I am someone who
thinks it is extremely important that the centrality of Islam in Middle
East politics and ideology in general, and the specific parties of
"political Islam" (like the Muslim Brotherhood) be challenged. I'm also someone who is not at all opposed to extra-electoral revolutionary
mobilization, including the possibility of revolutionary insurrection.
Still, I watch the unfolding events in Egypt with a sense of unease,
even dread. In the accounts I've read so far from the Egyptian street,
I get the sense that, where two years ago there was an elation married
with great hope, now there is something more like muted glee
accompanied by a sinking feeling. Mohamed ElBaradei's quote from the great American philosopher, "It's dà ©ja vu all over again," is decidedly lacking its original charm in this context.
Mohammed
Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood
(MB) won the elections last year. In fact, I'm sorry to say, with the
highest voter participation in fifty years, the MB and the more
fanatical
Salafists parties dominated the seven
elections that were held over the last two years, crushing the secular left and liberal forces in
every electoral contest. Given that the Election Commission and the
Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC), which oversaw the elections, were
composed of Mubarak appointees, and
considered in league with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces
(SCAF), there were suspicions that there would be vote-rigging, but
the numbers were such as to leave no doubt that the elections reflected
hard truths about the relative strength of the parties. On the basis of
those electoral victories, Morsi, as presidents are wont to do, used
his office to consolidate power for
his political allies. It is fair to argue that he and the MB were too
aggressive in that regard, but I do not think he closed the
door on the opposition parties and factions. [See Al-Amin, "Showdown in Egypt."]
If
anything, I think the opposition--especially its more militant
secular and leftist elements--made a strategic choice from the outset to
embark on a project to undermine the Morsi/MB regime as quickly and
thoroughly as possible. The radical opposition refused any strategic
cooperation with the Morsi/MB regime, because they understood--correctly, I think--that such cooperation would
have helped that regime consolidate and gain long-term stability and
legitimacy. They wanted to cut off any possibility of the enracination
of an Islamic state in Egypt. They wanted to stop in its tracks any attempt to strengthen the social,
cultural, and political foundations of such a state, which they
understood--again, correctly, I think--would be a profoundly
reactionary regime, in a cultural and socio-economic, if not political, sense.
Indeed,
the Morsi government did nothing to stop the continuing degradation of
the socio-economic plight of ordinary Egyptians. As poverty rose to
over 50 percent, Morsi weighed the terms of surrender to an IMF
austerity loan. Like other Islamist tendencies, the MB has a definite
strain of caritative populism. The left opposition understands,
however, that the MB has no structural socio-economic program that
breaks with neo-liberal capitalism. As Gilbert Achcar, in Le Monde Diplomatique ,
quotes Sameh Elbarqy, a former member of the Brotherhood: "The core of
the economic vision of [the] Brotherhood, if we are going to classify it in a
classical way, is extreme capitalist.... One of the big problems with
the Muslim Brotherhood now--they have it in common with Mubarak's old
political party--is the marriage of power and capital."
So
the
radical opposition, taking a decidedly revolutionary posture that
refused to be bound by the limits of electoral politics, mounted an
extraordinary
campaign to undermine and depose Morsi. They acted on the basis that
street-level education and agitation were legitimate and necessary
elements of an ongoing, and democratic, political process. They were
confident that, especially given the dire and deteriorating social
situation, such work could change the ideological
ground, and move masses away from the Brotherhood's orbit and toward
more radical action. And they were right.
Coalescing around a group called Tamarrud
(Rebellion), founded at the end of April, the radical opposition announced their
intention to mount a weekend of protests at the end of June that would
either force Morsi to resign, or, as Esam al-Amin
put it, "force the military to take over the country and launch a new
transitional period without the domination of the Islamist groups."
They wanted the constitution annulled, and the head of the Supreme
Constitutional Court installed as interim president. Toward that end,
they then
began a final push, circulating a petition, which, they claimed,
quickly gathered more signatures to oust Morsi than votes he received
in the election. They mobilized the anger of the nearly hopeless,
impoverished populace, which had seen no changes for the better in their
social lives, and united it with the fears of secular liberals, who
saw Brotherhood political hegemony as the encroachment of a
dogmatic Islamic social and cultural order. And they succeeded.
It
was an amazing, exemplary, revolutionary offensive that, within the
space of a few months, instigated a popular movement that deposed the
elected government, and turned Egyptian politics upside-down.
Except ...
for one little thing. This "revolutionary" dynamic was also based on an
alliance with elements of the "deep state" of the repressive Mubarak-era regime, known as the fulool. As is to be expected in an unfinished revolution, the fulool haven't gone anywhere. As Esam Al-Amin
points out: they are "still largely in control of the security
apparatus, most
of the private media, the judiciary, as well as major industries and
influential economic institutions." Al-Amin also claims that, by the
end of 2012, they had become "part and parcel of the secular opposition
groups and a major factor of the instability that has overwhelmed the
country ...reinvent[ing[ themselves [to] become major players on the
side of the secular groups against the MB and the Islamists."
Also deeply disturbing: The
final offensive against Morsi and the MB was
based on promoting the Egyptian army as the legitimate
nationalist savior. Indeed, the events of the last week unfolded just
as the opposition hoped they would, culminating with the
army stepping in to depose Morsi, in response to clear
demonstrations of popular anger and discontent, and sporadic and
spreading episodes of violence. The SCAF, it turns out, was the
key player, the go-to guy, for the Tamarrud.
This,
we must remember, is the same army that was the backbone of the
repressive Mubarak-era state for decades. It's the same SCAF that
was denounced by tens of thousands who jammed Tahir Square last April,
partly because of its perceived alliance with the MB! At that time, for
example, one student was quoted
as saying: "The military council is putting the people in a very hard
situation, and people are angry because their demands have not come
true.... People feel like the old regime has not gone anywhere, and under
the army we are living with them still." Yet another said: "I
am against the military council because the constitutional declaration
they made last year was all about rigging the election.... We just want
a revolutionary candidate, someone we can support and who stands with
the people."
This is the same army that is notorious for being an economic as well as a military caste. It's an army that, according to Al-Amin, controls "as much as thirty percent of Egypt's economy," that, according to Shana Marshall and Joshua Stacher,
"manufacture[s] everything from olive oil and shoe polish to the voting
booths used in Egypt's 2011 parliamentary elections," through a
network of "the privately owned businesses that constitute what has
become known as the 'officer economy.'" It's the same army whose
"tentacles also grasped large shares of the
civilian public sector as part of the 'privatization' process in the
1990s," and which, accordingly, appointed as Finance Minister "a strong advocate of
free-market liberalism and the 'rationalizing' of state subsidies on
staples."
Even the New York Times reporter, Ben Hubbard, recognizes that this army "has never been a
force for democracy. It has one primary objective...preserving national
stability and its untouchable realm of privilege within the Egyptian
state." For decades, "its tens of thousands of elite officers have
jealously guarded their privileged station" and "grown wealthy through
government contracts and business deals facilitated by their
positions." As Hubbard says, the elite officers' corps is virtually "a hereditary Brahmin caste,
in which sons follow their fathers' careers and they all live inside a
closed social circle." And, as he cites Steven A. Cook, of the Council on Foreign Relations: "The
liberals and the revolutionaries are too quick to hop into bed with the
military--it is not their friend.... The most important thing from the military's
perspective is preserving its place as the locus of power and influence
in the system."
It's also the same military that was, with the consent of most secular and
Islamist groups, in the constitution that has just been annulled,
"afforded a constitutionally sanctioned special status in a supposedly
democratic state run by civilians," and given a guarantee that the
Defense Minister would be appointed from its ranks. [See Al-Amin, "Egypt's Constitution, the Opposition, and the Dialogue of the Deaf."]
There's
no way to avoid recognizing it: The Egyptian radical opposition has delivered the
government back into the hands of this army. I find it hard to imagine
how anyone thinks this advances a revolutionary process. The SCAF are
not the Portuguese officers of 1974 (who are still revolutionary,
BTW!). The SCAF is not there to energize and support, but to control
and suppress mass movements for social justice. Nothing has happened to
move the Egyptian state one more inch in a progressive direction,
politically or socio-economically. If anything, the opposite has occurred.
Replacing Morsi-and-the-MB + SCAF with ElBaradiei-and-the-technocrats +
SCAF still = IMF + SCAF. It's neo-liberalism with a secular face, a combination more
acceptable to the West.
What Will Happen Now?
Shamus Cooke quite
perceptively reminds us how it goes: "In Egypt, the economic interests
of different groups are consciously hidden behind religion and abstract
notions of democracy. The very wealthy and corporations have no problem
acting extra religious or especially democratic if it pushes their
interests forward."
Now you also have this army rounding up and
arresting Morsi, the elected president, as well as the leaders and who
knows how many of the cadres of the MB. For what? What crime against
the people have they committed? Being Islamists? Having won elections?
Being too politically aggressive? For how long will they be held?
Until they agree never to run in, or maybe never to win, another
election?
Perhaps the anti-Morsi left opposition thinks (What
else could it be?) that the undeniable mass mobilization of the people
they've achieved will be the guarantee against a return to pre-Tahir
repression, and the engine of further, more complete, revolutionary
change. Now that we've got the Islamist menace out of the way, we can go after the rest of the obstacles to the profound change we need, or something like that.
That has a superficial plausibility, and I certainly hope it works out that way. Problem is, it will only work out that way if the masses stay mobilized, if they have a program to press for that at least outlines specific policies that will make ordinary people's live better, if
there is a political leadership and political organization capable of
transforming the state in ways that will enable instituting that
program, and if that mass
movement and leadership have no illusions about the role the
"officer economy" and the (politically) liberal (economically)
neo-liberal "technocrats"--i.e. IMF robots--will play, along with the conservative and dogmatic Islamists, in obstructing such decisive revolutionary
change. If what you've actually got is a Groundhog Day appeal to the
mass of Egyptians to wake up to a new morning of million-people
mobilizations every 6, 12, or 24, months; if, in the last mobilization
you've actually strengthened everyone's illusions about the friendly,
democratic, and salvific role of the national army; if you have no
political and socio-economic project besides disrupting the reign of
one bad guy after another; and if you have no political leadership or
organization that wants to, and will, build the capability for those
masses to take power and enact progressive programs--then, well, ongoing revolution, not so much.
There's
also this tiny little thing: If you think you've gotten the Islamist
menace out of the way, you are dreaming. There are tens of millions of
people who have long-standing allegiances to the MB and groups like
it. They did not all turn against it in the last few months. The MB is
a party with deep roots in
Egyptian history and society. It isn't going away. You've got them out
of democratic politics, though, that's for sure. As one Egyptian
merchant says: "Didn't we do what they asked...? We don't believe in
democracy to begin with; it's not part of our ideology. But we accepted
it. We followed them, and then this is what they do?" And, as Essam
el-Haddad, Morsi's foreign policy adviser put it on his web page,
before he was detained by the military: "The message will resonate
throughout the Muslim world loud and clear: democracy is not for
Muslims." Already, thousands have been chanting in rallies in the Sinai: "The age of peacefulness is over. No more peacefulness after
today." Far from "out of the way," the Islamists are going to be in
your face, more aggressively than ever, for some time to come. So much
for peaceful transition. [See "For Islamists, Dire Lessons on Politics and Power," NYT.]
Unfortunate
as it may be, Islamist parties' conservative socio-cultural positions
and simple doctrinal certainties, as well as their charity-driven
populism, have wide appeal in Muslim societies. Changing that will
require some years of demonstrating
that democratic political dialogue and liberal social values, combined
with radical structural economic changes, can more effectively
guarantee people's social security as well as a nation's cultural
integrity. It requires, in other words, another kind of long-term
revolutionary project. Under any circumstances, this problem will not be
arrested away, and it is the opposite of revolutionary to think that it
can.
As I said above, I am not averse, in principle, to
extra-electoral politics, or even insurrection. A serious revolutionary
conjuncture, a real break into a new social order, usually involves
both. It's a process driven by
politicized masses in motion, in ways that are not constrained
within the limits of "normal"--i.e., elite-crafted--electoral
politics. Let's say you have a sclerotically corrupt and unreliable
electoral process, with tepid citizen participation, largely understood
as a futile exercise, obviously fixed in advance by the ruling party or
elite, and riddled by obvious maneuvers to disenfranchise dangerous
voters and skew the vote, as you did in Mubarak's Egypt, or, you know,
as we have now in the United States. Then, sure, that kind of electoral
process is actually a tool of disempowerment and a thin facade of
democracy, giving political mobilization that bypasses it a strong
claim to legitimacy. If, however, you have an election cycle in the
wake of a euphoric revolutionary rupture, which attracts millions of
newly empowered citizen voters who are eager to help define their new
polity, then, from even the most "revolutionary" democratic
perspective, you should be much more reluctant to declare it null and
void.
Similarly, in
the midst of a revolutionary insurrection that, with the cooperation of
progressive military elements, deposes the government of a small,
corrupt, plutocratic elite that has little popular support, especially
a government that's been engaged in vicious repression of an
insurgent popular movement, it is legitimate to arrest and detain key
figures and key backers of that government. After all, a revolution
involves an unapologetic, forceful, seizure and transfer of power that
seeks to be irreversible, and there are crimes against the people that
deserve revolutionary justice. It's quite another thing, however, when
a military that is an integral part of the corrupt elite itself
finishes your insurrection for you by arresting a wide swath of the
cadres of a mass popular movement, including its presidential
candidate, who had been elected by tens of millions of people. This is
not an exercise in revolutionary, or any other kind of, justice or
democracy.
Egypt is in the midst of an upheaval that still
contains a myriad of possibilities, but I'm pessimistic about how this
is going to play out. It's a tad too clever to ideologically disarm the
populace in
the face of the army one day, with the idea that you can quickly rearm
them ideologically against the army tomorrow. I fear that we may be
seeing another example, in a key Arab
country, of a powerful democratic upsurge veering into a disastrous
dà ©nouement. So far, in Egypt, we have seen the unfolding of an intense
and militant
revolutionary process, without a revolutionary program or revolutionary
leadership, and therefore without a revolutionary strategy. If we want
to pursue a familiar distinction, what we've seen in Egypt has been a
rolling rebellion, not an uninterrupted revolution. It could still
become the latter, but I think the last week's events have made that
less likely.
This
is the symptom of a condition that affects insurgent left movements
throughout the world, especially those driven by revolutionary-minded
youth. They understand both the political and socio-economic nature of
the oppressive power they live under, and they understand how radical
are the changes that are necessary to build a new world of peace and
justice. They are smart and creative about devising ways to educate a
broader public about it, and to protest and disrupt it. They fight
power, disrupt power, challenge power. With few exceptions, they also
refuse to assume power, or to organize for the possibility of doing so.
By virtue of lived experience and liberal education, they
have developed, beyond a healthy skepticism, an absolute allergy
to power and organization. They inhabit an ideology in which power is
not just tendentially dangerous, but intrinsically and irretrievably
nefarious, and in which coherent, disciplined political organizations
are dogs of this devil. Despite their positive appreciation of
"empowerment" in other contexts, in the political context they cannot
imagine power to be liberating as well as dangerous. They do not want
to, and cannot, imagine a way of wielding power in a consistent,
programmatic, progressive manner. That way lies the Gulag, always.
Yet, the
thing is: If progressive, revolutionary forces are not willing or
capable of taking and wielding power to build a new social order,
someone else will take that power. Something else will substitute
itself for the revolutionary political organization that power-averse
revolutionary youth disdained to build. Some other political party or
parties, formed
around a relatively coherent theory and agenda and set of common
interests, will step into the vacuum of political agency that is left
by such an ideology at the most critical juncture. Some other
organized political force will take as a prize the society in ferment
that those rebellious youth created--like, say, the Supreme Council
of the Armed Forces. That way lies the status quo, squared, always.
Still, in any real set of circumstances, the possibilities for such a takeover are not infinite. In Egypt, as one analyst says,
"besides the Brotherhood, [the armed forces] are the only really
cohesive institution in the country." Globally, there are a few
constellations of programmatic ideas for structuring a modern polity,
and I want to focus on the one fundamental socio-economic question
that's "hidden behind religion and abstract notions of democracy" in
Egypt and throughout the world today.
Everyone recognizes that a shallow program of "democracy," limited to formally free
elections and well-written constitutions, does not nearly a revolution
make. Revolutionary upheaval like we've seen in Egypt occurs because
there is widespread social discontent, and without programs that--radically, quickly and tangibly--begin to change the social lives of
the majority of people for the better, no revolution will move
forward. A revolution is not just about giving people a vote or a
newspaper. It's not really a question of giving people anything, but of the people themselves taking control of social capital, and changing the fundamental social
relations of wealth production, accumulation, and
distribution.
There
can be no more pretense, in Egypt or elsewhere, that such changes
can be made without a decisive break with capitalism, or, as its
actually-existing variant is called, neo-liberalism. That's a very tall
order, which demands not just evoking the necessity to do it, but
elaborating-- in a context structured to make it extremely difficult
to do so--specific policies and programs that will lead irreversibly
to the end of capitalist social penury and the beginning of another,
more
just, social order. That way requires, always, a theory that can
explain the situation, and an organization that is rooted in the lives
of everyday people and capable of effectively focusing their struggle
for political empowerment,
Democracy is empowerment
of the people, and thoroughgoing democracy is not a question of the
granting of political rights, but of the seizure and extension of
political and
social power. That is the dangerous, and unavoidable, challenge, of
revolutionary politics. In Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed
Forces will be no part of it.