Original subtitles

People living on alms at the time of the Revolutions

were numbered in the millions.

and the number of impoverished persons was greatest

in the provinces considered the most fertile,

because very few peasants owned land there.

In Brittany, in three villages in the district of Carhaix, things were thus:

Frerogan: 10 families well-off, 10 poor, 10 living by begging.

Montref: 47 families moderately well-off,

74 less so, 64 families of poor and daily workers.

Paule: 200 households to most of which the name beggar belongs by right.

In Argentr�, out of 2300 inhabitants who do not live by trade and industry,

more than half live in destitution, and more than 300 are reduced to begging.

In Bayeux in Normandy,

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

and of the 500 in Saint-Laurent parish, three-quarters.

The grievance book Marboeuf parish in the Eure

laments that out of 500 inhabitants of this parish, there are about 100 beggars.

In Vainville near Arles, of 130 families, 60 are impoverished.

From the grievance book of the bailiwick of Douai we learn

that of the 332 families in Bouvignies half live on alms.

In Aix, of 143 families, 65 are destitute.

In Landus, of 413 families, about 100 are totally destitute.

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

say that, for lack of work, a good third of them are beggars.

In the seneschal of Puy-en-Velay,

according to the notebooks of the local clergy,

out of 120,000 inhabitants, 58,897 are incapable of paying any tax whatsoever.

In the cities, it was no better.

In Paris, of 650,000 inhabitants, 118,784 are destitute.

In Lyon, there were 30,000 workers reduced to begging.

In Rennes, one third of the inhabitants lived on alms,

and another third were perpetually in danger of pauperization.

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

that when the Constituent Assembly established the electoral census,

out of 6518 inhabitants, only 728 were counted as active citizens.

"Well-being for all on the basis of work" expresses the aspirations of

the fraternity of common people of that time all too precisely.

What they wanted, no one could say,

until long after the fall of the Paris Commune of 1792,

when Babeuf expressed it in a precise form.

If the Commune, with its aspirations of fraternity, came too soon,

Babeuf for his part came too late.

THE PEASANTS WILL RISE UP

That the Egyptian people have a tendency to support oppression

is a myth propagated by colonialism

which the history of the Egyptian people refutes.

It is a continuous saga of violent revolts by working classes for thousands of years.

In response to Western colonizers

the urban and rural masses united against 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 withdrew

and Mohammad Ali established a highly centralized regime,

peasant revolts multiplied.

South of Qena rose up an army of thousands of villagers

which overthrew local representatives of state power

and set up a true popular government.

Put down by a military expedition,

the revolt beg again two years later a little more south still near Luxor,

and spread rapidly as far as Esna in the south

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

Numerous battles were fought against the legal troops.

Remarkable victories were won.

And the ferocious repression which descended on the region

- villages sacked, burned, entirely destroyed,

their inhabitants sometimes put to the sword -

at first only reinforced the revolt.

But in the end the central power prevailed and the rebels were massacred.

Hardly a year after, another armed rebellion took place in the same region,

against conscription, and at the same time

and during the next 40 years revolts broke 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, though labor power was lacking

to meet the immediate needs of the peasants.

And a new revolt took place in Upper Egypt

and Minya against the feudal bondage of the corv�e.

Ever since the beginning of the reign of Ismail, who opened Egypt to the English,

by contracting an exorbitant national debt,

thousands of soldiers with heavy artillery were needed

to extinguish a revolt to the south of Asyut

against the corv�e and the obligation to work in the royal domains

for less than the usual miserable wages.

Several villages were set on fire and hundreds of peasants deported.

And soon the central power lost its authority everywhere.

The soldiers and tax collectors were greeted with gunfire;

armed peasant groups left their villages and hid in desert hills,

and harassed representatives of order;

jacqueries broke out, particularly in the royal domains

and those of the Turkish aristocracy.

In the army, officered by Turks and Circassians,

the patriots rose up in the revolt of Ahmed Orabi,

crushed in Tel el-Kebir by British intervention which turned into permanent occupation.

In 1919 came the revolution against the British occupation.

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

multiplying the sabotage of lines of communication

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 came to light;

armed revolts broke out against the big landowners.

Workers, unemployed, students, shopkeepers, civil servants

found themselves side by side all year long in the streets of Cairo

and of most of the other big cities,

in violent demonstrations of an amplitude unknown until then.

The workers went on to engage in specific forms of struggle:

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

The repression would be completed by a gradual co-option of the

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

A constitutional monarchy was established

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

Great Britain no longer directly governed Egypt.

During the thirties, peasant misery,

enlarged by the after-effects of the world crisis,

gave rise to a great many forms of

violent resistance to seizure of lands or collection of debt.

The peasants organized to surround the forces of order sent to their areas,

to isolate them by cutting ways of communication

and telephone wires, and burning their vehicles.

Meanwhile in the big cities the patriotic movement began again

against a British occupation which showed itself as real as

before the establishment of the constitutional regime.

New concessions were granted by the British, in exchange for new repression.

From 1945 on, the national classes again revolting together

finally made impossible the British occupation

and the reign of foreigners and aristocrats who governed in its name.

But it was the reformist petty-bourgeois forces

sprung from the army who took the initiative of the coup d'�tat of 1952.

Corruption ruled in all areas of the state, to Egypt's shame.

The State has only one goal: the country's well-being.

Therefore we leave these problems to government,

with which our behavior and the interest of the people correspond.

Finally I ask the proud people,

to keep peace and trust in the future and the patriots.

May everyone fulfill their obligations and try to reform themselves.

May we may work together, to eliminate corruption

and straighten out everything which is bent

I call for unity by which the State's mission can be realised.

The Almighty said:

"God changes no people, unless that people change itself."

He spoke true, the great God.

It is God who leads us to good.

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.