Labor Radicalism and Popular Emancipation: The Egyptian Uprising Continues

Originally published by Dollars & Sense

     In mid-August, the eminent Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek wrote, “Unfortunately, the Egyptian summer of 2011 will be remembered as marking the end of revolution, a time when its emancipatory potential was suffocated.” Indeed, the forcible clearing of protestors from Tahrir Square, the outlawing of labor strikes, and the imprisonment of thousands by the military that was taking place as Žižek wrote did not bode well for the revolution. In the months since his words were published, things have not gotten much better: the military has reinstated Mubarak’s Emergency Law, the International Monetary Fund has issued grim predictions for Egypt’s economic performance as interest rates soar, and Moody’s has again downgraded Egypt’s bond rating and that of several of its major banks. Meanwhile, the Islamists, marginalized in the earlier days of the revolutionary uprising, have returned, well organized and poised to play a significant part in the constitution-writing process that will commence following the upcoming elections.

     Yet since the overthrow of Mubarak, industrial actions against low wages and poor working conditions have persisted, and a multitude of new, independent labor unions have been formed. In recent weeks, a new wave of labor strikes has exploded across the country on a scale “not seen since the earliest weeks of the revolution,” as the Washington Post put it. But in view of the monumental challenges they face, what can these ongoing labor and leftist popular political movements still hope to accomplish? Is the revolution doomed, as Žižek suggests, or is a brighter future, and a truly radical social transformation, away from the domination of Egyptian society by capital, still within reach for Egypt?

The Political Economy of the Egyptian Uprising

Originally published by Monthly Review

Not long after Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Hosni Mubarak would resign his post as President, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Egypt to congratulate the Egyptian people on a job well done. The revolutionaries had accomplished their goal, she said. Everyone could go home and feel proud of their historic achievement and leave the cleaning up to the responsible adults—the United States and the closely allied Egyptian military, which has ruled Egypt since 1952. To prove that there were no hard feelings against the Egyptians for overthrowing one of the closest and most important U.S. allies in the Arab world, the IMF, World Bank, the G8, and the United States itself—the very entities responsible for supporting Mubarak’s thirty-year rule and imposing draconian neoliberal programs on Egypt—have extended as much as $15 billion in aid and credit to Egypt and Tunisia to assist in their transitions to democracy. This generosity begs the question: why are Western governments, and the international financial institutions (IFIs) that are closely linked to them, falling over one another to show their generosity to the revolutionaries and to display their support for progress in the Middle East?

Western ideological systems and establishment propaganda in Egypt have largely reproduced Clinton’s implicit message of “bad” versus “good” capitalism: Mubarak and his gang of “corrupt” associates have been driven out, and now the system’s benevolent equilibrium can be restored by replacing the bad guys with good guys chosen through elections overseen by the U.S.-backed Egyptian army. Accordingly, as recent events make clear, the commitment of IFIs and Western governments to “social justice” comes predicated on continuing the neoliberal transformation of Egyptian society that has been underway for decades. But is the problem the Egyptians face merely a long series of corrupt anomalies, or the system as such? Is a liberal capitalist democracy adequate to meet the demands of the revolution? And is there the potential for something more? Here we cannot avoid the essential question: how does the Egyptian uprising and the new reality it is helping create relate to global capitalism?