a sit-in the workers detained him and demanded his removal and the opening of investigations into widespread corruption in the Workers’ University.
The official Al-Ahram news agency carried a report entitled: "Employees detain vice president of Egyptian workers union”, which reported: “The vice president of the Egyptian Workers Union, Mostafa Mongy, has been detained since Monday morning by employees demanding his immediate resignation.” (Ahram Online , Monday 7 Feb 2011)
The Center for Trade Union & Workers' Services (CTUWS) presented a Communication to the Public Prosecutor demanding the issue of an order against Hussein Megawer, president of the ETUF, preventing him from travelling abroad and investigating the sources of his wealth.
On Tuesday 8th university professors staged a march in support of the revolution, joining the protesters in Tahrir. Also at 12 noon, journalists will gather at their union HQ, in an emergency meeting to lobby for the impeachment of their state-backed union chief, Makram Mohamed Ahmed.
The journalists are also on the move. They have attacked the state backed head of the syndicate shouting: “murderer, murderer!” Journalists marched from their union HQ to Tahrir Square, denouncing the government. Journalists have started collecting signatures to impeach the state backed press syndicate head. In all the state run newspapers journalists are in revolt against their pro-government editors.
The movement is spreading like a forest fire. The railway technicians in Bani Suweif are on strike. At least two military production factories in Welwyn are on strike. Public transport workers in three garages are on strike. Thousands of oil workers are protesting in front of the oil ministry. Tomorrow more oil workers from the provinces will descend on Nasr City to join protests in front of the oil ministry, and the Ghazl Mahalla workers will also start a strike
Many of the strikes are economic, but others are political in character. An interview with Hossam El-Hamalawy on Sunday 6 stated:
"It's been two days since the workers said that they wouldn't return to work until the fall of the regime. There are four hotbeds of economic struggle: a [steel] mill in Suez, a fertilizer factory in Suez, a textile factory near Mansoura in Daqahlia (the Mansoura-España garment factory in the Nile Delta region) on strike they have fired their CEO and are self-managing their enterprise. There is also a print shop in southern Cairo called Dar al-Matabi: there, too, they fired their CEO and are self-managing the enterprise. But, while workers are participating in the demonstrations, they are not developing their own independent action as workers. We still have not seen workers independently organize themselves en masse. If that comes, all the equation of the struggle will change."(http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/hamalawy080211.html)
On Wednesday the three independent unions that exist in Egypt (Property Tax Collectors, Health Technicians and Pensioners’ Federation) demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the state backed Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions, in Galaa Street, calling for the prosecution of the federation chief on corruption charges, and demanding the lifting of all restrictions on establishing free unions. The civil servants then marched to Tahrir Square in support of the revolution. They are not the only ones. Delegation after delegation of workers is arriving on the Square to express their solidarity with the demonstrators and discuss the future of the Revolution.
These reports 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 idea of a general strike is in the air. The demands of the workers have a clear revolutionary and class character. The workers of Egypt are drawing the most advanced conclusions. This is strikingly revealed in the statement of the Iron and steel workers in Helwan, who are calling for a major workers’ rally next Friday to Tahrir Square. They are advancing 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.
What now?
These demands are absolutely correct. They show a very high level of revolutionary consciousness and coincide completely with the programme that has been advanced by the Marxists. This programme provides the Egyptian Revolution with all it needs to succeed.
The immediate demands are naturally democratic in character. But the fight for democratic demands, if it is pursued consistently, must lead directly to the demand for economic democracy. 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. The Economist writes:
“Some 40% of Egyptians still live on less than $2 a day. In recent years, even as Egypt’s overall economy has grown apace and more consumer goods have filled even lower-income households, the poor have won little relief from relentlessly rising food prices and sharper competition for secure jobs. Such anxieties have found expression in a growing number of strikes and local protests across the country. Yet in a sense, persistent poverty has helped prop up the regime. “People survive on a day-to-day basis,” says a young Cairo lawyer. ‘They can’t go for long without a daily wage and daily bread, so they can’t afford to make trouble’.”
The present movement cannot succeed unless it is taken to a new and higher level. This can only be done by the working class. Mass demonstrations are important because they are a way of bringing the formerly inert masses to their feet, giving them a sense of their own power. A new and higher level involves the calling of a general strike.
An all-Egyptian general strike would deal a mortal blow to the regime, which is already in crisis. The old state power is breaking up. It must be replaced with a new power. The workers of Egypt have a tremendous power in their hands but it must be organized. That can only be done through revolutionary committees. The general chaos and disorder and the persistent reports of security agents engaging in arson and thievery convinced people that the chaos was planned. This has now led to the organization of citizens' militias in many parts of the country.
Hossam el-Hamalawy, in the same interview quoted above, describes how they were formed:
"Following the collapse of the police force on January 28th, people stepped in to protect their neighbourhoods. They have set up checkpoints, armed with knives, swords, machetes and sticks and they are inspecting cars that are coming in and out. In some areas, such as the province of Sharqiya, the popular committees are more or less completely running the town, and organizing the traffic."
Here we have the embryo of a people's militia – of an alternative state power.
The latest reports indicate that, in desperation, Suleiman is considering a coup. The problem he faces is that the army is already split. In these conditions an open confrontation with the working class and the revolutionary masses would strain its internal cohesion to breaking point. If the Egyptian regime attempts to use the army, it can break in pieces in its hands. Suleiman, the new "strongman" may stand at the head of the army and the police. But if he went down the road of organising a coup he could find himself with no telephones, no electricity, no transport, no fuel, no food and no water.
The old state power is breaking up. It must be given a final push and replaced with a new power. Only the proletariat can show a way out by placing itself at the head of the Nation. The workers of Egypt have a tremendous power in their hands but it must be organized. That can only be done through the establishment of revolutionary committees. In some areas committees exist, but they must be extended to every workplace, neighbourhood, school and college, and they must be coordinated on a national scale.
Imperialist intimidation
Faced with a revolution that continues to march forward, all the plans of the imperialists are now in ruins. The situation that they hoped was under control is out of control. Ahram Online yesterday reported that the Suez Canal Company workers from the cities of Suez, Port Said, and Ismailia had begun an open-ended sit in. This threatens to disrupt shipping movements if the strike continues. Over 6000 protesters have agreed that they will continue their protest in front of the company's headquarters until their demands are met. They are protesting against poor wages and deteriorating health and working conditions.
In desperation, Washington has sent U.S. naval, marine and air forces to the Suez Canal's Greater Bitter Lake. This is the mailed fist that is concealed within the velvet glove of Obama’s “democracy”. The imperialists are worried about the effects of the Egyptian revolution on the Suez Canal through which about 40 percent of the world's marine freight passes. Should it be disrupted for any length of time it could have repercussions far beyond Egypt itself, directly affecting oil transportation and subsequently the price of oil.
In reality this is an empty gesture on the part of Washington. The U.S. burned its fingers in Iraq. A new military adventure in Egypt is highly unlikely. It would provoke a storm in the USA and on a world scale. There would not be a single U.S. embassy left standing in the Middle East and all the other pro-US Arab regimes would be faced with overthrow. However, it does represent an attempt to intimidate the people of Egypt. This attempt at imperialist bullying must receive a powerful rebuff by the international labour movement.
Let us raise our voice in support of our class brothers and sisters in Egypt:
•Hands off Egypt!
•Down with imperialism!
•Solidarity with the Egyptian Revolution!
Every class conscious worker in the world will rejoice at this marvellous movement of the Egyptian workers and youth. Whatever happens in the next days and weeks Egypt, the Middle East and the whole world will never be the same again.
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