LENIN'S TOMB

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

The Syrian revolt enters a new phase posted by Richard Seymour

As Bashar al-Assad flees the capital, the armed segments of the revolution appear to be inflicting blows on sections of the security apparatus and taking over major cities: the revolution is turning a corner. Robert Fisk reports that a crucial dynamic now is the fracturing of an alliance between the Sunni middle class and the Alawite regime, signalled by the spread of the revolt to Aleppo. And defections from the state-capitalist power bloc continue. Indeed, Juan Cole has suggested that such divisions must run deep in the Syrian state for the opposition to be capable of planting a bomb that can kill a senior minister.

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The course of this uprising, from the immolation of Hasan Ali Akleh in January 2011, redolent of Mohamed Bouazizi's death in Tunisia, to the suicide attack on the defence minister, has been brutal. In the early stages, the Syrian government had a monopoly on violence. It was police violence and the decades-long rule by the Ba'athist dictatorship, undergirded by repressive 'emergency law', which provoked the 'days of rage'; it was the police beating of a shopkeeper that provoked a spontaneous protest on 17th February 2011 in the capital, which was duly suppressed; it was the imprisonment of Kurdish and other political prisoners that led to the spread of hunger strikes against the regime by March 2011. And it was the security forces who started to murder protesters in large numbers that same month. It was they also who repeatedly opened fire on large and growing demonstrations in April 2011. In the ensuing months until today, they have used used everything from tear gas to live bullets to tank shells.

And the main organisations of the Syrian opposition pointedly refused the strategy of armed uprising, noting what had happened in Libya, and arguing that the terrain of armed conflict was the ground on which Assad was strongest. Nonetheless, the scale of the repression eventually produced an armed wing of the revolt. The Free Syrian Army became the main vector for armed insurgency, expanded by defections from the army and the security apparatus. Now it is making serious advances.

In response to the insurgency, the argument among a significant section of the antiwar left has been that this revolution has already been hijacked, that those who initially rose up have been sidelined and marginalised by forces allied with external powers, intelligence forces and so on. Thus, the arms, money and international support for the armed rebellion is said to be coming from Washington, and Riyadh, and Tel Aviv. The likely outcome is the decapitation of a regime that is problematic for the US, and its replacement with a regime that is more amenable to the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, they argue, the political forces likely to hegemonise the emerging situation are essentially reactionary and sectarian. The left, democratic and anti-imperialist forces are, they say, too weak to lead the fight against Assad's regime. And so, as Sami Ramadani puts it in the latest Labour Left Briefing, "the sacrifices of the Syrian people have been hijacked by NATO and the Saudi-Qatari dictators".

Tariq Ali was the latest to make this case on Russia Today (prompting an impassioned rebuttal from this left-wing Syrian blog). MediaLens, an organisation whose output I have promoted in the past, also takes this view, and reproaches myself and Owen Jones for being insufficiently attentive to the accumulating mass of evidence that the armed revolt is basically a creature of imperialism, its actions no more than, effectively, state terrorism. Obviously, I think this is mistaken.

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I'll start with imperialism. One has to expect that in a revolutionary situation, rival imperialist powers will try to influence the course of events. We have seen the US, UK, France and Russia all involved in Syria's battle in different ways. Washington has long provided funding and other types of support to opposition groups, and the CIA is alleged to be training groups outside the Syrian border. It has two specific reasons to be involved: taking out a strategic ally of Iran, and being seen to be on the side of democratic change in the Middle East. The nature of its involvement is dictated by its preference for some sort of coup d'etat rather than a popular revolution; they want to encourage more senior regime defections so that a faction of the old ruling elite can coordinate its forces, lead an armed assault on the bastions of the Assad regime, and then declare itself the new boss. That is most likely why they are selectively feeding arms to groups they deem reliable, and training various select groups outside the country.

Russia, of course, is nowhere near as powerful an imperialist state as the US. Its role is arguably slightly enhanced by the fact that it is backing up a centralised, well-armed regime (vis-a-vis the insurgent population), whereas the 'Western' imperialist powers have been trying to infiltrate and co-opt elements of a very loosely coordinated resistance. The rebels by all accounts are extremely poorly armed; the trickle of weapons from the Gulf states is nothing compared to the helicopters, tanks and other munitions which the Assad regime possesses and deploys with such indiscriminate force. However you assess the relative balance between the various intervening forces, though, the point is that if you want to talk about imperialism in Syria you cannot just ignore the intervention taking place on behalf of the regime.

In fairness, many of those commentators highlighting imperialist intervention have also noted the flow of arms from Russia to the regime - Charles Glass, for example. Moreover, none of them appear to be denying serious repression by the regime. Rather, Patrick Seale is typical in arguing that the transition to an armed strategy, provoked by the regime, has been immensely destructive, as this is the terrain on which the regime is the strongest.

Nonetheless, there is in some of this a type of 'blanket thinking' that one commonly encounters, in which a signposted quality of one organisation, or faction within an organisation, or individual within a faction, is taken to be expressive of the situation as a whole. Thus, for example, Ramadani characterises the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are characterised as "Saudi-Qatari-backed ... logistically backed by Turkey": which is some of the truth, but simply not the whole truth. I will return to this. Likewise, when Seale describes the opposition strategy as being one of provoking "Western military intervention to stop the killing on humanitarian grounds", he ignores the declarations of the Local Coordinating Committees (LCCs) which are the organisational, cellular basis of the revolt, and which have consistently opposed imperialist intervention. He also ignores the left-nationalist and Kurdish forces - there are traditions of anti-imperialism in Syria well beyond the Ba'ath Party.

Or, let's take as an example this article by the comedy writer Charlie Skelton which is being recited widely. It basically makes two arguments. One is that leading figures within the Syrian National Council have connections to various US-funded bodies. The other is that vocal neoconservatives are pressing for military intervention and 'regime change', and declare themselves pleased by the successes of the armed opposition such as the Free Syrian Army. In and of itself, this could be part of a valid argument: why should these people be the spokespersons for the Syrian revolution in the Anglophone media? Why should the interests of Syrians be hijacked for some imperialist grand strategy? However, inasmuch as this ignores the majority of what is taking place, instead looking solely at narrow networks of influence, this is indeed a form of 'blanket thinking', allowing small minorities to stand in for the whole.

Imperialism is certainly involved. However, a few vulgar regime apologists to one side, no one is denying that there is more to it than that; that there are internal social and class antagonisms that have produced this revolt. If you want an analysis of the breakdown of the Syrian social compact in the last decade, amid a new wave of US imperialist violence which sent waves of refugees fleeing from Iraq, and Bashar al-Assad's neoliberal reforms, you should see Jonathan Maunder's article in the last International Socialism. The important point is that the regime can't survive. It is incapable of advancing the society any further, even on bourgeois terms. There is, therefore, only the question of how the regime will be brought down, and by whom.

The question is, is the geopolitical axis dominant? Is it this, rather than domestic antagonisms, which will determine the outcome of this revolt and its meaning?

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When you hear from ordinary Syrian activists, and not the exiles in the SNC, you don't hear a lot of support for an invasion or bombing: quite the contrary. The trouble is that there have been groups advocating intervention, and there has been a degree of intervention already. And while the rank and file have never been won over to the strategy of armed imperialist intervention, there isn't much unity over what strategy should be pursued and to what precise end. The question then is which forces can dominate and impose their line.

Before addressing this, one should say something about the organisational basis of this revolution. It isn't the leadership of the Syrian National Council (SNC), whose role as an 'umbrella' group belies their lack of influence on the ground. At the most basic, cellular level, it is the local coordinating committees (LCCs). A section of these, about 120 of them, have recognised the SNC since it was founded, and have some formal representation. In fact, they are grossly under-represented in the SNC structure compared to the liberal and Islamist opposition groups. And they don't make a very effective representation within the SNC structures, which means that when the SNC speaks it isn't necessarily speaking for the grassroots. However, a larger chunk, some 300 LCCs, have declined to recognise or affiliate to the SNC. The LCCs have opposed imperialist intervention, despite the bloodiness of Assad's repression; they have even tended to resist the trend toward militarisation of the uprising. Now, the LCCs, being localised resistance units based in the population, are not politically or ideologically unified. There are undoubtedly reactionary elements among them, as well as progressive and just politically indeterminate forces. So, the question of political representation is significant.

And at the level of political representation, there are various ideologically heterogeneous coalitions and groups. The SNC is understood to be the main 'umbrella' organisation unifying several strands from Kurdish to liberal groups. The leadership is disproportionately weighted toward exiles, while the actual systems of representation within the SNC are seriously skewed toward the bourgeois liberals and the Muslim Brothers. That's not the end of the world, given that some people have been invoking 'Al Qaeda' (really? people on the Left buying into this? Apparently so...) or just sectarian jihadis of one stripe or another. The fact is that Islamists and liberals are a part of the opposition in most of the old dictatorships of the Middle East, from Tunisia to Algeria to Yemen to Egypt to Bahrain etc etc etc. But these forces do represent the more conservative and bourgeois wing of the resistance to Assad. Generally speaking, like the LCCs, they have opposed the strategy of armed struggle - this is one of the reasons for their generally antagonistic relationship with the Free Syrian Army. But they did favour a strategy of armed intervention until forming an agreement in January with the left-nationalist National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, which rejected all imperialist intervention from outside the region: in other words, they would accept help from Arab states, but not from the 'West'. (Caveat: as will become clear, the SNC negotiators did not get this agreement ratified, and it may well be that the issue of imperialist intervention was one of the sticking points.)

Why, then, did the dominant forces in the SNC look for a time to imperialist intervention? I think it is obviously because these are not forces that are comfortable with mass mobilisation, least of all with armed mass mobilisation. A UN-mandated intervention - bombing, coordination with ground forces, etc. - would have solved this problem for them, achieving the objective of bringing down a repressive and moribund regime without mobilising the types of social forces that could challenge their hegemony in a post-Assad regime. Then they could have been piloted into office as the nucleus of a new regime, a modernising, neoliberal capitalist democracy. But as the prospects of such an intervention declined, as the grassroots failed to mobilise for some sort of NATO protectorate, and as the emphasis shifted to armed struggle via the Free Syrian Army (FSA) throughout the first half of this year, the SNC has been compelled to respond. It has developed a military bureau to relate to the FSA, albeit this has produced more claims of attempted manipulation.

Despite its international prominence, however, the SNC is not the only significant political formation organising opposition forces. The main organisation in which the Syrian left is organised is in the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, mentioned above - also known as the National Coordination Committee (NCC), tout court. This is the second most widely recognised organisation aside from the SNC, and has a much stronger basis within Syrian society. It is headquartered in Damascus rather than in Turkey, it has a strong basis in the LCCs and includes Kurdish, nationalist and socialist organisations. There have been attempts by both the SNC and NCC to overcome their differences and construct a sort of united front against Assad, but their political and strategic differences have made this impossible. Another factor obstructing unity is the NCC's position within Syria; it is far more exposed to military reprisals by the regime, and thus must pitch its demands very carefully. This is an important reason why it has emphasised a negotiated settlement as the answer to the crisis.

Also of significance is the Kurdish National Council, created by Kurdish forces in anticipation of having to fight their corner in a post-Assad regime: indeed, the reluctance of the majority of Kurds to actually support the SNC has been a significant factor in the composition and division of labour in the opposition. For Kurds oppressed in Assad's Syria, who do not automatically trust a future regime dominated by Sunni Arabs to protect minorities, it is seen as far more sensible to turn to a dense network of regional supporters and interests, described very well here.

The lack of unity between any political leadership and the revolutionary base - which extends to a lack of coordination between the coalitions and the armed groups, as we'll discuss in a moment - is a real weakness in the revolution. Aside from anything else, it makes it harder for the opposition to win over wider layers of the population - because people aren't sure exactly what they'll be supporting, what type of new regime will emerge from the struggle. There is a real fear of sectarian bloodshed, notwithstanding the cynical way in which the regime manipulates this fear. The military and civilian opposition leaders have tried to allay this fear, and FSA units say they are working with Allawi forces. But without a degree of unity and discipline, with the continued disjuncture between the turbulent base and the political leadership, and with Assad's forces heavily outgunning the opposition, this is a powerful disincentive for people to break ranks with the regime. Moreover, if some greater degree of cohesion and coordination is not reached, then the risk of some force outside the popular basis of the revolt (say, a few generals leading a proxy army) interpolating itself in the struggle and siezing the initiative, is increased.

This is not to argue that the SNC and NCC must converge around a common programme and then somehow impose themselves on the LCCs. I don't know how the political division of labour in the opposition could be optimised, and unity between the base and the leadership of such a movement would have to be negotiated and constructed on the basis of a recognition of the mutual interests of the social classes and ethnic groups embodied in the movement. Further, whether a merger would help or hinder the revolution probably depends very much what the agenda is and who is materially dominant in the emerging representative institutions. It does, however, explain why there have been and will continue to be attempts at forging some sort of unity, despite the ongoing antagonisms and differences between the various forces, and despite the very real problems with the SNC leadership.

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As for the armed contingent, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has been summarily vilified and demonised by many polemicists. Consistent with the 'blanket thinking' referred to previously, the FSA has been deemed a sectarian gang, terrorists, a Saudi-Qatari front, and so on. The first and most important thing about the FSA is that it is made up of anything between 25,000 and 40,000 assorted rebels - defectors from the armed forces, both soldiers and officers, and various civilians who volunteered to fight. As such, it is as politically and ideologically variegated a formation as the LCCs. Nominally, the FSA is led by Colonel Riad al-Asaad, a defector from the air force whose family members have been executed by the regime. But the reality, as Nir Rosen describes, is more complex: "The FSA is a name endorsed and signed on to by diverse armed opposition actors throughout the country, who each operate in a similar manner and towards a similar goal, but each with local leadership. Local armed groups have only limited communication with those in neighbouring towns or provinces - and, moreover, they were operating long before the summer." In other words, this is a highly localised, cellular structure with limited cohesion.

Contrary to what has been asserted in some polemics, then, the FSA is not simply a contingent of the SNC. It formed independently, several months into the uprising, following a series of lethal assaults on protests by the regime, specifically in response to the suppression in Daraa. It incorporated armed groups that had been operating locally with autonomous leadership for a while. Its relationship with the SNC, despite attempts by the leaderships to patch over differences, has been strongly antagonistic - largely because of the SNC leadership's opposition to the strategy of armed insurgency and its fears of being unable to control the outcome. Earlier in the year, a split from the SNC formed briefly over this point, with a group formed within the council to support armed struggle. Therefore, those who describe the FSA as "the armed wing" of the SNC, as The American Conservative did, are only exposing their ignorance, as well as that blanket-thinking. The same applies to those who say that the FSA is a Turkish-Saudi-Qatari client. Undoubtedly, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies have an interest in this struggle. Certainly, the leadership of the FSA is currently situated in Turkey, and enjoys Turkish support. And Turkey is a NATO member. But the extent of any support must be judged to be poor, because by all reports the army remains an extremely loose, and lightly armed force. Purely on military grounds, the regime has always enjoyed the advantage, and continues to do so. Moreover, the FSA is just far too disarticulated and heteroclite to be converted into someone's proxy army - unless you assume that any degree of external support automatically makes one a proxy, which strikes me as specious reasoning.

Finally, there is the question of the FSA's human rights record. Those who want to oppose the revolt say that the armed insurgents are a bunch of thugs or even - some will actually use this propaganda term - 'terrorists'. Well, the fact is that the armies have captured and tortured and killed people they believed to be regime supporters or informants. I believe they have blown up regime apparatuses and probably have killed civilians in the process. My answer? You can criticise this or that attack, you can say that the Islamists who bombed Damascus and issued a sectarian statement are not allies of revolution. But you can't keep saying this is a 'civil war' and then express shock when one side, the weaker side, the side that has been attacked and provoked, the side that is ranged against a repressive dictatorship, actually fights a war.

For the regime is fighting a bitter war for its own survival, and it is destroying urban living areas in the process. Do you want to go and look at Jadaliyya, and see the kinds of reports they post every day? Do you want to see the footage of what the Syrian armed forces are doing to residential areas, not to mention to the residents? Unless you're a pacifist, in which case I respect your opinion but disagree with you (in that patronising way that you will have become used to), the only bases for criticising such tactics are either on pro-regime grounds, or on purely tactical grounds. Among the tactical grounds are the objection that 1) this is the territory on which the regime is strongest (true, but I think the signs are that this can be overcome), and 2) there is a tendency in militarised conflict for democratic, rank-and-file forces to be squeezed out (not necessarily the case, but a real potentiality in such situations which one doesn't overlook). Of course, those tactical observations are valid, and people are entitled to their view. My own sense is that the regime has made it impossible to do anything but launch an armed insurgency and so these problems will just have to be confronted.

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All this raises the question, then: what accounts for the advances being made by the insurgency given its relative military weakness and strategic divisions? Part of the answer is that there is no surety of continued advance. It's an extremely unstable situation, wherein the initiative could fall back into the regime forces' hands surprisingly quickly. The current gains have been chalked up rather quickly, and not without serious cost. Nonetheless, the dominant factor clearly is the narrowing of the social basis of the regime, and the growing conviction among ruling class elements, as well as the aspiring middle classes, that Assad and the state-capitalist bloc that rules Syria can neither keep control, nor update the country's productive capacity, nor reform its rampantly corrupt and despotic political system.

Much has been made of Assad's supposed popularity, and the fact that he does have a significant social base. Even if the signs are now that the core bases of his regime are starting to split, the durability of the pro-Assad bulwark has to be encountered and understood. Recently, there was a Yougov poll of Syrians, which Jonathan Steele drew attention to in the Guardian. 55% of those Syrians polled said they wanted Assad to stay, and the number one reason they gave for saying this was fear for the future of their country. Now, you can take or leave a poll conducted under such circumstances. After all, the poll was conducted across the whole Arab world, with only 97 of its respondents based in Syria. How reliable can it be? And it would seem pedantic and beside the point to expect anyone targeted by Assad's forces to pay any heed to it. Nonetheless, there's a real issue here in that at least a sizeable plurality of people are more worried by what will happen after Assad falls than by what Assad is doing now.

A significant factor in this, as mentioned, is the problem of sectarianism. There is no inherent reason why a country as ethnically and religiously diverse as Syria should suffer from sectarianism: this is something that has to be worked on, and actively produced. The Ba'ath regime certainly didn't invent sectarianism, but in pivoting its regime on an alliance between the Alawi officer corps and the Sunni bourgeoisie, it did represent itself as the safeguard against a sectarian bloodbath and has constantly played on this fear ever since, even while it has brutally repressed minorities. Given the breakdown of the class and ethnic alliance making up the regime's base, sectarianism as a disciplinary technology is one of the last hegemonic assets the regime possesses. The importance of opposition forces being explicitly anti-sectarian (as has been seen repeatedly) can thus hardly be over-stated. At the same time, fear of imperialist intervention and some sort of Iraq-like devastation being visited on the country, is also real. Syria, as the host of many of Iraq's refugees, experienced up close the effects of that trauma. Nor is there much in Libya's situation today that I can say I would recommend to the people of Syria. So, it has been of some importance that despite serious bloodshed the LCCs and NCC maintained resistance to the SNC approach of trying to forge an alliance with imperialism.

If you observe the tendencies in each case of revolution, you see amid concrete differences important similarities. For example, there were considerable differences between the Mubarak and Assad regimes and in the tempo and pattern of resistance and opposition. This was not just in terms of foreign policy and the relationship to US imperialism, but also in terms of the prominence of the state as a factor in neoliberal restructuring which was far more important in Syria, the impact of the invasion of Iraq and the ensuing flows of refugees and fighters, the role of an organised labour movement in sparking rebellion which has so far played very little role in Syria (strikes have tended to be organised mainly be professional or petty bourgeois groups - another serious limitation faced by the revolution), and the role of military repression and insurgency in each state.

Even so, there are broad convergences which point to a general pattern. Most important of these are:

1) within these societies, a secular tendency toward a widening of social inequality, coupled with a narrowing at the top of society, resulting from the imposition of neoliberal accumulation patterns.

2) the fraying of the class alliances sustaining the regime as a consequence.

3) the exhaustion of the regime's resources for adaptation, and intelligent reform, such that all concessions come far too late and after such immense repression that it is hard to take them seriously.

4) the declining capacity of the state to maintain consent (or rather, encircle and marginalise dissent) either through material consessions or terror.

5) the re-emergence of long-standing opposition forces in new configurations during the period immediately before and since January 2011, with middle class liberal, Islamist and Arab nationalist forces playing a key role.

6) the emergence of forms of popular organisation - militias in some cases, revolutionary councils in others - performing aspects of organisation that would ordinarily be carried out by the state, and assuming a degree of popular legitimacy in contention with the regime.

7) the defection of significant sections of the ruling class and state personnel, who attempt to play a dominant, leading role in the anti-regime struggle and assume control of reformed apparatuses afterward.

My estimation is that in the context of the global crisis, and amid a general weakening of US imperialism - notwithstanding the relatively swift coup in Libya - these regimes are going to continue to breakdown, and opposition is going to continue to develop in revolutionary forms, ie in forms that challenge the very legitimacy of the state itself. The old state system, based around a cleavage between a chain of pro-US dictatorships and an opposing rump of nominally resistant dictatorships, is what is collapsing here. That is something that the advocates of negotiations as a panacea here might wish to reflect on. Certainly, I have no problem with negotiations as a tactic, particularly in situations of relative weakness. But these are revolutionary crises inasmuch as they severely test the right of the old rulers to continue to rule in the old ways.

These processes, not just in Syria but across the Middle East, are richly overdetermined by the various crises of global capitalism, which are so deep, so protracted, and giving rise to much social upheaval, that it is beyond the capacity of even the most powerful states to bring them under control. Into these complex processes, as we have seen, imperialist powers can impose themselves in various, often destructive, ways; but those commentators who spend all their time charting the agenda of US imperialism and its webs of influence in the region would do well to scale back and get a wider perspective. There is no reason at this moment to think that imperialist intervention is, or is going to be, the dominant axis determining the outcome and meaning of this process.

Labels: capitalist crisis, egypt, libya, middle east, neoliberalism, revolution, syria, tunisia, US imperialism

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

Marxism 2012 posted by Richard Seymour

Don't forget to come to Marxism 2012, starting tomorrow. There is so much to discuss this year, so many arguments to have, so many people who are wrong about everything, and so much at stake. Greece, austerity, the eurozone, Spain, the coalition, Syria, Egypt, Syriza, Gramsci, Lenin, Althusser, Chinese capitalism, Bolivarianism, the unions, the parties, the bosses, the state, revolution and imperialism. Come. My meeting, you should know, is this Friday at 11.45am, on 'Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism in the Liberal Tradition'. I'll be your badchen for an hour or so, then sign books or talk politics if you want.

Labels: althusser, american anti-imperialism, capitalist state, class, egypt, feminism, gramsci, greece, imperialism, lenin, liberal imperialism, marx, marxism, marxism 2012, race, revolution, socialism, trade unions

Friday, April 13, 2012

Tahrir: "the revolution is not over" posted by Richard Seymour

Tahrir Square April 2012

Labels: dictatorship, egypt, imperialism, mubarak, occupation, revolution, socialism, tahrir square, US imperialism

Monday, February 27, 2012

The antiwar movement's dilemma posted by Richard Seymour

My article in The Guardian, drawing on some of the research I did for American Insurgents:

The war on Libya produced a strange effect in British politics. The majority of the public opposed the war, but very little of this opposition was expressed on the streets. Nor is the possibility of intervention in Syria producing sizeable protests as yet.
The first and most obvious reason for this abstention is that behind a general scepticism about war lies a more conflicted sentiment, as people overwhelmingly sympathise with the democratic uprisings in both Syria and Libya. In a situation like this, the ideological relics of "humanitarian intervention" can be reactivated, as they were when the government packaged its bombing of Libya as a limited venture in support of human rights. But this is not the only factor. In the US, the election of Barack Obama took tens of thousands of Democrat-supporting activists off the streets. It would be mistaken to discount an extension of this effect to the UK. The stabilisation of the occupation of Iraq and the subsequent withdrawal of troops has also contributed...

Labels: anti-imperialism, antiwar, egypt, imperialism, iran, libya, middle east, revolution, syria, US imperialism

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Egyptian revolution posted by Richard Seymour

Some salient developments in Egypt today: The Muslim Brothers asked their supporters not to attend the protest in Tahrir Square today. This is causing a serious rift in the organisation, especially given the scale of the protests. Hundreds of thousands have demonstrated today, including about 100,000 in Tahrir Square (remarkable given the scale of army repression designed to keep people away), a further 100,000 in Alexandria. Despite the enormous amount of powerful and toxic tear gas being used, and the dozens killed and thousands wounded, "huge crowds" are reportedly still making their way into Tahrir. Watch the live feed for yourself:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The army is starting to hesitate. Field Marshal Tantawi has accepted the resignation of the cabinet and offered to speed up the transition to civilian rule - though without naming a date and without addressing the substance of popular grievances, it was similar to many of the speeches Mubarak made before his overthrow. The protesters aren't buying it. It's an open question whether others, who are not at the centre of the revolutionary movement, will. And some notable defections have occured. Here an army officer splits from the military leadership and joins the protesters:

It is not helpful to overstate the significance of such defections. But recall that an important condition for the overthrow of Mubarak was the disintegration of his police force and the refusal of the army leadership to support him. At the time, the army accumulated moral capital for not supporting the main attacks on protesters. Since then, their conduct - worse than Mubarak, says Amnesty - has turned that black into red. The military itself is now the clear problem; and presumably what is needed is a breakdown in military command.

Last thing, the US has made it clear that it is backing the military to the finish. It has to. Because if the military regime collapses in Egypt, then the US-led attempts to take control of the situation in the Middle East will be in tatters. The initiative would be in the hands of the revolutionary masses, not just in Egypt - the centre of gravity - but also in Syria and Yemen. Israel's regional power would be further weakened. Even the straightforward, low cost victory in Libya - whose new regime excludes both the Islamists and the Berbers - could begin to unravel.

Labels: dictatorship, egypt, libya, middle east, revolution, syria, US imperialism

Monday, November 21, 2011

Occupy Tahrir Square posted by Richard Seymour

Speaking of bungled acts of repression, the Egyptian military's assault on protesters after last Friday's mass protest has revived the country's revolutionary movement and (so I hear) put a general strike on the agenda. Tahrir Square has been retaken. This image (left) shows what the square looked like on Friday. Following the protest, which was against the military council's usurpation of dictatorial power, dozens of people decided to stay on in the square overnight. They were assaulted by troops using tear gas and rubber bullets in a bid to clear the square. The resulting uproar saw tens of thousands drawn back out onto the square. Repeated assaults seem only to have broadened the array of groups willing to stand against the military. Beyond Tahrir, there have been mass protests in Alexandria and Suez, among other places. The assembly of forces looks remarkably similar to that in February - trade unionists, liberals, socialists, Nasserists and Islamists, all out against the regime. There are now calls for international solidarity as the revolutionary movement, in tens of thousands not dozens, faces down rubber bullets and tear gas. The country's trade unions are calling for their 1.4m members to join protesters in the Tahrir Square sit-in. The struggle is still 'in the balance', as it were, but what a turnaround.

For a time, it seemed as if the armed forces would control the tempo of events. Elections would proceed in the manner prescribed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), and most significant forces would participate. The army would incite sectarianism against coptic Christians, and murder them with impunity. The leadership of the Muslim Brothers - expecting to do well in any prospective elections under the banner of the Freedom and Justice Party - would tend to side with the army in maintaining 'order' against those leftists, liberals and Islamists who antagonised the new ruling order. Indeed, at a crucial moment in July, a mass Islamist rally in Tahrir appeared to show that the alliance between the military and sections of the Islamists was being consolidated. Salafists, jihadis and Muslim Brothers chanted slogans in favour of national unity, while speakers defended the SCAF. The mobilisations of liberals and leftists against the regime, by contrast, looked small. Shortly after the rally, armed thugs were sent by the army to assault opposition supporters camped in Tahrir Square.

Some, in response to this situation, went so far as to declare the revolutionary process at an end. Others descended into indiscriminate rants about Islamists, and enjoined us to remember Iran, 1979. Here was a case of Islamist counter-revolution if ever there was one. Since many of the people I am referring to (I'm being deliberately vague, not to avoid giving offence, but to ensure that the offence is taken widely) are marxists, it is odd that their mistakes were so liberal. They began and ended their assessment of the forces assembled in Egypt on the basis of an ascribed ideology, with little or no reference to class or other political determinants. Whether or not ideology plays the dominant role in situating actors in a given struggle surely depends on the circumstances, but the imperative to be concrete was blithely evaded. Abstraction governed their responses. Relatedly, even while restricting the discussion to ideology, their discussion of that level of struggle was curiously flattened: Islamism was treated not as a complex, incoherent and frequently antagonistic combination of elements, but as a spiritual totality reducible to an incorrigible reactionary essence.

So, it is of more than passing interest that the current mobilisation has drawn support from salafists and detachments from the Muslim Brothers. We needn't deceive ourselves about the role that such forces play. They enjoy mass support, and the Brothers in particular have the infrastructure for a viable political organisation. But, where they have supported progressive political struggles - for democratic and human rights, for Palestine, against the dictatorship - they have tailed, rather than led, secular formations. The responsibility of marxists, however, is to look for the dominant line of political division in any given situation. In this situation, the struggle is between the armed forces, who have murdered and injured several people over the weekend, and the revolutionaries, who include thousands of Islamist activists. The political logic of demonising Islamism in these circumstances would either be a purist abstentionism, or worse, support for SCAF as a bulwark of secular power against the Islamists.

Thirty three people have been killed by armed forces in Tahrir Square since Friday. The level of brutality is shocking. I understand that the military opened fire with live rounds on protesters as they attempted to storm the Interior Ministry. Yet, as you can see, the response from the revolutionaries continues to be defiant:

The military appears to be producing a situation from which there can be no return. Either they will consolidate their power as a new despotism with a slender democratic facade - and elections are now in doubt - or they will be decisively weakened, and a new alignment of democratic forces will have the initiative. As the revolutionaries of Egypt say, Glory to the martyrs, Victory to the revolution, Power and wealth to the people.

Labels: army, dictatorship, egypt, islamism, mubarak, muslim brothers, occupation, revolution, socialism, tahrir square, US imperialism

Saturday, February 19, 2011

"Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers" posted by Richard Seymour

Via Mother Jones:

Labels: egypt, internationalism, socialism, solidarity, wisconsin, working class

Friday, February 18, 2011

Revolutionary feminism posted by Richard Seymour

The wonderful Nawal el-Saadawi on the Egyptian revolution:

Labels: capitalism, egypt, feminism, islamophobia, patriarchy, socialism, US imperialism

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Egyptian army moves to preserve its power posted by Richard Seymour

The revolutionaries demanded Mubarak's overthrow, and insisted that Suleiman should not be put in charge. They have won that. They demanded that the NDP-dominated parliament be prorogued in the interim before elections, and the constitution suspended. They have won that. But they also demanded that between now and elections, there should be a collective, civilian governing council, that the emergency law should be terminated, that unions and parties should have the right to form without the permission of the state. They haven't won that. The army has instead taken control, is attempting to dismantle the democracy village in Tahrir Square, and has been arresting activists today. This does not mean that the army is going to get its way over the future of Egypt, or even that its hesitant, faltering efforts today - and they did falter - represent anything but a tentative foot in the water, an attempt to see if something like order can be restored. In fact, the army's premature provocation resulted in thousands of people pouring back into the square, some rough confrontations, and eventually groups of army and police standing around looking perplexed. Some police even came to the square pleading to be accepted as comrades of the revolution. The army will have to concede some form of representative electoral system, with some basic political freedoms. The state will be weakened in its repressive capacity, and the government will be strengthened in its representative capacity. But the precise balance of forces in the new polity has still to be decided, and in particular the army's central role has to be negotiated (and struggled against). Everything the army does, therefore - whether they decide to keep the NDP men in place or throw them aside, for example - has to be read in terms of their determination to remain in charge.

The army's manoeuvering now is presumably aimed at breaking up the remarkably broad coalition that was first assembled in 2006. This has included of course the Muslim Brothers, the Nasserist 'Karama' party, the Labour Party (which is Islamist), the Tagammu Party (leftist), the Revolutionary Socialists (self-explanatory), Kefaya (an alliance which includes many of the above elements), the Ghad Party (a liberal offshoot of the Wafdists which was the first party to be approached by Mubarak for negotiations), and Mohammed El Baradei's National Alliance for Change. It has to be said that the alliance might have been quite difficult to maintain if the left had taken the sectarian attitude of some of the older layers of marxists who basically maintained that the Muslim Brothers were a tool of the capitalist class, simply an ally of neoliberalism and imperialism, and so on. The Revolutionary Socialists played a key role in overcoming that. Samir Najib, working in the Centre for Socialist Studies, argued that it was vital to understand that the Muslim Brothers as in part a movement of the oppressed, involving many rank and file activists who came from poor and working class backgrounds. Some of them had been on the Left, and been alienated from the Left because of their experiences under Nasser and because of the way the poor bore the brunt of the crisis that marked the latter years of the Nasser regime. He argued that socialists should act independently of the Islamists, but not dismissively of them. They should defend them when they were opposed to the state on issues such as the emergency laws, or the independence of the judiciary, and should be prepared to work with them on democratic demands. Such was an important argument in preparing the socialist Left to be directly involved in, rather than secluded from, the mass movements that have precipitated Mubarak's downfall. The subsequent alliance also meant that the Muslim Brothers were more sensitive to criticism, as when they were forced to recant on their 'Islam is the solution' slogan in 2005, which Christians and socialists argued was sectarian.

The army's strategy of forcing a transition managed by the armed forces themselves is partly possible because both Mohammed El Baradei and the Muslim Brothers appear to have supported an army takeover to avert an all-out social explosion. One expects that, though they were the slowest to support the recent revolution, they will be the first to be consulted by the armed forces. Under Mubarak, the Muslim Brothers were effectively coopted, operating as a loyal opposition. There were and remain tensions in the organisation between the businessmen and professionals who dominate the leadership and the poorer base, with more radical layers wanting to take a more uncompromising stance, and these started to come to the fore in the context of the Second Intifada. This building pressure contributed to the decision by the Muslim Brothers to form an alliance with left-wing and secular forces to depose Mubarak back in 2006. So, it would be mistaken to assume that the rank and file of the Brothers will necessarily accept whatever carve-up the leadership opts for. Similarly, while many of the leading middle class activists are declaring the revolution to be over, effectively throwing in the towel before they've even secured the minimal political and democratic rights that they are in it for, there is likely to be a mass of middle class radicals who will continue to want to fight. I expect they'll be among the thousands of people who remained in Tahrir Square as of today.

Internationally, the armed forces seem determined to hold on to Egypt's current role. The indications so far are that the Camp David peace treaty with Israel, which underpins the Palestinians' miserable plight and Egypt's participation in the seige of Gaza, is to be maintained. This is purchased with $1.5bn a year in aid plus training, but it's also part of a global orientation of power predicated on US-led neoliberalism. Again, the army's task is made slightly easier here, because El Baradei supports the peace treaty. The Muslim Brothers do not, but they are highly unlikely to push for its abrogation. Unless an alternative orientation for capital accumulation emerges, the Egyptian ruling class will likely continue to seek a profitable alliance with the US. Only the continuation of the popular movements can force an alternative path.

It seems clear enough that the revolution has further convulsions to go. It seems equally clear that the alliance which led to this revolution is going to be reconfigured. Juan Cole has long argued that this revolution was centrally based on the labour movement, the alliance of blue and white collar workers that first emerged in 2006. This has united textile workers with tax collectors. But the movement has also been characterised by a fairly broad alliance between the most militant sections of the working class and the liberal and radical sections of the middle class, the latter including lawyers, doctors, probably a lot of small businessmen not integrated into the regime, and so on. The focus, in the Anglophone media, on the Twitterati, may have overstated the relevance of the middle class, but they did not fabricate their role. In the current situation, it is often the small businessmen and middle class professionals (like the Google marketing head Wael Ghonim, currently in a meeting with the higher council of the armed forces) who are in a hurry to call an end to hostilities. They want to get back to earning money. The accent is shifting far more clearly to the organised working class. Perhaps more serious than today's arrests, then, is the attempted banning of labour activism. This is where a new front of struggle is going to be opened up.

Labels: dictatorship, egypt, islamism, liberals, middle east, muslim brothers, nasserists, revolution, socialism, working class

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Egypt solidarity rally posted by Richard Seymour

Amnesty International and the Stop the War Coalition in London today.

Labels: dictatorship, egypt, middle east, mubarak, neoliberalism, palestine, revolution, socialism, US imperialism

"Revolution is a locomotive" posted by Richard Seymour

Those middle class activists who think that Egyptians will now return to work to labour under a military regime - Wael Ghonim, the Google employee incessantly puffed by the Anglophone media as the 'leader' of this revolution, 'trusts' the army and urges people to go back to work - are about to be disabused and disillusioned. The protesters in Tahrir today are chanting that they want a civil, not a military government. The workers are still on strike. The steel mills, the sugar factories, public transport... they are not going to return to work just because the army now says it's in control. In the last week, the hard cutting edge of this revolution was the working class, and those whose revolutionary agenda did not include the interests of the working class are likely to find themselves left behind by events very soon.

Meanwhile, with celebrations erupting in Gaza, Tunisia, Lebanon, Jordan, all over the Middle East (and, I might add, in London), the struggle in Algeria is continuing today. In Algiers, the train services have been stopped, to prevent protesters from flooding into the capital. Thousands of police have been deployed. Crowds are being attacked with tear gas lobbed by police and rocks thrown by plain clothes thugs. Initially, only a few dozens managed to reach the main square where the protest was due to take place, with other scattered throughout the city. But it seems that the protesters have managed to break police cordons, despite considerable resistance. Algeria is an interesting contrast to both Tunisia and Egypt. The police have recently been awarded staggering 50% pay rises amid an economic crisis that is slashing working class incomes, and they have thus far been able to contain and disperse the rebellions with calculated violence and homicide. The main opposition groups, whether the Left or the Islamists, have been effectively repressed and then coopted over the years, such that they are playing only a small role in what is otherwise plainly a class uprising. The main trade union federation has had regime-friendly apparatchiks planted in its leadership, so it has done nothing to support the revolt. As a consequence, the riots which began to break out first in December 2010, then in force this January, initially had little institutional support. The protesters have now developed an umbrella co-ordinating body comprising opposition parties and factions, but this is only a few weeks old. As such, it's early days for the Algerian uprising. But the miraculous breakthrough in Egypt will have given it, and every other brewing rebellion in the vicinity, a tremendous shot in the arm.

Labels: algeria, dictatorship, egypt, gaza, middle east, revolution, tunisia, working class

Friday, February 11, 2011

Shut up, Obama posted by Richard Seymour

Obama is speechifying in his classically elevated, sonorous fashion. He should shut up. He has nothing to say. He spent weeks first backing Mubarak, then the torturer Suleiman. He thought his man, Suleiman, had been put in charge last night. It never once crossed his mind that he would stop aid to the regime, even stop sending the bullets and tear gas that have been used against protesters. The US has been handed its arse by the Egyptian people, the vanguard of global democracy, and should at this point be feigning humility.

Labels: dictatorship, egypt, middle east, revolution, US imperialism

Mubarak is gone posted by Richard Seymour

Mubarak has been ousted. Just after four o'clock GMT he announced his resignation. He has fled, reportedly to Sharm el-Shaikh. He should be arrested and tried. Egypt is celebrating. It is not over, of course. But the generals who made their move are not in control of events, and they can't crush the real forms of grassroots democracy that have developed in this revolution. They can't risk taking on the people who forced their hand today with such unprecedented, furious protests. Don't forget what bloody clashes preceded Mubarak's departure, how many Egyptians were killed in his crazed last gamble for power. Two million protesters thronged into Tahrir Square, and people kept coming. People marched on the presidential palace. An NDP headquarters was taken over. In el-Arish, cops killed five people. This was won with heavy losses, and there's further to go. Next stop, open the Rafah crossings. And it doesn't end with Egypt. Look at what's happening in Bahrain, in Yemen, Algeria, even Saudi Arabia. In Algeria even now, police are trying to repress a celebration of the revolt. These are beginnings, not conclusions. America's chain of icily psychopathic despotisms is beginning to shake.

Update: found this at Socialist Unity. Watch as the crowd suddenly roars:

Labels: capitalism, dictatorship, egypt, middle east, palestine, revolution, socialism, US imperialism

Glenn Beck on the SWP posted by Richard Seymour

Glenn Beck exposes the SWP's role in the world socialist-Islamist conspiracy, from 26 mins, 01 secs. Followed by some ranting with Dore Gold and an explanation of the "red-green alliance" between "Trotskyites and Islamists" in Britain.

Labels: conspiracy theories, egypt, glenn beck, islamism, Israel, muslim brothers, revolution, swp, trotskyism, zionism

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Either Mubarak goes or there will be a massacre, posted by Richard Seymour

I was going to be writing an article about why Mubarak had resigned. But Mubarak is not resigning. Social media has been a-buzz with indications and rumours all afternoon and evening, and his resignation seemed to have been confirmed by army chiefs and by the head of the NDP. We were told he would make a speech confirming that he was stepping down - that is, if he hadn't already blown his brains out, or hopped a plane to Saudi Arabia. There were also rumours that today's meeting by military commanders which apparently decided Mubarak's future was missing one Omar Suleiman, suggesting that he may not be kept on by the regime. An army general reportedly told protesters in Tahrir Square that all their demands would be met. NBC journalist Richard Engel was suggesting that the strike wave was the tipping point forcing Mubarak's resignation.

But no. We've had one terrible, infuriating moment after the next. Mubarak addressing the people as his 'children', positioning himself as the concerned yet proud patriarch of the Egyptian family; Suleiman urging protesters and striking workers to go back home and back to work, and "let's hold hands". The crowd in Tahrir Square, which was ready to explode with ecstasy and joy, instead exploded in rage and fury. As Mubarak's pre-recorded speech was broadcast, the noise from Tahrir Square was extraordinary. Witnesses report that there's been nothing like the atmosphere before, not throughout all the killings, the crackdowns, the evasions, and the disappointments. Protesters in Alexandria have now marched down to the military base and surrounded it to demand action against Mubarak. People in Cairo are marching toward the presidential palace and the state television building.

On Al Jazeera, Hossam el-Hamalawy says that Mubarak's speech has put things out of control. The workers on strike were already going to lead a mass march into Tahrir Square tomorrow. Now, tomorrow will see the biggest gathering yet, and it may march on the presidential palace. And then no one knows what will happen. The army may well be expected to crack down hard, to turn Tahrir into Tiananmen. But the mixed signals of the military leadership suggests nervousness and prevarication on their part. How confident can they be in the rank and file following orders if they're instructed to commit a massacre? How confident can they be that the guns won't be turned on them? That they won't end up hanging from a lamp post next to Mubarak? Throughout all this, the army leadership has tried to protect the regime while pretending to be a neutral party in the struggle. Why, if not that they're terrified?

So, why has Mubarak clung on? Is he following Washington's orders, or defying them? Did Saudi Arabia's offer to sub the regime make a difference? Does the regime fear that any concessions will just fuel the revolt? Do they really think they can ride this out? Or are they actually readying the most appalling crackdown?

Labels: dictatorship, egypt, mubarak, revolution, ruling class, socialism, US imperialism, working class

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Egypt's working class is on the move posted by Richard Seymour

The revolution in Egypt has partially been built on the back of workers' struggles going on for several years, especially since the magnificent insurgency in Mahalla, the general strike in 2008, and the big strikes in Suez and Alexandria in 2009. This uprising has seen new groups of workers form independent trade unions, as a national labour movement takes shape. Yesterday, workers from five companies on the Suez Canal went on strike. They've been joined by workers from government, sanitation, courts, and elsewhere. Railway technicians and oil workers are joining the militancy today, according to Hossam el-Hamalawy. Factories in Suez, Helwan and Mahalla have gone on strike, and more workers from Mahalla will be joining tomorrow. Strikes are popping up everywhere. Now I'm hearing that iron and steel workers are among the strikers, and that their demands are as follows:

1- Immediate resignation of the president and all men and symbols of the regime.
2- Confiscation of funds and property of all symbols of previous regime and everyone proved corrupt.
3- Iron and steel workers who have given martyrs and militants call upon all workers of Egypt to revolt from the regime's and ruling party workers federation, to dismantle it and announce their independent union now and to plan for their general assembly to freely establish their own independent union without prior permission or consent of the regime which has fallen and lost all legitimacy.
4- Confiscation of public sector companies that have been sold or closed down or privatized as well as the public sector which belongs to the people and its nationalization in the name of the people and formation of a new management by workers and technicians.
5- Formation of a workers' monitoring committee in all work places monitoring production, prices, distribution and wages.
6- Call for a general assembly of all sectors and political trends of the people to develop a new constitution and elect real popular committees without waiting for the consent or negation with the regime.

A mass of striking workers will be joining the protest in Tahrir square this Friday, which is intended to be the next 'big one'. One intriguing area of this development of militancy is among journalists in Cairo's daily newspapers, who are in open revolt against their pro-regime managers and editors. This has been developing for over a week, but it now appears to have reached a crisis point. It no longer makes any sense to speak of this regime having any ideological hold, but pro-regime newspapers would still be able to confuse things, spread misinformation, black out the rebellion. This is, therefore, of some significance. Imagine if media workers take control of their enterprises, and turn them to service of the revolution.

Lastly, America and Britain's named successor to Mubarak, the chief torturer Omar Suleiman, has been openly stating that there will be no challenge to Mubarak from within the state. This is as expected - no Tunisian solution has been possible in the Egyptian context. He is warning protesters that there must be a return to 'normalcy', but he is still saying for now that the army can't force people to stop protesting. This is not to say that the state isn't using force. The police have been killing people today. But the police can't beat the protesters (so far), and only the army can. So, Suleiman's caution is perhaps understandable not just as propaganda for an American audience, but partly as a result of a desire not to alienate the junior ranks of the army. The majority of the rank and file come from poor rural backgrounds, where communities have lost out from neoliberal land reforms, and are thus inclined to support the revolution. They may well be unwilling to murder their compatriots for this larcenous regime, and the US and the regime may be unready to put that to the test. But how long will that caution last when Egypt's ruling class continues to feel the pain of daily protests and mass strikes, when the loss of surplus becomes unbearable? Will the party of order then demand a massacre? Would the revolution then need to take up arms?

Labels: egypt, http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif dictatorship, middle east, revolution, socialism, US imperialism, working class

Monday, February 07, 2011

Why did the Egyptian intifada become a revolution? posted by Richard Seymour

This title is not a rhetorical question, not one of those devices where I set up a problem to which I already know the answer. It's not the usual trickery, in other words. I literally am not in a position to know. But perhaps the best way to get to the answer is to phrase the question properly in the first place. Asa Winstanley has an interesting article on New Left Project on the contours of the Egyptian uprising, which he argues has already acquired the dimensions of a genuine social revolution. He writes:

Despite many obstacles, there are reasons for optimism. Every time events seem to be slowing down, and the pundits predict a loss of momentum, Egyptians prove them all wrong and the revolution escalates. Indeed, for so many people, their lives literally depend on it.

The revolt is showing many early signs of popular social revolution, reminiscent of the wave of factory occupations, strikes and mass-uprisings that took place in Latin America in the late 1990s and 2000s. Youth, women, children and the working classes are leading this revolution. New independent trade unions have sprung up and there have been multiple calls for a general strike.

Given the mysterious New Year’s Eve bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria, the extent to which the revolution has been consistently anti-sectarian is heartening. There have been widespread reports of Christian Egyptians protecting praying Muslims, frequent use of the cross-and-crescent symbol and even participation of Coptic religious leaders (despite the fact that the church hierarchy, like the Muslim clerics of al-Azhar, has long been co-opted by the regime). On Sunday there was a Coptic mass in Liberation Square, protected by Muslims, and joint Christian-Muslim prayers for the martyrs of the revolution.

The level of spontaneous self-organisation is striking and highly impressive. Charles Levinson of the Wall Street Journal describes a scene in Liberation Square:

“Hundreds of young men guarded the square’s perimeter. Some frisked new arrivals and checked identification… By Thursday afternoon, several dozen protesters were wearing badges made of masking tape that specified their role in their hastily assembled administration. Doctors with medical coats wore pieces of tape bearing their names and specialities.”

Democracy Now! senior producer (and Egyptian-American) Sharif Abdel Kouddous has been reporting from Cairo (his work has been essential, as has that of the Electronic Intifada’s Matthew Cassel). Abdel Kouddous described how protesters in Liberation Square began to clean up for themselves: “not only are they gathering the trash, but they are actually separating plastic, doing recycling”.

What can explain this level of self-organisation? Why have the people been able to withstand wave after wave of repression, beating back an enemy with immensely superior resources? It, say some, lacked leadership and organisation. Indeed, the factions which have made up Egypt's mainstream opposition were largely late to the revolution and have been racing to catch up. For all the scaremongering about the Muslim Brothers, they have rarely been interested in power, much less an Islamic state, and they have been on the most conservative, slow-moving end of the protests since they began. Mohammed El Baradei, for all that he was feted on Al Jazeera, has no clear base in this struggle. As for techno-fixes, fuggedaboutit. The Egyptian state shut down the internet and the mobile 'phone networks, and it still didn't stop the revolution. Malcolm Gladwell is right, in this sense. The social media which is championed by those revolving door apparatchiks moving between the State Department and silicon valley (eg) is not organisation itself, but merely a means to it and, as it turns out, a dispensable means. Yet the logistics of revolution have been handled with aplomb. People who were assumed by journalists to be passive, certainly never capable of such a monumental task as revolution, have proven to be the most advanced and adept social organisers on the planet. They have disproved, in mere weeks, the filthy aristocratic prejudice, still undergirding ruling class thought today, that ordinary working class people cannot govern themselves.

Of course, the premise that this revolution arose ex nihilo, with no leadership and no prior history of struggle, may precisely be one of the assumptions inhibiting a proper understanding. Some of the most militant areas in this revolution have been zones of intense class struggle in the last few years - Mahalla, Alexandria and Suez, for example. And out of these struggles, leadership has emerged sufficient to plan days of action well in advance, consult on and elaborate very detailed and intelligent tactics, and disseminate invaluable information. The truth is, this didn't come out of nowhere. Well before the Tunisian revolt, Hossam was predicting that something was about to go up in Egypt. But the question remains. Why didn't this intifada surge, break against the rocks of state repression, and fall back in disarray and defeat? What made the difference between, say, Iran and Egypt? Ordinarily, one would expect there to be a point where people struggling against a regime that is willing to murder people in their dozens, or hundreds, and injure thousands more, start to melt away. The core of committed activists who keep things running when everything falls to pieces go into hiding, or are captured, locked up and tortured. But no - this time people said: "we can't go home after all this, if we do leave the streets, they'll come after us individually, raid our homes in the middle of the night, and take us away to secret jails." And so the question, again, is - why?

Labels: dictatorship, egypt, middle east, revolution, socialism, US imperialism, working class

Sunday, February 06, 2011

The liberal defence of mass murder posted by Richard Seymour

Would the liberal commentariat be happy to sacrifice Egyptians for the sake of capitalism?

One of the guests, Professor David Cesarani, floated the idea of there being a Tiananmen Square-style massacre in Egypt as a way of quelling potential post-Mubarak anarchy. And there has been no outrage. No Twitterstorm, no blog-based apoplexy, no heated radio phone-ins. Perhaps talking about the massacre of Egyptians is normal these days.

Professor Cesarani was asked by Michael Portillo about the “moral dilemma” of how to deal with what comes after Mubarak. What if it’s worse than Mubarak? Should it be crushed? Professor Cesarani said that if one takes the “wholly pragmatic view”, then “the outcome of a Tiananmen Square-style crackdown is desirable and is predictable”. Because, he said, “if you allow this popular democratic movement to run on unchecked, you cannot predict what’s going to happen. But you can predict probably that after a short, sharp, massive clampdown at huge human cost, there will be a sullen stability.”

Portillo was startled. “Quite a lot of people would be quite shocked to hear what you said – that a Tiananmen-style outcome would be desirable.” Cesarani responded that “the West is no longer weeping that much over Tiananmen Square because we’re doing a lot of business with China. So, many business interests would say, quietly, that, perhaps, well the way in which the Chinese managed their transition was preferable.” Another panellist, Matthew Taylor, former adviser to Tony Blair and now chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts, later described Cesarani’s comments on Tiananmen Square as “incredibly brave” and said: “In a way, I can see his argument.”

Granted, this is Brendan O'Neill's version of events, so you may wish to take this with a pinch of salt.

Labels: cruise missile liberals, dictatorship, egypt, liberal imperialism, massacre, revolution, US imperialism

Statement of the Revolutionary Socialists Egypt posted by Richard Seymour

The iron heel of US imperialism is coming down hard on Egypt. The army command which America funds, trains and instructs is now mobilising rapidly to consolidate a dictatorship under the leadership of Omar Suleiman. US warships are making their way to Egypt. This is not, military commanders insist, to prepare for military intervention. I would assume they are being truthful. An open invasion is neither necessary nor useful for the regime. The warships would be for contingency, and to remind people who the boss is. The main way in which the counter-revolution is being organised is through the efforts by the military to create a fait accompli, a far more sophisticated operation than Mubarak's crude use of armed gangs on horseback.

Since no one wants the torturer Suleiman, the question now, as this statement from the Revolutionary Socialists Egypt argues, is whether the soldiers can be broken from their bosses.

Statement of the Revolutionary Socialists Egypt:

Glory to the martyrs! Victory to the revolution!

What is happening today is the largest popular revolution in the history of our country and of the entire Arab world. The sacrifice of our martyrs has built our revolution and we have broken through all the barriers of fear. We will not back down until the criminal 'leaders' and their criminal system is destroyed.

Mubarak's departure is the first step, not the last step of the revolution

The handover of power to a dictatorship under Omar Suleiman, Ahmed Shafiq and other cronies of Mubarak is the continuation of the same system. Omar Suleiman is a friend of Israel and America, spends most of his time between Washington and Tel Aviv and is a servant who is faithful to their interests. Ahmed Shafik is a close friend of Mubarak and his colleague in the tyranny, oppression and plunder imposed on the Egyptian people.

The country's wealth belongs to the people and must return to it

Over the past three decades this tyrannical regime corrupted the country's largest estates to a small handful of business leaders and foreign companies. 100 families own more than 90% of the country's wealth. They monopolize the wealth of the Egyptian people through policies of privatization, looting of power and the alliance with Capital. They have turned the majority of the Egyptian people to the poor, landless and unemployed.

Factories wrecked and sold dirt cheap must go back to the people

We want the nationalization of companies, land and property looted by this bunch. As long as our resources remain in their hands we will not be able to completely get rid of this system. Economic slavery is the other face of political tyranny. We will not be able to cope with unemployment and achieve a fair minimum wage for a decent living without restoring the wealth of the people from this gang.

We will not accept to be guard dogs of America and Israel

This system does not stand alone. Mubarak, as a dictator was a servant and client directly acting for the sake of the interests of America and Israel. Egypt acted as a colony of America, participated directly in the siege of the Palestinian people, made the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace freezones for warships and fighter jets that destroyed and killed the Iraqi people and sold gas to Israel, dirt cheap, while stifling the Egyptian people by soring prices. Revolution must restore Egypt's independence, dignity and leadership in the region.

The revolution is a popular revolution

This is not a revolution of the elite, political parties or religious groups. Egypt's youth, students, workers and the poor are the owners of this revolution. In recent days a lot of elites, parties and so-called symbols have begun trying to ride the wave of revolution and hijack it from their rightful owners. The only symbols are the martyrs of our revolution and our young people who have been steadfast in the field. We will not allow them to take control of our revolution and claim that they represent us. We will choose to represent ourselves and represent the martyrs who were killed and their blood paid the price for the salvation of the system.

A people's army is the army that protects the revolution

Everyone asks: "Is the army with the people or against them?". The army is not a single block. The interests of soldiers and junior officers are the same as the interests of the masses. But the senior officers are Mubarak’s men, chosen carefully to protect his regime of corruption, wealth and tyranny. It is an integral part of the system.

This army is no longer the people’s army. This army is not the one which defeated the Zionist enemy in October 73. This army is closely associated with America and Israel. Its role is to protect Israel, not the people. Yes we want to win the soldiers for the revolution. But we must not be fooled by slogans that ‘the army is on our side’. The army will either suppress the demonstrations directly, or restructure the police to play this role.

Form revolutionary councils urgently

This revolution has surpassed our greatest expectations. Nobody expected to see these numbers. Nobody expected that Egyptians would be this brave in the face of the police. Nobody can say that we did not force the dictator to retreat. Nobody can say that a transformation did not happen in Middan el Tahrir.

What we need right now is to push for the socio-economic demands as part of our demands, so that the person sitting in his home knows that we are fighting for their rights. We need to organize ourselves into popular committees which elects its higher councils democratically, and from below. These councils must form a higher council which includes delegates of all the tendencies. We must elect a higher council of people who represent us, and in whom we trust. We call for the formation of popular councils in Middan Tahrir, and in all the cities of Egypt.

Call to Egyptian workers to join the ranks of the revolution

The demonstrations and protests have played a key role in igniting and continuing our revolution. Now we need the workers. They can seal the fate of the regime. Not only by participating in the demonstrations, but by organising a general strike in all the vital industries and large corporations.

The regime can afford to wait out the sit-ins and demonstrations for days and weeks, but it cannot last beyond a few hours if workers use strikes as a weapon. Strike on the railways, on public transport, the airports and large industrial companies! Egyptian Workers! On behalf of the rebellious youth, and on behalf of the blood of our martyrs, join the ranks of the revolution, use your power and victory will be ours!

Glory to the martyrs!

Down with the system!

All power to the people!

Victory to the revolution!

www.e-socialists.net

Labels: dictatorship, egypt, middle east, revolution, socialism, torture, US imperialism

Saturday, February 05, 2011

Mubarak resigns from NDP posted by Richard Seymour

So, the NDP was, like Ben Ali's ruling party, the RCD, until recently an affiliate of the Socialist International. Uh huh. But now it's been expelled. More significantly, Mubarak and the leaders of the NDP have just stepped down. Why? Does this mean Mubarak is on the way out? Well:

Robert Springborg, professor of national security affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School, said the army was manipulating the situation by dragging out a resolution of the crisis.
He said the army's aim was to focus the anger of the uprising against Mubarak rather than the military.
It's political jujitsu on the part of the military to get the crowd worked up and focused on Mubarak and then he will be offered as a sacrifice in some way. And in the meantime the military is seen as the saviours of the nation.
The military will engineer a succession. The west – the US and EU – are working to that end.
We are working closely with the military … to ensure a continuation of a dominant role of the military in the society, the polity and the economy."

Update: just as soon as I'd posted this, it emerged that Arab television broadcasts did not confirm Mubarak's resignation as head of the NDP. The story may be disinformation.

Labels: dictatorship, egypt, eu, middle east, mubarak, revolution, US imperialism