En Passant

Nearly half the world’s population lives on less than $2.50 a day and 1.2 billion are starving or malnourished. In the world’s richest country, the United States, millions of workers have been evicted from their homes as a result of the financial crisis for which they bear no responsibility. And while profits and CEO salary packages have surged over the last two years, unemployment remains at horrendous levels.

Even here in Australia, where we have so far escaped the worst of the economic crisis, the latest Roy Morgan unemployment survey, which gives a more realistic assessment of the situation than the massaged government figures, shows that unemployment jumped to 10.3 percent in January – an estimated 1,278,000 Australians were unemployed and looking for work. Another 7.5 percent were underemployed – working part time but looking for more work.

So in the “lucky country” in the midst of a mining boom an incredible 2,212,000 Australians (17.8 percent of the workforce) are either unemployed or underemployed. Meanwhile, according to Forbes Asia, the fortune of Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, has leapt from $9 billion to $18 billion in the space of a year.

These glaring inequalities that confront us daily pose the need for fundamental change – for a revolutionary transformation of society. But once you start to talk about revolution all the naysayers come out arguing that revolution is too extreme; surely we can improve things just by a process of gradual reform. They say we should look to parties like the ALP or the Greens or the Democrats in the US to change things on our behalf.

But the reality is that the people who actually rule the world – the Gina Rineharts, the Rupert Murdochs, the Bill Gates, and the Warren Buffetts – are not going to meekly stop exploiting the rest of us and are not going to willingly submit to democratic control. And governments whether Liberal or Labor, Democrat or Republican have shown time and time again that they are not going to stand up to them.

Just look at the case of the US. After eight years of George W. Bush – eight years of endless wars, eight years of falling living standards, eight years of atrocities like Hurricane Katrina – workers, the poor and the Black population voted for Barack Obama because he promised change.

But their hopes have been frustrated. Obama, like Bush before him, is beholden to the corporate establishment.

Big business interests backed Obama’s presidential bid precisely because they realised that the face of US capitalism needed a make-over – but only a cosmetic makeover that did not threaten their fundamental interests. So for all his talk of change, under Obama’s presidency corporate profits and CEO salaries have surged while wages have been forced down, social welfare slashed and even more troops have been sent to kill and die in Afghanistan.

It is a similar story in Australia. Whether it is the Liberals or Labor in office, governments are at the beck and call of the big end of town. As soon as a few mining company executives made a fuss Labor quickly backed down over the mining super-profits tax.

In Europe it is even worse. Reformist governments that called themselves “socialist” in Spain and Greece imposed horrendous austerity measures on the very workers that had voted them into office in the hope that a “left” government would defend them from ruling class attacks.

In a country after country across Europe workers have had no alternative but to go on strike and take to the streets to try to repulse the attacks on pensions and social welfare, the slashing of jobs and increased taxes on the poor. But the attacks continue relentlessly. The rich and powerful are determined to maintain their profits and impose the cost of the crisis on workers, pensioners and students.

There have been mass strikes in Greece, Italy, France, Belgium and Britain, the occupations of the squares in Spain, student protests right across Europe, and the Occupy movement in the US.

But while these struggles are an important beginning, they are going to have to go a lot further if we are going to begin to turn the tide. Workers and the oppressed are going to have to challenge the whole profit-driven logic of capitalism and introduce a new social order of freedom and mass democracy.

The high point of resistance has been the Arab revolutions, in particular the Egyptian revolution. The Egyptian revolution is a brilliant illustration of the whole process of revolution – of how a struggle in defence of living standards and for basic democratic rights can and must, if it is to succeed, spill over into a challenge to the whole basis of capitalist rule.

If you had spoken to anyone in Egypt five years ago or even two years ago they would have said revolution is impossible – the mass of people are too ground down, too apathetic. However small groups of activists and socialists burrowed away, building protests for democratic rights, supporting strikes for improved living standards and laying the basis for independent trade unions.

Just over a year ago the tide turned. What started as small protests ignited the occupation of Cairo’s Tahrir Square. All the resentment against decades of poverty, mass unemployment and repression by the Mubarak regime erupted into an incredibly powerful movement.

The huge rallies in Tahrir Square and across the other cities of Egypt, which fought off vicious police attacks and which were backed by a growing wave of strikes by workers, eventually brought down the hated dictator Mubarak.

The fall of Mubarak was rightly greeted with tremendous jubilation. Millions of people understandably felt that with the tyrant gone there would be a new Egypt and that they would have much better lives.

It was not to be. For the reality was that Mubarak was only the front man for an entire brutal and corrupt regime of army generals, top government officials and wealthy business owners who had benefited from the exploitation of the mass of the Egyptian people under the dictatorship and were determined to hold onto their power and privilege at any cost.

The revolution had to continue and deepen if the mass of workers and the poor were to achieve a decent life. Immediately after the fall of Mubarak only small numbers of committed Egyptian socialists and radical activists argued for the need to press on with the revolution.

Within months it became obvious that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), backed by the most reactionary forces in Egyptian society and by the US government, were doing everything possible to frustrate the gains of the revolution and maintain power in their own hands.

SCAF staged provocation after provocation. They sought to inflame divisions between Muslims and Christians. They launched brutal attacks on protesters in Tahrir Square and attempted to crush strikes. Unemployment continued to soar and poverty increased.

More and more workers and activists began to see that they had to take action themselves to deepen the revolution, for otherwise they would lose everything and Mubarak’s cronies would continue to rule the roost. The reformist arguments (to not rock the boat, to put your faith in those at the top and so on) if carried out, would be a disaster that would leave tens of millions of people condemned to poverty and oppression.

Over the last few months the process of the revolution has deepened as millions of workers and the poor have taken to the streets again and again, have continued with their strikes, and as the independent trade unions have strengthened their organisation. Most importantly, the political psychology of millions of people has begun to change. Not everyone has yet broken with all their illusions in SCAF, but the most active section of the masses has and many others are open to the arguments of the revolutionaries.

The Egyptian revolution is far from over. In the course of the struggle millions of people who have been oppressed all their lives are beginning to stand up and exert themselves and learn a myriad of political lessons.

To win, the masses are going to have to continue to press forward and put their trust only in their own strength and organisation and not rely on those at the top of society, such as the military, or those such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the liberals and the reformists who argue for compromises with the rich and powerful.

But the still unfolding Egyptian revolution sends a powerful message to those suffering injustice the world over. Mere tinkering with the system will not win real change. Only a revolutionary movement has a chance of ending the inequality and barbarism of the current system.