Beyond the 'democratic transition'

The Egyptian revolution that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship in January also created the conditions for uniting the masses of North Africa and the Middle East with the new movements that have emerged, particularly in southern Europe, against a common enemy.

In overthrowing the corrupt authoritarian regime, the masses found themselves face to face with the harsh reality that the economic conditions which had driven on the uprising remain unchanged after Mubarak was removed. These take a unique Egyptian form. The armed forces, which were the backbone of the Mubarak state, own factories that make a range of products ranging from weapons to drugs, and even home appliances such as cookers. The state is reckoned to own a third of the economy through the army. The banking sector is also largely state owned.

Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States, its major creditor, Egypt in recent year set about “liberalising” the economy and introducing “market reforms” through “structural adjustment programmes” (SAPs). These led to massive unemployment, rising poverty – about 44.4% of the Egyptian population were designated extreme poor to near poor in 2005 – and inflation, fuelling the revolution that swept Mubarak out.

The point of this story is that the IMF, Washington and agencies like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will, if they have their way, redirect the revolution’s energy into even deeper “reforms” and bigger SAPs that will integrate Egypt into the global market capitalist economy. This is also the plan for Tunisia and Libya.

The detail is brilliantly outlined in an article by Adam Hanieh for the ezine Jadaliyya. He explains:

Despite the claims of democratic transition, the institutions of the Egyptian state are being refashioned within this neoliberal drive as an enabling mechanism of the market. Egypt is, in many ways, shaping up as the perfect laboratory of the so-called post-Washington Consensus, in which a liberal-sounding ‘pro poor’ rhetoric – principally linked to the discourse of democratisation – is used to deepen the neoliberal trajectory of the Mubarak-era. If successful, the likely outcome of this – particularly in the face of heightened political mobilisation and the unfulfilled expectations of the Egyptian people – is a society that at a superficial level takes some limited appearances of the form of liberal democracy but, in actuality, remains a highly authoritarian neoliberal state dominated by an alliance of the military and business elites.

In essence, the financial initiatives announced over recent weeks represent an attempt to bind social layers such as these – Egypt’s military and business elites, the ruling families and large conglomerates of the GCC[Gulf states], and so forth – ever more tightly to the Western states. The revolutionary process in Egypt represented an attack against these elements of the Arab world. The uprising cannot be reduced to a question of ‘democratic transition’ –precisely because the political form of the Egyptian state under Mubarak was a direct reflection of the nature of capitalism in the country, the uprising implicitly involved a challenge to the position of these elites.

Hanieh is right. Democracy is neutralised while the power of the ruling corporate and military elites remains in place. That is the lesson not just of Egypt. In Spain, which had a “democratic transition” in 1975 after the death of the fascist dictator Franco, and in Britain where capitalist democracy has held sway for about 150 years, corporate and financial power predominates more openly than ever.

In Spain, the Real Democracy Now/M-15 movement is challenging the political system, while in Greece – which the IMF has bankrupted – anti-government struggles grow. In Britain, hundreds of thousands of workers are set to strike against the Coalition’s measures at the end of the month.

These confrontations effectively join with the Egyptian revolution, which is at a crucial stage. Democracy, if it is to mean anything, must embrace co-ownership and control of economic and financial resources, the repudiation of foreign debt and telling the money markets to get lost. That would constitute a genuine revolutionary, democratic transition and could be achieved through a network of people’s assemblies in each country. That’s what you’d call a structural adjustment programme of a positive kind!

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Power is not a dirty word

The occupation of Puerta del Sol in Madrid and actions in other Spanish cities organised by the Real Democracy Now/M-15 movement, openly challenges the country’s economic and status quo.

Where the movement heads next, its likely ambitions and aspirations, are hotly contested and debated in Madrid, Barcelona and outside Spanish embassies in other countries where solidarity camps have been established.

Some have designated the movement as the start of the Spanish Revolution and reject the mainstream political process, urging people “not to vote for them” in last Sunday’s elections. In London, one debate is between those who view it as primarily a Spanish question and others who favour a more global approach.

An open debate and struggle over ideas, orientation, strategy and tactics is fundamental. The M-15’s manifesto embraces this approach and the way the Puerta del Sol occupation is run encapsulates in microcosm how a future society could work more democratically than the present capitalist one.

For some, engaging in an alternative democratic, transparent process is a victory in itself and the movement should more or less leave it there. On his Beyond Clicktivism blog, Tim Hardy endorses philosopher John Holloway’s view that “the quest for power with the aim of transforming society sets us up for perpetual disappointment”.

Hardy claims the Spanish protests “don’t hope to seize power” and seek “instead to transform existing power relations” allowing “participants to directly experience the possibility of a better world through participating in assemblies and consensus decision-making.”

Well, yes and no dialectically speaking. The M-15’s manifesto says, for example, “the current status of our government and economic system… in many ways is an obstacle to human progress.” While the manifesto does not explicitly demand a new system, the implication is clear:

“The will and purpose of the current system is the accumulation of money, not regarding efficiency and the welfare of society. Wasting resources, destroying the planet, creating unemployment and unhappy consumers.”

In Holloway’s outlook, all power is alienating and is to be avoided; only consciousness developed in the struggle is positive. In his book Change the world without taking power (here’s an excellent critique of it by Phil Sharpe), Holloway focuses on human spontaneous activity because, he claims, it alone has the quality of overcoming alienation. Why it has not done so yet, despite countless mass struggles, is not explained.

As Sharpe notes: “In strategic terms Holloway can only postulate an endless repetition of struggle as being able to ultimately transcend alienation. This glosses over the tendency of spontaneous struggles to have alienating limitations and qualities that undermine the possibility of universal human emancipation. These embrace the tendency to gravitate towards reformist aims and restricted trade union type demands and the related acceptance of capitalism.”

The fact remains, whether we like it or not, that capitalism organises itself through state structures. The state is not some neutral body that can be won over to the side of ordinary people. Corporations and banks express their power over ordinary people through this state, which has physical force available to uphold its authority.

The state creates laws and practices that relate to property and share ownership, employment, working conditions, education, social rights, welfare and so on. It is in essence a capitalist state. Everything working people have gained is the result of a struggle AGAINST the state in each country.

What is new is that the political parties like the PSOE in Spain and Labour in Britain that once mediated between capital and labour through their access to the state’s political system, no longer pretend to do so. Corporate-driven globalisation has meant these parties’ effective integration into a market state.

In this context, making use of the existing state structures, including the political system, to shape human society in a progressive fashion is no longer a viable option. The present state has to go and power has to change hands, from the minority to the majority, in revolutionary practice. Corporate and financial power could be co-owned and controlled and exercised through a network of people’s assemblies.

Creating “real democracy now” demands nothing less.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Madrid echoes the spirit of Tahrir Square

The Real Democracy Now movement that has sprung up across Spain, with a main square in Madrid under occupation since Sunday, is a key moment in the developing global struggle against the failure of the political and economic status quo.

Drawing their inspiration from Tahrir Square in Cairo – where the Egyptian revolution began – thousands have organised themselves into a people’s assembly in Puerta del Sol to discuss a way forward. The movement, which is independent of political parties and the trade unions, used social networking sites to mobilise for the occupation.

A pamphlet distributed by organisers said they "do not represent any political party” and that "we want a new society that prioritises life over economic and political interests. We advocate a change in society and social consciousness. "Fabio Gándara, the spokesman for Democracia Real Ya, a 26-year-old unemployed lawyer who is studying to be a civil servant, said: "What we're denouncing is the lack of real democracy and the tendency toward a two-party system where corruption at all levels is simply scandalous.”

With tents, mattresses, a kitchen, a workshop and even a pharmacy, protesters have refused to budge, defying the decision of regional election officials that they should leave the square. They have also organised their own security teams to keep order in the square. There are at least 57 so-called "Sol campsites" that have popped up across the country in solidarity. Spaniards living abroad have also set up camps outside Spain's embassies in Berlin and London, and in Amsterdam's Dam Square.

In Spain – just as it was in Tunisia and Egypt, where the Arab spring began at the start of the year – the movement is driven by the “lost generation” of educated but unemployed young people. An estimated 45% of them are without work while average unemployment at over 20% is the highest in Europe.

They are the victims of a global capitalist recession which has devastated Spain’s economy which floundered when a gigantic property bubble burst in 2008. And they are casualties of the post-Franco dictatorship politics too.

The fascist regime was replaced by los señores Tweedledum and Tweedledee – aka the Socialist Party (PSOE) and the right-wing People’s Party (PP). Only fewer and fewer Spaniards can tell the difference between them. Both parties are endemically corrupt and have shared the role of integrating Spain into the global market-driven capitalist economy.

One result is that Spain is close to following Ireland, Portugal and Greece in seeking a bail-out from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. That would spell not only the collapse of the eurozone but trigger a new global financial collapse.

That is why Real Democracy Now is saying “Don’t vote for them” – the PSOE and PP – in Sunday’s regional and local elections because neither represents the interests of ordinary people. This is an astonishing indictment of a parliamentary democracy that was only established in 1977 after Franco’s death two years earlier.

This, naturally, poses the question of if not this “democracy”, then what type of political system should replace it? The protests in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and other cities, popularly known as M-15 as they began on May 15, have started that debate. In Sol Square there is a “democracy wall” where people have stuck hundreds of notes with their thoughts on them, declarations and statements.

In Egypt, the dictatorship was overthrown but power remains out of reach, resting in the hands of an army that owns a large chunk of the economy. In Spain, a 35-year-old parliamentary democracy leaves real power in the hands of the corporations and banks who use politicians as a front.

For a “real” democracy to work, it must involve the transfer of economic and financial resources into the hands of ordinary working people, alongside the replacing of the capitalist state by forms of popular power. Many took up the fight against Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s with that aim in mind. The revolution was cruelly betrayed by Stalinism and then defeated. Puerta del Sol signals a chance to put history back on course.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor