(Updated Feb. 13) Mubarak toppled! `We will ... celebrate, then start building our new Egypt!' + analysis by Tariq Ali

The streets of Cairo and every city in Egypt, filled with protesters furious about Mubarak's speech the night before, erupted in jubilation. News channels with their cameras trained on Tahrir Square gave up trying to make themselves heard over the joyous demonstration. Reporters described deafening chants of "Egypt is free!" and "You're an Egyptian, lift your head".

Many questions remain about the shape of the new regime under the military – and what role, if any, Suleiman, who infuriated Egyptians over the past several weeks with his defence of Mubarak's continued reign, will play.

The military has been at the centre of the Mubarak dictatorship for 30 years and also bears responsibility for the regime's crimes. In fact, military police have been involved in arresting key activists. Now the struggle will have to continue to make sure that the military establishment – which is also deeply involved in the country's business affairs – doesn't consolidate power in the hands of the armed forces.

But it's already clear that the people of Egypt have changed the course of history in the Middle East – and the world beyond. They have overcome the violence of police and thugs, the regime's attempts to co-opt parts of the opposition, and the double-dealing of Western leaders who put "stability" ahead of Egyptians' demands for democracy.

The emergency laws that enabled Mubarak's police state to rule for 30 years are still on the books. But the millions of people who engaged in this revolutionary struggle – with the sacrifice of at least 300 lives, with thousands more injured and arrested – weren't intimidated. They will continue to press for genuine democracy. And workers – whose strikes pushed the regime to the breaking point-- will continue to press for wages that can put food on the table, as well as the right to organise independent trade unions.

Egypt's revolution has taken a giant leap ahead, opening the way for a struggle that can reshape all of Egyptian society. And the monarchs, dictators and US stooges who hold power across the Middle East are terrified that they – following Mubarak and the ousted Tunisian autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali – could be next.

Friday, February 11, 2011

As Friday began, it was clear that the demonstrations would be bigger than ever – and so was the level of anger.

Already furious at Mubarak's refusal to announce his resignation the previous night, the mass of people were now upset at Communique #2 of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which backed vice-president Omar Suleiman's line that constitutional changes would come – but only after the protests end. The statement said that the armed forces "confirm the need to resume orderly work in the government installations and a return to normal life, preserve the interests and property of our great people".

If the regime thought this would quiet people's anger, they were wrong. By midday February 11, thousands had already surrounded the state television building and smaller numbers were outside the presidential palace. And Tahrir Square was packed as tightly as it had ever been in the course of the revolution.

As SocialistWorker.org contributor Mostafa Omar reported from the long line to enter Tahrir Square at midday:

The army's statement says nothing concrete. They are trying to back up the vice president's promise that will lift the emergency laws – but they said they would do so only at the end of the current crisis.

This is leading to the first serious rift between the demonstrators and the army. People are entering into heated debate with officers, accusing them of taking the side of the regime, and not the revolution. Already, three officers have quit the army and joined the protests – one of them has given a lengthy interview to Al Jazeera.

And while thousands are camping outside the state TV building, about 2000 workers in state TV and radio are on strike – the people who produce the regime's version of the news.

Already, there are an estimated 10,000 people camped outside the presidential palace in Heliopolis. People are coming to Tahrir with the expectation of marching there. But it's a long march – miles and miles.

What effect the mass discontent on the streets had on the maneuvers behind the scenes will probably become known in the days to come, but the morning and afternoon mobilisations were a clear rejection of the attempt to maintain Mubarak in power, while emphasising that his powers had been transferred to Suleiman.

Furious, the crowds continued to swell as the evening hours approached, and demonstrators reportedly overcame the military's attempt to defend the state television building.

When Suleiman finally appeared on television to make his brief statement that Mubarak had stepped down, the streets erupted again, but this time with joyous celebrations.

Around Tahrir Square, I estimate around 2 million people were celebrating the downfall of Mubarak. It was so crowded that it took an hour to walk about 50 or 75 feet.

The atmosphere was indescribable. There are fireworks everywhere in Tahrir Square. It looked like an Egyptian wedding – except multiplied by a million. It's not just young people involved in this movement, as the media have claimed. It's all of Egypt--people of all ages dancing and singing, coming up with chants.

My companions and I talked to a number of people. I asked many if they ever had thought such a thing could happen. Some said no – at least not in their lifetime. Others said they knew it would happen, such was the hatred for the Mubarak dictatorship.

While people are celebrating Mubarak's ouster, they are also watching the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has taken power. One man, a lawyer, said that perhaps people will go home tonight from Tahrir Square feeling victorious. But they will closely monitor what kind of steps the army will take in terms of constitutional and legislative change, he said.

When we asked what will happen if the army doesn't fulfill its promises, he said, "Tahrir Square is not going anywhere – we have already won once. It will be easier for us to regroup and remobilise. We can take it back at any minute."

Many others we spoke with also made it clear that the struggle won't end with Mubarak's ouster. There was a group of two accountants, two teachers and some university students from the Qalyubia governorate north of Cairo. They had been camping in Tahrir Square for a week. They all said this was the happiest day of their life. One of the accountants said, "We will not leave until the dictator goes on trial."

There was also more fraternisation with army officers and soldiers who came out of their tanks. At first, the officers didn't want to let people on the tanks, but eventually they did.

One tank commander I saw, a first lieutenant, is a young man in his 20s. You could see in his eyes and on the face of the soldiers the tremendous amount of relief they felt that they did not have to fire on the protesters. For two weeks, they faced the possibility of having to fire on their brothers and sisters – something they did not want to do.

This commander picked up the Egyptian flag and kissed it. I think he was showing that he was glad that he was serving the whole nation, and not one person or the regime.

Victory chants

The chants in Tahrir Square following news of Mubarak's ouster were amazing to hear. They reflected both a sense of accomplishment and also the anticipation of more struggle to come.

Instead of "The people want to bring down the regime", the chant became, "The people brought down the regime." Instead of "The people want to bring down the president," it became "The people want the president's money." There were a lot of chants for the martyrs: "Martyrs, rest in peace, your blood was not spilled in vain."

The big chant that many took up was "Freedom!"

There were also women's contingents leading chants – reminding the ex-president's wife how miserable and poor they were, and how much they struggled just to put food on the table.

They also chanted, "We want Egypt based on freedom and social justice." So you can tell that people are not just concerned about free elections – there are wider and deeper questions on everyone's mind that they see as linked to the democratic demands.

There is an internationalist feeling reflected in the chants as well. One of them went: "Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria." In other words, people know the importance of the January revolution in Tunisia in inspiring further action in Egypt, and they are keeping a close eye on developments in Yemen, Jordan, Algeria and other countries. On February 12, there is a national day of protest in Algiers in solidarity with the revolution in Egypt and Tunisia.

Many people spoke about the need to prosecute Mubarak and his family. One young woman, an administrative clerk, told us that the rest of the regime should be on trial.

Continued mass movement necessary

Many believe that to obtain justice, a continued mass movement is necessary. That's the perspective of pharmacist Mohamed Rashin, the father of five college-educated children. "I feel I have been in limbo between earth and sky", he said of the 18 days of struggle to oust the dictator. "I believe that we have the support of god, but I also believe in the power of the Egyptian people."

We talked to a middle-aged man who said, "The Egyptian people are giants." He added: "I love the American people, but I hate the American government. We are against any U.S. or foreign intervention. We will stay in Tahrir Square, because this is not about Mubarak. We have other demands – for political freedom, the end of the emergency laws. Demands that have to be met."

From the victory chants, you can tell that in the back of their minds, people are still thinking about what happens next. They say, "We brought down the regime", but what a lot of people really mean by that is: "We have broken part of the regime, so it's possible to go after the rest." The vast majority knows that it isn't about bringing down one person – that Mubarak represented the whole social and economic system.

And while there's a massive celebration, many people are concerned about reports that the US Sixth Fleet is on its way to Suez Canal. The sentiment is that we won't stay silent if there is any foreign intervention in Egyptian affairs.

Differences

If there is widespread agreement in the revolutionary movement that the struggle must continue, there are differences on how far to go.

On the left, for example, the April 6 Youth Movement and the Revolutionary Socialists play a key role in leading chants. The chants aren't just propaganda – they are agitational, with obvious organisational consequences. Thousands of young people are rallying around the April 6 Youth Movement and the Youth Coalition for the Revolution of Anger.

Before the vice-president's speech, we met Mohammad Abdel Aziz, one of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement and a leader of the January 25 Youth Movement – the groups that helped to organise much of the activity in Tahrir Square, and one of the most radical. As he said:

It is very important that if we bring down Mubarak today, it will not be the end, but the beginning of the revolution. The regime is not just one person, but an entire ruling elite around Mubarak. Our revolution started as a youth revolution, but now it has developed into a people's revolution.

One key focus of the next few days will be on working-class struggles. The strikes were one of the two decisive factors in forcing Mubarak out.

In the previous 48 hours before Mubarak's resignation, a growing number of workers had gone on strike. By Friday, February 11, there was the expectation that the strikes would spread the next day, Saturday – a workday in Egypt. The country was becoming ungovernable – not just politically, but also economically.

The second crucial development was that on February 11, there were masses of people surrounding the presidential palace in Alexandria, and more and more people were pouring toward the presidential palace in Cairo, which was a no-go zone as far as the army was concerned.

Role of army

When the army didn't fire on people, protesters were further emboldened. By 4 or 5 pm, with large numbers of protesters also outside the state television building, the army was in no position to fire on people. And at the presidential palace, the tanks turned their barrels away from the people.

At this point, people want a role for the armed forces in ensuring that the remnants of the old regime will be dismantled and figuring out a transition. But they don't want a military dictatorship. And the army is issuing statements that it will protect the freedoms of the people and the wealth of the country, a hint that the army will pursue those who are trying to smuggle money out of the country and pursue those who are corrupt – that was an announcement on state TV.

There will be mass pressure on the army to live up to those promises. Before Mubarak stepped down, we talked to a young man in Tahrir Square and asked him who he wanted to replace Mubarak. He said, "I want someone who is as poor as I am, who has eaten beans all his life" – the staple of the poor in Egypt – "so he will be able to understand the anger of the people".

You get the feeling from experiences like talking to him that this isn't just a movement for democracy. It's a movement for social justice and the redistribution of wealth.

In Egypt, masses of people have shown that they will no longer endure the conditions they have put up with under Mubarak – the police-state repression, the stifling of dissent, the neoliberal economic measures that have consigned half the population to living on US$2 a day.

But with his speech on February 10, Hosni Mubarak made it clear that he didn't want to not rule in the old way, no matter what the consequences.

It was one of the strangest days of the revolution so far, and we probably won't know for a long time what was going on behind the scenes. The day started out with the military sending the message to protesters that "all your demands will be met" and, in Washington, CIA chief Leon Panetta testifying in US Congress that Mubarak would be gone by the end of the day. And it ended with Mubarak saying he wasn't going anywhere.

Whatever happened, it puts the question of power squarely at the centre of things – Mubarak's power as president, the power of the military and whether it will follow Mubarak's orders, the power of the mass struggle.

But these are questions that have been in play already. The questions that have been raised as the struggle has spread and deepened in Egypt are the kind that emerge in every revolution.

Democracy

Thinking back about the great revolutions of the past, one is reminded of the writings of Karl Marx in 1848, in which he describes the revolutionary wave that swept across Europe that year. He described those revolutions as having a mass popular content, both in terms of participation, but also their profoundly democratic aspect. They raised demands for the right of assembly and free association, the free expression of ideas, freedom of religion – all questions that are present in Egypt today.

This aspect of the 1848 revolutions led Marx to begin to think about the way that a future working-class revolution would be the essence of any true struggle for liberation. Marx spoke at the time about socialists being the most extreme democrats – extreme not only in the sense that we carry the battle through to the end, but that we stand for a program and a goal of the complete liberation of all humanity, based on the working-class struggle.

Clearly, we aren't to that point in Egypt, but it's important to understand how far we've come. This is a country that has been ruled by a dictatorship for 30 years, with arrests, detentions and torture a constant occurrence. And now an uprising of two-and-a-half weeks thus far has spread to every part of the country and completely transformed Egyptian society.

Most of the attention has been devoted to the struggle around Tahrir Square – this is the symbol of revolution. But in the past few days, groups of workers have taken strike action. I noticed in newspaper reports that the health ministry workers I'd seen picketing two weeks ago are now formally part of the Tahrir demonstrations – since the demonstrators have now moved to the parliament building, which is right across from the health ministry.

So even with the mass mobilisation at Tahrir being maintained, there has been an enormous spread of the revolution, with larger and larger waves of people becoming involved in the struggle in a way that's astounding to behold.

The process hasn't just moved in one direction. The last two weeks have been a see-saw back and forth – with the situation favouring the government on some days, and then the momentum swinging back in favour of the movement on others.

When I came home from Egypt on February 8, the headline of Britain's Independent newspaper was "Will the revolution wane?" – the article was illustrated with a picture from the day before with Tahrir Square almost empty, and one from the previous week when it was packed. Little did the Independent know that the day it published that story, every major media outlet concluded that the mobilisations were bigger than anything that came before.

The swings back and forth have been extreme. For example, a week ago, on February 2 and 3, Mubarak's regime unleashed its baltagi – an Arabic word for thug that deserves to be introduced into the English language. After the attacks on the square, nobody was certain whether the movement would reappear in strength.

But it did. In large part, this was because public opinion swung very sharply in favor of the demonstrators. On Friday, February 4, among the people who came to Tahrir Square in their thousands and thousands were many who weren't previously committed to the democracy movement or the overthrow of Mubarak, but who came to show their support for the victims of the baltagi.

People came bringing medical help and supplies and food. This was another stage of the process – it became seen as the duty of any proud Egyptian to support the demonstrators.

That raises another subject that hasn't been commented on much in the media, but that is present for anyone in Egypt. We're talking about a society where the feeling of any kind of pride in being an Arab or an Egyptian is something that was lost a very long time ago. It was crushed out of people as a result of the peace with Israel on the one hand, neoliberalism on the other hand, the servile relationship of the Mubarak regime to the US on a third.

So this is one of the most spectacular aspects of what's happened in Egypt, as in Tunisia and as in democratic revolutions historically – the return of a sense of pride. This also comes, remember, after September 11 and the war on terror, which brought with it the demonisation of Arabs and Muslims around the world.

You can see just in the way people comport themselves that people have new expectations for their future. So that's to underline, if not fully explain, some of the dynamic elements that aren't so clearly evident from the outside, but continue to drive this struggle to new heights.

New challenges

Now the revolution is faced with a new challenge following Mubarak's speech, and people have been further transformed by the experience. Obviously, no one had any illusions about Mubarak staying on as president, but now Mubarak's vice-president Omar Suleiman has become more and more exposed for what he represents.

It was a factor that was already at work last weekend, when Suleiman organised talks with select figures in the opposition. So you have the government offering negotiations, but the chief negotiator is the chief assassin of the Mubarak regime. Everyone knows they're negotiating with the head of military intelligence who must have ordered the torture or killing of thousands of people.

So there are consequences for those forces in the opposition that agree to talks under those circumstances. For example, I read a report on February 9 that in the town of Suez, the negotiations with Suleiman produced mass resignations from three parties who were involved – the Tagammu, the Wafd and the Nasserists.

According to the Daily News Egypt, those who resigned met with members of the Muslim Brotherhood and others to "set up a coalition named 'The Council to Protect the Revolution' in Al-Arish, which is mandated to support the demands of the protesters".

That's just one of the incidents in this unfolding situation, which is very exciting, but which has very real dangers. At the end of the day the problem of power remains – how the masses of people can exercise power, and how they can defend themselves against power, including the power of the security forces and the army. That's the spectre that Suleiman and Mubarak both raised in their speeches on February 10, and it immediately raises the question of the defence of the revolution.