Egyptian revolution

One year ago today began in Egypt revolutionary protests against President Hosni Mubarak, involving millions of workers. Under the impact of the fall of the Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali protests by the working class, only eleven days earlier, the Egyptian workers began an eighteen-day revolutionary struggle that ended thirty years of Mubarak continued rule.

Although Mubarak has been supported by the U.S. Ambassador Frank Wisner, and about 840 people died due to police violence, Mubarak had on 11 Resign in disgrace in February and handed power over to one of the US-backed military junta. The American, European and Israeli governments were shocked by the loss of a valuable ally that had helped for decades about to suppress the workers’ resistance against imperialist oppression and poverty in the Middle East.

Twenty years after the ruling classes had claimed that the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy was the “end of history” and the final triumph of capitalism over socialism and class struggle, spurred on by the initial victory against Mubarak, the working class worldwide. In Egypt was celebrated for weeks and still on strike for higher wages and better conditions. The protests spread out throughout the Middle East, at last, even after Israel and the United States, where workers in the struggle against social cuts the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker threatened to “make it like the Egyptians”

The initial victory was the prelude for a year of bitter wars and class struggles.A year later, the military dictatorship, despite Mubarak’s fall is still in power, can imprison and torture thousands, while the working masses from poverty wages in the amount of two dollars a day to live. Despite their boundless courage and determination could not simply the historical problems of the political perspective of the program and the leadership skip that stood them against Mubarak’s regime, the working class.

In the first days of the Revolution, last February, told the World Socialist Web Site: “The revolution is still in its early stages. The class forces that are unleashed in this social explosion, begin to only express themselves in certain receivables. … The working class, which was suppressed for decades, has not yet set up its own program. In those first moments of the unfolding battle, this can not be otherwise. “

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is fighting for an independent political perspective for the working class. This distinguishes it from other class tendencies that emerged initially in the protest movement.On the basis of Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, the ICFI was trying to explain that the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie against the working class are afraid of imperialism and dependent. Therefore, they can not produce a democratic regime. Democracy can only be the result of a revolutionary struggle for socialism, led by the working class and to ask with the aim of all the resources of the national and international economy under the control of workers and the oppressed masses.

The ICFI tried to explain the increasingly sharp contradictions between the workers and parts of other classes, which were drawn by the revolution in political life: the middle classes – Islamist parties which were banned under Mubarak, sections of the liberal bourgeoisie, Mohammed ElBaradei supported – and above all “leftist” groups of middle-class.

The bourgeois parties intended an agreement with the Egyptian military government. The “left” representative of the middle class, for example, the misleadingly so-called Revolutionary Socialists (RS) and its international allies wanted to cooperate with Washington in order to manipulate the protests of the population – and create an “enlarged democratic space” under the military rule in which they could unfold.

These forces helped the propaganda of U.S. imperialism to a slightly “left” Painting: The funding of political groups and independent trade unions allegedly supporting the protests in Washington of the “Arab Spring” in the transition to democracy throughout the Middle East.

A major issue last year was the growing conflict between this layer and the reactionary revolutionary struggles of the working class. Than in spring because of growing discontent with the military calls for a “second revolution” were, according to the RS presented against this claim. Instead, she helped organize a united campaign of “opposition parties”, including ultra-right Islamists like Gamaa IslamiyahDadurch they lost the support of the public and allowed the military, in June and July, the resurgent protest in Tahrir Square to crush.

In the fall took the strike again, especially in late November, shortly before the start of Egypt’s parliamentary elections. This showed the growing anger over the fraudulent “democratic transition”, which is carried out under martial law.The elections were marked by massive propaganda, despite the indifference of the electorate, which the Islamists in parliament could improve their position. The reason for this is not their role in the revolution – which was insignificant – but the support of middle-class parties and the funding they received the ruling classes of Egypt and the emirates of the Persian Gulf.

However, the RS are now pushing to hand over power to a civilian regime, which would led by Islamist forces like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis, the extreme right.

Such a government is aimed at gunpoint against the social demands that have driven the workers in the struggle against Mubarak. It can be nothing else than a violent counter-revolutionary regime, which can continue to govern the army in the background. Islamist officials said recently that the army had “the right to a special status in the upcoming constitution, a larger than earlier.”

The “left” from the middle class are also directed outside Egypt hostile to the interests of the working class. The RS and its international partners such as the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the French New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) repeated the allegations of the Western powers, they fought for their invasion of Libya in the neighboring state for democracy and human rights. NATO took the opportunity to start a war in Libya and thus to intervene in the entire Middle East.

By: Raja Zahid Raza