In my view, it is not the GSsA that has brought about a change — it has acted as a catalyst. A deeper malaise grips Swiss society. Many things are coming to the surface and changing. The special links between the government and the people and between the army and the people does not exist any more. A lot of people do not vote in elections for example. Only about 20 20 40% bother to vote nowadays. This movement mirrors the upheavals of a more or International Viewpoint #174 • November 27,
October 2, 1989 by Sophie Massouri.
tures was dying down a bit when Brod-
Zürich, we are trying to take things furmann's film appeared on German ther. In Zürich, the JSR — Provos have television in June 1987. The aim of the set up a Youth Forum against the army film was to explain to German citizens the and have organized well-attended courses
USA
Race, abortion - key issues in New York election THE New York mayoral election on November 7 turned out differently than planned. Among other partly hidden truths it turned up the malignant growth of racism which has long existed in American society. Sexism is another festering sore, and this too was a little noted influential factor in the campaign. But when the votes were counted, the Democratic Party candidate, David Dinkins, narrowly defeated his Republican challenger, Rudolph Giuliani, 898,900 to 856,450. Thus Dinkins becomes the first Black mayor of the country's largest city, the financial center of US capitalism. FRANK LOVELL politics. Dinkins responded that such charges befogged the "real issues" and claimed that if elected he would serve the interests of all people.
This time-honored flimflam brought opposing class interests into the fray. Nearly all unions endorsed fair-minded Dinkins while Giuliani stalked the city's five boroughs surrounded with law-enforcement officials and orthodox, usually Hassidim, Jews. He failed to win full endorsement from the Catholic hierarchy because he waffled on the abortion issue, having at first come out strongly opposed to abortion but sensing the shift in popular sentiment, promised that if elected he would uphold the legal right to abortion, which remains intact in New York. Nonetheless, he appealed to predominantly Catholic neighbourhoods, implying that he "understood" the abortion question. His publicity in its broadest general appeal used the code words "the trusted candidate" for himself —to white voters meaning "one of us" — and asking repeatedly in TV spots if a tax cheat and a liar about his personal finances such as Dinkins, who also happens to be black, can be trusted to manage the affairs of the city.
In a public symposium last October
T HE 62-year old Dinkins is a wheelhorse in the Democratic Party machine that holds political power in New York. For more than 30 years he has been a timeserver in the machine, moving unobtrusively up the career ladder. He was Manhattan borough president, a powerful and prestigious position in city government, when picked to challenge the three-term incumbent Mayor Edward Koch in the Democratic Party last September.
Dinkins faces aggressive white opponent
In that contest Dinkins showed that his early training in the Carver Club of Harlem, an institution of the Tammany/ Democratic machine originally founded to garner the Black vote, had adequately prepared him in the mastery of "mainstream politics" (meaning dominant bourgeois political currents), to attract white voters when pitted against an aggressive white opponent. As perceived by the two "mainstream" candidates and their media handlers in the mayoral election, the economic and social problems of the city are the unbalanced budget, deficit spending, street crime, drugs, auto theft, homelessness, garbage disposal, air pollution, a shortage of police and jails. At this level neither expressed much concern over white-collar crime, political corruption, military spending, the poor quality of public schooling, inadequate mass transportation, unemployment and low wages. Both favored more police on the streets and in the subways. They agreed that homelessness is a problem — one that can hardly go unnoticed with thousands begging everywhere and sleeping in makeshift shelters — and differed on the solution. Giuliani favored private agencies to manage "rescue" shelters and build affordable housing. Dinkins also hoped low cost housing could be built, but saw another side of the problem. He said: "It's not the fact that a person is homeless, it is the behavior. That's what we and the police can enforce."
Both candidates play-law and-order card
Giuliani gained prominence as a public prosecutor and champion of law enforcement before seeking election as mayor, and Dinkins tried hard not to be outdone in the law-and-order department.
With such candidates jabbing at each other over their chosen issues, the mass media tried to generate enough public interest to insure a respectable turnout. Straw polls are the standard method, purporting to show from week to week who is ahead and who is losing or gaining. On election eve they predicted a 60% turnout of registered voters (unusually high) and an easy victory for Dinkins. The publicity trick designed to fulfil this prediction was to paint one candidate as the no-holdsbarred tough guy and the other as Mr. Reasonably Fair.
Accordingly, Giuliani mounted a relentless attack, accusing Dinkins of failing to pay taxes earlier in his career, of recently lying about his financial holdings (estimated at $1 million) and of machine
In a public symposium last October sponsored by the Trotskyist Fourth Internationalist Tendency (FIT) and its monthly magazine In Defense of Marxism, Lloyd D'Aguilar, host of a local radio show, predicted that Black communities, sensitive to the strong racist undercurrent in the Giuliani campaign, would vote more than 90% for Dinkins despite his failure to address the special problems of Black people. He also thought that there would be a large Black turnout. He was right on both counts. Danger of racist heading city government
All Black politicians and preachers backed Dinkins and warned their constituents against the danger of a racist heading city government, which they all know has been the case for as long as anyone can remember. For Blacks this was a chance to strike a blow against racism.
Giuliani's campaign strategy had sought to arouse the prejudices of white voters while pretending to be anti-racist. It succeeded in bringing out the white vote, but failed to deceive Blacks. This accounts for the large turnout — which surprised the pollsters who had predicted it - and the very narrow margin of victory for Dinkins - the smallest in any New York mayoral election since 1905 — which surprised the pollsters even more because it contradicted their predictions.
The election results revealed the truth about racism: 71% of all white voters cast ballots for Giuliani, only 27% for Dinkins. Even so, this was an unusually high vote from whites for a Black candidate in the
US. Some 65% of Hispanic voters support- I Dinkins The gender vovaiss Favored 21
USA
Dinkins, indicating the significance of the abortion issue in the final outcome. Efforts to outlaw abortion are evidently seen as blatant sexism. Male voters were almost evenly divided with 50% for Giuliani and 48% for Dinkins. Women voters went 53% for Dinkins and 45% for Giuliani, who was unmistakably anti-abortion.
Protestant voters gave Dinkins a 71% majority, but white Protestants gave Giuliani 70% of their votes, thus revealing the racial cleavage there. White Catholics supported Giuliani by 60%. Jews responded about the same: 63% for Giuliani and 35% for Dinkins.
Both candidates ran on "personal qualifications" rather than party affiliation, a common ploy in the US two-party system. Both, however, accepted financial contributions and endorsements from their respective parties. President Bush appeared at fund raisers and rallies for Giulia-
Republicans seek to shed
Giuliani style
Consequently, the "negative style", in the jargon of the Giuliani campaign, and his defeat, attaches an image to the Republican Party which the national Republican leadership now assiduously seeks to shed, since similar white racist, anti-abortion Republican candidates were defeated elsewhere on November 7. Black mayors were elected for the first time in New Haven; Connecticut; Durham; North Carolina and Seattle, Washington. A Black, a grandson of slaves, was elected governor of Virginia, the "heart of the old confederacy". If he survives a recount, he will become the first Black governor in the US.
In New Jersey, where the race for governor was between two whites, one a Reaganite Republican and the other a liberal Democrat, abortion was the central and decisive issue. The Democrat won by almost two to one, replacing a Republican incumbent who chose not to run for reelection.
In most US electoral contests it is impossible to distinguish between the platforms of the establishment contenders because there is no discernible difference between the two capitalist parties. It is sometimes argued that there is a very real difference because one is in office and the other is out. Politicians sensitive to shifting vote sentiment in their localities make necessary adjustments in campaign rhetoric to remain in office — as in the case of retired
Mayor Koch who switched from "progressive" US congressman to "conservative"
New York mayor. Others switch parties.
The US Congress has witnessed a dozen or more party "turncoats" in recent years, several still in office. Prominent among them are Senators Strom Thurmond of
South Carolina, Trent Lott of Mississippi, and Robert Stump of Arizona, who 22 switched to the Republican Party. Senator
Donald Diegle of Michigan switched to the Democratic Party. John Lindsay was a Republican in the US Congress and when he was later elected mayor of New York in the 1960s, he switched to the Democratic Party. There is so little difference between these two parties that defectors retain high esteem in both camps.
With rising political consciousness among masses of people around such questions as race prejudice, which is widely regarded as one of the causes of economic and social injustice, comes growing dissatisfaction with the cozy twoparty system that trivializes politics and deprives voters of meaningful choices. The abortion issue, perhaps more than any other at the moment, has aroused deep resentment of the complicity of the two establishment parties in the toleration and promotion of pervasive sexism. This resentment was expressed openly for the first time earlier this year at the convention of the National Organization for Women (NOW) when a resolution was adopted to investigate the formation of a new party. Pent-up frustrations were vented in the November 7 elections with the victories of more Black candidates and the defeat of disguised bigots.
### Public workers suffer declining living standards
The day of reckoning is not far off for the victors. In the case of Dinkins, who will take office on January 1, all major unions that represent city employees and other public workers will negotiate new contracts next year. This workforce is largely Black and other minorities and suffers a declining standard of living. These are the voters who elected Dinkins. Their unions contributed to his campaign. Their expectations are high. They think that Dinkins is in a position to satisfy their social and economic needs.
For his part, Dinkins is fully aware that he is powerless to give necessary concessions to the poor and to working people. This will be decided by the city's ruling rich, mainly the real estate interests and the big banks that control the Democratic Party machine, and the Dinkins machine will approve and enforce those decisions.
The familiar arguments against wage rises were heard during the election campaign. The city has a budget crisis and there is little hope for help from either the state or federal governments, which are also debt ridden. Tax increases are ruled out because business will suffer. The only promise that Dinkins was willing to make under these circumstances was that he will try to be fair to all parties in the coming wage negotiations. Meanwhile, with both candidates bad-mouthing government at all levels, the Democrat- controlled US Congress favorably considered a $305 billion military bill, which was approved by the House. This indicates to most voters that money is always available when the politicians are prompted to look for it.
International Viewpoint #174 • November 27, 1989
The fact is that the New York city bud- Tha fast is that the New York city budget is in the red by $500 million for the current fiscal year, which ends in June 1990. This is sure to be an argument against higher wages for teachers and other underpaid public workers next September. In anticipation of union negotiations, the "Dinkins transition team", , while considering ways to reward political supporters with jobs in the new city administration, is debating how to fill the sensitive post of labor relations director. This is only one of more than 100 top level jobs to be parcelled out, with thousands of others down the line. Dennis Rivera, president of local 1199 of the hospital workers' union, was called in to help make these decisions. Rivera, who helped deliver the Hispanic vote, is an essential link to the unions, and successfully negotiated settlements for hospital workers prior to the election.
Union bureaucrats may be rewarded
His post-election role in the Dinkins camp suggests that some rewards for union bureaucrats may be forthcoming if they are helpful in averting strikes and assisting the new city administration in other ways.
Whether the disillusionment of workers and masses of this city's minority populations, especially Blacks, can be diverted from organized opposition to the twoparty political establishment, as in the past, is dubious.
This time, the growing sentiment for a new form of political expression, as evidenced at the NOW convention in the call to investigate a "third party" is more pervasive than previously. It finds echoes in the labor party talk in some sectors of the union movement, as heard earlier this year at the broadly based conference in Detroit called by the popular publication Labor Notes. The Dinkins victory and others like it in the electoral arena have encouraged opposition to the two-party structure, rather than convincingly demonstrating that gains can be made through lesser evil strategies. When such hoped-for gains are not realized, new political strategies may be devised.
No new politics is likely to come spontaneously from the unions or the women's movement, and certainly not from within the Democratic Party under the leadership of such formations as the caucus of Black Elected Officials (BEOs) or Reverend Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.
But a new reform movement is now emerging in key unions. The New Directions caucus in the auto union and Teamsters for a Democratic Union are examples. These new forces in the ranks of US labor are most likely to be influenced by today's turbulent political developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. And this can lead to the breakup of monopoly capitalism's fraudulent twoparty electoral game in the US. *
EGYPT
Steelworkers fight back at
Helwan
A FTER AN initial
"active strike" involving the occupation of the factory, on the night of 23-24 July 1989, the factory management publicly agreed to open negotiations with trade union delegates. An agreement was reached involving a certain improvement of bonuses and provision of a meal. On the question of fringe benefits and revising the qualifications and numbers of new hires, the management went no further than promises. They
FOR SEVERAL months now 24,000 workers at the Helwan steelworks, situated in the suburbs south of Cairo, have been demanding a raise in productivity bonuses and meal allowances, as well as a fair allocation of fringe benefits (housing, health care, transport).
They demanded also the reinstatement onto the factory committee of two workers' representatives (Mohammed Mustafa and Abderrahim Haridi) who were expelled from
It for defending the demands of their be submitted to interrogation, then left without care in appalling conditions of detention. To the 300 strikers wounded while trying to get away, who had demanded sick leave for health care far from the hospitals and the security police, the management offered a choice between dismissal and return to the factory...there to be handed over to the police.
The leaders of the struggle, among them one of the two expelled delegates, who turned would give no response on the question of reinstating the two delegates expelled from the factory committee and the release of workers imprisoned after the strike of 24 July.
with occupation comrades.
SAMIA HUSSEIN such determination, the government such instructed the minister of the interior to confess themselves in to the public prosecutor rather than being dismissed, were savagely tortured by the police (electric shocks, cigarette burns, blows), over several days, so as to make them to having links with clandestine prepare an assault on the factory.
At two o'clock in the morning, 5 to 6 thousand police from the special intervention force, armed with electric clubs and machine guns, forced open the doors and saturated the factory with tear gas, clubbing the workers and firing on them.
One worker, Abdul Hay Mohammed, died after being kicked in the genitals and shot in the heart and lungs, as the autopsy would reveal. Seven hundred and fifty others were arrested and violently beaten, and 15 of these were taken to hospital with fractured ribs or skulls, or bullet wounds to the limbs, stomach or head.
They were subsequently "recovered" by the security branch of the police force, to
......
Dumyat
•Port Said
Tanta
Suez
Ismailia
Canal
Gidi Pass'
Cairo
Suez
El Giza
Helwan
El Fayyum
Beni Suef
Abu Rudeis
Ras Gharib suspected of belonging to the Communist Workers' Party ( CWP Marxist-Leninist), accused of having incited the workers to go on strike, were arrested, as well as two leaders of the Egyptian Human Rights Organization, a lawyer and a journalist. Some of them went on hunger strike.
Support campaign for jailed workers
A resistance began to organize in the factory. Two thousand workers working in the sector where their comrade had been murdered refused to draw their pay for the month of August, unless their comrades were freed. It was only under the threat of dismissal that some workers agreed to collect their wages. The Human Rights Commission of the Lawyers' Guild assigned several barristers to defend the jailed workers. Support committees were set up, public (comprising artists and intellectuals) or clandestine.
But the minister of the interior refused to give the names of the 600 to 700 strikers, dispersed amongst different Cairo jails, in the hands of the security branch. Only 120 of them have been subjected to a legal judicial procedure. Detained with common criminals, wounded in the course of the assault or the interrogations and denied health care, unable to receive visits from their families, the jailed workers are undergoing a particularly painful isolation.
In the struggle of the Helwan steelwork: ers — as in those that preceded it in tex- ers — as in those that preceded it in tex. 23 23 tiles, engineering and rail - the violence m
On August 1, the workers, at a general assembly, decided to resume their active strike with an occupation and demanded the reopening of negotiations, directly with the minister of industry (who is the head of the administrative hierarchy responsible for administering public enterprises). They added to their previous demands:
— the dissolution of the trade union, considered to be too subordinate to management, and the organization of new trade union elections;
- the replacement of the managing director and his deputy;
-the freeing of workers imprisoned for having distributed a leaflet.
A sham of negotiations began, by telephone, between the minister of labour, the chair of the steelworkers' trade union and those in charge of factory "security", on the one hand; and the strikers, on the other. Without any satisfactory offer in response to their demands, and surrounded by police who prevented the workers of the second and third shifts joining them, the strikers decided to continue the occupation.
They had no wish to relive the experience of the 24 July strike, when they had stopped their movement on the basis of promises, and ceded to others the right to negotiate on their behalf. They declared that they would remain on "active strike" until the arrival of the minister of industry, with whom they wanted to negotiate and sign an agreement on the spot. Faced with communist organizations. Sixty people
Workers resume active strike
EGYPT of compromise, and that it can accept no form of independent organization of the working class, even reformist or craft unionist.
The differences that could at one time exist inside the state apparatus on the modalities and the rhythm of economic liberalization have disappeared with the worsening of the economic crisis and the reduction of the regime's room for manoeuvre.
Having set for itself the goal of becoming one of the principal guarantors of the imperialist order and its interests in the Middle East and Africa, and being indebted to the tune of 48 billion dollars to the imperialist powers (principally the United States and France), the state of the Egyp tian bourgeoisie has no choice other than to step up the exploitation of the working class. It must at the same time repay the interest on its loans (or at least a part of them) and maintain its profits and those of foreign investors in the country. The latter are relatively unimportant, foreign capital having opted for a strategy of indebting the state and its local enterprises, public and private, rather than for investing directly.
Semi-finished products only for export
Public enterprises account for almost all Egyptian exports of industrial products. These essentially consist of semi-finished products (textiles, aluminium, cement and fertilizer). These are only for export, for two reasons: 1) because the big firms and the capitalist states have decided to "diversify", ', at least partially, such production towards the third world, so as to lower world prices. 2) because the state today of the Egyptian productive apparatus does not permit competition with the firms of the other capitalist countries in the more advanced products.
Thus the big public enterprises, which alone can furnish the surplus necessary to service the debt, have a special access to international credits to modernize their equipment. Their purchases of equipment have constituted an important channel for the imperialist firms above all since the crisis in the developed capitalist countries after 1974. The huge contracts with foreign firms have allowed the bureaucrats who run the state and the public enterprises to help themselves in the process to generous amounts of "baksheesh", which has also become part of the "debt"
Several factors have combined to put the Egyptian state in the position of being unable to repay its debts: - the first stems from the fact that the majority of credits have been used to finance purchases of military material and infrastructural investments (subways, ports, rail, telecommunications, sewage, etc.), and this spending does not lead 24 chandise, producin of exportably for directly to production of exportable mer-
Egypt.
- the second resides in the mode of allocating credits and their utilization. That is, from the considerable waste accruing from the venality of the bureaucrats who manage the public enterprises, from their incompetence or from the systematic disorganization of the economic coherence of the state apparatus since 1974. All these factors have considerably reduced the efficiency of the materials and machines bought with the borrowed money, and undermined the possibilities for repaying it. Moreover, these investments, which have often led to a growth of production capacity for certain products (textiles, aluminium bars, fertilizer), have been realized without taking account of the world market's capacity for absorption.
At the same time, the credits were conditional on the halting of exports to the socialist countries and other third world countries under barter agreements (without currency.
Enormous stocks of unsold goods
The Egyptian companies thus found themselves with enormous stocks of unsold goods, both because of the restrictions placed by the capitalist countries on imports coming from the third world, and because the international organizations that manage the debt of the countries of the third world (the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank) have encouraged the same kinds of production (primary materials, semi-finished textile and metallurgic products) in every country. from coneral to reason up mist hing. A consensus has grown up, stretching stresses the "exogenous" factors underlying Egypt's inability to repay its debt, because such an explanation questions the "external" order without reflecting on the political forces and class relationships of the "internal". Such factors are essentially the lowering of the world price of petrol (since 1984-85) on the one hand, as well as higher interest rates and shorter term loans (from 1980 on).
The first factor has gravely reduced the resources of the state. The emigrant remittances have shrunk with the slowing up of economic activity in the main oil producing countries of the Arab world. The second has considerably increased the debt burden on the Egyptian economy. Since 1981, the repayments (interest and matured bonds) have been greater than the new credits, and Egypt's negative balance has grown unceasingly.
With a productive apparatus lacking real internal coherence and a dislocated economy oriented towards the needs of the big firms of the imperialist countries, the Egyptian bourgeoisie has no practical alternative to the politics of "opening" followed today.
International Viewpoint #174 • November 27, 1989
The reformists of the Progressive Unionist Alliance and of the Egyptian Communist Party mislead. themselves and the working class in affirming that it would be possible to pursue another economic policy with other allies (the "socialist" countries or the other countries of the third world) on the basis of an accumulation directed towards satisfying the basic needs of the population, whilst maintaining the same social structure, the same relations of production, the same state apparatus. In fact, the reformists have nothing more to offer than a repeat of the Nasser experi ence, or that of the Ba'ath Party in Syria and Iraq or of "Algerian socialism" despite the common failure of all those experiments, and in an international situation that was very much more favourable for them then it would be today.
Aware of the unrealistic character of their proposals, since they are incapable of advocating socialist revolution, the reformists call for a simple "adjustment" of the programs of restructuring and austerity imposed on the working class.
State not prepared to make
Many concessions
They demand that the latter moderate its demands, and hope that the bourgeois state will accord them a little space in which to practise their politics of compromise. However, the state is not prepared to make any concessions, as is shown by the violent repression, of which CP members are among the foremost victims.
The worsening of the economic crisis renders more and more necessary wide scale "restructuring", , which is reflected in a sharpening of exploitation and attacks on the gains of the workers. The rapid deterioration of living conditions and the purchasing power of the working class is leading to a radicalization of struggles and reinforcement of repression. This situation can only end up, sooner or later, in a generalized confrontation between the working class and the bourgeois state apparatus. The outcome will depend on the degree of organization of the working class, the experience acquired in struggle and the defences it can develop against the repressive apparatus of the state.
The recent struggles revealed a high level of mobilization and solidarity amongst the working class. Important progress was made from the first struggle in textiles, when the workers had waited two years for a judicial decision before mobilizing, 1. In the course of the 1960s, the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, leader of the Arab nationalist movement, inaugurated a "socialist model" founded on the statization of industry and agrarian reform, which would be imitated in Syria, Irag and Algeria. After a decade, the bankruptcy of this bourgeois state "socialism" would be such that it progressively gave way to the "infitah" ("opening"), synonymous with (re)privatization and a tum to free enterprise.
to the one at Helwan, where the workforce organized an occupation of the factory in opposition to the police, and denounced the trade union commission when it had sold out on the question of the dismissals. The categorical refusal to negotiate by management and government, and the violence of the repression, removed many illusions amongst the workers about the possibility of avoiding a violent confrontation with the state. Workers mess, me ranization real. Nonetheless, the organization of the Deprived of independent trade union organizations since 1952, mistrustful of political organizations because of the undemocratic methods of the CP and its "defeatist" strategy in past struggles, subjected to the pressure of a police intelligence well versed in the practice of infiltrating clandestine organizations, the structured to gain a favourable relation- workers' movement is not sufficiently ship of forces vis-à-vis the state.
State equipped for civil confrontation
The state, on the other hand, has been prepared for a long time for confrontation. A great part of the military equipment bought from France, West Germany, or the United States is intended for street combat and repression of strikes and demonstrations. The three-day curfew and show of strength by the army during the revolt of conscript soldiers and police in
1986 showed that the army was prepared for "effectively" guaranteeing the bourgeois order. Having gained experience in
"anti-terrorist" operations in the crackdown against the militarized Islamic organizations, the police showed in the repression of the Helwan strike that it was also ready for "anti-striker" actions.
But however well equipped and well trained, the police and the army cannot indefinitely hold the line against a mobilization of nearly 10 million workers, largely supported by the other sections of the masses (public servants, students, artisans, small peasants). The working class faces thus a long struggle. In the course of this it must rebuild its organizations. And revolutionaries, despite the weakness of their forces today, have an important role to play. For the Egyptian masses, the big capitalist countries are the colonists and aggressors of yesterday and the creditors of today. They have not forgotten the tripartite aggression of 1956 (involving Great Britain, France,and Israel) against the Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal.
They know that it is the companies and states of the principal imperialist countries that, through the intermediary of their so- called "international" organizations (IMF
Word Bank, CaParis, are imposing the increases in the price of bread, clotnes pacad, clothes
EGYPT and energy, the "restructuring" and privatization of the big public enterprises and the dismissals which accompany them, the devaluation of the Egyptian pound and the price rises that follow, the freezing of their wages, the reduction of public spending on education and health, and so on. They are finding out through the repression that a great part of the debt, for the repayment of which they are being asked to tighten their belts, has been incurred through buying from these same imperialist countries the tanks and machine guns used to break their strikes. The Western companies have made lucrative profits out of Egypt's indebtedness: the French, through the construction of the Cairo metro, a nuclear power station west of Alexandria, and numerous factories, to say nothing of arms sales; the Americans, the Germans, the Swiss, the British, the Japanese, through the sale of "ready to use" factories, of machines of every type, the building of ports, roads and bridges, and again sales of military materiél.
Facts about life of Egyptian workers not known
The workers of the imperialist coun tries have little information on the situation of their Egyptian comrades. The media present Egypt only from its "tourist" aspect. They do not report that the monthly wage of a university graduate civil servant is around 40 dollars, that a kilo of meat costs around 12% of this figure, and that this salary does not cover the minimal expenses of a single person living in Cairo - transport (15 to 30%), housing (15 to 30%), food (30 to 60%), cigarettes (30%), to say nothing of clothing. The wage of a skilled worker in a big factory, bonuses included, can reach the equivalent of 130 dollars per month, which is no longer enough to maintain a family. The education of children and medical care are more and more expensive. The price of transport has quadrupled in five years, that of bread (the staple food in
Egypt) has quintupled, and so on. Most wage-earners have a second job to make ends meet. Numerous married women also work, as do more than a million children of less than 15 years, for all that unemployment remains near to 15% of the adult male population.
are faithful readers of
Amnesty International reports, few Westerners would know that the state of emergency is still in force, that arbitrary arrests of political oppositionists remain common, that torture is systematically practiced. The Western media present the Egyptian regime, faithful ally of the imperialist powers, as the "agent of peace in the
Middle East". They do not say that Egypt now possesses one of the most powerfu
Africa and Asia if the interests of those powers or a "friendly country" are found to be threatened. The same media never cease to laud the "progress of democracy" in Egypt, which they present as a country of political pluralism and freedom of the press. There has been a pseudo-liberalization since 1975, with the authorization given to currents within the single "Socialist" party to form other " 'parties" and that given to politicians of the old pre-Nasser regime to reconstitute the reactionary Wafd party. But this "liberalization" is strictly limited to bourgeois parties.
### Far left organizations permanently harassed
The Communist Party, which works on a clandestine basis inside the Progressive "Socialist" party) remains persecuted, and Unionists who originated inside the its militants are regularly incarcerated and tortured. The other organizations of the far left are permanently harassed by police intelligence, and every workers' mobilization is immediately and brutally repressed.
The violence of the repression unleashed against the fundamentalist Islamic organizations which, until now, have constituted the only real danger for the bureaucrats of the bourgeois state apparatus, foreshadows the scale of repression in store for the working class and its organizations, should the masses threaten the interests of local and foreign capital through their mobilizations.
For all these reasons, it is imperative to break the isolation in which the Egyptian working class finds itself, both regionally and internationally.
Solidarity must be built with the struggles of the Egyptian workers on a scale commensurate with what they represent
— the principal working class of the Arab world, the second biggest on the African continent, and one of the most important of the third world. *
LE 25
November 27, 1989 • #174 Internailonal Viewpoint