The masses win the streets again and take Tahrir Square for bread and freedom
Down with the military dictatorship, agent of imperialism and support of Zionism!
Revolutionary general strike until it falls!
Dissolution of all repressive forces!
Step forward to the soldier committees!
Weapons for the people!
For a provisional revolutionary
worker and peasant government
From Friday 9/20 the masses of Egypt won the streets again. They went out in massive mobilizations of hundreds of thousands that shook the main cities like Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Port Said, Mahalla, among others. In Cairo, the masses reoccupied Tahrir Square, after 6 years, challenging the dictatorship of Al Sisi. The war cry that went through these huge mass actions was "Sisi get out!" And the slogan of the 2011 revolution resounded "The people want the fall of the regime!" Also, in their massive mobilizations huge flags of the Syrian revolution were seen, in support of its last trenches in Idlib, since it is about, as it always was, the same revolution throughout the region. The dictatorship of Al Sisi unleashed a brutal repression on the mobilizations by using its police. Then, the army began a persecution to imprison the forefront of these protests. There are already more than 2000 new prisoners. Since 2013, Egypt is ruled by a brutal counterrevolutionary dictatorship under Al Sisi, where protests are prohibited, prisons are full of political prisoners (it is estimated they are already over 60,000) and even a few hundred of them were sentenced to death, while former dictator Mubarak was released.
As in 2011, the uprising of Egypt today is a link in a single chain of revolutionary processes that run through the region, like the huge revolutionary battles we see in Iraq and Lebanon. They have rebelled against the bloody counterrevolutionary dictatorship of Al Sisi and his army, which controls more than 50% of the industry and maintains the administration of the Suez Canal, where the trade that connects the ports of the Pacific and the Indian Oceans with the Mediterranean Sea and Europe. They are the guardians of the trade routes of the imperialist transnationals on behalf of the latter. They are the lieutenants of the United States, financed directly by the US treasure, which every year allocates billions of dollars to the Egyptian army. Small surprise that yesterday Obama endorsed and sustained the coup d'etat of Al Sisi, and today Trump greets him as "his favorite dictator" by giving him open and unconditional support, as in his recent statements in the meetings held recently at the UN.
On the other hand, the Egyptian army is a fundamental support of the Zionist-Fascist State of Israel, which they recognize in fact and in law from the Camp David Pact of ’78 and supply it with natural gas at a subsidized price. Thus, the army is the main Egyptian bourgeois fraction associated with international financial capital. Even since 2013 it has displaced other bourgeois factions, such as the Muslim Brotherhood (whose party was outlawed), while the rest are completely subordinated to the generalate.
The unprecedented sufferings of the masses push them into this enormous struggle against Al Sisi and they seek to resume the 2011 revolution, this time victorious, to conquer their demands.
Even in the face of such a regime of terror, the exploited face the army because they cannot stand their situation any longer. They go hungry and in misery, while the army manages huge fortunes and the transnationals take super profits from Egypt. The trigger that exploded the anger of the masses was when, due to breaches between sectors of the bourgeoisie, the millionaire businesses that the generals were doing at the expense of the sufferings of the exploited came to light. Luxurious 7-star hotels and pharaonic construction sites while the masses have no housing, dress in rags and walk barefoot through the streets of Cairo from corner to corner looking for some casual work for some coins, their only aspiration being to get a job. This reality came to light from complaints by Mohammed Ali, a multimillionaire businessman who was an army contractor for their pharaonic construction works, which was not paid and exiled in Barcelona for fear of being murdered, made corruption allegations with information from inside, posted un social media that he was part of those great negotiations but rejected yo be parte of the unheard of sufferings of the Egyptian masses. Actually, Mohamed Ali, from the tranquility and security of luxury homes in Europe, asks for his part. The masses win the streets risking the clash with this bloody dictatorship without fear of what might happen to them because they know that if they don't overthrow it, they will starve to death.
Thus, the masses return for their demands of the 2011 revolution for bread, dignity and freedom, which have not been at all resolved. On the contrary, with rising food prices, lower wages, layoffs, increasing unemployment and even not paying salaries for months in several state-owned companies - such as textiles located in Mahalla - the different governments that succeeded each other since 2011 to date, have thrown the burden of the longstanding economic crisis in Egypt on the shoulders of the workers and the masses. In 2016, the IMF granted Al Sisi a loan to “get out of the recession,” but at the cost of greater misery for the broad masses of Egypt. Dictator Al Sisi, under the orders of the IMF, continued to impose a brutal attack with a terrible devaluation of the currency (the Egyptian pound), which further reduced the purchasing power of the workers and even the ruined middle classes. Today the dollar has been valued internationally, which has led the Egyptian pound to further devaluation and deepened the suffering of the masses. Average salaries no longer reach basic needs and poverty has increased to very high levels, already reaching a 32.5% of yhe population. In other words, the Egyptian generals have gone on doing business with imperialism and made workers and the people pay for the debt and its costs with hunger and misery.
Down with the dictatorship of Al Sisi! For the dissolution of all repressive forces!
The masses are already winning the streets to the cry of, Out with Sisi! and, The people want the fall of the regime! The same war cry of the 2011 revolution that overthrew Mubarak. At that time, the policy of the leaders of the masses was to call for elections and Constituent Assemblies and carry out political fronts with “democratic” bourgeoisie, dedicating themselves to safeguarding the army and its officers caste. It was the officers caste that ended up delivering the coup in 2013 (see box). This time we cannot allow the same tragedy to be repeated. For there to be a solution to hunger and misery, to recover the right to hold meetings, protests, set up unions or have free elections, the dictatorship must be overthrown. This is the first democratic task to be solved in Egypt, un order to end with that caste of officers commanded by the Pentagon and Wall Street. We must disarm and dissolve all repressive forces! Let the ordinary soldiers set up committees and dismiss their officers! Judgment and punishment of all the murderous generals, executioners of the Egyptian people and thieves of the wealth of the nation! Freedom to all political prisoners! We must arm the workers and peasants rebels today! Revolutionary general strike until the dictatorship falls! It is necessary to paralyze all the factories, gas fields, public establishments, transport ... By stopping Egypt the workers will demonstrate who makes the nation work and who really are the owners of the wealth that these generals are robbing them of on behalf of imperialism.
We must recover what these parasites stole from us! To get out of poverty and misery, to have decent wages and a decent life, to have bread, we have to expropriate, without compensation and under the control of the workers, the factories, companies and property of the army and the transnationals that plunder Egypt! We must expropriate all the rich lands of the Nile, capable of producing food for all the exploited! No repayment of the external debt! Out with the IMF! Nationalization of banking in a single state bank under workers' control, which can give cheap loans to ruined farmers. Those below have to take the resolution of the crisis in their hands! The bodies of the masses fit for this fight against the dictatorship and imperialism must be set up, to expropriate the capitalists, to solve the problem of bread ... the masses need their self-determination bodies ... such as the popular committees, the assemblies of the exploited. Committees of workers, peasants and soldiers must be set up. Open the way to the power of those below. For a provisional revolutionary worker and peasant government, of the vast majority of the exploited people, supported by these committees. This government, on the basis of destroying the officer caste and dissolving the army and all forces of repression, and the armament of the masses will be the only one able to guarantee that a free and sovereign constituent national assembly could be convened, with one representative voted every 10,000, revocable at any time by his/her constituents, and who should be paid the average salary of a worker.
In the Middle East, the US, Europe and worldwide, the same class, the same struggle
The overthrow of the dictatorship of Al Sisi would be a great revolutionary blow throughout the Maghreb and the Middle East; starting with Palestine, because the Egyptian army is a fundamental support of the Zionist-fascist state of Israel. Its fall would put at the order of the day, as in 2008, the tearing down of the wall of Rafah (Egypt-Palestine border) that fences the Palestinian people in Gaza and also would unify the struggle of the exploited Egyptians with that of the Palestinian people for the destruction of the Zionist-fascist State of Israel, who would revolt again in the West Bank and the entire diaspora against the occupier. Yesterday the Palestinian bourgeoisie, when the whole region burning in the revolutionary fire of 2011, told its people that they should be neutral in these combats so that the masses as well as the governments were united with them -although the latter were supporting Zionism. Thus, the Palestinian people were isolated and separated from their true allies. And so, when the governments servile to imperialism that take care of the Zionist borders like Al Assad imposed their power, the Zionist-Fascist State of Israel was strengthened and lashed out against the Palestinian masses. Trump recognized the whole of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and also it's occupation of the Golan Heights as legitimate. Today the combat of the masses of Egypt has the opportunity to settle accounts with such betrayal and unify the Palestinian masses with the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed peoples of the Middle East. The struggle in Egypt is a great ally of the Syrian masses that resist in Idlib ... and so the Egyptian masses have understood by raising the flag of the Syrian revolution and their Syrian siblings in Idlib by raising the flag of Egypt. There, as in Iraq, Lebanon, etc., is the strength for Idlib not to fall! It is a gulp of fresh air for Iranian workers facing the Ayatollahs. It is part of a new revolutionary wave of the exploited who rise again against the hunger and misery they suffer while imperialism, oil companies and their governments and lackey regimes do profitable business. The exploited have risen today in Iraq against the US protectorate and in Lebanon they have won the streets of Beirut shouting "The people want the fall off the regime". At the beginning of the year, the same happened in Algeria and Sudan. From Cairo to Gaza to Jerusalem, from Tunisia to Beirut yo Algiers to Khartoum to Baghdad... The same intifada! For a federation of worker and socialist republics throughout the Maghreb and the Middle East!
The allies in this struggle are rising up in the imperialist countries. In the USA they are the workers that confront, as the 50,000 striking in GM, the imperialist transnacionals, the Wall Streets super banks and the Trump administration, while fighting for recovering their gains that were taken from them years ago by Obama and the Democrats; they are thus raising the demands of the world working class. In France they are the Yellow Vests and the Black Vests who take the streets. They are those who rise up against the transnationals and in the same belly of the Seven Sisters, the oil companies that pilfer the Middle East!
Yesterday, in 2011, a same cry thundered the USA and Egypt, at the same time, "Wisconsin and Egypt, a single fist!". This is the way, the internationalist unity of the working class for confronting imperialism and its lackeys as Al Sisi!
A same class, the same struggle against the same enemy!
Leandro H.
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The traitorous leaderships repeat their 2011 formulas that led the revolution to defeat
In 2011, as part of the same chain of revolutions throughout Maghreb and the Middle East for bread and freedom against sidereal increases in the price of food and for the fall of dictatorships prevailing in those countries, workers and people from Egypt carried out mass mobilizations and clashes with the police where all the police stations were taken, defeated the fascist gangs that wanted to evict them from Tahrir Square, took factory shops and staged a general strike. They left milestones of self-determination bodies, as were the popular committees and assemblies such as in Tahrir Square. They conquered the fall of Mubarak, while Ben Ali fell in Tunisia, Qadafy was defeated in Libya. But their leaderships led them to "democratic fronts" with other "progressive" bourgeois, to conquer democratic reforms of the regime, without disarming the repressive forces or dissolving the caste of army officers. The bourgeoisie preserved its band of armed men defending their property.
Since the beginning of the 2011 process, the former Trotskyists of the PO and PTS of Argentina, the English SWP and their party in Egypt the Revolutionary Socialists (SR), and the International Marxist Tendency (Militant) of England, among others, raised a program of elections, constituent assembly and setting up unions, leaving the officers caste intact for it to make a "democratic transition." This is how the revolution was diverted and Morsi and the Muslim Brothers came to power, who attacked the working class harshly with a brutal increase in the price of bread and the cost of life. When the masses returned to the streets to face them in 2013, the leaderships of the exploited led by the April 6 Movement made a front with the "democratic" bourgeoisie, who in turn called for the army to intervene, which posing as a "friend of the people ”and under the command of Al Sisi… The world left supported this“ democratic front ”, stating that it was possible to conquer democratic openings on fronts with bourgeois sectors and preserving the armed forces of the bourgeoisie, which resulted in the bloody and cruel Al Sisi fascist coup and "elected" counterrevolutionary dictatorship. Today, these currents say that we are facing a "second Arab spring." In a statement about Mohamed Ali, the SRs say that we must learn about who the allies are so that the revolution is not stolen as in 2011, though, subsequently they insist on making "a united front of all opposition forces" with the perspective of “exploiting the conditions of putting unions, student organizations and political organizations back on their feet and restoring the political spaces closed by force, against the counter-revolution”. They continue to set the pace in this policy of “democratic fronts”, looking to see where the bourgeois is with which to achieve democratic conquests without touching the officers caste of the army or dissolving their band of armed men. They continue refusing to organize committees of soldiers who dismiss officers and to carry on the general armament of the people. Already in 1917, in the middle of the Russian revolution, Lenin warned of the only way to truly confront an autocracy regime such as the tsarism that prevailed at that time, or the dictatorship of Al Sisi in Egypt today.
"If the Tsarist monarchy is really to be fought, freedom in fact must be guaranteed and not only in word (...) the only guarantee of freedom and complete destruction of Tsarism lies in arming the proletariat, in consolidating, extending, developing the role, importance and strength of the Soviet of workers' deputies. Everything else is pure phraseology and lies, vain illusions on the part of politicians in the liberal and radical field, fraudulent machinations. Help the workers to arm themselves or at least do not hinder this task and freedom will be invincible in Russia, the monarchy could not be restored and the Republic will be assured. Otherwise, the Guchkovs and the Miliukovs will restore the monarchy and will grant none, absolutely of the "freedoms" promised by them. All bourgeois politicians in all bourgeois revolutions have "fed" the peoples and deceived the workers with promises. " (Lenin, Letters from Afar, First Letter, our bolds).
The question is already clear. On the one hand, revolutionary Marxism with the program for the victory of the revolution. On the other, the currents that have denied it by raising programs of democratic fronts with bourgeois sectors, without dissolving the army, without overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie and without posing that the power of those below must be put on foot ... that is, by preparing a new defeat as in 2011. |
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