The economic crisis that started out from the United States and from the centres of the capitalist world is surging like a tsunami towards the outskirts of the capitalist world and vice-versa, bursting its banks, in which deep cracks were found. The area stretching from Algeria (which tried to stop the protest with concessions on food prices) to Jordan (on the brink of collapse with its immense masses of starving Palestinian refugees) is in the grip of the same crisis. But in Yemen and Morocco, too, the streets are on fire, whilst the traditional hotspots around Israel, Lebanon and the Strip of Gaza, are once again in a state of crisis. In the weaker countries the crisis, which had become social, because of overwhelming unemployment and the spread of poverty (the increase in food prices is merely the most obvious sign), has turned into a political one, as in Tunisia where the power of the old “bourgeois business committee” has been overturned by the people’s revolt, whose spearhead is represented by the proletarian masses, tired of putting up with a situation that has lasted 23 years, with the approval of the great European bourgeoisies.
The same “bread revolt” (that of the dispossessed) then exploded in Egypt, the biggest and most industrialized country in the whole of Africa. Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and Assuan are in a state of siege: enormous masses of proletarians from the industrial centres, who had been on strike a year ago in the textile sector of Mahalla and who a few years ago had opposed the rising prices of bread by attacking the bakeries, faced the police and the army with extraordinary courage and set fire to the government building. The cities of Suez and Alexandria were in the hands of the rebel proletariat, who managed to fight back police in combat gear, as clearly reported by the newspapers and on television. The police, military guards, army, tanks are ranged along the streets: dozens of deaths, fires and curfew. “If the cork pops in Egypt, the whole of the Middle East will blow up,” exclaim the alarmed political observers of the imperialist capitals: fear courses through the veins of the world’s bourgeoisie and so Mubarak is urged not to overdo the violence and to step aside.
It’s an important moment for the world proletariat. Not revolution, but an announcement of events that sooner or later will set fire to the heart of the proletarian metropolises, now under the dictatorship of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
Nonetheless, the reformist illusion will not be long in attempting, by other means, to patch together a compromise between the needs of the proletariat and the hymns to democracy, elections, “dignity and freedom”, reforms, government changes, before then unleashing a violent “clearing up” operation against the proletariat. As the old régime in Tunisia promises a political reshuffle whilst awaiting elections, in Egypt an attempt is being made to remedy the situation with a similar reshuffle, presenting a possible successor. The machinery of conservation and oppression will continue along its path unless it is stopped with the help of the entire proletariat: let us break the security barrier that keeps the two sides of the Mediterranean apart and bring the proletariat together in a fraternal embrace. This alone will decide whether blood has been shed in vain or not.
The first European countries to be shaken by the crisis (Greece in particular but also Ireland and Portugal) have been forced even further into debt by having to ask for considerable economic support against the growth in their public debt, the crisis of the banks and financial system and widespread unemployment. But in the south of the south (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen and today Egypt) the economic and political support that yesterday’s colonialist and today’s imperialist régimes are capable of giving, in the name of stability and a return to exploitation, will be directed towards the desperate attempt to re-launch the economic development that had taken place over recent years thanks to the massive presence of European companies, now feeling the backlash of the same crisis. Let governments come and go: just as long as profits, income, interest start to grow again! Whether lay democrats rule or Muslim Brothers, republicans or monarchists, just let the workers continue to sweat in the interests of the ruling class and its courtiers!
The vital living and working needs of the proletariat will not find a solution either in capitalism or in so-called social reforms, or in miserable religious charity, but in the destruction of the economic system itself.
The Maghreb and the Middle East, the “courtyards” of Europe, are thus starting to tremble: and with the advance of the crisis the latter is turning into a barrel of dynamite ready to be lit by the flame of the proletariat. Continuity of production and the re-establishment of business relations are essential for Europe, particularly at the moment as markets are being lost in the cut-throat fighting between world competitors and there is an urgent need for raw materials (gas and oil) and low-cost means of subsistence. But this situation demands “high-powered challenges”, not the conjuring tricks and skirmishes heralded by full-scale trade wars and currency wars. The bilateral agreements between the big powers, the G8 and the G20, are only the external face of clear failure. The need for immigrant workers, whether seasonal or not, is becoming urgent, in close relation to the desire to “stabilize” the domestic proletariat.
And so the idea of “sending back home” the thousands of proletarians who come knocking on Europe’s doors is a mean illusion: “need” on both shores of Mare Nostrum constitutes an economic resource for all, productivity and profits on the one hand and income (which the African states cannot do without) on the other.The North-African market on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, far more economically advanced than Central-African areas, has its main gateway here.This is a place where the local economic situation, fully integrated into that of the old colonial powers, has lost its original bases (characterized by the land): both imports and exports (machinery against energy and agricultural products) move along exclusive, specialized routes towards Europe, with centralized division of labour managed from outside. The serious present crisis is thus heading towards disaster.
In the countries of the capitalist Centre, instead, no steps have yet been taken outside the framework of corporative protest: workers, precarious employees in industry and in the civil service and students are often in a state of rebellion, but the profound inertia of processes and the rust that has thickened over time in economic and social structures are difficult to clear away. The democratic illusion is the basis and the breeding ground for all this. The demand to keep income up and the drive to resume work remain, and there is no real response to unemployment, the increase in precarious work, the prolonging of social buffers, or to the need for the banks to reinstate credit (in all its different forms) for production, trade and consumption. The defensive economic battle against poverty and unemployment is also fuelled by ancient litanies on “rights”, on “past union victories”, and takes place on a terrain of whingeing strikes that prove to be merely useless and farcical processions: not general strikes to the bitter end but pre-announced, orchestrated, devoid of objectives.
If power in the capitalist outskirts of the world is being shaken, the proletariat in the centre cannot desert the battlefield and linger in the back lines, but must become the avant-garde that once shook the West with its revolution in the heart of Europe itself. Africa calls the world proletariat to its side: class defeatism must resume in the cities, the proletariat must contribute its strength, pushing the fight against the ruling powers as far forward as possible!
It is clear that the role of communists is central here, because an increasing awareness is needed that without its organizational organ of direction (without the revolutionary party) any proletarian uprising is destined to be defeated. Work on the international consolidation of the communist party is therefore urgent and cannot be postponed any longer.
International Communist Party
