Struggles in Egypt in 21st Century: Objective Aspirations & Direction (1)
It is undeniable that the defeat of the first march of the international socialist movement which began with the fall of Russia & China has not yet been over. The impact of this defeat is so devastating, so intense & so deep that, for a long time, while the working class across the globe are still engulfed by the rightist as well as revisionist & reformist politics, the communist forces, at the other end, remain mostly satisfied in their own orbit, happier being secluded in hundreds of tiny groups isolated from the mass of the working class; not only that, in none of the countries these groups are being able to build a unified Communist Party & appear before the working class with full vigour – merger & split has become the order of the day. Such a situation is truly unprecedented, it never happened in more than 150 years history of the international communist movement. And under this circumstance, general trends of pessimism-defenselessness-passivity & surrender have engulfed the working class as well as the whole of the toiling masses across the globe. It does not need to say that such a situation is ideal for the imperialism-capitalism; exploiting this atmosphere, it has unleashed an all-out attack on the working class & the toiling masses in all the countries; and it is being further aggravated due to the effect of the financial crisis that has been recently spread all over Europe & USA.
Since last few years, the working class & the toiling masses across the globe, being extremely cornered by the imperialism & capitalism, are, once again, trying to stand up spontaneously in the arena of struggle by shaking off old passivity. It is now being seen even in Europe & USA, the pivots of imperialism & capitalism. And, nowhere in the world, are revolutionary communists in the forefront of these struggles.
In this situation, the question that arises now among the communists is, do all these struggles have any significance at all in respect to the communist movement when all these are not being led by the revolutionary communist parties? And if so, what are those? To get a convincing answer of these questions, first of all, we need a deeper understanding of all these struggles so that we can identify if there is any common thread in these struggles; & finally, as part of international communist movement, we can take the concrete lessons from it & frame our concrete tasks of the moment. Hence, though previously we have made some preliminary discussions on the current phase of struggles of Egypt in the June-July-August, 2011 issue of FAPP, we are entering into another phase of discussion on the same issue as part of this process. In the current discussion, we shall try to understand whether the Egyptian working class & toiling masses are doing any such thing spontaneously which may appear as significant in the context of present phase of defeat of international communist movement.
Main Aspects of the Present Phase of Struggle
Recently, Egypt took the centre-stage of international political map once again in January, 2011 thru? the 18 days? demonstration & blockade at Tahrir Square & consequent end of Mubarak era. It is now established that ?La Indignado? of Spain (M-15), ?Enraged? of Greece, ?Occupy Movement? – Tahrir Square acted as an inspiration behind all these movements. The way these movements emerged spontaneously catering different sections of the aggrieved people, the way the particular form of organization emerged & continued for the whole duration of the movements, which has now been popularized as ?General Assembly? – undoubtedly ?Tahrir Square? was the beginning of all these. So, the incidents of ?Tahrir Square? are undoubtedly significant to us. However, other than ?Tahrir Square?, there are some other happenings in Egypt since last few years & not much attended by the media – and to us, these are no less significant than that of Tahrir Square. Let us first identify these happenings.
(a) Though the main participants of the Tahrir Square movement were from the petty-bourgeoisie sections of the society, industrial workers also took part into it actively, though not since from the very beginning – and the significant aspect is that when they did, they did it from a position separate from the petty-bourgeoisie participants & did not keep the movement limited into the Tahrir Square. In fact, the movement of Tahrir Square started on Jan 25th, & waves of industrial strikes began to erupt from Feb 8. Khaled Ali, an activist of Tahrir movement had described this special role of the workers in this way: ?The workers did not start the January 25 movement because they
have no organizing structure. . . [But] one of the important steps of this revolution was taken when they began to protest, giving the revolution an economic and social slant besides the political demands.? (1) Another source says, the economic paralysis created by this strike wave, ?was one of the most important factors leading to the rapidity of . . . Mubarak?s decision to leave.? (2)
(b) Tahrir Square was no isolated incident. In its backdrop, there was a history of spontaneous workers? movement for at least four to five years & it developed solely with the initiative of the workers. Though the workers? movement in this phase started since end of last century, the ?illegal? strike of the 25,000 workers of Misr Spinning & Weaving Factory in 2006 can truly be marked as a NEW BEGINNING, as because, for the first time workers had gone to strike for 3 days defying ETUF, the only trade union approved by the government; and, the impact of this strike was so strong that management was forced to submit to the demand of the bonus rise raised by the workers. Soon the strike wave spread to other factories. According to a source, during Dec 7, 2006 to Sept 23, 2007, there were more than 650 incidents of workers? struggle & majority of it were strikes. (3) This phase of workers? struggle can not be stated as an isolated one, as because it is continuing more or less till now.
The more significant aspect that should be mentioned here is that the incidents of Tahrir Square have strengthened these independent initiatives of the workers, it has been accelerated thru? the fall of Mubarak. It can be evident from a statistics related to the number of workers taking part in the struggles during March, 2011 to September, 2011. (4)
March 82,000
April 65,000
May 57,000
June 57,000
July 33,000
August 65,000
September 500,000 – 750,000
Among these, special mention should be made regarding the 3-week long strike of 30,000 Sugar-mill workers & 12 days strike of 40,000 Bus workers. Both happened in September. The Bus workers temporarily stopped functioning of the Parliament by blockading the Parliament House by the buses. It has also been seen during this phase that the struggles have not remained limited only inside the factories, rather quickly it spread into localities, sometimes even to the national level & demands of the struggles got shifted to the national issues, breaking the shackle of factory demands.
This phase of workers? struggles has not subsided even after the win of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in the Parliamentary election in June, 2012. Rather, even before final publication of result, workers, workers? struggles have been unleashed with newer vigour. It has become wider, newer aspects have started to unfurl thru? these struggles. On June 15, 2012, once again the 24,000 heroes of the Mahalla-Al Kubra Spinning Mill have gone on strike. This time in addition to their own economic demands, they raised the demand of the resignation of the corrupted CEO of the company. Within four days of taking oath by Morsi as President of the country, the 1500 workers of Ceramica Cleopetra have demonstrated in front of the President House demanding implementation of settlement made with the management one year back. (5)
(c) The point is not only that workers are taking the path of struggle. In the 2006 strike, Mahalla workers organized the struggle under the banner of ?Strike Committee?, the committee formed by the workers being independent from Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), the only recognized & govt-sponsored Trade Union during Mubarak era. We are well aware of the utmost autocratic nature of the Mubarak regime, hence we cannot miss the significance of building up such an independent organization & of continuing such a heroic & successful strike under its banner, exclusively by the workers. And, they did not stop even there. Workers of Misr Spinning Mill demanded the resignation of the factory ETUF leaders, and threatened that unless the same was made, they would leave General Union of Textile Workers (GUTW), a central TU affiliated to ETUF. And at least 6,000 workers resigned from it during first week of March. Similar type of incidents started to occur at other spinning mills also – like workers of Kafr El-Dawwar & Sibin El-Kum also demanded resignation of local ETUF leaders, Kafr El-Dawwar workers forced the leaders to take part in the strike by keeping them besieged. (6) In the March of 2007, the workers built up the Textile Workers? League. In its continuity we find that, during second phase of strike in Mahalla in September, 2007, when the management & central TU leaders initiated a negotiation with the striking workers, workers did not allow a single representative from official TU of the factory to take part in it. That negotiation continued at least for four hours & finally management was forced to bow down to the demands of the workers. While the negotiation was going on, a large contingent of workers were present outside the negotiation room, raising militant slogans, thus forcing the management to recognize their strong presence there, which, according to a report, made a great influence to reach a settlement in favour of the workers. Similar type of incidents started to occur also at different private sector factories. (7) Another aspect that has been observed in 2 factories during this phase of strike seems significant – one, in Mahalla September 2007 strike & another, in the strike of Italian Cement group almost at the same time; in both the strikes it has been seen that the call of strike was made well in advance (knowing it very well that it would be declared ?illegal? as because it would not get the approval of official TU); it shows the organizing capacity & confidence placed on the organized force of the workers to a certain extent.
Though the incidences of struggles forming independent Strike Committees have been found since 2006 & the settlement of the disputes with that Committee done by the management have been seen since 2007 – from which we may safely say that incidents of workers? struggles forming own independent organization have begun since 2006 (we must not forget that this is happening de facto after nearly fifty years, since formation of EFTU); however, purely independent TU RETAU was first formed by the Municipal tax collectors & the administration was also forced to recognize it. Before formation of such a TU, the tax collectors had formed nationwide localized different Strike Committees, & thereafter they built up Strike Committee at the national level based on the representatives of local strike committees; the strike of the tax collectors at December, 2007 was led by this higher level Strike Committee, the management & the administration was also forced to reach a settlement with this Strike Committee. Then, on the strength of this struggle, they finally formed RETAU at December 2008. So, it is evident that this TU had also emerged exclusively from below, but emerged in a very organized manner. (8) In its continuity, in 2010, three more separate independent TUs were formed by the teachers, health technicians & pensioners. And, preparation for forming many more such TUs was going on underground. In this context, we should mention the efforts of the employees of Public Transport Authority & Postal Services. In fact, the first independent TU formed just after Tahrir Square was that of the employees of Public Transport Authority & its process had actually begun in August, 2009, during organizing the strike of the Cairo Bus Drivers.
Then came Jan, 2011, the storm at Tahrir Square. We have stated earlier that workers had a significant independent role in Tahrir Square episode. At the same time, it is also true that Tahrir Square episode itself had inspired the workers further to be organized in independent TUs. The formation of RETAU first got attention of the wider mass of the workers in Tahrir Square & it inspired them further to act in the same way. On May 4, 2011, at the inaugural conference of the independent TU of Railway workers, a representative described how he came to know the incidents of formation of independent TUs at Tahrir Square from the workers of Public Transport Authority; similarly, the President of the independent TU of Schumburger, the multi-national oil major described how he came to know about such a process from members of RETAU at Tahrir Square & being inspired from this information, he started to take initiative to build up an independent TU at his workplace.
Meanwhile, during the phase of Tahrir Square struggle, ?Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU)? was built up at the initiative of four independent TUs. Once again, we need to recognize that in a highly autocratic state like Egypt, where since 1957, there was no other central TU other than ETUF, such an almost independent initiative (as far as we have been able to know, though there was some assistance from some communist revolutionaries & a non-government organization named Centre for Trade Union & Workers? Services, frontline workers & employees of the four TUs took the leading role in this effort) deserves serious attention. Furthermore, it seems that till this day, the EFITU has not stagnated; rather, after the fall of Mubarak, struggles of the workers & employees are spreading, number of workers? independent TU organizations are growing & most of them have started to join in EFITU. After one year of the fall of Mubarak, nearly 200 TUs have been affiliated to EFITU & its members have been increased to almost 20 lakhs.
Another aspect of this process of building up of the independent TUs is that it has not remained limited only to the public/government sectors or old industrial areas; rather, it has spread even among the new industrial hubs emerged during the era of globalization. For example, in the SEZ of Sadat City, while prior to 2011, there was only two TUs & that also under the banner of ETUF, the number has expanded to 12 during post-Tahrir phase; not only that, a Labour Council affiliated to EFITU has emerged in the city; and, all these are happening at the initiative of the workers & as the product of the organized struggles like that of the workers of Gema (Gouhara) Ceramics & Porceline factory, or the strike of the workers of Besa Steal Plant. Even in the factories where the independent TUs have not been formed, struggles of the workers is continuing under the banner of the Strike Committees; negotiation with the management is being led by the leaders of these Strike Committees; and, finally, immediately after a discussion with the management, the leaders are approaching directly the General Body (GB) of the workers & final decisions are being taken only from this GB. (9)
(d) We have mentioned earlier that during the strike in September, 2007, Mahalla workers demanded share of the profit of the company, impeachment of the corrupt management & union leaders; what we have not mentioned there is that at that time they also voiced their protest against the government-IMF & imperialism. On September 28, 2007, Sayed Habib, a member of the then Strike Committee of Mahalla told unambiguously in an interview at VOA: WE ARE CHALLENGING THE REGIME (10). On the strength of the success of that strike, on April 6, 2008, the Strike committee of Mahalla called the industrial strike for the demand of uniform minimum monthly basic wage of 1200 Egyptian Pound (nearly 200 US Dollar – much higher than the then existing minimum monthly wage of 23 US Dollars) for all the workers of Egypt. The point that we must note here is that from the TU struggle of an individual plant, workers of that factory are raising a demand of the mass general workers of the whole country, that also, during an extremely autocratic regime. At that time, the administration had been able not to advance the strike thru? severe terror; but they had not been able to stop the workers permanently. So, immediately thereafter, we see that Nagi Rashid, a worker of South Cairo Grain Factory, filed a legal dispute at the Court in raising the same demand, and, on March 2010, the Court gave its ruling in favour of a uniform basic minimum monthly wage of 400 Egyptian Pound for all workers of the country; once this ruling was passed, immediately on May 1st, 2010 workers of different factories assembled & demonstrated in front of the Parliament House. From this demonstration, the slogan surfaced: EITHER A GOOD SALARY, OR THE RESIGNATION OF THE GOVERNMENT. Another slogan was: DOWN WITH ALL THOSE, INCLUDING MUBARAK, WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PRICE RISE. So, in Egypt, even before the happenings of Tahrir Square, we can not only find development of independent struggles among the workers, but also surfacing of some struggles on the basis of their own class as well as political issues without any significantly serious leadership of the communists.
After the fall of Mubarak, once the struggles of the workers started to escalate further, the interim administration of the army quickly unleashed severe terrors on those struggles. Even after that, struggles did not stop; and it went up to that point where being forced by the struggles of the workers, the Manpower & Migration Dept of the administration declared the process of national level election of ETUF held on 2006 as illegal, declared the annulment of its whole Executive Body & cancelled the registration of seven out of 23 national TUs affiliated to ETUF. Not only that, the Port & Airport employees, during their strike, demanded resignation of the representatives of the military from the management, termination of those Generals/Officers of the Armed Forces who were involved in the businesses related to these industries; the State Transport workers raised the demand of the resignation of high police officials posted in the management. Workers voiced their protest not only against the military rulers – they also voiced against National Democratic Party (NDP) led by Mubarak; as for example, we see that in October, 2011, Gas workers ransacked an office of NDP in Cairo & demanded its possession? this office was actually in the possession of these workers, but during Mubarak era, NDP occupied it forcefully from them; the workers & employees employed at Suez Canal Authority demanded punishment of one billionaire leader of NDP, who is also the owner of a local ceramic factory. (11)
(e) One more aspect that also needs mentioning here. Since the fall of Mubarak, the process of the formation of different political organizations has been started & communists operating in Egypt has also been a part of this process. For reference, we are mentioning here one such initiative. Primarily, with the initiative of ?Revolutionary Socialists?, a Trotskyte Group organization, Workers? Democratic Party (WDP) has been formed in March, 2011; some of the advanced workers have already taken part into it. It appears that this ?Party? is not claiming themselves as a revolutionary party & is not declaring Socialism as its goal. According to the statement of Kamal Khalil, a leader of this organization: ?this is not a socialist revolution. The workers are not in a position to take over the government. Given the balance of power in society it is ill-advised for workers to take over their factories. We want to re-nationalize while giving the workers more say in running their companies. This is a transitional period to achieve specific goals. We want to protect the workers and returning the ownership to the state can achieve that.? (12) So, in their first declaration, WDP has demanded an ?egalitarian? State based on equality of gender & religion, right to organize ?without any permission?, right to strike & demonstration, a standard minimum basic wage commensurate to price rise, free trade union rights, complete nationalization of education-health & industry, termination of the policies of ?privatization & liberalization? etc. At the other end, this ?Party? is claiming themselves as a ?Workers? Party? & in this respect, once again Kamal Khalil has stated: ?most leftist attempts to form a party include intellectuals as major players and a number of workers as members. This party aims at having workers as the main players and leaders of the party joined by a number of intellectuals.? However, according to his definition of ?workers?: ?when we say a worker, we mean anyone who needs to sell his labour, whether a worker in a factory, an employee or an agricultural worker.? (13)
Looking Back At the Past For The Sake Of Understanding the Present
Not only the long past, the history of the past 100 years of Egypt is equally colorful. We need not enter into the detail of that history – our sole purpose of looking back at the last 100 years is to understand the objective aspiration & direction that is being spontaneously reflected through the present phase of struggles. As long as these struggles are not being led by a true Communist Party with a strong foothold among the working class, it is only natural that these struggles would not represent any conscious direction based on conscious summing up of the past experiences of struggles & organizations. But the aspect that we want to understand seriously is whether there is any reflection of any partial/incomplete summing up of these past experiences in the spontaneous actions of the working masses that is going on in Egypt since beginning of this century. Unless we understand this aspect properly, we won?t be able to realize the objective aspirations & directions, at least some of the points, of these struggles that are going on without the leadership of the Communists. Keeping this in mind, we shall now enter into the discussions on some significant & relevant aspects of past history. For our convenience, we shall discuss this history into three parts – a) Colonial phase (1882-1952); b) Rule of Naseer & ?Arab Socialism? (1952-1970); & c) the era of liberalization – era of Sadat & Mubarak.
(to be continued)
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