Statement from the Revolutionary Socialists, released on November 21, 2011, calling on Egyptian workers to take strike action to help bring down the military regime.
Workers of Egypt: Rise up for the victory of the revolution
Nearly a year into our glorious revolution, the regime of oppression and corruption led by the SCAF has not ceased to impose itself by force, attempting to erase traces of the revolution and to prevent the impoverished, toiling masses from reaping the fruits of their great struggle.
The regime of repression that is protected by the military had imagined that the revolution was buried and ended, and that the people that rose up last January and destroyed the massive machines of oppression would today submit in the face of tear gas canisters, cartridges and live ammunition. The multitude now facing death in the name of rescuing the revolution, in confronting remnants of the criminal regime shall triumph as they have triumphed before. And the tools of oppression that were smashed on 28th January will be destroyed anew at the will of the revolutionaries.
The regime has proven beyond a doubt that it is but a deformed continuation of Mubarak’s obsolete rule. Our reclamation of those companies stolen by privatization under Mubarak’s rule is being resisted by the regime today. Those privileges endowed by Mubarak on the elite class of investors continue to be protected by the military regime. The minimum wage that workers called for in the name of a dignified life is being circumvented by Mubarak’s loyalists. The cold-blooded murder of revolutionaries at the hands of Mubarak’s butchers continues with patent debauchery at the hands of the military rulers.
Workers stepped forward last February to rescue the revolution, as labour strikes spread to all corners of Egypt to support the uprising, setting Cairo, Mahalla, Suez and Alexandria ablaze; workers in all of Egypt’s governorates and its factories and institutions both public and private committed to the struggle. The dictator was forced to step down when workers’ strikes paralyzed the joints of the regime and threatened its collapse – the regime chose to rescue itself by sacrificing its head.
Today the revolution will not be cheated once again and will not be pacified with sedatives. The working class that delivered the revolution to victory in February will not be late to rescue the heroes of the revolution that today hold their ground steadfastly in the face of the regime of corruption and repression. The companies occupied in January workers will return to occupy soon again and the workers that made their way to the squares of Tahrir, elShoun and el Arba’in will go there once more; the working class will reawaken with their heroic struggle to erase – at the side of the revolutionaries – the remnants of Mubarak’s regime and build a revolutionary path on the basis of justice and freedom.
The Revolutionary Socialists
21 November 2011
