On Brazil 2016 and Egypt 2013

In recent months we have corresponded with a group of comrades with whom there exist several issues on which we have, as yet, failed to reach agreement. As at least two of these are political questions of general interest we have decided to post our response on them.

Rousseff’s 2016 Impeachment 

The first question concerns the question of what attitude revolutionaries should take toward the rightist campaign to impeach Dilma Rousseff, the Brazilian president, in 2016. The comrades indicated to us that they felt that the position of the Internationalist Group (IG, led by Jan Norden) was correct against our own. We responded as follows: 

Comrades:

Thank you for your letter addressing events in Egypt 2013 and Brazil 2016. As regards the latter, we note your agreement with the Internationalist Group (IG) on the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. We published a critique of the IG’s position on this question in the first issue of our journal Bolshevik. In rejecting the suggestion that opposing Rousseff’s impeachment amounts to giving her political support you assert, a little more baldly than the IG: “In our view, the impeachment which ousted PT [Partido dos Trabalhadores – Workers’ Party] was a seizure of power by rightists eager to increase attacks on the working class….” You claim that siding with Rousseff against impeachment is not equivalent to voting for her in the first place but offer no explanation of the basis of this distinction.

Today in California, Donald Trump’s rightist followers are pushing a petition to get rid of Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor. If armed bands of rightists were moving to seize the legislature and string up Newsom, we would of course call for the workers’ movement to mobilize to stop any such attacks. But that is not what is taking place. Newsom’s opponents are adhering to the legal process available for removing elected officials. It is quite obvious that opposition to this recall drive amounts to political support for the Democratic incumbent. Perhaps you will agree. If so, why should an essentially similar attempt in Brazil to replace one politician with another through constitutional means be seen as something qualitatively different?

You advise us that it is “artificial” to attempt to distinguish between legal, constitutional activity (including no-confidence motions, recall petitions, impeachment proceedings, etc.) and brute military force (like the coups in Spain in 1936 and Chile in 1973). A useful example of the difference between attempts to remove elected leaders through legal/parliamentary means or via military coups was provided in the not-too-distant past in Venezuela. In 2002, when a section of the military briefly forcibly deposed president Hugo Chávez, revolutionaries defended him against the rightist coup attempt. But in 2004 when the president’s rightist opponents initiated a recall referendum, we gave him no support:

“Though the Venezuelan referendum was not directly organized by the U.S., the imperialists certainly supported those behind it. Some leftists argue that it was necessary to vote against removing Chávez because of the reactionary character of his opponents. But a ‘no’ vote on the question of holding a new presidential election amounts to support for the existing bourgeois government.

“There is no question that a victory by the right could have set the stage for ‘legalizing’ wholesale attacks on working people….

“Ideally, there would have been a way to vote against the imperialist-backed right wingers without politically supporting Chávez, but the format of the referendum made this impossible, just as it was impossible to simply vote ‘against’ [the fascist Jean-Marie] Le Pen in the second round of the 2002 French election. The Venezuelan referendum was not an extra-legal assault by the right, but rather a parliamentary maneuver sanctioned by the ‘Bolivarian’ constitution. This makes it rather different than the coups that deposed Chile’s Allende in 1973 or Haiti’s Aristide in 2004.”
—1917 No. 28

It is significant that in both these cases, the IG’s position was identical to ours. We see no difference in principle between the attempts to impeach Rousseff in 2016 and Chávez in 2004. Yet the IG’s attitude is diametrically different. It is pretty clear that the IG’s shift is the result of an opportunist impulse, which the group’s leaders sought to conceal with bogus declarations about giving Rousseff “no political support.” But supporting her campaign against impeachment is in fact a form of political support. It is not clear to us why you would choose to endorse this: do you agree with us (and the IG) regarding the 2004 recall of Chávez? If so, can you explain the disparity between that instance and Rousseff in 2016? The IG’s unwillingness to comment on this discrepancy is obviously borne of political cowardice.

As the IG correctly noted, Rousseff’s vulnerability to a constitutional challenge was largely the result of her government’s record of anti-working-class actions which turned many of her former supporters against her. The IG also observed that Rousseff’s government launched further attacks on working people even during the impeachment drive. The logic of those who supported Rousseff against impeachment is essentially that of “lesser evilism”—the same rationalization used by much of the American left to justify voting for the Democratic Party of racism and imperialist war.

Rather than siding with the “lesser” of two capitalist evils, revolutionaries in Brazil should have sought to organize militant resistance to Rousseff’s austerity measures (which her rightist opponents have of course continued and deepened). A successful fight against the pro-capitalist attacks of the Rousseff regime could have helped reunite Brazil’s divided working class and set the stage for an offensive against the capitalists.

You share the IG’s position of supporting Rousseff but advance slightly different arguments. The IG attempted to conceal its actual position by denying that voting against impeachment was in fact political support. You, by contrast, hint that the impeachment drive was not “merely a parliamentary affair.” Either Rousseff’s impeachment was essentially a “parliamentary affair,” or it was some sort of extra-legal coup. You awkwardly attempt to straddle both these alternatives by suggesting that perhaps she faced the “threat” of military action, although no such action ever materialized. If there had been an imminent coup against Rousseff, Trotskyists would of course have called for workers’ mobilizations against it—but this would not have extended to voting to keep her in office. Siding with Rousseff against impeachment meant voting confidence in the leader of a treacherous popular-frontist regime.

Egypt 2013: Muslim Brotherhood vs. Military 

A second issue between us involved whether the confrontation in Egypt 2013 between the Islamist regime of the Egyptian military and President Morsi posed essentially the same issue as that in Iran in 1978-79 between the US backed Shah and the Islamist movement headed by Ayatollah Khomeini. Differences over this issue played an important role in the 2018 dissolution of our fusion with New Zealand based Permanent Revolution Group (see: Marxism & Islamic Reaction: Polemics on Khomeini, Morsi & Erdoğan).

We note your approval of the then-revolutionary Spartacist League’s position in Iran in 1978-79 of “Down with the Shah! No to the Mullahs! Workers to Power!” Yet regarding the essentially similar events in Egypt 2013, you say: “We hope the BT sees the error in taking no sides here.” We do not think it is a mistake to refuse to take sides when two equivalently reactionary forces collide—as they did in both Iran and Egypt. In such cases, revolutionaries have a duty to tell the working class that neither side deserves support. Your 25 April letter criticizes us for “laying neutral” between the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood, while also endorsing our 1988 polemic with Workers Power, “In Defense of the Trotskyist Program.” In that exchange Workers Power charged us with “neutrality” in Iran: “Your position on Iran and your refusal to support the anti-Shah movement led by the mullahs is the fruit of your abandonment of Leninism. You remained neutral here….” Your criticism of our “neutrality” in the Egyptian showdown between Islamic reaction and the brutal Egyptian military echoes Workers Power’s revisionist critique over Iran.

It is important in politics to proceed from facts, not presumptions. We suspect that your critique of our dual defeatist position in Egypt, but not Iran, reflects a lack of familiarity with the close parallels between the two situations. Your disorientation is evident when you claim that the July 2013 military coup against Morsi was “the cause of the evaporation of any expression of bourgeois democracy and the start of repression” (emphasis added). We hope that after a careful review of the historical record you will agree that the partial elements of bourgeois democracy that existed when Morsi was elected essentially “evaporated” while he was in office, not as a consequence of his removal.

When the 2011 Tahrir Square protests against Mubarak erupted, the Muslim Brotherhood sought to mediate between the army and protesters. After Mubarak’s fall, the Brotherhood, which was legalized by the interim military government, set up a “Democratic Coalition” with various small non-Islamist formations to soften its image and broaden its appeal prior to the November 2011 election. The coalition adopted a program that incongruously combined liberal democratic demands (freedom of association, fair elections and judicial independence) with the assertion that Sharia law should provide the basis for Egypt’s political system. The anti-democratic implications were overtly spelled out:

“freedom of the press must be balanced against its ‘obligation to respect the general values and morals and norms of society according to the law’; likewise, it calls for respect for human rights according to international documents and conventions, in so far as they do not contradict the principles of Islamic Shari’a and the preservation of Arab identity’ (emphasis added).”
— Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, The Muslim Brotherhood, pp192-3

Like the Khomeinites in Iran, Egypt’s Islamists did not even pretend to be committed to bourgeois democracy: “In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood had made it very clear that, despite the fact they had been democratically elected, they had no intention to maintain a democratic system” (Ibid.). In May 2010 Morsi told Wickham:

“an individual is free to question basic precepts of Islam as a matter of private conscience, but once he or she begins to promote these ideas in the public domain, they cause harm (darar) to the public interest, and therefore the right to free expression can be legitimately curtailed….The public interest has also been invoked by Brotherhood leaders to justify the censorship of intellectual, creative and artistic works; regulate the content of the media and school curricula; and oppose legal reforms that infringe on male prerogatives in terms of marriage, divorce and inheritance.”
—Ibid., p188

The Brotherhood’s coalition won a parliamentary majority and Morsi gained the presidency with 51.7 percent of the second round vote. Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister, came second with 48.2 percent, much of which came from Egypt’s secular/urban population. Morsi received support in the cities, but his victory hinged on the Brotherhood’s ability to turn out its rural base.

Fearing that their electoral success might later be reversed, Morsi’s government appointed a committee to draft a new constitution. The majority of the committee were Islamists, although some secular figures and Coptic Christians were also invited to participate in an effort to broaden its legitimacy. When negotiations eventually broke down over the Brotherhood’s insistence on an Islamic state, all the minority representatives walked out. The Brotherhood leadership responded by instructing Morsi to proclaim his right to rule by decree—a clear indication that any commitment to bourgeois democracy had “evaporated.” This was further confirmed when protesters who objected to Morsi’s anti-democratic move were dispersed by armed Muslim Brotherhood thugs, in a replay of how Khomeini’s Hezbollah goons treated secular opposition in Iran:

“Steaming ahead regardless, the Guidance Bureau [of the Muslim Brotherhood] directed Morsi to issue a constitutional declaration, on November 20 [2012],that protected their cherished assembly from dissolution, and placed the president above the law.

“Immediately afterwards, the Brotherhood flogged the assembly to approve the new constitution in a marathon 16-hour session, on November 30, and pass it through a popular referendum in 15 days. Massive protests erupted, and thousands camped outside the presidential palace only to be cleared off, on December 6, by a band of armed Brothers. Very few had a chance to read, let alone comprehend, the 230 articles in the hastily conceived document. Less than a third of registered voters bothered to show up for the referendum, and only 63 percent granted their approval. Brothers were undeterred by the slimness of their popular mandate. As Brothers seemed incapable of compromise, civil activists now resolved to undermine the Brotherhood rule, even if it meant receiving help from their old regime enemies. A two-pronged attack ensued….

“That being said, the Brotherhood’s opponents could not have fielded enough protesters to legitimize a military intervention, had the common folk abstained. It was the Brotherhood’s incompetence at government and the fact that they had no concrete plan to offer that drove millions into the streets on June 30. And it was the Brotherhood’s decision to turn a political clash into a full-fledged religious war, through inflammatory rhetoric made convincing by dispersed acts of violence, that guaranteed the public’s blanket endorsement for their brutal repression. Brothers had not fully appreciated how practical their countrymen were, even if they were practicing Muslims. Disillusioned with the Brothers, Egyptians preferred risking backsliding into functioning secular autocracy to the certainty of sliding into what they saw as incompetent religious rule.”
—Hazem Kandil, Inside the Brotherhood, pp141-2

In Egypt, as in Iran, much of the support that the two contending reactionary forces enjoyed grew out of loathing and disgust for the other:

“[Morsi] won the election, but only just. And many who got him over the line in the run-off had voted not from conviction – but because they saw him as marginally more preferable to his opponent in the final round: Mubarak’s last prime minister. But rather than keeping everyone onside, Morsi was seen as increasingly divisive, open only to Islamist ideas, and loyal only to the Brotherhood…..

“But the event that may have sealed his fate came a month later, in November 2012. Seeking to fast-track a controversial, Islamist-slanted constitution, Morsi awarded himself total executive control, allowing himself to bypass judicial procedures to ensure the text was put to a public vote without further debate. The decision led to deadly street fights between Brotherhood supporters and leftist and liberals outside the presidential palace.”
—theguardian.com, 1 June, 2015

Faced with mounting opposition, Morsi was determined to cling to office. Things reached a climax on 30 June, 2013, when a mass mobilization of millions demanded his removal:

“The singularity of the 30 June rallies lies in the fact that, at least in Cairo, the crowds were simply too large to be compared to anything that went on before: not only was Tahrir square, the iconic centre of the Egyptian revolution, much more densely packed than on any previous occasion according to the unanimous commentary of all seasoned observers, but Ittihadiye, the area around the presidential palace in Heliopolis, drew crowds that would, on their own, rank this incident in the annals of mass protest anywhere in the world! So this was a formidable movement that would scare any party in government and any ruling class!

“And yet the Brotherhood and the other Islamist movements, with certain exceptions, showed no signs of giving in. On the one hand, they organized counter demonstrations and sit-ins that reached up to the hundreds of thousands. There were also clashes all around the country before, during and after the landmark date of 30 June that led to scores of casualties on both sides. On the other hand, Morsi himself stood his ground and declared squarely that he was not going to give in to the demands of the opposition….

“The deadlock born from the confrontation of two nearly equal social and political forces was simply inextricable. It threatened civil war. It was into this void that the army stepped in and staged its coup. This was a classic case of Bonapartism.”*
—socialistproject.ca, July 4, 2013

Morsi represented the Muslim Brotherhood—his commitment to bourgeois democracy was no greater than that of the Egyptian military. As in Iran, there was no reason for the working class to bloc with either of these reactionary forces. And, as in Iran, there was no revolutionary leadership capable of leading the struggle for a historically progressive resolution to the impasse, by channelling widespread alienation from both military and Islamic reaction into a fight for workers’ power.

In Egypt in 2013, as in Iran 1979, dual defeatism was the only policy for genuine Bolsheviks. Contrary to what you may imagine, no real “positions and gains” for working people in terms of democratic rights (or anything else) remained under the rule of the Brotherhood. Backing Morsi against the military meant siding with Islamic reaction; and, as in Iran, opposition to theocratic would-be dictators did not amount to support for military reaction. We can only agree with your observation that getting this issue wrong is likely to be “fatal” for revolutionaries “in the long run,” and hope that once you have a chance to investigate the facts our positions on this issue will begin to converge.