By Michael Barker
(Reprinted with permission)

Abstract

People power is the dynamic driver of social history, with history merely being the documented response of elite power-brokers to popular demands for justice. Recognizing the latent power and desire of normal people to overthrow their oppressive rulers, more far sighted elites have long recognized the need to channel such unrealized power into non-revolutionary political alternatives: a process which entails their intervening at the grassroots level of civil society to ensure that such threats never coalesce into a force powerful enough to upset the capitalist status quo. In this way, US elites have created what many authors have amorphously referred to as a non-profit industrial complex, which forms a “natural corollary” to the prison industrial complex. Overseas, such technologies of repression play a central role in sustaining imperial domination; and while their role is largely ignored by most writers (even radical ones), their importance has nevertheless been thoroughly documented. Therefore, it is in the light of this manipulative history that this paper aims to provide an extended critique of a key document representing this imperial solidarity approach, and explores the wider political background of the National Endowment for Democracy and the Solidarity Centre.

Preface

An earlier version of this article was published online by Swans Commentary on March 28, 2011. Following this, in January 2012, I was contacted by Peter Waterman who was acting as a co-editor of a special issue on New Worker Movements for Interface: A Journal About and For Social Movements. Peter asked me if I would submit a updated version of this article for this special issue, which I did so I could submit the piece to Interface for peer-review. One reviewer observed: “It is excellent article and will provide more critical contribution to the questions of imperial interventions in the Third World.” Adding that if the suggested minor changes were made the article would make ”an exceptional and unique intervention.” Encouraged by such comments, I resubmitted the article having made the required corrections.

However, when the special issue on New Worker Movements was published online in late 2012 I was surprised that my article had not been included. I thus wrote to Dr. Magid Shihade -– Interface’s editor for the Arab world — and he informed me that my article had been rejected because the editorial board was worried that Joel Beinin (the labour historian critiqued in my article) might initiate a lawsuit against the journal.

Although I have no hard feelings about the editorial board’s final decision, it is important to highlight the details of this case as it provides a concrete example of the precarious nature of independent publishing within critical journals; especially within those with little or no financial resources to defend their freedom of speech. Unfortunately, as a direct result of Interface’s decision to ignore my submission, Dr. Magid Shihade decided to resign from their editorial board in protest.

Introduction

People power is the dynamic driver of social history, with history merely being the documented response of elite power-brokers to popular demands for justice. As one might expect, in conventional history books, the full extent of the people’s power is conveniently excluded from narratives of social change, leaving us with the “great man” version of history — which has the unfortunate effect of undermining peoples’ belief in their own immense power to write history. Nevertheless as humans the world over have demonstrated, such counter-revolutionary tactics cannot contain popular insurrections indefinitely (Seymour, 2012). Thus, in recognition of the latent power and desire of normal people to overthrow their oppressive rulers, more far sighted elites have long recognized the need to channel such unrealized power into non-revolutionary political alternatives: a process which entails their intervening at the grassroots level of civil society to ensure that such threats never coalesce into a force powerful enough to upset the capitalist status quo (Barker, 2010a; Weinstein, 1968).

In the United States, one could argue that people power has been fairly successfully defused — for the time being anyway — by conservative elites, masquerading as liberals, who have sought to work in harmony with their class enemies by funding their activism. Critical areas where elites have for the time being succeeded in precariously containing popular activism, rank or file, or otherwise, include the labor movement (Barker, 2010a; Early, 2011; Yates, 2009), the civil rights movement (Barker, 2010b), the environmental movement (Barker, 2008a), and presently, even include erstwhile attempts to co-opt the Occupy movement (Berger, 2012). In this way, US elites have created what many authors have amorphously referred to as a non-profit industrial complex; a loose coalition which can be seen as “a set of symbiotic relationships that link political and financial technologies of state and owning class control with surveillance over public political ideology, including and especially emergent progressive and leftist social movements.” This non-profit industrial complex forms a “natural corollary” to the prison industrial complex (Alexander, 2009). Indeed, the nonprofit side of the political equation complements the state’s overt repression, “manag[ing] and control[ing] dissent by incorporating it into the state apparatus, functioning as a ‘shadow state’ constituted by a network of institutions that do much of what government agencies are supposed to do with tax money in the areas of education and social services” (Smith, 2007: 6-7). It is important to add that this shadow state also works hand-in-hand with the corporate media to undermine cooperative action through an ongoing propaganda offensive for the public’s mind (Martin, 2003).

Of course, such technologies of repression play a central role in guiding imperialism; and while their role is largely ignored by most writers (even radical ones), their importance has nevertheless been thoroughly documented (Arnove, 1981; Berman, 1983; Parmar, 2012; Roelofs, 2003). As Berman explains, especially in the post-World War II era…

…the major foundations increasingly supported educational institutions in strategic geopolitical locales in the hopes that these would educate individuals who viewed the United States national interests in ways similar to those held by their foundation sponsors and who would also help to structure a world amenable to these interests. (Berman, 1983: 12)

And so it is in the light of the manipulative history of such “democracy promoting” organizations that we should view the ongoing imperial solidarity shown to the Egyptian labor movement and to civil society groups more generally.

“Promoting Democracy” in Egypt

Although Hosni Mubarak’s long-standing US-backed dictatorship (1981-2011) has been immensely profitable to the West, this never precluded US elites from planning on the means of ensuring his ouster, that is, to lay the groundwork for a transition to a US-managed “democracy.” Therefore to understand what is happening in Egypt it is imperative to reconcile the conflicting approaches to managing social change that inform imperial decision making in the region. Most importantly, it is critical to note that imperial efforts to shape the Egyptian polity are far more subtle than many progressive scholars would give the US credit for. It is well known that Egypt is the second-largest recipient of US military aid (after Israel), but this fact should not prevent critics from acknowledging the significance of the US government’s other (non-militaristic) interventions in Egypt. Ruling class policy makers are dangerous; however, they are certainly not stupid. Such servile scholars are handsomely rewarded to manage the never-ending threats that capitalism creates for itself, and they are well aware that while dictatorships may be a convenient way of liquidating oppositional forces (in the short term), they are not a useful means of sustainably protecting geostrategic interests and capitalist investment opportunities in the long term. The “promotion of democracy” is thus seen as a practical way to ensure the longevity of oppressive foreign policy priorities (for a good example, see Palmer, 2003).

Here it is important to emphasize that external support for the Egyptian military-industrial complex differs vastly from the nature of external support granted to pro-democracy and human rights activists. So while billions of dollars of military aid ensures that the US largely controls the Egyptian military, the same is not true when millions of dollars are dispersed for managing social change in the civil realm. The primary difference is that military aid is used to exert direct influence on the actions of a limited segment of an already compliant ruling class, while political aid used to “promote democracy” is more defuse in its effects, as it attempts to indirectly manipulate the highly unpredictable oppressed and dissenting classes — that is tens of millions of people with no particular vested interest in the status quo. Thus any efforts to manage such huge swathes of humans always have the potential to threaten the continuity of elite domination with a potentially revolutionary situation. These are risks that have always made less thoughtful members of the ruling class uncomfortable with the “democracy promoting” establishment.

Most political commentators would concur that institutionalized oppression, like that most visibly present under US-backed dictatorships, necessarily leads to rising popular anger, and eventually to popular uprisings. If nothing is done to (mis)direct this dissent, isolated incoherent expressions of outrage can easily progress to organized demands for popular and meaningful forms of democratic governance — by the people, for the people. Such progressive developments are anathema to imperial elites, and consequently, vast amounts of intellectual capital has been devoted to developing the means to hijack popular discontent, so that it can be safely channelled into situations that promote low, rather than high-intensity democracy. As William I. Robinson (1996) points out:

All over the world, the United States is now promoting its version of “democracy” as a way to relieve pressure from subordinate groups for more fundamental political, social and economic change. The impulse to “promote democracy” is the rearrangement of political systems in the peripheral and semi-peripheral zones of the “world system” so as to secure the underlying objective of maintaining essentially undemocratic societies inserted into an unjust international system. The promotion of “low-intensity democracy” is aimed not only at mitigating the social and political tensions produced by elite-based and undemocratic status quos, but also at suppressing popular and mass aspirations for more thoroughgoing democratization of social life in the twenty-first century international order. Polyarchy is a structural feature of the emergent global society. Just as “client regimes” and right-wing dictatorships installed into power or supported by the United States were characteristic of a whole era of US foreign policy and intervention abroad in the post-World War II period, promoting “low-intensity democracies” in the Third World is emerging as a cornerstone of a new era in US foreign policy.(Robinson, 1996: 6)

Efforts to “promote democracy” in foreign states should not however be seen as a replacement of traditional diplomatic, economic and military forms of statecraft, but instead they should be merely seen as supplemental measures (albeit important ones). Such “democratic” inventions combine relentless propaganda offensives (directed from without and within) with strategically dispersed political aid: aid which is provided to friendly political organizations, and in some instances is used to help local actors create new political bodies. Such “democracy promotion” activities are undertaken by all Western governments, but in the United States they are coordinated by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — a group that was created in 1983 within “the highest echelons of the US national security state, as part of the same project that led to the illegal operations of the Iran-Contra scandal.” It should come as no surprise, that: “In structure, organization, and operation, it is closer to clandestine and national security organs such as the CIA than apolitical or humanitarian endowments as its name would suggest.” (Robinson, 1996: 89)

The current chair of the NED’s board of directors, Richard Gephardt, is the former chairman of the Progressive Policy Institute, “a Democratic Party aligned policy shop that promotes a ‘liberal hawk’ line on foreign affairs similar in many respects to that pushed by neoconservatives” (RightWeb, 2011). Thus it is perhaps fitting that his predecessor at the helm of the NED was Vin Weber (who is now just a regular board member), an individual who was a member of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and in the leadup to the illegal destruction wrought on Iraq, played a key role in a PNAC subsidiary, a group called Americans for Victory Over Terrorism. Next up, the vice-chair of the NED’s board is the right-wing economist Judy Shelton, while their president (since 1984) has been Carl Gershman, an individual who formerly served as the executive director of the right-wing Social Democrats USA (Sims, 1992), and as an aide to the famous neoconservative Jeane Kirkpatrick.

Needless to say, the US mainstream media rarely draws attention to the NED’s democracy manipulating activities, despite the fact that the NED has played an integral part in their government’s foreign policy apparatus since its birth in 1983 (for a review, see Barker, 2008b). But critical insights have occasionally graced the pages of the mainstream media, and one rare instance occurred in 1991 when Washington Post columnist David Ignatius (1991) reported, in a generally celebratory article, that the NED’s first acting president admitted that “A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” Ignatius adds: “The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection.” Providing ongoing support for US-friendly groups and individuals however goes way beyond support for free-markets policies and basic liberal-democratic reforms, as the NED also provides direct support to grassroots labor activists to undermine mass-based democratic movements for social change. In this instance the latter work is primarily coordinated by the NED’s core grantee, the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center.

The Solidarity Center in Egypt

Genuine worker solidarity as exemplified by the actions of rank-and-file union members the world over has always represented a serious threat to capitalist exploitation and imperial oppression. Therefore, since the early years of the twentieth century, more far sighted members of the elite have actively sought to isolate and marginalize this democratic threat by nurturing a labor movement whose leaders’ actions were counterpoised to the long-term interests of workers (Buhle, 1999). Not surprisingly, such pro-business labor bosses have supplemented their domestic contributions to labor “management” by facilitating imperial conquests through the provision of “aid” to labor struggles all over the world. In the distant past, such labor inference was organized in coordination with the activities of the CIA (Walsh, 1982), but since the early 1980s, this work has been guided by the NED. Kim Scipes (2010) provides a comprehensive historical overview of the interaction between the US government, the NED and organized labor.

The AFL-CIO was one of the founders and core institutes of NED, and the Solidarity Center [formally known as the American Center for International Labor Solidarity] continues to play a core role to this day. Long-standing members of Labor play or have played key roles within NED, most notably Carl Gershman, Lane Kirkland, Thomas R. Donahue, and John Sweeney. (Scipes, 2010: 104)

Needless to say, this labor movement imperialism is not being done through labor movement procedures, but behind the backs of members. This point was emphasized almost twenty years ago by Beth Sims (1992), who wrote:

Although many of the individual programs sponsored by the AFL-CIO have helped foreign labor and even been sought by it, the overall foreign policy which is carried out by the AFL-CIO and its institutes often harms workers both in [the United States] and overseas. Derived from the ideological biases of a select group of top labor bureaucrats — many of whom lack actual trade union experience — the resulting policies have stressed anticommunism at the expense of worker militancy. Simultaneously, these policies have affirmed the right of the United States to intervene in the affairs of other countries, whether through governmental or private actors. (Sims, 1992: 2)

Considering this unwholesome history, it should not be too shocking to learn that for the last decade, the AFL-CIO’s foreign “arm,” the Solidarity Center, has been lending an imperial helping hand to Egypt’s blossoming labor movement. For example, in 2004, the NED gave their first Egyptian-related grant to the Solidarity Center so they could “work with the Egyptian Trade Union Federation” to “establish an Egyptian Trade Union Technical Organization.” Subsequent NED labor grants have, amongst other things, been used to organize a “workshop with the International Transport Federation for Egypt’s port workers”; and helped “increase and improve the advocacy efforts of four labor support organizations on behalf of Egyptian workers in the absence of an independent trade union movement.” In 2009, the last year for which the NED’s grant records were available online, the Solidarity Center received their largest grant yet, worth a sizable $318,757. In February 2010, the Solidarity Center published an important report entitled “Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt”– a report that has informed much of the recent political commentary on the rise of Egyptian unionism. So bearing in mind the central role that the Solidarity Center has historically fulfilled in undermining rank and file democratic trade unionism, this paper will provide a comprehensive critique of the “Justice for All” report.

The Solidarity Center’s “Justice for All” Report

The principal author of “Justice for All” is Stanford University’s well-respected, progressive professor of Middle East history, Joel Beinin, who in recent years, has worked in Egypt as the Director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo (2006-08). Beinin’s previous scholarship has won high accolades, and his ongoing analyses of the rise of labor activism in Egypt have been widely cited, and so his decision to write for the imperialist Solidarity Center appears strange to say the least. However, as I demonstrate, at the time of writing “Justice for All,” he appears to have been totally unaware of the propaganda service his work might provide for the imperial “democracy-promoting” community; a shortcoming that I now hope I have made him aware of (via email).

My first significant problem with Professor Beinin’s detailed 136-page report concerns the short shrift he gives to imperial power-brokers in shaping Egyptian history. Beinin begins the first chapter of his report (which provides a historical overview of labor organizing in Egypt), by observing that for half of Egypt’s “history it was ruled and exploited by foreigners,” but no mention is made of the significant involvement of the US and UK governments in overseeing this oppression, a fact that becomes increasingly relevant as I discuss their activities in contemporary Egypt below. He does, however, highlight how “the fundamentally autocratic character of the [current] regime has not changed since 1952” (Beinin, 2010: 4), that is, the year that Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power. Here it would have been immensely useful if Beinin had provided a little critical analysis — or at the very least a footnote — that outlined the pivotal role British and American intelligence agencies played in Nasser’s rise to power, and in his eventual demise (e.g., Little, 2004). Unfortunately, Beinin’s only indirect reference to imperial interventions in Egypt comes when he writes how: “Presidents Anwar al-Sadat (1970-81) and Hosni Mubarak (1981- ) reversed Nasser’s economic and political orientation and turned towards free enterprise and alliance with the United States” (Beinin, 2010: 12).

One of the most important parts of Beinin’s study is the voluminous strike data he summarizes, which provides a handy and succinct illustration of the rising numerical power of the labor movement in recent years. He reports that “[o]ver 1.7 million workers engaged in more than 1,900 strikes and other forms of protest from 2004 to 2008.” He continues: “These labor actions have been amplified politically, because they coincided with a campaign for democracy organized by Kifaya (Enough) — The Egyptian Movement for Change — and other groups comprised mainly of the urban middle classes and intellectual workers” (Beinin, 2010: 14). While I certainly have no problem with this data, or the positive message it promotes, I would suggest that Beinin should have highlighted the fact that the work of the sole group responsible for collating this strike data (Sons of Land Center for Human Rights) has been supported by the NED. This is not to say that their data is not accurate, but it does further emphasize the central role that the US government has fulfilled in supporting the Egyptian opposition movement.

If the Solidarity Center was proud of its long-standing commitment to imperialism, one would assume that they would have encouraged Beinin to publicly highlight every instance of support that the labor and pro-democracy movement in Egypt has received from the NED. Yet quite the opposite appears to be the case; and even though Beinin draws heavily upon the published work of NED-funded groups, he makes absolutely no reference to the NED in his detailed report. This deception, whether deliberate or unwitting, reflects the long-standing secrecy with which the national leaders of the AFL-CIO and their Solidarity Center have “actively participated in US foreign policy initiatives without informing their affiliated unions and their members, much less asking for a mandate to do so.” As Scipes continues:

They have consciously kept these affiliations secret from their members, and have lied when they have been exposed. In short, they have actively betrayed the trust of workers, American and those throughout the rest of the world. (Scipes, 2010: 103)

Moreover, for what ostensibly passes as a labor report — and regarding labor operations by a labor center that has long been engaged in supporting imperialism — it is truly astounding that Beinin only makes one vaguely critical statement about the US government within the entire document. This passing concern with the United States comes on page twenty-seven, whereby he talks about the anti-democratic role of the Egyptian security authorities in intervening to impede the activities of independent labor organizations, which he suggests “is comparable” to the work undertaken by the FBI in the United States (Beinin, 2010: 27). By way of a contrast to this minor criticism (if one could even call it that), the rest of Beinin’s report has only positive things to say about US influence in the Middle East. In fact, the next time that he mentions the U.S. it is to praise their government’s good work, and the “reasonable” work of US-directed factories (which should read: sweatshops) in Egypt. He writes:

Officials of the US Embassy in Cairo who visited factories in the QIZs [Qualifying Industrial Zones] in late 2008 concluded that Egypt’s national labor laws are not the standard by which factory owners operate. If they produce for socially conscious corporations that demand good treatment of workers, like Levi Strauss & Co., then they maintain a reasonable standard of labor relations. Otherwise, they do as they wish. (Beinin, 2010: 54)

It is as if Beinin wrote his report within a political vacuum, such that his writing is divorced from any engagement with the major forces destroying global labor movements, that is, US-led imperialism. Under a subheading reading Intent to Control, Not Liberate, Workers Beinin thus distillates his ahistorical mindset (in this report anyway) by on the one hand ignoring US imperialism, and on the other, highlighting the oppressive nature of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) — which, he correctly describes as “an arm of the state” (Beinin, 2010: 11). The unspoken irony is that the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center likewise acts as a well-established arm of the US government, but not just as an arm of the state that represses local labor struggles, but as the long arm of the state (some might say tentacle) that also seeks to undermine the vitality of labor movements worldwide.

On the subject of state oppression, Beinin informs his readers that the 55,000 municipal real estate tax collectors who have organized to form the Independent General Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Workers “are the only workers so far to have succeeded in establishing an independent union” in Egypt. Much like in the U.S., the Egyptian government fears workers who choose to fight collectively for their rights. Thus it should come as no surprise that “the ETUF has sought to impede the formation” of the Independent General Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Workers “at every step” (Beinin, 2010: 31, 32). An integral part of the Mubarak regime’s efforts to counter successful union organizing in this regard is “Law 84 of 2002,” which Beinin explains “empowers the government to regulate and interfere” with democratic union operations. And so in an act of resistance, in November 2008, “the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights hosted a workshop attended by 150 NGOs from 14 governorates” that “endorsed draft legislation to replace” this law (Beinin, 2010: 35). Beinin continues:

However, the government has shown no interest in amending the law. On the contrary, NGOs [non-governmental organizations] that have sought to organize and represent workers independently, such as the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services (CTUWS), have been subjected to legal harassment, as have many independent trade unionists. (Beinin, 2010: 35)

There is no question that union organizing against oppressive laws is fantastic, but one can understand the Egyptian government’s repressive response in light of foreign-run NGOs — and especially those partnering with the US government — channeling considerable monies to Egyptian organizations that might not have the Egyptian government’s best interest in mind.

NED Links with Egyptian Personages and Organizations

To be clear the NED and the Solidarity Center operate by intervening in any given civil society of interest (as defined by US foreign policy goals) BEFORE popular mobilization becomes developed so as to channel potential mobilization in the direction desired by the US government. In other words, it seeks out important people and organizations in civil society, and tries to enmesh them in NED networks and operations so as to limit their ability to coalesce with other local allies in meaningful and independent (i.e., self-determining) ways. An anti-democratic process which also raises questions about trustworthiness among allies and potential allies concerning the NED-affiliated organizations’ operations. This is not to say that connection with the NED is automatically “imperialist,” but it raises serious questions, and requires affiliated organizations to consciously act on their own defined interests and not those of the NED.

Bearing this proviso in mind, it is important to recognize that the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, the group that hosted the workshop Beinin discusses (see above), has received almost continuous annual support from the NED between 1994 and 2005. Earlier in Beinin’s report (in a footnote on page twenty-seven), he points out how the government threatened to close the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights “for allegedly violating Law 84 of 2002” (Beinin, 2010: 56). It is ironic that for the evidence of the “threatened closure” of the NED-funded Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, Beinin cites a press release published by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) — a group that is funded by the British and Canadian versions of the NED, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, and Rights and Democracy (Fenton, 2006). In addition, FIDH’s executive director, Antoine Bernard, serves alongside Hisham Kassem (the former chair of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights) on the steering committee of the NED-initiated World Movement for Democracy. Moreover, until recently Kassem had been the publisher of Egypt’s first independent daily paper, Al-Masry Al-Youm (The Egyptian Today), was the former vice president of the liberal opposition party Al-Ghad, and in 2007 was the recipient of the NED’s annual Democracy Award.

Beinin goes on in his report to refer to the good work of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, a group that has been rewarded for its work by the World Bank, and has received seven grants from the NED between 1998 and 2005 — with the most recent grant being used to amongst other things organize “training workshops for 2,600 election monitors.” Another group whose work Beinin highlights is the Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women (Beinin, 2010: 73, 102), whose chairlady is Iman Bibars, an individual who acts as the regional director vice president of Ashoka Global — a US project to groom “social entrepreneurs” whose two major corporate partners are PR/propaganda giant Hill & Knowlton and management consultant McKinsey & Company (for a general analysis of the history of such grooming, see Parmar, 2012).

Beinin writes that the “most comprehensive study of migrant workers in Egypt is a report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights” (Beinin, 2010: 76) — a group that is a “partner organization” of FIDH. The Initiative’s founder and Director, Hossam Bahgat, is the vice president of Egyptian Association against Torture (a group whose president is the prominent Kifaya activist, Aida Seif el-Dawla). Bahgat is also a board member of the Tide Center’s International Network for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (the Tide Center being one of George Soros’s key US-based projects), and a board member of one of the US’s leading “human rights” foundations, the Fund for Global Human Rights. (For a critical examination of the imperial nature of such human rights activism, see Sellars, 2002.) Finally, another example of a project that obtains support from the US “democracy promoting” network is the Egypt New Woman Research Center, which Beinin writes “has received funding from the Ford Foundation” (Beinin, 2010: 118); although as one might expect he fails to draw attention to the Ford Foundation’s long-standing imperial pedigree (Berman, 1983; Parmar, 2012).

Here it is worth emphasizing that the aforementioned union service center, the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services — which was founded in 1990 by Kamal Abbas and the late Yusuf Darwish — is “a partner” organization of the Solidarity Center. This highly significant fact remains unmentioned in Beinin’s report, although he vaguely alludes to CTUWS’s connection to the AFL-CIO.

One labor activist told a Solidarity Center researcher that he believes the CTUWS has been targeted for greater repression than other labor-oriented NGOs because its good relations with the ITUC [International Trade Union Confederation], European trade union federations, and the ILO [International Labor Organization] have exposed the Egyptian government to international embarrassment. While it has backed away from its most egregious measures, the government has continued to subject the CTUWS to harassment by, for example, impeding the movement of Kamal Abbas as he was traveling to an ITUC meeting in Brussels in July 2009 and the national convention of the AFL-CIO in September 2009. (Beinin, 2010: 45)

Although I do not condone the repression of such union activities, it is hardly surprising that CTUWS has been harassed by the Egyptian dictatorship, particularly given the union’s intimate associations with the US government’s “democracy-promoting” establishment. Beinin acknowledges that CTUWS has “good relations with the Dutch Labor Movement Federation (FNV), other European labor federations, and with the ILO”; noting that it has “been supported by the Dutch NGO Oxfam Novib since 1993” (Beinin, 2010: 118). It is important to point out that since 2008 the executive director of Oxfam Novib has been Farah Karimi, an Iranian-born activist who is currently the president of the NED-connected Foundation for Human Security in the Middle East (Jacobs, 2009).

Again it is critical to emphasize that such connections do not mean that the Egyptian organizations agree with the labor imperialism promoted by their foreign backers. Indeed, after years of US-backed oppression, Egyptian activists are more than aware of the contradictions inherent in their acceptance of US aid. Nevertheless, this paradoxical funding problem needs to be discussed openly if Egyptian organizations’ political activities are to be less restricted by foreign interference. Moreover, they need to be clear about who they are asking for support, so that their getting help from foreign imperialist funders like the NED and Solidarity Center doesn’t harm their links with other local organizations that have either declined, or were never offered, access to such foreign aid. Imperial funders clearly have foreign policy priorities that are at odds with rank and file activists, and so groups obtaining backing from such foreign financiers should wherever possible seek to challenge the insidious idea that groups like the Solidarity Center are a “progressive champion” for workers rights and democracy.

This awareness of the broader agenda of unions that are part of the NED’s global “democracy-promoting” network is sadly something that Beinin does not possess, and his commentary even misleadingly describes the International Trade Union Confederation as being “a leading advocate of democratic trade unionism…” This, however, is far from the case, and it seems that this powerful international union promotes much of the same labor imperialism and business unionism favored by the Solidarity Center (Beinin, 2010: 121). The recently appointed general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is Australian neoliberal labor leader, Sharan Burrow, who serves alongside many of the US’s leading “democracy promoters” on the advisory council of the World Justice Project (i.e., Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell). The ITUC’s deputy secretary general, Wellington Chibebe, is also the secretary general of the NED-funded Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, and is the former chairman of the NED-funded Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition. The ITUC was formerly known as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, and a notable former member of their executive committee is John Joyce, who is a former board member of the NED and their “democracy-manipulating” union, the Free Trade Union Institute (Sims, 1992), and has served on the executive council of the AFL-CIO (from 1984 to 1999). Writing about the ITUC’s predecessor Scipes notes that:

AFL operations in Latin America were revived after World War II. Initially, they worked through ORIT — the Latin American regional organization of the anti-Communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) that the AFL helped establish in 1949 — and helped overthrow the democratically-elected government in Guatemala in 1954. (Scipes, 2010: 31)

Indeed, in 2003 the ITUC’s deputy chairman, Wellington Chibebe, was a recipient of the AFL-CIO’s George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award. As one might expect the political nature of this award has long been suspect given the imperial labor careers of both George Meany and Lane Kirkland (Buhle, 1999). So in this respect it is appropriate that in 1982, the AFL-CIO gave its award “to apartheid collaborator Gatsha Buthelezi, who had created a labor center — United Workers of South Africa — specifically to undercut the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) and the rest of the liberation movement” (Scipes, 2010: 35-6). Moreover the democratic significance of this award is particularly pertinent to this article, because in August 2010 the AFL-CIO gave it to two Egyptian labor activists (making it the “first time the US union movement has honored a workers’ organization from the Middle East”). These two trade unionists were the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services’ organizer Kamal Abbas, and Kamal Abu Eita, who is the president of the Independent General Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Workers. Consequently it is in keeping with the political tenor of the award that Beinin and El-Hamalawy (2007) observed that: “Despite ‘Abbas’ early association with underground Marxist politics, in recent years his center has abandoned overt political demands to focus on bread-and-butter issues.” This backsliding from revolutionary politics has been evident for over a decade and is more than demonstrated by his attendance in 2000 at the first World Forum on Democracy, which was organized by the neoconservative Freedom House and George Soros’ Stefan Batory Foundation.

The ability of the other 2010 Meany-Kirkland award winner, Kamal Abu Eita, to truly represent the Egyptian workers would seem to be compromised by his union’s affiliation to Public Services International, the Global Union Federation that represents more than 20 million public-sector workers worldwide. I say this because the current president of Public Services International is British New Labour ideologue and general secretary of the public sector union UNISON, Dave Prentis (Sell, 2012), who recently served alongside the likes of Anthony Giddens and Neil Kinnock on the board of trustees of the Labour Party think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research. Kamal Abu Eita’s union of Real Estate Tax Authority workers recently played a key role in the founding of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU), “whose existence was announced at a press conference during the Tahrir Square occupation” on January 30, 2011 (Beinin, 2011), and Kamal serves as their acting president. It is therefore worrying that in a recent interview Kamal highlighted the fact that: “The ITUC’s support, from our very beginnings, has been really important.” (TUC, 2011) Likewise it is concerning that the AFL-CIO (2012) boasts that “Shawna Bader-Blau, executive director of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, and Lisa McGowan, acting director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Solidarity Center, participated in the historic founding Congress of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU).”

One should observe that Lisa McGowan recently became the acting director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Solidarity Center taking over from Heba F. El-Shazl (who prior to this appointment had worked for another core NED grantee, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs). At the moment, Heba F. El-Shazl is a visiting professor at the Virginia Military Institute, and on February 11, 2011, referred to Kamal Abbas as “my good dear trade union brother” (El-Shazl, 2011). One might only hope that the feelings are not reciprocated. By way of a contrast with El-Shazl’s military affiliations, her replacement, Lisa McGowan, serves on the advisory committee of the US-based progressive (albeit liberal foundation-financed) group, Foreign Policy In Focus, sitting alongside Stephen Zunes — an individual whom I have criticized for his defence and active legitimation of the left-leaning parts of the “democracy promoting” establishment (see http://michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com/icnc/).

The geostrategic nature of the AFL-CIO’s selective displays of worker solidarity indicates that Hosni Mubarak was correct to be concerned with the growing tide of foreign-backed “democratic” activities occurring within Egypt. Beinin recognizes that this anxiety, in large part, owes much to such open displays of “international solidarity,” and he writes that to date the Coordinating Committee for Trade Union and Workers Rights and Liberties (CCTUWRL) “has been more reluctant than the CTUWS to accept international solidarity.” However, while I would suggest that all unions (radical or otherwise) have good reason to decline offers of such imperial labor solidarity, Beinin has no such misapprehensions, and counsels that: “Consistent support and solidarity from the international labor community could help to erode mistrust and strengthen the CCTUWRL” (Beinin, 2010: 118). But while Beinin implies that the CCTUWRL offers an example of a union that is “reluctant” to accept international labor solidarity, it still works closely with pro-democracy groups that do accept aid from the imperial “democracy-promoting” community. As Beinin points out:

Since 2001 the Coordinating Committee for Trade Union and Workers Rights and Liberties (CCTUWRL) has been holding monthly meetings in the Cairo office of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center [which is based in the same offices as the April 6 Movement, and is a partner organization of Oxfam International], where workers from all over Egypt come to share information about struggles in their workplaces, discuss strategy, and seek legal advice. The leading figure in the CCTUWRL is Sabr Barakat, a former steel worker. He and Khalid Ali Umar, co-founder of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center and an activist lawyer specializing in labor law, have authored many reports and books published by the CCTUWRL. Khalid Ali Umar participated in the September 2008 delegation hosted by the Solidarity Center. (Beinin, 2010: 118)

Either way, compared to the Mubarak government’s Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), even the compromised unions that are backed by the Solidarity Center offer a ray of hope for Egyptian workers. Highlighting this point, Beinin writes:

Since 1957, with rare exceptions, only pro-government loyalists have served as ETUF leaders. All 23 members of the ETUF executive committee in office for the 2006-2011 term are members of the NDP [National Democratic Party]. The current president, Hussein Megawer, has been head of the NDP parliamentary bloc and now serves as chair of the parliamentary Committee on Manpower. Megawer also serves as the Egyptian government’s representative on the boards of directors of both the Suez Cement Company and the Turah Cement Company. (The Egyptian government is a part owner of both companies, while Italcementi Group has a majority interest in both.) (Beinin, 2010: 40)

These corporate connections are intriguing, and just a little more research on Beinin’s part would have revealed that the chairman of Suez Cement Company is Omar Mohanna. This is worth acknowledging because Mohanna is the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, which indicates that the US government, if it chose to, could exert significant indirect pressure on reforming the ETUF through their good friend Mohanna. One would expect, however, that such pressure is already being applied given that Mohanna is involved with numerous groups that work closely with the NED’s “democracy-promoting” apparatus. For example, Mohanna is the vice chairman of the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies (a group that has received aid from the NED in 1995 and 1997 via the Center for International Private Enterprise), and his work as a board member of the NED-connected New Civic Forum.

In fact, as mentioned earlier, the NED has already given the Solidarity Center grants to work with the ETUF, and Beinin himself even explains how the ETUF “received funding and technical assistance from the Solidarity Center to establish child labor programs in the rural governorates (provinces) of Sharqiyyya, Minufiyya, Buhayra, Fayyum, and Kafral-Shaykh, and in Alexandria.” Then, remaining on his theme of uncritical support for the US government, Beinin continues by adding that: “These programs were positively evaluated in reports prepared for USAID…” (Beinin, 2010: 86). Now there is a surprise!

Instead of putting his hope in the creation of militant unions working to build a genuine workers’ democracy who will be able to fight against the Solidarity Center’s bankrupt model of labor imperialism, Beinin hopes that the ETUF will (with sufficient pressure from imperial elites) be forced to move away from repressing workers to a position of supporting them — to “join the struggle” as he puts it. It seems that there is as much chance of this happening as of Beinin and rank and file workers in the U.S. managing to persuade the AFL-CIO and their Solidarity Center from refraining to undertake labor “solidarity” in the service of imperialism (Beinin, 2010: 117). There has been an ongoing campaign by rank and file unionists within the AFL-CIO to prevent their labor center from engaging in such imperialist ventures since the early 1970s, when Fred Hirsch (1974) first documented the AFL-CIO’s involvement in the CIA-backed coup against Chile’s president Salvador Allende. Thus given such unrealistic expectations, Beinin starts the final chapter of “Justice for All” by noting:

The new shape of the labor market in the neoliberal era and how the government and the ETUF respond to it will be a big factor in determining the future of worker rights in Egypt. So far, the record has not been encouraging. Egypt’s privatization program and other neoliberal measures have won accolades from the international financial institutions. The IMF, the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum all rank Egypt high among “global economic reformers”, i.e., countries that make it easier for private-sector enterprises to do business. (Beinin, 2010: 111)

Here at least Beinin acknowledges the negative effects of such neoliberal developments — typically promoted by the Solidarity Center’s work — writing that: “The neoliberal project is creating a new Egypt that many believe is benefiting no more than the top 10 percent of the population.” He continues, pointing out how the Special Economic Zones and Qualify Industrial Zones “have contributed greatly to Egypt becoming the second largest market for foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa after South Africa”; with the United States acting as “the largest source of FDI in Egypt” (Beinin, 2010: 111). But despite highlighting the key role of the US’s neoliberalizing investments in Egypt, Beinin finds no serious fault with such investments. Instead, he quickly moves on to suggest that the real danger comes from China.

The Chinese are positioning themselves to become major investors in Egypt. Chinese investments in Egypt reached over US$500 million by 2009. In September 2008 an agreement to establish a joint Sino-Egyptian industrial center to manufacture textiles, footwear and pharmaceuticals was signed. Citic Group, China’s biggest state-run company, will invest US$800 million in an aluminum smelter. China is expected to become Egypt’s largest trade partner by 2010.

These shifts of global capital indicate that there is a great danger that Egypt will lead a regional “race to the bottom” which will undermine the living standards and fundamental rights of its workers. (Beinin, 2010: 113)

Beinin’s message as presented here is a powerful appeal to imperial self-interest, as, he warns, if the US government does not pick up its game and start “promoting democracy” with serious intent, then all their precious investment opportunities will be lost to their capitalist rival, China. Unbelievably, Beinin adds: “The ETUF, Egyptian NGOs, the Egyptian government, the US government, the international labor and human rights communities, and the US corporations can all play a role in protecting the fundamental rights of Egyptian workers and including them as essential partners in Egypt’s development” (Beinin, 2010: 116-7). To top this off, his concluding chapter even suggests potential policy responses for the US government.

But to make such recommendations, Beinin must (again) mischaracterise the extremely oppressive relationship between the two countries, writing: “Egypt is an important ally of the United States in the Middle East”; with “[o]ther countries in the region… looking to Egypt to see whether or not the United States will be serious in backing up its verbal claims to support democracy with meaningful actions.” Evidently Beinin has decided to ignore the fact the Egypt is and has been the US government’s most favored dictatorship in the world and, with no sense of irony, suggest that the U.S. “should not ignore the shortcomings of the current governmental system or be an obstacle to the Egyptian people’s desire for social justice and democracy.”

Admittedly Beinin does observe that “Egypt has been the second-largest recipient of US foreign aid since its 1979 peace treaty with Israel”; but he fails to mention that most of this “aid” was directed to Egypt’s enormous and brutal military machine. Either way, he says that “military aid should… be conditioned on ending operations of the internal security apparatus that inhibit freedom of expression and association, quash legitimate political protests, and undermine independent workers’ organizations and struggles for worker rights” (Beinin, 2010: 121).

Of course, no one would deny that attaching conditions to future aid would prove an effective way of forcing Egypt’s hand. But by ignoring the fact that foreign aid has been used to maintain Mubarak’s regime for the express purpose of promoting US foreign policy objectives, Beinin fails to implicate the US government as being the major reason why Egyptian elites have erased its democratic history, not to mention the labor movement.

Beinin is deluded when he emphasizes the continued positive role that can be played by US corporations in the growth of a democratic trade union movement in Egypt. Indeed, he points out: “As the US Embassy in Cairo has noted, the labor standards required by US firms are currently the most effective standards for companies that produce for them in Egypt.” No doubt the US Embassy did report on the positive achievements of their own government, and such uncritical reporting on Beinin’s behalf is sadly very much in keeping with the labor movement imperialism typically promoted by the NED and the Solidarity Center. So it is appropriate that Beinin ends his report not with a call for increasing labor militancy, but by making a further plea for “international solidarity” (Beinin, 2010: 122). He concludes: “If the international community consistently insists on the need for the government of Egypt to respect democracy, human rights, and worker rights, it is possible that the ETUF, or some elements of it, maybe empowered to assert their autonomy from the government and the NDP and join Egyptian workers’ struggle for a decent life and social and economic justice” (Beinin, 2010: 123).

Finally given the extent of foreign “democracy promoting” interventions into Egypt it is significant that this year Egypt’s Minister of International Cooperation, Fayza Abul-Naga, took legal action against a handful of foreign NGOs operating in Egypt (Abul-Naga, 2012). Of all the people who could be tasked with making such a decision Fayza Abul-Naga certainly knows, from personal experience, how imperial interventions are coordinated, as just last year she served alongside Carnegie Corporation president Vartan Gregorian, and former Rockefeller Foundation trustee Mamphela Ramphele on the board of trustees of Suzanne Mubarak’s New Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Either way, the end result of this much reported conflagration was the arrest of 43 individuals (19 of which were American) all of whom were based in Egypt working for one of the following four “democracy promoting” groups: the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House, and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Here one might observe that one of the few arrested individuals who is regularly mentioned by name in the Western press is Charles Dunne, who was the director of Middle East and North Africa programs at Freedom House. Dunne is certainly not the type of person I would be happy to see promoting human rights in my own country, and his background helps explain why Egyptian dictators are worried about the presence of such a “democratic” activist operating in their country. This is because in addition to formerly serving as the Director for Iraq at the US National Security Council (2005-7) and as a Foreign Policy Adviser in the Pentagon (2007-8), Dunne is a contributor to Fikra Forum, a project which was organized by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which in turn was set up by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Working for Genuine Solidarity

This paper has not examined particular Solidarity Center activities in Egypt –despite their receiving over $319,000 for them in 2009 — but has instead focused on the major report regarding Egyptian workers that has been produced for the Solidarity Center. As a corollary of Beinin’s uncritical acceptance of the Solidarity Center’s democratic rhetoric, we have seen that his report ignored the “enmeshment” of prominent Egyptian activists into NED-related organizations and networks. Thus despite extensive US interests in the region, and extensive operations and connections with and for the US government’s NED, almost none of this has even been acknowledged, much less explained in this report, thereby limiting its validity. Likewise, just as problematically, Beinin’s report has ignored larger US interests in the region, particularly Egypt’s key role in protecting Israel (Weir, 2011).

This is not to say that the Egyptians who work with the US “democracy-promoting” community will not, and cannot, engage in radical actions that lie beyond those limited goals envisaged by their foreign “allies.” Indeed, accepting money from groups like the NED or Solidarity Center can often be seen as the “least bad” option in a dire situation; but the main point to emphasize is that all pro-democracy groups must be transparent about their funding relations, and strive to openly discuss what negative influences such ties may exert on their overarching political priorities and objectives.

Finally, in the imperial heartland itself, it is imperative that all US citizens who are concerned with the oppressive repercussions of labor imperialism demand a full and honest report by the AFL-CIO on the activities of the Solidarity Center in Egypt. International solidarity is essential to creating a more equitable global order, and labor imperialism disguised as international solidarity needs to be undermined at every turn. Therefore, at present, the most effective action that can be taken by people residing outside of Egypt is thus to continue to work to create genuine and democratic forms of solidarity, that seek to promote human, and not imperial, interests.

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About the author

Michael has been writing for alternative media outlets since 2006, and at present is a regular contributor to Swans Commentary. He a contributor to Corporate Watch’s forthcoming book Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent: Capitalism, Democracy and the Organisation of Consent. His email is mbarker AT riseup.net