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Johannes Stern
On January 25, 2011, mass revolutionary struggles erupted in Egypt against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.
Egyptian workers and youth followed the example of their Tunisian class brothers, who had toppled that country’s dictator, Zine El Abedine Ben Ali, 11 days before. They defeated police in street battles on the “Friday of Anger” and, after 18 days of mass strikes and protests, forced Mubarak from office.
The Egyptian Revolution proved the revolutionary capacity of the working class and revealed the crucial task the working class faces in this era of world revolution: the building of its own revolutionary socialist party.
However, after three years of mass social struggles, the Egyptian bourgeoisie has proven incapable of meeting any of the demands for bread, freedom and social equality that drove the working class to revolution.
It is seeking instead, with the support of its backers in Washington, to restore as much as it can of the old Mubarak regime.
Since the July 3, 2013 coup, the junta of Mubarak-era intelligence chief General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has murdered and jailed thousands, banned the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and pushed through a constitution, publicly endorsed by Mubarak himself, enshrining a military dictatorship.
The junta is seeking to stabilise its rule through terror and repression.
On the third anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution on January 25, 260 000 policemen, 180 battalions, and 500 combat troops were be deployed throughout the country.
Without its own party fighting for a revolutionary perspective and the development of Marxist consciousness, the proletariat was able to topple the head of state and shake the political establishment to its foundations.
It was not, however, able to overthrow the Egyptian bourgeois state and lay the basis for achieving its social and democratic aspirations by ending capitalist exploitation and imperialist oppression.
Instead, the unfolding of the revolution brought the working class into conflict with the social and political forces through which the Egyptian capitalist class and its imperialist backers successively sought to stabilize their rule in Egypt.
As workers launched one wave of struggles after another, the irreconcilable conflict between the working class on the one side and bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces on the other came to the fore.
Initially, the army sought to continue its rule without Mubarak, installing the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) junta, pushing through anti-strike and anti-protest laws and cracking down on demonstrations in Tahrir Square.
When the ruling class responded to an upsurge of mass protests against the SCAF by organising presidential elections that brought the Islamist Mohamed Mursi to power, the MB was exposed as a defender of the same class interests as the hated Mubarak regime. Mursi held talks with the International Monetary Fund to prepare austerity measures against the workers and served as a stooge of US imperialism, supporting Israeli air strikes against Gaza and the escalating US-led proxy war in Syria.
With each stage in the struggle, the liberal and pseudo-left factions of the affluent middle class turned more sharply against the working class as they realised that its aims posed a threat to their own privileges.
When mass protests of tens of millions erupted last summer against the hated Mursi regime, these groups panicked and threw themselves behind the return of a military dictatorship as an alternative to working class revolution. They gave their support to the right-wing Tamarod movement and sought to channel mass anger against Mursi behind it.
Meanwhile, Tamarod helped the army organise the July 3 coup. Forces like Hamdeen Sabahi’s Popular Current and Mohamed El Baradei’s Constitution Party joined the transitional government established by the military and helped organise mass repression.
The most corrupt group supporting the coup and aiding the forces of counter-revolution was the pseudo-left Revolutionary Socialists (RS). In each phase of the revolution, the RS sought to subordinate the working class to one or another faction of the bourgeoisie.
Having initially claimed that the SCAF junta would grant social and democratic reforms, the RS opposed calls for a “second revolution” against the SCAF. – wsws.
Instead, it promoted the MB as “the right wing of the revolution”, hailing Mursi’s election as “a victory for the revolution”. When working class opposition to Mursi mounted, the RS hailed Tamarod as “a road to complete the revolution” and called the coup a “second revolution.”
Driven by the fear that the junta’s repression will provoke a renewed revolutionary movement of the working class, the RS is shifting even further to the right.
It is currently allied with the Islamist Strong Egypt Party and the April 6 Youth Movement in the so-called Revolutionary Path Front (RPF).
The RPF aims to reconcile the feuding factions of the Egyptian ruling elite, warning that, “the victory of either party over the other will mean the defeat of the state.” – wsws
Online Reporter