working class awakens
EGYPT The November-December issue of el- Munadil, a journal published in Lebanon by Arab revolutionary
Marxists, announced the formation of a new revolufionary organization in Egypt, the "Mustafa Khamis" Revolutionary Communist Group, (1) and published the group's first manifesto. The comrades of elMunadil commented: "The appearance of a proletarian revolutionary group in Egypt is an event of extreme importance for all Arab revolutionaries and an event that is especially welcome for us Trotskyists, for it constitutes an important and fundamental the The workers of Egypt are beginning to wake up. After twenty years of near immobility during which they were lulled by the mystifying propaganda about "socialism" and the union of the forces of the working people, " our working class has begun to emerge from its long sleep. In 1972 our worker comrades of the steel factories in Helwan placed themselves in the vanguard of the new awakening, leading the Egyptian working class down the path blazed by the blood of the martyr Mustafa Khamis, the path of workers struggle against capitalist oppression. But the workers of Egypt are much more numerous today than they were in 1952; they represent more than half the Arab working class and one of the largest working classes of the underdeveloped countries. And when the workers of Egypt reawaken to struggle, it is not simply the Egyptian bourgeoisie that trembles; all the Arab owning classes tremble too, as does world imperialism. We thus understand why the reawakening of the 8 new formed step forward in our efforts to build a revolutionary communist party on a pan-Arab scale, an Arab section of the Fourth International. El-Munadil salutes the comrades of the Mustafa Khamis group and wishes them, as well as all the workers of Egypt, full success in their struggle against capitalist slavery and for the victory of the socialist revolution." We can only concur with those sentiments. We are publishing below the first manifesto of the comrades of the Mustafa Khamis group, translated from elMunadil. workers of Egypt was one of the direct causes of the October War. 1. The October War and the general situation in Egypt one year after The remarkable struggle of the workers and students of Egypt had frightened the bourgeoisie and its state to the point that they directed all their efforts to putting an end to the situation of "no war, no peace," a situation whose impact was becoming ever greater and was feeding popular discontent. Now, since peace with Zionism was of course the goal being sought by the Egyptian bourgeoisie, and since the capitulationist character of this peace made it difficult to get the masses to accept it, the bourgeoisie had to dress up national betrayal in a cloak of military triumph. Thus the October War. The goal of the war of October 6, 1973, was to accelerate the execution of the capitulationist UN
Resolution 242, which had hitherto been stalled. According to the regime's calculations, this goal was supposed to be achieved through the intervention of American imperialism (to which the Egyptian regime had promised a political and economic opening) after the Egyptian military position was improved by the crossing of the Suez Canal. The aim of the limited war was to establish an unlimited peace between Israel and Egypt in order to clear the air and remove one of the important sources of political agitation. The regime even wanted to present the October War with the aura of a legendary war comparable to the great conquests of history. 1. Political Results of the October War The principal success achieved by the Egyptian bourgeoisie was the activation of the "peaceful solution." Indeed, it realized important steps down the road to peace with Zionism, aided by Henry Kissinger, a representative of American imperialism, who took on the role of itinerant "arbiter. This happened in spite of the fact that the October War was abouf to terminate in a new tragedy for Egypt, after the Zionist forces crossed the canal in the Deversoir area and encircled our Third Army, threatening to destroy it. This turnabouf in the military situation was not the result of the weakness or cowardice of the Egyptian soldier. On the contrary, our soldiers demonstrated devotion to combat and heroism in no way inferior to those of any other people struggling against invaders of their homeland. It was the higher military command that was responsible, since in the eyes of the regime the war was only a limited one aimed at achieving the "peaceful solution." This explains why there was no bombardment by our air force of the Israeli interior. But in spite of everything, the regime managed to organize an unprecedented campaign of mystification, presenting the October War as a historic sequel to the conquests of Saladin and Muhammed Ali, transforming it into a historical revenge by the Arabs against Israel, a war that would change the face of the world and the course of history. After the collapse of the legend of the invincibility of the Zionist army, stories were concocted seeking to create a new legend, that of an Egyptian army "invincible because of its valiant leadership." For an initial period, the regime's propaganda campaign met with wide success. The majority of our people believed that the hour of victory had struck and that the regime had resolved to confinue the fight until liberation. But after the cease-fire and particularly after the separation of forces, these illusions quickly began to disappear. Since then, the masses of our people have progressively become conscious of the fact that Israel's concessions do not derive from the successes of our army in October 1973
- successes that were partial and in any case overturned by the Deversoir operation - but rather result from the agreement between American imperialism and the Egyptian regime over the peaceful solution to the "Middle East problem. Moreover, it must be said that while the regime's propaganda campaign bore not insignificant fruit, and while the application of the peaceful solution has moved forward up to now without meeting broad mass resistance, the reason for this lies in large part in the absence of a revolutionary vanguard capable of opening the eyes of the masses and in the failure. of the Palestinian resistance to link up with the Egyptian toiling masses, particularly since the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization has also begun to travel down the road to the peaceful solution. 2. The Growing Economic and Social Crisis But whatever the intensity and success of the campaign of mystification waged around the October War, it did not and will not at all succeed in concealing the profound misery in which our masses live. In fact, since the October War Egypt has experienced more rapid and serious price increases and declines in the living standards of the masses than ever before. The reasons for this lie precisely in the changes that were made after October 1973 in the name of the "economic opening." The overwhelming majority of our people cannot tolerate the suffocatingly high cost of living. It is sufficient to take a look at the price increases for basic commodities since October 1973, which exfend even to basic foodstuffs. The price of a kilo of sugar has risen from 7 piasters before October 1973 to 11 piasters foday. (The Egyptian pound, divided Into 100 piasters, is exchanged inside Egypt for about US$1,75.) The price of cooking oil has gone from 7 to 11 piasters a kilo as well, and the price of a packet of tea has risen from 3.5 to 5.5 piasters. Moreover, these items are almost completely unobtainable in the cooperatives; people form long lines to buy just a small quantity of them. As for prices on the free market, they have risen from 16 to 26p. for sugar, from 16 to 32p. for cooking oil, and from 5.5 to 11p. for tea. Other basic foodstuffs are found only in the stores of the private sector, where the cost of a kilo of rice has gone from 5 to 6.5p., potatoes from 4 to 10p. a kilo, soap from 3.5 to 5.5p. The price of a kilo of meat has gone from 85p. before the October War to Ef1.10. Popular cloth is virtually nonexistent in the cooperatives, because the directors of the public sector prefer to sell it to merchants in the private sector, which is profitable both for them and for the
EGYPT merchants. The black-market price of a meter of cloth has risen from 12 to 22p. The price of a pair of shoes, which was around EE2.50 before October 1973, has risen to E£4.50-5.00. The transport crisis has attained very serious dimensions. People fight to get onto buses and trams that are packed with people to a point not even fit for animals; those who do not find a place inside climb up onto the roof or through the windows, extremely dangerous acts that our people nevertheless find it necessary to perform. The only solution the government has found to this problem has been to withdraw a few old buses from circulation and replace them with new vehicles in order to impose a 5 piaster fare increase under the pretext that the new buses are tourist vehicles. But that does not make them any less jammed. And we all know about the housing crisis. Rents in the popular neighborhoods have increased from EEB a month to EE15. In spite of that, it is impos- . sible to find housing without paying an initial fee that ranges from EE200 to EE500. And what about the workers! wages in face of this rising cost of living? In fact, the great majority of wages have not changed since October 1973, with the exception of some routine increases! The minimum wage has been increased from EE7.50 a month to EE12,, which is insufficient to cover the minimum basic needs, especially since the E£12 becomes EE1O after all the various deductions. 3. The Real Nature of the Regime Exposed The crushing increase in the cost of living weighs a lot heavier than the fables about the October War. The regime has failed in its attempt to make the "economic opening" bring about an improvement in our situation. We have seen how quickly the legend about the wheat and corn the United States was supposed to send us has evaporated, while at the same time the planes and all the other arms that U.S. Imperialism is offering to our Zionist enemy are very real and far from being a legend. The "popular" welcome the regime arranged for Nixon was not an expression of the sentiments of our people. How could it have been, when our martyrs had fallen under the fire of arms furnished by Nixon to Israel? The reality is that the regime, besides waging campaigns aimed at conditioning public opinion and convincing it of Nixon's friendship toward us, sent the workers of the public sector to greet the imperialist president, paying each worker half a pound for coming out. (In the past, the "price of welcome" was only a quarter of a pound.) It is very clear that the "economic opening" decreed 10 by Law No.43, on investment of Arab and foreign capital and the "free zones, " passed by the "Peoples Assembly" on June 9 of this year - perhaps in commemoration of June 9,1967* - profits only the landed proprietors and the exploiters of the tourist sectors, a tiny minority of our people. For the most part, Arab capital is being directed toward the purchase of land. The foreign investments are mostly in the tourist industry. The result is that the overwhelming majority of our people, with the exception of the bourgeoisie and some categories of the petty bourgeoisie, actually suffer from these investments. How? It's simple: The main effect of the capital now pouring into land and the tourist industry in Egypt is to generate a rise in prices (inflation). I! thus constitutes the principal cause of the excessive high cost of living from which we are suffering. The real character of the regime has begun to become clear to broad masses, and the illusions about "socialism" and "the union of the peoples forces" have begun to crumble. The reality is that the existing regime is a bourgeois regime serving to stimulate capitalism and encourage the private sector and opening wide the doors of Egypt to imperialist capital. Among the major "achievements" of the regime, of which it is extremely proud, is the release of goods that had been sequestered during the Nasser era. In reality, we are dealing with a regime of the capitalist bourgeoisie, a regime of merchants and landed proprietors. It is extremely revealing that in newspaper announcements the merchants declared in the name of their association that they "present all their thanks, all their esteem, and all their support to Mr. President Anwar el-Sadat for having chosen the chief and dean of the merchants, Dr. Abdel Aziz Hegazi, Esq., for the post of president of the council of ministers." The advertisement of the merchants' association added: "May god come to his aid and direct his steps toward the road of economic opening." It. thus appears that in the eyes of the capitalists today the divine light is represented by ... the economic opening. It is the misery in which they live that has led our masses to realize the real character of the regime. This pressure on the masses has been especially aggravated by the fact that all the celebrated democratic rights, courts, and other such fables in reality simply amount to control by the state intelligence over the slightest workers activity, control by the * June 9, 1967, was the date on which Egypt occepted the cease-fire in the 1967 war; Nasser then presented his resignation, thus provoking enormous demonstrations. - INPRECOR
"Socialist Union" (socialist in name, ruling bourgeois party in reality) over all forms of elections, and a total absence of real freedom of expression. Our masses will not tolerate these conditions of misery and repression indefinitely. During the past several months they have begun to move and to wage struggles that represent the beginning of a long road of struggle against the regime of capitalist slavery. Nor will our masses be deceived by the conspiracy of the peaceful solution; we are confident that the Egyptian people will not remain passive in face of the passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal. 2. The development of class struggle after October 1973 It was the student movement that was most heavily influenced by the October War and the propaganda campaign that followed it. The main theme of the student struggles that took place in 1972 was the demand for war and the denunciation of the regime's impotence in face of Zionism, along with its capitulationist intentions. That is why the October War, along with the mystifying propaganda campaign that accompanied it, led to the freezing of the student movement for a time. But the "return to consciousness" was not long in coming. (The reference is to the title of a pamphlet by the well-known writer Tewfiq el-Hakim. - INPRECOR) If is probable that the student movement will again take to struggle during the coming winter. But for our toiling masses, the principal motive force of struggle is their living conditions; and all the wars in the world will not succeed in concealing those conditions. While our peasant brothers, bent under the weight of misery, repression, and mystification, have gone into motion only rarely -and here we must mention the peasant revolts in the Bouheira region against the restitution of land to the landlords in the context of the lifting of the old rules of sequestration (the tribunal decided on a compromise postponing enactment of the new rules until after the harvest) - our working class, as usual, has placed itself in the vanguard of popular. struggles against the capitalist regime. In May of this year tens of thousands of our comrades of the aviation and war-production factories in Helwan went on strike for three days against the government's attempts to reduce the bonuses they had been getting, under the pretext of transferring the factories from the government sector to the public sector. The determination of our comrodes, which brought about the personal intervention of the minister of war industries, succeeded in carrying the day, the state granted the workers' demand, but later nine members of the trade-union committee were removed from their positions on the grounds that they had supported the strike. In August, our worker comrades of the Misr-Helwan spinning and weaving company occupied the factory to protest a wage reduction for a three-month period enacted under a false pretext, our comrades won full payment of their wages. The month of September was riddled with workers struggles, for it was the month during which the pressure of the high cost of living attained it apogee because of the expenses for the start of the new school year and the traditional expenses for the month of Ramadan. The demand that additional credit be extended to the workers became generalized. But the regime refused to grant this, limiting itself to suspending until January 1975 the deductions normally taken out of wages for old loans, a measure whose effect is extremely limited. Our worker comrades of the Misr Helwan Company thus launched a new strike on September 14, demanding that payments be made into their frozen savings accounts. More than 4,000 workers (that is, an entire shiff) went on strike for two hours on September 14 and again on September 15. This time they continued their strike, rejecting all the company's fine promises, until the radio broadcast the regime's decision to pay the equivalent of one month's wages into the workers' accounts. The success of the workers of the textile factories was due in part to the contribution made by the worker comrades of the Helwan aviation factories, who also went on strike September 15 and occupied their factory, raising the same demand. On the same day, there were strikes by the workers of the "industrial iron foundry" company and of the "technical and metallurgical industries, "strikes that involved nearly 20,000 workers demanding payment of the same three-month bonus that the workers of the steel factories had obtained in reward for finishing construction of a factory before the set target date, which had been accomplished by the efforts of the workers of the three companies. Since the payment of bonuses had been limited to the workers of the public sector, the workers of some private textile factories in Shubra el-Khaima went on strike on September 18. The regime gave in immediately and included these workers in its decree, thus failing in the attempt to take advantage of the differences it has been seeking to intensify among the various sectors of Egyptian industry. These are the most important struggles we know about. It must be remembered that we live in a country in which the press and the other news media maintain silence about every workers struggle and even present the decrees won by workers strikes as decisions issuing from the attention the regime is paying to the interests of the workers and the people. There have been other struggles in past months by
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EGYPT the workers of the Shubra el-Khaima textile mills and by the public transit drivers in Shubra, Mahalla el-Kubra, and other places. As we have already pointed out, the detonator of these struggles has been the harshness of the conditions of the workers. In some cases the workers have thrown up a vanguard leadership, as was the case with the workers of the Misr Heiwan Company, who succeeded in electing delegates' committees from the ranks, breaking with the traditional institutions. They managed to keep these committees going for several months. In most cases, however, the struggles have been touched off by spontaneous pressure from the rank-and-file workers. The development and extension of the workers struggles forcefully underlines the urgency of the task of constructing a revolutionary workers leadership expressing the real interests of the working class against the capitalist system, a leadership capable of coordinating the struggle of the various industrial sectors and branches and of arming the mass of advanced workers with revolutionary class consciousness. In the absence of such a leadership and in view of the spontaneous character of the struggle going on, the anticapitalist consciousness of the workers takes the form of nostalgia for the Nasser era, during which the present high cost of living was unknown. Years of mystification, aided by some so-called communists, have prevented our working class from understanding that what is presently going on in Egypt is simply the natural consequence of the Nasser era and that the interests of the working closs will not really triumph until the workers themselves take power. Posing the question of leadership requires examining the tendencies that presently exist in the workers movement. 3. Tendencies in the workers movement The present line-up of tendencies in the Egyptian workers movement is of course in large measure the direct result of the years of Nasserism. In the preceding period, two main tendencies existed in the Egyptian working class. The first, which represented the regime, was the Nasserist tendency; the other, oppressed by the regime, was the Communist tendency. In the past few years other small groups have been created, both of the above-mentioned tendencies have divided, and some leaderships have emerged spontaneously from some workers struggles. 1. The Trade-Union Bureaucracy The Nasser regime reorganized the workers movement in conformity with its own interests, turning 12 the "General Union of Egyptian Workers" into the official trade-union movement. Obviously, the Nasserists controlled the workers union throur, the Nasserist party, the Socialist Union, imposing their total domination through well-known methods, particularly by requiring approval by the Socialist Union of all candidates for election to the trade-union committees. The natural consequence was that the Nasserists got a virtually total grip on trade-union posts, and they continue to dominate these posts, thus constituting a broad trade-union bureaucracy. But the political developments that followed the death of Nasser and the "rectification movement" of May 15, 1971, * led to a division in the ranks of the trade-union bureaucracy between two factions, the first supporting the Sadat regime, the second being discontented with the "rectification" measures. The tendency supported by the present regime, the Sadatist tendency, includes the minority of the bureaucratic leaders who quickly abandoned their Nasserism in favor of support to the regime in order to obtain the best posts and the highest salaries. The members of this tendency collaborate completely with the regime and its apparatus, especially the intelligence services, and oppose any workers activities-spying on the workers and singing the praises of the regime and its "achievements. The other tendency, the Nasserist tendency, includes the majority of the bureaucratic leaders and the "Vanguard Organization" group founded by Nasser and later dissolved by Sadat. This tendency does not oppose the regime and plays the same bureaucratic role of aborting workers struggles that it has always played. But it also tries to put pressure on Sadat to prevent him from continuing to liquidate the Nasserist institutions, for the Nasserist bureaucracy well knows that its privileges depend on the maintenance of the institutions created by Nasser. The Nasserist tendency opposes the liquidation of the public sector, because it.knows that the position and privileges of the trade-union bureaucracy in the public sector are far higher than they are in the private sector, where the bureaucracy is subjected to the will of the capitalists. This tendency opposes the idea of reducing the 50 percent proportion of "workers and peasants" (in reality, factory directors and rich villagers) in the "Peoples Assembly," because that would mean a loss of parliamentary seats for the Nasserists. It defends the formulas of the Socialist Union and the "union of the forces of the working people" (that is, the dictatorship, of the single party), because it views a multiplicity of parties as a development that would inevitably entail *On May 15, 1971, Sadat ordered the arrest of many of the leaders of the Nasserist bureaucracy, the principal figure arrested being All Sabri, - INPRECOR
the loss of the role of bureaucratic hegemony played by the Nasserists. These are the basic reasons for the attitudes of the Nosserist tendency; its speeches about "socialism" and the "popular interest" are nothing but transparent veils for its bureaucratic interests, which are threatened by the bourgeois regime. 2. Groups Coming Out of the Egyptian Communist Party The tragic history of the Egyptian Communist movement after the second world war is well known. If is a history dominated by continual fragmenfation, total ideological disorder, and extreme factional sectarianism. The disarray of the Egyptian Communists reached its apex after the Charter was issued*; the movement then divided into several tendencies, ranging from those that saw the Nasserist regime as a quasifascist monopoly capitalist regime to those who saw it taking a socialist road. What finally emerged as dominant was the thesis elaborated by the leaders of the Soviet Union on the "non-capitalist road of development, " an invention as remote as can be from Marxism-Leninism, which recognizes no third road between the bourgeois and proletarian one. The decision of the Communist party Central Committee to dissolve the party and join the Socialist Union can be considered the declaration of bankruptcy by the party leadership; it represented the supreme class betrayal, dissolution of a workers party and integration into a party dominated by the bureaucratic bourgeoisie. *In 1961 Nasser published a "National Charter" that marked the regime's turn toward extending nationalizations. - INPRECOR
Nasser: Created the trade-union bureaucracy The new period, that of the Sadat regime, has seen new activity from several groups issuing from. the dissolved Communist party. The best-known of these are two groups, one representing the continuity of the Stalinist line of obedience to the diplomacy of the USSR, the other following a different, but no less opportunist, path. The first group consists of a small grouping of partisans of the bureaucratic regime that rules the USSR. At the time when the Egyptian regime entered into intimate relations with the USSR, these people sang the praises of the regime; they dissolved the Communist party and participated in the institutions of the Nasserist regime. But the Sadat regime was not to their taste, precisely because it liquidated the Ali Sabri group, which was friendly to the USSR, and provoked tension in the relations with "the great friend, " especially when it orchestrated the expulsion from Egypt of the Soviet military experts (in 1972). Then the Egyptian Stalinists began to speak again about reconstructing their party; today they oppose the Sadat regime on the same basis that the Nasserist tendency does and in alliance with the Nasserists. In their eyes, the present regime is one that is restoring capitalism after Egypf had taken the socialist road. They oppose the opening to American imperialism, but approve the peaceful solution and the execution of the UN resolution; and they could not do otherwise, since the USSR figures among the principal authors of this resolution! The second group is larger and is active among the student milieu and small functionaries, as well as the workers. It calls itself the "Revolutionary Current" and is distinguished from the first group in that
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EGYPT it has abandoned obedience to the USSR, especially on the question of the Palestinian cause. The Revolutionary Current group adopts the objective of the liberation of Palestine; in general it holds radical positions on the national question, rejecting the peaceful solution, opposing the cease-fire, the separation of forces, and even the project of the "Palestinian state, " which is aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause. But the Revalutionary Current group has not adopted these positions in a "revolufionary" way. In fact, it sees no contradiction between these positions and an alliance with ... Sadat! This group asserts that the Sadat regime will wage a fifth war and will continue in this manner until liberation is won! On the basis of this prognostication, the Revolutionary Current believes it necessary to establish a front with the regime, an anti-Zionist united front. And while the group demands trade-union and political rights, it does so only in words, so as to strengthen its alliance with the regime; it adopts a reformist attitude toward workers struggles. The Revolutionary Current group• is fooling both itself and the masses when it asserts that the established bourgeois regime will liberate Palestine; it is closing its eyes to the striking reality: The regime has thrown itself into the arms of Ameri-. can imperialism and is marching firmly down the road of national betrayal, the road of the peaceful solution and the UN resolution. The duty of revolufionaries is to denounce this reality, not embellish it. That is elementary! 3. The New Vanguard The past few years have seen the emergence of a certain number of small groups adopting revolutionary ideas. These groups are present mainly in the student milieu and played a notable role in the student revolts of 1972. In addition, vanguard workers leaderships have surged forward in the struggles of the workers of Helwan; in the steel and textile factories leaderships have taken charge of strikes and expressed without deformation the real interests of the workers. The general situation in Egypt, that of exacerbation of the class struggle, necessarily involves the emergence of such revolutionary groups and vanguard leaderships. But the fundamental precondition for avoiding both the tragedy of the Egyptian Communist movement and an endless division into grouplets is the elaboration of an absolutely clear revolutionary Marxist program without Stalinist or nationalist deformation, a program around which revolutionaries will be assembled and with which they will be armed in their participation in the class struggle, in their leadership of these struggles, and in their march toward the construction of a proletarian revolutionary organization in Egypt capable of linking Egypt to the development of the Arab revolution 14 and the world socialist revolution. This must be an organization integrated into the revolutionary communist party on the scale of the Arab nation, which must itself be a section of the revolutionary communist international, the Fourth International, founded by the Bolshevik-Leninist opposition to the Stalinist degeneration of the Third International after Lenin's death. That is the only Leninist road! 4. Program of the revolutionary communists The strategic aim of the struggle of revolutionary communists is the dictatorship of the proletariat, apart from which there is no way to solve the democratic and national tasks. But along this road revolutionary communists struggle for a body of immediate and transitional demands that permit the development of the struggle and organization of the toiling masses to attain the strategic goal. The program of the revolutionary communists is as follows: Against the high cost of living and for the improvement of the living conditions of the masses:
*reduction of the prices of basic necessities,
*price control by committees of workers delegates, inhabitants of popular neighborhoods, and housewives, the committees having the right to inspect the accounts of the factories and merchants,
*minimum monthly wage of E£30,
*E£5 increases for all wage earners making less than EE50 a month,
*sliding scale of wages, that is, increases in wages every time prices go up - and at the same rate,
*extension of working conditions in the govemmental and public sector to the workers in the private sector, tenure being granted all workers,
*double time for overtime work, figured on the basis of a seven-hour workday.
*full payment of wages to laid-off workers until they find new jobs at the same wage rate,
*guaranteed employment for all those who want work; reduction of the workweek if necessary to bring this about. To assure democratic rights:
*elimination of the domination of the "Socialist
Union" over trade-union and political life and elimination of any form of intervention by the regime in the trade unions,
*freedom of trade-union action,
*total freedom of political action and association,
*right to strike and demonstrate,
*freedom of assembly and full freedom of expression, including freedom of the press and of publishing,