Struggles in Egypt in 21st Century: Objective Aspirations and Direction (2)
[In the 1st part of this article, published in FAPP, Jan-March, 2013 issue, first of all we have explained from what perspective we started to study the struggles now going on in Egypt. In this respect, we have stated that after a long phase of frustration-passivity etc among international working class due to the effect of defeat of the first offensive of the world socialist movement, a new phase of resistance against the all-pervasive attacks of the imperialism-capitalism has started to surface spontaneously from among the working class and toiling masses at different corners of the globe and it is taking shape as a new trend of working class movement. A common phenomenon of this new trend is that it is going on without any effective leadership of existing parties/organizations and new forms of organizations are also surfacing spontaneously in some places. Another phenomenon is that the struggling masses almost everywhere are trying to establish their own control over the struggles and organizations. All these struggles have brought forward the burning question before us, the revolutionary communists, what are the significances of all these struggles when these are not going on under the leadership of communists, which is not also possible right now in this era of defeat as because simply there is no true communist party deeply rooted among the working class in any country of the world. To get a convincing answer we need a thorough study of these struggles based on Marxist understanding. To start this process we have chosen Egypt for our study. Egypt has got the priority as because here the features of this new trend are most apparent.
Then, based on fact we have identified main aspects of the present phase of struggles of Egypt. The identified aspects in brief are: (a) the role of industrial workers in Tahrir Square struggle; (b) since 2006, a new beginning of workers' trade union struggle has surfaced and it is going on uninterruptedly; (c) workers are not only taking the path of struggle, they are also building up their own independent trade union organizations for advancement of their struggle - it has begun even during Mubarak era, when only the ETUF, the government sponsored central TU, was recognized and formation of any union without taking cognizance of ETUF was illegal; workers have not remained limited only into the formation of plant level trade unions (both in public/government sectors as well as in SEZs)- they have even advanced further by way of forming independent Federation-type organizations; (d) through these struggles they have been successful to raise their minimum wages and bonus levels; have achieved the "right to organize and struggle"; moreover, in their struggles they have brought forward slogans like, "Either A Good Salary, Or The Resignation Of The Government", "Down With All Those, Including Mubarak, Who Are Responsible For The Price Rise" etc; after fall of Mubarak, they demanded resignation of the representatives of the military/police officials from the management, punishment of old political leaders placed in management.
Do all these aspects bear any significance for the international communists in this era of defeat, particularly when all these are happening without the leadership of revolutionary communists? To get an answer, we need to enter into the past history of struggle of the Egyptian working class. For convenience, we are now going to discuss it in three parts: (a) Colonial phase - i.e., up to 1952; (b) Nasser era - 1952-1970; and (c) Era of neo-liberalism - Sadat and Mubarak era.]
Colonial Phase
In this phase, Egypt was de-facto a British colony, while economic relationship was primarily pre-capitalist in nature - so working class was still underdeveloped; even in 1950, we find that approximately 60% of the rural population does not own any agricultural land, while less than 0.5% population possesses 35% of the agricultural land. Naturally, exodus of the rural poor towards the city in search of job remained unhindered. While in 1917, total population of Cairo and Alexandria was less than 12 lakhs, within 30 years it crossed 30 lakhs (14).
Simultaneously, industrial development at that time was also at the very preliminary level and slow. Major industrial sectors were at the hands of the foreign capitalists, national economy was primarily dependent on trading. Only comparatively developed sector was infrastructure - like banking-transport etc. Most of the skilled workers were also of foreign origin. The level of industrial development during the two world wars was negligible.
To the masses of Egypt, colonial rule was primarily responsible for such backwardness - initially aspiration for national liberation from such rule was limited among the small enlightened sections; however, as days had passed, this aspiration had been percolated throughout society. But the national capitalist class was not eager to complete the democratic revolution; the unity and struggle between the religion and nationalism ran simultaneously - religion, means conservative Islam, reformist Islam as well as Jewism; on the other hand, among nationalist ideology, the concept of Egyptian 'Watan' (fatherland) and liberation of Arab land emerged simultaneously; the imperialist conspiracy during two world wars on Arab world influenced national politics and as part of it, the national politics could not evade Israel-Palestine issue, particularly during the 2nd World War.
Major workers' strikes started to surface since August 1917 - workers of Greek Cigarette Roller Co first took the path of struggle, then workers of Cairo Tramway, Alexandria Port, Railroad, Cairo Water Co. followed them. During the First World War, Egypt became a major centre for the British Army and the people of Egypt were forced to bear their expenses of food and shelter. People supported British imperialism in the war, in return they expected freedom of Egypt. But once the war was over, their expectation was completely ignored. As a result, the anger of the Egyptian population against the colonial rule, in particular that of the workers and peasants, burst out spontaneously. Along with the strikes, workers hand in hand with the peasants threw big challenges to the British rulers by way of damaging railway lines-tram lines etc. Even one after another attacks on the army centres were going on. British rulers tried to handle the rebellion ruthlessly. At least 3,000 people were killed, villages were burnt - but the rebellion could not be stopped. In particular, workers struggles took the wider nature. Finally in 1922, British rulers were forced to declare Egypt as a "Protectorate" country and the nationalist "Wafd Party" came to power (15).
What was the role of the communists in this revolt? According to the observation of Joel Beinin, the historian specialised in Egyptian history - "The failure of the CPE (Communist Party of Egypt) was due to two major errors. The party misunderstood the importance of the national struggle in Egypt and its link to the class struggle. It called for an all-out attack on the Egyptian bourgeoisie and threw down the gauntlet on Sa'd Zaghlul's popular nationalist government even before the British had been decisively expelled from Egypt and long before the vacillation and conciliation of the Wafd was apparent to the Egyptian masses. Perhaps because of the high proportion of the foreigners in the original ideological leadership of the party, the CPE failed to understand the importance of the struggle for Egypt's independence in the eyes of the Egyptian people and objectively as part of the class struggle itself. ? The party was young and weak; the new Waf'd government was popular. The CPE had no chance to emerge victorious from a decisive confrontation in these circumstances". (16)
Since 1924, workers were organized primarily in the Wafd Party for a long time. But as time went on, workers started to become alienated from the party due to its vacillating and compromising character. In addition, Egyptian economy was being affected by the crisis since 1930s. As a result, workers struggles once again started to surface since that time, which gained its peak during the 2nd World War. According to a statistics, during the end of 1940s, at least 500 trade unions were active in Egypt.(17) Since 1942, the trade union of the Subra Al-Khaima Textile factory appeared as the most struggling trade union of the workers. Primarily due to the initiative of the leaders of this Union, an organization named "Workers Committee for the national liberation" was formed in 1945 - many progressive intellectuals joined in it. In February 1946, "Nationalist Committee of the Workers and Students" was formed and they called for general strike and demonstration on Feb 21, 1946 declaring it as "Day for the throwing away the army". On that day, at least one lakh workers demonstrated at Cairo city and few thousands of workers of Subra Al-Khaima Textile factory took lead in it. Another strike of the textile workers surfaced in May, 1946. They did not stop just there; they called for general strike against unemployment and military rule. The state did not take this call in good grace, severe terror was unleashed against the striking workers. Still, workers struggle again re-surfaced in 1947 - this time, a strike of the workers of Misr Spinning Mill took a significant role. Side by side, this time struggle of the peasants also started to increase. During 1950-52 it spread into a large rural area. This incident was identified as an "undisputed signal of revolution" by Dr Ahmad Hussain, the then minister of social issues.(18)
Since 1930s, the overall condition of the communists also started to improve. At that time, communist ideology spread primarily through the foreigners living in Egypt and the Egyptian Jewish intellectuals. Due to their initiative, a good number of small communist organizations like EMNL, Iskra, New Dawn, Workers' Vanguard etc started to organize the workers. However, regarding the activity of the then communists an historian has made a very interesting observation: "Communist groups lacked more than a familiar idiom with which to connect to the Egyptian people; it also lacked the depth and comprehensiveness of the Muslim Brotherhood's Islamic message. Communism provided a theoretical framework for interpreting the world and the legitimate goals for which to strive. It had little to say, however, about the day-to-day conduct of its adherents outside of regular attendance at designated meetings, rallies, and strikes. Rather than offering insight into all aspects of a potential member's life, it connected to him on only one basic-political-level. That is, rather than incorporating the members' day-to-day activities, the communist message kept an esoteric distance from the lives of its adherents. Marcel Israel, an important organizer and leader of several Egyptian communist organizations, recognized this problem when he noted, "[Our] studies revolved around complicated ideological issues which had no direct connection with the struggle's requirements. The workers start their Marxist studies by studying the principles of materialistic arguments" (quoted in Ismael and El-Sa'id 1990, p. 32)".(19)
In addition, during the end of the 2nd World War, in particular after the win of Soviet army in Stalingrad, Arab intellectuals of Egypt also started to take part in the Communist movement in good numbers. But, once confrontation in the Arab world surfaced on the issue of formation of Israel state since 1948, Egyptian communists, particularly its foreigner section, supported formation of separate Israel state - as a result, they had been marked as "Zionist" and most of them were thrown into jail. They were released in 1950, once Wafd Party came to power; but immediately thereafter, the Jewish members were thrown out of the communist organizations, in particular from the DMNL (formed in 1947 by the assimilation of Iskra and EMNL group), which had the maximum base among the workers at that time. Since then, the activities of the communists were centred primarily among the Egyptian Arab intellectuals. In their consciousness, communists were the most effective force for the national liberation and combating imperialism. Here we can represent an interview of Faud Morsi, the leader of the Communist Party of Egypt (Al Raya) made in 1986, in which he recollected from a pamphlet named "Who are the Egyptian Communists and What They Want" published in 1954 and stated that "Since we are nationalist Egyptian, hence we are communists". (20)
As a whole, it appears that we may conclude a few things about the communists of Egypt at that time. We have seen the observation of Joel Beinin about the role of communists during the 2nd decade of 20th century; and, we feel that his observation is not completely erroneous. On the other hand, during the phase of 2nd World War, we find that Jewish members were expelled from communist organizations, their position was not much different from that of the bourgeoisie nationalist organizations. It is also seen that the way the Egyptian communists supported the formation of separate Israel State had been a serious impediment for them. As a whole, we may say that to the then Egyptian communists, the inter-relation between national liberation movement as well as anti-imperialist struggle and struggle for socialism and the question of working class leadership in this struggle was not very clear, hence the then communists of Egypt failed to avail the scope of liberation from colonialism and pre-capitalist exploitation that surfaced during the two world wars and the subsequent history of Egypt took a different path altogether.
The Nasser Era
Upsurge of the "Free Officers" on July 23, seizure of power by Nasser in 1952 and freedom from de-facto British rule - thus began of the most colourful history of modern Egypt. Nasser took charge of Egypt at a time when, the image of the then "socialist" USSR had become a dream to all the toiling masses of the world; and, Egypt was no exception from it.
Nasser came to power in July, 1952 and immediately in September he initiated the programme of Land Reform. It began by way of limiting the land ceiling to 200 Fedan, which during his tenure was reduced to 50 Fedan. In addition, through finalization of minimum wages for the agricultural labourers, implementation of Tenancy Act etc, the standard of living of the rural masses had been improved. Still, these can never be declared as revolutionary measures, as because according to a statistics, during Nasser era, approximately 15% of the agricultural land was re-distributed and by this measure, during 1950-1970, the number of landless peasants was reduced from 60% to 43% (21). Not only that, even though the political authority of the big landed estates was curbed to a certain extent, however, the political power of the rural masses was not at all expanded and bureaucratic grip in the rural area was tightened.
Along with the agricultural reforms, special stress was given in industrial development and expansion of home market. For this, at the one hand development of heavy industries and infrastructure, nationalization of major sectors and control on home market etc. got special priority; on the other hand measures like life-long security of the public sector workers, reduction of working hours etc. were taken. In a word, development of state capitalism in the garb of "socialism" was the main contribution of Nasser. And, it is a fact that through all these measures during 1961-1970, GDP of Egypt became double, free primary education had expanded from 1.3 million in 1952 to 3.4 million in 1966, among them more than 50% were girls, general standard of living of the workers and peasants had been improved to a large extent, in comparison to earlier.(22)
However, this policy of industrial and agricultural reforms from above started to face serious problems since the mid-sixties of that century. Maintenance of strong military forces put a serious pressure on government coffers. Foreign debt taken for industrialization was also creating the hurdle for further economic development. According to a source, foreign debt taken only for non-military purposes had escalated to 1.7 billion US Dollar in 1970, the primary source of which was the then USSR and the East European "Communist Block".(23) Economic facilities of the masses were severely curtailed to make up for the burden of the 1967 war. In effect, grievances of the people started to rise.
Even after that, till day Nasser has been remembered by the Egyptian people as their most beloved leader due to his strong anti-British as well as anti-US imperialist stance. Nationalization of British controlled Suez Canal, the effort to build up United Arab Republic (UAR) had made Nasser not just the leader of Egypt, but of whole Arab world for quite some time. In addition, the role of Nasser in support of anti-imperialist struggles of the Third World had also been revered well; for a long time he was the leader of NAM. Zhao en Lai, the first premier of post revolution China, had once declared him as the "Giant of Middle East".
It is well known fact in history that initially in 1948, Russia supported formation of Israel, but soon they withdrew their support and immediately after the death of Stalin they stood strongly beside Arab nationalism. Since 1955, ties of USSR with Egypt started to develop, they started to provide arms and loan to Egypt. In 1967, Egypt got the lion's share of the aid provided by the "Communist Block". They provided huge loan to build up Aswan Dam, Helwan Steel Plant and Baharia Wasos Mine and many others. Their main motive was to establish control on natural resources of Middle-East through Egypt and thus to keep the competition alive with US on this issue.
Looking back it is now apparent that the then Egyptian communists were strongly influenced by the "Socialist" and "anti-imperialist" measures of Nasser. In 1956, observing the alliance of Nasser with USSR, the then Unified Egyptian Communist Party supported the "anti-imperialist foreign policy" of Nasser. Debate surfaced among the communists of the whole of Arab World on the question whether to support or to oppose the formation of UAR - as a result of which the communist movement in Egypt was divided; Nasser took this opportunity to call for joining the communists individually to his Party, Arab National Union (ANU). Initially when communists did not agree, severe terror was unleashed upon them, in particular since end of 1958. But significantly even after all the terrors, Egyptian communists continued their support to the nationalist policies of Nasser government. Meanwhile, soon contradictions among UAR deepened and once Syria left UAR, its existence came under question. At this time, Nasser changed the name of his party to Arab Socialist Union (ASU) and in July 1962, through a National Charter he expressed the commitment of Egypt to "Arab Socialism". Subsequently, both in Iraq and in Syria, Baath Party came to power and many among the communists of Arab world started to perceive that though there were some ideological differences between Nasserism-Bat'hism and Marxism, objectively they stood at the same platform. Egyptian communists were no different from that perception and they unilaterally and without any criticism supported the National Charter of Nasser as well as all his economic and social policies. Thereafter, there did not remain any question to the communists to join in Nasser's Party; in April, 1964, prior to the visit of Nikita Khrushchev in Egypt, all the communists were released from jail and within a year all the communist organizations of Egypt were dissolved and individual communists joined the ASU.(24)
Neo-liberal Era
After death of Nasser in September, 1970, Anwar-Al Sadat sat at the helm of Egypt with bunches of economic problems. To address those problems, he attempted to shift from policies taken by Nasser. In 1973, during the oil crisis 'Intifah' (free market economy) was declared, policy of closer relationship with USA than USSR was taken; till that time, though policies of weakening of state sectors were not taken, however efforts for private capital and technology investments from Arab as well as western world had already been initiated. Simultaneously, process for restoration of ownership of land to the big landed estates had also begun.
All these efforts of economic reforms faced major resistances. Since August, 1971 to September 1976, series of workers' resistances surfaced, among which open street battle for three days by the thousands of textile workers of Subra-Al Khaima in March, 1972 and that of Mahalla-Al Kabra in March 1975, simultaneous mass strikes at major state sector factories in March 1976 and military intervention at the strike by the Cairo transport workers in September, 1976 were very significant. But all these resistances could not deter western imperialism to pressurize the government for further and faster economic reforms; as a pre-condition for loan. IMF demanded complete withdrawal of food subsidy. Once government yielded to the pressure of IMF in Jan, 1977 and severe price rise affected the masses, major uprising engulfed the whole of Egypt. International history has remembered it as the "Bread Uprising". Only after assurances from the government to restore food subsidy, the uprising stopped.(25)
It needs to be mentioned here that "Bread Uprising" brought a serious jolt to the economic reforms. Sadat during his tenure could no more be able to venture for withdrawal of food subsidy. Policy of "Intifah" was also not much successful to attract foreign investment. In that situation, the economy became more and more dependent on foreign loans. According to a statistics, while in 1971, foreign loan was 2.32 billion Dollars, in 1980 it escalated to 17.4 billion and in 1986 it sky-rocketed to 35.8 billion. At the same time, economic disparity also started to widen. While in 1965, 7% of national income trickled to the lowest 20% of the income group, at the end of 1970, it reduced to 5.1%. At the same time, the concentration of percentage share of the national income had increased from 17.4% to 22% for the topmost 5%.(26)
Within a short span since coming to power, Mubarak implemented at the diktat of IMF-World Bank, withdrawal of food subsidy and then in 1991, "Structural Reforms Programme". Privatisation of State Sectors started. During Iraq war, Egypt extended unconditional support to US. As a result a total of 30 billion Dollars of foreign loans were waived. Agriculture was also not spared from "Structural Reforms Programme". The agricultural policies of Nasser were completely dismantled. In its effect in 1997, thousands of peasants were evicted from their land.
Still, it is evident that the pace of reforms was much slower than what the IMF-World Bank expected. Common explanation of the historians here is that Mubarak was very much cautious about the possibility of social unrest due to the impact of faster economic reforms. While definitely it has some merit, at the same time, if we keep in mind the geo-political significance of Egypt to US imperialism in relation to maintaining its control over Middle-East, we may probably agree that it had also not put that much pressure on Egypt at that time to implement the reforms programme as it had done to other third world countries. But even after this pace of reforms, it is found till the end of last millennium, more than 300 state factories were privatized and the number of workers in state sectors was reduced to half.
Situation had further worsened since the beginning of the new millennium. At the end of first decade of this century, production in private sectors has reached to 70% of total industrial production; Egypt has been declared by 'The Business Week' as "Emerging Market" in 2006. In 2007, total FDI has escalated to 11 billion Dollars. At the other end, expenditure in the social sectors has been reduced, during 2005-2008, an additional 2.6 million people has become poorer, number of permanent workers has reduced, and that of the contract workers has increased rapidly. At the same time foodgrain price has become double. In April, 2008 there was a major food riot in which at least 11 people was died. And at the cost of all these, the US government has provided to Mubarak administration @ 2 billion US Dollars per year as economic aid, the bulk of which has filled up the coffer of Mubarak and his associates including top brass army officials.(27)
The last nail in the coffin has been the impact of the economic crisis that engulfed whole of western world since end of 2008. So, when we reach at January, 2011 Tahrir Square, we can identify Egypt as a volcano on the verge of eruption.
Another aspect also demands serious discussion. We have stated earlier that during the last days of Nasser, the concept of 'Arab Nationalism' was put under major scanner. Almost at the same time, the defeat of the first phase of the forward march of the international communist movement had also started to surface. The conglomeration of these two factors had started to aggravate the ideological crisis of Egyptian intelligentsia since that time. Thereafter, during post-Nasser era, as the Egyptian ruling class started to align more with the US imperialism, Islamic Fundamentalism had started to get a breeding ground at their covert support since the end of seventies of last century. Egypt was no exception; such became the situation in whole of Middle-East since that time.
It needs to be mentioned here that while imperialism has a direct role for spreading of Islamic Fundamentalism in Egypt, at the same time as soon as at the behest of Mubarak, the Egyptian ruling clique started to serve imperialist interests, in particular of the USA, more and more, aggressive fundamentalism has also started to gain its ground in its reaction. However, it has to be recognized that even though the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is also a fundamentalist organization, still it has some fundamental difference with other fundamentalist organizations operating in Egypt as well as in the whole of Middle-East. During Nasser era, it was banned and most of its members were put under custody. Once Sadat came to power, though these members were released from jail, the ban was not withdrawn. But since that time, they started to concentrate on mass activity through social services by building up Syndicate type organizations. At the same time, they had been able to increase their influence among the students-teachers-lawyers etc. We can get a better picture of their nature of activity from an interview of Hilmi-Al Jajhar, President of the students' union of Cairo University in the eighties and later on an active organizer of the Medical Syndicate of MB, given in 2002: "In the 1970s we used to have beards and wear julbab [the long, flowing garments traditionally worn by Egyptian men], and our discourse was visibly and directly Islamic. We focused on issues like Islamic dress and spreading Islamic awareness through books and exhibitions. In the 1980s hardly any Ikhwan students had beards and all wore Western clothes and suits. We focused on issues related to democracy and on serving the needs of the students by providing them with cheap reference books and revision manuals".(28)
In addition, they brought a major change in the organization structure in the eighties. Rejecting the path of complete centralization in organizational functioning, some measures regarding de-centralization were taken. Most important among them was building up a complex network among different syndicates-students' unions-college teachers' organizations-Islamic Banks-voluntary organizations etc. and through this building up an organic relationship with the masses and the mother organization. Regarding their activity at this phase, Ahmad Al-Nahas, the then treasurer of Engineers' Syndicate of Alexandria, described later on: "In the initial years of our presence in the syndicate we did nothing but services, services, services. We did not speak politics, because we realized that if we did so from the outset, people would not listen. We needed to provide services first. As a result, people began to gather round us. It was only then that we could talk to them about our political views. We would expect them to support us, since by then they knew us better." (29)
After building up a strong mass base through these activities, MB started to bring forward their fundamentalist politics more and more in the nineties. In 1990, during Iraq-Kuwait war, though both the MB and Mubarak had opposed Saddam Hussein, when US attacked Iraq on the pretext of war, MB opposed strongly against USA. Since then, it started to confront Mubarak government more aggressively and took different programmes to regain its political recognition. In this situation, since 1995 Mubarak regime tried to restrain MB and as a result, its open populist activities started to face resistances from administration.
While, MB was gaining ground in Egypt, at the same time aggressive Fundamentalist Organizations had also started to spread. In opposition to MB, their prime activities were based primarily in urban area, secretive in nature and through small groups. The ideological foundation of their activities was that Islamic laws cannot be implemented in present state structure and on this point, they had a major difference with MB. However, their activities were also mainly restricted since 1995 and on this pretext all the trivial democratic rights of the people were curtailed since that time in the name of indefinite "Emergency" situation. In its continuation, the parliamentary election in 2005 became completely farcical.
Sum Up of the Past Experiences
As stated earlier, our main purpose of recollecting past history is to understand - is there any element of consciousness that is being reflected in the present phase of spontaneous struggles of the working class and the masses which they have arrived at from their spontaneous sum up of all these colourful experiences? Not only that - is there any advancement of consciousness from the past in the present phase of spontaneous struggles? We need to understand these aspects, as because the present struggles are continuing without any conscious leadership of the communists as well as without any conscious assimilation of the past experiences by the communists. So, from this perspective, we now need to identify main aspects of the past experiences.
Anti-imperialist element
Earlier we have discussed that in the history of the last hundred years of struggle of the Egyptian working class and the toiling masses, initial focus was opposition of the colonial rule and subsequently it had been shifted to the opposition of the imperialist conspiracy to establish its control over Egypt. During pre-1952 phase, it had been expressed through the demand of complete freedom from British rule. Later on, under the leadership of Nasser, anti-US imperialism was the focus of this opposition. Here, we must keep in mind that to implement the policy of western imperialism since end of the 1st World War to control the Middle-East to grab its huge natural oil resource, Egypt needs to be utilized as an entry point for them - hence, control of Egypt has always remained very important to western imperialism. We have seen earlier that anti-US imperialist struggle reached its zenith during Nasser era. But we must also note that the strength of Nasser's opposition to US imperialism was primarily based on the support of the then USSR and the 'Communist Block" of Eastern Europe and the manifestation of this opposition was primarily through administrative measures, not through active participation of the masses. Hence, essentially the inner content of that opposition was weak and dependent on the role of the government. Hence, since the death of Nasser even though the Egyptian ruling clique took the path of surrendering more and more to them, the strength of resisting imperialism through mass struggle had been weakened. Here, the aspect of percolation of the frustration and despair among the working class globally due to the surfacing of the defeat of the first forward march of the international communist movement, in which Egypt was no exception, can also not be ignored for this weakening. In any case, since then, the opposition of imperialism has remained limited to the struggles against the economic attacks unleashed by the ruling classes at the diktat of imperialism. But that does not mean we can ignore the persisting anti-imperialist element among the Egyptian masses, as we have already seen that initially Mubarak was very much cautious to implement the imperialist programme.
It also needs to be mentioned here that opposition to imperialism by the Egyptian masses has been expressed through two distinctly different streams - one, struggle of the working class and secular masses; and two, through Islamic Fundamentalism under the leadership of the MB. Here we again reiterate that opposition of imperialism through aggressive fundamentalist garb was never as strong in Egypt as in other Middle-Eastern countries. Even, very recently in 2012, when Morsi tried to declare Egypt as an Islamic state, the way the Egyptian population opposed it through street protests it reflects the existence of secular consciousness of its people to a certain extent.
Democratic aspiration
Along with the anti-imperialist element, a strong democratic aspiration has always been at the core of the history of the struggle of the Egyptian masses for last hundred years. All major bourgeoisie democratic rights including the right to struggle and organize have always remained suppressed during the whole period. We have seen how in the pre-1952 period, all the mass struggles was crushed through blood bath, organizations had always tried to survive by confronting massive state terrors. In Nasser era, all the organizations were banned, two worker leaders were even hanged just for leading a workers' strike. During whole of post-Nasser era, except for some small periods, Egyptian people have faced the claustrophobic dictatorial rule. As a result, a strong and spontaneous aspiration for democracy among the working class and the toiling masses is not just the product of Mubarak rule, but of the political rule persisted for long 100 years. Here, it is also important to note that the development of capitalism through reforms from above made during Nasser era had also naturally escalated the democratic aspiration of the masses. So, at one end, limited capitalist development, and the prolonged autocratic and dictatorial rule on the other end - both these two factors have accentuated the demand for democratization of political system among the masses. One more evidence of it is the way the popularity of Morsi had declined within one year of coming to power and the way he had been dethroned by military intervention after a de-facto mass upsurge, caused to resist the effort of Morsi's further autocratisation of the state. It shows how strong the democratic aspiration of the Egyptian masses is.
Nationalist Aspiration
It is quite natural that due to the inability of the Egyptian Communists to represent consciously, the anti-imperialist as well as democratic aspirations of Egyptian working class and the toiling masses have primarily been driven spontaneously towards a strong nationalistic aspiration. We have already seen how the Egyptian communists had been swayed by that strong nationalist emotion during the period of 2nd World War. How the same emotion exists still today has been expressed in an interview of Amal-Al Syed, a leading female worker of Ghajl-Al Mahalla, made in 2011. She has said: "I lost my sense of belonging to the country; the Egyptian flag had no meaning for me. But after the January revolution I felt proud again of my country and of my flag. ? Egypt is everything. It's not an individual. But my country, Egypt, will remain as a good example for the whole world. The dignity of the Egyptians should be above all else. Egypt remains the number one. Egypt remains the mother of the world."(30)
However, it should also be noted that a struggle among the masses against this nationalist feeling can also be detected simultaneously. First of all, by one after another anti-people measures, Egyptian ruling classes have repeatedly forced the working class to go for struggles on class issues, a reflection of which had been seen in the forties of the last century when along with anti-British struggles, Egyptian working class went on strikes on their own independent demands; at that time, rural peasants had also fought against the attempt of rent procurement. The same phenomenon has been seen in the struggles of the workers in the seventies and in the struggles of the workers going on uninterruptedly since 2006. Unless we take into consideration this phenomenon, we won't be able to identify the true significance of the independent initiatives of the workers going on till now.
Betrayal of the leadership
In this context, we need to bring forward another section of the interview of that female worker of Mahalla made in 2011. She says: "I hope the revolution will succeed and won't be hijacked. It was made by heroes, but cowards are stealing it away. It happened before in the Mahalla Factory. When the workers demanded their rights some people infiltrated their ranks and divide the labour movement. (Their only strategy is) Divide and rule. Divide and rule". In the discussion of recollecting history of last 100 years we have seen how Egyptian working class and the masses at different times have depended on the secular Wafd Party, Nasser's Party, MB etc - they even have the experiences of depending on the communists; but none of them have been able to represent in the correct way their true aspiration. Even in the current they also have the experience how the Army has "hijacked" Tahrir Square in 2011 and the anti-Morsi demonstration in 2013. All these experiences are also very significant to understand today's initiatives of the Egyptian workers.
Significance of Present Struggles
Keeping all these aspects in consideration, we shall now try to analyse the incidents going on since 2011. Here, we first take the point of struggle for democracy, which has drawn the international attention most.
Here first of all, we need to note that through the fall of Mubarak and subsequent parliamentary election, a strong struggle to achieve a bourgeoisie-democratic state structure has been manifested; but through the incidents after the fall of Morsi it has been apparent that a prolonged and persisting struggle with the representatives of the old autocratic state structure remains pending for the coming days to attain the stability of this new state structure; and since such a state structure is not antagonistic with the requirement of imperialism, rather the best political option to keep the people tied with for continuation of exploitation, we may easily presume that they would have a strong support to stabilize the same.
At the same time, the recent episode of anti-Morsi demonstration, which was converted to a de-facto mass upsurge, shows how strong the demand of the masses for democracy is. Not only that, within a short span of two and a half year since January, 2011 we have observed series of stormy events in Egypt - incidents of Tahrir Square-fall of Mubarak- a complex parliamentary election process-victory of Morsi and MB-again fall of Morsi-seizure of power again by military. How do we explain it? The only objective reason of it can be the existence of a strong secular and anti-imperialist democratic current among the masses. So, we need to understand that objectively there exists two opposing trends among the masses - one, moving towards stabilization of parliamentary democratic state structure; another is, a spontaneous motion of the masses to cross the limit of that state structure. Undoubtedly, right now the first trend is in overwhelmingly dominating status and the second one is very feeble. In any case, however feeble the second trend may be now, the objective existence of it is more important to the international working class.
Another aspect in this regard is no less important. We observe that this struggle for democracy has not remained limited merely to the democratization of state. Since 2006, through consistent struggles Egyptian working class has been able to achieve the "right to struggle and organize", however temporary in nature that may be. And to achieve and retain this right, till this day they are being forced to combat the terror of police and military. It is true, right now this right has remained limited only within the arena of trade union struggle, but as a communist we must not forget that in reality it is not a mere trade union right, it is an important political right. In addition, we do also know that even though it is a bourgeoisie-democratic right, but for the working class it is such a right which is, at the same time, most fearsome for the bourgeoisie; because they know it very well that working class is the only class, who by way of utilizing this right, amongst others, can take up the struggle for democracy to its final destination.
Here also we need to wait and see whether the Egyptian working class keep these struggles limited on their own partial economic demands and in this way by limiting the struggle within the bourgeoisie arena, or taking lessons from the rich and colourful experiences of these struggles, they can advance by themselves towards attainment of total democracy. This aspect is very much important as because these struggles are going on spontaneously, without the leadership of any true communist party.
However, at the same time we need to keep in mind that since right now the domination of capitalism-imperialism is very strong due to the weakness of class struggle, the future of preserving this right in Egypt is very tough; the moment it would go against their interest, attacks on this right would be imminent. Hence, it is quite possible that the prolonged and deep-rooted anti-imperialist and democratic aspiration of Egyptian people would objectively push them to move further to cross the limit of bourgeoisie-democratic political structure, which itself would again be a hindrance to stabilization of that structure; and the working class would also be forced to cross the arena of trade union struggle and to play their positive role in the arena of political struggle. In addition, we have seen earlier that there are both the contradictory trends among the working class and the toiling masses - nationalist as well as to be free from the limits of nationalist aspirations; we have also seen that in the present phase of struggle, the second trend has become more prominent than earlier. So, in the coming days, the possibility of the Egyptian working class playing there independent role as a class is becoming stronger.
So, as a whole we may say that Egyptian people have a long, colourful history of struggle against the imperialists and for democracy; this struggle has gone de-facto uninterrupted with some recess; it is not only continuing, but also advancing in its own way, taking lessons from the experiences; in content, the objective aspiration of this struggle is true democracy, i.e., people's democracy. From Historical Materialism, we can say that the true victory of this struggle is possible only when it would convert to struggle for achieving the rule of working class and peasantry and only under the leadership of the working class and through revolutionary unity among the working class and the peasantry, this struggle can reach its destiny.
Now the question that haunts is whether the Egyptian proletariat is prepared to play this role. We strongly feel - not yet. Their path of advancement is very tough and complex. During the era of defeat of the first journey of the international working class towards socialism, it is quite natural that Egyptian proletariat, as part of the international proletariat, is shaded with frustration about revolution/socialism etc, confused with the questions about the role of the Communist Party-Working Class leadership etc; in addition, the role that had been played by the communists of their own country has also added salt to their adverse experience. Had there been an international organization of the working class today, it could guide them to decide their strategy and tactics in this complex situation. But not only the question of this international organization is far from reality, till now they are long behind to form their own and correct communist party.
So then, shall we conclude that the present phase of struggles going on in Egypt is destined to doom? We strongly say - not at all. How?
First of all, we have seen that it has become a matter of concern to the Egyptian working class that their struggles are repeatedly being "hijacked". This has again been amplified even in anti-Morsi demonstration through the role of the military. It has also been seen that from this concern they have already started to build up their separate organization and to retain the control over it for the sake of struggle.
At the same time, we have also seen them build up a peculiar form of organization during the phase of Tahrir Square movement. This organization was formed in the course of struggle of the amorphous masses and had also dissolved once the struggle was ended. Internationally this form of organization has been popularized as the "General Assembly". There is a similarity between the organizations of the workers and the "General Assembly" - both form of organizations are built up spontaneously from the below. There is another similarity - in both the cases, participating masses are trying to keep their control over it. The prolonged and bitter experience of betrayal has made all the existing political parties completely unreliable to the Egyptian masses. And, from this unreliability, the Egyptian proletariat is not only dissociating from old organizations, by trying to maintain their control over the newly formed organizations, they are trying to dissociate themselves from the lines and methods of functioning of the old, to create and develop newer lines and methods of functioning of the new.
Some may question, if the situation be so, how do we explain the incident of winning of MB in parliamentary election. This question has become more pertinent for them who had cried as "counter-revolution" observing the election result. For them, we can only remind that for the communists, election is such a political struggle which cannot be directed to a revolutionary direction without the existence of a national level political organization of the working class deeply rooted among the masses. Right now, Egyptian working class is far from such an organization. It must also be kept in mind that the electoral battle does not always reflect the objective struggle below. It has aptly been proven by the post-election history.
Secondly, we must also note that the Tahrir Square movement was developed on a sole issue - the fall of Mubarak. But, in the struggle of the workers we are observing that these struggles are surfacing primarily on the economic and plant level issues. Now, our question is should we identify these struggles as mere economic struggle, or do we conclude that through these struggles the Egyptian working class is objectively resisting the attacks of the policies of Globalisation-Liberalisation and for this reason, a political element is objectively being added into it? It is much more significant that Egyptian working class is probably the only one, who in this era of defeat, is not only resisting the attacks of the policies of Globalisation-Liberalisation (which is the main characteristic of the present day struggles of the working class across the globe), they have been able to move ahead, at least one step, by way of achieving wage-rise, the right to organization, permanency of service for the contract workers (for however time being it may be) etc. This is very significant for them in their history of struggle of last 100 years, as because this time they have been able to achieve all these without de-facto help of any external organizations.
Undoubtedly, all these are just the signals of a new beginning, but definitely, the future lies in these signals. The way the Egyptian working class has started to step ahead to build up their own future based on their incomplete and spontaneous sum up of their past experiences of struggle and organization, the way the struggle of the general toiling masses is also going on uninterruptedly, we can definitely hope that they will not stop just here. In the course of development of these struggles, they are definitely attaining newer strength, newer consciousness, which will again help them to advance further, and finally the Egyptian working class will be able to establish their class-leadership in the revolutionary struggles of the mass of the working class and the peasantry. Finally the signals of the end of the era of international defeat have started to come from different corners of the globe, Egypt is definitely the most significant among it - hence, as part of the internationally defeated army, we shall wait eagerly to observe its further advancement.
Source:
(14) "Workers & Peasants in the Modern Middle East", by Joel Beinin; Cambridge University Press, 2001.
(15) "Labour Unrest in Egypt, 1906-1990" by Donald Quataert, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40241325; "Labour & Politics in Egypt, 1919-1939" by Marius Deeb, http://www.jstor.org/stable/162126; "Peasants in Revolt - Egypt 1919" by Ellis Goldberg, http://www.jstor.org/stable/164298; "The Egyptian Revolution of 1919: New Directions in the Egyptian Economy" by R L Tignor, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4282606.
(16) "Formation of the Egyptian Working Class", by Joel Beinin; http://www.jstor.org/stable/3012255.
(17) http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/2385.
(18) Same as (14).
(19) "Islamic Mobilisation: Social Movement Theory and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood", by Ziad Munson; http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121130.
(20) "The Communist Movement & Nationalist Political Discourse in Nasirist Egypt", by Joel Beinin; http://www.jstot.org/stable/4327640.
(21) Same as (14).
(22) "Politics, Power and Poverty: Twenty Years of Agricultural Reform and Market Liberalisation in Egypt" by Ray Bush; http://www.jstor.org/stable/20455019.
(23) "Egypt As Recipient of Soviet Aid, 1955-1970" by Karel Holbik and Edward Drachman; http://www.jstor.org/stable/40749433.
(24) Same as (20). In addition, interested reader may also consult "The Communist Movement in Egypt, 1920-1988" by Tareq Y Ismael & Rifaat El-Said; Syracuse University Press, 1990.
(25) "1977: The Lost Revolution" by Hossam el-Hamalawy; http://www.ebook-downloader.com/downloadinfo/1977-Bread-Uprising-12893045.
(26) "The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square" by Steven A Cook; Oxford University Press.
(27) "Transition to What: Egypt's Uncertain Departure from Neo-Authoritarianism", Mediterranean Paper Series, May 2011. "Egypt's Unfinished Revolution", http://www.isreview.org/issues/79/feature-egyptianrevolution.shtml.
(28) "Mubarak and the Islamists: Why Did the 'Honeymoon' End?" by Hesham Al-Awadi; http://www.jstor.org/stable/4330097.
(29) Same as (28).
(30) The video "Al Jazeera World - Revolution Through Arab Eyes - The Factory"; available in www.youtube.com/watch?v=u01Fytmjlmw. English Subtitles of the original video has been quoted here.
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