Original subtitles

...that the bourgeois, here, as always,

were too cowardly to stand up for their own interests.

...that from the Bastille onwards

the plebs had to do all the work for them

...that without their intervention on 14th July,

5th and 6th October to 10th August,

2nd September and so on

the bourgeoisie would have succumbed every time to the old regime.

The coalition in league with the Court would have crushed the revolution

...and that therefore only these plebeians carried out the revolution.

But that this

did not come about without these plebeians attributing

to the revolutionary demands of the bourgeoisie

a sense which they do not have,

pushing equality and brotherhood to extreme consequences which

turned the bourgeois sense of these catch-words totally upside down

because this sense taken to its extreme

actually changed into its opposite.

...that this plebeian equality and brotherhood

had to be a pure dream

at the time when it was a matter of establishing the exact opposite

and that, as always, irony of history,

this plebeian version of the revolutionary catch-words

became the strongest lever in imposing this opposite.

Bourgeois: equality before the law and brotherhood in exploitation.

The people living off alms at the time of the Revolution numbered millions.

and the number of impoverished beggary was at its greatest

in the provinces which counted as the most fertile,

because in these regions there were only very few landowner peasants.

In Britagne, in three villages of the district of Carhaix,

it looked like this:

Frerogan: 10 well-off families,

10 impoverished, 10 beggary.

Montref: 47 families with means,

74 less well placed, 64 poor and day laborers.

Paule: 200 households

to the greatest part of which the name of beggary belongs by right.

And in Argentré,

out of 2300 inhabitants who do not live off industry or trade,

more than half just barely struggle through,

and more than 300 people are reduced to beggary.

In Bayeux in Normandy,

of 1500 inhabitants of the Saint Patrice parish, 400 live of alms,

and of 500 inhabitants of the Saint-Laurent parish,

three-quarters off alms.

The grievances book of the Marboeuf parish in the Eure

complains that out of 500 inhabitants of the same parish,

around a hundred are beggars.

In Vainville near Arles

out of the 130 families, there are 60 which are impoverished.

From the grievances book of the ballifree of Douai we learn

that in Bouvignies

out of 332 families half live off alms.

In Aix, out of the 143 families,

65 are impoverished.

In Landus, of 413, around 100 completely impoverished.

The peasants of the village of Harville, in the Meuse,

say that, owing to the lack of work,

fully a third of them are in beggary poverty.

In the senechal of Puy-en-Velay,

according to the words of the grievances book of the clergy there,

out of the 120,000 inhabitants,

58,897 are not in a position to pay any taxes of any kind.

In the towns, it was not better.

In Paris, of 650,000 inhabitants, 118,784 were indigent.

In Lyon, there were 30,000 workers pauperized.

In Rennes, a third of the inhabitants lived off alms,

and another third was in continual danger of pauperization.

The little town of Lourletaunier, in the Jura, was so pauperized

that when the Constituant Assembly introduced the electoral census,

from among 6,518 inhabitants,

only 728 could be listed as active citizens.

"Well-being for all on the basis of work"...

expresses the aspirations of the plebian fraternity of that time still much too precisely.

What they wanted, no one could tell,

until long after the fall of the Commune of 1792,

Babeuf gave the thing a precise form.

If the Commune, with its aspirations of fraternity,

came too early, Babeuf again came too late.

THE PEASANTS WILL RISE UP 1976

That the Egyptian people are rather inclined to endure oppression

is a myth

propagated by colonialism which the history of the Egyptian people refutes.

It is an uninterrupted epic of violent revolts of the working classes.

during the course of thousands of years.

In the resistance against Western colonizers

the urban masses and the rural masses

have taken turn ever since the French expedition led by Bonaparte:

revolts in Cairo,

armed peasant rebellions near Fowa...,

near Faraskur...,

near Manzala...;

numerous revolts in Upper Egypt.

When the French expedition withdraws and Mohammad Ali...

establishes a highly centralized regime,

peasant revolts multiply.

To the south of Qena an army of several thousand villagers arises

which overthrows the local representatives of power

and sets up a true popular government.

Put down by a military expedition,

the revolt begins again two years later,

a little more south ~ near Luxor,

and spreads rapidly as far as Esna in the south

and in the north as far as the gates of Qena.

Numerous battles are fought against the legal troops.

Remarkable victories are won.

And the ferocious repression which descends on the region

villages sacked, burned, entirely destroyed,

their inhabitants sometimes put to the sword

at first only reinforce the revolt.

But in the end the central power prevails and the rebels are massacred.

Hardly a year after another armed revolt takes place in the same region,

against conscription,

and at the same time and during the following 40 years, revolts break out

in lower Egypt and as far as the gates of Cairo

against conscription, against the unbearable taxes

and against the obligation to plant certain areas with rice

on behalf of the state,

even though labor power is lacking for the immediate needs of the peasants.

And a new revolt takes place in Upper Egypt and Minya.

against the feudal bondage of the corvée.

Ever since the very beginning of the reign of Ismail,

who opened Egypt to the English, by contracting an exorbitant national debt

thousands of soldiers, with heavy artillery will be necessary

to stifle a revolt to the south of Azur

against the corvée and against the obligation to work in the royal domains

for less than the usual miserable wages.

Several villages will be set on fire and hundreds of peasants deported.

And soon the central power loses its authority nearly everywhere.

The soldiers and the tax collectors are greeted with gunfire;

lots of armed peasants leave their villages, take refuge in the desert hills,

and harass the representatives of order;

jacqueries break out,.

particularly in the royal domains and those of the Turkish aristocracy.

In the army, officered by Turks and Circassians,

the patriots rise up,.

it will be the revolt of Ahmed Urabi.

crushed in Tell El Kebir by British intervention,

which turned into permanent occupation.

In 1919 it is the revolution against the British occupier.

The rural masses, disinherited and poor, are its principal force,

multiplying the sabotage of lines of communications

and organizing a great many clashes with the army of occupation.

And the revolutionary, democratic objectives are tied to the patriotic objectives:

embryonic forms of popular power come to light;

armed revolt breaks out against big landowners.

The workers, the unemployed,.

the students, the shopkeepers, the officials

find themselves side by side throughout the year

in the streets of Cairo and of most of the other big cities,

in violent demonstrations of an amplitude unknown until then.

The workers will pass on to specific forms of struggle:

occupation of factories and self defense against the forces of repression.

The repression will be completed by a gradual co-option

of the mass movements by means of formal concessions to the national dignity.

A constitutional monarchial regime is established

in which the reformist bourgeoisie will be able to play a second-rate role.

Great Britain no longer directly governs Egypt.

During the thirties, peasant misery,.

enlarged by the after-effects of the world crisis,

gives rise to a great many forms of violent resistance...

to the seizure of lands or to the collection of debt.

The peasants organize themselves

to surround the forces of order sent to the fort,

to isolate them by cutting the ways of communication and the telephone wires,

and burning their vehicles.

While in the big cities the patriotic movement begins again

against a British occupation

which shows itself as real as before the establishing of the constitutional regime.

New concessions will be granted by the British,

in exchange for new repression.

From 1945 on,

the national classes again revolting together,

will finally make impossible the British occupation

and the reign of the foreigners and the aristocrats

who governed in its name.

But it is the reformist petty-bourgeois forces sprung from the army

who took the initiative of the coup d'état of 1952.

Corruption has spread into the services of the State to such a point

that it has harmed Egypt's reputation, especially in affairs of the State.

We have no other goal than the good of the State.

For this reason we leave these problems to government,

So that our action conforms to the constitution and the people's interests.

I end these words by asking proud people

to maintain calm and serenity.

And to have confidence in the future and the people of the fatherland.

May each one do his duty completely, try first to correct himself,

and cooperate with us to end corruption

and straighten out everything that's taken place.

Likewise I ask them to unify their ranks to realise all that we wish

for the State's goals.

The Almighty said:.

"God doesn't change what's in people, unless people change what's in themselves."

God Almighty spoke true.

And God guarantees a good outcome.

And from 1955 to 1967

the mass movement would be dismantled and co-opted

by a new ruling caste inheriting all the vices of the old

and betraying the national dignity which had served its ascension.