Sunday 29 April 2012

On Lenin, Left Unity & Organisation

The following post is my thoughts alone and doesn't necessarily represent the position of the party or any other organisations I'm part of. Check out this piece I wrote on revolutionary organisations in Australia today for a disclaimer listing the organisations I am part of, as well as a bit of an explanation as to why I'm at where I'm at.

I'd also like to make a distinction in terminology I'm using, between sectism (the practice of socialists operating in tiny organisations based on narrow differentiation) and sectarianism (hostility, aggresive behaviour or unhealthy competitiveness between such tiny organisations). Also, IMHO = in my humble opinion, with which I preface this whole piece.


It has also been pointed out to me that there's a contradiction between stating what is to be done today is more important than history, then faffing on about the history of the Socialist Alliance. I might not have done the best job of attempting to write that history without taking sides on ten year old faction fights, but I still think it's pertinent to talk about it and perhaps think about the lessons learned given Pham's proposal for such a formation to be launched in the US.

This piece is written as a response to some of the ideas about socialist regroupment in America today raised in a debate hosted on LINKS. Ostensibly, this debate started with Pham Binh's proposals for steps towards joint socialist organisation, such as joint organising committees, if not a broad-based socialist party, in Occupy and Tasks of Socialists.

But the thing that actually triggered debate is his review of Tony Cliff on Lenin: Building the Party published shortly after. Binh puts it that this is "emblematic" of "exactly what’s wrong with us, the US socialist left" and, although I am inclined to agree, the timing of the publication of Cliff on Lenin, despite his explanations, seems calculated to trigger such a response.

The US International Socialist Organisation (ISO)'s Paul D'Amato responded in the Mangling of Tony Cliff, which promted some discussion of how these issues relate to left politics in Australia, which I'll respond to further down. However, I'd like to note that this response continued the tone of the debate – any discussion of how socialists should be organising today is predicated on having The Correct Interpretation of Lenin.

Paul Le Blanc, also of the US ISO, responded in Revolutionary Organisation and the 'Occupy moment'. Of particular interest to me here is some of the constructive engagement with Binh's points around left regroupment, specifically the vision of effective "united front" work being put forward:

"The key to left unity is to engage in the real struggles of today. For example, a number of us in Pittsburgh (from different groups and from no specific groups) are engaging in a united front effort to defend public transit, and some of us are engaged in related efforts to help the Occupy movement to be part of this and similar struggles. That is reflected here:
http://www.pittsburghersforpublictransit.org/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/184136405014024/240591199368544/
http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/video/6795512-riders-protest-planned-port...
http://www.livestream.com/occupypittsburgh/video?clipId=pla_481e856b-3f9...
Out of such experiences as these, a genuine left unity can be forged, which can advance mass struggles and mass socialist consciousness that are among the essential preconditions for the crystallization of a substantial revolutionary socialist party."

Le Blanc's most recent response, while advancing the discussion on interpretation of Lenin in much the same manner as the rest of the debate, actually put forward something very healthy in this statement: "Is the pre 1912 RSDLP model of hardened factions what we need"?  – which was followed up in the comments to argue that the kind of united front approach Le Blanc outlines above will be more useful to build future prospects for left unity and a real mass revolutionary party than a multi-tendency united party would not (an argument that I don't think I agree with, but which I commend for actually advancing the discussion). However, I found the response of one commented extremely interesting:

Thu, 04/19/2012 - 04:03 — Des Derwin (not verified) Refining further "I'm not sure Pham is trying to cram us into a "revolutionary party" rather than explore the ground between the movements, and united fronts within the movements, and the holy grail of the revolutionary party. "

Prior to this discussion, the only significant amount of Lenin that I'd read was State and Revolution, perhaps with some bits of What Is To Be Done?, so it's definitely been a helpful learning experience for me to observe the debate and learn a bit more of the ins and outs of the early Russian communist movement. But, while debates over what exactly happened historically or readings/interpretations of different texts are useful, to me more interesting is the component of discussion around "what is to be done" in 2012.

As Binh put it (while, I'd argue, falling into the same trap himself), debate around who is "right" is emblematic of what is wrong with many parts of the modern organised left – The aim of studying the past is to have an unassailably correct interpretation of the "truth" of how to organise as given by Lenin/Trotsky/whoever, then shout at everyone else until they agree and join your organisation. I'm going to write a future post of the dynamics of being right, as opposed to winning arguments, but in the interim I'll just say that I don't think this is of any use to anyone other than socialism's enemies. But the other aspect of this debate - coming up with concrete proposals around how socialists relate to Occupy, the prospects for united front work or other forms of left unity, etc have been far more healthy.

Personally, I think I'd argue for the launch of a broad left party, formation or network in the US of the line that Binh has proposed. The context in the US, with the Occupy movement putting class struggle back on the table, seems ready – and, indeed, to call out for the organised left to step up to the plate. But it's not guaranteed that such a formation is going to work, and it's definitely not going to be much "like" the RSDLP – asides from the vast material conditions on the ground, the contexts of 100+ years of splitting amongst "leninist" and "trotskyist" parties and organisations means that the main divides between left forces no longer line up with the fundamental questions like bourgeois democracy as they once did.

But Binh's (and others') criticism that those parties and organisations haven't succeded or taken as good advantage of the opportunities that the "Occupy moment" presents as they could have is well-founded. Nor is the outright criticism of such a formation, or D'Amato's comment that "There are no genuine revolutionary parties; indeed, there are no examples yet of successful new “broad-based” left parties”, well-founded. The experience of Die Linke shows that the global context today doesn't invalidate a broad left electoral approach and shows that the chaotic infighting within such a formation envisaged in the ISO's responses isn't guaranteed.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the experience of the Socialist Alliance in Australia, which initially formed as a similar proposal to what Binh is proposing. I'll start this section with another disclaimer - that I didn't join the Alliance until 2008, so much of this history I didn't witness firsthand.

As comments on "Mangling of Tony Cliff" showed, the Alliance was initially successful in drawing together most of Australia's socialist groups into a joint electoral front, with the following organisations endorsing it: "the Democratic Socialist Party, the International Socialist Organisation, the Freedom Socialist Party, Workers Power, Workers Liberty, the Workers League, the Worker Communist Party of Iraq, Socialist Democracy and Socialist Alternative." - pretty much all of the Australian socialist left forces I can think of today, bar one.

However, the failure of the initial excitement of such unity to translate into immediate electoral success was a setback, and fed into the reservations about the future direction of the Alliance from some members or organisations. Socialist Alternative were the first to withdraw their support for the formation; although the above debate put several reasons on the table for this (I'll get to these below), the context of an expected Labor electoral victory in 2001 and a new sustained anti-capitalist mass movement to relate to both never materialised. S11 in Melbourne gave way to 9/11 and the defeat of the anti-Iraq war movement. This question is perhaps worth thinking about regarding Binh's proposals and the current American context – will the "Occupy moment" be sustained? This question needs to be asked and thought about, even if no definitive answer is possible, for the socialist left to begin considering how it should relate to it or reorganise around it. 
  
In the letter from the Australian ISO national executive stating their decision to withdraw from the Alliance, they cite these factors as the reason (as well as "sectarianism" towards disillusioned segments of Labor). There's another point which gets brought up in the ISO executive's letter, as well as in the early days of the Alliance and by fellow Sydneysider James Supple in commenting on my earlier piece on this topic – the actions of the late Democratic Socialist Party in eventually dissolving into the Alliance. The fact that socialists previously not part of organisations who joined the Alliance were themselves calling for this to happen, a majority of the Alliance's members, not just the DSP, is apparently not worth remembering.

But despite these concerns about the timing and significance, the Alliance was (and is) still a worthwhile exercise, IMHO; it succeeded in drawing  a significant number of previously non-aligned socialists into organised political activism. The DSP's eventual dissolution into the Alliance (at the only DSP congress which I attended) was a small step towards putting aside "leninist" sectism to work in a slightly broader & more open formation – and although there is ongoing debate about how to organise, ro teach marxism in a formation without such a tight line, etc, the balance sheet 10 years later is, I feel, in the positive. The experience of the Alliance has been a step forward, even though it didn't succeed as a multi-tendency party as Binh proposed - the ISO's disaffiliation was the final nail in the coffin of this vision of dissolving old party boundaries. But instead, something else has come out of it, which I think is the healthiest of the far left "sects" today. (Dave Riley has elaborated good points as to why; this can also be seen in the electoral socialist unity campaings of 2011/12 Socialist Alliance has been involved in, such as the broad ticket for the 2011 state elections, the Community Voice campaign in the council elections, and the Community Party of Australia (CPA's) strong campaign in the SA state elections.)

The response of a Socialist Alternative member in the comments on D'Amato's article were less enthusiastic and more dismissive of the Alliance. I'll respond to some of these points which I feel are significant to the debate about how we move forward in Australia today.

Wed, 02/29/2012 - 20:08 — Lewis T 
"The simple fact is that the 'broad party' model has failed everywhere it has been tried....
It was formed on the initiative of the DSP, then the biggest group on the far-left, a Stalinist group which supports the Vietnamese and Cuban governments."

- This dismissive comment reflects what I think Binh was trying to get across – sectism results in the ossification of socialist politics around points of differentiation, rather than building dynamic unity over what is to be done here today. We (Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative) share a critique of Stalinism as running counter to the principles of socialism, although members disagree on exactly how Stalinism developed and assumed power. Yet that label still gets thrown around as the reason we couldn't possibly work together here in Australia today in challenging the rule of capital. For the record I'm going to make a post regarding taking a position Vietnam, of which the Socialist Alliance has none AFAIK.

"The reality almost everywhere is that revolutionary Marxists are in a small minority. This makes it easy for us to get frustrated and look for shortcuts like the broad party model. But the model has been a failure everywhere, so to insist on it as the new way forward is sheer dogmatism. It requires patience, hard work and dedication in the slow periods, combined with an ability to throw oneself into action and relate to mass movements and radicalisations when they do happen, to rebuild revolutionary Marxism."

Despite the lip service paid to the idea that "We are well aware that recruiting a couple of people here and there isn't a timeless strategy that we will pursue until the revolution", Lewis isn't willing to concede that there could be any other strategy than sectism in this moment; any attempt to open up a space to consider new ways or initiatives to organise is a "shortcut". 

"All of the broad parties are well to the right of the social-democratic movement that Lenin considered himself a part of. Furthermore, after Stalinism has held back the left for over 50 years, why would we want to unite with it? We should be trying to consign them to the dustbin of history where they belong."

This is exactly the mindset which breeds under conditions of sectism. You can recruit from those not yet involved in marxist politics and give them the correct line on every issue; those who disagree with you on those points are enemies to be defeated and eliminated. The idea that you could convince other committed revolutionaries to change their positions on anything is anathema. The idea that you yourself could have the wrong ideas about anything is anathema. The point isn't making the correct tactical judgements or convincing broader layers of people but Being Right (as I've said, I'm going to post further on this). This mindset helps to ensure we will make the kind of mistakes Binh pointed out that the US socialist left made in relating to #Occupy, or perhaps how we in Australia related to different opportunities such as the climate movement in its peak (where the involvement of a group like Socialist Alternative or other socialists who abstained from it might have meant the movement didn't fall in behind Labor's emission trading scheme that Abbott is calling a tax).

I'm not going to say that Socialist Alternative hasn't gotten some things right and build up a solid amount of cadre – they have. Perhaps Lewis is even right are even right that sectism is the only choice, and broader formations are just a "shortcut". But thinking back on Road Maps, Dead Ends, and the Search for Fresh Ground: How Can We Build the Socialist Movement in the 21st Century?, Dan Dimaggio's article on finding new forms of left organisation which I found an intensely uplifting breath of fresh thinking about socialist organisation (and written before the #Occupy moment!):

"Even if it is the case that “micro-sects” are all that can be built now, then let them be less pretentious, less sectarian, more open to working with one another, and more aware of their own inherent weaknesses (not to demoralize them but rather to help better understand the role they might play). Let them critically evaluate all their methods, search out more effective forms, and really ask if they are preparing the way toward something better in the future."

This is something I feel is an intensely important component of the activism and thinking (praxis, dare I say it) of all of us in the sects of today. But What, concretely, am I proposing Is To Be Done?

Right now Australian socialists of the leading organisations (SA, SAlt, Solidarity, SP) do work together in the vision of Le Blanc's "united front" or DiMaggio's "local groups" – on a whole bunch of issues and campaigns like equal marriage rights, refugee rights, Palestine solidarity, in various unions – I'm finishing this piece in the 2012 Climate Action Summit (CAS), where two socialist organisations and a whole variety of anti-capitalist activists beyond them are represented. But like Des Derwin, I think we need to explore a space beyond this level of unity (which at times is anything but united, as socialists who have been involved in the above listed campaign groups can attest!) while less than a single multi-tendency party of socialists. The decisions like where resources are priorities in which campaigns, activist calendars broader than those drawn up within campaigns, decisions regarding clashing events are all being made within each sect right now, and the only form of dialogue between them is through more or less hostile discussions when we see each other in movement groups (the clash between Marxism 2012 and the Eastern Convergence in Darwin being a prime example of this). We need to take some further steps now to break out of "sectism" and find some organisational forms or actions that we can take towards making us, our involvement in broader campaigns and united fronts, and convincing broader layers of the vision of a socialist Australia, more effective.

On this step, seeing a published form of the principles document, Towards a Socialist Australia, with beautiful design and layout, getting around as a pamphlet at the CAS and other activist events in recent days (and selling like hotcakes!) is heartening. Getting this document and  launching into the "upcoming consultative discussions" will hopefully prove a step forward in developing this kind of common vision for what a socialist Australia could look like more broadly. I've got some feedback of my own (editorial, but also some ideas for how we could more strongly sketch out the positive vision of democratic socialism) which I might post at a later date. But rather than do so in this already lengthy post, I'd like to raise that through the forums listed above. Let's get the conversation started!  

Socialist Alternative's Marxism 2013 could also be another prospect for developing such a joint vision? Sue Bolton's review of the 2012 conference outlines the potential for expanded left discussion and including climate relate issues. Many of the internationl speakers have come from a variety of tendencies with diverse views on Marxism; even at least one workshop strand or session with Australian speakers as a multi-tendency/open discussion on different ways Marxists organise would be a step forward for the left more broadly.

Dimaggio advances some concrete ideas which I'm not so confident of, esp in the Australian context -  joint publications, for example. Wollongong's Broad Left exists in this kind of way, as an open network publishing circle reincarnated from a former paper publication (but such projects are often prone to material/resource/time issues). Perhaps it's worth pointing out that LINKS has sofar hosted this debate, and it is set up as a project in this vein of socialist renewal; there is an inevitable need of any publication or resource to be actively supported and organised if it is going to actually interact with and play a role in real world politics, or even maintain itself.

Dimaggio also proposed a roster of talented speakers on joint tours organised by socialist groups – this kinda does happen between groups in the current form (Malalai Joya's recent tour of Australia was organised in this way, with Socialist Alternative booking her for Marxism 2012 and other engagements being arranged due to her presence) – but such things exist within the boundaries of the sects, sometimes with competing organisations "poaching" each other's speakers for tours, otherwise "boycotts" of relating to speakers if they are speaking for a group you are hostile to, otherwise exlusive tours just in the places it benefits whichever group that "gets" the speaker  – democratic broad left forums or organisations of one sort or another could actually plan and discuss such proposals democratically, weighing up benefits of which left speakers are being toured, etc, as with the benefits of intervention into movements, etc.

The successful examples of Broad Left (the lack of posts for 6 months notwithstanding) & Community Voice in Wollongong and Left Unity in Adelaide (see here and here for some more info on the Adelaide experience, with which I'm not as familiar) show us what is possible when the left actually does attempt to move beyond sectism. I think that it requires national replication, or attempts towards it that may take remarkably different forms, in as many cities as possible. Multi-tendency forums, networks or councils, short of a party or even an organisation which exists in its own right, but networks or space to have discussions re the questions I outlined above about movement work, strategic aims, electoral candidates, etc in a democratic forum rather than simply in our own sects is, I think, entirely achievable even in today's context. There are formations which do serve this role already (such as Sydney's Politics in the Pub) but I think we need to ensure these are not just discussion or social circles, but formations actually focussed on some form of activism (or even just left activist networking, not just talkfesting). And ultimately, such projects could open the way towards some sort of national network of left forces.

The question of unity on the basis of ideas is an important first step, and one which underpins almost all of the current forms of organisation we have – however, the American debate amongst is playing between people who would seem to largely agree on how socialists should relate to democrats, occupy, unions, etc but not to agree on what structures they should agree on those things in! Obviously, agreement around ideas is important, but the more important thing is unity in action. The kind of "united front" work that Le Blanc suggested we concentrate on (ie business as usual) to me is an attempt to avoid the minefield that building unity based on ideas between the competing socialist groups right now could be; but ultimately, it falls short of setting up a constructive framework for building unity through joint action. Ultimately, this means that not only will business will continue as usual, but when the shining moment comes when there is a crisis that shifts mass consciousness so much that there is a big enough layer of people convinced of revolutionary ideas around that we actually could start to build the revolutionary party that will lead the fight to overthrow capitalism, as the IST comrades have suggested will be the case, the party won't be ready for them, and the socialists who've lived through this period of history will be found wanting.

Monday 23 April 2012

Arab Spring Meeting Notes #3 - from Caracas to Cairo

This is the latest in my series of posts of notes from talks I have given at meetings here in Australia since my return from the middle east last year. This one was written immediately after I returned in December 2011 to a meeting of the Illawarra branch of the Socialist Alliance. There are some mistakes &or gaping holes in this one, which I've made it my mission to try and fill so that all of these posts can be developed some form of comprehensive article on the Arab Spring. So telling me I'm wrong, and especially pointing out how, would be much appreciated - as well as constructive criticism of any other sort. Feel free to plagarise all of these talks as much as you want, although read the aforementioned point about getting things wrong first! :p

The situation: A global economic crisis leading to spiralling prices of food and fuel, neoliberal reforms that pulled the support network out from underneath the people and pushed more and more below the poverty line – all at the behest of western institutions like the IMF and World Bank. A  pro-western government responsible for torture, ill-treatment, extrajudicial killings, political disappearances and political corruption, happy to follow these mandates to the letter. The result: a mass uprising, brutally repressed by the regime with hundreds of deaths. This scenario could be used to describe the regimes of the Arab world and the overthrows of 2011, but it's equally describing the situation in Venezuela in 1989, when the Carazaco uprising took place, the regime suspended constitutional order, and anywhere between 500 and 2000 demonstrators were killed. Three years later, Lieutennant Colonel Hugo Chavez led an abortive coup attempt, and the following year President Perez was impeached by the Supreme Court. Why am I raising this in a talk on the Arab Spring? In many ways the example is a useful one to understand the process going on in Egypt, Tunisia & the broader middle-east right now. But I'll come to that later.

Background

When Mohammed Bouazizi doused himself with petrol in front of a police station on December 17, 2010, it was the final straw for many of those suffering under oppressive police states across the region. Decades of neoliberal economic reforms and spiralling oil prices since 2001 had been making life harder and harder for the vast majority living in the Arab world. This situation, this pressure, saw a variety of expressions over the first decade of this century. At first, this took forms which were relatively acceptable to the regimes – especially in Egypt, where solidarity mobilisations with the second Palestinian intifada in 2000-2001 and against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 brought street politics back to the region where it for the main part had been forced underground. These protests were the first for a new layer of young people who'd spent their whole lives living under the dictatorship.

However, when these young Egyptians and veteran leftists started campaigning for democratic reforms in 2004, forming the Egyptian movement for change (or "kefaya", enough), they began to face major harrasment from the regime. This came to a head in 2005, with the Mubarak regime organising a referendum approving constitutional changes allowing for multi-party elections while still ensuring the process was entirely sewn up by his National Democratic Party (NDP). Despite a strong grassroots campaign, Kefaya, as part of the National Front for Change coalition, only won 12 seats, with the NDP holding a super-majority of 388 seats and the Muslim Brotherhood winning 88. This reflected an important dynamic of this decade, which evolved out of imperialist interventions in the late 20th century; perhaps the majority of the population in most of the region, or at least a large section, saw political Islam, in one form or another, as the natural opposition to the pro-capitalist pro-Western pro-war on Terror regimes. Like the Venezuela comparison, we'll come back to this point; however, for now it's worth noting that, of all the region's countries, this support for political islam movements was perhaps weakest in Tunisia.

After this, and with the worsening of unemployment, poverty & other social conditions, a large layer of Arab youth & workers became increasingly radicalised. This came to a head in 2008, with radical workers in the key textile manufacturing city of Mahalla in Egypt leading a call for a general strike which for the first time articulated the demand for the revolutionary overthrow of the regime, as opposed to reforms or parliamentary change, and pitted the people against the state's apparatus of repression. Asides from poor pay and the corruption of the regime, basic economic issues – especially the major food shortage – were factors in this uprising; the little reportage it got in the Western media oversimplified this episode into a "bread riot", just one of many around the world occuring. In Tunisia, too, there were strikes and demonstrations by workers and the unemployed  in the Gafsa mining region, which were likewise heavily repressed. These struggles gave birth to the revolutionary social movements which found their expression in what's been called the "Arab spring" – for example, Egypt's leading April 6 Youth Movement takes their name from the date of the 2008 Mahalla general strike. And they were also an important test of strength for the revolutionary workers movement, amongst which most of the underground leftists could be found.

So when Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself on December 17, there was a huge layer of young Tunisians with whom this act resonated – who had all personally experienced the repression, corruption and harrasment of the regime's police officers, who had personally felt the desperation of being young, unemployed and with little hope for changing their situation, and who had seen how revolutionary action could hurt the regime. The final factor was the technological revolution which had seen cheap broadband internet and internet-ready mobile phones spread through the population in the course of little more than a year. The limited space for digital freedoms was taken up by citizen-journalist bloggers such as Lina Ben Mhenni, Slim Amamou and Azyz Amami. When protests broke out in Bouazizi's city of Sidi Bouzid (not Sidi Bou Said!), young people began posting videos of the spontaneous protests and the following repression on Facebook, and these three bloggers were crucial components, alongside the revolutionary workers, in growing this episode from just another chapter of repression to the point of nadir, the lowest point of the regime's excessed – the final straw.

Overthrowing the Dictators

So with the combination of these different factors, the Sidi Bouzid uprising spread like wildfire in a way the 2008 Gafsa protests had not been able to. And they brought a critical mass of people to the streets, shutting down the country until elements of the regime – including key military leaders – decided to cut their losses and temporarily side with the movement. This triggered Ben Ali's sudden departure – as documented by an air traffic controller at Tunis airport, part of the internet freedom movement, who tracked Ben Ali's plane as it attempted to land in France, the neo-colonial power with the biggest stakes in Tunisia's economy, before he was rejected and eventually fled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he remains – hopefully to live out his days in the city as Idi Amin did!

This victory in Tunisia inspired many young Egyptians, who turned out in their thousands for the January 25 protest against police violence on national "police day". In the words of Basem Osman, a young member of the Socialist Party who I interviewed in Egypt: "Before January 25 I didn't think it would work – just like every other time, we would go, maybe 4-500 people, and the police will arrest a lot of us. But on this day, all of us were surprised – I thought I would go to Tahrir Square and just see my friends, but there were 3000 people in the square. It was the first time I'd seen a demonstration of that size! We didn't think it would continue, but at 1am the police attacked the demonstration, injured and arrested many of us, and the rest of us escaped. But when we fled, we didn't all go to our homes – most of us went to the poor neighbourhoods in Cairo like Abdeen, Shubra – very poor neighbourhoods – and when the police attacked again, many of my friends hid in the houses of ordinary people and told them about the demonstrations. I think this was as important as Facebook or Twitter in building the revolution. "

"I think that the Tunisian Revolution inspired people everywhere, gave people hope, and after that they were ready to demonstrate. Even my family, who normally didn't know anything about politics in Egypt, were asking me, "Are you going to the demonstrations on the 25th of January? We want to go."

The following days saw the Egyptian police respond with far greater savagery than their Tunisian counterparts did, and likewise, protests grew increasingly radical. Thus, on January 28, the first Friday of Anger, hundreds of thousands of protesters stormed and sacked the NDP headquarters. In Basim's words: "I don't believe in armed revolution, but the NDP headquarters is a huge building, which is very conspicuous; I see it every day when I go to work and so do many people, it's very central, and when we see it we feel so bad – it's a symbol of the regime. So when we saw it on 28 January, everyone just wanted to burn it."

I won't speak about the ins and outs of the following 18 days in Egypt; however, it's worth noting that the final blow to Mubarak's rule was not the inability or unwillingness of the military to carry out repression as the police were for fear of triggering a civil war, but the uprising of workers starting with the call for a general strike on February 6.

However, in both Tunisia and Egypt, the overthrow of the dictators themselves as well as their personal cronies who had personally profited from draining the nation's coffers – such as the Trabelsi family in Tunisia, who have fled the country one by one – has not translated into an end to neoliberal policies or breaking free of the imperialist enclosure. The regional political revolution against corrupt regimes has not yet been succesfully in fully removing them. Thus, we can compare the situation to the 1989 Carazaco uprising; the beginning of the ascendancy (potentially, anyway) of a revolutionary mass movement. As Hossam el-Hamalawy, blogger & member of the Revolutionary Socialists put it: "The Egyptian revolution will not be settled in 18 days or months. It’ll take “years” for the dust to settle, may be four or five, I don’t know. There will be waves, ebbs and flows, battles to be won and others lost."

The question, thus, is will these revolutions win their demands? That's the question I was asking myself when I went to Egypt in September; that's what I will now try to answer.

The Revolutionary Movements
Egypt


Arriving in Egypt the day before the September 9 protests that brought tens of thousands to Midan Tahrir, marching to the Ministry of Interior and the Supreme Court, and then thousands storming the Israeli embassy, certainly threw me in at the deep end! But arriving in Cairo at almost any point would have been like that.

After February 11, Friday protests -- in Cairo's Tahrir Square and nationwide -- continued more or less every week, with protesters reclaiming it for major sit-ins during July in the hundreds and then again in November in the thousands. These protests have also taken on the regime in more radical ways as the year has progressed; first over a guaranteed transition to civilian rule, then demanding the end to political repression, especially military trials for protesters, then after the October 9 massacre of dozens of Coptic Christians, openly calling forGeneral Tantawi, the head of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (the real power behind the throne; personally members control around 25% of the economy – us aid), to step down. #noscaf and #fuckscaf are the Twitter tags of this movement!

But even outside of what could be called the "democracy" movement of bloggers and activists, there has been mass democratic struggle in almost all layers of society, and the Tahrir protests are really only the tip of the iceberg. Most days when I walk around the city or meet various people there are little sit-ins or protests or speakouts happening outside ministries or public buildings. More than once I was simply spending time in my room and saw protesters marching past from my balcony that I had heard nothing about!

New workers' movement


The lion's share of these protests are by parts of the new workers' movement, which, as I outlined, were growing for several years before 2011. The official trade unions and syndicates, more than 4000 in total, were sewn up by the NDP, but in the last few years underground independent unions have been forming out of wildcat struggles within Egypt's major factories and businesses. Now there's more than 150 independent unions, and more are being established all the time; some of these unions have won official recognition, and are leading struggles – both for economic demands like better pay and conditions, but also for structural reforms, to get rid of Mubarak's cronies and for more worker control of workplaces.

For example, one protest march I saw was by secondary school teachers, who are striking for better pay, demanding the removal of the minister and more funding for public education – a major issue, as all Egyptian families have to shell out for either private schooling or extra tuition due to the inadequacy of the state schools. These protests broke out into a close to general strike in October, just one example of the many sectors of the economy where strikes & labor activity have occured. The Egyptian Socialist Party and other revolutionary socialists have prioritised working in this area, which is one of the reasons why it's been growing so successfully.

Cronies

The key figureheads of the old regime are imprisoned or on trial in absentia, but in pretty much every big business, ministry or government department and public service – Mubarak-era cronies are still in power, and the networks of corruption still exist. The repression of protest and activism may have eased up since February 11, but corruption – such as the bribes to get things done in the system – have worsened. And in some ways, such as the military trials – which have imprisoned over 12,000 activists, and sentenced 8000, as well as subjecting all female protesters to "virginity tests" – are worse than anything carried out under Mubarak.

On this basis, it's clear to most Egyptians that the revolution hasn't changed much yet, but the revolutionary movement still seems to have the support of most people on the street. The trade union movement is a big part of this – revolutionaries aren't just talking about the nebulous structure of the whole political class, or rights and class in an abstract way, but also conducting campaigns against specific individual figures at all levels of power, who ordinary people know are corrupt and are stooges of the rich and the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (which, thanks to years of billion-dollar blank cheques from the US, owns of huge swathes of industry).

The Elections

The most recent occupation of Tahrir has largely petered out in recent days, especially given that the expected suspension of November 28's elections never materialised. Mostafa Ali, of Egypt's Revolutionary Socialists, has said:
"THE political sentiment in Tahrir is ahead of the country. You can think of it as the revolutionary vanguard in society among students and workers and youth--but it is much larger than in January. Political consciousness has developed tremendously.
These are people who understand that the SCAF is the continuation of the Mubarak regime. They are beginning to understand the connection between political and economic issues. They are beginning to grapple with the role of police in society. And they are the ones who understand that the ruling class played a trick on them by using Mubarak as a scapegoat in order to save the rest of the political system.
So you have a minority in society--symbolized by Tahrir--which has advanced politically and in terms of its consciousness. And it's ahead of the rest of the country in that sense. Back in January, a majority of people in the country wanted Mubarak to go, so they supported Tahrir. At this moment, that isn't the case regarding the SCAF.
The revolutionary vanguard is much, much larger. Its willingness to fight is unbelievable--it fought five days against the police. But the majority of the workers and poor people have not yet concluded that the SCAF must immediately return to its barracks. Or they don't think we have the power yet to push the SCAF to return the barracks."

While the RS are in some ways taking an ultra-left line on the struggle, this assessment is spot-on.

Most Egyptians are willing to put their faith in Ikhwan, in the parliament, and in SCAF's administration of the transition; they know that, if these is outright manipulation or a backwards step by the government, they have the power to get rid of them. But this is a dangerous situation, as the military regime has signalled its intent to enshrine its power under the new parliament & president, ensuring that its budget and authority will not be under civilian mandate or scrutiny. The coming period is a test for the revolutionary movement, and calls for a display of leadership to take this fight to the new parliament and SCAF and expose them as stooges of imperialism with no desire to break from the neoliberal consensus.

Revolutionary left

Meeting with comrades of the Egyptian Socialist Party (a socialist unity project which seems like the closest thing here to Germany's Die Linke or Australia's Socialist Alliance) was really illuminating, especially for putting the particular struggles in context and finding out more about what's been going on with the independent trade union movement.

Key leaders of the democracy movement are also affiliated to one or another of the socialist parties which have formed post-February 11; the Revolutionary Socialists have been joined by several of the leading blogger/democracy activists, while the Egyptian Socialist Party, for example, has joined by many of the leaders of the Kefaya movement.

Another aspect has been pro-poor work on a more direct level; revolutionary youth have been going into poorer communities, especially the informal slum settlements on the edge of Cairo, and helping to establish committees and networks simply to fight for access to basic infrastructure, jobs, food, etc. This is very exciting; there's a big layer of revolutionary "Tahrir" youth who are joining the organised left now that it's out from underground and openly propagandising.

While I was meeting with a comrade at the downtown Cairo office of the Egyptian Socialist Party, there was a meeting of around 20 young members, some with pre-January experience in politics but most without, debating the best ways to take the revolution forward. It was certainly a world away from some of the sleepy education meetings I've been part of in Australia! Many of the "Tahrir" youth can tend towards an ultraleft emphasis on protest, occupation and confronting the state – to what extent to embrace this tendency instead of emphasising the many kinds of party-building and activism needed to grow the movement has been something of a debate among the left here.

The revolutionary left in Egypt is well aware of the need to keep this struggle growing; to strengthen the parties and forces of the left so they can lead the struggle is everyone's primary task – while at the same time doing as much as possible to work towards unity, such as opening joint party offices in smaller cities where the left was unable to organise during the underground Mubarak years. However, over the elections, there have been some significant splits; the ESP and some other revolutionary groups, including a split of radical youth from the Muslim Brotherhood, still contested the elections, while the RS and some of the other Tahrir protesters called for a boycott, which basically failed.

Tunisia

Travelling to Tunisia was a bit of a shock after the turbulent revolutionary spirit of Cairo. When I first arrived, I was especially shocked by the fact that Avenue Habib Bourguiba and the Kasbah square (the two sites of major protest in the capital Tunis) are under occupation by the police, with razor wire set up outside the prime minister's office, the Ministry of Interior, the French embassy and pretty much anywhere that people will specifically protest against. The army is on the streets too; I've got no idea if they still have a pro-revolutionary image here, despite its US funding, but it is much smaller than the police forces. Either way, the streets are definitely under wraps at present, and mass struggle has been much more successfully contained.

Mass protests and strikes definitely slowed down in Tunisia, at least in the major urban centres of the coast, over the course of the constituent assembly elections, which took place on October 23. The assembly brought the islamist Ennahda (rennaisance) to power, although only with 37% of the vote. This timetable is designed, as far as I can tell, to tread the line between reining in the revolutionary energy of Tunisia's youth and winning enough legitimacy among the majority of the population to avoid a "second revolution" protest wave breaking out. However, Tunisia's revolutionary movement has seen a resurgence post-elections, with a wave of labor activism including strikes & an unemployed movement occupying for more jobs for local communities starting in the final days of October, as well as mass demonstrations in Tunis outside the new parliament.

But the Tunisian revolutionary struggle wasn't ended, despite the election sucking up the energy of a good number of democracy activists and the organised left. Like in Egypt, there are struggles within every element of society to get rid of corrupt figures from the old regime. For example, on my second day in Tunis I saw two protests: one, a group of around 650 graduate secondary teachers staging a sit-in at the Ministry of Education to demand the government create jobs for them, I saw on my way walking to another demanding the release of a police officer whistleblower who revealed that two recently appointed figures were corrupt and were responsible for killing protesters.

Tunisian left

One factor that made a difference in Tunisia's revolution beginning first was the difference in unionism; unlike in Egypt, where the state unions and syndicates were quite tightly controlled, leftists were able to hide under the umbrella of the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT, Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail) at the local branch level under Ben Ali dictatorship, although the top leadership was bought off by the regime. The UGTT was one of the key bodies, along with the blogger-journalist-activists, in spreading the uprising from the rural town of Sidi Bouzid, to the bigger cities along the coast, due to the slightly greater leeway for activity at the local branch level.

There have been some initiatives to set up independent trade unions, including by the police, which have been quashed by the regime; I'm yet to hear of any purging of the UGTT of Ben Ali collaborators, but I really don't know what the state of play is there or whether the UGTT remains a functional body actually leading the workers' movement. I know that a conference is taking place in December for revolutionary unionists to discuss how to help grow the movement, so stay posted on that one.

One exception worth mentioning is the national union of students; it had some leeway to struggle under the first post-colonial dictator Bourguiba, but was totally infiltrated by Ben Ali and became totally useless. Since January 14 it's been reclaimed and is leading struggles on campuses, over basic things like money for textbooks or students unfairly dismissed by the corrupt administrations still in place at most universities.

Due to the closeness of the relationship with France, many exiled left organisations organised among the diaspora in France for the last 10 or 20 years and have now returned; some of the more radical of the centre-left formations, which look likely to do well in the elections, such as Ettakatol (Democratic Forum for Labour and Freedoms), are in this category. Revolutionary groups have returned since Ben Ali's downfall. The Left Worker's League (LGO), the main Trotskyist group, seems to fall into this category; most of the democracy activists and young people I've spoken to here don't even know who they are, and I haven't been able to get in touch with them or meet them yet.

Communist Workers' Party of Tunisia

I did manage, however, to meet with a member of the central committee of the Communist Workers' Party of Tunisia (PCOT), which played an essential role in the uprising against Ben Ali (largely through their involvement in the UGTT) and who seem to be the biggest and best force on the left here. Despite their affiliation to the Hoxhaist (Albanian Maoist) international tendency, they have the sharpest line on the ongoing revolution and how to keep advancing the struggle of anybody that I've spoken to here. It is definitely the only big-name party in Tunisia that didn't switch to safe rhetoric due to the approaching election, and it is still talking about revolution!

The biggest weakness that I'd identify of the PCOT is that it isn't as well respected among democracy activists, or as big a part of that movement as, for example, the revolutionary socialists in Egypt are. Indeed, many of the leading blogger-journalist-activists here, such as Slim Amamou (who was named the minister of youth within the second post-January 14 government, although he recently resigned that post) and Azyz Amami, are leaders of the Tunisian Pirate Party, which seems to be taking on the role of groups like April 6 or the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth in Egypt. And still more are standing for election as independant candidates.

The PCOT is a very old party, which struggled underground for a long time, which means it is well positioned to organise for the elections – this, I think, may have deterred people who are rightly cynical of the electoral process. However, revolutionary young people are definitely looking to the organised left, and to the PCOT especially (the local "goth" subculture in Tunis, for example, is full of PCOT militants!). The PCOT's main office in Tunis was absolutely bustling with young people doing various things for the election campaign.

And post-election campaign, PCOT has played a massive role in leading the resurgence of revolutionary struggle; their activists were central to organising Tunisia's #occupy protests on 11th November, as well as the ongoing Bardo sit-in outside the parliament building where the new Constituent Assembly, demanding that the new constitution be put to a referendum, the prosecution of police officers responsible for killings during the uprising against Ben Ali, suspending international debt repayments incurred by Ben Ali's regime, and community democracy reforms very similar to Community Voice's platform! Live broadcast of assembly sessions, etc.



So – will these struggles win? I've tried to paint as accurate a picture I can of these movements, their strengths and weaknesses, and their sway in the population as a whole. The struggle may take years, and it may never bring revolutionary parliaments or governments like Chavez. Each revolutionary process has to confront and break down the power of the state in its own way. But I am optimistic and confident that yes, these movements will win.

Friday 20 April 2012

Arab Spring Meeting Notes #2 - Learning from the Arab Spring

This is the second post of notes from talks that I have given on the Arab Spring. This one includes both Tunisia and Egypt, looking at the broader class dynamics at play a little bit, and some initial ideas on where to for the revolutionary movements. Discussion, constructive criticism and correction of any errors is welcomed.

Bringing the Global Revolt to Australia - Learning from the Arab Spring

I'm Patrick Harrison, I'm an activist with Resistance & the Socialist Alliance. Last year I travelled to Egypt, Tunisia & Palestine, in part to try and meet with revolutionary activists in those countries and to document the unfolding revolutionary processes, as well as to correspond for Green Left Weekly.

Another GLW journalist who writes on the region, Tony Iltis, said in a recent Socialist Alliance forum that the primary responsibility of activists in the West is to understand the Arab Spring in order to learn from it, then secondarily to show solidarity with it. Maybe we don't have unelected dictators committing major atrocities against their people here in Australia, yet the chapter in the MENA region's history being called the Arab Spring shows a lot about the functioning of the global political & economic systems – and what it takes to change them.

Background

Western politicians and the media love to talk about the Arab Spring as though it was this thing that came from nowhere and nobody could have predicted it. Yet when Mohammed Bouazizi doused himself with petrol in front of a police station on December 17, 2010, it was the final straw for many of those suffering under oppressive police states across the region. Decades of neoliberal economic reforms and spiralling oil prices since 2001 had been making life harder and harder for the vast majority living in the Arab world. This situation, this pressure, saw a variety of expressions over the first decade of this century. There were officially sanctioned demonstrations in 2000-1 in solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada, which brought street politics back to the region where it for the main part had been forced underground throughout the 90s. These protests were the first for a new layer of young people who'd spent their whole lives living under the dictatorship.

However, when these young Egyptians and veteran leftists started campaigning for democratic reforms in 2004, forming the Egyptian movement for change (or "Kefaya", enough), they began to face major harrasment from the regime. This came to a head in 2005, with the Mubarak regime organising a referendum approving constitutional changes allowing for multi-party elections while still ensuring the process was entirely sewn up by his National Democratic Party (NDP). Despite a strong grassroots campaign, Kefaya, as part of the National Front for Change coalition, only won 12 seats, with the NDP holding a super-majority of 388 seats and the Muslim Brotherhood winning 88. This reflected an important dynamic of this decade, which evolved out of imperialist interventions in the late 20th century; perhaps the majority of the population in most of the region, or at least a large section, saw political Islam, in one form or another, as the natural opposition to the pro-capitalist pro-Western pro-war on Terror regimes. It's worth noting that, of all the region's countries, this support for political islam movements was perhaps weakest in Tunisia.

After this experience of struggle, and with the worsening of unemployment, poverty & other social conditions, a large layer of Arab youth & workers became increasingly radicalised. This energy led to a growth in activism in a variety of areas; most significantly, some of the networks of leftists which existed, either underground as in Egypt or hiding as low-level activists within the regime-sanctioned trade unions as in Tunisia, used this period to agitate for workers to form independant unions and strike for their rights. This came to a head in 2008, with radical workers in the key textile manufacturing city of Mahalla in Egypt calling a general strike; although the strike was crushed, the consequent street demonstrations in the city articulated for the first time the demand for the revolutionary overthrow of the regime, as opposed to reforms or parliamentary change, and pitted the people against the state's apparatus of repression.

Asides from poor pay and the corruption of the regime, basic economic issues – especially the major food shortage – were factors in this uprising; the little reportage it got in the Western media oversimplified this episode into a "bread riot", just one of many around the world occuring. In Tunisia, too, there were strikes and demonstrations by workers and the unemployed  in the Gafsa mining region, which were likewise heavily repressed. These struggles gave birth to the revolutionary social movements which found their expression in what's been called the "Arab spring" – for example, Egypt's leading April 6 Youth Movement takes their name from the date of the 2008 Mahalla general strike. And they were also an important test of strength for the revolutionary workers movement.

So when Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself on December 17, there was a huge layer of youngnies.Lina Ben Mhenni, Slim Amamou and Azyz Amami. When protests broke out in Bouazizi's city of Sidi Bouzid, young people began posting videos of the spontaneous protests and the following repression on Facebook, and the networks of online activists & journalists were crucial components, alongside the revolutionary workers who initiated demonstrations in most of the major cities, in growing this episode from just another chapter of repression to the point of nadir, the final straw.

So with the combination of these different factors, the Sidi Bouzid uprising spread like wildfire in a way the 2008 Gafsa protests had not been able to. And they brought a critical mass of people to the streets, shutting down the country until elements of the regime – including key military leaders – decided to cut their losses and temporarily side with the movement. This triggered Ben Ali's sudden departure – as documented ical repression going hand in hand with the economics of third world neocolonies.

One of the factors which made the difference between 2008 and 2010 was the technological revolution which had seen cheap broadband internet and internet-ready mobile phones spread through the population in the course of little more than a year. The limited space for digital freedoms was taken up by citizen-journalist bloggers such as Lina Ben Mhenni, Slim Amamou and Azyz Amami. When protests broke out in Bouazizi's city of Sidi Bouzid, young people began posting videos of the spontaneous protests and the following repression on Facebook, and the networks of online activists & journalists were crucial components, alongside the revolutionary workers who initiated demonstrations in most of the major cities, in growing this episode from just another chapter of repression to the point of nadir, the final straw.

So with the combination of these different factors, the Sidi Bouzid uprising spread like wildfire in a way the 2008 Gafsa protests had not been able to. And they brought a critical mass of people to the streets, shutting down the country until elements of the regime – including key military leaders – decided to cut their losses and temporarily side with the movement. This triggered Ben Ali's sudden departure – as documented by an air traffic controller at Tunis airport, part of the internet freedom movement, who forwarded on to the street protests the course of Ben Ali's plane as it attempted to land in France, the neo-colonial power with the biggest stakes in Tunisia's economy, before he was rejected and eventually fled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he remains – hopefully to fter that they were ready to demonstrate. Even my family, who normally didn't know anything about politics in Egypt, were asking me, "Are you going to the demonstrations on the 25th of January? We want to go."

I won't go on much further about the events of the uprisings against the dictators themselves. I think it is as important to understand how the situations of those countries have evolved in the last year to see the real strength of this revolutionary movement. As Lina Ben Mhenni told me when I interviewed her by chance in a Tunis cafe where activists and goths hang out - “The revolution did not finish on January 14 (the day Ben Ali was overthrown) — it started on January 14! Ben Ali left the country, but he is just the head of the system." And the same is true for Mubarak in Egypt.

Egypt

In Egypt, since February 11, Friday protests -- in Cairo's Tahrir Square and nationwide -- continubdeen, Shubra – very poor neighbourhoods – and when the police attacked again, many of my friends hid in the houses of ordinary people and told them about the demonstrations. I think this was as important as Facebooke year has progressed; first over a guaranteed transition to civilian rule, then demanding the end to political repression, especially military trials for protesters, then after the October 9 massacre of dozens of Coptic Christians, openly calling for General Tantawi, the head of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (the real power behind the throne; personally members control around 25% of the economy – us aid), to step down.

The Parliamentary elections which began at the end of November and finished in January were a crucial test; one that, in many ways, the movement failed. Mostafa Ali, of Egypt's Revolutionary Socialists, said: "THE political sentiment in Tahrir is ahead of the country. You can think of it as the revolutionary vanguard in society among students and workers and youth--but it is much larger than in January (2011). Political consciousness has developed tremendously.

These are people who understand that the SCAF is the continuation of the Mubarak regime. They are beginning to understand the connection between political and economic issues. They are beginnied more or less every week, with protesters reclaiming it for major sit-ins during July in the hundreds and then again in November in the thousands. These protests have also taken on the regime in more radical ways as the year has progressed; first over a guaranteed transition to civilian rule, then demanding the end to political repression, especially military trials for protesters, then after the October 9 massacre of dozens of Coptic Christians, openly calling for General Tantawi, the head of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (the real power behind the throne; personally members control around 25% of the economy – us aid), to step down.

The Parliamentary elections which began at the end of November and finished in January were a crucial test; one that, in many ways, the movement failed. Mostafa Ali, of Egypt's Revolutionary Socialists, said: "THE political sentiment in Tahrir is ahead of the country. You can think of it as the revolutionary vanguard in society among students and workers and youth--but it is much larger than in January (2011). Political consciousness has developed tremendously.

These are people who understand that the SCAF is the continuation of the Mubarak regime. They are beginning to understand the connection between political and economic issues. They are beginning to grapple with the role of police in society. And they are the ones who understand that the ruling class played a trick on them by using Mubarak as a scapegoat in order to save the rest of the political system.

So you have a minority in society--symbolized by Tahrir--which has advanced politically and in terms of its consciousness. And it's ahead of the rest of the country in that sense. Back in January, a majority of people in the country wanted Mubarak to go, so they supported Tahrir. At this moment, that isn't the case regarding the SCAF."

However, there was not political unity on the question of how the elections would be approached. Another wave of massive protests sprung up several weeks before the elections; initially it seemed the SCAF would have to postpone them, but it gambled that holding them on time would take the wind out of the sails of the protest movement, demanding a civilian council be appointed to take presidential power away from the military before the elections were held. This worked; the days when I was in Cairo, when the elections were being staged there, were some of the low points in Tahrir's occupation, with at best hundreds overnight and a thousand during the day. The Egyptian Socialist Party, the brotherhood youth (split) and some liberal or left forces sought to take parliamentary seats in the "Revolution Continues" alliance; however, other forces such as most of the online activists and the Revolutionary Socialists instead pushed for a boycott of the elections, but not until the days before the elections when it was clear the elections were going ahead.

Tunisia

Despite Egypt's greater geopolitical significance and much larger, poorer and perhaps more revolutionary population, I think the post-January 14 events in Tunisia are more exciting, more significant, and show more about the dynamic of the Arab Spring.

Since the ouster of Ben Ali, Tunisia has seen 22,000 labor protests that include strikes, demonstrations, and other protest activity; Unlike the activity happening before Ben Ali's downfall, this has been across the entire country, interior and coast, and in every sector and industry. Most of these actions have either been supported or led by UGTT (Tunisian General Workers Union). In January of this year left forces – PCOT, LGO, anarchists, social democrats- united to contest and win the leadership of the UGTT; under Ben Ali the union was allowed a stronger degree of autonomy than Egypt's totally anti-worker unions, and branch-level activists could quite often get away with a degree of political activism that only Egypt's journalists could.

Unlike in Egypt, the overthrow of Ben Ali in Tunisia gave way within a month to even bigger protests (the Kasbah sit-ins). These demanded the next step, and the next step, and the next step, in the agenda of democratic reforms; getting rid of Mohammed Ghannouchi, the PM under Ben Ali; getting rid of other ministers; the dissolution of the domestic intelligence services; and the October 2011 constituent assembly elections. The Tunisian left was positioned a little better than the Egyptian left for these elections; nonetheless, the largest revolutionary organising running in the elections, PCOT, won only three seats, while a couple of other forces got one or two seats. However, the lion's share of those involved in the protest movements who wanted to relate to the elections did so as independants, and failed to make any kind of real impact.

The situation in Tunisia since then has continued to evolve; radical islamist forces have gained a lot of space from Ben Ali's downfall, but there has been a corresponding growth in women's rights, workers rights and democratic activism to counter the calls for sharia law and to call for de-criminalisation of dissent.

Lessons

What are the lessons that we here can learn about the revolutionary movements in Egypt, Tunisia and across the Arab World? To me, they come down to the question of leadership. A layer of activists – mostly young, all committed to changing the world – united behind the revolutionary goal of mobilising people to overthrow their dictators. Since the overthrows, these movements have developed and deepened – but an alternative vision to the Islamists wasn't put forward strongly enough in the electoral contests. Perhaps more importantly, efforts to advance the revolution's demands – for real democratic reforms, but also for the fundamental shift of economic priorities away from the washington/imf consensus of neoliberalism – are still yet to win a real political shift. To win this, revolutionary activists don't only need the objective factors to be on their side – the availability of new tools like the internet, the relative poverty, dissatisfaction with the regime – but also the subjective factors – how the layer of revolutionaries organise in these conditions. And until there is some way that the old left parties, the new left parties, the radical democracy activist groups and the independants are able to take the initiative away from the regimes and develop a united platform and work together as a united force, then these revolutions will remain unfinished.

Monday 16 April 2012

Arab Spring Meeting Notes #1 - Egypt, February

This post is the first in a series of notes from talks that I have given since returning to Australia about the Arab Spring uprisings and revolutionary struggles taking place in the middle-east today. These are raw, and several sections have been copied and pasted from earlier posts I wrote during my time in Egypt & Tunisia last year. I'm posting these in the hopes of getting some critical engagement - pointing out any inaccuracies or errors I've made or alternative theories about the revolutionary upsurge now taking place. Please comment below.



I'd like to start this talk with a little anecdote about the present situation in Egypt which hit close to home on Sunday: Australian journalist Austin Mackell, United States student Derek Ludovici, translator Aliya Alwi and veteran union activist Kamal al-Fayyumi were detained by the police in Mahalla El-Kubra, Egypt on February 11 while trying to interview workers in the city.

From statements posted by Alwi on Twitter, the group faced some "aggression" from locals: "Our car got rocked and beaten against the glass, got called a whore and all sorts of things. Police escorted us to station."

Initially, the group thought they were simply being protected by the police; however, several hours after being detained, the police informed the group that they were being changed with "offering money to youth to vandalise and cause chaos".

Alwi said they were being transferred to military intelligence in the neighbouring city of Tanta in her last tweet; the group were transferred back and forth between different offices and agencies in the two cities as well as the capital of Cairo eight times throughout the three days they were held and then tried.

Mahalla has been the epicentre of independent union activity and strikes in the four years before the January 25, 2011 uprising against Mubarak's rule, continuing throughout the year since. Austin has interviewed workers in the city before; in a video published on April 12 last year, he interviewed Kamal al-Fayyumi about union activity in the city.

The end result of the situation was freedom for all involved on the back of a wave of international & domestic pressure – none of which, shamefully, came from the governments of Australia or America. Austin is still being threatened with deportation due to having overstayed his Visa, and has been told not to leave the country (perhaps banned?), but he remains at large.

Unfortunately, though, that kind of treatment is faced by thousands of Egyptian activists and foreign journalists who want to be part of or just report on the real struggle now underway; and most never receive the attention Austin and Aliya did.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which controls the military authorities (and which, thanks to years of billion-dollar blank cheques from the US, owns of huge swathes of industry). , assumed presidential powers when Hosni Mubarak resigned from office on February 11, 2011. Initially it claimed it was backing the revolutionary movement, but it's clear the SCAF has been Sadat & Mubarak's Greek choir and are keeping up the same neoliberal pro-western agenda now the figurehead is gone.

Activists, unions, bloggers and journalists still face constant harassment — from reactionary "baltageya" gangs made up largely of those with criminal records forced to or paid off to commit political crimes by the interior ministry, as well as from the official state forces like the notorious CSF police department which was responsible for most of the deaths in Tahrir in the last year. The "local resident attack" on Austin & co sounds exactly like the kind of extra-judicial attack often engineered by the "baltageya" – but for many, it ends in an assasination attempt, not just arrest.
More than 12,000 people have been arrested and 8000 charged by military tribunals since the uprising against former dictator Hosni Mubarak began a year ago. Many female detainees have been subjected to cruel and degrading "virginity tests" as part of this, which is something the old regime would never have attempted.

But everything isn't going the regime's way, despite the repression. What Austin was reporting on probably got more attention than it would have internationally thanks to his case – a call by revolutionaries for a general strike on the anniversary of Mubarak's ousting, February 11, after what was possibly the largest EVER demonstration in Tahrir Square on the one-year anniversary of the uprising, January 25.

I spent three different spells in Cairo at the end of last year – in Sept, Oct & Nov – and I was quite lucky to be able to see three different episodes in this ongoing revolutionary struggle. Rather than describe the history of the conflict or what's happened in the last month I'd like to talk about my experiences there last year, as I think it really highlights the direction this movement is going in.

I arrived in Egypt the day before the September 9 protests that brought tens of thousands into the street, marches to the Ministry of Interior and the Supreme Court, and then the storming of the Israeli embassy; Egypt certainly threw me in at the deep end! But arriving in Cairo at almost any point last year would have been like that. I met strangers at protests and on the street who in a very Egyptian way invited me to take tea, most trying to con me in some way, at one point asking me to take part in a wedding ceremony, and who all talked politics. Not everyone on the street was with the revolution, but the atmosphere is one of open debate of politics, leaders, policies and movements – before January 25 last year, the closest most Egyptians came to doing this in public was talking about their football clubs, although that in itself is a somewhat political thing!

Tens of thousands of Egyptians reclaimed Tahrir square after several weeks of police occupation on September 9, demanding an end to military trials of civilians and for judicial freedom. The atmosphere was like nothing in Australia I'd been to – somewhere between a protest, a vast open-air conference with ongoing workshops and debates around the clock, and a democracy festival on the scale of the BDO music festival here.

Throughout 2011, Friday protests -- in Cairo's Tahrir Square and nationwide -- have been going on more or less every week. The week after September 9, there was a protest at Tahrir Square of around a thousand against the military trials; a fortnight later, 1500 at "back to the barracks" protests demanding a quicker timetable for creating a civilian government. The politics of these protests and the movement as a whole have kept getting sharper and more radical since.

But even outside of what could be called the "democracy" movement of bloggers and activists and Tahrir square, there has been mass democratic struggles in almost all layers of society, and the Tahrir protests are really only the tip of the iceberg. As such, the situation in Egypt, or indeed Tunisia or Libya or Syria or anywhere else, shouldn't just be considered in terms of who has taken power or who is leading the movements. But I'll come back to that.

Another crucial stage occured in October, when a majority who had previously been taken in by the SCAF's lies saw through the veil.

Walking around downtown Cairo on October 10, everything felt relatively normal ― if, perhaps, a little more tense than usual for post-January 25 Cairo, with Tahrir empty and lots of shops closed.
That is, until I came across the wrecks of burnt out cars on the Corniche el Nil in Maspero, just north of Tahrir Square, being pulled apart by enterprising young men.

The night before, Coptic Christians marched from Shubra to protest acts of discrimination against Copts by the interim government and islamist gangs being funded from the Gulf, including the destruction of St. George's Church in Aswan and the forceful break-up of a protest on October 5. The marchers were assaulted by unidentified groups of thugs – undoubtedly baltageya - before being arrested & massacred en masse by the military and police.

At least 26 people were killed in the ensuing violence, many by army armoured personnel carriers that drove straight into the crowd of thousands, gunners firing wildly above and into the crowd – now iconic images.

The regime has been busily exploiting religious tensions within Egypt since the fall of Mubarak, trying to split the unity between Christians, Muslims, atheists and other Egyptians shown during the occupations of Tahrir Square.

This includes broadcasts from the state media, which, as protesters were being massacred on October 9, were busily reporting that Christians were stealing weapons from the army and killing Muslim soldiers.

Yet, despite this campaign, the graffiti around the city showing the Christian cross and the Islamic crescent, with the words "2gether 4ever", has been some of the best preserved since the start of the revolution.

Another rumour repeated to me on the streets of downtown Cairo as the bloodshed was unfolding was that the protesters were marching to support Mubarak or try and influence the outcome of his trial and those of his colleagues in crime, which were just wrapping up and being broadcast in every shop on every tv and every radio – even the KFC & McDonalds at Tahrir!

No doubt seeking to bolster their own support base and fan the flames of religious tension, the Muslim Brotherhood released a statement calling on Copts to cease protesting for the sake of "democracy".

“There are certain channels, means and times for demanding legitimate demands and all Egyptian people have legitimate demands, not only our Coptic brothers,” said the statement. “This is certainly not the right time to demand them since the current government is an interim government and the general conditions are abnormal."

The Brotherhood demanded the regime keep the current timetable for elections, which they did bringing Ikhwan to parliamentary majority in January.

The Revolutionary Socialists, on the other hand, condemned the oppression of Copts "which goes hand-in-hand with a policy of divide and rule between Christian and Muslim working people".
"We will continue to defend our revolution, and the people’s right to free expression, to protest, demonstrate and strike, in order to restore our stolen rights, and to cleanse the country of the roots of corruption, which is still poisoning our revolution and attempting to overturn it," their statement read.
The interim government responded violence and international condemnation by launching a quick inquiry, detaining 25 suspects implicated in the violence. It added the “Equality Law” to the penal code, which stipulates special punishment for anyone who carries out any action that causes violence against individuals or communities based on gender, race, language or religion, or which might lead to unequal opportunity or social inequality. But police have abandoned enforcing ordinary laws since January 25, except when they want a bribe. The only police I saw not lurking around on the street or facing off against protesters were the traffic cops.

Ultimately, this incident was crucial in turning mass consciousness against the SCAF; prior to it, polls showed only 10% believed SCAF was against the revolution, afterwards, between 40 and 60%.
Each episode of mass repression beyond the constant ongoing attacks on the movement might buy the regime a little time and stability, but it has radicalised more and more people.

As I said, the Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan were the winners of the Dec-Jan parliamentary elections, which were poorly managed and, while not directly rigged and indeed quite open compared to elections under Mubarak, bound to deliver a result to reactionary anti-revolutionary forces given the conditions for the new parties and the flow of money from the gulf to religious parties, and the best representatives of Tahrir, the "Revolution Continues alliance" of radical social democrats, left-liberal, left-Islamist and socialist forces, won only 8 seats of the 454, with the Egyptian Socialist Party winning none at all. Largely, this was because of protests going on in November before and through the elections, which was the last time I was in Cairo.



I arrived in the night before the elections would begin, which was the tail end of a two-week wave of street battles against vivious repression than included more than 20 deaths and a huge number of injuries, many caused by snipers with birdshot ammunition aiming to cripple & blind protesters. These protests were designed to push the SCAF to hand over power to a civilian "salvation council" for the course of the elections, but by the week leading up to the elections the military made a gamble and stopped attempting to clear the square itself, while appointing a new government and PM – Kamal Ganzouri, another stooge of the military once PM under Mubarak – and in response, Tahrir protesters & those at the smaller sit in outside the Cabinet of Ministers which was calling for Ganzouri's resignation largely boycotted the election. But the call for a boycott went out too late and was up against too much propaganda from the regime, the Brotherhood & other forces to pick up widespread support.

Occupy Cabinet was one interesting thing to note, as it was a lot like Occupy Sydney (only 300 camping at the largest, down to 25 overnight) with its own security line, makeshift tarp tents and medical stations, with a lot broader support than #O has here, but still quite a way ahead of the mass consciousness – many Egyptians came through the lines to see what it looked like, and some of them told me they didn't support the group even though they supported Tahrir (which through Nov-Dec had more like 500 at any one time, maintaining a complete occupation of the roundabout and entrance to the Mogamma state offices).

In a sense the failure of the movement to take a united approach to the elections showed the issues with lack of a united leadership for the protest movement; the Revolutionary Youth Coalition uniting key groups like A6YM and supporters of El Baradei (which had one member elected to parliament) has not beed democratically elected, while the socialist left (ESP & RS probably being the most notable) has not yet built a mass audience. Promisingly, many of the Occupy Cabinet protesters were from a variety of left groups – of the ones I spoke to one from ESP, one from Communist, one from the MB youth split, several El Baradei supporters, and many more independants who were quite open to all those different tendencies – but there's no forum yet that I know of for these revolutionaries to discuss taking a lead, rather than responding to the developments of the movement.

So I'll wrap it up with a quick update on what's been happening in the last month. The new parliament has been calling on unions & protesters to shut up and get the country's struggling economy back on its feet, maintaining the vicious attacks on protest, and signalling they will take out more loans from the IMF on the condition of economic restructuring – so the current stage of the movement is awakening Egyptians to the knowledge that political Islam is no real alternative to the Mubarak consensus.

As I said, the January 25 first anniversary protests were bigger than even the original uprising, which shows that despite the savage repression and the confusion of the parliamentary elections, the basic demands of the movement – real civilian government and an end to military influence, and above all an end to neoliberal attacks and real pro-poor economic reforms – still have mass popular support and are still bringing people onto the streets.

The region has reached an era, after a half-century ascendancy of dictators and neoliberalism, when the 99% are fighting back and claiming the ascendancy. The leaders of this movement now are the ones who developed still under the old ascendancy of tyranny and capital, and the forces taking power in elections are those who have money or influence, not those who in any real sense represent Tahrir. But that doesn't mean we should write off the struggles as a whole; as socialists who support the right to self-determination, we should show critical solidarity with these struggles, and while remaining aware of the contradictions as they emerge or deepen, should see past these to the real struggles against capital that are at the heart of the Arab Spring.