Contrary to what the bourgeois media claim, revolutions
are not made by individual agitators or small groups. They are made by the mass
of people and they are prepared for years by the decay of the old system which is
no longer able to take society forward. On the other hand, when a society is ripe
for revolution, that is, when all the contradictions have accumulated to a critical
degree, a small force can play a large role in the events that are about to
unfold.
Contrary to what the bourgeois media claim, revolutions
are not made by individual agitators or small groups. They are made by the mass
of people and they are prepared for years by the decay of the old system which is
no longer able to take society forward. On the other hand, when a society is ripe
for revolution, that is, when all the contradictions have accumulated to a critical
degree, a small force can play a large role in the events that are about to
unfold.
Last week the New York
Times carried a very interesting article, called "Wired and Shrewd, Young Egyptians
Guide Revolt", where the methods used by the organizers of the first Egyptian
demonstrations at the end of January are highlighted. Although we do not agree with
many of the political points made in the article, it serves to highlight the very
effective methods used by the organizers to mobilize a mass force. These lessons
must be studied by all honest Iranian revolutionaries who today enter a crucial
day where demonstrations have been called in 35 cities around the country. For Marxists
a serious attitude towards methods, demands and organization is crucial to facilitate
victory and at the same time to assure the least amount of casualties in the process.
In Egypt, just like Iran,
society has been ripe for revolution for some years. Eruptions have occurred in
all parts of the country, such as when 55,000 tax collectors struck in 2007 or when
27,000 workers at Misr Spinning and Weaving struck for a week in the same year and
won an all-out victory. Without a revolutionary party, however, to channel and generalize
these struggles and to give them a national character, they have remained isolated
to certain areas and groups.
The overthrow of the Tunisian
dictator Zine El Abedine Ben Ali, was a great impulse and inspiration for the Egyptian
masses. In that moment of ferment a small group of 15 courageous activists managed
to play a key role in utilizing the momentum to organize the first demonstrations.
A Facebook revolution
It is a well-known myth
that the Egyptian revolution was supposed to have been a true "Facebook-revolution".
But what the article in The New York Times clearly shows is that web services such
as Facebook, Twitter and GoogleChat are powerful tools, but that they cannot replace
physical mobilisation and organisation.
The group organizing the
movement got in into contact through these media and used them to leak false information
in order to deceive the security forces, but when it came to organizing and mobilizing
the group were physically present. For the day of the first demonstration the group
had reportedly sent activists to more than 50 different locations in Cairo from
where different demonstrations were to start and to move towards Tahrir Square.
At the same time the official starting point of the demonstration was announced
on the Internet to be a completely different place in order to deceive the security
forces.
Democratic and social
demands
It is clear that the main
demands of the revolution up until now have been democratic. The slogan of Down
with Mubarak could unite all social forces in Egyptian society while at the same
time give a clear and concrete goal for the movement. The demand for overthrow
of the regime is an utmost necessity within a democratic mass movement, not only
to achieve democracy, but also to mobilize the masses. Especially in a country such
as Egypt or Iran people understand that a movement that does not remove the
despot will be met with bloody retaliation.
But at the same time the
activists in Egypt discovered the value of social demands in mobilizing the working
and poor masses. The article in New York Times explains:
"The day of the protest,
the group tried a feint to throw off the police. The organizers let it be known
that they intended to gather at a mosque in an upscale neighbourhood in central
Cairo, and the police gathered there in force. But the organizers set out instead
for a poor neighbourhood nearby, Mr. Elaimy recalled.“Starting in a poor neighbourhood was itself
an experiment. ‘We always start from the elite, with the same faces,’ Mr. Lotfi
said. ‘So this time we thought, let’s try.’“They divided up into two teams — one coaxing
people in cafes to join them, the other chanting to the tenements above. Instead
of talking about democracy, Mr. Lotfi said, they focused on more immediate issues
like the minimum wage. ‘They are eating pigeon and chicken and we are eating beans
all the time,’ they chanted. ‘Oh my, 10 pounds can only buy us cucumbers now, what
a shame what a shame’.”
The result was overwhelming; it revealed
the forces that were waiting to explode within the working masses. One of those
interviewed in the article explained: “Our group started when we were 50. When we
left the neighbourhood we were thousands.” As the protests broke up that day, she
said, she saw a man shot to death by the police.
Preparations
Although the activists of the group admit
that they had underestimated the poorer parts of the population, it is clear that
these activists weren’t newcomers. They had a professional attitude to the demonstration
and did not simply rely on calling on the masses to come out. They put
actions behind their plans and ideas and left as little as possible to chance. In
the week leading up to the demonstration they had a sustained stepping up of the
campaign on the Internet and even made preparatory demonstrations in the poor neighbourhoods
where they were not confident of support for their demonstration. Again the article
explains:
"The night before the ‘Friday of anger’
demonstration planned for Jan. 28, the group met at the home of Mr. Elaimy while
Mr. Lotfi conducted what he called a ‘field test.’ From 6 to 8 p.m., he and a small
group of friends walked the narrow alleys of a working-class neighbourhood calling
out for residents to protest, mainly to gauge the level of participation and measure
the pace of a march through the streets.
“‘And the funny thing is, when we finished
up the people refused to leave,’ he said. ’They were 7,000
and they burned two police cars’.”
The role played prior preparation
of the demonstrations was crucial as they could have ended in a bloodbath if the
vanguard of the movement, the youth, had been isolated without the protection of
a mass movement. At the same time the demonstrations, the biggest ones being on
Fridays after Friday prayers, would start at different mosques in quieter areas
and from there walk towards the main arteries of Cairo where security forces would
be more concentrated.
Plan for a sustained
campaign
In contradiction to what
messrs Mousavi and Karroubi seem to imply, single day protests have proven to be
much less effective than a sustained campaign where momentum is built up. One day
demonstrations can only be used to measure one’s forces and send a signal throughout
society, while a serious offensive to change society requires a plan for a sustained
campaign that is constantly stepped up.
This fact is confirmed
by the most successful demonstrations in Iran in the year of 2009. The first one
was on the 17th June (25 Khordad), and came on top of a month long election campaign
that mobilized thousands. The other was on the day of Ashura, where power virtually
slipped onto the streets after a week of mobilizations (mainly because the events
coincided with the death of Ayatolla Montazeri).
In Egypt and Tunisia too
we saw that it was a sustained campaign of mass actions that laid the foundation
for the overthrow of Mubarak and Ben Ali. While carefully calculating important
factors such as fatigue, the organizers of the demonstrations did not have illusions
in one day demonstrations. The article explains that "The organizers disseminated
a weekly schedule, with the biggest protests set for Tuesday and Friday, to conserve
their energy."
Although it does not appear
to have been the plan, the 18 days of demonstrations in Egypt were connected with
a constant stepping up of the struggle. This fact played a very big role. Like an
army in battle, revolutions need to be on the move. Stagnation or standstill can
lead to disorientation and in the end loss of vital morale. Therefore, besides having
a clear and concrete revolutionary program it is important constantly to have a
plan for stepping up the struggle and drawing in new layers of society.
In the end what was crucial
and gave the final push in both Tunisia and Egypt was the drawing in of the working
class as an organized force with strike action. This is an important lesson for
Iranian revolutionaries that must use the momentum and impulse of demonstrations
to prepare and organize a general strike.
The need for leadership
The Egyptian revolution
has many lessons for serious revolutionaries. In this article we have chosen only
to cover a small part of all this. The activists who ignited the movement in Egypt
did indeed have some excellent ideas and methods. Especially their methods helped
overcome a major problem that we face in Iran on how to gather a core of thousands
before a crackdown. But at the same time the group had some shortcomings.
Firstly, one weakness of
the activists was the lack of a clear programme linking democratic and social demands
in order to draw in all layers of society and to work against the propaganda of
the regime who, at times with some luck, portrayed the movement as a group of people
only trying to create chaos with no particular aim.
Secondly, and most importantly,
the group did not manage to give the movement an organized expression. In order
to enforce the excellent preparations that they had made, to widen and strengthen
the scope of the movement and to make it more representative, they should have worked
towards setting up organizing committees in all neighbourhoods and factories and
link them up on a local and national basis. This would allow for a much greater
mass of people to participate in the movement and give it a far less chaotic character.
At the same time such an organization would allow the masses to develop a leadership
and give it a concrete representative force. It is a virtual fact that, had such
a force been present in Egypt, it could have overthrown Mubarak on several
occasions since the beginning of the movement and taken power, based on the support
of the majority of the people.
Instead the movement was
faced with at least one occasion in the evening of Sunday the 6th February
where disorientation and loss of morale seemed to be spreading through some layers
of the masses, creating a dangerous situation where reaction could have made a bloody
comeback. The revolution, however, was saved many times by the heroic acts of especially
the hardest core of the movement who lost many martyrs to defend it. Also finally,
although the masses had power in their hands, they did not know what to do with
it and it thus slipped through their fingers and into the hands of the army.
The main problem of the Egyptian, Tunisian and Iranian revolutions are, and
have been and will continue to be, the lack of a revolutionary party and leadership
that has studied past struggles and drawn the necessary conclusions. This fact gives
the revolutionary processes a more chaotic and protracted character and at the same
time will require more sacrifices from the masses. But it is not our task to laugh
or weep over this fact, but merely understand that it is our historic task to build
and temper this leadership amidst the raging flames of the revolution. It is not
an easy task, but it has never been easier. History is on our side, the forces of
reaction are historically weak and the masses are rising in readiness for struggle.
We have full trust in the youth and the workers and their ability to take their
destiny in their own hands. Forward until victory!
