Egypt: Dead-end Reform Goal Doomed Militant Fighters

In actions that inspired the world’s working class, millions of Egyptian workers and students filled the streets of Cairo and other major cities in January demanding the head of Hosni Mubarak, the dictator who ruled Egypt since 1981. Workers’ strikes in key industries, such as oil, textile, transport and on the Suez Canal were crucial in persuading the military to abandon Mubarak, forcing him out.

Sadly, nine months later the workers’ and students’ hopes have been dashed. The absence of communist ideas and leadership and the consequent reliance on the dead-end capitalist notion of reform as the key to ending workers’ oppression doomed the movement from the beginning. Consider:

• One of the most widespread demands was raising the minimum wage, which has remained at $6.30 A MONTH since 1984. In the last ten years, national output (GDP) per person has doubled from $250 a month to $500, but the increased income has all gone to those in the top 10%. The new military government has steadfastly refused to raise the minimum wage. Nor has it raised pensions: in its last year, the Mubarak government raised the minimum pension (what most retirees get) from $9 a month to $24.

• Another key demand was the right to organize independent unions, student groups and political associations. The military government did allow the formation of new political parties if focused only on the upcoming elections. But meanwhile, it has viciously repressed protests. Rather than abolishing the hated military tribunals and the fascist “emergency law” (in place since 1981), the military government has used them more than ever. About 12,000 civilian protestors have been brought before military tribunals, with over 99.9% given long prison sentences — ten times the pace under Mubarak. Workers protesting unsafe working conditions and low wages have been especially singled out for attack.

• The January protests demanded a government more accountable to the people. The great “accomplishment” of that Papyrus Revolution (as it was called) replaced an 82-year-old Air Force general (Mubarak) with a 78-year-old Army general (Mohamed Hussein Tantawi), the head of the new military government!  And these honchos have carefully designed election rules to ensure that the same old elite is re-elected to Parliament. Dissolution of the old ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), mattered little. In the old system the local bosses in each city and town would buy their election, often as “independents” who, after winning, simply rejoined the NDP. The new system will produce the same result; in fact, probably most of the old Parliament members will remain.

Workers and students have lost because they relied on capitalist “democracy.” For months under the new government, they poured into the streets in the hundreds of thousands. But the military government out-waited them.

By contrast, the fascist Muslim Brotherhood is advancing from victory to victory. The military government has been making lots of changes reflecting the Brotherhood’s agenda, allowing it partial power in exchange for Brotherhood cooperation in crushing the workers’ and students’ movement. This deal was on full display in July and August, when Brotherhood-linked thugs — the “Salafist” religious fundamentalists — and the military attacked protestors on alternate days.

Most Egyptians reject the Brotherhood’s religious extremism. The military government has been forced to use the Salafist thugs for its dirty work, especially the racist campaign against the Copts, the 10% of Egyptians who are Christian. They have traditionally suffered tremendous racist discrimination.

The ruling classes everywhere use racism to secure political and economic control. But Egyptians who turn out in the streets have repeatedly demanded more jobs, higher wages and better public services, not religious extremism. Only communist leadership can move these militant reform demands into revolution.

Egypt’s experience shows how much a communist party matters. Just think of the difference if Egyptian workers had a revolutionary communist party which could organize millions of workers to target the heart of Egypt’s ruling class (instead of concentrating on Tahrir Square). That party could have turned this part of the Arab Spring into a glimpse of a worker-led communist society.