Revolution in Flux

A redaction in part of my last post on the Egyptian revolution is in order, as events and evidence of their causes have been reported from the scene.

First, is the military really planning to supplant the revolution? If so, only for a time – but the time is not theirs to spend. Do they really seek to split the revolutionary parties, hoping to profit by aligning themselves with one revolutionary faction, to the disadvantage of the others? There is evidence of that, because going ahead with the elections now is thought to favor the Islamist parties. The secularists aren’t even sure whether they will vote, though they are sure they’d like the vote to be delayed.

And if the vote does take place, and the Islamists win, but the secularists sit out, wouldn’t that split the revolution? The people who occupy Tahrir Square would then be in revolution against the winners of the election.

It’s right opportunism pitted against left adventurism all over again. The right hand of the revolution sees the opportunity of political gain, even a majority in the lower house of parliament for Islamist principles. It’s partial, immediate, therefore opportunist victory; political liberties may alone be in sight (and there may even be a hidden agenda against certain forms of civil liberty).

So the adventure in left adventurism is whether to vote. And if you don’t, whether to create a definite split in the revolution. Which leads where? to another adventure?

There’re signs cooler heads will prevail. One report says the Islamists have sent their cadres to the Square. Whether to give their support to the secular left of the revolution, or just to keep an eye on them, who can say? And certainly whether to vote is not a closed question on the left, though compelling the military to step back is the preferred option.

I can see pretty clearly now that any potential for cleavage is grounded in class differences between the two groups of parties: the right representing an underclass that is not quite proletarian; and the left representing a petit bourgeois who will not be satisfied by anything less than the full range of political and civil liberties. Since the vote of the underclass demographic, if cast, would predominate in the Arab world, elections can pretty much be expected largely to go their way. That’s why constitution framing is so important.

Revolutionists: Save the splits for the constitutional convention itself!

The physical situation also poses dangers. One of the things that makes it look like the military caretaker government is, or feels like it could be, allied with the revolutionary right is their common concern, for example, for the Palestinian state: the one because it enhances their prestige as a card for Egypt to play in any disagreement with Israel; the other because of religious and nationalist sympathies and hostilities. Here the two political programs coincide.

But perhaps I gave the military too much credit when I said “guardians of the constitution” has a subtext. Really both the phrase, and the overall political touch, now seem just clumsy. Their appeal to a putative “silent majority” is lame. The Field Marshall in charge would have moved much faster if he had anything personally in common with Mubarak, or Sadat, or Nasser.

The physical fact is, the army stands between the revolution – the left revolution – and a more open and perhaps more serious threat. The black-shirted police have the looks of the horse and camel riders who had their butts handed to them last winter in Tahrir Square. (I thought I recognized one or two of them in recent video.) They, rather than the military, explicitly constitute the physical projection of counter-revolutionary interests.

The question is: whose interests? Who gives them orders? Who bankrolls their pay and equipment? It’s clever that they use U.S.-made tear gas. Nominally, the police are within the Ministry of the Interior. Nominally the military is the caretaker government. Who’s taking care of the Ministry? There’s intelligence and purpose here that reeks of the big bourgeoisie. Are they really in a position to defy the military?

Anyway, the revolution already beat the thugs once. Are the latter any stronger now? How does the revolutionary right, not confronting them in the Square, feel about them?

Things will change again soon enough. But the revolution in Egypt is strong. And now it knows for sure its work is just begun…

…and supposedly, the elections are starting tomorrow.