Democracia Obrera

We salute the masses in Egypt whom since Friday 27th January 2011 have risen up, defeated the police in the streets, disarming them across many towns and cities, destroying the police stations (the centres of torture and suppression of the masses for many years), and setting up workers committees with sections of the army supporting them. This marks the definitive start of a workers revolution, not only against the Mubarak regime, but against the domination of US imperialism in the region. On the 27th and 28th January imperialism directed the army to start to move against the masses but in many areas the rank and file of the army has refused to shoot down the masses and have joined the revolution. US imperialism has directed a core of its more trusted section of the army, from the Presidential guard, to go and protect the gas and refinery installations and the main television station premises. Imperialism is preparing a range of steps from brute force to planting reactionary elements within, such as Mohamed El Baradei, and working together with the Muslim Brotherhood leadership to prepare a new imperialist puppet regime in the event that the masses cannot be smashed in their fight to overthrow the hated Mubarak regime. Another option being prepared is a possible military coup which would be merely a change of faces but go along with brutal suppression of the mass uprising.

The immediate task of the revolution is the setting up of soviets, that is, committees of struggle with worker delegates principally (but not limited to) from the textile, gas and oil, hydroelectricity and metal and armaments factories, from the large capitalist farms, including delegates from rank and file soldiers, delegates from the unemployed, students and ruined sectors of the lower middle class and poorest peasants (in the agricultural areas). Workers from every workplace in struggle should send delegates to these soviets. What goes hand in hand with this is the setting up of a workers militia, workers committees of self defence, as part of these soviets, against the brutal, murderous regime. It is the Mubarak regime (on the instruction of imperialism- they used the same tactic in Tunisia) that was responsible to send thugs to attack the museum of antiquities and to attacks the houses of some of the middle class. This is an attempt to win the lower middle class away from the support of the revolution. The masses have already set up ‘popular revolutionary committees’. These committees are pre-soviet-type structures that need to be strengthened and extended along the lines explained above to be centred on workers’ delegates. Every effort must be made to fight the domination of the middle class. This can best be done by the adoption of a revolutionary programme.

What should the programme of the ‘popular revolutionary committees’ be fighting for?

The first is to call for the overthrow of the entire Mubarak regime, with the officer caste and the entire bureaucracy who kept up the brutal attacks against the masses on behalf of imperialism for all these years. It is important to go beyond just ‘down with Mubarak’. Down with any interim government of El Baradei, the Muslim Brotherhood and fragments of the Mubarak regime. This ‘interim government’ is just another face for the continued rule of US imperialism.
We need to raise the slogans of Tunisia (and really the world working class) for bread and work. This means that the workers should seize all the capitalist farms, place them under agricultural workers control, seize the entire capitalist food production and distribution, placing these too under workers control. No compensation to the capitalists. This is the way to feed the masses immediately. Model worker collective farms should be set up; cheap credit and every assistance for farming equipment should be given to the poorest peasants. The re-allocation of the land should be jointly determined by committees of agricultural workers and committees representing the poorest peasants. The capitalist class have all become fat over the bones of the masses, all of them closely linked to the Mubarak dictatorship. The imperialist companies and banks operating in Egypt have long propped up the Mubarak dictatorship. They have kept the masses in unemployment and starvation in the land of plenty. It follows that to conquer work all capitalists and imperialist assets, including the banks must be expropriated without compensation to the capitalists, and placed under workers control. There should be no private ownership of the means of production, ie the large farms, large textile companies, the arms manufacturing companies, the banks, the hydroelectricity, the gas and oil companies, the large food distributors, all the large companies should be under workers control, This would lay the basis for immediate reduction of the working day, sharing the work among all who can work, without loss of pay. It is only a revolutionary government based on the ‘popular committees’ that are centred on workers’ and rank and file soldiers delegates that can implement the masses aspirations for bread and work.
expel all US military bases in Egypt; the revolutionary popular committees should take them over
Tear down the Rafah border- the ending of the blockade on Gaza is an immediate democratic task. In 2008-9 the masses from Egypt helped to tear down the Rafah border; now the Palestinian masses can join hands with their Egyptian class brothers and sisters to get rid of the entire Mubarak regime.
The nomadic poor should have their demands addressed for work and land and services.
for the scrapping of the debts of the masses with the capitalist banks
The immediate return of all the treasures of the country that were stolen and that are today in the collections of Buckingham palace, in the USA, in France and elsewhere.
for the immediate right of return of all Palestinians and for all the walls and checkpoints that keep the Palestinian masses in concentration camps to be torn down.
for the immediate overthrow of all the repressive regimes in the region
appeal to the workers of the world to take up the fight against world imperialism-capitalism, to import the Egyptian and Tunisian revolution to their home soil, ie for the revolutionary struggle for the working class to take power on a world scale
for an immediate conference of all workers revolutionary organizations and internationalist Trotskyists in Egypt to set up a revolutionary International, which for us means the refounding of the Fourth International.

US imperialism directs every move of the Egyptian regime.
Some of the left are naively (some consciously) putting forward the view that US imperialism is not involved in the actions of the Egyptian regime and that they should exert ‘pressure’ on the Mubarak regime for ‘democratic change’. This is a fatal error as the very suppression of the masses over the years has been directed by US imperialism. In fact US imperialism is directing every step of the crackdown against the masses, despite their rhetoric of calling on the Egyptian regime for ‘restraint’. US imperialism is trying to contain the uprising against it from spreading to the rest of the region and into the heart of the USA. The tightening of the section of the military that is strongly loyal to the regime, over the masses gathering in Tahrir square in central Cairo, is the start of manoeuvres to brutally suppress the revolution, another Tiananmen Square massacre is being prepared by US imperialism as they cannot allow the revolution to spread into the region. The question of the masses arming themselves for self defence against the onslaught of US imperialism is central to the coming days. The youth in the Tiananmen Square in 1989 were pacifist, they disarmed the soldiers gave them a few smacks and gave their guns back. The result was, when the masses were tiring, the brutal Chinese regime drowned the revolution in blood. The masses need to draw the lesson and draw it quickly.

For many years the Egyptian regime has been a puppet of US imperialism and its second bastion of reaction (after Israel) to control the masses in the region. Israel is openly identified as the enemy but the Egyptian regime is the enemy within and thus much more dangerous. Their brutality against the working class has been sustained by US imperialism through an annual military support of at least $2 bn, second only to Israel. The suppression of the workers’ movement, the suppression of the freedom of speech, of the freedom to organise independent political organization in Egypt have been sustained by US imperialism, in fact it is the actual policy of US imperialism in Egypt as they determine every move of the Mubarak regime. The crisis of imperialism and the increased starvation of the Egyptian masses has been enforced in a most brutal manner by the Egyptian regime. The same imperialism is responsible for the slave conditions of the workers in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Iraq, Iran, Libya, where workers work in virtual concentration camps for imperialism, extracting and refining the oil and gas, with all the profits going to imperialism and a few pennies sustaining brutal anti-worker regimes. It is an immediate task to extend the revolution to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and all the Emirates and all the oil producers in the region, with the call for all the imperialist puppet regimes to go, for the setting up of workers councils (soviets), uniting all the struggling masses, and for power to go to these revolutionary workers’ councils.

The same imperialism is starving and brutalizing the masses in the US. It is an immediate task for the working class in the USA to blockade the ports, blocking any arms shipments to the US military bases. It is an immediate task to mobilise millions of the workers and immigrant workers in the US to march in the streets against the murderous Obama regime that is preparing to drown the Egyptian revolution in blood. The workers organizations should break with Obama and prepare a general strike in the US against the world imperialist onslaught, against the world-wide Cast Lead operation that imperialism leads to starve billions of the world’s masses. For the working class to live, imperialism must die.

The imperialism policy of isolation of the Palestinian masses has been brutally executed by the Egyptian regime. They, including the former head of intelligence, Suleiman, who is now Vice President, and former head of the Airforce, Shafiq, now Prime minister, were informed every step of the way when the sellout Fatah negotiators were betraying Palestinian fighters, when they were giving up on the right of return of the 6-7 million Palestinian refugees. The Mubarak regime directly blocked and still block the Rafah border and thereby sustained the genocidal Cast Lead attacks on the Palestinians in Gaza in 2008-9 as well as the imperialist blockade on Gaza in general. The Egyptian regime exports cement to Israel to help its building of the illegal wall in the West bank. The Tunisian and now the Egyptian revolution marks the start of the third Intifada, which is the revolutionary offensive against the puppet regimes in the region that keep the Palestinian masses in chains. It is an immediate task to join hands with the rest of the working class in the region for the overthrow of the puppet regimes of imperialism. But more than this, the freedom of the Palestinian masses and of the entire masses in the region is tied up with joining hands with the working class in Europe for the revolutionary overthrow of the imperialist regimes there as well as the revolutionary overthrow of the minor imperialist regimes such as in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, etc. Down with Maastricht and the regimes that starve the masses. For a federation of Soviet worker states of Europe. The revolution of the semi-slaves in North Africa and Middle East must be extended to defeat imperialism on their own door steps. This lays the basis for the defeat of the Zionist regime which is the bastion of world imperialism in the region.

US imperialism and world imperialism is likely to fight up to the end in Egypt because a workers state would immediately bolster the Palestinian struggle for freedom and would explode imperialism’s grip on the world’s biggest oil reserves. Even a fully bourgeois democratic Egypt would pose a threat to imperialism as all the brutal dictatorships in the region would immediately come under threat. A democratic task of the expulsion of all US military bases would be posed. If the masses of the region really controlled the oil reserves, world imperialist exploitation would be threatened.