Egypt's second revolution for 'bread, freedom, justice'

The second Egyptian revolution which is firmly under way has swept millions into the new uprising against the presidency of Mohamed Morsi, whose regime has patently failed to solve any of the day-to-day problems of the masses.

Viewing the crisis in Egypt primarily as a conflict between the forces of Islam and secularism is mistaken. Like all religions, Islam provides a form of expression for the very poor who are otherwise unrepresented.

Although the target is the Muslim Brotherhood, the central issues are poverty, unemployment, corruption and deepening inequality. The Morsi government has failed on all these counts.

Millions of Egyptians are voting with their feet in every major city to rage against the Morsi government. Like their predecessors in 2011 they vow they will not leave the streets until the regime is gone.

Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, came to power after the 2011 February revolution which saw long-standing dictator Hosni Mubarak toppled. Turnout in the 2012 elections was low. Morsi won only 51% of the votes.

Egyptians are now rallying to the cause of Tamarod or “Rebel”, the newest political campaign to emerge in the country. So far its campaign calling for Morsi’s departure has attracted over 22 million signatures, quickly exceeding its young organisers’ target of 15 million.

Tamarod denounces Morsi as a total failure for not achieving the goals of the 2011 revolution – which were bread, freedom and social justice. He is castigated for “excluding the deprived” and not bringing justice for the revolution’s martyrs.

Economic and social security feature high on the list of grievances. Tamarod says it rejects Morsi “because we are still begging loans from the outside” and “because the economy has collapsed, and depends only on begging”.

Leading Egyptian economists warned in May that the country is suffering its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Egypt’s former finance minister Samir Radwan recently warned of a devastating effect on Egypt’s poorest people.

"You are talking about nearly half of the population being in a state of poverty.  Either in absolute poverty or near-poor, meaning that with any [economic] shock, like with inflation, they will fall under the poverty line," he said.

The value of the Egyptian pound is plummeting as fuel and food prices soar. But taking on a proposed $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund requires political stability and draconian cuts in public spending.

Since Morsi’s election Egypt has seen rampant inflation with even the middle classes finding it impossible to cope economically. A quarter of Egypt’s youth are unemployed.

Thus, the aspirations that lay behind the historic overthrow of Mubarak have not been realised. Indeed, it is clear that neither the democratic nor the economic demands of the revolution can be achieved within the current political framework – in which the army still plays a central role - or by holding fresh elections.  

Looking to Egypt’s armed forces for salvation, as many in Tahrir Square are presently doing is equally a mistaken strategy. Dark forces in the military such as those of General Abdel al-Sisi are waiting in the wings.

Millions are rejecting Morsi because, like the provisional government of February in 1917 in pre-Soviet Russia, it cannot deliver to those who overthrew the autocracy that preceded them. The global economic crisis, which is driving the new Egyptian revolution, makes further reforms impossible.

Liberals and pessimists are warning of the “dangers” of a second revolution. Yesterday’s Observer cautioned that Egyptians, “caught up in a storm of dissent degenerating into outright violence, may lose what gains they have made, and be swept backwards”.

This neo-colonial viewpoint is, as always, a defence of the status quo. Achieving “Bread, freedom and justice” requires revolutionary polices to end capitalism in Egypt. That means uniting poor farmers in the countryside, workers in the urban centres, the unemployed, professional people and respecting the rights of women, religious minorities and to freedom of expression.

A second revolution along these lines would inspire workers fighting capitalist austerity in every country to deal with their own rulers.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

  

Egypt's unfinished revolution

Egypt is experiencing the throes of the third phase of its political and social revolution. Tanks have been ordered onto the streets of Cairo. And a new concrete wall is going up in the street leading to the presidential palace.

As a struggle for power grips the country, Egypt’s opposition has decided to boycott the constitutional referendum being forced through by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood despite the concessions offered by president Mohamed Morsi.

In massive protests five people were killed and over 200 injured, many by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in orchestrated attacks. More demonstrations are planned for tomorrow against plans to push ahead with the referendum.

Although Morsi has rescinded most of the powers he had grabbed on 22 November in a decree in which he had set himself above the law, he has now allied himself with the leadership of the armed forces in a desperate bid to cling to power.

Demonstrations around the country accused him of  “stealing the country” and following in the footsteps of deposed president Hosni Mubarak. Some six Morsi advisers abandoned him last week and largely moderate Islamic academics at Al-Azhar university called for the measures to be rescinded.

Essam al-Amir, the head of Egyptian state television has resigned and journalists working for the state media channels have sided with the street. One female broadcaster even held a shroud in front of the cameras, recalling those who had died in the 2011 revolution to overthrow Mubarak. The crisis within the media – attacked for not showing the massive protests - extended to Egyptian Al Jazeera.

Morsi’s backdown on the decree granting him pharaonic dictatorial powers was intended to defuse the raging political crisis. In fact, it is leading to greater turmoil. The military has been given “extraordinary” powers through a 15-member national defence council.

Playing cards with the devil, Morsi hopes that by aligning himself with the military – which still owns and controls large parts of the Egyptian economy – it will continue to defend him and his regime.

Morsi’s new constitution would give increased powers to Muslim clerics by making them arbiters for many civil rights, and provide a constitutional basis for citizens to set up Saudi-style religious police. These would monitor morals and enforce segregation of the sexes, impose  Islamic dress codes and mete out punishments for “crime” like adultery, regardless of what secular law states. 

It has been strongly criticised by the United Nations Human Rights commissioner, Navi Pillai. She said it would concentrate powers in the hands of the president, undermine the independence of the judiciary and weaken a range of international treaties that protect civil and political rights.

Within Egypt, critics argue that the constitution drafting process was not representative of the country, especially after numerous groups, including women’s rights organizations, Coptic Christians and liberal leaders withdrew after saying the Islamists would not compromise on any issue.

Running alongside the crisis over the referendum, is widespread anger over November’s negotiations over the $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan to Egypt. Many believe that Morsi smuggled through its agreement with the IMF under the cover of the Gaza crisis. Part of this was a new round of tax rises on popular items, which Morsi has now withdrawn – at least for the time being.

Morsi’s floundering regime is walking a fine line between the army and massive popular anger. This is indeed an expression of the incomplete Egyptian revolution. Some describe the present moment as Egypt 3.0.

As Adam Hanieh, wrote in an article by for the ezine Jadaliyya, in the months following Mubarak’s overthrow: “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.”

In the end, defending and extending the Egyptian revolution is not about setting a Muslim Egypt versus a secular Egypt, but solving the question of power so that the mass of the people control their lives, their economy and their state.  

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Film protests express a broader anger

As mass rallies and violent protests continue to sweep the Muslim world over an anti-Islam film made by US-based racists, the widespread reaction raises the question about whether the background to the protests is purely religious.

More than a dozen people have died since last Tuesday in protests sparked by the appearance on YouTube of a trailer for the crude, poorly made film, which is entitled "Innocence of Muslims".

Yesterday, the  leader of Lebanon's Shia movement Hezbollah appeared in public for the first time since December 2011 to denounce the film which has sparked worldwide protests. In other developments

• About 3,000 protesters from the Philippines Muslim minority burned US and Israeli flags in the southern city of Marawi
• In Yemen, hundreds of students in the capital, Sanaa, called for the expulsion of the US ambassador
• In Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, hundreds of protesters faced off with police, throwing stones and petrol bombs, while police retaliated with tear gas
• Hundreds of Palestinians staged a peaceful sit-in protest in the West Bank city of Ramallah
• Angry demonstrators in the Afghan capital, Kabul, fired guns, torched police cars and shouted anti-US slogans
• Police arrested at least 15 people at a small protest outside the US embassy in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku

The scale of unrest is drawing comparisons with the Arab spring of 2011. Heading the list of mass protests, are Tunisia and Egypt, the very countries in which two entrenched and hated dictators were toppled last year.

The furore is prompting the question – is this primarily a religious protest? While some may be enthused - or shocked - by the crude religious sentiments and apparent intolerance of the demonstrators, the truth is more complex – but also, in some respects, more simple.

A global mapping of the protests reveals clearly that the notion that the background causes are purely religious – or indeed anti-Western – must be tempered. The countries with the largest Muslim populations, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, have seen relatively fewer violent protests and some large areas of the Muslim world have not been involved at all.

The fact is that Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Islamist Ennahda party in Tunisia, and president Abdel Rabbo Mansour Hadi of Yemen have been unable to satisfy the demands of the vast majority of their people. Indeed, the Egyptian president was in Brussels at the headquarters of the European Commission at the weekend seeking a €1bn loan.

The new rulers of Egypt and Libya, who are moderate Islamists, are under siege from the more fundamentalist Salafist parties and pro-Qaeda groups.  

Meanwhile, in Tunisia opponents of the new regime are being locked up and tortured after protests in the very same town where the self-immolation of a fruit seller sparked the original revolution of 2011 which toppled dictator president Ben Ali. Radhia Nasraoui, president of Tunisia's Organisation Against Torture, says that dozens of people are being tortured in the country’s jails.

But there is another force, much greater, at work. As one US blogger has noted: “Islamism is only the weaker expression of a broader anger against power in its domestic and foreign forms.”

The religious form masks what is a struggle for power by contending classes in the wake of incomplete revolutions. Those in power are deploying anti-imperialist and religious demagogy to trap those who believe, correctly, that their religion has been insulted.

The aspirations of the poor and dispossessed, as well as the lower middle classes, remain unfulfilled. The Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan notes: “What is irreversible in the Arab world is this intellectual revolution, the awakening that we can get rid of dictators. That is here, and the people have this sentiment and this political power. They feel that they can do it, and it’s still there.”

A different kind of secular, revolutionary leadership which can express and take forward the interests of the oppressed of all faiths, those of no faith, and minorities, is needed to ensure this awakening continues to flourish.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Egyptians pays heavy price for IMF loan

The Egyptian government has accepted a $3.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in return for a ruthless austerity programme, cuts in food subsidies, the introduction of a sales tax and more privatisation.

These are the same terms that the military turned down last year, saying it would saddle the country with unacceptable repayments for years to come and amounted to a threat to Egypt's national sovereignty.

But the IMF insists that Egypt must cut its budget deficit, and use the same methods as Greece and Britain to do so. Just as elsewhere, their only vision of the future is of the mass of people ground down to keep the capitalist show on the road.

Egypt has a funding gap of around $11bn over the next 18 months and has asked the World Bank for $1 billion, the European Union for $660 million and $500 million each from the African Development Bank and the Arab Monetary Fund, on top of the IMF money.

Without these loans, the economy will collapse and a massive devaluation of the Egyptian pound will let inflation rip. Egypt’s foreign reserves have fallen to around $10 billion as the government spent $26 billion in one year to prop up the currency.

Egypt's loan potential has been assessed by the European Bank for Development and Reconstruction (EBDR), on and the whole tone of their report shows the underlying causes of the revolution mean nothing to them and they want to go on promoting the same policies. The EBDR praises the pre-revolutionary period of "comprehensive reform", and talks of the "major success story" of external liberalisation.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has analysed the EBDR’S technical assessment and says it "reveals the Bank’s lack of commitment to democracy and development in post-revolutionary Egypt"

Amr Adly, head of the EIPR's Economic and Social Justice Unit says: "The assessment simply ignores the cronyism and corrupt nature of the privatisation process during that period where public assets (state-owned enterprises, public land and even natural resources including fresh water and natural gas) were mainly transferred into the hands of a few cronies who where closely tied to the regime." (Thanks to Platform London for highlighting the EIPR report).

The EBDR's so-called "success story" ignores the mounting poverty, unemployment and economic injustice that set the scene for January 2011 revolution. But the banks' recipe for post-revolutionary Egypt is to go even further down the same road.

Clearly European capitalism believes that recent parliamentary elections in Egypt have produced a government that will toe the austerity line - and they are right.
The Muslim Brotherhood has joined with the army and the elite to steal the revolution from the people.

With income from tourism and exports in collapse it seems unlikely that the government will be able to stave off a massive economic crisis and devaluation, allowing inflation to rip.

As the presidential election looms, the Egyptian 99% need to consider whether this is the way to achieve what they sacrificed so much for. The issue of what kind of economy they want will take centre stage alongside what kind of democracy they want.

It is crucial that the advanced forces of the Arab Spring – the youth in particular – prepare plans for an economic transformation that can offer an alternative to putting the country's future into the hands of the banks and the IMF. A future where democratic People's Assemblies take control of the economy and place enterprises, including tourism enterprises, into the ownership of those that work in them is surely the way to go.

It is a co-operative future that takes economic power out of the hands of the corrupt elite, and runs the economy for the benefit of the many not the profit of the few. This is the only way to deliver the economic and social justice the revolution set out to achieve.

Penny Cole

Make 2012 a year to settle accounts

The year ends as it began, with great social movements of people who have taken to the streets because other means of democratic expression are either cut off, denied or wilfully ignored.

It coincides with a world economy teetering on the edge of a depression, overwhelmed by the very debt that it generated to lead an unsustainable, self-destructive expansion.

Italy, now run by an unelected government headed by a Goldman Sachs advisor, yesterday had to pay almost 7% to refinance a small portion of its huge debt. Europe’s banks only function because they have access to cheap money from the central bank. Everyone knows it can’t continue.

In the last few weeks, huge numbers have defied the authorities in Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Russia; many have paid with their lives at the hands of authoritarian regimes that deny basic freedoms.

Across the United States, the occupy movement that began on Wall Street has sustained a stubborn foothold despite state repression and exposed the Obama presidency. In Britain, the biggest strike for 30 years was backed by the resilient and imaginative St Paul’s occupation.

No one can dispute that despite the different forms and apparent aims of people in different countries from Bahrain, Libya to Israel, this is a truly global phenomenon that signifies a new period of world history.

On October 15, various actions against the system were held simultaneously in almost 100 countries, initiated by the Democracy Now! movement in Spain. It was an event unique in human history that we must build on in the coming year.

New generations have driven the movement on, giving the lie to those who stupidly claim that modern capitalism has created hopeless individualism and despair in place of social solidarity.

People have rediscovered and enhanced their individuality in social movements that have emphasised inclusiveness, transparency, democracy and collective decision-making. Social media designed to reinforce corporate culture has become a key tool for mobilising against the self same system.

The movement will ebb and flow and new forms of struggle will emerge to enhance the occupation movement simply because the multi-sided crisis of the present social system is not going away any time soon.

In Britain, over a million young people are out of work, while more toil for a pittance or nothing at all. Prisons are full to bursting, partly as a result of the state’s revenge on summer rioters who were led to believe they were “worth it”.

The ConDem government’s cuts are magnifying the recession. Panic in ruling circles is mounting about the impact of a eurozone collapse. Yet the Tory-led regime rides high in polls, buoyed by the fact that Labour and most trade union leaders offer no alternative let alone leadership.

Although millions participated in the March demonstration against spending cuts and the November 30 strikes, TUC leaders are busily trying to end the fight over pensions. They are signing up to deals that mean paying more, working longer and getting less on retirement.

If 2011 witnessed a great social awakening around the world, while ruling political and business elites were befuddled by the global economic and financial crisis, we should make 2012 a year when historical accounts are settled in our favour.

Some argue, however, that A) a coherent strategy is unnecessary, B) that the system will give way under mass pressure, or that C) a package of reforms can rescue capitalism from itself. A and B ignore the realities of how power is wielded through the state while C disregards the system’s inherent contradictions.

Recent breakthroughs in physics about the smallest particles, the speed of light and dark matter show that humans have capacity to discover and learn about themselves and the world.

The point in 2012 is to change it by creating movements in the spirit of scientists, by working collaboratively to find solutions, developing forms of co-leadership that avoid hierarchy yet do not stifle bold decisions or strategy planning.

More 18-year-olds in Britain are on Facebook than are registered to vote. This does not mean we should turn away from politics because of the politicians - that gives the status quo a free hand. We have to make a politics of our own.

A World to Win campaigned throughout 2011 for a strategy based on People’s Assemblies. These could deconstruct the capitalist state and create the framework for a sustainable not-for-profit economy and financial system based on co-ownership and control.

We took the idea into student occupations, strike movements and the occupations at St Paul’s, Glasgow, Newcastle and other cities. We are looking to our members, supporters and friends to develop this strategy and make it happen in 2012.

A World to Win editors

Egypt's military regime is challenged

The 25th of January revolution in Egypt that swept Mubarak from power after 30 years vented simmering social, political and economic pressures which had been building for a long while.

Revolutionaries are keen to shed the old “puppet state” stigma from the days of deposed President Hosni Mubarak, whose regime received more than $50bn from the US during his three decades in power.

Egyptian finance officials are scrambling to find internal fixes so that foreign aid isn’t necessary to cover a reported $28.5bn deficit. Polls show that an overwhelming majority of the population rejects foreign aid, especially from the US, even as the country struggles to recover.

A Gallup poll found that 75% of Egyptians oppose US aid to political groups, and 68% think the US will try to exert direct influence over Egypt’s political future. In the last week, the military council that runs the country rejected the caretaker government’s proposed budget largely because of its dependence on aid from the US and other foreign donors.

Egypt also retreated this month from seeking loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank after activists complained that such arrangements compromise the country’s sovereignty. Instead, a new package of help for housing and small firms has been agreed with the United Arab Emirates.

Foreign aid typically comes with conditions about how such money is spent, which many Egyptians interpret as making the country beholden to Western interests. The IMF’s offer over the weekend of a $3bn loan to Egypt came with veiled conditions that suggest “it expects the country to alter its subsidies system and adhere closely to free-market principles despite previous claims that IMF assistance is unconditional,” according to a Cairo newspaper.

Pro-democracy activists say the long-time annual US aid package of up to $2bn – $1.3bn of it for the military – ensured that Mubarak’s authoritarian regime upheld the unpopular peace treaty with Israel and kept the Suez Canal open to facilitate American military operations in Iraq and the region. The joint US-Israel-Egypt enterprise that allowed tariff-free exports to the US must also be under threat.

The Muslim Brotherhoood's newly established Freedom and Justice Party is planning to focus on replacing Egypt's use of financial instruments such as derivatives and futures, with the three-decade old Islamic system operates by sharing profit or loss between the bank and its clients, instead of interest, which is forbidden.

John Sandwick, an Islamic finance adviser in Switzerland, believes that introducing more Islamic finance would not necessarily solve the country's economic problems. "Shari’ah is a method of doing business that doesn't stop speculative frenzies and impractical or unethical behaviour, as we've seen all too clearly," he said.

Nothing is settled, as blogger Jesse McLaren, who has followed the Egyptian revolution, notes: “Despite the removal of Mubarak, his regime is still intact: the emergency laws and military trials of civilians are still in effect; police cracked down on demonstrators on Nakba Day and beat a bus driver to death in June.”

Workers are demanding a minimum wage of 1,200 Egyptian pounds ($200) a month. Women demonstrated in Tahrir on International Women's Day for government-funded child care, an end to discrimination in hiring and promotions, and an end to sexual harassment and violence against women. Peasants have began reclaiming the land.

“But these demands challenge the military regime and the corporations that support them, which persists despite Mubarak's overthrow. As a striking doctor said, ‘Every percentage point for increasing health care will come from the budget of the Ministry of Interior and other parts of the oppressive machine.’ The same economic crisis that contributed to the revolution is driving a deeper wedge between political reforms gained and the social and economic demands that have yet to be met,” McLaren rightly points out

The outcome of the political struggle will determine whether the country continues as a subordinate part of the web of finance and trade relations that unite the global capitalist economy or whether the popular revolt finds a leadership that sets out on a new path to not-for-profit social ownership.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

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

Egyptians storm their Bastille

The storming of the headquarters of Egypt’s secret police over the weekend, while soldiers stood by, is another remarkable episode in the country’s unfolding revolution. Once the feared and hated symbol of the torture and abuse, the building was seized by thousands of protesters.

Emboldened by the removal of Mubarak-appointed prime minister Ahmed Shafiq – he was fired by way of the armed forces Facebook page – protesters gathered outside the Amn al-Dowla secret police HQ on Saturday evening because they feared documents were being shredded.

Similar actions took place in Alexandria and other cities. The agency, which ran a huge network of informants, was notorious for its use of torture. Many of those who took part in the storming were former victims. This time they entered the massive compound in a celebratory mood. Although there were no prisoners left, there was plenty of evidence.

Egyptians took their photos sitting in the chair of the agency’s hated director, General Hassan Abdel Rahman. They also pored through folders of documents, lists, photos, maps, and videotapes. Some were able to find their own files. On Sunday, Egyptians were already posting photos of the documents online, some to a Facebook group called Amn Dawla (State Security) Leaks, whose logo is an adaptation of the Wikileaks logo.

A number of “documents will soon be declassified, showing some senior Egyptian officials' connections with the country's security organisation in the repression of people and protesters,” said Ahmed al-Dowma, a member of Egypt's Youths Coalition of Revolution Rage,

Meanwhile, Habib El Adly, Mubarak’s long-time interior minister, loathed and feared in equal measure appeared in court on Saturday, charged with money laundering. From a cage in the courtroom, he pleaded not guilty. And hundreds of Egyptians are marching to the country's border with the Gaza Strip to demand that it be opened. Egypt has imposed a blockade on Gaza since Hamas took control of the territory in 2007.

The initiative to open the Gaza border is the brainchild of the Tahrir4Gaza campaign. Ahmed El-Assy, the main campaign organizer, said: “The Mubarak regime collaborated with Israel to keep the Palestinians weak, but now he's been overthrown, so there's no need to maintain the status quo.”

The Egyptian revolution is shaking not only the region but inspiring struggles as far away as Wisconsin. A mass movement led by a new generation of professionals and workers has destroyed an autocratic regime and set about the creation of a new society. At this point, the army is playing a Bonapartist role, sitting uneasily between the country’s ruling classes and ordinary people.

Clearly, the rank-and-file of the armed forces is determined not to intervene through force. But the top ranks, who attained their positions through Mubarak, are another question. Many became rich through holding their rank, as the army has close connections to the ruling families and landowners.

The Egyptian revolution is at the democratic stage, cleaning out apparatus of repression that lasted for over 30 years. Since Mubarak's fall, a core group of eight to 16 leaders from various groups has coordinated Friday demonstrations aimed at keeping the army on track toward free and fair elections. They call themselves the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth.

For it to become a social revolution, a leadership is needed that will campaign for policies of democratic ownership and control of the country’s resources. Elections to a new parliament will in themselves not answer the questions of unemployment, inflation and poverty which are driven by the global crisis of capitalism.

Tahrir Square has become a kind of a People’s Assembly, where demands are formulated and struggled for. That’s where the new prime minister was compelled to make his first appearance. A network of popular committees created along the model of Tahrir could become the basis for a truly revolutionary transformation not only of Egyptian society but countries in every continent.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

'You Go - We Stay' fits the bill everywhere

The Egyptian revolution continues its unfinished business. Before but especially since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown, a situation of dual power prevails in a country where eight million people – a tenth of the whole population – took part in the mass uprising that broke the back of the dictatorship.

The sweeping out of not only the despised Mubarak, but his entire regime, including the five million in the security apparatus and the military top brass, is in progress, but is still to be completed.

The military has announced that it is dissolving parliament which was stuffed full of Mubarak’s cronies and suspending a constitution that banned political activity, thus conceding some of the principal demands put forward by those who occupied Tahrir Square in Cairo.

But groups such as, amongst others, the Coalition of the Youths of Egypt’s Revolution, the Revolutionary Youth Council and Revolutionary Command Council are insisting on further changes. They remain wary about the army – which propped up Mubarak – being in charge until promised elections are to be held in six months’ time.

Leading activist Khaled Abdelkader Ouda, while welcoming the army’s initial steps, said a council of trustees would be announced on Friday, the date when organisers want millions on the street to celebrate Mubarak’s removal. The council is being set up to guard "the people's revolution".

In the 48 hours run-up to Mubarak’s ousting, organised workers began to move and go on strike around the country. Transport workers in Cairo walked out on Thursday and some 24,000 textile workers struck in the town of Mahalla al-Kubra. Over the weekend, workers at the National Bank of Egypt struck, demanding the resignation of the bank's directors and restructuring of the wages.

Other groups taking action include oil workers, public transport workers and environment ministry civil servants. But while the mass movement is flexing its muscles, the army is reportedly preparing to ban strikes and other actions in a challenge to the popular will.

Egyptians were first inspired by the success of their fellow north Africans in Tunisia, who saw off President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January. Like the Tunisian masses, they were motivated first by economic demands – an end to unemployment and poverty. This then turned into a political struggle – led and coordinated by young people making full use of the internet and social networking to defy and bypass state media censorship.

The focus is presently on a political revolution: the departure of the regime, its cronies and state apparatus. People want the dissolution of parliament to be followed by a new constitution and untainted forms of representation and democracy for all sections and political organisations in Egyptian society.

But the economic demands of the Egyptian revolution must still be formulated and achieved. They include the right to employment, good working conditions, a living wage and free trade unions. Attaining these means taking on those who own and control the banks, major industries and installations, such as the Suez canal. Elections to a new Parliament alone cannot fulfil these aspirations.

The calm determination of the Egyptian masses over the past 18 days, their courage in the face of state terror, their inventive and witty slogans such as “Day of Departure”, “No You Can’t”, “You Go - We Stay”, their insistence on remaining in Tahrir Square, has demonstrated unequivocally that when masses of people act together they become an unstoppable force.

So far the movement has been characterised by a skilful combination of face-to-face communication together with social media (sometimes used for deliberate deception), secrecy and strategic maneuvering has succeeded in outwitting the security apparatus.

The outcome of the Egyptian revolution now depends on the development of a leadership that can unite the networks of young people in the cities together with industrial workers for the purpose of a social revolution.

The demands of the movement must be broadened and deepened to articulate the economic and social needs of the Egyptian masses. This means liberating Egypt’s resources from the capitalist classes, one third of which are in the hands of the military.

The revolutionary and community councils and militant workers must appeal to the army rank-and-file, who have until now remained largely neutral, to join the revolution and remove Mubarak’s generals. These organisations can become the basis of a new democratic state to replace the existing, corrupt and big business state.

In this way Egypt can show the way, not only to the hundreds of thousands already stirring on the streets of Algeria, Yemen and Jordan, but to workers throughout the world who are fighting the impact of the world economic recession. 'You Go - We Stay' should be our common refrain.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Uprisings deepen capitalism's crisis

Attempts to solve the global debt crisis have sent food prices soaring, driving impoverished masses onto the streets throughout the Middle East. Now a wave of political revolutions dashes remaining but false hopes of economic “recovery”.

Oil prices are rising sharply as the upheaval that began in Tunisia and now grips Egypt threatens to spread to major producers Algeria, Libya and even Saudi Arabia. Stock markets are jittery as they take in the consequences, including any threat to oil tankers which use the Suez Canal.

In Egypt, workers, the unemployed, young and old, artists and athletes, Christians and Muslims have united in their determination to bring the 30-year old autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak to an end. His determination to hang on until September pleases neither the Egyptian people nor the White House, which fears the consequences of an unstoppable revolutionary process the longer Mubarak’s regime clings to power.

This fact is recognised by the International Monetary Fund too, which helped impose harsh market “reforms” on Egypt in the 1990s, which have only deepened inequality. IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned governments to tackle economic strains or risk instability and even war.

“This protest won’t end in North Africa; it will spread in many countries because of high unemployment and increasing food prices,” Hamza Alkholi, chairman and chief executive of Saudi Alkholi Group, a holding company investing in industrials and real estate, said in an interview in Davos, Switzerland.

As Nouriel Roubini, the leading economics analyst who forecast the global financial crash, notes: "What has happened in Tunisia, is happening right now in Egypt, but also riots in Morocco, Algeria and Pakistan, are related not only to high unemployment rates and to income and wealth inequality, but also to this very sharp rise in food and commodity prices."

In Egypt, 40% of the 80 million people live on less than $2 a day. Prices of basic foodstuffs have soared by over 17%, putting basic necessities beyond the reach of many. The average Egyptian now spends 40% of his or her income on food while economists put the unofficial jobless rate at about 25%.

The worldwide surge in commodity prices is being driven by stock markets and investment banks desperate to find new areas for profit-taking. With the 2008 financial meltdown still unravelling, speculators have turned to basic commodities. They have used funds pumped into the system by the US Treasury and the Bank of England, also known as QE or “quantitative easing”.

QE was designed to boost economic growth. Instead, it has helped to create a 32% increase in the average cost of food in the second half of 2010, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Wheat prices alone jumped 70% between June and December.

Despite Mubarak’s televised claim that the protests had been manipulated by political forces this is a completely Egyptian, largely secular, wholly grass roots movement. With its roots in a strike by textile workers in April, 2008, a popular revolution is under way. The country is at a standstill as events unfold. The economy is paralysed. People’s committees have taken charge of the security of their streets and neighbourhood.

Even when Mubarak shut down the internet and mobile phone networks last week the 70,000 strong April 6th Facebook group of mostly young people continued to organise the protest, calling for the “million man march” that brought more than two million Egyptians onto the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Sinai and Upper Egypt demanding that the president should leave.

People on the street demand change to “every element of the system” but lack a developed leadership that can transform the Egyptian capitalist state. As soaring prices and unemployment make clear, revolutionary social and economic change is required along with the end of the Mubarak dictatorship.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor