The Proletarian Giant shakes Egypt

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.

Egypt is one link in the chain of social crises caused by the economic recession, which is hitting the proletariat in the countries of young capitalism as much as in the old, along with the poor peasant farmers. The recession has induced the bourgeoisie to withdraw even the little it had conceded over the past few decades, and this has forced the proletariat onto the offensive, in the south as in the north of the world.

In Egypt, in struggles taking place throughout the country for several weeks, more than 300 people have been killed and thousands more wounded or incarcerated.

Returning to the streets en masse on February 11^th to demand the removal from office of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian protestors have obtained what they asked for. At the time of writing the head of State had resigned and the government of the country had passed into the hands of a Committee set up by the General Staff of the military.

The Army, who participated in the repression even if it was a job left mainly in the hands of the police, finally decided to abandon Mubarak and take power into their own hands, even if only temporarily – or so they are saying. Certainly this has caused a split between the sectors of the bourgeoisie prepared to defend the government at any cost and those prepared to sacrifice Mubarak and his numerous ‘clients’, apart from his alliance with the Washington, that is.

The United States, following the Tunisian uprising and the hasty exit of their man, Ben Ali, were faced with a sharpening of the revolt in Egypt and the threat of it spreading to neighbouring countries. Considering that Egypt is a country of key strategic importance in the Middle East and North Africa, and the country which the USA throws most money at in the region after Israel, it finally decided to press for a change in the head of government. The CIA it seems was taken by surprise by the recent events, explaining the odd twists and turns of American diplomacy, but the Pentagon, meanwhile, just to be on the safe side, sent battle ships to defend that vital artery of capitalism, the Suez Canal.

As far as Israeli diplomacy is concerned, it fought, without success evidently, to the bitter end to keep its faithful ally Mubarak firmly in place. And it also comes as no surprise to us that the Palestinian parties, Fatah and Hamas, reacted in the same way as the Israelis, and both of them, in the occupied territories and in Gaza, either repressed or contained the spontaneous manifestations of joy and solidarity with the Egyptians which burst onto the streets. Indeed Hamas actually took over the job of the Egyptian police by hermetically sealing the Rafah crossing.

The watchword of the bourgeoisie the world over, whether Arab, Egyptian or from elsewhere, is “change within continuity”, that is, the classic “changing everything in order to keep everything the same”.

In fact, what we are witnessing today in Egypt is a reinforcement of the regime. Mubarak’s government, after 30 years of open, brutal dictatorship and faced with an economic crisis ended up far too discredited in the eyes of all social classes. Leaving aside the working class, which is permanently rebellious, the petty bourgeoisie is no longer prepared to put up with a system which openly subjects it to the arbitrary decisions, corruption and the privileges of Big Capital, which for the most part is incarnated in a tiny minority of top officials and businessmen linked to the family of the president.

In Egypt, then, the big bourgeoisie, big finance and industry, centred mostly around the military hierarchy, is showing that it is prepared to make concessions to the people, who had taken to the streets, and to put a break on corruption and re-establish a certain ‘quantum’ of democracy and political liberty.

Given the lack of any bourgeois political party with a real programme of any recognisable interest to the masses, this ‘change’ can only be managed from above. And now, not only in the countries of young capitalism but everywhere else, the real party of the bourgeoisie looks for its base of support, in terms of power and intelligence, not from within the social mass but within the State apparatus itself and, in the case of Egypt, historically and in this particular case as well, within the army. Thus was it in 1953, with the national revolution of Gamal Abdel Nasser and his colleagues in the military.

Thus on the streets of the Egyptian cities there is a mixture of classes which are all colliding together. On the one side there is the lumpen proletariat of the capital, defending the supreme leader and the handouts they have come to expect from him. On the other hand there is the petty bourgeoisie, which is nationalist, in all its various sub-species and across its entire ideological spectrum, ranging from the Nasserites to the democratic liberals to the infinite varieties of Islamism, etc. Finally there is the working class, which takes the bourgeois watchwords of liberty and democracy to mean the possibility of trade union organisation, wage increases and reduction of the working day.

The only classes of any real significance in modern society are the proletariat, the bourgeoisie and the big landowners. The others are either hybrids or historical relics. Only classes have a historical and, at the appropriate juncture, revolutionary capacity. In Egypt as well, as though a war was approaching, we find the main classes, whether they are aware of it or not and whether they want it or not, silently preparing for battle: the working class concealed behind the iridescent superfetations of the middle classes; the capitalists and landowners behind the coteries and families who have been making use of their time in power to line their own pockets.

Indeed, the petty bourgeoisie, in its quest for greater democracy, political liberty and freedom of expression, has obtained fleeting satisfaction only because it has received the backing of that veritable giant, in both numerical terms and in terms of its long history of struggle, which is the Egyptian proletariat; those millions of workers in industry, services and agriculture who work for a miserable salary and who, faced with massive unemployment, have managed to organise themselves in clandestine trade unions despite the threat of prison and torture, and to engage in formidable strikes up to the point of obtaining significant victories, even if only partial and temporary.

The working class, despite being the central factor in the crisis, and despite seeing its struggles ignored by the media, which wants to depict a unitary but indistinct movement of people fighting for liberty, has managed to maintain a separate presence by demanding the freedom to form trade unions and to strike. It was the mobilisation of workers which forced the Mubarak government into conceding a 15% increase in wages to State employees; a demand which was straightaway taken up by workers in the private sector.

But now, when every patriot and every bourgeois is calling for an orderly “return to work” for the good of the country and to “build a new Egypt”, the proletariat can hardly share in the exultation of petty bourgeoisie about some old pharaoh being put out to grass; such an outcome certainly doesn’t satisfy the demand for significant and general wage increases, for trade union freedom, for work and for an income for the unemployed.

The test of strength on those issues will be with the new military, and the rendering of accounts is already happening at the Mahala Textile Company, where 20,000 textile workers are still out on strike despite the deployment of forces by the military.

In order to delay the inevitable social clash with the working class, even though it will not be long in coming, the big bourgeoisie, both Egyptian and foreign, is counting on the uncertainty of the political situation, on the novelty of the electoral farce, on euphoria over the few scraps of freedom which have been recovered.

But when that clash happens, the proletariat, in Egypt as everywhere else, mustn’t be caught unprepared.

It should continue on the path it has already embarked upon, of organising itself into trade unions which are independent of the State and the bosses; organisations which are indispensable not only to defend living standards and working conditions but also to protect its members and leaders; organisations which are needed to unite the class by the overcoming of all divisions of trade, sex, religion, in order to move on to the constitution of economic organisations of struggle at the national level.

It will need to keep its eye on the army, on its general staff, which has functioned up to now and will continue to function as the truncheon of bourgeois power and as long as it remains will be used against the proletariat.

It will also need to keep its eye on false friends such as the Muslim Brotherhood who, even if for decades they have not escaped persecution from the regime themselves, they have nevertheless long constituted an arms length anti-worker, anti-trade union and anti-communist militia.

The workers also must not place any faith in the bourgeois parties, even the most ‘democratic’ ones or of the so-called ‘left’, like the ex Egyptian Communist Party, which has always shown itself ready to turn its back on the workers whenever they are determined to go their own way.

The workers must reconnect with their international and anti-capitalist programme of social emancipation, which is separate from and opposed to that of all other parties. In communism’s programme there is, on the historic scale, the proletarian revolution – the time for it is already ripe – and the simultaneous overthrow of bourgeois power in all the countries of the region.

It is not an easy task which awaits the proletariat. And in order not to lose sight of the way ahead, which is full of pitfalls and unknown challenges, it is necessary that the most conscious and combative proletarians reconnect to the invariant tradition and the party of Marxist revolutionary internationalism.

Without its party, as centuries of experience have shown, the proletariat can arrive at the point of mounting a violent revolt, but not of transforming it into a revolutionary process; into a social movement capable not only of replacing a government of the bourgeois State but of overthrowing the bourgeois power, of striking at the heart of the regime of wage labour.

The sole revolutionary programme is the communist programme. The sole revolutionary party is the Communist Party. Every other party is inevitably reactionary and counter-revolutionary.

For there to be a communist revolution there needs to be a Communist Party, an organ of political combat forged over centuries and founded on clear and immutable principles, with a pre-established plan of revolutionary action, with a unique, centralised global leadership connected to a disciplined body of proven militants, who are faithful and enthusiastic, and solidly rooted within the working class and the main countries. A party known to soldiers in the armies, who alone can direct military actions needed to defend the revolution.

Only with this indispensable instrument – moving as one man because able to predict events and the moves of its bourgeois enemy, and in the full knowledge of the homicidal fury and tricks the latter will resort to defend its privileges, but also of its inherent weaknesses – will the victory of the working class be possible.