Well Sort of…No,Not Really
by ANDY LISBON
A recent article by the IWL (International Workers League) on
developments in Egypt, entitled, Egypt: No confidence at all in the new
puppet military and imperialist administration! makes some confusing
and contradictory claims that they come to by a combination of: ignoring
the developments since 2011 in Egypt, by rewriting recent history in
Egypt, and by misapplying a theory of Permanent Revolution on
development in Egypt and throughout the Middle East. Whether that
theory has held up intact over the course of the last 80 years, during
which dozens of revolutions have occurred and been reversed without
the leadership of the working class in either phase of the ‘process,’ is
beyond the scope of this document. Nevertheless, I will try to make
sense of the mass of confusion, historical inaccuracy and theoretical
sleight-of-hand represented in the article.
What Are the Claims?
1) The military reclaiming direct control of the government through a
coup should be supported by socialists because it was a direct result of
the popular explosion that took place between June 30 and July 3rd,
2013.
“Jaded and absolutely fed up, the toiling masses rose with much greater
power than that epic feat against the dictator and toppled another
president in fewer three years..Egyptian masses are now writing a new
page in the history of their revolution, a revolution that is still continues
its course and is permanent and uninterrupted.”
2) The events that have taken place represent a weakening of the State
(another reason we should support the event even though they ended in
a coup).
“The military regime ruling in the country managed to survive the fall of
Mubarak was not destroyed even it was injured and weakened by the
activity of the masses… the fundamental thing is to understand that,
regardless the forms, the fall of Morsi, just as the fall of Mubarak was
before it, is an enormous revolutionary triumph of the Egyptian masses
who, through their activity weakened the military as well as American
imperialism that have been upholding this regime for the past 30 years.”
3) The Muslim Brotherhood’s claim that Morsi should be returned to
power because he was elected in a fair election is false, and that they
represent the forces of counter-revolution and should be put down.
“Of course, according to what we explained above, this repudiation
cannot stand for our supporting the demonstrations of the Brotherhood
trying to return to power or that their leaders – beginning with Morsi,
liable for all the repression during this year, or the Brotherhood’s mass
media are to be returned to them to be used in campaigns against what
the masses decided in the streets…. As long as the Brotherhood keeps on
calling their supporters to walk out into the street to take over the
control, that is to say, to go against the action of the vast majority of the
toiling masses and the achievement that the eviction of Morsi meant for
them; we are against defending his right of expression and
demonstration.”
4) Socialists should oppose the ensuing crackdown on the Muslims who
are demonstrating to restore the president who was democratically
elected in Egypt.
“However, the fact that we are against the demonstrations of the Muslim
Brotherhood to return to the office does not mean that we shall back any
repressive action of the Army or the police because their measures obey
the interests of their commanding officers and the is no reason for which
we can trust them. We condemn this attack for its unnecessary cruelty
and because these deaths served the only purpose of strengthening the
attempt by the Brotherhood at returning to power taking advantage of
the indignation that this fact caused in all the sectors, including those
who had evicted Morsi.”
5) Socialists should oppose a government of the military because it
represents the restoration of the most repressive sections of the State
apparatus and appears to have growing support from the forces of
imperialism, namely the United States and its key allies in the region.
“No confidence in the new government! We must face them
independently!
With Morsi defeated, the main enemy of the mass movement is the new
government established once more by the military.”
6) The “mass movement must demand from this new civilian-military
government, the one that claims to be the “guardians of the people” an
immediate, really democratic and sovereign Constituent Assembly to
pass a program for the liberation of Egypt from the imperialist bonds.”
One can be excused for being confused by this tangle of contradictory
assessments given that points (1) and (2) run completely contrary to
point (5); and that point (3) runs counter to point (4). Such a mess of
mixed messages can only produce the worst response in workers or
revolutionaries at time like this: not clarity but confusion, not action but
paralysis.
Untangling the Mess: Comparing Egypt 2011 to 2013
First off, the struggle in 2011 was an uprising that opposed the worst
aspects of austerity that led to mass unemployment and hunger,
opposed a Mubarak regime that was a dictatorship and shed workers
blood in the streets; and called for the removal of Mubarak and the
establishment of a democratic process that would allow more popular
control of the government and presumably, the beginning of the
realization of the popular demands.
The aims of the struggle at the time where partially accomplished by the
establishment of free elections (although confined within bourgeois
limits) for the first time in Egyptian history. These developments,
including the establishment of democracy in Egypt, were universally
hailed by socialists as a first step in a revolutionary process. The IWL
went so far as to call these developments an “unconscious socialist
revolution“ I will leave aside lack of familiarity with such a term ever
being used within Marxism, and that it is completely contradictory to
what Marxists actually think socialist revolution is: the conscious act of
the working class coming to power.
The fact is that the coup in 2013 has now completely reversed every one
of the partial gains accomplished by the “first phase of the revolution” in
2011, and yet we are supposed to understand this as a continuation of
the revolutionary process. In fact, we are supposed to see the forces of
the Muslim Brotherhood as the forces of counter-revolution because
they are ‘mistakenly’ going into the streets to defend ‘democracy’
because they are demanding that a democratically elected president be
restored and military rule be reversed.
The election of Morsi was close, he defeated the former regime candidate
by a slim margin (51% vs. 49%) but he did win what was largely
considered a fair election. In fact there have been many subsequent
elections since then. The people in Egypt went to the polls at least six
times: to vote for a referendum to chart the political way forward
(March 2011), to vote for the lower and upper house of parliament
(November 2011-January 2012), to elect a civilian president over two
rounds (May-June 2012), and to ratify the new constitution (December
2012). Each time the electorate voted for the choice of the Islamist
parties to the frustration of the secular and liberal opposition.
I think it is understandable that Muslim workers see themselves as
defending democracy by opposing the coup because that is exactly what
they are doing. They are not mistaken. Far from being counterrevolutionary,
within bourgeois terms, these workers see most clearly
what has happened. The democracy they fought and bled for in 2011
has been dismantled by a coup. As a matter of fact, socialists who
applauded the 2013 demonstrations uncritically and directed the
working class into the hands of the military, instead should have opposed
the removal of a bourgeois bully (but an elected one) by a military coup,
which amounts to back handed support of reaction, and instead
organized a working class defense of democracy.
This is exactly the role the Bolshevik party played in 1917 in defending a
far worse criminal in power (Kerensky) against the forces of reaction on
the march (Kornilov) that threatened to take down both Kerensky and
the organs of worker’s power, the Soviets.
But now events have passed socialists and the working class by and
reaction has once again taken power (despite socialists refusal to
acknowledge that). I do not believe socialists need to call for reimposition
of Morsi in opposing the illegitimacy of the military coup; just
as the Bolsheviks would not have called for the re-installation of
Kerensky. Socialists are for neither bourgeois road. Despite the
weakness of the Left in Egypt and internationally, the role of socialists
both inside and outside of Egypt is to argue for the independence of the
working class.
Instead, IWL draws an equal sign between Mubarak and Morsi. They
fail to acknowledge, on the one hand, that while one ruled by direct
dictatorship, the other’s rule was established by bourgeois democracy;
and on the other hand, that Mubarak’s fall was the final chapter in a
struggle against dictatorship and for the establishment of a democratic
regime, while Morsi’s fall came with the dismantling of that regime and
the re-imposition of military dictatorship. To call such a development a
continuation of a revolutionary process is a contradiction, and not the
kind resolvable through ‘dialectics,’ its just bad logic.
Who took down Morsi? The masses or the military?
IWL makes this mistake because it claims that the events, which took
down Morsi, were a simple result of the mass demonstrations that took
place in late June and early July. If only it were so simple. A quick
perusal of the bourgeois and Left press over days after the coup prove
that it was nothing of the kind.
Things broke down between Morsi and the military over a year ago
when Morsi moved swiftly to shake up the military after his inauguration
on June 30, 2012. Within six weeks, he summoned Field Marshal
Hussein Tantawi, who had served Mubarak for two decades and was
interim head of state after him, and told him to retire along with the
U.S.-trained chief of staff, General Sami Enan. Morsi then appointed a
pious Muslim, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as commander of the armed
forces.
The president believed he had stamped his authority on the men in
uniform. In reality, the officer corps was willing to see two old retainers
put out to pasture, clearing a blocked promotion ladder. “They (the
Brotherhood) misread what happened. We allowed it to happen,” said
one colonel. The military still viewed with deep suspicion a head of state
that, they believed, saw Egypt as “just part of a bigger (Islamic)
Caliphate,” said the colonel.
Morsi believed the military would not act against him, especially if the
Brotherhood took care of the army’s economic interests when drafting a
new constitution. “He thought Sisi was his guy,” a
senior Western diplomat said. “He didn’t understand the power
dynamics.”
Late in 2012, when Morsi and the Brotherhood pushed for a new
constitution, they clashed with secular parties and civil society groups
angered by the Islamist tinge to the charter, ambiguous wording on
freedom of expression, and the absence of explicit guarantees of the
rights of women, Christians and non-government organizations.
After weeks of debate, fear that a judiciary packed with Mubarak-era
appointees would dissolve the constituent assembly, helped prompt
Morsi to issue a decree shielding the assembly from legal challenge and
putting the president above judicial review. It was a move born out of
the Brotherhood’s deep suspicion that the judiciary was out to undo all
its electoral gains. When Morsi rammed the new charter through, the
opposition walked out. The constitutional decree was a turning point.
Ministers were not consulted. Several of Morsi’s own staff warned that it
would set him on a confrontation course with powerful sections of civil
society.
The demonstrations against Morsi were entirely justified and expressed
the popular disillusionment with the Morsi government and their
attempt to consolidate more political power into the presidency using the
cover of “protecting the gains of the revolution.” Many mainstream
media (and even state-run media) outlets participated in protest by
suspending publication or expressing opposition to Morsi’s policies. Still,
while popular support of Morsi eroded, there were reports that many of
the demonstrations were actually led by the Mubarak supporters. It was
clear that Morsi had overplayed his hand and was facing opposition from
both the Left and the Right. The opposition was said to be led by
activist Hamdeen Sabahi and centrist leader, Mohamed ElBaradei in an
alliance with one of Mubarak’s men, Amr Moussa, the former foreign
minister under the dictatorship. The Morsi regime was clearly
weakening.
On December of 2012, a wave of protests rocked the Morsi
administration and Morsi’s Ittihadiya palace was regularly attacked with
petrol bombs, rocks and metal bolts. The police and military refused to
come out and defend Morsi at the time and the Muslim Brotherhood was
forced to organize its own defense of its party in power. Later in
January, during the second anniversary of the uprising that had
established democratic rule in Egypt, Morsi had called a curfew after
demonstrations turned violent. Reports have it that far from imposing a
curfew, members of the military refused to impose it.
“People at night were playing football with the army which was supposed
to be imposing the curfew,” said Mekky, who had become justice
minister. “So when I (as president) impose a curfew and I see neither
my citizens nor my army that are supposed to implement the curfew are
listening to me, I should know that I am not really a president.”
A Weakened State or a Stronger One
The IWL article claims that the Egyptian State has been weakened by
the coup. A state that now enjoys the active or passive support of tens of
millions of Egyptians. A state that has absorbed into itself virtually
every section of resistance in the Tamarrud (from El Baradei, to the
students and trade union leaders) as well as all the sections of the former
Mubarak regime, and excluding only the Salafists and the Muslim
Brotherhood itself. All these sectors bound under one roof supporting a
coup government, an aggressive return to the streets of the military and
brutal crackdown on Muslims and opposition forces. Compare this to a
regime in which the military refuses to act to defend it and instead plays
soccer with workers. By any measure that makes sense, politically or
organizational, the hand of the state has been massively strengthened by
the coup and socialists would be fools to not acknowledge this
development. Because this same state apparatus is being prepared and
sharpened for dealing with opposition it will face beyond the Muslim
Brotherhood in the coming weeks, months and years.
The Process of Morsi’s Removal
In truth, the groundwork for this support and strengthening of the state
did not start on June 30th 2013, but had been laid down in the preceding
months.
In the months prior to the coup, the European Union, supported by the
United States, launched a discreet diplomatic effort to try to bring the
Morsi government together with its liberal and secular opposition to
compromise on a national unity government. The aim was to trigger
fresh parliamentary elections and a loan agreement with the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) that could have unlocked stalled
economic aid and investment.
Morsi never explicitly embraced the EU initiative although he never
rejected it either. Morsi proved unable to implement the IMF’s
neoliberal agenda. Events soon put a deal out of reach.
Only a month before the army intervened to remove Morsi, two of
Egypt’s most senior power brokers met for a private dinner at the home
of liberal politician Ayman Nour on the island of Zamalek.
The two power brokers were Amr Moussa, a long-time foreign minister
under Mubarak and now a secular nationalist politician, and Khairat El-
Shater, the Brotherhood’s deputy leader and most influential strategist
and financier. Moussa suggested that to avoid confrontation, Morsi
should heed opposition demands, including a change of government.
The Tamarrud itself, far from being an independent movement of the
working class, is a student-initiated movement, which grew well beyond
their ability to direct and control as it swelled. It brought together a
variety of disparate forces whose only point of agreement (whether
coming from the Right or from the Left) was a shared a hatred and
distrust for a weakening, and isolated Morsi administration. This
included trade unions, students, liberal leaders and groups, members of
the old Mubarak regime (fulool), members of the military, and even the
Salafists. While workers participated in the movement and provided its
popular base, the political leadership of it was entirely composed of a
disparate grouping of the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie.
Billionaire businessman Naguib Sawiris, who left Egypt shortly after
Morsi’s election, told Reuters he threw his full support behind the youth
movement.
“The Free Egyptians party, the party that I founded, used all its
branches across Egypt to (gather) signatures for Tamarrud,” Sawiris
said in a telephone interview from his yacht off the Greek island of
Mykonos. “Also the TV station that I own and the newspaper, Al-Masry
Al-Youm, were supporting the Tamarrud movement with their media …
It is fair to say that I encouraged all the affiliations I have to support the
movement. But there was no financing, because there was no need.”
Far from causing the fall of a regime, the demonstrations on June 30 –
July 3, despite their mass base and mass character, can best be
understood as the final act in the political undoing of the democratic
reforms won in 2011. The political and organizational groundwork for
this act by the military had been prepared months in advance, and has
been used to orchestrate a popularly supported coup that significantly
strengthens the hand of the state, of imperialism and threatens to split a
nascent workers and student movement along religious lines while
undoing or marginalizing political developments that had led a section of
workers to see the military as their enemy in 2011.
Oppose the Coup, Oppose the Crackdown
This is why socialists should oppose the military, not just in the actions it
takes today, but also in the taking of power and reject any association of
the coup as part of some revolutionary process. The acts by the military
over the last month are best understood as an act of counter-revolution
that should not just be opposed in name but in deed. For socialists, that
means rejecting the attacks, which are now taking place on Muslims or
the shutting down of radio and television stations like Al Jazeera. It is
not enough to ‘expose’ the crimes of the military or ‘condemn’ the crimes
of the military. That is the role of a reformist, liberal media. We are
revolutionaries. Socialists on the ground in Egypt should be organizing
the active defense of Muslim workers being attacked by the military, and
rejecting the ethnic divide being promoted within our class by bourgeois
dictatorship that has been restored.
In actively defending our Muslim brothers and sisters who are now
under attack by the bourgeois state, we can explain to Muslim workers
that we do not support the restoration of the Morsi government not just
because of the many betrayals and atrocities it visited on its opponents
but because the “Morsi democracy” is really a different form of the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. (It’s worth mentioning that the same is
true for the US regime which imprisons greater percentage of its
population than any other country, doesn’t allow felons to vote, and
condones people like Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant being gunned
down in the street.)
We as socialists are not for that either, but we are for uniting workers
across racial, ethnic, religious and gender lines to overthrow the rule of
the bourgeoisie, whether it’s hidden behind a military dictatorship
(Mubarak, Sisi) or behind a parliamentary shell (Morsi, Obama). We
must convince Muslim workers of the atrocities that Morsi committed in
attacking our Christian brothers and sisters. Socialists can organize a
defense against the military repression while engaging Muslim workers
about the basis of that defense which challenges religious and ethnic
sectarianism and attempts to politically and organizationally unite a
single workers movement. A movement whose aim to opposing and
eventually take down the coup government for the establishment of a
workers government and the overturning of imperial and capitalist
relations in Egypt. This must be followed by the subsequent spreading of
the socialist revolution throughout the region, and the world.
Of course we cannot be blind to the enormity of the task and how feeble
our forces are in arguing such a course and how politically distant the
working class is from such a vision.
Nevertheless, this is our path. It is the path of the political independence
of the working class in relation to the machinations of the bourgeoisie;
and it is the only path that can solve the economic and social crisis in
Egypt – socialist revolution.
This stands in sharp contrast to what the IWL is arguing in their article.
The mush of opposing a coup we support or rejecting a crackdown we
simultaneously justify.
Permanent Revolution? Does Egypt Fit?
We cannot fool ourselves into thinking this path is an easy one. The fact
is, there are no socialists of any weight providing the kind of leadership
we are calling for. In part because, like the IWL, socialists in Egypt and
across the globe have been completely confused by the developments in
Egypt (and throughout Middle East during the Arab Spring), and have
tried to paint the great moments of class struggle that are taking place in
socialist colors by saying they are part of a revolutionary process that
‘may’ lead to socialist revolution because it conforms to a process of
permanent revolution laid out by Trotsky in 1929.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Postulates 2 and 3 of Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution states:
“With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development,
especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the
permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of
their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is
conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader
of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.”
Furthermore:
“Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry the tasks of the
democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But
the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than
through an irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the nationalliberal
bourgeoisie.”
Is that what is going on in Egypt? Is that what is taking place in any of
the regimes taken down by or threatened during the Arab
Spring? Absolutely not. Class struggle? Yes. But struggle thoroughly
led by sections of the national bourgeoisie and even sections of the petite
bourgeoisie. Not a single movement in any region of the Arab Spring has
an independent working class organization or expresses independent
working class demands. How do we know this? Well, there is no call for
socialist revolution in the face of any of these developments, no
establishment of workers councils, no moments of dual power and
finally, (and unlike in Trotsky’s day) no mass Communist Party rooted
in the working class in any of these countries, not even a single
movement led by independent trade unions.
As postulate 4 of Trotsky’s permanent revolution states:
“No matter what the first episodic stages of the revolution may be in the
individual countries, the realization of the revolutionary alliance between
the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only under the political
leadership of the proletariat vanguard, organized in the Communist
Party.”
All this should give us some pause as we assess the political and
organizational developments taking place within a region where struggle
is immense, but the movements, because of the weakness of the radical
Left, end up being manipulated by various sections of national
bourgeoisie and are even financed by sections of international
bourgeoisie through imperialism.
The failure of the IWL and the rest of the revolutionary Left to recognize
the decisive influence of the international and national bourgeoisie, and
their insistence on characterizing events in terms of a “permanent and
uninterrupted” revolutionary process, instead of clearly assessing events
as they unfold and charting a course independent of the bourgeoisie,
leads them to the path of opportunism. This is the path that the IWL
and most other revolutionaries are currently walking.
Size (and Implantation) Matters.
The challenge we face is that the number of socialists with a base in the
working class in Egypt, in the Middle East, or throughout the world, is
tiny in relation to the crisis workers now face. A small group of socialists
in Egypt would find it impossible to enact either the course of action the
IWL and others is suggesting: “a demand from this new civilian-military
government, the one that claims to be the “guardians of the people” an
immediate, really democratic and sovereign Constituent Assembly to
pass a program for the liberation of Egypt from the imperialist bonds.”
Beyond the absurdity of demanding a coup government of dictatorship to
call a “Constituent Assembly” and the confusion such a call would have in
the heads of the few workers who are listening; the real problem is the
idealist notion that ANY of this can be realized without the presence of a
mass revolutionary party with a mass working class base. Nothing of the
sort exists, in Egypt or anywhere for that matter. Proclamations such as
these, even if they were right, (and the IWL’s are not) are scraps of
paper without a mass party to implement it and to test it in practice. The
ideas might be founded on scientific socialism but the method is idealist
and hopelessly utopian.
A small set of socialists could, however, begin assembling a core of
workers and students around them who reject the military government,
the Morsi government and ethnic divisions being sown by the coup
government. Such a group might begin to build around them a cohort of
revolutionaries prepared to put forward an independent political line in
the face of the mass of confusion sown within our class by the
movement’s bourgeois leadership. But let’s be clear, these
revolutionaries must understand that this is a building operation, and
they will have limited impact on the course of the struggle given the scale
of the forces at play and the small size of their own organization. These
more modest aims would be hard to do and the pull of opportunism is
great, but our task is to make a working class revolution, not just
produce regime change of any sort.
Class struggle in Egypt is great, but is no surprise. We are
Marxists. Class struggle results from a class divided society. The real
story we should be telling in Egypt and to workers here in the US is the
tragedy of millions mobilized and acting for a better world, several times,
over only a few years and what does it produce without mass
revolutionary leadership and revolutionaries without a mass working
class base.
Well, you see it in Egypt. A coup government of reaction.
The project for building such an organization here in the US is an
immediate task that cannot be put off for a time when struggle picks
up. It is an essential task now both for the possibility of training a cadre
of socialists how to lead class struggle, and to building a larger
revolutionary party that has a relationship to, and eventually recruits, a
growing working class vanguard which will develop in that
struggle. Without that preliminary work, the kind of work done by the
Bolsheviks over decades in Russia, we will lose. That is the lesson of
Egypt and the Arab Spring. In our opinion, we should start telling it that
way.
ENJOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their
Fellow Men!
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