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Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Egypt

BRECHT DE SMET

ABSTRACT:


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AT THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY of the Egyptian Revolution of January 11,

2011, labor historian Joel Beinin provocatively posited that: The January 25

Revolution is not over. Rather, it has not yet occurred (Beinin, 2013). He argued

that the popular uprising had been swiftly outmaneuvered by the Supreme Council

of Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood. The state apparatus

remained largely intact, and there was no fundamental change in the political and

economic relations of power. Beinin refrained from categorizing the January 25

insurrection as a revolution because its outcomes appeared all but transformative.

This consequentialist historical perspective echoed Theda Skocpols classical

definition of a revolution as a process that not only entailed class-based revolts from

below, but also rapid, basic transformations of a societys state and class structures

(Skocpol, 1979, 5). Thus, a particular outcome of the revolutionary process is turned

into a primary determinant of its categorization as a revolution. This means, on the

one hand, that a process can only be discerned as a revolution post factum, and, on

the other, that the notion of a failed revolution becomes problematic, since its success

SS the conquest, break-up, and transformation of state power (cf. Lenin, 1976) SS

becomes a precondition of its definition. In the case of Egypt, this would imply that

the successes of the counter-revolution are evidence that there is no genuine

revolution unfolding.

However, it was not social scientists who first defined the Tunisian and

Egyptian uprisings as a revolution, but the protagonists themselves. As a concept


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it emerged spontaneously from the ranks of the protesters who tried to make sense

of their own collective and collaborative mass activity. Shifting the focus of analysis

from outcomes to agencies, the substance of revolution appears as: the forcible

entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny (Trotsky,

2001, 17S18). This subject-centered concept of revolution places the punctuated and

non-linear development of subaltern self-determination, self-consciousness, and self-

organization at the heart of its analysis.

From the perspective of the subaltern classes, revolution is the process through

which they (attempt to) reconfigure the existing historical bloc1 to their advantage.

The January 25 insurrection thus constituted an explosive and salient moment within

a protracted, molecular process of economic strikes and political protests that

stretched back to the early 2000s (ZDB, 2012). Conversely, the dynamic of counter-

revolution is shaped by agents whose practices, strategies, and discourses aim to

protect and consolidate the status quo.

Despite the conceptual clarity of these ideal-typical struggles, the actual

processes of revolution and counter-revolution are intersected, on the one hand, by

hegemonic2 relations between ruling and subaltern groups, and, on the other, by

1 Gramscis concept of historical bloc has two dimensions. First, it points to

a vertical coherent ensemble of political and economic forces. Second, it

represents a horizontal alliance of classes and groups under the umbrella of

a national-popular will (Morton, 2007, 96S97).

2 Whereas for Lenin the notion of hegemony served as a category in the analysis


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political fights internal to these factions. By itself, the simple dichotomy between

revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces cannot function as a complete

analytical framework to understand the complex patchwork of political projects and

alliances in Egypt today. In order to understand the unfolding process of post-

insurrectionary transformation in Egypt, it is necessary to grasp precisely why certain

political powers are able to exert leadership over the masses.

Drawing on a Gramscian framework, I explore the historical lineages of the

military soft coup that deflected the spontaneous uprising of January 25. Gramscis

concepts of passive revolution, Caesarism, and transformism offer

interpretative instruments for an understanding of the current process as neither a

victorious revolution, nor a triumphant restoration.

of proletarian strategy (Morton, 2007, 88), for Gramsci it became a key

concept in the theory of state formation. The historical development of the

modern, bourgeois integral state contained the internal differentiation of

civil and political society. The class rule of the bourgeoisie was based on both

domination and hegemony. Whereas domination is naked and top-

down class rule, whereby the ruled is the passive object of the integral state,

hegemony is the active consent to the ruling classs leadership because of its

prestige, its directive capacities, its cultural aura, its ability to manage

society and resolve societal problems, etc. For the bourgeoisie, hegemony was

the capacity to present itself as a progressive and leading force in society and

to represent its own particular interests as the general good.


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The Nasserist Lineage

On Thursday, February 10, 2011, for the first time since the beginning of the

January 25 protests, the military emerged as an explicitly autonomous participant

in the revolutionary process through the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF),

which consisted of the Defense Minister, the Chief of Staff, and other high-ranked

officers of all military services, districts, and departments (Kandil, 2011). The mere

fact that the SCAF convened independently from the president was proof that a

silent coup was taking place. CNN quoted an anonymous senior Egyptian official:

Its not a coup, its a consensus (Guardian, 2011b) SS a growing consensus among

Egypts capitalist class fractions and foreign allies, such as the USA, that Mubaraks

days were numbered and that the military was the only stable sphere of the state

apparatus able to contain the revolutionary flood (cf. Amar, 2011; Shenker, 2011).

Curiously, despite the critical attitude of organized activists vis--vis the role

of the Armed Forces, the broad masses cautiously welcomed the intervention of the

military, embracing and kissing soldiers and conscripts, giving them flowers, food,

and drink, talking and discussing with them, and demanding that our brothers in

the national armed forces clearly define their stance by either lining up with the real

legitimacy provided by millions of Egyptians on strike on the streets, or standing in

the camp of the regime that has killed our people, terrorized them and stole from

them (Guardian, 2011a). Opposition figures such as el-Baradei called upon the army

to save the country now or it will explode (Guardian, 2011c).


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These interpellations of the Armed Forces as a potential revolutionary ally for

the masses were not only the product of a simple naivete towards the real interests

of the military, or, conversely, a calculated pragmatism not to confront the armed

bodies of the state; they also represented deeply entrenched historical expectations

of the army as a national and popular force for change. This lineage was firmly

rooted in the Nasserist experience of the 1950s and 1960s, which still resonates in

contemporary Egyptian politics.3 Fragments of Nasserist ideology were still

entrenched within popular common-sense notions about social justice, relations

between state and economy, and anti-imperialism. For many Egyptian workers

and farmers, the historical figure of Gamal Abd al-Nasser remained an icon of

liberation because of his domestic redistributive and social welfare politics and his

prestigious role in the non-aligned movement.

In the eyes of leftist political activists and intellectuals, however, the Nasserist

heritage was much more ambiguous. The novelist Alaa al-Aswany offered an

intuitive glimpse of the contradictions that operated at the core of the Nasserist

3 For example, in the post-Mubarak presidential elections of May 23 and 24,

2012, Hamdeen Sabahi, leader of the neo-Nasserist al-Karama (Dignity)

party, surprisingly came in third, with 20.72% of the votes, after Muhammad

Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq (Ahramonline, 2012). In militant Alexandria,

Sabahi even won the first round with 34% (Ali, 2012). Sabahis popularity

among Egypts working classes was only partially derived from his implacable

opposition toward the Mubarak regime from the 1970s onward, and his

humble background as a fisherman (Ibrahim, 2012).


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project:

I do not think it was a coup, rather a coup supported by a real

revolution. Nasser was a great leader and he did very positive things for

Egypt. . . . many Egyptians had, for the first time, the opportunity to

enjoy a good education, health care, food, because of Nassers

revolution. . . . But also we shouldnt forget that the current dictatorship

and regime is based on Nasser. Everything: the security state, the

control system, the elections . . . everything is based on this regime. The

irony is that he established a dictatorship while he didnt need it.

Nasser was supported to the extent that in any free elections he would

have easily gained a majority. That was not the case with the presidents

who came after him. He was the one who built the dictatorship

machine. And the problem with this machine is that everyone can use

it. Everything is ready for the dictatorship, the security, the torture. If

you are in the driving seat you just push the button and the regime willkeep on running. (Personal communication with Alaa al-Aswany,

November 26, 2010.)

Despite the 1919 anti-colonial popular uprising, the emergence of militant trade

unions from the 1920s onward, and huge movements of students and workers after

World War II, it was the Nasserist episode that consolidated a particular, and

arguably distorted, concept of revolution, which was understood as a particular

process of radical decolonization, economic and political modernization, social

justice, and nation building in Egypt and the Arab world. Already in the 1960s and


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1970s academic narratives of Nasserism, the military was presented as a relatively

progressive, transformative force (cf. Hurewitz, 1969; Vatikiotis, 1972). In

contradistinction to the conservative ruling elites, which were tied to the interests of

foreign colonial capital and domestic landed property, the military and its leading

petty-bourgeois stratum in particular (cf. Halpern, 1963) appeared as a modern and

national political agent that acted as a substitute for the absent archetypical

bourgeoisie. From the 1970s onward, the developmental and democratic failures of

the Arab socialist states provoked a critique of these perspectives (Picard, 1990,

198S9). Some of these analyses even rejected the transformative capacity of the

military, regarding the nationalist coups as forms of premodern continuity rather

than modernist change (cf. Perlmutter, 1974). Others recognized the (failed)

modernization efforts of the regime, but denied any revolutionary character of the

military dictatorship, citing its violent and authoritarian politics vis--vis workers

and farmers (Beinin, 2013).

In order to understand these contradictions, authors operating within a

Gramscian tradition have categorized the Nasserist intervention as a form of passive

revolution (e.g., Cox, 1987, 210; al-Shakry, 2011). However, as I argue below, this

regime label creates more problems than it solves: by itself, it cannot explain in a

satisfactory manner the complex interdependency between popular masses and state

elites, nor the transformative shift from Nasser to Sadat and Mubarak. Thus

Gramscis notion of Caesarism appears as an additional, yet indispensable,


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conceptual tool to understand the contemporary dialectic between subaltern actors

and ruling groups.

Passive Revolution

The term passive revolution was first deployed by Gramsci to understand the

Risorgimento as a process of revolutionizing, but non-revolutionary formation of a

modern Italian state (Thomas, 2009, 146). Italys road to modernity differed from

the archetypical trajectory of France, in which the bourgeoisie led the popular masses

to a revolutionary overthrow of Ancien Rgime forces. First, the Italian

modernization and state formation process was molecular and gradual, instead of

consisting of explosive ruptures. Small reforms and concessions deferred or

deflected far-reaching structural transformations (Gramsci, 1971, 109). Second, the

old ruling classes were not removed from power, but renegotiated positions of

governance within the newly emerging political and economic relations (Sassoon,

1982, 132). In addition, the moderate modernizers, such as Cavour, were able to

absorb the radical vanguard, personified in Garibaldi and Mazzini, into their own

ranks. Gramsci denoted this process by the term transformism (Gramsci, 1971,

58S

59). Third, Italys modernization was based on a weak, limited, or restricted

hegemony. Whereas hegemony presupposes coercion as one of the extensions of its

substance as class direction, the reverse holds true for passive revolution, where

political leadership is peripheral to its primary determination of domination


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(Gramsci, 1971, 59). The moderates did not exercise leadership as the bourgeoisie

over the other classes, but as a class fraction they dominated the Italian bourgeoisie

as a whole. By leaning on the state apparatus, the moderates solved the riddle of

class leadership in a bureaucratic and technocratic way (Gramsci, 1971, 104S6).

Fourth, Gramsci understood the self-consciousnessSSor lack thereofSSof the actors

involved as an important determinant of the capacity for passive revolution. A

fundamental reason why the Italian moderates succeeded in absorbing the radicals

was that whereas Cavour was aware of his role (at least up to a certain point) in as

much as he understood the role of Mazzini, the latter does not seem to have been

aware either of his own or of Cavour's. . . (Gramsci, 1971, 108). Passive revolution

is then possible when (a particular fraction of) the ruling class has a deeper self-

awareness of its historical role than its antagonists.

Gramsci expanded passive revolution as a criterion to cases of state formation

beyond Italy, . . . to those countries that modernize the state through a series of

reforms or national wars without undergoing a political revolution of a radical

Jacobin-type (Gramsci, 1996, 232). Passive revolution characterized the process of

capitalist transition after the failed revolutions of 1848, when the revolutionary

optimism and radical Jacobinism of the bourgeoisie was shattered by the uprisings

of the subaltern classes that had once consented to its rule. The revolts revealed the

particular interests behind the bourgeoisies universal political project, but the

subaltern subjects were unable to forge a hegemony of their own, leaving the ruling


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classes in power. Passive revolution was thus understood as the cynical mode of

governance of a class, whose rule was not based on a rousing ethico-political project

or universal liberation myth, but on the disorganization and fragmentation of its

oppositional forces.

Gramsci also indicated that the concept of passive revolution was useful for the

interpretation of the political economy of capitalist restructuring (Buci-Glucksman,

1979, 222)SS indeed, of every epoch characterized by complex historical upheavals

(Gramsci, 1971, 114). In his writings on Americanism and Fordism, the Italian

Marxist discussed the gradual yet total restructuring of the capitalist social formation

as a passive revolution aimed at fighting the falling rate of profit (Gramsci, 1971,

279S280). At this point, the meaning of passive revolution is almost interchangeable

with that of reformism (Forgacs, 2000, 428). Italian Fascism also incorporated an

aspect of passive revolution as it offered an answer to the problematic, particular to

Italy, of both capitalist restructuring and transition by expanding and reinforcing the

direct role of the state in the process of surplus extraction. From a criterion of

interpretation of the historicalSparticular process of Italian state formation, the

concept of passive revolution came to denote the methodology of restructuring

political and economic relations within a historical and global framework of capitalist

crisis (Morton, 2007, 71) SS the reconstitution by elites of what Gramsci called a

historical bloc.


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The Nasserist CoupSRevolution

As Omnia al-Shakry (2011) indicated, the Nasserist episode shared many

similarities with Gramscis notion of passive revolution. From a birds-eye

perspective, Egypts colonial and semi-colonial historical bloc had been in crisis since

the mass revolts of 1919. Throughout the three decades following Egypts formal

independence, the indigenous industrial bourgeoisie was not able to develop itself

as a coherent class-for-itself, but it remained a fragmented, amorphous collection of

economic actors, subjugated to domestic landlords and international capital groups,

and thus incapable of leading an anti-imperialist hegemonic bloc (Clawson, 1978, 21;

Farah, 2009, 31). Up to 1952 strikes, protests, riots, and revolts SS especially by

workers and students SS destabilized and disorganized central state power. The

development towards revolution from below was deflected (Marfleet, 2011; cf. Cliff,

1963) by the coup of the Free Officers on July 23, 1952, which initiated an

authoritarian transformation from above.

Nasserism quickly revealed itself as a particular elite methodology of

politicalSeconomic transition towards capitalist modernity. As the main predicament

for the nations development was grasped as the twin evils of imperialism and

feudalism, the military clique sought to create a new historical bloc that subjugated

these social and political forces to their rule through industrialization and full

sovereignty. At first, the Nasserist state saw its role merely as the midwife of

spontaneous industrial development by private capital groups (Beinin, 1989, 73;


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Johnson, 1973, 4). However, the domestic and foreign industrial capitalists that were

courted by the state proved to be fickle allies for economic development, which led

to an expansion of the state into the domain of industrial accumulation. The Socialist

Decrees of 1961 nationalized, in one stroke, large-scale industry, banking, insurance,

foreign trade, utilities, marine transport, airlines, many hotels and department

stores. The public sector became the dominant industrial producer and investor

(Aoude, 1994).

In order to subsume the population under its modernizing project, the state

had to create the terrain of a modern civil society in the shape of mass trade unions,

professional syndicates, public companies, universities and schools, women, youth,

and children organizations, cultural clubs, peasant associations, etc., which drew, for

the first time in Egypts history, the majority of the population into the activity of

mass civil institutions. However, the Nasserist state regarded these structures rather

as instruments of popular mobilization than participation (Bayat, 1993, 66). The

people was conceptualized as a passive source of legitimacy, instead of an active,

self-determining force. The process of politicalSeconomic transformation was

supported by transformist politics and coercive consent. At first, the Nasserist state

tried to absorb industrial capitalists into its emerging bloc. The reluctance of

domestic entrepreneurs and Western financial actors to invest in the states

industrialization schemes stimulated the socialist turn of the regime. Nasserism

proved more successful in absorbing subaltern groups and the communist opposition


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through subsequent waves of coercion and integration. Farmers were integrated

through land reforms, but their own spontaneous occupations of landed property

were violently suppressed (Marfleet, 2011). Mass education and guaranteed state

employment granted working-class graduates a stable future. Nasserist domination

over the workers movement was secured by a combination of unilateral and far-

reaching social reforms, high wages, repression of leftist activists and intellectuals,

and state-led corporatism (al-Shakry, 2011). Strikes and independent worker actions

were prohibited, but, from 1957 onward, proletarian bargaining power was secured

by the state-controlled General Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions (GFETU)

(Bayat, 1993, 68). The radicalization of economic policies in the 1960s and the

rapprochement with the Soviet Union stimulated the integration of leftists as loyal

personnel into the state apparatus SS e.g., expressed in the formation of the Arab

Socialist Union (ASU) in 1962 and the Egyptian Socialist Youth as a Marxist cadre

school in 1965 (Johnson, 1973, 4). When in 1964 communist prisoners were released,

the two biggest communist organizations voluntarily dissolved themselves into the

ASU (BL, 1987, 583-4). The Egyptian Left struggled to grasp the class nature of the

Free Officers and their societal transformations. The failure to understand this false

friend stimulated both opportunist and sectarian politics vis--vis the Nasserist

project, which expanded the capacity of the state to absorb the fragmented leftist

opposition.

This sketchy narrative seems to confirm the interpretation of Nasserism as an


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of the Nasserist state to lead the nation and defend the common good was of central

importance to the continuation of military rule.

Moreover, the mass movements that disorganized state power in the run-up

to the 1952 coup constituted both a springboard and an obstacle for the Free Officers.

By leaning on the spontaneous uprising and the trade unions, they were able to

hijack the movement in order to conquer state power for themselves, but the

mobilization of workers, students, farmers, and lower-middle-class groups also

generated a historical debt to these subaltern forces. Thus, the absorption of

subaltern actors into the Nasserist integral state was not only the result of regime

policies, but the negotiated outcome of an enduring political and economic struggle.

In other words, the interpretation of Nasserism as a passive revolution

successfully reveals the contours of its substance as an authoritarian project of

modernization, but it conceals the historical social and political relations that

determined its populist and even socialistic character. In order to understand

Nasserism as a revolutionSrestoration initiated from above, but supported from

below, Gramscis concept of passive revolution has to be complemented by his notion

of Caesarism.

Caesarism

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx (2009) discussed a

situation of societal crisis in which a state or state-faction bereaves the ruling classes


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of its direct and formal political power. The state appears to balance between the

classes and gains a level of autonomy vis--vis its constituent class. However, it still

articulates the interests of the ruling class and acts as its diligent guardian. Gramsci

elaborated upon the concept of Bonapartism through his concept of Caesarism,

which can be said to express a situation in which the forces in conflict balance each

other in a catastrophic manner; that is to say, they balance each other in such a way

that continuation of the conflict can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction

(Gramsci, 1971, 219). The stalemate is solved by the intervention of a third force

. . . from outside, subjugating what is left. . . (Gramsci, 1971, 219).

To the common interpretation of Bonapartism as an essentially right-wing

phenomenon, Gramsci added that there were progressive and reactionary forms:

Caesarism is progressive when its intervention helps the progressive

force to triumph, albeit with its victory tempered by certain

compromises and limitations. It is reactionary when its intervention

helps the reactionary force to triumph SS in this case too with certain

compromises and limitations, which have, however, a different value,

extent, and significance than in the former. (Gramsci, 1971, 219.)

Moreover, the Italian Marxist distinguished between the classic, military form of

Caesarism in nations without a fully developed civil and political society, and the

modern type that can be brought about by the financial and political power of small

groups or individuals (Gramsci, 1971, 220). Finally, he discussed the difference


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between quantitative and qualitative Caesarism. Whereas qualitative Caesarism

changed and developed the form of the state, its quantitative variant was content

with a mere continuation of existing state practices (Gramsci, 1971, 222).

In Gramscis writings, the conceptual relation between Caesarism and passive

revolution is not immediately clear. Robert Cox, for example, understood Caesarism

as the instrumentality of passive revolution (Cox, 1987, 192). Because of its

populist character, he labeled Nasserism as a radical Caesarism (Cox, 1987, 243).

However, Coxs intellectual deployment of the concepts of passive revolution and

Caesarism established a typology of state forms, while Gramsci stressed that these

categories were, respectively, a criterion of interpretation (Gramsci, 1971, 114) and

a a generic hypothesis, a sociological schema (Gramsci, 1971, 221). Whereas the

notion of passive revolution draws attention to the contradictory unity of reform and

restoration in the capitalist age, Caesarism highlights the direction, pace, and class

nature of the process.

In Egypt, factions of the military constituted a semi-independent, external

social force, which was able to solve the protracted and undecided power struggle

between the nationalSpopular forces and the semi-colonial ruling bloc of landlords,

the Palace, and British capital. Nasserist Caesarism was relatively progressive,

because the Free Officers took the side of the popular masses against feudalist and

imperialist forces. Although the Free Officers had delivered the death blow to the old

semi-colonial bloc by using military force, they did not base their rule solely on


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coercion. Similar to the French bourgeois state that emerged triumphantly from the

revolution of 1789, the Nasserist project contained an ethico-political dimension,

which mobilized and inspired the masses. This progressive aspect did not wane, but

was strengthened in successive waves of nationalization, social legislation, and

absorption of communist and trade unionist individuals and groups into the state

apparatus. In addition, Nasserism was a qualitative Caesarism, as it transformed the

Egyptian social formation in a revolutionary way. Ironically, Nassers Arab

socialism proved to be the most efficient way to appropriate and embed pre-

capitalist social forms in capitalist relations of production.4

A nuanced reading of Nasserism is not only important to understand its

contemporary ambiguous legacy, but also to differentiate between Nassers passive

revolution and the transformation that was initiated by his successors Sadat and

Mubarak. Both entailed authoritarian, top-down reforms, but represented opposed

class interests.

4 Acknowledging the progressive aspect of Nasserism does not entail a denial

of its counter-revolutionary role. While the state was heir to the class forces

that generated it, the Free Officers regime was a military dictatorship that

subordinated the subaltern classes to its rule. In the same way, Gramsci

recognized the progressive and qualitative element in Italian Fascism SS

i.e., a methodology to overcome the organic crisis of bourgeois rule through

mass mobilizations and far-reaching reforms SS without labeling the

movement as a revolutionary emancipatory force (Forgacs, 2000, 248).


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From a Neoliberal War of Maneuver. . .

Gramsci remarked that the difficulty in analyzing forms of passive revolution

was not to discern elements of reform and restoration, but to see whether in the

dialectic revolution/restoration it is revolution or restoration which predominates

. . . (Gramsci, 1971, 219). In this sense, the transition from Nasserism to the

historical blocs of Sadat and Mubarak could be interpreted as a shift from a

progressive and qualitative Caesarism to a reactionary and quantitative process of

restoration by counter-reforms.

From the 1960s onward, there was a contradiction between the states political

populist consumption policy, oriented towards generating consent from the masses,

and the economic investment demands of developmentalism, which necessitated

productivity, low costs, and labor discipline (Cooper, 1979, 482S3). It became

obvious that the system could not sustain both capital-intensive industrialization and

high levels of consumption (BL, 1987, 459). Prices and taxes were increased; the

workweek was increased from 42 to 48 hours without compensation; forced savings

were deducted from monthly wages; paid holidays were cancelled; and so on

(Posusney, 1996, 219). The economic malaise and the Six Day War defeat shattered

the dream of Arab socialism and weakened Nasserist hegemony. The Nasserist bloc

was forced to change its accumulation strategy and to recompose its class alliances.

Under the rule of Sadat in the 1970s, Caesarism consolidated its civil, reactionary,

and quantitative turn.


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Since the coup of the Free Officers in 1952, the army had become the ruling

stratum of Egyptian society. The Armed Forces became a patchwork of semi-

autonomous and contending spaces within the state SS the Army, Air Defense, Air

Force, Navy, Intelligence Services, Republican Guard, Ministry of Defense, etc. SS

which were ruled by their generals as small fiefdoms. After the Six Day War, Nasser

himself began to sidetrack the role of the Armed Forces in political society, shifting

the balance of power from the Ministry of Defense to the Ministry of Interior, and

moving towards a dictatorship of the police rather than the military (Springborg,

2009, 10). President Sadats democratic revolution consolidated this

demilitarization of the ruling stratum and the state apparatus (Tucker, 1978, 6). In

1974, his political position strengthened by the October War of 1973, the President

announced the Infitah, a program of economic liberalization and reintegration in the

world market, aimed at attracting foreign investment (Bayat, 1993, 77S

8; Farah,

1986, 22S4; Lachine, 1977, 4S5). The Open Door policy signaled a new accumulation

strategy that reoriented Egypts domestic economic structure towards neoliberal

changes in the global economy (cf. Cox, 1987, 218S44).

After the Camp David negotiations of 1978, the Armed Forces not only lost

their central political role, but also their military function within the new bloc. The

USA helped to transform the post-Nasserist military into a stable and reliable state

structure that could be directly domesticated and contained through military aid. To

appease the officers, Sadat granted them economic concessions: to run shopping


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malls in Egypt, develop gated cities in the desert and beach resorts on the coasts.

And they are encouraged to sit around in cheap social clubs (Amar, 2011). From

Caesarist overlords, the generals degenerated into petty capitalists, whose mediocre

surpluses were artificially shielded from private and public competition. In this

manner, from a dominating class fraction, the generals evolved into a subaltern ally

of a newly emerging transnational ruling bloc consisting of state bureaucrats, public

sector managers, powerful landlords, subcontractors, new and traditional layers of

the domestic bourgeoisie,5 foreign capitalist investors,and the USA.Sadats Caesarism was a qualitative transformation of Egypts social formation,

embedded within the global passive revolution of neoliberalism. Egypt, together

with Pinochets Chile, constituted the vanguard of this anti-popular reconfiguration

in the Global South (Callinicos, 2011). Such a radical reconstitution of the existing

5 Under Nasser, Egypts economy had never been fully nationalized and pockets

of private accumulation continued to exist in agriculture, trade, and some

industrial sectors. Because domestic trade was left relatively free and prices

of consumer goods were only influenced through subsidies, commercial

capitalists flourished (Cooper, 1979, 499). The industrial bourgeoisie

developed new activities to accumulate capital, especially as subcontractors

for the government. Without the full liquidation of the private sector, the

growth of the public sector stimulated a proportional expansion of the

subcontracting companies (al-Khafaji, 2004, 247). State capitalism

strengthened private capitalists within its protective womb (Marfleet, 2011),

who, ironically, favored more liberal economic policies (Cox, 1987, 243).


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political and economic relations required an offensive war of maneuver: sweeping

changes to the historical bloc SS by a confrontational class struggle instead of war

of position of molecular or quantitative transformation, e.g., by a broad strategy

of transformism (Cf. Gramsci, 1971, 243). Despite Sadats attempts at establishing

Islam and bourgeois democracy as new ideological forms, his hegemonic project

could not generate a convincing and mobilizing ethico-political dimension. Whereas

the progressive moment predominated in Nassers passive revolution, Sadats

attempt to radically reconfigure the populist historical bloc along neoliberal lines was

quickly revealed as a cynical process of restoration that excluded the demands of

subaltern allies such as workers and small-scale farmers. The rule of Sadat and his

successor Mubarak was no longer determined by their positive hegemonic

leadership and prestige, but by their negative ability to maintain their political

opponents and subaltern classes in a fragmented or economicS

corporate state (cf.

Thomas, 2009, 152).

The repression of the 1977 bread riots insurrection and the Camp David

negotiations increasingly alienated even its new Islamist allies from the Sadat state

(Farah, 1986, 126). The failure of the states transformism of political Islam

eventually led to the Presidents assassination in 1981.

. . .To a War of Position SS and Back

Even though Sadats politicalSeconomic project was designed as an offensive


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passive revolution, it was turned into a defensive process of transformation due to an

unforeseen reconfiguration of its economic base and the specter of mass revolt

(Bayat, 1993, 76S8; Beinin, 2001, 157). From the second half of the 1970s, a steady

stream of revenues from migrant workers remittances from the Gulf region, foreign

loans and diplomatic, military, and economic aid, and tariffs from the re-opened Suez

Canal, oil, and tourism, rendered a confrontation with Nasserist industrial relations

unnecessary. Despite a process of deindustrialization and the collapse of the political

consensus, the public sector continued to expand until the mid-1980s and the state

was able to sustain its redistributive polices (RW, 2008, 190). The spontaneous

emergence of a semi-rentier economy shifted the accumulation strategy of the ruling

strata from dispossession (and thus class confrontation; cf. Harvey, 2003) to rent

seeking (and thus governance by means of state redistribution of external revenues

among the population) (Roccu, 2012, 12).

The defensive turn of the passive revolution entailed a softening of the coercive

dimension of the regime. Political prisoners were released, civil rights such as

freedom of press and association were reinstated to a limited degree, and

parliamentary elections were held. The political dtente of the Mubarak 1980s

constituted a tactical retreat of the dictatorship, leaving limited spaces open in civil

and political society for contentious politics that remained subordinated to the

interests of the state. The Emergency Law, banning of strikes, demonstrations,

parties, and critical newspapers, and military courts safeguarded the states


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domination over the political opposition (Marfleet, 2011). Mubaraks political

transformism was successful, as it absorbed opposition parties such as the leftist al-

Tagammu and the liberal al-Wafd, and, to a lesser extent, movements such as the

Muslim Brotherhood.

The actions of the workers movement in this decade were primarily defensive

and apolitical, aimed at achieving particular economic demands and restoring the

strong bargaining position of the working class towards the redistributive state

(Beinin, 2009, 23S

4). Mubaraks quantitative passive revolution and molecular

reconfiguration of the ruling bloc extended the life-form of Nasserist hegemonic

relations in the workplace, encouraging workers to display their economic

productivity and political loyalty to the state in exchange for material concessions

(Posusney, 1996, 233). Thanks to the economic base of rent accumulation and

distribution, Mubarak temporarily succeeded in the formation of a new post-

populist bloc: a gradual reform of political and economic relations by a state that

included rather than excluded class allies and opponents in its project, although they

remained in a subaltern position vis--vis the ruling class fractions.

However, from the second half of the 1980s onward, rental income decreased

and the state prudently began to push for neoliberal reform. Worker actions and the

resistance of the corporatist labor bureaucracy postponed harsh measures until the

beginning of the 1990s (Beinin, 2001, 159). The foreign debt rose to more than $38

billion (US) and the budget deficit increased to over 20% (RW, 2008, 225). The Gulf


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26

War of 1991 led to the return of many migrant workers, who flooded the domestic

labor market. It also resulted in the collapse of tourism, compounding the fiscal

crisis (Mitchell, 2002, 276). The dry spell in rental income, combined with the

reluctance of state and private capital groups to invest in the productivity of

agriculture and industry, necessitated a new strategy of accumulation that would

drive up the rate of profit by increased exploitation and dispossession. The domestic

crisis of rent-based accumulation and foreign pressure by the USA, IMF, and World

Bank forced the ruling classes war of position back to an offensive passive revolution

(Farah, 2009, 41). In 1991 Egypt accepted an Economic Reform and Structural

Adjustment Program (ERSAP) inspired by the neoliberal paradigm of the

Washington consensus (Bush, 2007, 1599). The ERSAP aimed to contain and

decrease foreign debt and inflation, by cutting state subsidies on consumer goods,

privatizing public companies, liberalizing markets and prices, freezing wages,

commercializing agricultural lands and implementing a flat tax.

The new and aggressive accumulation strategy required a political

reconfiguration of the post-populist bloc; i.e., the exclusion of subaltern forces, the

absorption of new allies, and the subduing of fractions of the capitalist class (Roccu,

2012, 16). The offensive turn of the passive revolution was not supported by a

strengthening of the ruling cliques political prestige and leadership, but it combined

antagonistic class struggle with limited hegemony. In fact, the ruling bloc was

further restricted instead of expanded, and already absorbed allies and opponents


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27

were alienated and ejected instead of consolidated.

First, the higher echelons of the Armed Forces saw their political and economic

power within the bloc diminished (NLR, 2011). The generals began to feel a deep

resentment towards their foreign, especially American, donors (Amar, 2011; Kandil,

2011), and towards the rising faction of neoliberal crony capitalists around Gamal

Mubarak, the Presidents son (Amar, 2011). This marginalization of the military

within the ruling bloc accelerated the trend initiated by Sadats civil Caesarism.

Second, workers and farmers were increasingly excluded from the neoliberal

bloc. The ERSAP restored economic growth and the rate of profit by decreasing

wages and benefits, by exploiting workers in the private sector, by expropriating farm

lands and increasing the prices of land rent (Farah, 2009, 41, 44; Mitchell, 1999,

463). Third, the limited spaces for opposition within the political and civil spheres

were further restricted. From 1990 onward, state control over elections and

parliament was increased. In 1999 government passed a law that decreed that all

NGO-type organizations had to reapply for a license to operate legally in Egypt.

NGOs that engaged in political activities were banned (Mitchell, 1999, 465). Such

measures severely restricted the capacity of the state to absorb political opponents.

Various movements and struggles prepared the way for the January 25

uprising in the two decades that preceded it. Throughout the 1990s new groups,

centers, parties, and movements emerged, which organized and educated a

generation of activists with fresh ideas and methods of struggle. Street politics was


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28

reborn in the 2000s, with the demonstrations in solidarity with the Second

Palestinian Intifada in 2000; the sit-ins against the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and

Lebanon; and the Kefaya (Enough) movement against presidential rule. These

civilSdemocratic movements were entwined with the economic protests and the

struggles of workers, farmers, slum-dwellers, and villagers against the violent

accumulation strategy (cf. De Smet, 2012; ZDB, 2012). Here I will not dwell on these

antecedents of the revolution, nor on the dynamic of the January 25 uprising itself,

but immediately jump back to the intervention of the Armed Forces in the

revolutionary process.

January 25 and Caesarism

The exploration of the Nasserist lineage above renders the successful

intervention of the SCAFSS

and its relatively swift demiseSS

in the revolutionary

process intelligible. Already a few months after the uprising, scholar Bassem Hassan

claimed that the way things have been unfolding since last January resembles more

Gramscis notion of caesarism than the scenario of a victorious popular revolution"

(Hassan, 2011, 4). Moving onto the political scene, as if in a historical drama they

were doomed to repeat, the Armed Forces halted the spontaneous uprising by

presenting themselves as a Caesar able to solve Egypts Gordian knot with a stroke

of their sword.

For the SCAF, a Caesarist intervention was necessary, because, just as in 1952,


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the best way to halt the independent development of the revolutionary process was

to lead and thus control it. A Caesarist intervention was possible, because, just as in

1952, the Armed Forces were perceived as a national force defending the general

good, instead of as a state structure with particular interests of its own (Hassan,

2011). Ironically, the military was able to play the part of Caesar, not because of its

strength, but because of its forced retreat from political society, which had inoculated

the institution from popular criticism of the escalated state domination, oppression,

and exploitation over the preceding two decades. In contradistinction to the civil

institutions of the Mubarak regime SS apart from the judiciarySS the Egyptian

Armed Forces had retained their nationalSpopular aura.

However, the political and economic circumstances of the Caesarist

intervention of 2011 differed fundamentally from those of 1952. The Free Officers of

1952 elaborated a progressive political and economic vision of fighting feudalism and

imperialism, achieving social justice, and developing the country. This ethico-

political and nationalSpopular dimension lent their Caesarist intervention a

progressive and qualitative character. The SCAF, however, was pushed into the role

of Caesar, which it only reluctantly played to save its own particular interests. The

political and economic interests of the generals did not fully coincide with those of

the crony capitalists, the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), or the Ministry

of Interior; but neither did they correspond with those of the revolutionary masses.

The civilSdemocratic demands also threatened the remaining privileges of the Armed


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Forces within the neoliberal bloc.

The SCAF eventually became caught up between the defense of its own

particular interests and the expectations of the masses. Taking the lead in the

revolutionary process agreed with the dominant sentiment among protesters that the

Armed Forces were on their side. Conversely, the generals were pressured to act

because the interpellation of the people and the army: one hand started to affect the

rank-and-file soldiers. To open fire on the largely peaceful protesters would have

broken the spell that conjured the image of the Armed Forces as defenders of the

nationalSpopular interest. In order to prevent solidarity between soldiers and

protesters, the SCAF had to take the lead in deposing the President, which satisfied

the expectations of both popular masses and soldiers (cf. Stacher, 2011).

By sacrificing the Mubarak clan and dealing blows to the neoliberal

capitalists, the NDP, and the Ministry of Interior, the SCAF hoped to renegotiate a

stronger political and economic position for itself within the ruling bloc (Springborg,

2012). The SCAF had no interest in reinforcing the public sector, which became

evident in its opposition to court rulings in favor of workers wanting to renationalize

some of the privatized companies. Concessions to workers, instead, constituted an

ad hoc political tactic of dealing with their social movements, than a fundamentally

new economic policy. Egypts debt cycle and the interventions of transnational

capital SS which continued to push for neoliberal reforms SS severely limited the

space for political and economic reforms (Maher, 2011). In the end, the generals


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were not against neoliberal reform in itself, but they despised the fact that they

werent the main beneficiaries of the accumulation by dispossession (Ambrust, 2011).

Deploying the Gramscian criterion, the military Caesarism of 2011 appeared as

essentially reactionary and quantitative: a restoration that, because of the strength

of the revolutionary wave, could not be but a kind of distorted revolution itself.

Many analysts stressed that the SCAF genuinely desired a swift transition of

power in order to continue its economic and military activities. However, Joshua

Stacher observed that one should not . . . mistake the armys reluctance to govern

for aversion to rule (Stacher, 2011). The Caesarist intervention had thrown the

burden of political leadership upon the Armed Forces, and while the generals wished

to fortify their economic and political clout within the ruling bloc, they had neither

the capacity nor the will to develop hegemony over the whole of society. Instead, the

generals preferred to rule by civil proxy.

Yet, once in control of the state apparatus, the SCAF was loath to abdicate in

favor of any of the civil forces, which it could not trust with the task of securing its

political and economic privileges. Especially with the Muslim Brotherhood and the

Salafists, the military caretakers developed a loveShate relationship, which reflected

both their desire for a stable, powerful, and conservative civil ally, and their anxiety

of losing grip over the post-insurrectionary transition process, i.e., the top-down

passive revolution that had to replace the active, bottom-up revolution of the

masses.


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Islamist Caesarism?

The purely military phase of the post-insurrectionary period was short-lived,

as the March 19, 2011 constitutional referendum, parliamentary elections, the writing

of the constitution, and the presidential elections shifted the counter-revolution

towards a civil form. Instead of representing a genuine process of revolutionary

democratic change, elections and referenda constituted formidable weapons of

restoration. First, they reoriented revolutionary politics from the spontaneous and

bottom-up spheres of the street and the workplace to the restricted and top-down

controlled domains of the state. Moreover, the focus on elections strengthened the

growing divide between the narrowly defined political fight for democracy, and the

economic struggles of workers, farmers, and the urban poor. Second, by atomizing

the collective subject of the protesters into individual voters, the qualitative

majority in the streets was reduced to a quantitative minority in the polling booths.

The voices of the active vanguard were drowned in the silence of a passive majority

that had not (yet) drawn the same revolutionary conclusions as the militant layers.6

6 Trotsky discussed this predicament with regard to the Russian Revolution of

1917: A minority of the revolutionary class actually participates in the

insurrection, but the strength of that minority lies in the support, or at least

sympathy, of the majority. The active and militant minority inevitably puts

forward under fire from the enemy its more revolutionary and self-sacrificing

element. . . . But the situation changes the moment the victory is won and its

political fortification begins. The elections to the organs and institutions of

the victorious revolution attract and challenge infinitely broader masses than


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Third, the rapid pace and repetition of elections not only demobilized the streets, but

they also channeled the time and energy of activists into centrifugal and tiresome

discussions and negotiations about party programs and alliances SS while there

existed an urgent need to connect the political vanguard to its mass base of workers,

farmers, and the urban poor (Kandil, 2011). Fourth, elections and referenda became

moments in which the spontaneous and popular demands of the uprising SS bread,

freedom, and social justice SS were pushed into the background, and new political

themes, such as religion, came to the forefront. The shift to identity politics

especially fortified the position of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists.

During the first days of the January 25 insurrection, Muslim Brotherhood

leaders had been fearful of state repression if they were to participate in the protests,

and suspicious of the autonomous dynamic of a mass movement they could not

control. However, the Brotherhood was drawn into the demonstrations, because, on

the one hand, its rank-and-file members had already joined the uprising (Alexander,

2011, 544), and, on the other, the organization recognized the insurrection as an

opportunity to renegotiate its position within the ruling bloc. Muslim Brothers stood

side by side with the other protesters and were often among the most militant and

resilient demonstrators and occupiers. After the fall of Mubarak, the attitude of the

leadership changed, however, as it cautiously supported the SCAFs soft coup,

calling upon protesters to leave Tahrir Square and start negotiations with the military

those who battled with arms in their hands (Trotsky, 2001, 186).


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council (cf. Alexander, 2011). The explosion of worker strikes, which, at first, had

been welcomed as an integral part of the democratic revolution, was now condemned

by Brotherhood leaders as destabilizing and particularist (personal

communication with Hisham Fouad, March 13, 2011).

In the period leading up to the parliamentary elections of November 2011, the

Brotherhood leadership chose to play the humble part of power broker between the

generals and the popular masses (Alexander, 2011, 536). However, the

Brotherhoods landslide electoral victory in the parliamentary elections of autumn

2011, and the abject failure of the SCAF to provide political leadership, encouraged

the Brotherhood to go on the offensive. Within political society there emerged a

situation of dual power between the Islamist-dominated parliament and the

Ministry of Defense. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists had argued for swift

parliamentary elections in order to cash in on their organizational and discursive

advantage vis--vis other opposition forces. At the beginning of 2012, however, they

realized their victory was a pyrrhic one, as parliament was still governed by the old

constitution that did not even grant them the right to form a cabinet of their own

choice. A race began between parliament, which established a committee to write a

new constitution that would expand its powers, and the executiveSS

i.e., the SCAF

SS which began legal proceedings to contest the constitutionality of parliament. On

June 14, 2012, the High Constitutional Court dissolved parliament, and the SCAF

took over legislative powers SS preparing the outcome of the final round of the


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presidential elections that were held on June 16 and 17, 2012.

The electoral run-off between Muhammad Morsi, the formal candidate of the

Brotherhood, and Ahmed Shafiq, widely perceived as the candidate of the SCAF and

the old regime, represented a choice between two wings of the counter-revolution:

for or against Islamic fundamentalism or military dictatorship. However,

because the elections were presented as a constitutive element of revolutionary

transformation, both factions had to articulate their particular interests in the

universalist language of popular revolution and the common good. Both Morsi and

Shafiq displayed Caesarist tendencies, as they claimed to be the only revolutionary

force able to contain the danger of military or fundamentalist counter-revolution.

Morsis victory gave momentum to the civil turn of Caesarism. After a year

in power, the SCAF had become a select and self-centered clique that was unable to

affirm its domination over the whole Armed Forces, let alone the other ruling class

factions, or society at large. Within the Armed Forces, a growing number of officers

was dissatisfied with the ham-fisted political leadership of the SCAF. The apparent

repetition of the Nasserist tragedy ended up as a short-lived farce. Rather than a

profound demilitarization of the state, Morsis constitutional declaration of August

12, 2012SS

which retired the SCAF generals and granted the President their

executive and legislative powers SS signaled a deal between the Brotherhood and

oppositional officers, offering a division of labor within the unfolding passive

revolution: in exchange for a protection of the militarys economic interests and


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privileges, the Armed Forces would leave the reorganization of the state to the

Brothers. This consensus was affirmed in the new constitution of December 26,

2012, which shielded the defense budget from parliamentary oversight, and asserted

that the Minister of Defense was chosen from the ranks of the Armed Forces. The

Brotherhood succeeded in replacing or absorbing the personnel of most state

institutions, except for the judiciary, which had always enjoyed relative independence

vis--vis the executive and legislative branches of power (Springborg, 2012; Wagih,

2012).

Crisis of Caesarism

The Muslim Brotherhood faced the conundrum of building a post-Mubarak

historic bloc that integrated the interests of its own business elites with the concerns

of the military generals, the radicalS

conservative agenda of the SalafistsSS

who

pressured the organization from the right SS and the revolutionary demands of the

popular masses, who had catapulted the Islamists into power. The Brotherhoods

inability to offer political leadership and forge a national consensus around the

constitution, to democratize the so-called deep state SS the civil and military state

structures that grew out of the Nasserist dictatorshipSS

and to solve the economic

crisis, constituted obstacles to its ambition to become the core of a new, hegemonic,

ruling bloc. Moreover, even though the division of post-insurrectionary politics along

sectarianSreligious lines had steered the political debate into a discursive domain


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dominated by Muslim Brothers and Salafists, it also made it much more difficult for

those forces to present themselves as the universal expressions of the national,

Egyptian interest.

On November 22, 2012, President Morsi issued a new constitutional

declaration, which temporarily granted him absolute executive and legislative

powers. The declaration was a pre-emptive strike, shielding the Brotherhoods

crumbling presidency from any attack within political society until a constitution was

ratified that offered a stable legal framework to continue the Islamist-led passive

revolution (Wagih, 2012). Although Morsis decision called tens of thousands of

concerned Egyptians back to the streets, unlike the unity of the people against the

regime during the January 25 uprising, this time around the mass sit-ins and

demonstrations were divided between popular forces protesting the rise of a new

Mubarak or Pharaoh, and Brotherhood sympathizers supporting the Presidents

firm decision to protect the revolution. In Caesarist fashion, Morsi did not dispute

the oppositions charge that political power was increasingly centralized and

concentrated into his hands, but he claimed that this was necessary to defend the

democratic transition against those who wanted to sabotage reform.

In the eyes of his followers, Morsis claim was not without base, as the presence

of so-called feloul elements SS supporters of the former regime SS within the anti-

Brotherhood camp weakened its claim to represent the genuine subject of the

January 25 Revolution (Wagih, 2012). Despite its claims to constitute a


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revolutionary third way between the Brotherhood and the deep state, the

oppositional National Salvation Front (NSF) united semi-feloul rightists such as Amr

Moussa, liberal democrats such as Muhammed al-Baradei, and leftist Nasserists such

as Hamdeen Sabahi under one broad umbrella of vague civil politics. At best, the

civilSdemocratic coalition only advanced a political critique of Mubaraks passive

revolutions practices of domination, coercion, and exclusion, and did not reveal the

connection of these superstructural forms to historical and recent transformations

in Egypts economic structure.

The entrenched stand-off between the Muslim Brotherhood and these civil

opposition forces indicated Morsis failure to act as a Caesar, transcending the

contradictions in the political sphere, or even to absorb his opponents in an Islamist

transformism. Yet, the dominant dichotomy also emphasized the success of the

capitalist classes and the deep state in deflecting popular revolutionary demands

for democracy and redistribution of wealth. Islamist, military, and civilSdemocratic

elites were able to subsume political activists, intellectuals, and subaltern groups

under their discrete political projects. These vertical hegemonic alliances cut

through attempts of grassroots revolutionaries to forge horizontal ties between

subaltern actors: workers, farmers, unemployed youth, urban poor.

The Burden of Past Generations

Since the uprising against Hosni Mubarak on January 25, 2011, initial and


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transformism, and Caesarism serve as criteria of historical interpretation, rather than

as archetypical political forms. Gramscis shades of Caesarism enable an

understanding of the qualitative difference between Nassers and Sadats passive

revolution, the changing position of the military, the relation between domestic and

global transformations, and the exclusion of subaltern actors from the reconfigured

historical bloc. The dynamic of neoliberal passive revolution as a war of maneuver

in the 1970s and 1990sS2000s stands in contrast to Mubaraks war of position in

the 1980s, and connects to strategies of accumulation, coercive consent,

transformism, and subaltern forms of resistance.

This Gramscian interpretation renders both the revolutionary January 25

insurrection and its counter-revolutionary appropriation intelligible as alternating

moments of one and the same process. It also reveals the historical and

contemporary constraints of revolution and restoration within the Egyptian social

formation. If the substance of the January 25 revolution is a subaltern war of

movement against the aggressive reconfiguration of the post-populist bloc along

neoliberal lines, then it can only succeed by overthrowing the existing domestic and

transnational class alliances and their strategy of accumulation by dispossession.

The democratic revolution cannot succeed except by a fundamental reform of the

economic structure, and the economic structure cannot be reformed unless political

power is captured and appropriated by a subaltern counter-bloc. However, the

current political class collaboration among social-democrats, communists, liberals,


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right-wing nationalists, and Nasserists in the face of a greater evil, be it the

Brotherhood or the deep state, renders a radical subaltern coalition and hegemony

impossible and only serves to reinforce the current process of restoration.

Department of Conflict and Development Studies

Ghent University

Universiteitstraat 8

Gent, Belgium 9000

[email protected]

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