I.S. on Egypt, Iran:

Cheerleaders for Class Collaboration

We print below a report by a Trotskyist League comrade on a February 8 Toronto forum, “From Tunisia to Egypt: Resistance to Revolution.” The forum was sponsored by the International Socialists (I.S.), Canadian affiliate of the International Socialist Tendency of the late Tony Cliff.

The room was packed with people standing up at the back and at the entrance door. There were about 50 independents, two-thirds of them youth. Most young people seemed to be Arab and were politically raw but interested in discussing the recent events. Clearly, the events in Egypt are awakening the interest of some youth.

There were two speakers. The first, Mohammed Shokr from Mohamed ElBaradei’s bourgeois Egyptian National Association for Change, did not say much but showed his “anti-imperialism” by saying that it is in the interests of the U.S. and Israel to have a democratic regime because it will be stable, given that Egypt under Mubarak is unstable. He also cheered the crowd by saying that we are witnessing a revolution made by people for people, that the Egyptian people are not divided (there are only government thugs against them), that Arabs are ready for democracy and that protesters (including his son) are “having fun” in Tahrir Square.

The other speaker, James Clark from the International Socialists, spoke much longer. As expected, there was not a word of opposition to ElBaradei or the Muslim Brotherhood, but there was a lot about building an anti-Mubarak front. He said that the movement did not come out of nowhere; it started in 2003 in protests against the war in Iraq and developed through the Cairo conferences. He praised these class-collaborationist “anti-imperialist” conferences and pointed to them as examples to emulate, including the Kefaya movement (the bourgeois Egyptian Movement for Change). He said the next stage needs to be a general strike, replicated in every workplace, and that the protests need to be escalated, for example by shutting down the Suez Canal. He added that new organizational forms will develop in which communists, socialists, Muslims, Christians, males, females are brought together.

Despite our hands being up throughout the discussion round, the Cliffites were determined to not let us speak. We had to wait until a second round and until it became embarrassing for them. Cliffite Pam Frache spoke first on independent trade unions being formed in Egypt. Another Cliffite advertised a campaign organized by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, so far called the “Toronto-Arab Solidarity Campaign” (they have not decided on the name yet). Its aim is to demand that the Canadian government stand with Egyptian democracy!

The Arab youth were mostly listening. Most comments from the floor were typical: “Don’t tell them what to do but support whatever they do/want.” The Cliffites probably anticipated that I was going to go hard against them for their support to the mullahs in Iran in 1979, captured by their headline, “The Form—Religion, The Spirit—Revolution” (Workers’ Action, February 1979). We had polemicized against them on this question at the demonstration last Saturday. At the end of the first round, before I spoke, James Clark said the following in response to those who bring up Iran, including a young female in the audience who was wearing the hijab (headscarf) and asked about people connecting Iran to Egypt:

“What they’re trying to do here is create this sense of fear that there is going to be this ‘Islamist’ imposition on the revolution….

“We need to know why that particular argument is being made about Iran. We should know that while the outcome of the Iranian revolution was shifted by the early 1980s, it nevertheless kicked out the Shah, and actually was a pole for anti-imperialism in the region for a long time. There are still a lot of people, whether we agree with them or not, who look to Iran as an alternative to the situation that exists in the other parts of the Arab world. I’m not endorsing Iran as an alternative, but we need to know that that is a particular perspective that does exist, and that there is some popular support for what exists there, and that there are debates inside Iran about that….

“We need to be clear when we’re having a discussion about this particular movement: when you attempt to compare it with Iran in 1979, in most cases it’s been an attempt to create fear about Islam and the Muslim community and the participation of the [Muslim] Brotherhood in a popular revolution.”

My intervention was the third-to-last. I started with Iran, making the point that the mullah-led “revolution” wiped out an entire generation of leftists—it massacred leftists, women and homosexuals, contrary to how the speaker depicted it. To the youth, I pointed out the need to learn lessons from history and a crucial lesson is that workers and radical youth need to fight independently of any capitalist politicians and religious forces. This means saying down with Mubarak, opposing ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood and fighting for workers revolution. I lifted the issue of Socialist Worker on Egypt and said that there was not a single word of opposition to ElBaradei or to the Muslim Brotherhood. I noted the I.S. line on Iran 1979 and contrasted it to ours, encapsulated in our slogan: “Down with the Shah! Don’t bow to Khomeini! For workers revolution in Iran!” I ended on the need to learn the experiences of the Russian Revolution.

After, the I.S. was quick to applaud the nationalism expressed by the only young Arab who intervened, who said (in response to me) that it is not about workers but about Arab people who have found a way to express themselves after so much suffering. The speaker representing ElBaradei’s organization also spoke of Iran in his concluding remarks, saying that that “revolution” was driven by ideology but the Egyptian revolution is driven by people. Clark concluded by saying that in Canada we need to find out what the obstacles are (Canadian government) and fight them (sign petitions).

We engaged the Arab youth once the meeting ended. I was speaking to a group of Arabs about the need to oppose the Muslim Brotherhood and to create a workers party that will fight for socialist revolution. The usual response was that the Muslim Brotherhood has changed, that there are many tendencies within it and that the fundamentalists do not dominate it. I said that the mullahs in Iran did not start killing leftists right away; they waited until they were sufficiently strong. They were open to discussing with me, particularly because I emphasized the need to learn from past defeats. The key point needs to be repeated to these youth: anything other than working-class independence necessarily brings defeat.