Toppling a dictatorship takes great courage and solidarity. But replacing it with something materially better can take a lot more than that – political organization, skill, patience and discipline.

That is evident today in Egypt. Dropping Mubarak was in many ways an act of collective heroism, but we should not be altogether surprised to see the fruits of that struggle now falling into jeopardy.

Under Mubarak, there were only two viable political institutions in Egypt: the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. All other mass political parties and movements had been successfully suppressed. When the dictatorship fell, the Muslim Brotherhood easily won the ensuing election, essentially by default. Politics abhors a vacuum, and the secular-democratic forces were unorganized and fragmented.

Not surprisingly, the Brotherhood’s Morsi government fell far short of the expectations of most of the people. They had nothing to offer in the face of the disintegrating economy and their program was far out of line with the democratic impulse which removed Mubarak from power.

But until other viable mass political formations come into play, with viable strategies and means to assume and exercise power, there is no other real alternative than the re-establishment of the military dictatorship. Egypt has now come full circle, except that at this point, the army is murdering supporters of the Brotherhood, rather than the elements who predominated in Tahrir Square two years ago.

At least from the North American vantage point, subject to all the filtering of the information we receive, there is no sign that the kind of capably-led organized political force is yet being built that is required to create a democratic state in Egypt.

This might work for the U.S., and for its ally Israel, but it cannot work for democracy.