Revolution Against Revolution

For some time now the revolution in Egypt has been spinning like a top, on a narrower and narrower basis, until it belonged to the Brotherhood alone, and not really to the nation and its people. The pattern of reported incidents, not to mention the whole tendency of the merely partisan constitution, has been obvious. I drafted a post to that effect, but didn’t publish it, having a garden to put in, and thinking the crisis was not that near.

Mostly I thought the opposition was not strong enough to force a revolution against a revolution, especially given the Brotherhood’s demonstrated support in the electorate. Morsi could align his party more closely with the Salafists, with the seculars, or even with the military, broaden his base, and right the top. Maybe this is what he was trying to do, but perhaps he made the wrong choice.

Parochialism alone would not have made the seculars strong enough, against the well-organized and unitary Brotherhood, to make their revolution. Demonstration versus counter-demonstration might have continued in a stalemate.

Thus the action of the military on the side of one set of demonstrators, ostensibly to give it peace as against the other set, was a surprise to me. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been. After all, the military considers itself a secular institution, and found itself part of a state that, unlike Mubarak’s, was no longer secular. The situation was not quite too bad as to make martial law a social necessity. But the die is cast. The military moved as soon as it had colorable grounds to move against a colorably legitimate government. The courts seconded them by providing the interim president.

Meantime, under the threat that an Islamist party would actually enforce an Islamist constitution, the secular liberals seem to have found greater unity, and the Coptics to fear for their very existence. Given the present combination, and despite the threat that temporary military control over the public apparatus will become permanent, it’s possible to reopen the question whether a bourgeois revolution, as opposed to a revolution merely to legalize a formerly outlawed party and its mere beliefs, is possible in Egypt. So, good Moslems who happen to be in business, say in tourism, might have voted for Morsi last year, but now lean towards the seculars. Coptics who sat out the elections because nobody seemed to be courting their votes might now appreciate that tolerance is a plank in the secularist platform. And women are less likely to expect the Brotherhood to take note of, much less safeguard and expand, their political and civil liberties.

Dialectically, where’s the new liberal energy coming from? It’s one thing to confront a politically backward or timid people with repression. It’s another to substitute one form of repression for another over a people that is already revolutionized. The timidity is gone; the means for agitation are at hand. The Brotherhood’s voter may not have resented that Morsi let the economy stagnate. Not having any to begin with, the generality of them cannot be sensible of opportunities being lost. It’s different with the petit bourgeoisie: they can embrace the principles of liberal bourgeois revolution out of class interest. Moreover, the naturally liberal student movement is revitalized and sitting at the table with El Baradei and the rest.

 

The present liberal-democratic combination is formidable. It also may not last long. I can only hope that the United States government will know what to do this time and not just urge everybody to remain calm so that the price of oil can go back down. Why is it OK to spend blood and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan to establish democracy, but do nothing, not even formulate and follow a consistent policy, when all of the Arab Middle East, from the Maghrib to the Levant, is going through revolution? The revolutions are trying to do the work of democracy in a way that costs us neither blood nor treasure, and that our blood and treasure couldn’t in principle have a better likelihood of doing well.

Egypt is the center of gravity. We ought to find a way to help them make their revolution against a revolution.