Middle East Revolutions
A year on from the Egyptian Revolution
Socialist Worker 25th January 2012 - Judith Orr
Socialist Worker editor Judith Orr reports from Tahrir Square in Cairo on a day of protest and celebration, a year after the fall of Hosni Mubarak ...more
The Egyptian workers’ movement and the 25 January Revolution
ISJ January 2012 - Anne Alexander
Egypt’s revolution exploded back into the global news over the weekend of 19-20 November, as hundreds of thousands fought pitched battles with the police to retake Tahrir Square. Tens of thousands poured into the streets across the country in a show of solidarity with the revolutionaries of Tahrir who demanded an end to military rule. This article was completed a few days into this new phase of the revolutionary process, far too soon to draw conclusions about the outcome of the new round of struggle between the risen people and the state. Rather it is an exploration of one of the fundamental processes that brought the revolution back to Tahrir: the rise of an organised working class movement. ...more
Egyptians rage against the regime
Socialist Worker November 2011
The ongoing revolution has reached a critical point as protesters and police clash in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, writes Sameh Naguib from Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists People are filling the squares in cities across Egypt in their tens of thousands. The numbers in the streets are amazing. ...more
Egypt's revolution conquers new ground as strikes spread
Socialist Review November 2011 - Mark L Thomas
A massive new strike wave has thrown into doubt the hopes of Egypt's ruling army council (SCAF) that elections to parliament, currently planned for late November, would allow a return to stability and order. ...more
Taking sides in Syria
Socialist Review July 2011
The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt were major reversals for the US and Israel. But Nato intervention in Libya's popular rebellion has raised the possibility that imperialism could hijack the revolutions. Simon Assaf asks, can Syria's uprising avoid falling into the hands of the West? Syria has long been a thorn in imperialism's side. The Baathist regime has given crucial support to the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance movements who depend on Syria for their survival. So those who found themselves on the same side over the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia have suddenly found sharp disagreement over the movement for change in Syria. ...more
The growing social soul of Egypt’s democratic revolution
ISJ June 2011 - Anne Alexander
This article is a preliminary and incomplete account of an unfinished revolution.1 It represents a first attempt to explore the implications of the great wave of strikes and social protests which preceded Mubarak’s fall from power and dominated the first months of the revolution. Taking Rosa Luxemburg’s writings on the 1905 Revolution as a starting point, it argues that a powerful dynamic of reciprocal action between the social and political aspects of the class struggle is deepening the revolution and starting to create the potential for the revolution to “grow over”, in Trotsky’s words, from a political struggle within capitalism to a social and political revolution against capitalism ...more
