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<H2 class=date-header><SPAN>Friday, July 5, 2013</SPAN></H2>
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<DIV class="post hentry" itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting"
itemscope="itemscope" itemprop="blogPost"><A name=5973996758587319494></A>
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<H1 class=title><A href="http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/">Facts For Working
People</A></H1>Egyptian Revolution: perspectives and international repercussions
after Morsi </H3></DIV></DIV></DIV><FONT size=5>by Stephen Morgan<BR><BR>I would
like to offer some remarks on the international repercussions of the 2nd phase
of the Egyptian revolution, the effects on the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda,
plus some comments on the perspectives for the workers' movement in the Arab
world.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
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class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5>Another key factor which needs to be considered is what the international
repercussions will be for the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamists and Al Qaeda, as
well as for the growing global anti-capitalist movements.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
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class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5>With regard to the MB and Islamists, the effects will probably be very
contradictory. In the first place, the scale of the secular revolt against their
government will have been a startling blow to their leaders and core supporters,
both in Egypt and around the Muslim world. Similar revolts on a lesser scale
have taken place in Tunisia already and it will no doubt have further
repercussions there. It will also definitely affect the political process in
Islamic countries across the North African/Maghrebian region such as Libya,
Morocco and Mauritania.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
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class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5>Like the MB, Al Qaeda and its equivalents will have been caught off-guard
and confused by events, just like they were by the first Egyptian and Tunisian
revolutions in 2011. In the interim period since then they have regained
something of their equilibrium and broadened their influence to some degree.
While having fiercely denounced the MB in the past, Al Qaeda has nevertheless
also been making overtures and toning down their rhetoric against the MB
governments recently, in order to reach out to their wider supporters. So, in
general terms, the shift towards the MB and the election of MB governments
helped them to recover from the disastrous blow they suffered by the secular
revolt in 2011. For their supporters, the new MB regimes seemed to reaffirm the
idea that the shift towards Islamism was still continuing, that the secular
nature of the first revolutions was merely a passing aberration and that history
was in fact on their side. However, the scale and power of the new mass secular
movement in Egypt and the passionate rejection of even the MB's milder Islamist
ideology will again flabbergast them and disorientate them
temporarily.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV
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class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5>Having said all of that, there are two sides to the coin of what is
happening or developing. The crack down on the MB by the Egyptian military can
make martyrs of them among their supporters, who will fight back. Moreover, they
are used to this situation, having learned how to sustain themselves during
persecution by the military and secular state under the Mubarak regime. The
current attacks on them by the military, compounded by the eventual
disillusionment with new regime's failure to meet the expectations of this
second revolutionary wave, will lay the basis for a recovery in their support,
although I doubt it will be sufficient to sweep them to power again in the
future. A far <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">"messier"</I> period is
opening up in my opinion.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV
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class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5>The eventual failure of the new regime to fulfill the expectations of the
second revolution will instead lead to a clearer left/right polarization in
society, though this will be complicated by the fact that the military could
also retain the support of an important section of the population, particularly
among the middle classes, who will want stability, particularly if the MB turns
to violence and Al Qaeda begins an urban guerrilla offensive and terrorist
activities in the cities and the Sinai.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV
style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 13pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5>Therefore, so much depends on how the Egyptian labour movement develops
in the next period. It alone could be the force which would cut across or
diminish such developments and send a different beacon of light to the workers
of the region. Like the rest of the underdeveloped or emergent countries, the
Arab nations have seen a huge growth in the size of the working class. 21% of
the workforce in the Arab world are now employed in industry, equivalent to
Latin and Central America and only 1% less than Western
Europe!</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV
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class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5>In Tunisia, a colossal 32% of the workforce are industrial workers,
Algeria 24%, Turkey 26%, Libya 23%, Palestine 22%, Saudi Arabia 21%, Jordan 20%,
Morocco 20% and Egypt 17% (although this is probably an underestimation, given
that some 40% of peasant small holders have a primary income from working in
industry, while at the same making a part of their income from small farms and
are therefore classified as part of the agricultural workforce) Even in Syria,
16% of the workforce are in manufacturing.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV
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class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5> It is an ironic offshoot of French imperialism that union
federations based on the French models do play a prominent national role in
countries like Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The fact that many of them have
become stooge unions of the state in a way confirms the potential for industrial
action by the workers, in the sense that the ruling classes have taken control
of the hierarchy of the unions, precisely because they recognize and fear the
potential for independent working class organization.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV
style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 13pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5>Regardless of this the ruling class was unable to stop the massive strike
waves which swept Tunisia and Egypt in advance of the revolutions. Indeed, in
Tunisia during the 2011 revolution, while independent, free unions were
established, the workers in the industrial heartlands, who started the
revolution, took the local stooge unions by the neck, invading their offices and
removing regime puppets or forcing them to call regional general strikes, which
snowballed into national actions.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV
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class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5>The workers in the phosphate mines and industrial heartlands of Tunisia
and the textile workers of Mahalla in Egypt played a crucial role during
2006-2008 in paving the way for the revolutions. They fought the forces of the
state and broke the <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">"fear barrier"</I>
surrounding the dictatorships. The effect of their struggles was to leave the
imprint of the idea in the subconsciousness of the masses that it was possible
to stand up to the state and win. However, as we have said before, despite the
mass strikes which later complimented the revolutionary movements, Even so,
there is tremendous potential for an independent workers movement to grow in the
coming period and the possibility not only of general strikes in different
countries, but even regional transnational, general strikes similar and probably
greater than the one-day general strike against austerity, which took place
across Southern Europe in 2013.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV
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class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5> But if the working class moves into the arena and fills the vacuum
with its own independent unions and a party with a radical, anti-capitalist
programme, this new alternative to secular liberalism, military Bonapartism and
radical Islam can quickly grip the imagination of the masses, who will flock to
its banner, pulling behind them the semi-lumpen and lumpen sections of society,
the poor farmers, the street vendors and craftspeople and sections of the middle
classes, particularly small shopkeepers and professionals like doctors and
lawyers, engineers and those working in the high-tech communication
sector.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV
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class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5>We have already seen how the first stage of the Tunisian and Egyptian
revolutions swept North Africa and the Middle East from the shores of the
Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf and how it inspired movements like Occupy, the
Indignados and the strikes in Greece and across Europe and elsewhere as well.
</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia; FONT-SIZE: 13pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-language: JA"><FONT
size=5>Its effects have continued to be felt in the massive movements recently
in Turkey and Brazil. This second phase in Egypt now will solidify the idea in
the minds of the masses around the world that 2011 wasn't a <I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">"one-off"</I> but that it is indeed really
possible to remove dictators and unpopular governments through mass action. The
masses globally will become more confident in their potential power as a result.
In that sense it is also possible that while Egypt has influenced the developing
world revolution, events stemming from it in other countries, especially through
the intervention of the labour movement in other nations, can in turn affect the
future events in Egypt as well.</FONT></SPAN></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>