Egyptian army manoeuvres in attempt to cut across worker protests

14th February, public transport workers on strike protesting outside Ministry of Interior. Photo: 3arabawyAccording
to latest reports, thousands of public sector workers, including
ambulance drivers and transport workers, are out protesting for better
wages and conditions. Even the ordinary police have been affected by
this new mood of worker militancy. Around 200 of them have been out
demonstrating, demanding better pay. Oil and gas workers have been
protesting, as have the workers in the national steel industries, as
well as in textiles, telecoms, railways, post offices, banks, oil and
pharmaceutical companies. Even the workers in the tourist industry held a
protest near the Great Pyramids.

Hundreds of bank workers rallied outside a branch of the Bank of
Alexandria in Cairo. They were demanding that their bosses step down. As
a result Tarek Amer resigned as chairman of the state-owned National
Bank of Egypt, the country’s biggest commercial bank. This came after
angry workers stopped him from reaching his office. So big has the
strike wave been among the bank workers that the military declared
Monday a bank holiday, hoping thus to defuse the strike movement.

Military considered banning strikes

In response to this wave of worker militancy, according to an Al
Jazeera report, Egypt’s military leaders yesterday were “reportedly
preparing to ban strikes and act against ‘chaos and disorder’ in an
attempt to restore order in the country following weeks of protests that
led to the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. A military source said
the Supreme Military Council would issue an order on Monday [February
14th] that would ban meetings by labour unions or professional syndicates,
effectively forbidding strikes, and would tell all Egyptians to get
back to work.” (Al Jazeera, 14th February 2011)

According to the same report:

“Earlier in the day, pro-democracy protesters in the square said they
had been told by the army to leave or face arrest. Meanwhile, the army
ordered Al Jazeera and other international media outlets to stop filming
in the square.”

This gives a clear indication of what the army is now trying to do.
This is what is meant by a “controlled transition” to democracy. As Al
Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from Cairo, said, “I think the military
is concerned that this could turn into a series of protests across the
country. If that happened, the only way they could stop them would
probably be to use force. And if they use force, that would end the
respect and the legitimacy the army has in the eyes of the ordinary
people.”

That is already beginning to happen now, as the masses see what the
army chiefs are doing. They feel that the revolution could slip out of
their hands and into those of the men of the old regime, unless they
actively intervene to stop this from happening. That also explains why
the military had to step back from its planned ban on strikes.

In this we see how the army Supreme Council, together with the
bourgeois “opposition” leaders are concerned that the fall of Mubarak is
unleashing class forces that go beyond the mere demands for democracy.
We have to remember that for the workers, democracy means greater
rights, such as the right to organise, to assembly and to strike. These
rights the workers yearn for in order to be able to fight for better
wages and conditions.

Precisely because these minimum democratic rights are the basic
conditions that allow workers to express themselves and to organise
freely, they are not prepared to delegate all powers to the military
chiefs. Let us not forget that this is the same military that served
Mubarak well during his 30-year dictatorship.

Just as the workers do not trust the military, the Generals look with
concern at the role the Egyptian working class has been playing. When
it became clear that Mubarak was attempting to manoeuvre to remain in
power, in spite of the mass protests shaking the country, the workers in
the factories decided it was time to make their presence felt. The
Generals understand full well that what gave Mubarak the final push was
when the workers began to organise as a class and started to come out on strike, in some cases taking over their workplaces.

But workers will resist

14th February, striking oil and gas workers staging a protest. Photo: 3arabawyNow
those same workers will not be satisfied with mere promises for some
form of transition to democracy. They are pressing all their social and
economic demands. That explains the wave of strikes that is gripping the
country. Workers want better wages, better working conditions,
healthcare, pensions, decent housing. These are actually the problems
that were at the root of the revolution itself.

Ironically for the Egyptian bourgeois, it was the very economic
“success story” of Egypt that has led to this situation. The working
class of Egypt has been enormously strengthened by the boom of the past
decade. Since 2003 Egyptian GDP has been growing by an average of 5.5%
per year, some years even reaching more than 7%. This has meant the
opening of many new factories. And this in turn increased the size and
weight of the working class.

However, economic booms do not necessarily benefit all classes
equally. There was a growing social polarisation, which sooner or later
had to lead to a confrontation between the classes. This explosion had
been coming for some time. In the past few years we have witnessed in
Egypt the biggest strike wave since the end of Second World War.

We have reported on this in recent years, as for example in Egypt: The victory of Mahalla workers exposes the weakness of Mubarak’s regime (by Frederik Ohsten and Francesco Merli, October 4th, 2007 and Unprecedented strike wave of Egyptian workers
(by Jorge Martin, April 23rd, 2007). We have consistently explained that
this growing worker unrest would sooner or later lead to revolution.
This has now come, and having gained a feel of their own power the
workers are not going to simply go back to work as if everything has now
been sorted, simply because Mubarak is no more.

Army officers fill power vacuum

The problem we have in Egypt is that as the revolution unfolded a
power vacuum opened up, one in which the workers emerged very powerful,
but through lack of a conscious and organised party of their own, they
were not able to fill that vacuum. On the other hand the ruling
bourgeois elite could not hold the movement back, and thus into this
vacuum has stepped the military.

How has this been possible? How is it that the very generals of the
Mubarak regime have been able to take on this role? The answer to that
can be found in the way the revolution unfolded. All revolutions in
history have had an impact on the army, those bodies of armed men, as
Engels described them.

Bertold Brecht, in his famous and oft-quoted poem, "From a German War
Primer", wrote the following: “General, your tank is a powerful
vehicle; It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men; But it has
one defect: It needs a driver. (…) General, man is very useful; He can
fly and he can kill; But he has one defect; He can think.”

These lines highlight the dilemma faced by the chiefs of the Egyptian
military during the mass uprising that started on January 25th. Millions
of workers, men and women, and youth came out onto the streets,
encouraged by what had happened in Tunisia just a few days previously.
Tunisia showed that the most despotic of dictators can be overthrown
once the masses move decisively.

Once such a mass movement begins it starts to have an impact on the
young men who make up the state’s repressive apparatus. In normal times
the fear of being disciplined by higher ranking officers holds the army
together, under the tight control of the supreme commanders at the top.
To disobey orders means to be severely punished. However, this control
breaks down when ordinary soldiers see their brothers and sisters,
mothers and fathers, friends and neighbours, pouring out onto the
streets in protest. They start to think!

Soldiers are trained and educated with idea that their role is to
defend the “motherland” and its people. They are not educated with the
idea that their task is to shoot at their own people. When a revolution
breaks out, therefore, the army comes under immense pressure. On the one
hand it is the army of the bourgeois state and is therefore called on
to defend bourgeois order. On the other hand it is made up of mainly
young men who come from the same classes as the people on the streets,
and thus they come under pressure to fraternise with the masses.

Fraternisation

This is what we saw during the Egyptian revolution. On January 28
when the masses were out on Tahrir Square the news bulletins reported
that the army had been sent into the square. Initially the generals may
have had the illusion that that may have been the end of the movement.
But that was not possible as we very quickly found out as soon as images
of Tahrir Square hit our TV screens. The soldiers went into the square
waving at the crowds, hugging and kissing the protestors. They told the
people in the square that they were there to protect them. Rather than
the army taking over the square, the people took over the army! They
fraternised, in the same way we have seen in revolutions throughout
history.

This explains why the army chiefs issued the statement that the army
would not shoot on the people. The fact is that if the officers had
given orders to shoot they would have faced a revolt in the ranks, not
just of the rank and file soldiers but also of many low and middle
ranking officers and even some higher up. The army would have fragmented
along class lines and the revolution would have gone much further than
it has done so far.

If anyone wants proof of this it is sufficient to quote one report:

“On 4th February, the day of the most terrifying police/thug brutality
in Tahrir Square, many commentators noted that the military were trying
to stop the thug attacks but were not being very forceful or aggressive.
Was this a sign that the military really wanted the protesters to be
crushed? Since then, we have learned that the military in the square
were not provisioned with bullets. The military were trying as best they
could to battle the police/thugs, but Suleiman had taken away their
bullets for fear the military would side with the protesters and use the
ammunition to overthrow him.” (Why Egypt’s Progressives Win, published in Jadaliyya) [Our emphasis]

The following report, Egypt army to shoot commanders? that
appeared in Press TV on February 10th, confirms Suleiman’s fears. It
reports one activist in Egypt as saying “I think some of them (the army
personnel) might join [the] protesters. We have heard some of the
officers and soldiers saying ‘if we receive an order to shoot people, we
would shoot whoever issued the order’."

When on February 2nd, Mubarak sent in his hired thugs, the aim was
clearly to beat back the revolution, intimidate the revolutionaries and
shift the balance of forces back towards the regime. Instead it had the
opposite effect. Had the regime attempted to use the army to crush the
people, it would have collapsed that same day and the army chiefs would
have been finished as well.

But what were the army doing on February 2nd? The army chiefs were
clearly collaborating with Suleiman. The order was not “to interfere”,
thus allowing the pro-Mubarak thugs to get into the square and attack
the anti-Mubarak protestors. The ordinary rank and file soldiers in the
square, on the other hand tried to defend the people, but as the above
quoted report indicates they could do very little. In the end the people
pushed back the reactionary thugs and the following day the protest
gathered even more steam as ordinary Egyptians were enraged by the
scenes of violence and came out in support of the revolution in even
larger numbers.

The fact that the ranks of the army sympathised for the revolution
meant that the generals could not use the troops as they wished. They
had to hold back their own forces for fear of these fragmenting in their
hands. Thus to hold the army together and intact they were forced to
appear to be “with the people”. That explains the slogans about “the
people and the army as one hand” and so on. Many believed the army was
genuinely on their side.

Double game of top officer caste

However, it was also clear to the most advanced layers that the army
chiefs were playing a double game, issuing statements that the people’s
demands were safe in their hands, while at the same time not moving
decisively against Mubarak. However, in the end, to maintain the
authority of the army, the Supreme Council was forced to push Mubarak
out.

The army command was thus able to exploit the genuine sympathy of the
ranks of the army to raise their own authority among the people. They
thus pretended to be with the people and for democracy. But we mustn’t
forget that these men stand at the head of the army of the state of
Mubarak. Mubarak has gone, but his state apparatus remains intact.

We must remember that in the final analysis the bourgeois state is
made up of “special bodies of armed men” whose task is to defend the
ruling class and its property. In the conditions created by the
revolutionary uprising of the Egyptian people, the best way for the army
tops to continue to play this role was to pretend to be on the side of
the people, i.e. not to completely expose the real role of the military.

Faced with such a situation, US imperialism stood by powerless to
intervene. They had not foreseen the possibility of such a revolutionary
movement and were taken completely by surprise. In reality they waited
to see what would happen, to see how powerful the movement would turn
out to be. Once it became clear to them that the movement was
unstoppable, and that even the army could break up with large sections
going over to the revolution, they suddenly became “democrats” and
discovered the rights of the Egyptian people. They proclaimed that Egypt
was a sovereign nation that had to decide on its own fate. Not quite
what they were saying just a few weeks earlier. Until the masses rose
up, Mubarak was a “friend” of America and a guarantor of stability in
the region.

But as each day passed it became clear that Mubarak had become a
liability and thus the calls from Obama for a transition to democracy
became stronger. They realised that in order to get people off the
streets and the country back to some kind of normality, Mubarak had to
go. The United States provides large sums of aid to Egypt, mostly in the
form of military aid to be spent on equipping the army. Many Egyptian
officers have been trained in the United States and have direct links to
the US military. No doubt these links will have been used to get the
message across.

As we have pointed out in previous articles, Mubarak was not under
pressure solely from the US but also from the despotic regimes in the
region. Whereas Obama was making calls for a “transition”, leaders like
the King of Saudi Arabia had other ideas. They understood that the fall
of Mubarak could turn out to be the beginning of their own downfall.
That explains why, according to a report that appeared on the Bikyamasr
website: “In a surprise move, the Saudi Arabian government announced it
is looking into matching the United States estimated $1.3 billion in
military aid given to Egypt annually in an effort to alleviate American
pressure on the Egyptian army.” (Saudi may match US military aid to Egypt, Feb 10th, 2011)

The Saudi regime was trying to stop the unstoppable by literally
buying the Egyptian army. The problem was that the revolution was moving
on and to have listened to the advice of the Saudi monarch would have
meant the situation slipping out of the hands of the Egyptian military
top brass.

Military elite’s direct business interests

14th February, public transport workers rally. Photo: 3arabawyThe
Egyptian military elite is a part of the ruling class, not solely as
loyal serving soldiers but also as active players in the economy. As The
Independent commented on Saturday, the Egyptian military, “commands a
sprawling economic empire that produces a vast array of military and
civilian goods and services, none of which appears in the national
budget. Close observers liken Field Marshal, Minister of Defence and now
head of the Higher Military Council that took control of Egypt
yesterday, Mohamed Tantawi, to the CEO of the largest corporate
conglomerate in Egypt.”

“In the mid 1980s the World Bank urged that military companies be
sold to civilian interests as part of the broader privatisation
programme, advice that was rejected out of hand. Since then the military
economy has continued to expand. Paradoxically, it has itself benefited
from the privatisation programme, with formerly state owned civilian
enterprises being handed over to military control.”

Thus the Egyptian army chiefs have a direct stake in the situation,
both as defenders of the state and as owners of a significant part of
the economy.

Formally speaking the Supreme Council of the army has been given its
powers to govern directly by Mubarak. In that sense there is a
continuity of power within the same regime. The fact that they have
decided to keep Mubarak’s ministers in office is confirmation of this.
On Sunday they dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution. No
one will be too concerned about the dissolution of parliament as it was a
farce in any case, the result of fraudulent elections back in October.
The constitution also is not of much concern as it was that of a
dictatorial regime.

What people are starting to get concerned about is whether the
military are not preparing to impose a clampdown on the movement.
Mubarak’s prime minister, the ex-General Ahmed Shafiq, has indicated
that his first priorities are "peace and security" and measures to
prevent "chaos and disorder".

The answer to people’s concerns has come very quickly. As Robert Fisk pointed out in Monday’s The Independent:

“…hundreds of Egyptian troops – many unarmed – appeared in Tahrir
Square to urge the remaining protesters to leave the encampment they had
occupied for 20 days. At first the crowd greeted them as friends,
offering them food and water. Military policemen in red berets, again
without weapons, emerged to control traffic. But then a young officer
began lashing demonstrators with a cane – old habits die hard in young
men wearing uniforms – and for a moment there was a miniature replay of
the fury visited upon the state security police here on 28th January.”

Different layers within the movement

In this we have to understand that the protest movement that led to
the overthrow of Mubarak has different layers and different wings within
it. Those who made the revolution and guaranteed that its first demand
was met – the removal of Mubarak – were the workers, the youth, the
women, fighting on the streets. No political party has led this
movement.

Now, however, there will be no shortage of individual and groups
claiming to “represent the people”. The movement will see a divide
between those who want to go to the very end and make sure this
revolution sweeps away every vestige of the old rotten Mubarak regime
and those who will try to moderate the protests and channel them along
safe lines.

To appease the masses and get them off the streets, the army has
promised “free and fair elections” under a revised constitution.
However, it has given no clear commitment of when this would be; simply
stating that it would be in charge "for a temporary period of six months
or until the end of elections to the upper and lower houses of
parliament, and presidential elections".

Google executive Wael Ghonim and blogger Amr Salama recently met the
army chiefs to, "understand their point of view and lay out our views,"
as they themselves explained in a note on one of the pro-democracy
websites that helped launch the revolt. They said the military council
vowed to rewrite the constitution within 10 days and put it to a
referendum within two months, in line with the protesters’ demands for
democratic change. Ghonim and Salama reassured activists that the only
purpose of the meeting with the Supreme Council of the armed forces was
to “protect and legitimise the demands of the Revolution of January 25th.
This is the kind of talk that is aimed at getting the masses off the
streets and the workers back in their workplaces. It is the talk of
people whose sole aim is some form of bourgeois democracy. But the
workers, men and women, the youth, the downtrodden poor want more than
that.

In reality the same old regime is still there, barely dressed in
democratic clothing. The reason for its newly discovered love of
democracy is that it has to tread very carefully. The balance of class
forces is enormously weighed in favour of the workers and youth. The
“bodies of armed men” in the lower ranks are still infected by the
revolutionary fervour of the past few weeks. Therefore the people at the
top have to use cunning and subterfuge. They promise a new
constitution, democratic elections, but not immediately of course. They
need time to consolidate their grip on power. If there are to be
democratic elections they need to form bourgeois parties that can
continue to defend the interests of the same ruling class that backed
Mubarak for 30 years.

In the coming period there will be a jostling for positions among all
the bourgeois politicians, who will be trying to establish some form of
credibility among the masses. All of them will be democrats of course.
Mubarak’s hated National Democratic Party will disappear, as all its
members abandon it like rats jumping off a sinking ship. They will
change their clothes and reappear in some other form. They will discover
that they were “never really with Mubarak” and had always desired
democracy.

We have seen this before many times in history. After the collapse of
Mussolini in 1943-45 many ex-fascists recycled themselves as Christian
Democrats. In Spain we saw the same happen with former Franco supporters
reappearing as Popular Party leaders. In Nigeria back in 1998 the hated
Abacha was assassinated and the generals then proceeded to hand over to
civilian rule one year later in the elections. The man who “won” the
1999 elections was an army general who had been dictator in the 1970s.

In all these cases we saw dictatorships removed under the pressure of
the mass movement, only to see power taken up again by representatives
of the same class that had ruled through the dictatorship. Democracy was
granted to the masses, while the economic interest of the ruling elite
remained intact – in essence this was a counter-revolution in democratic
form.

Masses feel their own strength

The problem in Egypt is that Mubarak tried to hold on to power to the
bitter end in spite of the fact that the imperialists were telling him
it was better he should go. By doing so he further radicalised the
masses and strengthened the mass movement. Now the masses feel strong
after overthrowing the despot.

As we have said, it was the entry onto the scene by the working class
in the last few days of the Mubarak regime that finally pushed the
military to remove the dictator. The conditions existed – and still
exist – for the masses to take power. Had a call for a general strike
led to the actual organisation of such a strike, combined with student
occupations and a conscious appeal to the soldiers to side with the
masses, no force could have stopped the revolution from going all the
way. If committees had been elected in all the workplaces,
neighbourhoods, universities and high schools, and army barracks, and if
these were linked up on a national level this would be the basis for an
alternative power in the country. We saw how people took over Tahrir
Square, with the same happening in other cities. We saw workers
beginning to take over their workplaces. In embryonic form this was the
power of working people emerging.

However, the revolution has not gone so far yet. This is due to one
factor, the lack of an independent mass party of the working class. That
explains why we saw so much improvisation and spontaneity. This was all
very good in terms of getting the masses involved and out on the
streets. It achieved the objective that united everyone, the removal of
Mubarak. But once he was gone, the lack of an organised workers’ party
became very apparent. The question of who is to govern the country is
posed. That is why the military can play the role of arbiter, pretending
to stand above all classes.

What opens now is a new period in Egyptian history, one in which the
working class will press all its demands, while the bourgeois attempt to
strangle the revolution. The military will not be able to destroy all
the gains of the revolution. The workers have been emboldened and will
press on building their own organisations, as they are doing with the
trade unions.

On the other hand the bourgeois will reorganise themselves on the
political front, pushing forward all kinds of individuals and party who
will claim to stand for the interests of all Egyptians. The point is
that whoever forms a government in the future, on a capitalist basis
will not be able to solve the pressing problems, of unemployment, low
wages, bad housing and so on. That flows not from the Mubarak regime –
although it compounded the problems – but from the capitalist nature of
the economy. The same wealthy elite will continue to have control over
the economy.

What is required is a complete break with the bourgeois regime and
that means expropriating the wealth of the big capitalists, starting
with the clique around the Mubarak family itself. For this to be
possible the Egyptian workers require a Marxist revolutionary leadership
like that of the Bolshevik party in Russia in 1917. But such a party
must be built and before that can happen the Marxists must get organised
as a tendency within the Egyptian labour movement. Such a tendency
could begin the task of providing that analysis and programme that the
workers of Egypt so urgently need.