Mubarak has fallen! - Revolution until Victory!¶
Core Argument¶
Mubarak has fallen! - Revolution until Victory!
The tyrant Hosni Mubarak has been toppled after just eighteen days of revolutionary mobilisation, a victory won at the cost of three hundred dead and thousands wounded. The masses, emboldened by each confrontation with police and military, poured onto the streets in their millions. In Suez, official buildings were occupied; in Asyut, the ruling party headquarters fell; in El Arish, youths fought gun battles with police; in Alexandria, two hundred thousand gathered and fraternised with sailors. The army, its high command divided and paralysed, ultimately ditched Mubarak rather than risk a split if ordered to fire. Yet the military does not control the streets or the factories.
The decisive element forcing Mubarak out was the working class. Nationwide strikes gave the uprising irresistible momentum: over twenty strikes hit railroads, textiles, hospitals, and factories, with workers demanding better wages, conditions, and contracts. A new Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions was established. This was no spontaneous outburst; the revolution was prepared by the biggest strike movement in over half a century. Between 2004 and 2008, more than 1.7 million workers participated in over 1,900 strikes, and the April 6, 2008 Mahalla uprising broke the barrier of fear.
The overthrow of Mubarak is only the first step. Washington wanted an “orderly transition” controlled by the CIA, but Mubarak’s stubbornness radicalised the situation, fatally undermining any managed transfer. Omar Suleiman, the Americans’ chosen successor, has fallen with his master. The regime is disintegrating; the army will likely hand power to a civilian government and call elections soon. But no bourgeois government can solve Egypt’s deep problems: ten per cent unemployment, seventy-six per cent youth joblessness, wages of seventy to one hundred and ten dollars per month, severe housing shortages, four million without healthcare, and pervasive corruption. The Mubarak family alone is worth seventy billion dollars while forty per cent live below the poverty line.
The working class is now the motor force, giving the revolution a social-revolutionary character. Workers in Helwan are striking and demanding revolution until victory. To solve Egypt’s problems, capitalism must be broken, the capitalists and imperialists expropriated, and society transformed along socialist lines. The fight for democracy must become the fight against the dictatorship of the rich.