At the ISO's meeting today we talked about the military's power in social revolution, it was interesting, fairly weighty stuff. Of course we don't want the Egyptian revolution to die down, but it seems the army is acting in counter-revolutionary ways: hey are trying to get those still camped out in Tahrir square to budge, to go back to work.
It's important to note the army will never be able to create a state like the one it witnessed fall. By now the people are conscious of their power, they know they can achieve what they want and they know that they can shut down the most powerful state in the Middle East. There has been a shift in consciousness that has proved that revolutions are still possible in the 21st century, indeed revolutions aren't a bit of the past but maybe an undeniable piece of future. As a comrade said, we are more connected now than ever, it is easier for us to organize, an example of this is the UKuncut campaign that has blocked stores of companies that dodge tax, including vodafone.
However, capitalism is an always shifting system, it continuosly gives more powers to the rulers, but their technology will always trickle down. In order to keep the revolution working and to keep the new military government in check, people will always have to be one step quicker than the governments. They will have to keep their demands and not bend down.
The army doesn't have to go against its people, right now I'm not commenting about the situation in Egypt. In Portugal in '74 the army helped topple down the fascist dictatorship of Salazar. Within three weeks of the provisional government, the number of unions rose by a thousand percent.
In part this is because the army will always have a working class element. Even though it is one of the state's traditional powerhouses, they are mostly formed by the working class. Those who get their hands all bloodied are sons of workers. So they will always be reluctant to go against the people, because they too have worked as tanners or in market stalls or on the dumps of the city.
The army and the police are quite different. The army is nationalistic, it exists to protect its citizens from foreigners and it is a working class source of pride to be in it.The army is seen as the ultimate power symbol of the country and because it represents the country in all its classes, it will not always go against the people.
For example, in the more than famous Tianamen square protests, reform protesters had been demonstrating for weeks. The army was present, it was the local branch though so it felt unable to shoot against people they potentially knew. In order to 'disperse' the crowds, China was forced to send troops from elsewhere. Then the tanks rolled in, curtains fell and hidden behind sheets thousands were murdered. This shows that the military is reluctant to shoot its own people, the same isn't true of the police. The police were the ones reported to kill many in Egypt and Tunisia and very recently in Bahrain.
The police, on the other hand, exist to maintain the status quo ante, the class system. It is there to protect the richer. If there is a robbery in a store, the police will be there quick, if there is a robbery in a house, the police will take more time, it simply isn't as important.
The military could thus be seen as a potential weapon in favour of the revolution, but of course, who says armed revolutions work out?
A good post, but I think the Tianamen Square example is important. While it is famous as originally being a student protest, it expanded to be a protest of ordinary people in Beijing, with most of the city out of the control of the government and the soldiers fraternising with the people in the neighbourhoods but then, at the crucial point when the people of Beijing and the soldiers that were sympathetic were ready to defend Tianamen Square with their lives, the leaders of the protest movement explicitly rejected violence. The result was the collapse of resistance to the authoritarian regime because a student who rebels at worst will be expelled from their course (not too bad because they rarely have dependents), and workers will lose their job (more serious as they will lose their livelihood); soldiers will lose their lives - the penalty for mutiny is death. Revolution, to win the support of the army, must face the question of armed force and accept the responsibility.
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