Initial thoughts on the Egyptian paradox
It is a puzzle for everybody with revolutionary and democratic instincts what to think about the Egyptian coup, says Sophie Katz. It is not of course a problem for Britain’s popular ‘commentariat’ who trumpet their clichés about everybody else’s failure to abide by the rule of law and shamefully remind their readers of the horrors of Pinochet (a coup that large parts of the British media and a British PM supported.) And they are silent about the coup that the British manufactured in Egypt in the not so distant days of Empire.
Leave aside the hypocrites. The whole of the left across Europe is certainly puzzled and uneasy about events in Egypt. Should they support the Muslim Brotherhood’s claims of democratic legitimacy, or see their military overthrow, that stems from a multi-million mass movement in support of a more radical Egypt, as a progressive act?
The left in Egypt is the best source for all of our understandings of this ridiculously ‘post modern’ tangle of apparent contradictions. However it is possible, even from a distance, to sketch some preliminary definitions of, what is, a significant new stage in the unfolding of the Egyptian revolution.
Marx’s ’The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon’, his history of Napoleon’s offspring who came to power in France at the head of a coup in 1851, includes the following words about what the coup meant; he wrote that the events; “demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.” The head of the Egyptian army, ” Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, certainly fits the profile as a mediocrity. But does he play a hero’s role?
The Egyptian army mostly owns Sharm el-Sheikh, the south Egyptian resort. Like the Iranian army who own large parts of the their country’s assets, the Egyptian generals have also become very wealthy by squirreling away $ billions from the US annual subsidy they receive of $1.5 billion each year for having signed up to the treaty with Israel at Camp David. They own and control swathes of the Egyptian economy – including large sectors of the tourist industry. They are literally beholden to the US. In the past they followed their international masters dictates. The unfolding social revolution in the country has given them a new independence. They are a section, an enormously powerful section, of the Egyptian ruling class. They have acted to change a government. This has topped off the latest political revolution.
Trotsky used the term ‘Political Revolution’ when he described what he thought should be done about the crystalised Soviet bureaucracy in the late 1930s. He was for the defence of social and state property, the product of the social revolution, but he was for the overthrow of the bureaucracy who he believed had stolen the leadership of society from the working class and its allies. It could be argued that the French events in 1968 produced a political revolution and dismissed Gaullism, creating the basis for the modernisation of the country. Similar views could be taken regarding the overthrow of Salazar in Portugal and the Franco regime in Spain. In other words a political revolution is the overthrow of one section of the ruling class by another using revolutionary means. (In the USSR Trotsky argued, the bureaucracy was a parasitic section of the working class.)
In Egypt a social revolution is unfolding. Inevitably it will produce political revolutions that spin off this great movement as different sections of the ruling class try to find the best way to defend their interests in the face of this tidal wave. The revolution brought down the first approximation of a leadership that had traditionally stood against the old authoritarianism, the Muslim brotherhood. Millions of peasants, small property owners and the dispossessed voted for the only organisation with some sort of history of resistance to the misery of a society ruled by corruption and the secret police. This first approximation of a new society was ‘used up’ within a year. That is the nature of all revolutions. As yet no new leadership has emerged for those – in their millions – who demand a new society and, as always in revolutions, the cities lead the country, the most progressive sectors lead the least.
So, for a moment, the army stands in for progress, for change, for the future. Of course, it stands for none of things. And in the end the army’s wealth and power will need to be defeated for the revolution to win.
The British Chartists stood for annual Parliaments. That was one sign of their revolutionary character. In other words democratic institutions of government are only fully realised when they respond to the movement of the people who they are supposed to represent. The US Constitution’s right to bare arms is the product of a successful war of independence and a civil war. Albeit turned into its perverse opposite today, that right was a signal to all US governments and to all leaders that the sovereignty laid with the people as a whole. And so it is with a revolution. Egypt’s future still lies in the momentum of the masses. What this latest political revolution reveals is that the leadership of the cities in this revolution desperately needs to create a common programme with all the sections of plebeian Egyptian society; just as the Russian workers allied themselves to the peasant revolt and the upsurge in the army In 1917 in order to win their revolution.
In the west socialist must learn from the revolutionaries and leftists from the streets of Cairo. They are now among the most politically sophisticated people on earth. Everything we write and say should be tested against their experience. Our main role is to learn and support.
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6 responses to “Initial thoughts on the Egyptian paradox”
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An interesting article. Quite correctly it dismisses the shibbolith of “bourgeois democratic processes” in the specific revolutionary Egyptian situation. Bourgeois democracy is a very, very important safeguard for the rights of the working class and its allies to organise within capitalist society. We must never forget thast, or belittle its importance – compared to fascism, or indeed , Stalinism. But it is also of course a deeply flawed system of government – heavily weighted towards the owners of the mass media – and the rich generally. One only needs to look at the way, through direct and indirect bribery,and the unrelenting pressure of the capitalist press, the Labour party has been “bought outright” to entirely serve the interests of the superrich over the last few decades .
Today in Egypt the revolutionery process has moved way beyond the restricting boundaries of Bourgeois democracy – only a year after Bourgeois democracy apparently triumphed with the overthrow of Mubarak ! In basic time terms alone, the rapidly changing consciousness/awareness of the dispossessed, and the resulting shifting class alliances as the struggle develops, moves far too fast to be captured by a periodic “bourgeois democratic” electoral process. After the first phase of the revolution which overthrew Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood, after many decades of charity work and organisation within the urban and rural poor, and growing alliances with the more fundamentalist Muslim sections of the Egyptian capitalist class, was well placed organisationally to dominate the presidential and parliamentary elections – and did so , against a deeply divided opposition. Quickly the social, economic and political conservatism of the Muslim Brotherhood (imposing IMF Austerity on the nation – causing huge increases in basic living costs, and its blatant fundamentalist authoritarianism), caused it to expose its essentially pro-capitalist, reactionary nature, to masses of Egyptians. Hence this “second revolution” in which the active participation of millions of Egyptians, from a wide and often contradictory set of class positions, faced the still entrenched military establishment with the need to “head off” the new revolutionary wave by overthrowing Morsi and the Brotherhood.
We need to recognise both the cynical opportunism of the military’s actions, but also that it was not a “Chile style” military coup. The military were NOT the “initiating drivers” in the process – but responding to the ever rising revolutionery struggle on the streets. In other words, the old order could no longer go on in the old way – but the new society is still to be born.
It is of immense benefit to the still growing mass struggle, that through its arrogance and incompetence Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have now found themselves on the opposite side to the opportunist military establishment – because if ever an organisation had the potential, via its deep roots in the urban and rural Lumpen poor, combined with its overriding social and political conservatism, to perform the same function in destroying the Left and the working class, as fascism played in the 20’s and 30’s in Europe, it is the Muslim Brotherhood.
The fundamental demands of the Egyptian masses – for a better economic deal – requiring a massive redistribution of wealth and power in Egypt, of course remains unfulfilled . Yet this is the key issue behind both the revolt against Mubarak, and the revolt against Morsi and the Brotherhood. The next phase of the struggle , with the issue of basic economic reform now out in the open as key demands of the popular movement, is likely to quickly fracture the current alliance between the dispossessed masses and the various “liberal” bourgeois factions pretty quickly. There are now some real similarities with the shambolic revolutionary period in Russia in 1917 with the shortlived Kerensky regime. As in Russia, Bourgeois Liberalism is incapable of pushing the fundamental economic and power contradictions to a conclusion which meets the demands of the impoverished masses for radical wealth redistribution, to a satisfactory conclusion. In Russia in 1917 there was a well organised and socially embedded Bolshevik Party to push the revolutionary process to a (temporary) revolutionary conclusion. In Egypt the various factions of the Left are growing fast, but are very small in terms of the revolutionary needs of the time. The next phase of the revolutionery process in Egypt is likely to be very bloody indeed, and failure to maintain the current revolutionary wave will result in a catastrophic capitalist backlash to reinstall a military/capitalist dictatorship – with bourgeois democracy put away in the “toolkit of bourgeois capitalist control mechanisms” for a long long time. The separation of the reactionary street army of the Brotherhood from the “deep state” forces of the military/capitalist ruling class will make this reactionary outcome much harder to achieve.
“As yet no new leadership has emerged for those – in their millions – who demand a new society and, as always in revolutions, the cities lead the country, the most progressive sectors lead the least.”
I am unqualified to discuss the Egyptian Revolution, however the above statement is a false historical generalisation – (sections of) the peasantry have during many modern revolutions played a decisive, sometimes leading, truly revolutionary role. Sophie’s statement exemplifies the old Enlightenment, anti-rural, scientific ‘progressive’, socialist vanguardism that I would have hoped would by now have had its day.
Instead of painting a black and white stereotype of regressive, reactionary and superstitious peasants versus a progressive and revolutionary urban working class and allied intellectuals, it would be far more helpful to try understand and disaggregate the situation and interests of the urban and rural productive classes in order to develop an effective radical political strategy and new political economy.
As socialists many of us really need to begin questioning the enormously influential and largely subconscious conceptions of what constitutes the good society. Politically we remain locked into a shiny modernist paradigm based on ‘progressive’, teleological narratives that we share very closely with bourgeois liberalism at the same time that this paradigm is falling apart and mutating towards barbarism and totalitarianism. If we do not get rid of these assumptions we will be unable to develop a viable alternative.
Far too “coded” and euphemistic a “critique” of Sophie’s excellent analysis for me, Neil . What on earth do you really mean by:
“As socialists many of us really need to begin questioning the enormously influential and largely subconscious conceptions of what constitutes the good society. Politically we remain locked into a shiny modernist paradigm based on ‘progressive’, teleological narratives that we share very closely with bourgeois liberalism” ?
Now for me, as a socialist, “the good society” is one in which the abundant and increasing output and resources of the industrial modern society are equitably distributed and used to benefit the greatest number of citizens , on the basis of need, not want or privileged entitlement. A society in which the majority rules, but the rights and freedoms of minorities are recognised and protected. A society in which the rule of collectively determined laws safeguard civil liberties for all. A society where genuine mass participative democracy has real meaning.
But what do YOU mean, Neil ? Are you one of those “permanent anti-growth austerity Greens” who thinks the future has to be one of permanent rationing and austerity for all ? Can’t see THAT idea mobilising the majority of have-nots to take on the current grossly unequal capitalist status quo. Or the middle classes either – once they realise permanent austerity and anti growth politics would actually impact negatively on their comfortable lives too !
By the way, peasants can indeed participate in major revolutionery movements,and indeed have done – often — but their fundamentally individualist work and life experience means that , unlike the modern industrial working class, peasant revolutions ALWAYS end up being hijacked by well-organised elites, whether bourgeois ones (Mexican Revolution) or bureaucratic Party-based Stalinist/Maoist ones (China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, etc).
“Now for me, as a socialist, “the good society” is one in which the abundant and increasing output and resources of the industrial modern society …”
I’m sorry to say John but I think you and Sophie are living in the past. I know this is getting a bit off topic from the Egyptian situation but since you ask … When I consider the resource constraints, ticking population time bomb, environmental problems, and tendencies within capitalism I do predict we will see the end of growth within a generation and a continuation of haltering, low-level, and highly unevenly distributed growth until then *regardless what you, me, the ‘have-nots’, and ‘middle classes’ think or want*. The Left can try resist this but it would be doomed, and in my opinion won’t do anything to get us out of this mess. By the way have you ever considered how much your personal consumption would have to be cut in order for there to be an equitable distribution and utilisation of the ‘output and resources of the industrial modern society’ globally? Or do you believe that the global have-nots are going to close the gap while western consumption continues to rise? It’s not going to happen!
The socialist left is sooner or later going to have to come to terms with ecological limits and develop a form of socialism that is not dependent on growth but a transition to ‘degrowth’. In that way it will be going with the natural flow and eventually that will reap benefits. I have scoured Left Unity articles and comment almost in vain looking for a glimmer of environmental sense. It hardly exists.
By the way, the absence of growth is not the same thing as ‘austerity’- and I would hope that we could stop conflating the two: austerity is a combination of policies to reduce the budget deficit which reinforces the reduction in earnings and the social wage. Degrowth is conducive to greater equality and individual and social freedom. It does not have to mean rationing and wearing a hairshirt – though if we continue in the present direction that will be – at best – what we end up with.
Lastly, you state that peasants ‘fundamentally individualist work and life experience means that, unlike the modern industrial working class, peasant revolutions ALWAYS end up being hijacked by well-organised elites whether bourgeois ones … or bureaucratic Party-based Stalinist/Maoist ones’. Excuse me asking – if that’s the fate of peasant revolutions, and the revolutionary consciousness of the urban industrial WC is superior, pray point me to the substantive evidence?
Exactly Neil. Add to that the C21st phenomena of ‘leaderless’ revolutions, new technology (making communication between people in the same, different and international groups infinitely quicker and broader – OK not necessarily deeper, but time will tell), alliances between incongruous groups/class strata (basically ‘people’!) and roles for a much broader cross-section of society than just the most desperate/least-to-loose – check Brasil, in a totally different situation, but with similar phenomena, at least superficially; and you have a very new situation that cannot be reduced in the ‘all-roads-inevitably-lead-to-Trotsky/Russianrev scenario’ way Sophie and John do above. (Wow, sorry what a sentence).
The question is, in this new context, what forms solidarity and internationalism can take, when it is so fast-moving and massive. I would hazard a guess that a ‘peace’ approach would be the best place to start: ban the arms trade, end economic and other support to Egypt and similar states; a cultural offensive in support of the revolution: Arabic dancer friends of mine are very active in this area!
There are no resource constraints , no population time bomb , you aint no socialist kiddo