This fascinating document was submitted to the wider Comintern for discussion as the Egyptian Communist Party attempted to reconstitute itself in the early 1930s.

‘Draft Programme of the Communist Party of Egypt’ from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 12 No. 23. May 26, 1932.

This Draft Programme, sent by a group of Egyptian Communists, has been submitted by them to the Parties of the Communist International as a basis for discussion.

1. National Oppression, the Enslavement of the Workers and the Economic Crisis.

Egypt is in reality a colony of British Imperialism, although the latter conceals its domination by the screen of a reactionary and decaying monarchy. The monarchy of King Fuad, supported by the officials and police, the big landlords and the comprador capitalists, assists British imperialism to strangle and plunder the country. With this assistance, British imperialism hides its claws. The British military fist hangs over the head of the Egyptian people. The British plunderers keep the Suez Canal in their hands. They hold the key to all the wealth of the country. On the neck of Egypt they have put a noose of heavy debts. They have seized the Sudan. They own the banks. They have converted Egypt into a slave cotton plantation. Egyptian industry is developing only to a very slight degree and very slowly. The overwhelming mass of the population are tied to the land, to the production of cotton, which is not manufactured in Egypt but goes to British factories so that it can afterwards be sent back to Egypt in the form of high priced cloth. The Egyptian lackeys and toadies of foreign imperialism are petty pawns in the game. The British masters give their orders openly to Fuad and his servants, appoint and dismiss ministers, and control the whole of the state apparatus. The Egyptian people carry on their shoulders a double oppression–British imperialism and a servile, violent and bandit monarchy.

It is worst of all for the workers, peasants and city poor. The inhuman exploitation and oppression of the workers is supported by this system of national disgrace and oppression, slavery and poverty. The Egyptian workers work 11-12 or 14 hours a day. For this exhausting labour they receive five or six piastres. Women and children work under still worse conditions. The autocracy of the bosses is without limit. The whip of the overseers hangs constantly over the workers, driving them like slaves. The labour agents–“mekauls” hire the workers and plunder them. The murderous “rais firka” (overseers) beat and maim the workers, rob them of their wages and treat them like dirt. Their criminal violence to the women workers and their brutality is not punished. At every step, the workers are faced with fines. Work is carried on in the most terrible insanitary conditions, and in a few years the worker becomes invalid. The workers are robbed in the factory stores. They live in tents, 15 to 20 persons in each. Where the Arabs receive a miserable pittance, the European workers receive five times as much. All the laws are against the workers. For “incitement” against the autocracy of Fuad and the British oppressors, the punishment is five years in jail, for organising a strike–2 years, for taking part in a strike–six months to one year. There are no laws on insurance against illness, disablement, unemployment and the protection of labour. Police spies everywhere are hunting for class conscious workers. The workers’ organisations which are independent of the police and capitalists are mercilessly persecuted.

The fate of the peasant masses, the fellahs, is equally hard. They work from sunrise to sunset, and they have to give their very last to pay rent and taxes. They produce cotton, but the price of cotton is dictated by foreign bosses in Egypt and by the world market. The fellah goes barefoot, is poor and hungry. The very “highest” prices cannot give him anything except an increase in the wealth and strength of his exploiters and the bloodsucking landlords and money lenders, speculators and middle men, officials and police. Over 4 of Egyptian exports consist of cotton produced by the convict labour of the poor fellahs. More than half of the cultivated land is in the hands of the big landlords and more than seven-tenths of the fellahs posses only 1/10 of all the land. The fellahs are driven by ruin to abandon their land and seek any other district. But in the towns they cannot find either work or food. At the small number of factories and workshops which exist, there is always a long line of people looking for jobs. People without passports are deported from the town, to the slavery of their previous exploiters. The fellahs are under the orders of the landlords. Any policeman or official is all powerful over them. They are harrassed by the omda–both as an administrative official and as a money lender who fixes himself firmly on the backs of the fellahs. He controls the seed reserve credits, fertilisers. He is kind to the kulaks but he has no mercy towards the poor and middle toiling fellahs. While the masses of fellahs are struggling and starving on petty strips of land, getting ever deeper into the toils of the money lender and landlord, the big land areas and all the big irrigation plants are the property of the imperialist plunderers. There is no right or national freedom in Egypt. The Egyptian people are in subjection to foreign imperialism and its agents. It is worst of all for the poor working people who have no limits to their hours of labour, who never have vacations, who live half starved and have not even the right to say a word.

The severe economic crisis has been raging for three years. Tens of thousands of unemployed have neither food nor work. Every worker on the railroads, in the ports, the factories or the plantations is threatened with dismissal. Everywhere there is severe unemployment, but the mass of unemployed cannot be fed by the few crumbs which are given in a few so called charitable dining rooms in Cairo and Alexandria, which have been opened to distract attention. The last insignificant bits of land, together with all property, right down to the last shirt, are taken away from the fellahs. The capitalists, landlords, money lenders, the police and official gang and the imperialists make use of the crisis in order to rob and strangle the workers, peasants and city poor even more. They are trying to transfer all the burdens of the crisis on to the shoulders of the workers; cotton is sold for next to nothing, but the noose of taxation and debts is tightening ever more round the necks of the peasants. Fuad temporarily reduced rent by one third, but the price of cotton fell by half. The property of the fellahs is being sold up everywhere. Whole villages are being deserted. In the cities there are new masses of fugitives asking for charity. In the villages, as in the towns, there is neither work nor food. For the impoverished and ruined toilers there are no rights, no laws. The judges work for the landlords and money lenders and squeeze out taxes which go to pay tribute to the imperialists, to support the gang of police and officials, to give sinecures to concessionists, to the big landlords and money lenders. British imperialism wrings out a contribution in gold from Egypt, demanding the payment of debts in gold while the value of the English pound has dropped by almost a third. Taxation and impoverishment are growing.

The enslavers of Egypt–British imperialism and its servants, the police-bureaucratic monarchy of Fuad, the big landlords and merchants who are getting rich by bargains with foreign capital–are trying to find a way out of the crisis by an unprecedented impoverishment and enslavement of the workers of Egypt. They are trying to cut down the price of Egyptian cotton still lower, so that the British cotton manufacturers, the bankers and the limited companies and the owners of the irrigation works can rake in profits. The fellahs will pay ruinous tribute to the landlords, moneylenders, the foreign oppressors and the government gang. They will have to pay still more than they are paying now. Their families will have to suffer and starve still more, working for the parasites and the oppressors. This is what the enslavers of Egypt are aiming at.

They are trying to make the whip of the “Rais-firka” swing over the heads of workers in the cotton ginning mills, the tobacco and cement works. They are trying to make the labour power of the workers cheaper than it is now. They wish to ridicule the national and political life of the Egyptian people still more. Egypt under their heels will become more and more a workshop for the preparation of a new bloody imperialist war, for new murderous attacks of the imperialists on the enslaved peoples (above all, on the Arab peoples), for an attack on the Soviet Union, the land of complete national freedom and victorious socialism. Once again they will drive the fellahs by force into labour battalions, once again they will requisition the cattle and grain of the fellahs, once again there will be forcible collections for the English Red Cross. British bombing planes will fly from Egypt to the borders of the fatherland of all the workers and enslaved peoples, the U.S.S.R., raining death and destruction.

This is the way out of the crisis which is being sought for by imperialism. This is being sought for by the fawners who are grouped round the Fuad and Sidka Pasha gangs. The Party of the palace lackeys, the higher bureaucracy and the big feudalists “El Ittihad”–the party of the millionaires, compradores and cotton exporters–“Hizv El Shaab”–the party of the merchants and usurious bourgeoisie and the stock exchange speculators–“Ara Vdestur”–all these parties conceal behind their public programmes their slavish service to British imperialism and the blackest reaction.

Wafd is the party of the bourgeoisie and the landlords, counter-revolutionary national reformists. It unites the rich capitalists, lawyers, speculators and liberal landlords, whose policy is to bargain with the enslavers of Egypt out of fear of a national revolution and in hopes of small concessions for themselves. It is the party of national deceit and national treachery. It bargains with imperialism and the Fuad gang for small and unimportant concessions so as to strengthen the situation of the capitalists and landlords at the expense of the workers and peasants. It keeps itself apart from the camp of Fuad and Sidki Pasha, but in practice it utilises the national liberation movement of the people so as to disorganise the revolutionary struggle and to bargain for concessions for the bourgeoisie and landlords. It not only works against any real struggle for the independence of Egypt, for the overthrow of the monarchy, for the confiscation of big estates and for the eight hour day. Nay more, it tries to lead the mass movement so as to weaken and crush this movement, to betray and sell it. The whole history of Wafd from 1919 onwards is the history of the struggle of Wafd against the revolutionary workers, peasants and the toilers in general. When Wafd was in power, all the independent class workers organisations and all the revolutionary organisations were broken up. Wafd bargained with English imperialism, sold the freedom and independence of Egypt in 1930, and the agreement was not signed only because of formalities which had not been agreed on regarding the Sudan, Wafd is prepared to make any bargain with imperialism so long as it is decorated with a constitutional appearance. It is an anti-national party with a counter-revolutionary policy, a party which stated through the mouth of Nahas Pasha that it was ready to fight against the U.S.S.R. in the interest of British imperialism. The lying phrases of Wafd assist imperialism and the monarchy to crush and strangle the national movement. For many years, Wafd pretended that it was striving for the independence of Egypt, attempting to trick the masses with promises. When British imperialism put forward the Fuad monarchy as a screen for itself, Wafd began to shout that it would fight for “constitutional freedom”. It did not dare to call on the masses even for a struggle for the overthrow of the rotten monarchy. Now, Wafd is again pretending to act against British imperialism. In reality, together with imperialism and its lackeys in Egypt, it is seeking for a way out of the crisis by the further enslavement and oppression of the people. It is just to conceal this that it uses its “oppositional” phrases.

The party, “Hisb El Vatani” in 1919 expressed the dissatisfaction of the lower ranks of the petty bourgeoisie, and slipped into supporting the Fuad gang, losing all its previous influence.

The toiling masses of Egypt, headed by the working class, must now more than ever before ask themselves: why have the innumerable sacrifices made by them in the struggle for the liberation of Egypt from imperialist slavery and the oppression of the landlords and usurers, in the struggle for the radical improvement of the position of the workers and peasants, not given the desired results? There can be only one correct answer. The masses of workers, peasants, and working people in the towns went into the struggle honestly and sacrificed themselves, but they were dragged along by hostile, treacherous, counter- revolutionary forces which on every occasion diverted their blows away from imperialism, which on every occasion exposed them to the blows of their enemies.

The workers can only find their own revolutionary way out of the present difficult situation by a revolutionary struggle against imperialism, against the reactionary monarchy, against the landlords and moneylenders, against the counter-revolutionary bourgeois national reformists. They can find their revolutionary way out by rallying and uniting all working people under the leadership of the revolutionary proletariat, under the leadership of the Communist Party of Egypt.

2. The Struggle for a Revolutionary Way Out of the Crisis.

The national reformist bourgeoisie, of course, have contradictory interests with British imperialism, to the extent that they conflict with imperialism on the matter of dividing up the plunder squeezed out of the working majority of the country. But the national reformist bourgeoisie, headed by Wafd, completely support imperialism in the struggle against the revolutionary movement of the working class, the peasants and the toilers in the towns. Wafd fears the revolutionary victory of the workers and peasants, and with all its force and means it tries to interfere with it. It looks on this as the chief danger, because this victory would signify the overthrow of the yoke of imperialism and the confiscation of all the land of the imperialists, the king, the landlords and the Wakufs (Clurch) for the benefit of the peasants and farm workers who cultivate it. It would mean the 8-hour day and a considerable improvement in the standard of life of all the workers. The fat incomes from speculation in cotton and from the shares of companies would disappear. The power of the landlord would be swept away. The strength of the moneylenders would be broken and the influence of the Omde would disappear, and on these, not only the Fuad gang but also Wafd are fully dependent. The Egyptian capitalists and the “liberal” landlords wish for the kind of “freedom” for Egypt which would not be freedom for the workers and fellahs. They need that kind of “independence” for Egypt under which they could play the role of buffer and at the same time agents between imperialism and the oppressed and exploited masses.

There cannot be a successful and victorious revolutionary struggle without a complete and irrevocable break with Wafd, without a merciless and stern struggle with it. Between the camp of Wafd and the camp of the national anti-imperialist and agrarian revolution there is an impassable gulf. In order to throw off the imperialist yoke, we must smash and destroy the influence of Wafd among the masses, its influence on the workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie. Between the camp of Wafd and the camp of imperialism with its monarchist agents there is a firm contact, which is increased by its efforts to be of service to British imperialism.

The working class–the foremost and most revolutionary class of the Egyptian people, is united by the very work it performs in the big capitalist factories. It is becoming a conscious revolutionary class because the class struggle against wage slavery, against capitalism, trains and teaches it. This struggle puts it in the front rank of the struggle against foreign enslavers and the oppression of landlords and money-lenders. Over its head hisses the lash of the overseers and the police. It has not even the most elementary human and civil rights, because the whole country is pining in colonial slavery, because its brother–the fellah–has no other lot but slavish labour for the landlord. The working class is not scattered like the peasant masses. It alone is able to lead the working majority of Egypt onto the independent road of revolutionary struggle, welding it together and uniting it under the banner of revolution. It alone can finally and completely expose the counter-revolutionary policy of the capitalists who exploiting it and who at the same time hide under the cloak of Wafd and call themselves “friend of national freedom”. The working class is the class which throughout the world is leading all the toilers not only to liberation from the power of imperialism, the monarchy and the landlords, but to the complete abolition of all exploitation of man by man. The working class has formed the first socialist government in the world–the U.S.S.R.–where the right of all nations to self-determination has been absolutely realised, where tens of millions of the workers have driven out the capitalists and landlords and are building the new life–socialism.

Only an unbreakablefraternal alliance of the working class and the toiling peasants under the leadership of the proletariat can assure the victory of the national revolution. In the struggle against imperialism, against the landlords and the reactionary monarchy, against the counter-revolutionary policy of Wafd, the workers and peasants have common interests.

The direct and immediate aim of the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution in Egypt is the overthrow of the yoke of imperialism and the reactionary monarchy, the winning of complete independence for Egypt, the peasant agrarian revolution, the 8-hour day and a radical improvement in the position of the workers, the establishment of a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the working class and the peasants in the form of a Soviet Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. This revolutionary victory will promote the further struggle of the toiling masses under the leadership of the proletariat for the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism, for the destruction of classes and complete social ownership of all the means of production. In all parts of the world there is going on the struggle of two systems–the bloody, rotting. and dying system of capitalism, and socialism which has obtained an indestructible foundation in the U.S.S.R. The present world economic crisis is striking with special force at the countries enslaved by imperialism, which will in turn still further deepen and sharpen the crisis of world capitalism which cannot exist without the colonial enslavement of the majority of the human race. In contrast to this world of exploitation, oppression, parasitism, speculation and colonial plunder there is the U.S.S.R. which in 1931 completed the construction of the foundations of socialist economy. The example of the U.S.S.R. rouses the working masses in the imperialist countries and the enslaved toiling masses of the colonial peoples to a revolutionary struggle. The U.S.S.R. shows to all the revolutionary way out of the contradictions of imperialism.

Imperialism is seeking for a way out by means of an attack on the working class, by a new enslavement of the colonies, by provocation of war against the U.S.S.R. The seizure of Manchuria by Japanese imperialism and the general attack of the imperialists on China signifies an attempt at a new division of China and the complete enslavement of the country, together with preparations for intervention against the U.S.S.R. The Chinese workers and peasants, led by the Chinese Communist Party, have already established a number of Soviet districts and have formed their Red Army. Their example is being followed by the toilers of Indo-China and India, who are preparing for a decisive struggle against the imperialists.

The Egyptian workers and peasants do not wish to carry the chains of slavery any longer or to live in a half starved condition. Their struggle for freedom and independence, for land for the peasants and the eight-hour day for the workers is an inseparable part of the general struggle of all the toilers and oppressed peoples against imperialism, against a new enslavement of colonial peoples, against new threats of a new world war, against the danger of anti-Soviet intervention. While struggling for their own cause, the workers and peasants of Egypt are fighting for the liberation of all Arab peoples from imperialism, for a fighting alliance with them.

A successful struggle of the working class of Egypt is only possible by the advance guard coming together in the ranks of the Communist Party of Egypt. Only when all workers support their class party will the Egyptian proletariat be able to obtain the leadership of the majority of the toilers. Owing to the temporary weakness of the workers’ movement, in Egypt, to police provocation, petty careerists succeeded in disorganising the activity of the Egyptian C.P., separating it from the workers and from the revolutionary mass struggle. Communists who stand aloof from the workers out of fear of arrest are not Communists but pitiful cowards and traitors who disgrace the cause of the workers.

But the cause of the workers, the cause of the Comintern is dear to Egyptian workers. The workers of Port Said, Suez, Cairo and Alexandria, the workers of Bulak who built barricades in 1931, the thousands and thousands of proletarians, farm workers and class conscious poor fellahs cannot do anything else but seek to organise a strong militant proletarian party for the leadership of the struggle for the anti-imperialist and agrarian peasant revolution, for the Soviet power of the workers and peasants, which will create the conditions for a further deepening of the revolution, for a further struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat and Socialism.

They need a fighting mass Communist Party. They need a fighting programme of the national revolution. We call on them to raise the banner of their Party, and headed by their select Communist vanguard composed of the most self-sacrificing proletarians and poor fellahs, to work among the masses for the organisation of the resistance of the workers and peasants to predatory imperialism, the landlords, money-lenders, and counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, for a struggle for a revolutionary way out of the crisis. The Communist Party is needed to unite and organise the broad masses of workers and toiling peasants in the struggle for their urgent class interests against imperialism, the landlords and the capitalists. It is necessary to unite and direct the whole struggle of the working class and its ally–the peasants–towards a conscious revolutionary aim. It is above all necessary to the advanced workers so that they can consciously fight and lead the struggle of the broadest masses of the toilers. The Communist Party is the only Party of struggle for the interests of the toilers. Without it the masses will be in the power of their enemies, the deceivers, who trick them with promises. The Communist Party of Egypt must form part of the world Party of the proletariat and the most advanced elements of the working peasants.

All over the world there is going on a struggle between two worlds socialism which is conquering and liberating, and capitalism which is decaying, dying and murdering. The toilers of the colonies and semi-colonies can throw off the rusty chains of colonial slavery and the oppression of the landlords and the moneylenders only in firm and fraternal alliance with the country of victorious Socialism and the international proletariat.

The Egyptian proletariat, the workers and the exploited peasants will not have to wait and ask favours from above. Their programme is the programme of revolution which requires self-sacrifice and courage, but which at the same time leads towards the goal.

Our fundamental revolutionary demands are:

1. Drive out the British imperialists including their land, naval and air forces, from Egypt and the Sudan.

2. Complete unlimited economic and political independence for Egypt and the Sudan. Complete freedom of national self-determination for the Sudan. The struggle for the liberation of all Arab peoples from the yoke of imperialism, for an All-Arab Federation of free peoples. The destruction of all the privileges of the imperialists. The overthrow of the monarchy, the doing away with the old officials, Omde, the fake local self-government bodies and the police. The election of judges by the people. The arming of the workers in defence of their national independence and rights as labourers. Freedom of the press for the toilers. The separation of the church from the state and the law courts from the church.

3. For a workers’ and Peasants’ Soviet government. For the power of the Soviets.

4. Confiscation without compensation of all land, cattle and agricultural implements of the imperialists, Landlords, moneylenders, the King and the higher officials and wakufs (including married wakufs), and their division among the farm workers and poor and middle peasants who do not exploit the labour of others.

5. The nationalisation of all irrigation undertakings and the big machines belonging to them (pumps, etc.,) Free supply of water for the land of poor fellahs.

6. The confiscation and nationalisation of all banks and industrial undertakings of the imperialists.

7. The annulment of the national debt and all debts to the imperialists. The annulment of all debts to the moneylenders and all oppressive agreements. The annulment of all the indebtedness of the fellahs. The annulment of all oppressive taxes on the toilers and a progressive income tax on the rich.

8. Freedom of organisation for workers and toilers, freedom of activity for all their organisations. The eight-hour day. Equal pay for equal work for all people who work, independently of their nationality or sex. Minimum wages. The four-hour day for young persons of 14 to 16 years, the six-hour day for young workers of 16 to 18 years. The prohibition of child labour and night work for women and young persons. Social insurance against sickness, old age, unemployment, disablement. A radical improvement in the housing conditions. The defence of labour.

9. General compulsory education without charge for workers and peasants.

10. Alliance with the U.S.S.R. with the international revolutionary proletariat and the struggling toilers of the colonies.

3. Our Partial Demands and the Tasks of the Immediate Struggle and of Organisation.

A. The police–bureaucratic monarchy on the one hand and Wafd on the other hand (although in different ways–the first by violence and the second usually by deceit, which, when Wafd is in power is inevitably accompanied by the crushing of the struggling masses, as was shown in 1924 and the following years) are using every effort to prevent the attempts of the workers to rally together and unite. For this purpose they use various manoeuvres, putting on the mask of “friends of the workers”. The Egyptian workers are deprived of the most elementary weapons for the protection of their everyday vital interests in the sphere of improving the conditions of labour. The trade unions of the workers are almost always trade unions in name only. They are ruled either by police spies, labour agents, overseers, and employers or by the rich “patrons” from Wafd–lawyers and capitalists who are making a career for themselves at the expense of the workers.

The struggle for Independent Class Trade Unions is the most important task of the working class. Without this weapon, the Egyptian proletariat cannot successfully struggle for its most vital needs, cannot successfully carry on strikes, cannot rally together, cannot struggle against unemployment. Compulsory government arbitration throttles the strikes. The government gang plays games with the workers, throwing contemptuous sops to them and bribing the worst elements. Even the hiring and dismissal of workers is in the hands of bloodsuckers–“mekauls”. The workers must organise for the struggle.

The first slogan of the workers is: for the class trade unions, independent of the police and Wafd. For freedom of strikes and the class organisation of the workers, for freedom of association and struggle for the toiling peasants, for the freedom of the press for workers and peasants. The workers must come forward with their immediate vital demands, adapted to the struggle against the attack of the exploiters. The chief of these demands are as follows:

1. No wage cuts, increase in wages. Equal pay and equal labour conditions for workers of all nations. A guaranteed minimum wage corresponding to the wages of foreign workers.

2. Against the mass dismissal of workers. Compensation at dismissal equal to three months wages. The abolition of labour agents (mekauls) for the hiring and dismissal of workers. Employment of workers to be conducted through the labour exchanges, functioning under the control of elected representatives of the workers or elected workers’ committees. The annulment of all oppressive agreements and money lenders agreements relating to the hiring of workers.

3. Collective agreements with the workers organised in class trade unions. A decided shortening of the working day down to an eight-hour working day. A compulsory weekly rest day. A genuine and effective prohibition of child labour and the payment of young persons in proportion to the work performed. Equal pay for equal work, the prohibition of night work for Women and young persons. Leave of absence for women during pregnancy. The prohibition of women’s labour in harmful occupations. The six-hour day for young workers.

4. Immediate relief to the unemployed through the taxation of banks, shipping firms, commission houses, concessionaires, stock exchanges, owners of industrial and transportation enterprises, and high officials. Unemployment insurance at the expense of the government and the employers.

5. Food for the unemployed and refugees. Guarantee of food and dwellings for the unemployed and refugees at the expense of the government, employers and big merchants and speculators. Prohibition of banishment of refugees who have come from the villages without passports.

6. Abolishment of police arbitration and police interference in strikes.

7. Free election of factory committees by the workers and recognition of these committees by the employers. Freedom to strike and freedom of activity for the class trade unions. Improvement of living conditions for the workers.

8. Workers’ pickets during strikes and workers’ self-defence against police violence.

9. An international front of the Arab workers and workers of the national minorities. The workers must organise, first of all in the factories, in order to prepare their struggle from below. For this first of all the most active elements must come together and thus form a trade union group in the factory. Every effort must be made to organise the unemployed and the refugees, fellahs and agricultural labourers.

B) Special slogans of struggle for the fellah masses containing demands which best express their most urgent needs:

1. Fellahin! don’t pay taxes or debts!

2. Do not pay rent in time of crisis!

3. Against seizure of land, harvest, cattle and agricultural equipment for non-payment of taxes, rent or debts. No fellah may be driven from land which he cultivated.

4. Out with the tax collectors and usurers in the villages.

5. No return of loans to the Government, distribution of “relief” funds of the landlords, usurers and Omde among the starving and ruined fellahs.

6. Complete annulment of feudal contracts imposed upon the fellahs working on the farms (“Izbe”) of the landlords. Struggle against the practice of forcibly bringing back fellahs who have deserted the landlords.

7. Struggle to have all funds and resources (seed, fertilisers, loans) which go through the hands of the Omde, transferred to the elected committees of the poor and middle peasants. Taxing of the irrigation companies, banks, contractors and higher officials for the relief of the starving fellahs.

8. Independent unions of agricultural labourers and the organisation of peasants committees.

9. Struggle against confiscation and sale of peasant property and land.

10. Freedom of organisation for agricultural labourers, poor and middle peasants. Freedom of activity for their organisations and elected committees.

11. Organisation of self-defence for agricultural labourers and peasants against the violence of the imperialists, the government, the landlords and usurers.

It is still more difficult for the poor and exploited peasants to organise themselves than for the workers, but their position has become so frightful that they are forced to seek a way out by means of struggle. Active groups of peasants, openly forming today committees of struggle against usurers and tomorrow forming committees of struggle against the forced auctioning of fellah’s land etc., can carry with them the majority in the villages if they set to work with courage and determination. The peasants are spontaneously seeking a way out of their misery by incendiarism and various other reprisals. It is necessary to help them to organise themselves, and the city workers together with the agricultural labourers must help the peasantry and paralyse the influence of landlords, usurers, Omde and kulaks, and lead the struggle of the poor peasantry and strive to rally them around the elected committees of peasants.

C) The most advanced and class-conscious workers of Egypt, whom the Communist Party calls to rally round its banner, must also help the poor in the towns and the poor handicraft proletarians to organise and defend their interests against the usurers, profiteers and capitalist leeches, by demanding the taxation of the usurers and big foreign companies and their agents.

It is the task of the workers to show oppressed and exploited Egypt the revolutionary way out of the crisis. The way to the revolutionary overthrow of imperialism and the reactionary monarchy, the way to the peasants’ revolution can be prepared only through an open and stubborn mass struggle in defence of the vital interests of the oppressed population. The economic crisis has shaken the foundations of a reactionary regime. The working elements of the towns and villages and the best revolutionary elements among the students are impatient for struggle and frequently desert the path of mass revolutionary struggle for isolated independent acts. The Communists and all conscious revolutionary fighters must turn their attention to work in the army of occupation and among the armed forces of the Fuad monarchy.

The working class in alliance with the poor and exploited peasantry must come forward as fighters and organisers of the struggle for liberation. It must stand at the head of the anti-imperialist and anti-monarchist movement, linking it up with the struggle of the workers and peasants. Its slogans are clear and comprehensible:

1. Away with the British armed forces in Egypt and the Sudan. Down with the decrees and violence of British imperialism.

2. Complete cessation of all government payments.

3. No taxes whatsoever on the toilers. Heavy Taxation of the imperialists, bankers, speculators and landlords for the benefit of the unemployed, the starving and the refugees.

4. No payments whatsoever on debts to the usurers in the towns and in the villages. No rent payments whatsoever in time of crisis.

5. No wage cuts but increase in wages; cessation of payments to officials and police officers receiving over 20 pounds; unemployment insurance. Relief to the unemployed at the expense of foreign and local parasites.

6. Down with the Fuad monarchy! Down with the police and the police spies in the trade unions and in the factories! Down with the counter-revolutionary policy of the Wafd!

7. Freedom for the independent class trade unions, peasant organisations and revolutionary organisations. Organisation of Self-defence for workers and Peasants. Freedom of the press for all working elements.

8. Down with the criminal preparations for a new imperialist war and war against the Soviet Union! For the Support of the Fatherland of the workers.

The Egyptian proletariat and poor peasantry have a difficult road of struggle before them. But this is the only way out of slavery to liberation.

The united revolutionary front of workers and peasants is being formed, is growing and is being extended from below on the basis of immediate resistance to the enslavers and exploiters. The revolutionary activities of the Egyptian workers during the past two years are irrefutable proof that the working masses have a huge reserve of revolutionary energy. They must devote this energy first of all to the organisation of a struggle in defence of their immediate demands and against the attacks of the imperialists, the government and the capitalists. A solid and organised struggle of the workers will rouse the mass of fellahs and will help to find the correct and successful transition from economic struggles and economic strikes to demonstrations, political strikes and other highly developed forms of struggle. The tasks which face the working class call for the mobilisation of all its forces for the struggle at the head of all working and exploited elements in Egypt.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1932/v12n23-may-26-1932-Inprecor-op.pdf