THE move by the Egyptian military leadership to overthrow the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mursi represents a decisive development in the Egyptian revolution and the struggle against imperialism throughout the region.
Mursi, elected just over a year ago by the narrowest possible margin over the only other candidate – a representative of the ousted regime of Mubarak – is now in jail and warrants for the arrest of three hundred Muslim Brotherhood leaders have been issued.
These fast-moving events have left the leaders of world imperialism floundering around as they see their grand schemes for the complete re-drawing of the Middle East map being torn asunder by the mass revolutionary movement of the Egyptian masses led by the working class.
With the ousting of their close ally Mubarak, imperialism banked on the reactionary Muslim Brotherhood taking over, with the military pulling the strings in the background.
Mursi faithfully followed this plan, giving total support to the murderous campaign to overthrow the secular government of Assad in Syria and continuing the policy of betraying the Palestinian peoples while at the same time refusing to implement any demands to alleviate the crushing economic crisis that has seen the Egyptian economy collapse over the past twelve months.
He carried on with the policy of Mubarak of using loans, on which Egypt has become dependent, in order to pay back existing loans to foreign banks made to Mubarak, as insisted upon by the World Bank and the IMF.
Meanwhile the military, whose leaders control and run an estimated one third of the country’s industries (particularly dominating the lucrative tourist industry), were allowed to carry on as usual, with only a minor change to the old leadership that had followed Mubarak.
All this has been blown apart by the Egyptian working class and youth who refuse to accept having a reactionary Islamic state forced on them, and the economic devastation caused by the world economic crisis of capitalism.
Egypt, the world’s largest importer of wheat, has seen food prices double in nine months, fuel shortages driving up the price of all goods, the currency collapsing by 12 % against the dollar, and over half the population living below the poverty level.
The revolutionary movement of the working class cannot be derailed by any cobbled-together coalition as is being proposed, it is being forced to advance from the demand for bourgeois democratic reforms to the struggle for the social revolution.
This is not the only nightmare that world imperialism is facing in the region.
Its other main ally, Turkey, is facing similar upheavals with the continuing insurrectionary mass demonstrations, supported by the trade unions, against the Islamic government of Recep Erdogan who this week was forced to threaten to bring in the army to crush demonstrators.
These developments are laying waste to imperialism’s plan for the re-division of the region, notably the overthrow of the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad as a prelude to war against Iran and the crushing of Hezbollah.
With these allies and main suppliers of the Syrian ‘rebels’ pre-occupied in trying to stave off revolution at home, the Syrian regime has been enormously strengthened in its fight against the imperialist-backed ‘rebels’.
This point was driven home by Assad, in an interview published on Thursday, that his opponents have ‘used up all their tools’ and failed to overthrow his regime, and he declared the ‘end’ of political Islam as a tool for imperialist domination.
Every attempt by imperialism to bar the road of the masses, led by the working class, to social revolution is being beaten back by the revolutionary tide driven on by the world economic crisis of capitalism.
The fast-developing Arab socialist revolution, a part of the world socialist revolution, demands the building of parties of the Fourth International in every country to lead this struggle to victory.
