The Egyptian revolution, following on
rapidly from the Tunisian uprising, has sent shockwaves across the whole
of the Arab world. All the serious strategists of capital are
discussing the “domino effect” of the events unfolding in Egypt. None of
them, however, had anticipated any of this.

One of the salient features of a
revolution is that the masses conquer the fear of the state and
repression. This has been graphically demonstrated on the streets of
Egypt. At the same time the surge of a mass upheaval breaks the taboos
in the psychology of the soldiers and the army begins to cleave on a
class basis. A rare fraternity between the security forces and the
masses, whom they are supposed to crush, develops as the revolution
blossoms.

“The sky was filled with rocks. The
fighting around me was so terrible we could smell the blood.” With these
words Robert Fisk describes the dramatic events in Tahrir Square, where
the forces of the Revolution met the counterrevolution head-on. All day
and all through the night, a ferocious battle raged in the Square and
the surrounding streets.

The revolution in Egypt is reaching a
critical point. The old state power is collapsing under the hammer blows
of the masses but revolution is a struggle of living forces. The old
regime does not intend to surrender without a fight. The
counterrevolutionary forces are going onto the offensive. There is
ferocious fighting on the streets of Cairo between pro- and anti-Mubarak
elements.

The
whole of Egypt is now in a precarious balance. That same precariousness
applies to the role of the armed forces, the sole remaining fulcrum of
the regime. On paper it is a formidable force, as solid as the
aforementioned pyramid. But armies are composed of human beings, and are
subject to the same pressures as any other social stratum or
institution.