The future in revolt

Capitalism did not invent oppression. Some of the most profound and inhuman injustices predate the emergence of capitalism by millennia. The capitalist social system, that overthrew both feudal and Asiatic social relations, often reorganised older oppressions; recreated them; gave them new clothes.

In addition, the accompanying political revolutions intendent on the capitalist social and economic breakthroughs, were often partial, incorporating significant aspects of the old regimes. This compromise over the political dispensation was designed to form a bloc which would counter the emergence of another cycle of revolutionary activity by the plebeian mass of the population.

In sum, the capitalist system (already dominant in key sub-sectors of economic life) was ushered in still wreathed in the old oppressions and with a diluted politics suborned by the new rulers great fear of the revolutions they themselves had previously led.

The most radical capitalist revolution was achieved through the war of Independence and then advanced by the civil war in the USA. This made no political concessions to any 'ancien regime'; there had been none to parley with. And it finally brought to an end modern slavery - at least in the capitalist centres of the west. Nevertheless toilers, women and all peoples of colour remained shackled in the US, albeit in social, economic and cultural chains that were nevertheless reflected in and confirmed by the legal system. So the capitalist essence of society was still obscured by previous traditions of bondage even in the US, let alone in western Europe, and, at the same time, all this (albeit limited) progress in the west stood (and still stands) on the oppression and subjugation of half of the rest of the world through empire. Unemployment, underemployment, subjugation, bond slavery and violence on a mass scale were all 'exported' out of the capitalist centres into the formal or informal dominions of 'the great powers'.

Despite this historical reality, western capitalism has taken on a special if contradictory place today among some radical political movements outside the west. The west's image for example in northern Africa or in Eastern Europe is that western capitalism has produced the most advanced societies in the world. This mirage remains unrelated to history and to the immense burden on the whole of humanity represented by the continued machinations and structures of western Imperialism. In the western countries themselves, the great, indigenous mass struggles for real political democracy, often led by women, the emergence of welfare reform and huge effort, organisation and battles conducted to create more bearable living conditions for those that had to sell their labour, are forgotten in this view. And the fundamental impact on the west of the 20th century popular workers and peasant revolutions, initially in Russia and then expanding across the globe, that threatened revolution at home if there was not reform, is entirely absent from the picture.  

It is not hard to see why this confusion has arisen among some radical forces in North Africa or the Middle East or even in places in Eastern Europe. The collapse of the USSR and the Chinese adoption of 'the capitalist road' implies that only capitalism now has the historical energy to create new societies. Yet here lies a profound contradiction. Egypt is the centre and the fulcrum of the Arab Spring. The radicals in Tahir Square understood perfectly well that capitalism was going through deep crisis in 2008/9. They knew that the US financed the Egyptian Army. They were aware that the west had set up Saddam. And that Qaddafi had recently been laundered by the US and the UK. But they cheered Obama while loathing how big money controlled US elections. What they wanted was a reformed capitalism. Their proposed reforms were radical. They called for a Scandinavian health and welfare service, for an end to the secret police, for 'free' elections. They applauded Edward Snowden's revelations and most of all they wanted a hi tech freedom to move across the globe for their own future. This huge lower middle class layer, represented in all the second rank developing societies where, unlike in the BRIC countries, the factory stage, previously centred between work on the land and service in the cities, has been by-passed, believed it was possible to escape capitalism's ancient horrors, because they had already apparently escaped them for themselves.

Radicals in Egypt linked up with Los Indignatos in Spain and Occupy in New York. All these groups saw themselves as the new global citizens; not least the heroes and heroines in Tahir Square who were risking their lives daily. They imagined a new global reality where space could be wrested from the avaricious market, in city squares or in cyberspace. Modelled on ideas developed by the Zapatistas who took over and successfully defended territory from the Mexican government, and vitalised by the possibilities of instant global communication, they imagined an 'ideal' capitalism, shorn of its political deformities, with space allowed for a world wide 'commons' in which people could develop their own politics and economic activity. (After all were not 35% of the German population producing their own energy?)

The tragedy was that capitalism is going in absolutely the opposite direction. It is ransacking history for models of exploitation and control that might benefit its bloody progression. It is re-imagining and then recreating tyrannies led by autocrats and billionaire gangsters, mass producing new means of oversight and control, throttling the fragile shoots of democracy, creating client political classes and parties, reducing all examples of independent politics, economics, sexual life and even individual imaginations to commodities. And Egypt was and is a key part of the structure that modern capitalism is constantly creating. A partially and unevenly developed country with a military guarantee card for western imperialism in the middle east.

Egypt has 27.2 million in work (2012.) This breaks down into Agriculture (32%), Industry (17%), Services (51%) (2001 figures.) The unemployed are 20.5 million (2012 figures.) Agriculture accounts for 14.7% of Egypt's GDP; industry: 37.4%; services: 47.9% (2012.)

It was this difficult and murky Egyptian reality that was not faced by the bulk of the radicals that bravely made their political revolutions to overthrow Mubarak and then Morsi. Ideal capitalism was not available to them or their country - even via elections. Instead the brutal reality was a society ruled by (often military) millionaires in hock to the US with a vast security apparatus; where the bulk of workers are small farmers; where the unemployed are nearly equal to all those with employment; where a small industrial working class play a large role in the country's GDP and where the obstacles to progress can only be broken at the social and economic as well as the political level.

The bloc that needed to be created was to unify the political rebellion in the city with a social and economic policy for employment, for the land and for industry. In practise, instead of the Tahir radicals dividing their enemies, their enemies divided off the radicals from their essential friends. The army appeared to the radicals as the exact opposite to its essence. Presenting itself as a guardian of modernity and progress the army's actual rule, even at one removed after the coming elections, is the fundamental bloc to any real progress. The army is Imperialism's life breath in Egypt. It is a murder machine that will provide a new platform for millionaires and billionaires to buy up more of Egypt's resources.

For sure a far reaching contest with the Muslim Brotherhood for the leadership of the unemployed, for the allegiance of the rural poor and the industrial workers was needed. But after the fall of Morsi, better the turmoil of a new Constituent Assembly, and immediate elections and of a country thrown into debate and argument than the peace of the graveyard.