The Egyptian Kronstadt

[robbo203]

excellent post on Libcom...

==================================

As violence intensifies in Egypt, the new Egyptian dictator accuses the
protesters of being counter revolutionary. Are we going to see the Egyptian
workers facing their Kronstadt or are they on the verge of a genuine Arab
Spring?

A year ago thousands of working class Egyptians battled the police and army
throughout the streets of Cairo. They were seeking to overthrow a brutal,
corrupt, and undemocratic regime who made it clear that they would not go
willingly.

Following a huge stand-off in Tahir square the regime was swept away. The
Egyptian revolution then became the spark that kick started similar actions
around the Arab world.

To say I was cynical about the Egyptian revolution is an understatement. To rid
themselves of the Mubarak regime was fantastic, however I didn't have much faith
in what was to replace the old regime. It seemed that they were just swapping
one set of bastards for another.

Twelve months down the line, what has changed in Egypt? Absolutely fuck all has
changed. The lived experience of the Egyptian working class is no better. They
do not have a democracy, or anything resembling one and the people are now back
in the streets of Cairo fighting with the new regime. The new regime is
suppressing the people just as the last one did. Nine hundred protestors have
been injured so far.

The new Egyptian dictator Essam Sharaf, has called on the protestors to leave
Tahir square as they are "threatening the revolution". Spoken like a true
Leninist!

There is no revolution in Egypt, all that has happened is that one group of
bosses have replaced the other, and anyone who dares question the new regime is
labelled as counter revolutionary.

I sincerely hope that there is a now a `real' revolution in Egypt, where there
is genuine workers control rather than just a new set of bosses who are friendly
to the West. The coming weeks will show whether the Egyptian workers are facing
their Kronstadt, or a genuine `Arab Spring'.

http://libcom.org/blog/egyptian-kronstadt-20112011 (http://libcom.org/blog/egyptian-kronstadt-20112011)

[agnixie]

Essam Sharaf handed his resignation yesterday, the egyptian head of state is the chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, not the prime minister, the SCAF is an administration entirely dominated by former Mubarak cronies and the civilian cabinet is merely a puppet to give the illusion of legitimacy.

[rednordman]

There is no revolution in Egypt, all that has happened is that one group of
bosses have replaced the other, and anyone who dares question the new regime is
labelled as counter revolutionary.ah man. You didn't actually believe all the bourgeois western presses orgasming over this so called 'revolution'. It was clear from the start that the military was going to take over. If it was any type of revolution than it wasn't one at all, it was just a coop, supported by the Egyptian people.

Sadly, I saw whats happening now as inevitable, the moment mubarak stepped down.

As for the 'leninists' remark. Well I would indeed believe you...if the military was communist.

[Leftsolidarity]

Like a Leninist?

[Sasha]

Yeah, no matter I like the spirit of the pieces, its to infactual to take seriously.

[Tim Cornelis]

ah man. You didn't actually believe all the bourgeois western presses orgasming over this so called 'revolution'. It was clear from the start that the military was going to take over. If it was any type of revolution than it wasn't one at all, it was just a coop [sic], supported by the Egyptian people.

The bolded part is utter nonsense. Firstly, the military did not take over it was already in control under Mubarak. Therefore, a coup did not occur, only a puppet stepped down. And that it was supported by the Egyptians is nonsense too.

[rednordman]

The bolded part is utter nonsense. Firstly, the military did not take over it was already in control under Mubarak. Therefore, a coup did not occur, only a puppet stepped down. And that it was supported by the Egyptians is nonsense too.interesting. According to the BBCNews website, just after the revolution people were chanting support for the military as if the military and the people where on the same level. Yes, its BBC but still.

Yes, you are indeed correct, it wasn't a coup, just a puppet stepping down. Just to clear that up.

Why the heck media around the world saw this as any kind of revolution I have no idea.

[Geiseric]

If anything the protesters themselves are being leninist by defying the new government, and the new government is being menshevik with their revolutionary defensism

[rednordman]

If anything the protesters themselves are being leninist by defying the new government, and the new government is being menshevik with their revolutionary defensismgood point. Except the government and military are behaving more conservative than anything else imo.

[Revolutionair]

If anything the protesters themselves are being leninist by defying the new government, and the new government is being menshevik with their revolutionary defensism

Wait, does nobody see a pattern here?

Group A (Tsar) has power -> group B (Kerensky) rebels against A.
Group B (Kerensky) has power -> group C (Bolsheviks) rebels against B.
Group C (Bolsheviks) has power -> group D (Kronstadt etc) rebels against C.

[Threetune]

The poor Egyptians are making massive and rapid strides with the working class growing in organizational and political confidence among the more conservative masses, and this Kronstadt analogy is so wide of the mark and utterly irrelevant to what’s happening Egypt. But any anti-Leninist drivel will do for a daft hysterical diversion.




V. I. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/mar/15b.htm)Lenin (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/00.htm)

ON THE KRONSTADT REVOLT


Published: Published in Russian on March 26, 1921 in Petrogradskaya Pravda No. 67. Published in English on March 15, 1921 The New York Herald Tribune No. 197 Printed from the Petrogradskaya Pravda text.
Source:Lenin Collected Works (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/index.htm#volume36), Progress Publishers, 1971 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/v36pp71.txt), Moscow, Volume 36 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/volume36.htm#1921-mar-15), page 538.
SUMMARY OF A TALK WITH A CORRESPONDENT of THE NEW YORK HERALD

"I believe that there are only two kinds of government possible in Russia—a Government by the Soviets or a Government headed by a tsar. Some fools or traitors in Kronstadt talked of a Constituent Assembly, but does any man in his senses believe for a moment that a Constituent Assembly at this critical abnormal stage would be anything but a bear garden. This Kronstadt affair in itself is a very petty incident. It no more threatens to break up the Soviet state than the Irish disorders are threatening to break up the British Empire."

"Some people in America have come to think of the Bolsheviks as a small clique of very bad men who are tyrannizing over a vast number of highly intellectual people who would form an admirable Government among themselves the moment the Bolshevik regime was overthrown. This is a mistake, for there is nobody to take our place save butcher Generals and helpless bureaucrats who have already displayed their total incapacity for rule.
If people abroad exaggerate the importance of the rising in Kronstadt and give it support, it is because the world has broken up into two camps: capitalism abroad and Communist Russia."
V.I. Lenin.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Actually what some Leninists would say is something like: what liberals don't understand about revolution and what this poster apparently doesn't see either is that a revolution is not a single event, but a process. Liberals see the revolution as toppling a dictator and shuffling things at the top, some on the radical left who also tend to see revolutions as an event see this revolution as hopeless because the working class taking power through the uprising last year seemed unlikely. But really the events at the beginning of the year were part of a "beautiful revolution" - times when the ruling order can't go on and many class interests in society converge for a limited but major change. So workers and shop-keepers and students and business people could all agree that the regime couldn't go on and had to go - but the meaning of calls for democracy and an end to dictatorship mean different things depending on what you class position is. So after all these "beautiful revolutions" like upheavals against the Shah, in 1848 europe, in the revolution in Paris preceding the Paris commune, the initial phase of the Russian Revolution create an opening when different class interests compete and those who just wanted to change a figure-head or liberalize antiquated laws begin to stand on one side and there is also the potential for workers to organize and push their interests and what democracy wold mean to them.

So I think the poster is dead-wrong when he says that nothing has changed since the revolt at the beginning of the year - the thing that's changed is that class differences have begun to show themselves within the movement and people are in motion and beginning to fight in their interests. This doesn't mean that revolutionary working class consciousness will emerge in a big way let alone that people will be able to organize a way to fight for worker's power, but these clashes between the state as well as between different class interests in the democracy protesters are the way people can potentially learn how to organize and fight and be their own leaders.


This brotherhood [of antagonistic classes] lasted only as long as there was a consanguinity of interests between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Pedants sticking to the old revolutionary tradition of 1793; socialist doctrinaires who begged alms for the people from the bourgeoisie and who were allowed to deliver lengthy sermons and compromise themselves so long as the proletarian lion had to be lulled to sleep; republicans who wanted to keep the old bourgeois order in toto, but without the crowned head; members of the Dynastic Opposition [22] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume07/footnote.htm#117) on whom chance imposed the task of bringing about the downfall of a dynasty instead of a change of government; legitimists, [23] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume07/footnote.htm#118) who did not want to cast off their livery but merely to change its style -- these were the allies with whom the people had fought their February revolution. What the people instinctively hated in Louis Philip was not Louis Philip himself, but the crowned rule of a class, the capital on the throne. But magnanimous as always, the people thought they had destroyed their enemy when they had overthrown the enemy of their enemies, their common enemy.

The February revolution was the nice revolution, the revolution of universal sympathies, because the contradictions which erupted in it against the monarchy were still undeveloped and peacefully dormant, because the social struggle which formed their background had only achieved an ephemeral existence, an existence in phrases, in words. The June revolution is the ugly revolution, the nasty revolution, because the phrases have given place to the real thing, because the republic has bared the head of the monster by knocking off the crown which shielded and concealed it.

Order! was Guizot's war-cry. Order! shouted Sebastiani, the Guizotist, when Warsaw became Russian. Order! shouts Cavaignac, the brutal echo of the French National Assembly and of the republican bourgeoisie.

Order! thundered his grape-shot as it tore into the body of the proletariat.

None of the numerous revolutions of the French bourgeoisie since 1789 assailed the existing order, for they retained the class rule, the slavery of the workers, the bourgeois system, even though the political form of this rule and this slavery changed frequently. The June uprising did assail this system. Woe to the June uprising!


Order! Cries the military. Order! Cries the Supreme Council. The line in bold is only significant because I thought it was a cool line that sounds like it could apply to Egypt: by getting rid of the dictatorship, the crimes and brutality of the capitalist system are exposed without the dictatorship acting as a buffer for working class anger.

And as far as the analogy about Kronstadt goes, it doesn't even work historically is you accept the idea that so-called Leninism, Bolshevism, leads directly and only to Stalinism. Egypt and the region have yet to have their "ugly" revolution, they've yet to have a distinct worker's revolt. A more accurate analogy would be some event after the toppling of the Tsar.

[Threetune]

“Actually” Jimmy, Leninism should not be as vague as to see “that a revolution is not a single event, but a process.”, because we go beyond discussion of revolution ‘in general’ and try to be specific about revolution ‘in particular’.

All kinds of slippery opportunism can be concocted behind the formally correct but over used vague slogan about ‘revolution being a process’. The Egyptian revolution not only has its own historical characteristics arising out of earlier Nasserism, Soviet friendship, nonaligned movement etc, it is taking place alongside other mass revolutionary movements throughout the region and the greatest ever capitalist world economic crisis.

All the crass comparisons with earlier revolutions are mostly just blather attempting to slip in some anti-communism as the above posts clearly demonstrate.

[Threetune]

Yeah, no matter I like the spirit of the pieces, its to infactual to take seriously.

Ye, what did you like about “the spirit of the pieces” which is nothing but ignorant and reactionary anti-communist sectarianism and a good attempt at flaming if ever there was one.

[Jimmie Higgins]

“Actually” Jimmy, Leninism should not be as vague as to see “that a revolution is not a single event, but a process.”, because we go beyond discussion of revolution ‘in general’ and try to be specific about revolution ‘in particular’. What are you "actually" arguing here? If you have a disagreement, be straight with it. My point was not to give a specific analysis of the revolution but to address the view of this poster who dismisses the significance of the uprising as not part of a revolution because he sees it as ending with the toppling of Mubarak.


There is no revolution in Egypt, all that has happened is that one group of bosses have replaced the other, and anyone who dares question the new regime is labelled as counter revolutionary.This would be true if revolution is just a single event such as a movement to overthrow Mubarak but as we can see more clearly now, the overthrow was the opening, not the closing of the struggle. And in terms of social revolution, the overthrow of Mubarak did not replace one group of bosses for another, it just got rid of a few top bosses while generally the same people still run things. So Egypt is still very much in a process of revolution though we can't say how deep it will be or if worker's will begin to organize and push separately or will tail other class forces let alone if workers will win power.

[Crux]

excellent post on Libcom...

==================================

As violence intensifies in Egypt, the new Egyptian dictator accuses the
protesters of being counter revolutionary. Are we going to see the Egyptian
workers facing their Kronstadt or are they on the verge of a genuine Arab
Spring?

A year ago thousands of working class Egyptians battled the police and army
throughout the streets of Cairo. They were seeking to overthrow a brutal,
corrupt, and undemocratic regime who made it clear that they would not go
willingly.

Following a huge stand-off in Tahir square the regime was swept away. The
Egyptian revolution then became the spark that kick started similar actions
around the Arab world.

To say I was cynical about the Egyptian revolution is an understatement. To rid
themselves of the Mubarak regime was fantastic, however I didn't have much faith
in what was to replace the old regime. It seemed that they were just swapping
one set of bastards for another.

Twelve months down the line, what has changed in Egypt? Absolutely fuck all has
changed. The lived experience of the Egyptian working class is no better. They
do not have a democracy, or anything resembling one and the people are now back
in the streets of Cairo fighting with the new regime. The new regime is
suppressing the people just as the last one did. Nine hundred protestors have
been injured so far.

The new Egyptian dictator Essam Sharaf, has called on the protestors to leave
Tahir square as they are "threatening the revolution". Spoken like a true
Leninist!

There is no revolution in Egypt, all that has happened is that one group of
bosses have replaced the other, and anyone who dares question the new regime is
labelled as counter revolutionary.

I sincerely hope that there is a now a `real' revolution in Egypt, where there
is genuine workers control rather than just a new set of bosses who are friendly
to the West. The coming weeks will show whether the Egyptian workers are facing
their Kronstadt, or a genuine `Arab Spring'.

http://libcom.org/blog/egyptian-kronstadt-20112011 (http://libcom.org/blog/egyptian-kronstadt-20112011)
I find it very hard to take this piece seriously. Yeah sure the egyptian government are "leninists" right, right. If you are so cynical about any revolutionary upheaveals why bother writing at all?

[Blackscare]

excellent post on Libcom...

Tahir square as they are "threatening the revolution". Spoken like a true
Leninist!


Ugh, this post is far from "excellent". Instead of offering any cogent analysis is just descends into typical libcom whining. Don't get me wrong, I'm not supporting the current Egyptian regime or military, but for a post on the subject to be "excellent" to me it should tell me something that I don't know or provide some sort of insight. This article is neither. It's mostly just veiled inter-leftist saber-rattling with references to sailors from almost a fucking century ago that nobody but libcom gives a shit about, and this little gem I quoted up top.


You know, if this were a stand-up bit, I'd say that there was far too much set up for a very unsatisfactory punchline "LOLZ LENINISTS, KRONDSTAT". This article wasn't really about Egypt, or else it would be informative in some way.

Don't make me gag.