The Tenth Anniversary of the January Revolution and Lessons of Defeat

Statement by the Revolutionary Socialists

A decade has passed since the most significant event in modern Egyptian history since, the 1919 Revolution. The January 2011 Revolution was defeated, and we still pay the price for that defeat. Perhaps the ongoing violence and brutality of the counter-revolution, even after all these years, are the best indicators of the earthquake caused by the January Revolution and the terror that still fills the hearts and minds of the ruling class and their state. For the first time since 1919, the masses intervened in an attempt to change the course of history in the first revolutionary confrontation with the post-colonial state.

However, the January Revolution was defeated. Without understanding the reasons for that defeat, we cannot take a single step towards overcoming the nightmare we have been living since the 2013 coup. The revolution was not defeated only because of successive betrayals, which began with the Brotherhood’s alliance with the military after Mubarak’s fall, hoping to share power with them, and ended with the so-called democratic civil forces’ alliance with the same military to get rid of the Brotherhood and support for the coup in 2013 and the massacres that followed.

The deeper reasons for the revolution’s defeat lie in several dilemmas faced by the political forces and movements that participated in the revolution, resulting in weaknesses that allowed the revolution’s enemies to pounce on it and eliminate it.

Firstly, the revolution’s slogans remained extremely vague and idealistic (bread, freedom, social justice). For example, what did we mean by freedom? What type of democracy did we want, and what kind of liberation? Was it merely parliamentary democracy? Or a deeper and more direct form of democracy through which real liberation for all the oppressed (such as women and religious minorities) would be achieved? Did we want to cleanse, dismantle, and restructure state institutions like the judiciary and the police, etc.? Or obtain superficial concessions from these institutions, like the ridiculous renaming of the State Security apparatus?

And what did we mean by social justice? Was it merely reducing corruption and favoritism and setting a minimum wage with a “realistic” increase in taxes on corporations and the wealthy without touching the essence of neoliberal policies? Or nationalizing monopolistic companies and placing them under democratic control? Some limited reforms of capitalist policies or a serious attempt to transcend capitalism? Or perhaps a form between “realistic” demands and radical demands? And if we only demanded some reforms to mitigate the effects of neoliberalism on people experiencing poverty and the middle class, what was revolutionary about that?

The conceptions of freedom and social justice varied, not only between different forces but also within the ranks of each force.

Secondly, despite the significant role played by workers’ strikes in ousting Mubarak and the mutual influence between the political movement in the streets and squares and the labor movement in factories, companies, and workplaces, there remained an almost complete separation between the two movements. The labor movement remained within the limits of economic and union demands and did not become influential on the political scene. This is even though even in non-revolutionary experiences of transition from dictatorships to parliamentary democracies, labor movements played a central political role that made such a transition possible (Brazil, South Korea, and South Africa). Understanding the objective and subjective reasons for the weak political role of the labor movement in the January Revolution and attempting to overcome that weakness may be one of the main tasks for the Egyptian left in the coming years.

Thirdly, the forces participating in the revolution did not pay attention to the social depth of the counter-revolution. The military’s ability to mobilize broad sectors of the middle class with slogans about the danger of chaos and the risk of sliding into civil war (examples of Libya and Syria) and exploiting feelings of insecurity not only among the middle class but also among many of the poor played a significant role in the success of the counter-revolution and creating a popular base for its project. The revolutionary forces could not engage in the necessary ideological battle to win the hearts and minds of many of these people, which is something no revolution can succeed without.

Fourthly, the revolutionary forces needed to appreciate the extent of the role of regional forces as a backer and ally of the counter-revolution and as an inexhaustible source of funding for the project to suppress the revolution. The perception that the enemy was only the Egyptian ruling class and its state was an idealistic view from which the revolutionary forces suffered. The experience of January and what followed undoubtedly confirmed that the revolution cannot succeed in Egypt without interaction and solidarity with democratic movements in the Gulf.

Fifthly, the state of Islamophobia suffered by the broader sector of liberal forces, the left, and “intellectuals” in general played a significant role in many of them throwing themselves into the arms of the regime as if it were a bastion of secularism and freedoms against Islamic “fascism.” We have seen in the last seven years the depth of reactionary and conservative attitudes, even hostility to secularism and freedoms, of the regime and the broader sector of the ruling class. The subservience of a broad sector of the Egyptian left, liberals, and nationalists to the bourgeois state under the pretext of fear of political Islam is one of the fatal weaknesses that played an important role in the revolution’s defeat.

Finally, on a strategic level, the national liberation revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s were clearly defined in terms of demands and goals: liberation from colonialism, getting rid of the control of traditional classes (e.g., large landowners), and moving forward with an ambitious project of independent development and industrialization led by the state (what the late Marxist thinker Ibrahim Fathi considered in Egypt’s case as the “second phase” of the bourgeois revolution). But what after the end of that era of national liberation and capitalist modernization and the stabilization of local bourgeois rule? What are the goals and demands of the revolution against that class? Do we want to transcend the rule of that class or just have it condescend to us with some reforms? Can we realistically imagine a genuine democratic alternative that frees us from that failed alliance of the military and businessmen? That alliance to which the post-colonial state in Egypt has fallen? And can a revolution succeed without preparing for that radical alternative? The twenty-first-century revolutions cannot succeed while still confined to the ideas and projects of the post-independence bourgeoisie in the twentieth century.

Perhaps the time has come, after a full decade since the January Revolution, for serious discussion about the weaknesses that contributed to our defeat and working to develop a new vision and strategy that can truly enable us to rebuild the radical opposition to the regime and prepare for our coming revolution. This is what we owe to the martyrs of the January Revolution, the massacres of Sisi, and our comrades, colleagues, and brothers and sisters, tens of thousands of whom are still detained in his prisons as punishment for the January Revolution and in fear of our coming revolution.