With all the elation over the fall of the Mubarak regime, more people are drinking the spontaneist and uncritical kool-aid that I initially criticized in an earlier post . I am also excited about the toppling of a comprador dictator and the possibilities that will emerge from this rebellion; I have never maintained otherwise, though my critical, historically grounded, and nuanced position has caused me to be misinterpreted by overly excited comrades, friends, and acquaintances.My position remains the same as the post cited above: this uprising will not become a socialist revolution and those who currently possess the most developed organizational structures (ie. competing sectors of the ruling class) will end up directing the rebellion and providing its class content––this is already happening. This is not to say that I'm not excited, that I don't think it's possibly a progressive historical moment, though I must admit I'm more excited by the possibilities emerging in Tunisia, the uprising that has been shunted aside by the mainstream North American left in favour for the spectacle of Egypt. In any case, I want to discuss some of the stranger claims that I have heard in the course of Egypt's exciting uprising.I think people are about to abandon this bizarre belief since the military is now saying they will ban the right of labour unions to meet and strike. Still, until the military starts banning these meetings and strikes, I'm sure this belief will linger.Since when has an army that has been built and trained under a dictatorial regime, an army that belongs to a comprador regime, ever been progressive? If the army has come out against the Mubarak regime we should question WHY it has come out against this regime: this is not a Peoples Army, this is an army that is wed to the dictatorship of the compradori. According to Al-Jazeera (which I am listening to right now), the military is beating protestors and denying food from reaching the centres of the city.And yet many of my friends who should know better feel as if Egypt has suddenly slid outside of the course of history, is an entirely new event, and that the military was not the backbone of Mubarak's regime and that, even if it is finished with Mubarak, still possesses the ideological focus of the regime. If there was an uprising throughout North American, and the military suddenly appeared in the cities to "protect" the people from the police, we would hopefully question the aims of a military that is deeply embedded in imperialism. Not so in Egypt! That military must suddenly be good, having shed the ideology behind its construction.The only question about the military is whether it will align itself behind an emergent liberal democracy or unite with a new Mubarak-like regime. And though the former might be more progressive than the latter, neither are properly revolutionary––which brings me to my next point.When I hear statements like this I desperately wish everyone would do concept analysis on the word "revolution." I admit that my philosophy training makes me grumpy when it comes to the misapplication of words, but I still believe that it is important, especially as leftists, to be clear about our concepts.A revolution is something that alters the social relations at the base of the mode of production, a revolutionary movement is something that is aimed at altering these social relations. Revolutions can be progressive or reactionary: we can imagine a monarchist revolution, after all, that aims to change the social relations of a given mode of production by returning them to a tributary society. But revolutions are about fundamental changes in the economic base, not rearticulations of the superstructure.In the 20th century there have been many revolutions and revolutionary movements, two of which were world historical revolutions: Russia and China. World historical revolutions not only change the social/productive relations that define the mode of production, but are "new" in that they create, even if the eventually fail, universal developments in our understanding of revolutionary theory and praxis. Before the counter-revolutions and capitalist restorations in Russia and China, however, the mode of production was fundamentally changed. And though it was also eventually changed back in both instances, the revolutions overturned, they were still revolutionary.This is not the case in Egypt where what is happening is an, or a, that is not focused around changing the mode of production. The primary organizing group that was engaged in sparking the spontaneous uprisings, as well as directing them, is a coalition of middle class elements, spear-headed by ElBaradai's organization, that eerily resembles the proposed coalition government. The demands of this group are bourgeois demands: they are not about changing the fundamental social relations of Egyptian society, they are not opposed to capitalism or even comprador capitalism. Even if these demands are transcended by elements involved in the uprising, the uprising is now veiled in the class content of its primary organizers who possess the structures and vision to focus the rage of the masses. Clearly, if this group succeeds in establishing its vision the Egyptian rebellion will be progressive; if it fails, and the army comes out on the side of another Mubarak, then we can see the rebellion being suppressed by another reactionary sector of the ruling class.In any case, demanding a secular democracy in this day and age is not revolutionary, though it is progressive in the context of Egypt, because a secular democracy, as we should know, can exist quite happily with the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and even with the dictatorship of the compradori––though in the case of the latter a secular democracy will also have to deny certain social reforms in order to prop up the labour aristocracy in the centres of capitalism.The revolutionary movements of the 21st century, those that are united around a vision of a society beyond capitalism and imperialism, are by-and-large ignored by the North American left. I know I'm repeating myself, because I complained about this in my earlier post about Tunisia and Egypt , but I think this point needs to be made again and again. Why is there no general excitement around the revolutionary storms in Nepal and India, why no support for revolutionary groups in places like Afghanistan that have been organizing for years? These are truly exciting and revolutionary possibilities. And even in the case of Nepal, whatever one might think about the internal struggles of the party, there were exciting uprisings and mass demonstrations––but that were focused around an ideology that demanded the end of imperial-capitalism. As leftists we should be more excited about these possibilities and be ready to defend them against imperial intervention. And yet, despite American former involvement in propping up the regime in Nepal, we had no mass demonstrations in support of Nepal's revolution; they were forced to overcome this obstacle without any global internationalism.Instead, we throw our excitement around mass uprisings that respond to objective conditions but lack the subjective conditions of revolutionary organizing. I am not arguing that we should not support, and not be excited by, what is happening in Egypt. Rather, I am arguing that if we are truly leftwing and not simply social democrats, we should support those truly revolutionary movements, those movements that connect to the historical concept of. Our revolutionary imagination has become truncated, degenerating under the belief that capitalism is the end of history.Why do people want to resist historical analysis and live behind some historical veil of ignorance when it is clear that the only way to make sense of any social development is to examine this development in context? Perhaps the rejection of history, of comparative analysis, is what allows us to believe that Egypt will be a revolution and we desperately want revolution, no matter how naive we must become. It is this rejection of historical analysis, therefore, that allows us to make the above mistakes: we can pretend that the military is also historically unique, we can throw around the word revolution without any historical understanding of the concept.Furthermore, if the people in Egypt are not allowed to compare their uprising to other similar historical situations (they aren't, actually, as one of the links I posted above should demonstrate), then they would not be able to ground their revolutionary options in the radical understandings hard won by the masses who shed much blood throughout the past two centuries. Their sacrifices should teach us how to struggle, how to understand struggle, and we desecrate their memory by pretending they have taught us nothing.If we can speak ofin any sense, then we must examine those world historical revolutions: those that rejected their modes of production and brought universal understandings of theory and praxis through their successes and failures. In the 20th Century there were only two world historical revolutions, and though there is much debate over the lessons gleaned from these revolutions, they were new lessons (and not new or unique in some ahistorical sense) that can teach us, and have taught us, far more than a possible secular capitalist rebellion––an echo in the Egyptian context of the French Revolution.(For example, we can look at the rebellion against the Pinochet regime in Chile and the transition to its secular democracy after the fact. But Pinochet was five steps backwards from Allende, and the rebellion that ousted him did not return Chile to the Allende years but just advanced it one step forward again.)To imagine that Egypt's rebellion emerged from an historical vacuum, that Egypt was just waiting outside of time and space as an unchanged orientalist landscape, and that the uprisings there are somehow disconnected from multiple uprisings throughout the world. Moreover, it prevents us from understanding the root reasons behind these uprisings: the objective conditions caused by the capitalist crisis.There are uprisings in Mexico, for example, that were not sparked by the uprising in Tunisia but, like the rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt, they were produced by measures caused by the current crisis. And Mexico is simply one example: before Egypt and after Egypt, we will see these rebellions spread as the masses react to the parasitical limits of capitalism. Whether or not these rebellions become revolutionary, however, depends on the subjective conditions of organization. Refusing to examine Egypt in any historical context, however, prevents us from giving it proper sense.Although this claim seems rather strange, and I almost think it should be dismissed out of hand, because it has been made over and over, I think we need to interrogate its core assumptions. So far the Egyptian uprising has been defined by its "peaceful" currents, and how its prime organizers have worked to ensure that they did not lead the people into a bloodbath, but this does not make itIf the masses in the street are not disciplined, are not organized in a militant manner and armed to combat the military, they will be crushed. Again, this is another important point about revolutionary structures, however loosely understood: if the people are not trained to fight the army, or at least not organized to be ready to fight the army, then they will be defeated. (Note that I do not buy the Gandhian thesis, nor do I believe that the peaceful elements of the Civil Rights movement in the US were responsible for its gains, and I think there is a lot of historical data that proves this.) I realize that by making this point I will offend those who abide by point three above, who want to imagine that Egypt outside of history, but it needs to be made.Obviously the ideology of the prime organizers, being elements of the secular bourgeoisie, are touting this pacifist line. The more radical elements of the uprising, however, whose demands transcend those of the main organizers, are not bedazzled by this pacifist rhetoric. Earlier, I cited an article from Egypt that discussed the history of the 1946 Egyptian strikes, and concluded by demanding that the workers stop listening to the middle class organizers and organize for a real revolution. And though I worry that this strategy, because the revolutionary structures are generally absent, will lead to another failed Spartacist Uprising, this position is clearly revolutionary in content.But what will the people who make this complaint do if and when the workers and more radical elements of the rebellions reject suppression, perhaps even the suppression of the possible secular democracy, and pursue a struggle that transcends the rebellion's initial demands? I would like to suggest that this claim plays the age-old game of dividing "good" rebels from "bad" rebels, the former being good because they are peaceful and law-abiding.Well yes it does. In fact, although I believe that Tunisia was also a rebellion and not a revolution (conceptually speaking), the uprisings there possessed more revolutionary content: revolutionary structures have emerged in Tunisia that, so far, are absent in Egypt. So many activists do not want to learn from Tunisia, and what is happening in Tunisia, when they speak of Egypt––which is odd, considering that the rebellions in Tunisia sparked the rebellions in Egypt.Although I agree that the transformations in Egypt are important for the alignment of global imperialism (such as how this will affect Israeli colonialism), I find it extremely strange that Tunisia is now being ignored. To be honest, it was half-ignored in the North American left landscape when it first happened: during its first weekend I recall talking about it to friends and comrades and they stared at me blankly. As soon as Egypt happened, however, everyone was glued to their television screens.Generally, my complaints about all of these complaints are due to the North American left's myopia. If we are to be proper internationalists––that is, internationalists capable of critically supporting international struggle––we have to have a broader vision, a clearer understanding of revolutionary demands, and a willingness to support more struggles, especially revolutionary struggles, then those presented to us by the bourgeois press. The Egyptian Intifada is important, yes, but I would argue we can only understand its importance if we engage with it properly rather than make vacuous, ahistorical, and uncritical pronouncements. The most radical elements fighting on the streets in Egypt are not making these pronouncements, after all, because they understand that these are the product of bourgeois ideology: our international solidarity should be with this sector of the rebels.