Events in Egypt are developing at
lightning speed. Similarly to the last days of Mubarak in February this
year, we see daily battles on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere. The
Egyptian masses are determined to see the revolution carried through to
the end. The clash between revolution and counter-revolution is
provoking a crisis inside all political forces, as the rank and file
instinctively move towards revolution and the leaderships vacillate and
try to hold the masses back.
Events in Egypt are developing at
lightning speed. Similarly to the last days of Mubarak in February this
year, we see daily battles on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere. The
Egyptian masses are determined to see the revolution carried through to
the end. The clash between revolution and counter-revolution is
provoking a crisis inside all political forces, as the rank and file
instinctively move towards revolution and the leaderships vacillate and
try to hold the masses back.
Tahrir square during the "Million man march"The
latest protests, which are now entering their fifth day, are the
largest and longest since the beginning of the revolution and the fall
of Mubarak. According to Ahram online, the “million-man march” on
Tuesday 22nd November succeeded in mobilising a million
people in Tahrir Square, and 100,000 in Alexandria. In addition, there
were protests of many thousands in Suez, Port Said, Gharbiya, Fayoum,
Damietta, and Minya. Such numbers are all the more impressive given the
brutality that protestors are facing from the state. The streets around
Tahrir Square have become open battlegrounds, with police firing round
upon round of tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets at the crowds and
protestors defending themselves with stones and Molotov cocktails.
The violence and brutality on display by the state forces – the armed
bodies of men – cannot be overstated. Dozens have been killed and
thousands injured. Reports (http://english.ahram.org.eg/~/NewsContent/1/64/27284/Egypt/Politics-/Fighting-intensifies-around-Tahrir-Square-as-thous.aspx)
indicate that the Central Security Forces are using a new potent type
of tear gas that causes extreme suffocation and epileptic shocks. In
Qena, the firing of tear gas into apartment blocks has left a nine-month
old baby girl dead. Elsewhere, tear gas has been fired into hospitals
and even mosques.
This brutality, instead of scaring protestors away and diminishing
the crowds, has simply served to enrage the masses even further, leading
to a swelling of the numbers on the streets. The revolutionary masses –
primarily lead by the youth, who have been the most determined fighters
since the beginning of the 25th January movement – have lost
all fear. As is so often the case, the whip of counter-revolution has
merely propelled the revolution further forwards.
“Leave, leave”
As we reported previously (http://www.marxist.com/egypt-revolution-moving-into-a-new-phase.htm),
these latest protests are directed against the military regime – the
Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) – which filled the power vacuum
left after the departure of Hosni Mubarak on 11th February, and which has refused to leave ever since, despite repeated calls and protestors on behalf of the masses.
The current protest, which began with a demonstration in Tahrir
Square last Friday, was organised by an array of the different political
groupings that put down their banners in order to unite against the
electoral and constitutional process that the SCAF have put in place.
The parliamentary elections scheduled for the 28th November
are rightly considered to be a sham, with the SCAF suggesting that it
remain as a super-constitutional body after the elections, and with
presidential elections not scheduled (originally) until late 2012 or
early 2013.
In response to the protests, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi,
head of the SCAF, gave a public statement in which he announced the
resignation of the Cabinet and the moving forward of presidential
elections to June 2012 (at the latest). Such concessions, however, like
the meagre reforms offered by Ben-Ali, Mubarak, and Gaddafi in their
final days, are too little, too late for the revolutionary masses in
Tahrir Square, who were quick to reject Tantawi’s offers. The crowds
responded to the Field Marshal’s calls for protestors to disperse with
defiant chants of “leave, leave; Tantawi must leave”.
Events are moving forward quickly; the confidence of the masses is
growing and consciousness is rising; the SCAF is unable to keep up with
the situation. The similarity to events in February earlier this year is
clear, with the ruling elite, detached from the real situation and mood
on the streets, trying to maintain power at all costs. Like the dying
days of Hosni Mubarak, we see appeals from the SCAF for calm and order
accompanied simultaneously by the deployment of state violence. Indeed,
within two hours of Tantawi’s speech, security forces had already
returned and the street battles had recommenced.
The Egyptian news website Al Masry Al Youm comments (http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/517625) on the similarity between the February days and the current situation:
“Shortly after he finished his speech, thousands of protesters in
Tahrir chanted slogans reminiscent of those used during the protests
that brought down President Hosni Mubarak.
‘Leave, leave,’ they told Tantawi.
The growing similarities between these protests and unrest early this
year are not limited to slogans. Political activist and analyst Samer
Soliman compared Tantawi’s speech to the ones Mubarak made early in the
revolution, saying it came too late and offered solutions that were no
longer acceptable after the recent escalation.
‘It’s obvious that time has passed him by, and he doesn’t realize what’s happening around him, just like Mubarak’ Soliman said.
Islam Lotfy, member of the 25 January Revolution Youth Coalition and
co-founder of the Egyptian Current party said protesters in the square
immediately rejected Tantawi’s ‘disappointing’ speech.
Activist Ahmed Maher, coordinator of 6 April Youth Movement, agreed
with Zahran, saying, ‘the speech doesn’t respond to the demands raised
by protesters in Tahrir and other governorates. The speech is the same
as the speeches of Mubarak in his final days.’”
Both the tone and the content of Tantawi’s speech was similar to
those of Mubarak’s, with conciliatory appeals to the crowds for order
and calm. Tantawi’s speech suggested that he may have been living on
another planet for the past ten months, with proclamations that the SCAF
represented the will of the Egyptian people and was protecting the
“national interest”, has never shot bullets at any Egyptian citizen, and
has been patient with “attempts to smear the reputation” of the SCAF.
It beggars belief to think that anyone is expected to buy such
hypocritical nonsense that is spouted forth simultaneously alongside
brutal state repression on the streets.
But neither violence nor concessions, similarly to the last days of
Mubarak, will be enough to keep the SCAF in power. The military regime’s
days are numbered, and it is increasingly looking like a case of not if the SCAF will choose to leave, but when it will be forced to leave.
Defections and divisions
There are further similarities between the beginning of the
revolution and current events, with the defection of certain
high-ranking state officials to the side of the protestors. Ahmed
Shoman, a popular army captain who was amongst the first of the army
officials to defect to the revolution in January, has once again joined
the masses in Tahrir Square, condemning the SCAF for attempting to stay
in power and telling reporters that the army “should never be above the
people”. Shoman is seen to represent the more revolutionary elements
within the army, and such a defection indicates the potential for
greater splits in the state apparatus.
Alongside defections in the military, there are also divisions
forming in the Muslim Brotherhood. Since the beginning of the
revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood has kept at arms’ length from the
revolutionary movement, refusing to attend a number of protests and
tail-ending the movement when it has been involved. Instead, the
Brotherhood has concentrated on gaining electoral success in the
upcoming parliamentary elections, which it is widely expected to
dominate due to its large national organisational network, which, unlike
other political groups, pre-dates the revolution.
Now divisions are beginning to occur within the Muslim Brotherhood
between the old, elitist, opportunist leadership and the younger
members, who, like the rest of the Egyptian youth, are the most
revolutionary layer of the movement. The Brotherhood leadership, which
is more concerned with its own interests than that of the revolution,
and which is scared of the size of the latest protests, has advised its
members to avoid the demonstrations. This has led to the resignation of
many younger members from the Brotherhood.
What this highlights is that the old (and new) political divisions in
Egypt are breaking down and polarising into two camps: revolutionaries
and counter-revolutionaries. What is also clear is the complete absence
of any mass organisation that is able to represent the desires and needs
of these revolutionary youth. It is this lack of leadership – the
missing subjective factor – that is one of the most striking features of
the Egyptian revolution and that is, in the final analysis, the main
barrier standing between the Egyptian masses and the potential of taking
power.
In the February days, it was the impact of the workers on the
revolution, through a wave of mass strikes, that ultimately led to the
toppling of Mubarak. Indeed, this September was characterised by a
further wave of strikes throughout the country (http://www.marxist.com/egyptian-working-class-organising-and-on-the-move.htm).
The latest protests have seen the youth at the forefront, as was the
case in the first wave of revolution. This will inevitably be followed
by movements of the working class. Already workers from Suez and other
parts of the country have called for an indefinite general strike, but
because of the lack of organisation on a national scale, this is yet to
materialise.
What is needed now is for the Federation of Independent Trade Unions,
which has been newly formed since February, to mobilise all its forces,
not simply by joining in the protests in Tahrir Square, but by calling
for a general strike. Such a move would hold a fire to the backsides of
the SCAF and ensure a speedy departure of the military regime.
Nature abhors a vacuum
The important question regarding the possible fall of the SCAF is:
who would fill the void? As is often said, nature abhors a vacuum, and
this is even more the case in politics. Regarding the most commonly
cited possibilities, the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood have
consistently revealed themselves to be against the revolution, and it is
clear that a liberal bourgeois government, perhaps with a presidential
figure such as Mohamed El Baradei, would be able to solve none of the
social and economic issues that have been posed by workers and youth
throughout the revolution. One must not forget that the demand for
“social justice” has been consistently made since the beginning of the
movement; despite some suggestions, the Egyptian revolution is clearly
about more than just establishing a democratic civilian government.
Any new government will, in the end, be faced with the task of
solving the problems facing the Egyptian people; the task of providing
jobs, increasing wages, and improving public services. But none of these
issues can be solved on a capitalist basis. Despite consistent economic
growth in Egypt, inequality has grown; youth unemployment, like the
rest of the Arab world, is extremely high, with official estimates
(which are very likely to be underestimates) of around 25%; inflation is
biting into already pitiful wages.
The tasks facing Egyptian workers and youth, therefore, is to take
power into their own hands – both politically and economically – and not
to place their trust in any of the fair weather friends of the
revolution. Once again, this raising the question of the need for the
independent trade unions and the labour movement as a whole to assert
itself, and for the need to build a revolutionary organisation in Egypt
that can unite the various struggles and lead the movement forward –
forward to socialism.
