This is Not the End-Perspective on Mubarak's Resignation

This was a lot better than my previous video, and much more concise.

Text of video-

Good afternoon, faithful viewers. We have a lot to cover today, so let's not waste any time. In case you haven't heard the news coming out of Egypt today, President Hosni Mubarak has finally resigned despite his assurances to the contrary yesterday. For those of you who think this is automatically the end of totalitarian, right-wing government in Egypt, think again. Let me remind you that just a week ago, Mubarak assigned a brand new round of thugs to lead his government. These are the people who have likely supported Mubarak unquestioningly through his dictatorship, especially the new Vice President Suleiman, who is the head of Mubarak's infamously brutal secret police that has terrorized the country for the past 30 years.

But Mubarak did make one step I don't think many people expected. Rather than handing power over to Suleiman, he gave it to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces—the leadership of the Egyptian military, led by a man named Mohammed Hussein Tantawi. But a military government is no less a dictatorship than Mubarak's state was. As long as the corrupt representatives of the Egyptian ruling class hold power, they WILL use that power against the Egyptian people. This one will be just as brutal, if not more brutal, than Mubarak's state was in crushing dissent. Part of the reason Mubarak took so long to exit was that he was completely delusional about how much of a threat the protesters posed to him. This can be seen in his recent actions such as firing everyone in the government but himself. Suleiman and Tantawi have no such illusions, and both have used enormous amounts of power in the past to crush popular uprisings to maintain power. If the present movement doesn't remove all of them immediately with the same resolve as they removed Mubarak, they will be crushed.

To further secure their safety from US imperialism, but also ensure that this never happens again, the society the Egyptian people create must be based on the principles of libertarian socialism, a system that ensures that no single person or clique holds enough power to oppress them.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Hosni
• Mubarak
• Egypt
• Egyptian
• Revolution
• Protests
• 2011
• Suleiman
• Tantawi

[TheAwkwardTapestry]

Libertarian Socialism is a contradiction. Libertarianism involves private ownership of the means of production by individuals, socialism involves the workers owning it collectively. The two can not co-exist, one is firmly opposed to the other.

[commissarusa]

@TheAwkwardTapestry

Read up on the origin of the word "libertarian" first. The person who first used it in a political sense was a colleague of Proudhon in the 1st International named Joseph Dejacque. He used it to mean any non-statist or non-hierarchal alternative to capitalism. In most of the world, it still means that. Only in the USA and sometimes Canada does it mean "right-wing individualist who talks about state oppression all the time while ignoring all other forms." No offense.

[TheAwkwardTapestry]

@commissarusa But there is still a state during socialism. It is just controlled by the working class and therefore takes a very different form to what now gets called a state through defending the interests of the majority over the minority. It is only after decades of socialism that the state would become purely administrative. First there is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat stage.

[commissarusa]

@TheAwkwardTapestry

Non-statist doesn't mean no state at all. It just means a form of society that isn't entirely controlled by the state. Not all socialism is Leninism or even Marxism.

[TheAwkwardTapestry]

@commissarusa If it's not Marxist, then definitely not socialist. Marxism is the theory of socialism.

So why not call yourself a socialist or communist? The libertarian, by your definition, is completely irrelevant and will just confuse people since it's been used since before Marx to describe free-market capitalism.

[commissarusa]

@TheAwkwardTapestry

It's not irrelevant, since it still means the same thing in nearly every other country except the US. Stop being so dogmatic. But let's face the facts: is Marxism really that much more relevant? In the minds of most people, Marxism is synonymous with repression and terror. It obviously isn't, but that doesn't change the fact that all the things that differentiate it from libertarian socialism have been shown to be incorrect.

[TheAwkwardTapestry]

@commissarusa It means that everywhere, it's the definition of the word. What you're describing is not even socialist, it's more the anarcho-syndicalism of the IWW. That failed, over and over again. It the US it was never even able to establish a labour party.

[commissarusa]

@ProletarianRenegade

Let's wait and see what happens. I honestly hope you're right. Reports from Cairo indicate that the protesters haven't lost perspective yet, and they're still talking about dismantling the entire government. But it's only been a few hours. Tomorrow the real work for the leftist movement begins. If you know any leftists who can speak Arabic, tell them that they must spread the word any way they can about what we're seeing here. The people must not be allowed to lose steam.