Stop Me Before I Vote Again

I assume Suleiman is gone, or will be. Yesterday, Yahoo mentioned El Baradei as a likely presidential candidate. Comrade Crow described this as a "bourgeois" revolution, and so it will have its "Democratic Party", replete with creeps, cronies and crooks.

(from the Angry Arab):

""While demonstrating in Tahrir Square recently, I met one judge - a member of the "Committee of the Wise" - who would fall into this second group. He had long opposed the appointment of female judges and told me, "Stop talking about women and all that nonsense."
This group is trying to hijack the efforts of the young revolutionaries by talking about maintaining stability. It supports "reform" as a matter of making minor changes to the constitution, a document that was altered in 1971 to grant then-President Anwar Sadat his nearly pharaoh-like powers. The 1971 constitution makes Egypt's president the head of the executive branch and the head of state and gives the person in that office the right to interfere in all other branches of government. It also bestows broad immunities that shield the exercise of these powers from accountability. Minor tinkering with this document should not be part of Egypt's democratic future."
Posted by As'ad AbuKhalil at 7:46 AM

lenin's tomb and juan cole (informed comment) both have useful overviews of current events and prospects, lenin pretty much agreeing with OP's POV.

Dammit, can't we dream with our head in the clouds for one goddamn day about the new socialist paradise where neoliberals & torturers are jailed (and not tortured, as we're benevolent dreamers) & assigned a lifetime of latrine duty?

Then on Monday you can curse the bourgeois takeover by El Baradei & Crying Google Guy.

For the moment I'm gonna gave a little faith in the people who did the hard work, not to mention the newly-emboldened working class, and hope I'm not being naive.

Personally, I'm not all that enamored with pigeon-holing this thing with the conventional Leninist labels. I'm also not as sure as others that EB means doom for sure. Again, what if he actually represents ordinary Egyptians and starts making regional demands?

Also, what would be the basis for a simple socialist victory here? This isn't Venezuela. There's no clear fountain of power to seize and redistribute. Indeed, isn't trying to figure out how to keep feeding themselves part of the new agenda?

Whether the people of Egypt accept al-Baradei in accordance with Uncle Sam's and little nephew Eretz Yisroel's wishes, that depends more on the people themselves doesn't it?

If Mubarak had simply stepped down without citizen protest & uprising, sure... al-Baradei would be the man, and we'd see an emulation there of what Obama has done here.

Egypt ain't the USA, though. Isn't that what this whole unfolding is demonstrating very handily?

" lenin pretty much agreeing with OP's POV"

if so ..comrades purge me ...please

i am vileness

the great ones in the dialectical here after
call on you neih ...they demand

some brave soul among you
must come to detroit
find my mossy cell
and
rip off my right index finger

it is decreed

"paine .. thou shalt hunt and pack no more "

must come to detroit

Come? To Detroit?
This must be misdirection.
Detroit surely has unemployed talent willing to work cheap.

Let your (remaining) fingers do the walking.

sen
apropos the democratic revolution in a country like egypt
it is unlikely to go the route if it lets the bourgeois run the full show

i posted up a certain notable rev's
take back last post near the bitter end of it

i'll repeat it here

as it pretty well defines my sense
of the maximal here
ie
the left most possible outcome

"neither of the two basic problems or tasks
of Egypt's bourgeois-democratic revolution can be solved or accomplished by the national bourgeoisie.....Possible participation in the revolution on the one hand and proneness to conciliation with the enemies of the revolution on the other-- such is the dual character of the Egyptian bourgeoisie...When confronted by a formidable enemy, they unite with the the people the workers and peasants against the enemy , but when the workers and peasants awaken they turn round
to unite with the enemy
against the workers and peasants..."

"Therefore, the proletariat, the peasantry, the intelligentsia and the other sections of the petty bourgeoisie undoubtedly constitute the basic forces determining Egypt's fate..."

--in as much as a democratic revolution succeeds --

".. These classes, some already awakened and others in the process of awakening,.."

--the peasnats are as i understand just now openning their eyes--

"... will necessarily become the basic components of the state and governmental structure in the democratic republic of Egypt "

optimally of course

"with the proletariat as the leading force..."

"This new-democratic republic will be different from the old European-American form of capitalist republic under bourgeois dictatorship, which is the old democratic form and already out of date..."

"This new democratic form suits a certain historical period and is therefore transitional; nevertheless, it is a form which is necessary and cannot be dispensed with"

" this form is a state under the joint dictatorship of several anti-imperialist classes... "

"this transitional form of state will be adopted in the revolutions of emerging countries. "

"Each of these revolutions will necessarily have specific characteristics of it's own "

" each ... a variation on a general theme"

Hmmm...lots of historic links between this capital and Cairo, going back more than 2 millennia. Even some more recent sociocultural similarities, especially with the south of the country and countries on the other side of the mare.

OP: what do you have against Richard Seymour?

Here's a credible view of the emergence of labor in the uprising:

http://www.arabawy.org/2011/02/12/permanent-revolution/

Perhaps it's just time to admit that while analysis and polemic which were written in 1848 and 1871 can still have some application to our times, they do not represent or embody them anymore than Lucretius' seminal work properly explains the modern popularization and lay embrace of the rudiments of atomic theory.

This looking back to look forward just sort of ignores what is new, now. It ignores the change it purports to explain.

As Sen's link to arabawy ought to demonstrate, not everything follows a Hegelian or post-Hegelian or dialectical development.

And if anything ought to come under the closest possible scrutiny, it's the broad connection between the Dialectic, as a means of explaining history and human choices, and the continued failure of the revolutionary left which embraces it; which is left almost always chasing actual events instead of making them; and which is ever trying to push pin those events into a theory which it embraces like religious doctrine and which is as mystical and priestly as the Trismegistian Hermeticism from which Hegel originally - and openly - cribbed it.

Seymour using Lenin as a blog handle is enough pomposity and presumption
For me to hate ten bloggers
And I suspect he is at heart wearing a trot tattoo

Why trots are such cockroaches to me is mostly a submerged sourced monster of an aversion
Mental hay fever would put it too mildly
It's contempt and loathing
Wouldn't blame much of it on poor Trotsky himself of course
He had much greatness in him

So, fight sectarianism with sectarianism.

There's blurb on Reuters saying that the army is planning on banning strikes. If so, it looks like round 2 may be labour vs. the army

"So, fight sectarianism with sectarianism."

huh?