The revolt in Tunisia is successful, but now it is menaced by the trap of democracy

Through a hail of bullets, the Proletariat in North Africa is Rising up and taking on the Bourgeoisie

This generous, international revolt of the working class will only be consolidated by reinforcing its defensive organisations, the trade unions; by challenging the parties and the liberal and democratic illusions of the petty bourgeoisie; by reconnecting with the Marxist programme and political party, in solidarity with the workers in all countries and against the criminal global reaction of capital

Let the word ring out, so long mystified and prohibited: Communism.

In Tunisia the proletariat has taken to the streets, forced into taking action by increasing poverty and growing unemployment. For over a month it fought the police and more than a 100 demonstrators lost their lives. What sparked the revolt was an increase in food prices. After a few weeks the petty bourgeoisie also joined the movement. The rise in prices was partly revoked.

Ben Ali, one of the many dictators in North Africa, has fled, urged on his way by his former collaborators and the army. He stood at the head of a system of corruption which was so vast that he had even become a dangerous liability to the country’s bourgeoisie, and was hated not just by the proletariat but by all social classes.

But of course corruption and nepotism are inevitable in all bourgeois societies. In Europe and America it also happens on a grand scale, with the recent expenses scandal in England just one example among many.

Tunisia is no stranger to social conflict. In 2008, following the sacking of miners in the Southern mining region of Gafsa, there was a protracted struggle against the forces of repression which lasted for 8 months.

Throughout the world we see confirmation of the Marxist thesis that capitalism is incapable of providing for humanity’s needs. The majority of African States have developed a ‘cash crop’ agriculture and monoculture which is geared to the export market. Although more profitable it has resulted in the ruin of the small-holding peasantry and it provides no nutritional benefit to the local population. What is more, a part of the global cereal production is dedicated to the production of fuel for motor vehicles. In a society based on capital and profit agriculture is inevitably neglected and food stocks are never sufficient.

In Tunisia today, the battle is between the members of the old government, who have been recycled as members of the new government, and the petty bourgeois parties. The bourgeois opposition is demanding a Provisional Government which includes all parties and new elections. The openly bourgeois parties like the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberty, the Islamic parties, and the ex-Stalinist Ettajdid all aspire to a democratic government on the European model. The Communist Party of Tunisian Workers calls for a Constituent Assembly and a ‘genuine democratic republic’.

Once again they are setting the trap of democracy to ensnare the working class. This vile, decrepit bourgeois confidence trick, this new superstition which has virtually become a religion, now performs the same function in the West as Islam does in the Arab world and the Middle East. Democracy has as its economic basis the exploitation of wage labour; it is the mask behind which lurks the dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie and the big landowners. Under democratic regimes as well it is still they that decide the fate of all the millions of workers and their families.

It may well be that a new Tunisian government is formed and declares itself to be democratic, and yet, due to the grave economic and social crisis, it will not be long before it is inevitably transformed back into a dictatorship. But the Tunisian proletariat – deprived as it is today of its communist and revolutionary political party – will be powerless even if the opposition parties do win the election. The overthrow of the Ben Ali family is not enough to liberate the proletariat from capitalism and poverty. For that to happen the proletariat will have to organise itself into a vast network of trade union organisations, permeable to revolutionary activity, which regroup all workers on the basis of defending their immediate interests and which includes the unemployed as well. These organisations, same as everywhere else, will have to take up a position outside and against official trade-unionism, which in Tunisia’s case is represented by the UGTT, which is in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

To prepare for the overthrow of capitalism in every country, the vanguard of the Tunisian proletariat, and that of North Africa as a whole, will need to enrol itself in the ranks of the International Communist Party.

But nothing can detract from the fact that the Tunisian proletariat, which flexed its muscles and overthrew this bloody regime, has provided an inspirational example and given hope both to itself and to the exploited of the Maghreb and, we could say, to the entire world. Egyptian proletarians have already risen up and ousted another dictator, other battles have erupted in the Yemen and Bahrain, and now a civil war rages in Libya.

But not only the gangrenous regimes of North Africa and the Middle East, but also those in ‘rich Europe’ have seen the writing on the wall in the events in Tunisia.

This crisis is in fact neither Tunisian nor North African but is linked to the crisis of international capitalism. It is part of a chain of events which include, amongst others, the social movements in Greece and the strikes in Portugal and Spain, which announce that the countdown to the overthrow of bourgeois domination has already begun.