9
9
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I popped the champagne
cork to celebrate the Egyptian people's success in driving out of office the American puppet, Hosni Mubarak. However, as I wrote on February 1, Mubarak's departure doesn't guarantee that his successor will not find himself wearing the
same American harness. As Gerald Celente puts it, "Meet the new boss, same as old boss."
It remains to be seen how
much of a revolution has occurred. Marx and Lenin would be put off by the
idealistic jubilation over a spontaneous revolution that caused Mubarak to resign after a couple of weeks of protests. Marx and Lenin would say that nothing has changed. The materialist basis of the old order is still in place: the elites, the police, the army, the bureaucracy, the U.S. Embassy. Moreover, no vanguard has appeared to lead the revolution to completeness. Marx and Lenin would heap scorn on the prevalent idea that the material interests of the old
ruling order, which is still in place, have been brought in line with the
material interests of the Egyptian people.
Marx and Lenin, and their
disciple Pol Pot, believed that no revolution could succeed that did not destroy all representatives of the old order. The effective force in history, Marx and Lenin said, was violence. The Bolsheviks murdered every member of the Czar's family in order to obliterate any hope that the old order could be reinstated.
How many revolutions have
succeeded without violence? Even the American Revolution was violent, and not merely against King George. Colonists who thought of themselves as British and remained loyal to England were dispossessed and had to flee to Canada. Although not Marxists, the American revolutionaries were unforgiving.
Perhaps what we have witnessed in Egypt is just the opening stage. If Egyptians find out that not much has changed, they will erupt again in a more decisive manner, this time
under focused leaders. If this revolution is put down, the next development could be civil war, leading on to Celente's prediction of regional wars developing into the first
"great war" of the 21st
century.
The elites are greatly
outnumbered, and in every country the elites have monopolized resources and
opportunities and possess more wealth and income than they know what to do
with. The few armed
with vast wealth are unlikely to prevail against the many armed with vast anger.
Still, too much should not
be given to Marx and Lenin. Material interests are important, but they are not all. There is good and evil in the human breast. People can change their minds The Soviet Empire was not overthrown by a revolution. It collapsed because the ruling class, the communists themselves, changed their minds, acknowledged the
wrongness of their system, and let go of it.
Perhaps this will happen in Egypt and elsewhere.
Perhaps this will happen in Egypt and elsewhere.
