Rolling General strike and mass demonstrations called for Egypt on Tuesday. Some lessons and conclusions we can draw from the revolutions hitting the Arab world.

The Egyptian working class is not intimidated by the Mubarak regime or the presence of the military on the streets of Cairo. More protests and demonstrations are being planned for Tuesday with one million people expected from around the country. Ranks should be swelled if the rolling general strike that has been called is successful.

"The whole regime must come down," a construction worker told the Reuters news agency. "We do not want anyone from Mubarak's retinue in the new government, which the people will choose. We want a civil government run by the people themselves."

“The demonstrations are wonderful! I have been waiting for this all my life!” another demonstrator, an elderly man told the BBC when asked if he thought the protesters had gone too far.

The working class of Egypt, Tunisia and other countries in the region are a classic example of what works in struggle and what doesn’t---what strengthens the working class and what strengthens our enemies. Syria’s dictator Assad is now talking about reforms telling the Wall Street Journal that the protests in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen are ushering in a “new era” in the Middle East. The Arab leaders need to do “more to accommodate their people’s rising political and economic aspirations.” he says.

All the suicide bombings and actions of religious or any other organizations using the method of individual terrorism could not have produced in a thousand years the results we have seen in the past week or so. Arab dictators, from Assad to the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies, Islamic regimes like Iran and the Zionist regime in Israel, and imperialist powers like the US, are all united in their fear of the revolutionary potential of the Arab masses. The Chinese dictators have blocked the word “Egypt” from search engines for fear that the events there will encourage the Chinese workers to rise up and threaten the iron heel of the Chinese bureaucracy that rests precariously on their necks.

This is the power of the working class in action and the ruling classes of the world fear it.

According to today’s Wall Street Journal, “The umbrella organization that organized the protests formed a steering committee on Sunday under Mr. ElBaradei to pressure the regime for more political concessions.” The opposite it true; the intention is to hold back the forces that have brought concessions so far and prevent them from going further, contesting state power. The greatest danger now are the counterrevolutionary forces; the religious leaders, the Egyptian capitalist class as represented by Mr. ElBaradei, the Zionists and imperialist forces that will unite in one way or another to undermine the independent movement of the working class, co-opt the movement and move to preserve capitalism and the market. While we support all struggles for democratic reforms we have no illusions that capitalism can provide them for most people or for any length of time; we have to go further.

Science, including social science, will not tolerate a vacuum.

It is imperative that we draw conclusions from these heroic struggles of the Arab workers and youth. Firstly, these revolutions and uprisings are not occurring under the banner of Islamic fundamentalism. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been described as the most organized and powerful opposition in Egypt, never endorsed the protests and never called upon its members to join them, although it never aggressively opposed them.  It has now endorsed the former UN official Mohamed ElBaradei.

We also pointed out previously that as these mass uprisings were taking place, there was a suicide bombing in Moscow that killed dozens of workers. These are big news for the capitalist mass media as such methods of struggle are alien to the working class and are abhorred by most workers while they also create public support for increased state suppression of democratic rights and civil liberties. Workers are not attracted to such methods or those groups that use them and the events in the Middle East show this. The revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East are being fought over democratic rights, reform, jobs, housing and fair and free elections as well as trade Union rights as well as socialist elements.

So the process taking place in North Africa and the Middle East lays to rest the pessimistic arguments put forward repeatedly by Union leaders, liberals and the like that workers will not fight. But it also confirms the importance of organization, leadership and program. As in the strikes that have taken place in the US and gone down to defeat, what is missing is leadership, not the heroism of workers or our will to fight.

In an interview published Saturday, Jon B. Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said of the Egyptian events, “As in Tunisia, the protests appear to represent a largely leaderless movement with no clear agenda and no way to seize power.” * The Egyptian capitalist class in conjunction with global imperialism is intent on remedying this situation.

So two important conclusions we draw are that the working class will fight contrary to all the liberal and bourgeois arguments that we won’t. The other is that the role of leadership, is crucial. We agree with the theoretician of capital quoted above that what is lacking is a leadership of the working class that can draw together all the revolutionary forces and that this leadership, must have a clear program, or agenda as he put it, and a strategy for seizing state power.

Capitalism cannot solve the crisis effecting workers in the Middle East or throughout the world. The capitalist system cannot meet the “aspirations, political or economic” of the Arab or any other people throughout the world. Capitalism cannot solve the environmental crisis that threatens to destroy life on Earth as we know it.

It is difficult when one is not there or and don’t have forces on the ground in such a situation. But the history of working class struggle, from the Paris Commune to the Russian Revolution and the Seattle General Strike has taught us a thing or two even in defeat, perhaps more so in defeat.

The working class can place no trust in any of the institutions of the capitalist class or its political representatives. Free elections of delegates from the Trade Union organizations, community committees, and all independent working class organizations to a Constituent Assembly is the way forward.   Relying only on our own strength with support from our middle class allies is what will lead to a real victory. Through a Constituent Assembly a new constitution can be drawn up to reflect the interests of the working class and not of capital and in this way can challenge for state power on a democratic socialist basis.

The revolutionary process has not been contained to Tunisia. The Wall Street Journal describes US capitalism’s fear of the revolution spreading throughout the region, especially to Saudi Arabia. And the Chinese bureaucracy is terrified of it spreading there. The Zionist regime is terrified of what this means for them in the region as their imperialist masters appear to be losing their base among the Arab regimes who themselves are worried to death. As the WSJ puts it, “Egypt’s political turmoil risks setting off shifts that undermine broad American foreign policy goals” that could, “Put Washington in its weakest position in that region in half a century.” **

These facts alone prove that the allies of the Egyptian workers are the workers of all countries and their enemies and ours are those forces, both domestic and foreign, whose goal it is to perpetuate the rule of the market,. The garment workers of Bangladesh, the auto workers of the US and the students of the world that have waged battles against capital in the past period are the forces that the revolutionary Arab workers must reach out to and we must reach out to them.

Regardless of the outcome of the present events, the Arab masses have changed the world in the last two weeks. But to resolve the problems we all face; to meet the economic and political “aspirations” common to all workers of the world, the Building an independent international working class movement, armed with a program and strategy for replacing capitalism with a world federation of democratic socialist states is necessary.

*See: The Obama administration and Egypt WSWS *
** Events Rattle US Approach in Region WSJ 1-31-11
* This blog is not affiliated to the WSWS