Sunday, April 3 2011, 2:00 pm
AGECA
177 rue de Charonne
75011 Paris
The revolutionary uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt mark the beginning of a new era of global class struggle. The working class has proven its enormous social power. It has refused to be intimidated or held back, forcing the despots Mubarak and Ben Ali to resign.
The revolution, however, is still in its initial stage. The dictators are gone but the regimes remain. In Egypt power lies in the hands of the military, in Tunisia, Ben Ali’s cronies form the government with some members of the opposition as a political cover.
The revolution cannot stop with the general demand for democracy. The strivings of workers and young people—for jobs, better wages, a secure future—can only be fulfilled by abolishing capitalist property, semi-feudal relations in the countryside and imperialist domination. The struggle for democracy is inextricably linked with the struggle for workers’ power and the socialist transformation of society.
These events have confirmed the critical significance of Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution and the struggle waged by the International Committee of the Fourth International to build a revolutionary leadership based on this perspective.
The revolution in the Maghreb and the Middle East is connected with the class struggle in France and all over the world. Everywhere the working class faces the same problems—declining living standards, growing unemployment and poverty, demands for austerity and the decay of democratic rights. At the other pole of society, a tiny financial elite has amassed fabulous wealth and has an iron grip over all of the political parties.
In France, workers must break with all the organisations that defend capitalism—the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the trade unions and their allies in the Left Party and the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA)—and take the path of international socialist revolution. Our meeting will discuss the significance of the events in the Maghreb and Middle East and the building of a new revolutionary leadership for the working class on both sides of the Mediterranean.