[News] Egypt - 'If power is not seized, counter-revolution will rise'

[Anti-Imperialist News]

'If power is not seized, counter-revolution will 
rise': Vijay Prashad on the Arab revolt (Part I)

Monday, 31 January 2011
http://radicalnotes.com/content/view/153/30/

Vijay Prashad is a prominent Marxist scholar from 
South Asia. He is George and Martha Kellner Chair 
in South Asian History and Professor of 
International Studies at Trinity College, 
Connecticut. He has written extensively on 
international affairs for both academic and 
popular journals. His most recent book 
<http://radicalnotes.com/content/view/39/39/>The 
Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third 
World (2007) has been widely acclaimed as the 
most authentic rewriting of the world history of 
the postcolonial Global South and the idea of the "Third World".

Pothik Ghosh (PG): In what sense can the recent 
events in the Arab World be called revolutions? 
How are they different from the colour revolutions of the past two decades?

Vijay Prashad (VP): All revolutions are not 
identical. The colour revolutions in Eastern 
Europe had a different tempo. They were also of a 
different class character. They were also along 
the grain of US imperialism, even though the 
people were acting not for US but for their own 
specific class and national interests. I have in 
mind the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the 
Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. Otpor in the 
Ukraine, among others, was well lubricated by 
George Soros's Open Society and the US 
government's National Democratic Institute. 
Russian money also swept in on both sides of the 
ledger. These Eastern European revolutions were 
mainly political battles in regions of the world 
still unsettled by the traumatic transition from 
state socialism to predatory capitalism.

The Arab revolt that we now witness is something 
akin to a "1968" for the Arab World. Sixty per 
cent of the Arab population is under 30 (70 per 
cent in Egypt). Their slogans are about dignity 
and employment. The resource curse brought wealth 
to a small population of their societies, but 
little economic development. Social development 
came to some parts of the Arab world: Tunisia's 
literacy rate is 75 per cent, Egypt's is just 
over 70 per cent, Libya almost 90 per cent. The 
educated lower-middle-class and middle-class 
youth have not been able to find jobs. The 
concatenation of humiliations revolts these young 
people: no job, no respect from an authoritarian 
state, and then to top it off the general malaise 
of being a second-class citizen on the world 
stage - second to the US-Israel and so on - was 
overwhelming. The chants on the streets are about 
this combination of dignity, justice and jobs.

PG: Does the so-called Jasmine Revolution have in 
it to transform the preponderant character of the 
politico-ideological topography of oppositional 
politics - from Islamist identitarianism to an 
organic variant of working-class politics - in 
West Asia and the Maghreb? Under what 
circumstances can this series of general strikes, 
which seem to be spreading like a brushfire 
through the region, morph into a constellation of 
counter-power? Or, would that in your eyes merely 
be a vicarious desire of Leftists from outside the region?

VP: I fear that we are being vicarious. The 
youth, the working class, the middle class have 
opened up the tempo of struggle. The direction it 
will take is not clear. I am given over to 
analogies when I see revolutions, largely because 
the events of change are so contingent.

It is in the melee that spontaneity and structure 
jostle. The organised working class is weaker 
than the organised theocratic bloc, at least in 
Egypt. Social change of a progressive type has 
come to the Arab lands largely through the 
Colonels. Workers' struggles have not reached 
fruition in any country. In Iraq, where the 
workers movement was advanced in the 1950s, it 
was preempted by the military - and then they made a tacit alliance.

One cannot say what is going to happen with 
certainty. The Mexican Revolution opened up in 
1911, but didn't settle into the PRI regime till 
the writing of the 1917 constitution and the 
elevation of Carranza to the presidency in 1920 
or perhaps Cardenas in 1934. I find many 
parallels between Mexico and Egypt. In both, the 
Left was not sufficiently developed. Perils of 
the Right always lingered. If the Pharonic state 
withers, as Porfirio Diaz's state did, the 
peasants and the working class might move beyond 
spontaneity and come forward with some more 
structure. Spontaneity is fine, but if power is 
not seized effectively, counter-revolution will 
rise forth effectively and securely.

PG:  What are, in your opinion, the perils if 
such a transformation fails to occur? Will not 
such a failure lead to an inevitable 
consolidation of the global neoliberal 
conjuncture, which manifests itself in West Asia 
as fascistic Islamism on one hand and authoritarianism on the other?

VP: If such a transformation fails, which god 
willing it won't, then we are in for at least 
three options: (1) the military, under Egyptian 
ruling class and US pressure, will take control. 
This is off the cards in Tunisia for now, mainly 
because the second option presented itself; (2) 
elements of the ruling coalition are able to 
dissipate the crowds through a series of hasty 
concessions, notably the removal of the face of 
the autocracy (Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia). If 
Mubarak leaves and the reins of the Mubarakian 
state are handed over to the safe-keeping of one 
of his many bloodsoaked henchman such as Omar 
Suleiman
. Mubarak tried this with Ahmed Shafik, 
but he could as well have gone to Tantawi
.all 
generals who are close to Mubarak and seen as 
safe by the ruling bloc. We shall wait to see who 
all among the elite will start to distance 
themselves from Mubarak, and try to reach out to 
the streets for credibility. As a last-ditch 
effort, the Shah of Iran put Shapour Bakhtiar as 
PM. That didn't work. Then the revolt spread 
further. If that does not work, then, (3) the US 
embassy will send a message to Mohamed 
El-Baradei, giving him their green light. 
El-Baradei is seen by the Muslim Brotherhood as a 
credible candidate. Speaking to the crowds on 
January 30 he said that in a few days the matter 
will be settled. Does this mean that he will be 
the new state leader, with the backing of the 
Muslim Brotherhood, and certainly with sections 
of Mubarak's clique? Will this be sufficient for 
the crowds? They might have to live with it. 
El-Baradei is a maverick, having irritated 
Washington at the IAEA over Iran. He will not be 
a pushover. On the other hand, he will probably 
carry on the economic policy of Mubarak. His 
entire agenda was for political reforms. This is 
along the grain of the IMF-World Bank Structural 
Adjustment part 2, viz., the same old 
privatisation agenda alongside "good governance". 
El-Baradei wanted good governance in Egypt. The 
streets want more. It will be a truce for the 
moment, or as Chavez said, "por ahora".

PG: The Radical Islamists, their near-complete 
domination of the oppositional/dissident 
politico-ideological space in the region 
notwithstanding, have failed to rise up to the 
occasion as an effective organisational force - 
one especially has the Muslim Brotherhood of 
Egypt in mind. What do you think is the reason?

VP: The Muslim Brotherhood is on the streets. It 
has set its own ideology to mute. That is very 
clear. Its spokesperson Gamel Nasser has said 
that they are only a small part of the protests, 
and that the protest is about Egypt not Islam. 
This is very clever. It is similar to what the 
mullahs said in Iran during the protests of 1978 
and 1979. They waited in the wings for the 
"multitude" to overthrow the Shah, and then they 
descended. Would the MB do that? If one says this 
is simply the people's revolt and not that of any 
organised force, it's, of course, true. But it is 
inadequate. The ‘people' can be mobilised, can 
act; but can the ‘people' govern without 
mediation, without some structure. This is where 
the structured elements come into play. If there 
is no alternative that forms, then the Muslim 
Brotherhood will take power. That the Muslim 
Brotherhood wants to stand behind El-Baradei 
means they don't want to immediately antagonise the US. That will come later.

PG: What does the emergence of characters like 
El-Baradei signify? Are they really the 
"political face" of the resistance as the global media seems to be projecting?

VP: El-Baradei comes with credibility. He served 
in the Nasserite ministry of external affairs in 
the 1960s. He then served in the foreign ministry 
under Ismail Fahmi. One forgets how impressive 
Fahmi was. He resigned from Sadat's cabinet when 
the Egyptian leader went to Jerusalem. Fahmi was 
a Nasserite. For one year, El-Baradei served with 
Boutros Boutros Ghali at the foreign ministry. 
That was the start of this relationship. Both 
fled for the UN bureaucracy. Boutros Ghali was 
more pliant than Fahmi. I think El-Baradei is 
more along Fahmi's lines. At the IAEA he did not 
bend to the US pressure. Given that he spent the 
worst years of Mubarak's rule outside Cairo gives 
him credibility. A man of his class would have 
been coopted into the Mubarak rule. Only an 
outsider like him can be both of the ruling bloc 
(in terms of class position and instinct) and 
outside the ruling apparatus (i. e. of Mubarak's 
cabinet circle). It is a point of great privilege.

With the MB careful not to act in its own face, 
and the ‘people' without easy ways to spot 
leaders, and with Ayman Nour not in the best of 
health, it is credible that El-Baradei takes on the mantle.

PG: Is the disappearance of working-class and 
other avowedly Left-democratic political 
organisations, which had a very strong presence 
in that part of the world till a few decades ago, 
merely the result of their brutal suppression by 
various authoritarian regimes (such as Saddam 
Hussein's in Iraq, Hafez Assad's in Syria and 
Nasser's and Mubarak's in Egypt) and/or their 
systematic physical decimation by Islamists such 
as the Muslim Brotherhood? Or, does it also have 
to do with certain inherent politico-theoretical 
weaknesses of those groups? Has not the fatal 
flaw of left/ communist/ socialist forces in the 
Islamic, particularly the Arab, world been their 
unwillingness, or inability, to grasp and pose 
the universal question of the "self-emancipation 
of the working class" in the determinateness of 
their specific culture and historicity?

VP: Don't underestimate the repression. In Egypt, 
the 2006 budget for internal security was $1.5 
billion. There are 1.5 million police officers, 
four times more than army personnel. I am told 
that there is now about 1 police officer per 37 
people. This is extreme. The subvention that 
comes from the US  of $1.3 billion helps fund this monstrosity.

The high point of the Egyptian working class was 
in 1977. This was the bread uprising. It was 
trounced. Sadat then went to the IMF with a cat's 
smile. He inaugurated the infitah. He covered the 
books by three means: the infitah allowed for 
some export-oriented production, the religious 
cover (al-rais al-mou'min) allowed him to try and 
undercut the Brotherhood, and seek some funds 
from the Saudis, and the bursary from the US for 
the deal he cut with Israel. This provided the 
means to enhance the security apparatus and 
further crush the workers' movements.

Was there even space or time to think about 
creative ways to pose the self-emancipation 
question? Were there intellectuals who were doing 
this? Are we in Ajami's Dream Palace of the 
Arabs, worrying about the decline of the 
questions? Recall that in March 1954 the major 
Wafd and Communist unions made a pact with the 
Nasserite regime; for concessions it would 
support the new dispensation. That struck down 
its independence. The unions put themselves in 
the service of the Nation over their Class. In 
the long run, this was a fatal error. But the 
organised working class was small (as Workers on 
the Nile shows, most workers were in the 
"informal" sector). The best that the CP and the 
Wafd could do in the new circumstances was to 
argue that the working class plays a central role 
in the national movement. Nasser and his 
Revolutionary Command Council, on the other hand, 
heard this but did not buy it. They saw the 
military as the agent of history. It was their prejudice.

(To be continued)





Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20110131/bc058ffd/attachment.htm>