Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT)
14.8.2013 (12:00 GMT)
www.thecommunists.net
1. The crackdown crackdown of the military-imposed regime against the pro-Morsi mass protests is underway. According to different reports between 300 and 2.200 people have been killed in the first few hours only. The smaller of the two protests, at Nahda Square in Giza, has been already destroyed by the army and police. However thousands of people are still defending the protest camp at the Raba’a al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City neighbourhood. In reaction there have been a number of mass protests and attacks on army bases and police stations (e.g. in Helwan in southern Cairo, Alexandria and Sinai).
2. There is no doubt that these are decisive days for the democratic struggle against the reactionary regime of al-Sisi and his army command. The crackdown demonstrates once more the reactionary character of this regime. This regime threatens to suppress any possible resistance and to destroy the limited democratic gains of the 25th January 2011 Revolution which brought down the Mubarak dictatorship. This is why the RIT states that the main enemy today is the al-Sisi regime and the main task is to defend the democratic rights and the mass protests against the regime.
3. If there has still be any doubt about the character of the regime, a few incidents in the last days symbolically demonstrate once more its thoroughly counter-revolutionary character. It arrested two leaders of the Suez Steel workers who have organized a number of strikes. It collaborated with the Israeli army in killing four Islamist fighters on the Sinai Peninsula who are part of the just struggle against the Zionist Apartheid state. The regime detained 42 Syrians in Alexandria, including children and a pregnant woman, in order to deport them to Turkey. In doing so it helps the reactionary Assad dictatorship in its determination to liquidate the Syrian Revolution. The struggle for a workers and popular insurrection against the military-imposed regime is part of the necessary advance of the Arab Revolution towards a consistently democratic, anti-imperialist and socialist revolution.
4. The protests against the al-Sisi regime are currently led by the bourgeois-Islamist leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. The RCIT does not support in any way the politics of this party. Quite the opposite, the RCIT supported the mass protests against the Morsi government on 30th June and before. These protests were progressive because the workers and poor fought for bread and democratic freedom against the bourgeois-democratically elected Morsi government. However, the military coup created a completely new situation. The army command takeover was thoroughly counter-revolutionary albeit it claimed to be related to the 30th June demonstration. In fact this claim was nothing but a figleaf for the army command, the imperialists and the fulool (remnant of the Mubarak regime) to take power directly in their hands and to start an anti-democratic rollback.
5. The RCIT sharply condemns those leftists in Egypt and internationally who objectively helped the reactionary military regime in their counterrevolutionary plans by whitewashing their coup d’état on 3rd July as an “advance for the revolution” or even a “Second Egyptian Revolution”. The centrist Revolutionary Socialists in Egypt and their international co-thinkers of the SWP(UK) and the ISO(USA) or the IMT of Alan Woods are examples for this shameful betrayal. They are a warning example for the workers vanguard that political organizations lacking a revolutionary method in program and politics will inevitable end on the side of the counterrevolution.
6. The main task today is to organize the broadest possible resistance against the military dictatorship and the current crackdown. The is struggle should be organized around the following slogans:
* Defend the pro-Morsi demonstrations without giving political support to their leadership. For a broad united front (including Islamists) in defense of democratic rights! For mass action committees to organize the resistance! For armed self-defense units! For a general strike against the military regime!
* For a Revolutionary Constitutional Assembly elected and controlled by the working people and protected by armed popular militias! Prepare the struggle for a workers government, based on the poor peasantry and the urban poor committed to the expropriation of the multinationals, big capital and banks under workers control as well as to the replacement of the bourgeois state apparatus by workers and peasant organs.
* Advance the independent organization of the working class by building a rank and file movement inside the trade unions against the pro-regime or the pro-Morsi leaderships! For a new Workers Party based on a revolutionary program!
7. At the same time the international workers movement must rally to defend its brothers and sisters in Egypt and to support their resistance against the military dictatorship. For solidarity demonstrations and protest pickets in front of the Egypt embassies! For material support for the protest movement against the regime! The international workers movement must organize actions to hit the military dictatorship in Egypt!
Forward in building a revolutionary party in Egypt and internationally!
International Secretariat of the RCIT
Footnote
We refer those who are interested in the RCIT’s extensive analysis of the political situation in Egypt and its elaboration of the revolutionary program to a number of documents and articles which we have published in the last weeks:
* RCIT: Egypt: Appeal for solidarity after steel workers arrested by army, 13.8.2013.
* Yossi Schwartz: Egypt: Mobilize Resistance against the reactionary military regime!, 27.7.2013.
* RCIT: Revolution and Counterrevolution in Egypt (Editorial for RevCom#12), 22.7.2013.
* Michael Pröbsting: The Military’s Coup d’État in Egypt: Assessment and Tactics, 17.7.2013.
* RCIT: Egypt: Down with the Military Coup d’État! Prepare Mass Resistance! 8.7.2013.
* RCIT: Tasks of the Revolution in Egypt, 2.7.2013. All articles except the two latest one have been published in the RCIT’s international journal Revolutionary Communism No. 12 (July/August 2013).