We reproduce below a political stand of the
International Communist Tendency we share analysis and policy guidelines and
that we support. Fraction of the
International Communist Left
september 2013
The Events in Port Said
(Internationalist Communist Tendancy)
We are publishing this position statement about what
is happening in Port Said, Egypt with the warning that the news about what is
going on is limited [ignored internationally by the official media] and not
entirely consistent even if all the sources consulted agree on the fact that
the Egyptian city is in ferment.
Information is still scarce
but some facts speak for themselves. After street protests, anger erupted
following the 21 death sentences handed down for the massacre in Port Said.
During a spontaneous protest against this Morsi's police left 40 more victims
on the streets. After that the police were forced to abandon the city leaving
it in the hands of the protesters. At the moment, all public order, traffic and
production linked to the Suez Canal are in the hands of the insurgents. Port
Said has become a kind of free zone where the state has had to temporarily
raise the white flag. If it is true that the death sentences on the 21 youth
and the subsequent forty victims were the tragic triggers immediately provoking
the rebellion, it is also true that the devastating consequences of the
economic crisis and the arrogance of the reactionary Islamist Morsi government
have been a decisive element.
Finally, after two years of
tensions on the streets, of managed elections, of fraud and betrayal of the
most basic expectations, something has snapped. The main fact, if confirmed, is
that workers of Port Said were the first to trigger the revolt; including the
port workers, those in transport and workers from other factories. Marine
traffic has halted, factories have closed and the mobilisation of the city
seems to be general and definitive. The movement, as well as guarding against
the inevitable government reaction, must also deal with a number of internal
problems
A first danger is the risk of
isolation. The workers of Port Said must actively ask for practical militant
help from all Egyptian workers, from the factories of Cairo to those of Alexandria,
Ismailia and Assiut. The only way to avoid the risk of isolation and the
ability to continue the fight is to widen the struggle and open up greater
opportunities. Any bourgeois government can wait. It can wait until the anger
is exhausted in some act of protest, however powerful and violent, and then
take back by force the situation that previously got out of hand. The manoeuvre
is much simpler and more effective if the uprising is isolated, if it concerns
only a sector of production or a geographically small area. Breaking this
isolation, asking for proletarian solidarity is not only tactically necessary
but it is the condition for the fight to continue, otherwise the axe of
repression will fall heavily on the demonstrators.
The more the struggle continues
on the lines of a frontal attack, away from the conservative siren calls of
reformism, whether secular or religious, the more it can serve as a model for
proletarians in the whole area of North Africa, in the hope of giving an
initial sense of class to the failure of the "Arab Spring ". At this
point, the proletarians of the Egyptian Canal Zone must not fall into the trap
of believing that reform can be a different way of managing public affairs
within the framework of a capitalism that is everywhere around them. It is not
only by demanding the fall of the Morsi government and respect for democratic
freedoms, or by operating within the political framework of civil disobedience
that things will radically change. The movement that has had the strength to
rebel against the murderous authoritarianism of the Islamist government, to
free itself from the chains of the traditional political forces, which is
trying to present itself as politically autonomous, must continue on the path
without falling back on the options that radical reformism offers, or be drawn
back into the old worn-out democratic game.
The European proletariat,
which suffers the same exploitation on the other side of the Mediterranean,
should do its part. Class solidarity, which despite a few episodes of struggle
has recently sensationally absconded everywhere, has expressed itself here and
there. It should now take this opportunity to reappear on the international
scene. Europe’s streets have every reason to be full of disturbances against
the various policies and heavy sacrifices demanded of us. If they do it should
not be in single sectors or under the umbrella of this or that union policy, of
this or that "left reformist" political force, but on the basis of
real class solidarity, beyond nationalist boundaries and particularism, and
this seems to be a good opportunity to start.
One last point. Spontaneity,
the determination of a struggle that arises immediately against a government,
against its police, is doomed to failure if it does not elaborate a tactic, a
strategy and a programme that goes beyond the traps of capital, to build a real
social alternative, which is another way of producing and distributing that
wealth of which the Egyptian proletariat, like the international working class,
is the only creator. However, if we stay on the ground of civil disobedience,
if the movement sets as its objective just the overthrow of the Morsi
government in favour of "true democracy", subject to all the
pressures of capitalism, as the movement in Tahrir Square did with Mubarak, the
results will be the same, if not worse.
FD (ICT) 6 March, 2013
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