No trust in the army command and the old elite! Continue the Revolution!
Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 11 April 2019 (16.00 UTC Time), www.thecommunists.net
1. People are joyfully marching in Khartoum and throughout Sudan. The long-time dictator, Omar al-Bashir, has been overthrown. This comes only a few days after the resignation of another reactionary despot, Algeria’s President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. These are important victories for those courageous heroes who fought for weeks and months in the streets despite brutal repression by each regime’s security forces.
2. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) enthusiastically welcomes these developments. Our comrades participated in solidarity rallies – as they have, consistently, since the 2011 beginning of the Great Arab Revolution. The resignations of Bashir and Bouteflika are not only victories for the Sudanese and Algerian peoples. These are also victories for the Syrians fighting against the tyrant Assad, for the Egyptians resisting the military dictatorship of General Sisi, as well as all others fighting for their political, social, and economic freedom!
3. The resignations of Bashir and Bouteflika have shattered the capitalist dictatorships in Sudan and Algeria. However, we are obligated to temper our joy with sober warnings. The experience of the Arab Revolution since 2011 has demonstrated that the ruling class is driven to deceive popular mass movements when they become too strong. In such situations the elite – often following the lead of the army command – is prepared to “sacrifice” the face of the regime in order to preserve the underlying “system”, i.e. the state machinery of the privileged ruling stratum. General Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf’s declaration of a three-month state of emergency in Sudan as well as the plan of the military council to rule for two years demonstrates that the ruling elite wants to stay in power. A very similar development is taking place in Algeria where army chief General Ahmed Gaid Salah has taken over de facto control.
4. We have seen this in Egypt, in Tunisia, and in Yemen. In each of these cases, the elite felt it necessary to make a strategic retreat in the form of democratic concessions. By such concessions they conspired to defuse the mass movement. This process was aided by numerous bourgeois traitors who pretended to support the democratic revolution while, in reality, they only hoped to advance their own career ambitions and fill the vacancies in the state apparatus. This process was unfortunately also unintentionally aided by many well-meaning and honest democratic activists and grassroots leaders who didn’t understood that the political changes were intentionally superficial, leaving, in the end, the capitalist power system – including the strong army and rich capitalists – intact.
5. The fundamentals were unchanged. The elite and the army remained in power and retained all their money and their weapons. Economic control continued in the hands of domestic and foreign capitalists. The army kept all the instruments of repression, buttressed by their paralyzing grip on the economy. Likewise, the countries in revolt continued to be dominated by imperialist Great Powers such as the U.S., Russia, the EU, and China. As a result, the working people remained in a state of relative powerlessness. When the dynamic of the mass mobilizations receded, the ruling elites retaliated and restored their representatives to positions of power. They did so either by a coup d'état (Egypt - 3 July 2013) or via pseudo-democratic elections (Tunisia).
6. The RCIT has supported the Arab Revolution from the very first day. We have always stressed that an authentic democratic revolution requires more than a change of faces. The entire system of repression, wealth, and corruption in the service of a small elite must be smashed! Based on the lesson of the past eight years – we continue to emphasize that the only way forward is the expropriation of the whole elite! All domestic and foreign corporations must be nationalized and placed under the control of workers! The army command, the police and secret services must be smashed and replaced by popular militias! Only this ensures that the armed power is under the control of the working people. Political power must be put into the hands of popular councils elected and controlled at regular mass assemblies in the workplaces, neighborhoods and villages. As the issue of constitution and democracy remains a burning issue we call for the convening of a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly. The popular masses must be armed so that the old elite cannot manipulate the process and subvert the will of the people.
7. In other words, the RCIT calls the heroic people in Sudan and Algeria to continue the revolution and to fight until the victory is complete. We also call upon them to link their insurgencies to the ongoing liberation struggles in Syria, Palestine, Tunisia, Jordan, Iran, Yemen and other countries. The revolution must be spread to the entire Arab world and throughout the rest of Africa. We also call upon supporters of the Arab Revolution to come to the rescue of the Libyan people who face a massive counter-revolutionary threat with General Haftar trying to conquer Tripoli to smash the last remaining remnants of the revolutionary process of 2011.
8. In the wake of the beginning second wave of the Arab Revolution, we repeat our condemnation of those Stalinist, Bolivarian and other pseudo-leftists who have slandered the Arab Revolution as “Islamofascist” and “CIA-led color revolutions”. They have, consequently, ended up supporting Assad, General Sisi, Gaddafi, Haftar, the YPG and Russian imperialism. There are also others who did not join the bloody counterrevolution but suspended their support for the Arab Revolution after some years by mistakenly confusing the setbacks with final defeat and by wrongly denouncing the liberation struggle of the popular masses as “reactionary” just because the initially prevailing petty-bourgeois democratic ideology has been increasingly colored with shades of petty-bourgeois Islamism. We call those who relinquished their support for the Arab Revolution to overcome their prejudices and to return to the struggle. Comrades, now it is high time to side with the working people fighting in Algiers, Khartoum, Idlib, Tripoli, Sanaʽa, Gaza, Cairo and Teheran and to unite the struggles into a single Intifada of the entire Middle East!
9. Comrades, brother and sisters! The Arab Revolution has suffered many defeats since 2011 due to the lack of strong revolutionary parties. Building such parties – in combination with building a Revolutionary World Party – is the most urgent task of our time! Now, with the beginning of the second wave of the Arab Revolution, we must tackle this task energetically! We urge activists to unite in a revolutionary party based on a program of socialist liberation and solidarity with the struggles of workers and oppressed in other countries. Join the RCIT in tackling this great task!
* Down with any self-proclaimed “transitional government” and “military council”! No “state of emergency”! Full democratic rights to demonstrate, to assembly and to organize!
* Continue the mobilizations! Continue the Revolution!
* Build committees of action at work places, neighborhoods, universities and villages! Elect delegates for a national congress!
* Create self-defense committees!
* For a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly!
* For a workers and poor peasants government!
* Forward to the second wave of the Arab Revolution! Long live the socialist world revolution!
* For a revolutionary party as part of a revolutionary world party!
International Bureau of the RCIT
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We refer readers to our website where the RCIT has published numerous booklets, statements and articles on these issues. In particular we draw attention to the following documents:
Algeria: Bouteflika Retreats! Now Let Us Defeat His System! Organize Committees of Action! For a General Strike and Popular Insurrection to bring down the regime! For a Workers and Poor Peasants Government! 12 March 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/algeria-bouteflika-retreats-now-let-us-defeat-his-system/
Algeria: Victory to the Popular Insurgency against Bouteflika and his System! 9 March 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/algeria-victory-to-the-popular-insurgency-against-bouteflika-and-his-system/
Sudan: Bring Down the Regime of Omar al-Bashir! 28 December 2018, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/sudan-bring-down-the-regime-of-omar-al-bashir/
Report (with Photos and Videos): Sudan: Rally in Solidarity with the Popular Uprising, 6 April 2019, Austrian Section of the RCIT, https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit/sudan-rally-against-the-dictatorship/
Report (with Photos and Videos): Sudan: Rally in Solidarity with the Popular Uprising against the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, 13 January 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit/sudan-rally-in-solidarity-with-popular-uprising/
Libya: Defend Tripoli! Defeat Haftar! For Popular Militias to organize an independent struggle against the counterrevolution! 9 April 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/libya-defend-tripoli-defeat-haftar/
Report (with Pictures and Video): Rally at the 8th Anniversary of the Syrian Revolution, 17 March 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit/rally-on-8th-anniversary-of-syrian-revolution/
On the Syrian Revolution we refer readers also to a special sub-section on our website: https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/collection-of-articles-on-the-syrian-revolution/
Michael Pröbsting: Is the Syrian Revolution at its End? Is Third Camp Abstentionism Justified? 5 April 2017, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/syrian-revolution-not-dead/
Michael Pröbsting: Syria and Great Power Rivalry: The Failure of the „Left“, 21 April 2018, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/syria-great-power-rivalry-and-the-failure-of-the-left/
Solidarity with Gaza! Statement by the Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine), 18.07.2018, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/solidarity-with-gaza/
Yossi Schwartz: Israel as a Colonial Entity, 26.06.2018, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/israel-as-a-colonial-entity/
Report (with Photos and Videos): Rally on the 8th Anniversary of the Egypt Revolution 2011, 27 January 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit/rally-on-8th-anniversary-of-egypt-revolution/
Joint Statement: Warmongering in the Middle East: Down with all Imperialist Great Powers and Capitalist Dictatorships! 13 May 2018, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/joint-statement-warmongering-in-the-middle-east/