One hundred years ago, a Dublin-born socialist named Robert Croker, also known as Robert Noonan and, most famously, as Robert Tressell, died in Liverpool, England and was buried with 12 others in a pauper’s grave. He was barely 40 years old.

He’s rightly remembered today for his only novel, ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’, generally hailed as a classic literary endeavour, which describes aspects of Edwardian English working class life from a Marxist perspective.

It’s a posthumously published book that, without resort to preaching or pedagogy, encapsulates the robbery that is the capitalist mode of production through an engaging story of employers and employees in a small English seaside town. Its narrative implies that social change is both necessary and possible, without ever being explicit enough about the means to achieve this.

One of its highlights, which unfolds in a naturalistic and humorous manner, is the exposition of ‘The Great Money Trick’, described by English playwright Howard Brenton as: “nothing less than Karl Marx's labour theory of value, a cornerstone of socialist thinking.”[1] This is the scene in which the book’s central character, a decorator called Owen, explains to his workmates in the building trade how ‘a fair days work for a fair days wage’ in fact produces profits for the bosses at the expense of the workers. It’s an unsurpassed set-piece which has been translated for film, theatre and television.

Before proceeding, a brief explanation of the book’s title. ‘Ragged Trousered’ implies those meagre garments worn by the poor or workingmen. An earlier period in France might use the phrase ‘sans culottes’. ‘Philanthropists’ is a satire on the ‘great and the good’ who gave money to the ‘deserving poor’. In Tressell’s view, it’s the proletarians who are the ‘philanthropists’ because it is their unpaid labour in the form of surplus value which supports the collective class of capitalists.

After his death, it’s thanks to the efforts of his daughter Kathleen that Tressell’s handwritten, 1,600-page manuscript was eventually published, at first in a heavily-edited form (because of its socialist content, according to the original publisher, who, despite his prejudices, nonetheless recognised the literary worth of the work). It appeared in England and Canada in 1914, in revolutionary Russia in 1920, and in its full version in the 1950s.

Because the work so movingly describes the plight of the proletariat as an exploited class, it has become a treasured icon of the left whose function is to keep the proletariat in precisely that condition.

Written in the interregnum between capitalist ascendency and its decadence, by an author whose membership of the Social Democratic Federation gives free reign to today’s trade union and Labour Party (Social Democratic) politicians to claim continuity with its content, the revolutionary kernel of Tressell’s work has been buried in the tomb of recuperation.

At a centenary event in Hastings (South East England), where Tressell toiled and on which the fictional town of ‘Mugsborough’ in the novel is based, one could find local and national Labour Party politicians, trade unionists and other, more well-meaning folk, all laying claim to his legacy.

In a UK left-leaning national newspaper, the Guardian, the aforementioned left-wing playwright Howard Brenton could declaim: “The party Tressell joined, the SDF (Social Democratic Federation), was revolutionary. We know that path led to the disaster of the Soviet Union.”[2]

But the SDF, despite being the UK’s ‘first Marxist-based’ party, was riddled with programmatic and practical ambiguities which saw the likes of Eleanor Marx and William Morris quit its ranks. And contrary to Brenton’s assertion, the ‘disaster’ of the ‘Soviet Union’ was not the result of the workers’ revolution there, but of its international defeat.

The support the majority of the SDF – including Tressell’s inspiration, the ‘Mugsborough rebel’ Alf Cobb - gave to British imperialism in World War One – and the relative failure of its members like British communists John McLean and Willie Gallagher to reinforce their internationalist attitudes with a corresponding organisational practice – only underlines the importance of coherent, Marxist revolutionary organisation, then and now.[3]

The richness of Tressell’s literary and Marxist masterpiece –  despite a certain sentimentalism evident in the ending – remains a challenge to today’s communists and sympathisers: how to communicate what we believe and fight for into forms –  words, music ,film, whatever – which convey meaning without cliché or cant.

KT 31/1/11

The tide of rebellion in North Africa and the Middle East shows no sign of abating. The latest developments: demonstrations and clashes with the police in the Libyan city of Benghazi following the arrest of a lawyer involved in a campaign demanding an investigation into the brutal massacre of hundreds of prisoners after a protest in 1996. Qaddafi’s regime again displays its ruthless brutality – there are reports of snipers and helicopters firing into crowds, killing many; in Bahrain, thousands of demonstrators occupy the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, hoping to emulate the occupation of Tahrir Square. They raise slogans against sectarian divisions (“No Shia, no Sunni, only Bahraini”) and against self-appointed leaders (“We have no leaders”). At the time of writing, riot police have now cleared the area with considerable violence – many demonstrators have been injured and some killed. In Iraq, there have been new demonstrations against the price of necessities and the lack of electricity.  

But perhaps the most important development over the last week or so has been the explicit development of mass workers’ struggles in Egypt. As Hossam el-Hamalawy[1], put it in an article published by The Guardian on 14 Feb, the upsurge of the workers fighting for their own demands was a potent factor in the decision of the army to dispense with Mubarak:    

“All classes in Egypt took part in the uprising. Mubarak managed to alienate all social classes in society. In Tahrir Square, you found sons and daughters of the Egyptian elite, together with the workers, middle-class citizens and the urban poor. But remember that it's only when the mass strikes started on Wednesday [4] that the regime started crumbling and the army had to force Mubarak to resign because the system was about to collapse... From the first day of the January 25 uprising, the working class has been taking part in the protests. However, the workers were at first taking part as ‘demonstrators’ and not necessarily as ‘workers’ – meaning, they were not moving independently. The government had brought the economy to halt, not the protesters, with their curfews, and by shutting down the banks and businesses. It was a capitalist strike, aimed at terrorising the Egyptian people. Only when the government tried to bring the country back to ‘normal’ on 8 February did the workers return to their factories, discuss the current situation and start to organise en masse, moving as an independent block”.

An article by David McNally[2] on www.pmpress.org [5] gives an idea of how widespread this movement has been:

“In the course of a few days during the week of February 7, tens of thousands of them stormed into action. Thousands of railworkers took strike action, blockading railway lines in the process. Six thousand workers at the Suez Canal Authority walked off the job, staging sit-ins at Suez and two other cities. In Mahalla, 1,500 workers at Abul Sebae Textiles struck and blockaded the highway. At the Kafr al-Zayyat hospital hundreds of nurses staged a sit-in and were joined by hundreds of other hospital employees.

Across Egypt, thousands of others – bus workers in Cairo, employees at Telecom Egypt, journalists at a number of newspapers, workers at pharmaceutical plants and steel mills – joined the strike wave. They demands improved wages, the firing of ruthless managers, back pay, better working conditions and independent unions. In many cases they also called for the resignation of President Mubarak. And in some cases, like that of the 2,000 workers at Helwan Silk Factory, they demanded the removal of their company’s Board of Directors. Then there were the thousands of faculty members at Cairo University who joined the protests, confronted security forces, and prevented Prime Minister Ahmed Shariq from getting to his government office”

We could add numerous other examples: about 20,000 workers in Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra, more than 100 kilometres north of Cairo, who have re-launched a strike after a three-day break in the largest spinning and weaving factory in Egypt. Workers in the tourist industry, like the 150 who staged a well-publicised demo against their miserable wages in the shadow of the Great Pyramid; bank workers demanding the sacking of their corrupt bosses; ambulance drivers using their vehicles to block roads in a pay protest; workers who demonstrated outside the HQ of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation denouncing it as a “den of thieves” and “a group of thugs” and called for its dissolution – their words received instant verification as ETUF goons responded with beatings and missiles. The police have also been publicly protesting against the way they have been used against demonstrators, a clear indication of plummeting morale among the lower echelons of the force. No doubt there will be many more examples to be added to these.

As McNally notes, this movement shows many of the characteristics of the mass strike as analysed by Rosa Luxemburg:

“What we are seeing, in other words, is the rising of the Egyptian working class. Having been at the heart of the popular upsurge in the streets, tens of thousands of workers are now taking the revolutionary struggle back to their workplaces, extending and deepening the movement in the process. In so doing, they are proving the continuing relevance of the analysis developed by the great Polish-German socialist, Rosa Luxemburg. In her book, The Mass Strike, based on the experience of mass strikes of 1905 against the Tsarist dictatorship in Russia, Luxemburg argued that truly revolutionary movements develop by way of interacting waves of political and economic struggle, each enriching the other. In a passage that could have been inspired by the upheaval in Egypt, she explains,

‘Every new onset and every fresh victory of the political struggle is transformed into a powerful impetus for the economic struggle. . . After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle burst forth. And conversely. The workers condition of ceaseless economic struggle with the capitalists keeps their fighting spirit alive in every political interval’”.

As both McNally and Hossam el-Hamalawy point out, the power of this movement was not acquired overnight. For the past seven years, it is the workers who have been at the frontline of resistance against the poverty and repression imposed on the entire population. There were a number of strike movements in 2004, 2006-7 and 2007-8, with the textile workers of Mahalla playing a particularly significant role, but with many other sectors joining in. In 2007 we published an article [6] which already discerned the “germs of the mass strike” in these struggles, because of their high degree of self-organisation and solidarity. As Rosa pointed out, the mass strike is something that matures over a period of years – the struggles of 1905 which she wrote about had been fermenting in successive struggles over the previous two decades – and 1905 was also a bridge to the revolution of 1917.

But despite all the talk of revolution in these countries – some of it honest if flawed, some of it part of the mystifying discourse of leftism which always seeks to banalise the very concept of revolution – this movement towards the future mass strike faces many dangers:

-          the danger of repression. Now that the massive protests have dispersed, the army which has ‘assumed power’ (in fact it was always there at the heart of it) is issuing urgent calls for Egypt to get back to work. After all, the revolution has won its victory! There have been hints that workers’ meetings will be banned. We already know that throughout the period when the army was claiming to be protecting the people, hundreds of activists were being arrested and tortured by this very same ‘popular’ institution, and there is no reason to expect that this kind of ‘quiet’ repression will not continue, even if head-on clashes are avoided;

-          the illusions of the combatants themselves. As with the illusion that the army belongs to the people, these illusions are dangerous because they prevent the oppressed from seeing who their enemy is and where the next blow will come from. But illusions in the army are part of a more general illusion in ‘democracy’, the idea that changes in the form of the capitalist state will change the function of that state and make it serve the needs of the majority. The call for independent trade unions which is being raised in many of today’s strikes[3] is at root a variant of this democratic myth: specifically, it is based on the idea that the capitalist state, whose role is to protects a system which has nothing to offer the workers or humanity as a whole, can allow the exploited class to maintain its own independent organisations on a permanent basis. 

We are a long way from revolution in the only sense it can have today –the international proletarian revolution. The authentically revolutionary consciousness required to guide such a revolution to victory can also only develop on a world scale, and it cannot come to fruition without the contribution of the workers of the most advanced capitalist countries. But the proletarians (and other oppressed strata) of the Middle East and North Africa are here and now learning vital lessons from their own experience: lessons about how to take charge of their own struggles, as exhibited in the strikes being spread from below, in the neighbourhood protection committees that sprang up after Mubarak unleashed the police and the dregs of society to loot their homes; in the daily ‘direct democracy’ of Tahir Squre. McNally again:

“Developing alongside these forms of popular self-organization are new practices of radical democracy. In Tahrir Square, the nerve centre of the Revolution, the crowd engages in direct decision-making, sometimes in its hundreds of thousands. Organized into smaller groups, people discuss and debate, and then send elected delegates to consultations about the movement’s demands. As one journalist[4] explains, ‘delegates from these mini-gatherings then come together to discuss the prevailing mood, before potential demands are read out over the square’s makeshift speaker system. The adoption of each proposal is based on the proportion of boos or cheers it receives from the crowd at large.’”

Lessons too in how to defend yourself collectively against the onslaughts of police and thugs; in how to fraternise with the army; in how to overcome sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia, Muslim and Christian, religious and secular. Lessons in internationalism, as the revolt spreads from country to country, taking its demands and its methods with it, and as proletarians everywhere discover that they face the same declining living standards, the same repressive ‘regime’, the same system of exploitation.

Perhaps most importantly, the very fact that the working class has affirmed itself so emphatically precisely at the moment of ‘democratic triumph’, after the departure of Mubarak which was supposed to be the true goal of the revolt, reveals a capacity to resist the calls for sacrifice and renunciation on behalf of the ‘nation’ and the ‘people’, which are always central to the bourgeoisie’s patriotic and democratic campaigns. Interviewed by the press over the past few days, workers in Egypt have frequently pointed to the simple truth that motivates their strikes and protests: they cannot feed their families, because their wages are too low, prices are too high, or they have no prospect of jobs at all. This is increasingly the condition facing the working class in all countries, and no ‘democratic reform’ will go any near alleviating it. The working class has only its struggle as its defence, and the perspective of a new society as its solution.

Amos, 16.2.11

This contribution is based largely on the book The Politics of Heroin (CIA Complicity in the Global Drugs Trade) by Alfred W. McCoy. It deals with the period around World War II, the US state’s use of the Mafia domestically, its use in the invasion of Italy and the subsequent explosion of heroin production up to the late 1950s. McCoy’s is a brave book whose detailed research put him in danger both in the 'field' and back home in the USA. If anything, the analysis in the book is somewhat understated and this makes it all the more effective.

In 1980, US President George Bush Senior, ex-head of the secret services, declared his 'War on Drugs' when the CIA were up to their necks in the drugs business through a whole mosaic of alliances and the protection that they afforded it. Nixon had already declared a 'war on drugs' in 1972 and Reagan after him. Clinton followed with his own expanded version in 1996 and then Bush Junior in 2002. Through all these wars on drugs, opium, hashish, coca and their derivatives, as well as synthetic stimulants (amphetamines, MDMA) increasingly traded like major global commodities according to the laws of the market. This in itself is nothing new. Early European merchants and colonial adventurers, including the British, Dutch, Spanish and French, discovered opium’s potential in the seventeenth century.

More recently, in the 40 years of the Cold War (up to 1989), the USA’s prohibition on drugs went hand in hand with using and protecting major drug dealers in the 'fight against communism'. Through the 50s to the 80s, the Central Intelligence Agency (created by Truman in 1947) used tribal armies that under its protection became major drug lords in Burma, Laos, Afghanistan and Nicaragua. The financing of these armies through the drugs trade relieved the CIA of paying for their costly upkeep (this was in contrast to French imperialism’s role in the drug trade after the war which was much more 'hands on' in the trade itself – see below).

The drugs trade expanded across Asia, Central and Latin America involving Corsican, Italian, nationalist Chinese, Honduran, Haitian, Panamanian and Pakistani gangsters in the CIA 'enforced' non-enforcement areas; generally speaking this went hand in hand with the expansion of the arms trade. After the CIA’s intervention in Burma opium production in this country increased 40-fold; in Afghanistan it was up 460-fold a year or so ago. In 2000, the CIA’s main covert battlegrounds – and thus of the greatest interest to US imperialism – were Afghanistan, Burma and Laos; in that order the three leading opium producers in the world.

In the late 1940s, heroin addiction looked like falling to insignificant levels in the USA which wasn’t surprising given years of world war. Today its prisons are full of drug-related offenders. Five to 10% of all HIV cases are reported to be down to intravenous drug use. The prohibition of drugs, like that of alcohol, facilitated the expansion of the industry and the expansion of corruption where even 'war on drugs' money was channelled into production in some cases. Local suppression turned into global stimulus. The consequences of increased prices and no reduction in demand could only encourage increased production which is pushed back and forth across the globe but always expanding to meet demand. Prohibition has been a major factor in turning the drugs industry into one of the world’s biggest, larger than textiles, steel and automobiles. According to a 1997 UN report “highly centralised” transnational crime groups, with nearly 4 million members (or “associates”) world-wide control most of the drug trade within which police and state corruption and protection are extensive. Despite all these 'wars' on drugs, US diplomats and the CIA have been involved in the drugs trade in what McCoy calls “coincidental” complicity, condoning, concealment and active involvement in transportation.

The USA and the Mafia

World War Two had seen the Mafia in Sicily smashed by Mussolini. Surviving only in outposts in the mountainous areas and in Marseilles, the Corsican Mafia was weakened by their collaboration with the Gestapo. Both these structures, and their drugs businesses, were revived and given new life by the US from the beginning of the Cold War as imperialism reacted to the new realities of American and Russian rivalry. In the 1930s, the 'new guard' of Salvatore C. Luciana, aka, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, turned the American Mafia into a centralised, relatively peaceful national cartel ready to take over the prostitution and narcotics rackets, including the Don’s once-forbidden drug, heroin. Luciano was arrested and convicted in the late 1930s Mafia clampdown. In 1942, in order to exert control over the New York waterfront, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) approached Mafia boss Joseph “Joe Socks” Lanza, also a union agent, for his help. Lanza arranged a meeting with an ONI go-between and Luciano who was residing in Albany prison. Apart from helping with the imposition of domestic repression on the docks and on dockworkers, Luciano also helped in the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943, providing maps, charts and Mafia contacts in the region. ONI operatives reported that the Mafia were “extremely cooperative”.

In the invasion of Sicily local mafiosi were responsible for the rapid speed of General Patton’s advance through the mined roads into Palermo. Further, there is no doubt about the relationship between the US military occupation of Italy and the Mafia, whose representatives were selected as mayors by the Allied Military Government (AMGOT). The commander of this force, Colonel Charles Poletti, appointed Luciano’s lieutenant and New York gangster Vito Genovese (now living in Naples and doing very well after working with the fascists) to assist the US war effort. Genovese was soon using military transports to move all sorts of contraband goods around, reminiscent of Milo Minderbinder in Catch 22. In the meantime Luciano and his cohorts were beginning to integrate all the aspects of the global heroin trade.

Whether you get your news from the papers, TV or online you won't have missed headlines about an 'Egyptian Revolution.' What's happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen has shown that people from many social strata are fed up with the conditions they live in and are rebelling en masse against those who enforce them. The fact that this movement has affected a number of countries is very exciting, but it does not amount to a revolution, i.e. the replacement of one class by another. Despite the scale and heroism of the uprisings, despite the promise they contain, most of the explicit demands being made only amount to an adjustment of the capitalist political system: bourgeois rule has not been consciously challenged.

In Egypt, for example, the move to get rid of Mubarak now has the support of the army and US imperialism, so as a demand it is clearly no challenge to capitalist rule. Yet the leftists go along with the idea that a revolution is taking place. “Victory to the Egyptian revolution” is the front page headline of Socialist Worker (5/2/11). In the same issue the SWP say that “The overthrowing of Mubarak would fundamentally challenge the status quo in the oil rich region.” In reality the replacement of Mubarak has become part of US policy which it is undertaking through its links with the Egyptian army.

The SWP see the uprising in Egypt as a blow against Israel and ultimately the control of the US in the region who rely on Israel to act as its policeman in the Middle East: " a revolutionary transformation of the region would throw this arrangement into question and give hope that Arab people can win their fight for freedom." Not only is the talk of a 'revolutionary transformation' a misleading description of the immediate potential of the situation, but the genuine struggles of workers and other oppressed strata are obscured by the nationalist jargon about the “Arab people.”

It is not surprising that, in an article in which the SWP says Egypt is “on the verge of revolution”, it refers to “the memory of the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9.” Back then, during the period of upheaval which led to the replacement of the Shah by the regime headed by Khomeini, as well as the popular demonstrations there were also militant workers' strikes. In October 1978 the strikes of tens of thousands oil workers, steel workers and rail workers were major factors in the Shah's exit. But that didn't mean there was a revolution. The Islamic regime which came to power in the wake of these events is perhaps even more repressive than the rule of the Shah.

And today the leftists, for all their talk of the importance of the working class, still look to other forces and ideas as the key element in the situation. For example, the SWP describes the Muslim Brotherhood as a “contradictory force”. By this it means that although it is a conservative force and “its leaders include factory owners and rural landlords” it also “has the respect and support of millions of Egyptians.” While revolutionaries are straightforward in denouncing any party that wants to take its place in the capitalist state apparatus, leftists pick out their favourites from the contending bourgeois forces.

The SWP also says that “the hold of Nasser and nationalism remains a strong force.” But instead of exposing the influence of the current generation of Nasserites the SWP claim that they too have an 'ambiguous' role: “They are deeply hostile to neoliberalism―not because they oppose capitalism, but because they believe all industry should be under state control. They support some peasants’ and workers’ demands, yet believe these should be limited by the needs of national unity. This means that the role they will play in the coming period remains unclear.”

Why would we expect any more from a group that thinks (as they did in the 1950s!) that “Nasser’s radical reforms inspired the Arab masses, and threatened imperialist domination of the Middle East.” The truth is that many had illusions in Nasser, but that far from threatening imperialism he was an integral part of the imperialist conflicts in the region. During his rule and that of his successors Egypt became an outpost of Russian imperialism prior to switching sides in the conflict between the two blocs.

The promotion of Arab nationalism is widespread throughout the left. The ‘Communist Party of Great Britain’ that publishes Weekly Worker (quotes from nos 850 and 851)is particularly strong on pan-Arabism, in a way that is reminiscent of Bakunin's pan-Slavism. Avoiding a class analysis the CPGB says that Mubarak's Egypt is “An everyday living insult, and humiliation, to ordinary Egyptians and the very idea of pan-Arabism in general” and that “Arab reunification remains an urgent but unfulfilled task.” Instead of a marxist understanding of the international unity of the working class the CPGB argue that “the Arab masses have a shared problem. The answer should be a common solution, which, of course, there is - revolutionary pan-Arab unity.” Referring to the “Arab masses” and making pseudo-scientific pontifications about the “objective and cultural-psychological conditions for pan-Arab unity exist in abundance” does not change the class reality of capitalism, where only a conscious working class can overthrow bourgeois rule, and where all forms of nationalism stand in the way of class consciousness.

The CPGB claim that “A free Egypt, as part of a pan-Arab revolution that rages across the entire region, would challenge the hegemony of Israel.” This shows where their position leads. The expression “challenge the hegemony” ultimately means 'go to war with'. This is where the leftists' ideas lead. The CPGB's idea of a 'revolution' raging across the Middle East means plunging it into an imperialist war in which many of the 'Arab masses' will lose their lives. In the past support for the Palestinian 'revolution' by SWP founder Tony Cliff meant support for Nasser's Egypt in 1967's Six Day War. Not only do leftist ideas hamper the real movement of the working class toward a real revolution, they also lead to imperialist war.

Car 5/2/11

At the time of writing, the social situation in Egypt remains explosive. Millions of people have been on the streets, braving the curfew, the state regime and its bloody repression. At the same time the social movement in Tunisia has not gone away: the flight of Ben Ali, the government reshuffle and the promise of elections has not succeeded in damping down the deep anger of the population. In Jordan thousands of demonstrators have expressed their discontent with growing poverty. In Algeria the protests seems to have been stifled but there is a powerful international black-out and it seems that there are still struggles going on in Kabylia.

The media and politicians of all kinds talk non-stop about the ‘revolts in the Arab world’, focusing attention on regional specificities, on the lack of local democracy, on the exasperation of the population with seeing the same faces in power for 30 years.

All this is true. Ben Ali, Mubarak, Rifai, Bouteflika and co. are true gangsters, caricatured expressions of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But above all, these social movements belong to the exploited of all countries. These explosions of anger are rooted in the acceleration of the world economic crisis which is plunging more and more of humanity into grinding poverty.   

After Tunisia, Egypt! The contagion of revolt in the Arab states, especially in North Africa, which the ruling class has feared for so long, has arrived with a bang. Populations who have been faced with the economic hardships caused by the world economic crisis have also had to deal with ruthlessly repressive regimes. And faced with this explosion of anger, the governments and rulers have shown their true colours as a class which reigns through starvation and murder. The only response they can come up with is tear gas and bullets. And we are not just talking about the ‘dictators’ on the spot. Our own ‘democratic’ rulers, right wing and left wing, have long been the friends and allies of these same dictators in the maintenance of capitalist order. The much-vaunted stability of these countries against the danger of radical Islamism has for decades been based on police terror, and our good democrats have happily turned a blind eye to their tortures, their corruption, to the climate of fear in which they have lorded it over the population. In the name of stability, of non-intervention in internal matters, of peace and friendship between peoples, they have supported these regimes for their own sordid imperialist reasons.

The social revolt in Egypt

In Egypt we have seen dozens, perhaps hundreds of deaths, thousands wounded, tens of thousand more wounded or arrested. The fall of Ben Ali was the detonator. It stirred up a huge wave of hope among the population of the Arab regimes. We also saw many outbursts of despair, with a series of suicides in Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, western Sahara, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, particularly among young unemployed people. In Egypt, we heard the same slogans as in Tunisia: “Bread, Freedom, Dignity!” This was clearly a response to the principal effects of the world economic crisis: unemployment (in Egypt it affects 20% of the population); insecurity (in Egypt, 4 out of 10 live below the poverty line and several international documentaries have been made about the people who live by sorting through the Cairo rubbish heaps); the rising price of basic necessities. The slogan ‘Mubarak, dégage’ was taken directly from the Tunisians who called for the departure of Ben Ali. Demonstrators in Cairo proclaimed “It’s not our government, they are our enemies!” An Egyptian journalist said to a correspondent from Figaro: “No political movement can claim to have started these demonstrations. It’s the street which is expressing itself. People have nothing to lose. Things can’t go on any longer”. One phrase is on everyone’s lips: “we are no longer afraid”.

In April 2008, the workers of a textile factor in Mahalla to the north of Cairo came out on strike for better wages and working conditions, To support the workers and call for a general strike on 6 April, a group of young people had organised themselves on Facebook and Twitter. Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested. This time, and in contrast to Tunisia, the Egyptian government blocked internet access in advance.     

On Tuesday 25 January, so-called ‘National Police Day’, tens of thousands of protestors hit the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Tanta and Suez and came up against the forces of order. Four days of confrontations followed; state violence only fuelled the anger. During these days and nights, the riot police used tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition. Standing by was an army of 500,000, very well equipped and trained, a central pillar of the regime, unlike in Tunisia. The power also made extensive use of the ‘baltageyas’, thugs directly controlled by the state and specialising in breaking up demonstrations, as well as numerous agents of the state security wearing civilian clothes and merging with the demonstrators.

On Friday 28 January, a day off work, around noon, despite the banning of public gatherings, demonstrators came out of the mosques and onto the streets in huge numbers, everywhere confronting the police. This day was named ‘The Day of Rage’. The government had already cut off internet and mobile phone networks and even landline telephones. Still the movement swelled: in the evening, the demonstrations defied the curfew in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez....Police trucks used water cannon against the crowds, made up largely of young people. In Cairo, army tanks were at first welcomed as liberating heroes, and there were a number of attempts to fraternise with the army; this was given a lot of publicity and in one case at least it prevented a convoy of armoured cars from supporting the forces of order. Some policemen threw off their arm bands and joined the demonstrators. But very soon, in other areas, armoured cars opened fire on the demonstrators who had come to greet them, or mowed them down. The head of the army, Sami Anan, who led a military delegation to the US for talks at the Pentagon, came back in a hurry to Egypt on the Friday. Police cars and stations, as well as the HQ of the governing party, were torched and the Ministry of Information ransacked. The wounded piled up in overworked hospitals. In Alexandria, the government building was also burned down. In Mansoura on the Nile Delta there were violent confrontations that left several dead. A number of people tried to take over the state television station but were rebuffed by the army.     

Around 11.30 at night Mubarak appeared on TV, announcing the dismissal of his government team and promising political reforms and steps towards democracy, while firmly insisting on the need to maintain the “security and stability of Egypt against attempts at destabilisation”. These proposals merely increased the anger and determination of the protestors.

A worry for the imperialists

But although for the demonstrators Tunisia was a model, the stakes involved in the situation are not the same for the bourgeoisie. Tunisia is a relatively small country and it holds an imperialist interest mainly for a second rate power like France[1]. It’s very different with Egypt which is easily the most densely populated country in the region (over 80 million inhabitants) and which above all occupies a key strategic position in the Middle East, especially for the American bourgeoisie. The fall of the Mubarak regime could result in a regional chaos that would have heavy consequences. Mubarak is the USA’s principal ally in the region next to Israel, playing a preponderant role in Israel-Palestine relations as well as relations between Al Fatah and Hamas. This state has up till now been seen as a stabilising factor in the Middle East. At the same time the political developments in Sudan, which is on the verge of splitting in two, makes a strong Egypt all he more necessary. It is therefore a vital cog in the US strategy towards the Israel-Arab conflict and its destablisation risks spilling over into a number of neighbouring countries, especially Jordan, Libya, Yemen and Syria. This explains the anxieties of the US, whose close relations with the Mubarak regime put it in a very uncomfortable position. Obama and US diplomacy have been trying to put pressure on Mubarak while saving the essentials of the regime. This is why Obama made it public that he had spent half an hour talking to Mubarak and urging him to throw off more ballast. Before that, Hilary Clinton had declared that the forces of order needed to show more restraint and that the government should very quickly restore the means of communication. The next day, probably as a result of American pressure, General Omar Suleiman, head of the powerful military security forces, responsible for negotiations with Israel, was brought in as Vice President.   The army has gained in popularity for having remained in the rear during the demonstrations and for having on numerous occasions taken a friendly attitude towards the crowds. This allowed it to argue in a number of cases that people should go back to their homes to protect them from looters.

And in other Arab countries...

Other expressions of revolt have appeared in Algeria, Yemen and Jordan. In the latter, 4,000 people gathered in Amman for the third time in three weeks to protest against the cost of living and to demand economic and political reforms, in particular the resignation of the prime minister. The authorities made a few gestures, some small economic measures were taken and some political consultations held. But the demonstrations spread to the towns of Irbid and Kerak. In Algeria, on 22 January, a demonstration in the centre of Algiers was brutally repressed, leaving 5 dead and over 800 injured. In Tunisia the fall of Ben Ali has not put an end to the anger, nor to the repression. In the prisons, summary executions since the departure of Ben Ali have added up to more deaths than during the clashes with the police. A ‘liberation caravan’ from the western part of the country, where the movement first started, has defied the curfew and been camped outside the PM’s offices demanding the resignation of a government still made up of the cronies and chiefs of the Ben Ali regime. The anger has not gone away because the same old people are holding onto the reins of power. A government reshuffle finally took place on 27 January, chucking out the most compromised ministers but retaining the same PM. This still didn’t calm things down. Ferocious police repression continues and the situation remains confused.

These explosions of massive, spontaneous revolt reveal that the population is fed up and no longer wants to put up with the poverty and repression doled out by these regimes. But they also show the weight of democratic and nationalist illusions: in numerous demonstrations, the national flags are being brandished very widely. In Egypt as in Tunisia, the anger of the exploited has been quickly pushed towards a struggle for more democracy. The population’s hatred for the regime and the focus on Mubarak (as on Ben Ali in Tunisia) has meant that the economic demands against poverty and unemployment have been relegated into the background by all the bourgeois media. This obviously makes it possible for the ruling class in the democratic countries to sell the idea to the working class, especially in the central countries, that these ‘popular uprisings’ don’t have the same fundamental causes as the workers’ struggles going on here: the bankruptcy of world capitalism.

Towards the development of the class struggle

This eruption of the social anger engendered by the aggravation of the world crisis of capitalism in the countries at the peripheries of the system, which up until now have almost exclusively been dominated by war and imperialist tensions, is a major new political factor which the world bourgeoisie will have to reckon with more and more. The rise of these revolts against the corruption of leaders who are pocketing vast fortunes while the great majority of the population goes hungry, can’t lead to a solution in these countries on their own. But they are signs of the ripening of social conflicts that cannot fail to burst to the surface in the most developed countries in response to the same evils: falling living standards, growing poverty, massive youth unemployment.   

We are already beginning to see the rebellion of young people in Europe against the failure of world capitalism, with the students’ struggles in France, Britain and Italy. The most recent example is Holland: in The Hague on 22 January, 20,000 students and teachers gathered in front of the parliament building and the ministry of education. They were protesting against the sharp rise in university entrance fees, which will in the first place hit those repeating their second year, which is often the case with students who have to work to pay for their studies. They will have to pay an extra 300 euro a year, while the latest budgets envisage cutting 7000 jobs in this sector. This was one of the most important student demos in the country for 20 years. It was also brutally attacked by the police.

These social movements are the symptom of the international development of the class struggle, even if, in the Arab countries, the working class has not yet clearly appeared as an autonomous force and is mixed up in a movement of popular protest.

All over the world, the gulf is widening between a ruling class, the bourgeoisie, which displays its wealth with indecent arrogance, and on the other hand the mass of the exploited falling deeper and deeper into deprivation. This gulf is tending to unite proletarians of all countries, to forge them into a common front, while the bourgeoisie can only respond to the indignation of those it exploits with new austerity measures, with truncheons and bullets.   

Revolts and social struggles will inevitably take on different forms in the years to come and in different regions. The strengths and weaknesses of these social movements will not be the same everywhere. In some cases, their anger, militancy and courage will be exemplary. In others, the methods and massive nature of the struggle will make it possible to open new perspectives and establish a balance of forces in favour of the working class, the only social force that can offer a future to humanity. In particular, the concentration and experience of the proletariat of the countries at the heart of world capitalism will be decisive. Without the massive mobilisation of the workers in the central countries, the social revolts in the peripheries of capitalism will be condemned to impotence and will fall under the domination of this or that faction of the ruling class. Only the international struggle of the working class, its solidarity, its unity, its organisation and its consciousness of what’s at stake in its combat will be able to draw all the oppressed layers of society into a fight to put an end to dying capitalism and build a new world in its place.  

RI 30/01/11

As well as this article we have produced a shorter leaflet here [24], which can be downloaded and distributed by our sympathisers.

Over 200,000 public sector workers and students have taken to the streets and are occupying the state capitol in Wisconsin to protest proposed changes to collective bargaining agreements between the state government and its public employee unions. The state’s rookie governor, Tea Party backed Republican Scott Walker, has proposed a bill removing collective bargaining rights for the majority of the state's 175,000 public employees, effectively prohibiting them from negotiating pension and health care contributions, leaving only the right to bargain over salaries. Moreover, according to the legislation, public employee unions would have to submit themselves to yearly certification votes in order to maintain the right to represent workers in future scaled down negotiations. Firefighters not affected by the proposed changes (because their union supported Walker in the November election) have shown their solidarity with those under attack by joining the protests, which many say have taken inspiration from the wave of unrest sweeping Egypt and the wider Middle East. Many Wisconsin protestors proudly display placards giving the Governor the ominous moniker Scott “Mubarak” Walker, while others hold aloft sings asking, “If Egypt Can Have Democracy, Why Can’t Wisconsin?” Protesters in Egypt have even shown their solidarity with workers in Wisconsin!

Meanwhile, although the U.S. State Department has repeatedly called on Arab leaders to show restraint against protestors these past weeks, Gov. Walker has threatened to bring in the National Guard to suppress if necessary! Some veterans groups have responded that the guard’s job is to respond to disasters not serve as the Governor’s personal goon squad. The political situation in Wisconsin is said to be fragile, as a constitutional crisis looms. All 14 Democratic state senators have fled the state, denying the Republican controlled state legislature the quorum it needs to pass the Governor’s bill. It is said that if they are found within the state, the state patrol will arrest them and bring them back to the capitol! On the other hand, union and Democratic leaders openly talk of recalling the Governor and any state senators who support his legislation. American politics just keeps getting more and more cartoon-like with each crisis!

Source: Politico.com [25]

The crisis in Wisconsin has been framed by the national media as the first real clash of a Tea Party backed Republican executive using his newly found political power to enact an ideological agenda of destroying the public employee unions that many Tea Partiers and Republicans blame for the virtual bankruptcy of state governments across the country. These Republicans say that enacting austerity is necessary in order to balance a state budget crippled by a massive $137 million deficit. On the other hand, Democrats and their friends in the unions are making a hue and cry over the Republican governor and his national Tea Party allies making good political use of a real fiscal dilemma to push their union busting ideology. Who's right?

It is true that, just as in Europe, the American states are in effect facing insolvency. While at the national level the federal government can still indulge in quantitative easing (in effect printing more dollars), the states have no such privilege and therefore face an urgent need to push through drastic austerity measures if they are to balance their budgets and remain financially viable in the bond markets. At this level, Gov. Walkers’ legislation appears to fit a vital need of the bourgeoisie to lower the state’s labor costs and gain a lasting advantage in future negotiations by limiting the scope of future contracts. He would seem to be setting a model to be followed in other states, as they struggle to come to grips with their terrible fiscal situations.

However, on a more global level, the bourgeoisie is also well aware of the political and social risks of launching heavy attacks on workers already hammered by high unemployment, pay freezes, furloughs and the collapse of the real estate market. Hence the tried and true American strategy of pushing attacks through in a piecemeal fashion at the state and local level, rather than launching a direct and immediate frontal assault on federal entitlement programs. Still, there is a risk that Gov. Walker’s legislation would go too far in destabilizing the unions—which act as the shop floor police to control workers’ anger, as well as the state Democratic Party itself, which relies on the unions for much of its campaign fundraising. Gov. Walker’s policy could not only risk emasculating the unions when the bourgeoisie needs them the most, it could also threaten to upset the two-party system in a vital swing state that President Obama won in 2008.

Last year saw protests in California against cuts to education budgets and earlier last week workers in Ohio protested a bill that would limit collective bargaining for state employees there, as did teachers in Indianapolis. When the need for further attacks come, the bourgeoisie will need the union apparatus there in order to contain the workers’ militancy and make sure the struggle remains within the scope of bargaining over wages and benefits rather than threaten the state itself.

The perilous state of Wisconsin's finances isn't uncommon. It's facing a $137 million budget deficit this financial year, and a whopping $3.6 billion over the next two years. The most drastic aspects of Gov. Walker's cuts demands that most state and local employees contribute half the cost of their pensions and at least 12.6 percent of their health insurance premiums. However, this is only projected to save the state $30 million by this June, rising to $300 million over the next two years, only 10% of the deficit. The rest of the bill proposes to save $165 million this year by simply refinancing state debt. Thus the biggest savings have nothing to do with public employees. This is of course cold comfort to the workers facing crippling increases in pension contributions and health care costs. One estimate says the proposal amounts to an effective pay cut of 10% for the average Madison teacher.

With the average contract negotiation taking 15 months, the Governor has refused to meet with the unions, instead calling for drastic measures, threatening the layoff of 1,500 state workers if his plan isn't accepted. He certainly seems to be staying true to his reputation of playing hardball. But is this just another case of a Republican trying to out 'right-wing' the right of his party by busting the unions? Walker himself is very clear: “For us, it’s simple. We’re broke. It’s not about the unions. It’s about balancing the budget.” (NY Times [26]) From the union side, David Ahrens, of the UW-Madison's Carbone Cancer Center, disputes the emergency nature of the situation saying, “That would be more believable if he had ever bothered to meet with the unions to begin with.” (Wisconsin State Journal [27])

President Obama also weighed in on the union’s behalf, repaying the $200 million they spent on his November election campaign and calling Mr. Walker’s proposals “an assault on unions.” However, the House speaker, Rep. John Boehner, of Ohio, praised Mr. Walker for “confronting problems that have been neglected for years at the expense of jobs and economic growth.” As would be expected, the Left has come to the defense of the unions as the workers’ best protection in tough times, while the right descries them as historical anachronisms that stunt economic growth and kill jobs. What are workers to make of all this?

It's important to understand the key role the unions play as part of the state apparatus. They are 'social firefighters', acting as a safety valve at the economic and political levels. The kind of collective bargaining agreements under attack today were introduced by the likes of President Kennedy who saw their benefits in terms of social control offered by the unions, especially when the kinds of 'victories' the unions were winning included no-strike clauses! In the late 60s and early 70s these 'concessions' were certainly more affordable in economic terms than they are today. Forty years of economic crisis has led to great erosions in the social wage enjoyed by the post-war baby boomers. But while the unions are expensive in economic terms, they are also effective tools in imposing austerity on the working class. For example, in Wisconsin the unions [28] “already negotiated a deal with the previous administration for $100 million in cuts to benefits along with an outright 3% pay reduction.” One gets the sense that unions’ anger at the Governor’s plans is not so much about the cuts to the workers they are supposed to represent, but at the prospect of no longer be regarded as partners with the state in managing the economy. In fact, Marty Beil, head of WSEU/AFSCME—the Wisconsin public employees’ union argued that the union was perfectly willing to go along with certain cuts, but could not stand for the Governor’s brazen power play: “We are prepared to implement the financial concessions proposed to help bring our state's budget into balance, but we will not be denied our God-given right to join a real union... we will not - I repeat we will not - be denied our rights to collectively bargain.” In a conference call with the media she continued, "This is not about money (…) We understand the need to sacrifice." (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel [29])

All the talk of union busting is at bottom an attempt to derail the discontent shown by the workers against the attacks on their living condition into the dead-end of the defense of unions themselves and the democracy they supposedly embody and away from effective strike action to defend their living and working conditions. Already, in the movement in Wisconsin, the unions have been very effective in couching it in terms of the defense of “democracy” (hence the linking to Egypt), even though it is their allies, the Democratic Senators who appear, for the moment, to have obstructed the functioning of the bourgeois democratic apparatus by absconding from the state. Already, national Tea Party activists have bused in counter-demonstrators coming to the “democratically-elected” Governor’s defense and to protect the “majority of Wisconsinites” who voted for his tough actions against the unions. If your main goal is to defend “democracy,” it’s not clear which side you would support!

In a sense, the hunt of the state troopers for the missing senators is emblematic of the deeper hunt the US bourgeoisie is having for a solution to its economic crisis. As that solution proves ever more elusive, the bourgeoisie on all levels—federal, state and local—will have to resort to further attacks against the working class. Public employees—civil servants, firefighters, highway workers and above all teachers—will be on the front line of this assault. It is no accident, or simply an ideological penchant of the right wing, that Tea Partiers and Republicans have put public employees in the cross hairs. It is their wage and benefit bill that most immediately impacts the fiscal solvency of the state.

Moreover, attacks against public employees have not been limited to states governed by Republicans. In New York, Democratic Gov. Cuomo has threatened nearly 10,000 layoffs if union negotiations stall, while Democrat Jerry Brown in California has talked about the need for painful cuts to solve that state’s perennially budget woes. On the federal level, President Obama himself has frozen federal employees' salaries and his budget commission has threatened to lay off 10 percent of the federal workforce! Nevertheless, the zealousness with which Tea Party Republicans like Walker have carried their crusade against the very foundation of the unions (as distinct from the workers they are supposed to represent) has the potential to backfire if it is carried to its ultimate conclusion. The bourgeoisie will inevitably need to call on the unions as the class struggle continues to heat up. The attempt by a rookie Republican Governor to wipe out the unions in his state is yet another example of the difficulties the U.S. national bourgeoisie is having in controlling its political process as a result of the social decomposition that deepens every day this system still stands.

Colin, 02/20/11.