The Egyptian Revolution: the Electoral road to imperialist stabilisation vs the road to workers power

We were delighted to see footage telecast Sunday (7/15/12) of Hillary Clinton’s Cairo motorcade being pelted with tomatoes and shoes. We were told she shook hands with the elected President, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate M. Morsi, but this was not shown. Today we did see a photo of her shaking hands with Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed forces (hereafter the SCAF.) We watch what each of these sorry figures do because we are focused on the two questions of power: who has it now and how does the working class go about seizing and keeping it (?) We have some altogether different answers to those two questions than what thoughtful workers have come to expect from various erstwhile revolutionary socialists.

So let’s look at the Egypt of Mid-July, 2012 in the aftermath of the two rounds of bourgeois parliamentarism that have the Anglo-American imperialists soaking their shirt fronts for joy. These now believe their local partners/dependents have put over the stabilization of bourgeois rule. No supposition is involved on their part. Morsi has said it has been done, both to the Egyptian press and to the Saudi government. Morsi and Clinton particularly feel that what remains to be done to consolidate their triumph over the masses is to foist a more opaque, “constitutional” civilian rule upon them. This will require that the Army (specifically Tantawi and the SCAF) appear to cede more power to an elected parliament that has so far (7/15) met in defiance of the Supreme Court (army controlled) exactly once and for five minutes. Clinton says the U.S.A. is not in Egypt to pick the winners. Not much it isn’t!

Read On