Communist Workers Group (CWG-USA)

EGYPT Debate: LCC responds to RCIT

Dear Comrades of RCIT,

Thanks for your letter and your article critiquing our position on recent momentous events in Egypt.  We thought our article was good and self-explanatory.  You ask us to elaborate on our position.

We obviously agree on the overall global situation and the Arab Revolution, unlike most of the reformist and centrist left that sits in the imperialist countries offering Orientalist advice to the Arab masses on how to fight for democracy.

Nevertheless, we have a difference on how to understand events in the Egyptian revolution and in particular the question of the recent so-called ‘coup’ and the relevance of the Revolutionary Constituent Assembly (RCA) tactic in advancing the revolution. So we will try in this brief response to identify what we think are our differences in program and method.

The RCA is a secondary, tactical, question and I don’t think we have serious differences on that as a necessary demand in the Transitional Program. However, we think that the application of it historically, and your application of it today supports our view that it is a ‘defensive’ demand. The issue around the RCA is the role it plays in the action program. When the class is on the offensive the RCA is included as a promise to more backward elements of the workers and petty bourgeois that the workers will fight to defend and win bourgeois rights. When the class is in retreat the RCA becomes a central task since the defence of the most advanced bourgeois democracy possible is a condition of the return to an offensive.

Nor probably do we have any serious difference on the term ‘coup d’Etat if by which is meant the army taking control of the state. The disagreement is whether in Egypt right now the army needed to stage a coup to control the state. While both the WIVP and RCIT use the term coup they draw opposite conclusions. For the WIVP the SCAFs control of the state is conditional on meeting the expectations of the masses for democracy and therefore an indication of the advance of the revolution. For the RCIT it signifies a defeat, workers’ illusions in democracy, and possibly a retreat of the revolution.

Our position is that the term ‘coup’ is descriptive and does not help in understanding the deeper class relations and power struggles of the Egyptian revolution and the wider Arab Revolution. The danger is that the ‘coup’ becomes an impressionistic ‘fact’ that detaches itself from the totality and is then given too much weight in assessing the balance of class forces. The result can be as serious as to mistake an advance in the Arab revolution for a counter-revolutionary retreat.

Indeed, you begin your letter by saying (paraphrasing) that the ‘coup’ is important for the whole of the Arab Revolution. We think that by this you actually mean that the ‘coup’ is a defeat for the revolution in Egypt and because of Egypt’s importance in MENA, a setback for the Arab revolution.

This is where our major difference lies. We avoided using the term ‘coup’ to describe the army seizure of power because this gives too much weight to the deposing of the MB regime that came into existence as a counter-revolutionary deal with the SCAF in its attempt to suppress the advance of the Egyptian revolution. We clearly recognised this in our 2012 article “The Egyptian Revolution: the electoral road to imperialist stabilisation vs the road to workers power”.

When the MB regime failed to keep the lid on the revolution the army exercised its reserve power to depose it. Despite his attempts, Mursi had failed to take power from the SCAF. Thus the SCAF was able to use that power when the revolution resurged in its many millions determined to bring down Mursi. This appeared to be a ‘coup’ because the SCAF removed the MB from government; but actually the SCAF continuing to play its role as ‘king maker’, very much under pressure to suppress the revolution and fulfil its Bonapartist role in balancing between both imperialism and the Egyptian masses.

Thus while the RCIT points out that the SCAF has adopted a more openly pro-US foreign policy, and the WIVP claims that the SCAF must meet the democratic expectations of the masses forcefully expressed on the streets, we see this apparent ‘coup’ as a ‘rebalancing’ of the Bonapartist trick cyclist, riding the high wire above the classes but in a global imperialist crisis without a safety net.

In other words in relation to the epoch of imperialism, the crisis of capitalism, and the re-opening of the Arab Revolution, we see the apparent ‘coup’ as only one aspect of the advance of that revolution in Egypt and MENA. Given the global revolutionary period, the Transitional Program must point the way to the independent organisation of the workers, the general strike, the insurrection and a Workers’ State.

To the extent that elements of the working class and the oppressed have illusions in bourgeois democracy we think that the development of independent worker organisation which confronts the SCAF regime will explode the main class contradiction and detonate the secondary contradiction in the army between the supreme command and the ranks. This is the offensive method of destroying illusions in bourgeois democracy by the victory of revolution over counter-revolution.

It seems to us, however, that since you see the ‘coup’ as evidence of a defeat, if not retreat, of the Revolution in Egypt and the wider MENA, that while you call in you program for independent class mobilisation up to and including a Workers’ State, you really do not have confidence in the movement being able to split and defeat the SCAF on the streets or in the workplaces. You are in effect saying that the movement is in retreat so that the fight for a RCA is the main task of the revolution today.

This is the essence of our differences in Egypt. Does the balance of class forces advance of revolution over counter-revolution or not? We agree that we are in the imperialist epoch; since the 1980s we are in a structural crisis of overproduction; since 2008 we are in a global revolutionary period which can lead only to socialism or barbarism; that the Arab Revolution is the re-opened national-democratic revolution; but we disagree on the conjuncture in Egypt and therefore MENA.

Ultimately this is a difference in method regarding how we weigh the respective aspects of the totality. We would say that your method is too impressionist in isolating the ‘fact’ of the SCAF and US conspiracy to seize power and thus giving too much weight to the counter-revolution, as against the massive mobilisation of the masses resistance to the crisis of imperialism and to all of imperialism’s attempts so far to impose a counter-revolutionary defeat.

We hope that this has clarified the method underlying our article on Egypt.

Fraternally,

Dave Brown

For  LCC

July, 22, 2013

References

Egyptian Class Combat Deepens: On to the mass political general strike. Forward to workers’ councils  http://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/egyptian-class-combat-deepens-on-to-the-mass-political-strike-forward-to-workers-councils/

The Egyptian Revolution: The electoral road to imperialist stabilization vs the road to workers’ power http://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/the-egyptian-revolution-the-electoral-road-to-imperialist-stabilization-vs-the-road-to-workers-power/

To Arms, To Arms the Revolution in Egypt is under attack! http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/02/to-arms-to-arms-revolution-in-egypt-is.html

Egypt debate: WIVP statement http://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/egypt-debate-workers-international-vanguard-party-statement/

Egypt: RCIT debates WIVP and LCC http://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/rcit-debates-wivp-and-lcc-on-the-tactic-of-the-revolutionary-constituent-assembly/

LCC: The Arab Revolution meets NATO/Zionism. http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/the-arab-revolution-meets-nato-zionism.html

Part 1: From Rebel to Revolution? Formal democracy and its grievances http://en.aswatmasriya.com/analysis/view.aspx?id=a502e964-1fcb-4f21-8b1c-e7d3695524df

Part 2: From rebel to revolution? On the alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military http://en.aswatmasriya.com/analysis/view.aspx?id=bc45df34-a539-4796-8b77-a9cc56fec9e5

Coup vs Revolution: Which narrative to prevail? http://en.aswatmasriya.com/analysis/view.aspx?id=684e53da-3af0-4ab7-b37d-fbe8ab27ac76

The Politics of the Brotherhood Democracy: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13062/the-politics-of-the-brotherhood-democracy_how-the-