Speculation, Mr. Marx?

How can one speculate about the outcomes of the military’s action in Egypt? Of course it’s irresponsible of the Brotherhood’s leadership to say the brothers ought to defend their revolution with their lives. It’s sufficient to defend it at the ballot box if they can’t find a way to do it peacefully on the street.

Having first placed its forces in the way of the Brotherhood’s demonstrators, the military can scarcely escape its share of the blame for what happened when they subsequently tried to cross those lines. The decision was not just to replace Morsi’s government, but also to limit the reaction. It was clever but ineffective to neutralize the Brotherhood’s leadership. So now they have blood and prisoners on their hands.

So far this is judgmental but not at all dialectically principled. Observers say Morsi’s government never did get entire control of the state apparatus, that much control remained with Mubarak appointees or at least with people who had no stake in the revolution. What they say is now pretty evident: the police and the courts got behind the military’s solution – at least for now but not, I’d guess, forever. That doesn’t mean these state elements are lined up permanently and out of principle with the parties of secular revolution either. The danger is they could just as easily decide to play their own hand. But since – the supposition runs – they never joined the revolution, but rather stayed where they were and continued to be who they are, any subsequent realignment is just as likely to be counter-revolutionary as not. Here, the dialectical role normally played by class interests is played by considerations of state.

 

One can be more precise. In the Marxist theory of history, the state is the instrument through which, when possible, class interests are adjusted and reconciled. We can also say that, since they consist of people, and people are political as well as economic animals, the political interests of the state elements are always at stake in a revolution. When the object of a revolution – control of the state – is, as here, imperfectly achieved, state elements can retain, more or less, their original pre-revolutionary character, which as a set of political interests governs their action.

But if we try to determine what is dialectically necessary about the working out of the revolution through the current coalition of state elements and bourgeois-liberal parties, we immediately run into the problem of the executive, a problem exacerbated by the circumstance that the military itself has an essentially independent executive. (More on this below.)

As mere subjectivity, or to the extent it is merely subjective, the executive is not subject to dialectical law, is free to determine itself. Just so, Nasser – or even Gaddafi himself – started as a revolutionary, but became as the holder of the state power over balancing economic interests merely the tool, or latterly a member, of the big bourgeoisie. Sadat and then Mubarak came in not as revolutionaries, but as preservers of the state, and were subject to the same transformation.

I would expect El Sissi to, let’s say, enjoy the same opportunities. Certainly the name of preserver still fits the role the military has been playing. But in revolutionary times, we might ask, preserver of what? There is no revolutionary state to preserve, because what there was is precisely what the military removed from power. The free-floating notions “Egyptian people” or “Egyptian nation” can be substituted for the notion of state in the logic of the dialectical moment, but as free-floating only give the executive subjectivity free play. In the end, the minister/general could decide to preserve whatever he thinks worthy to be preserved, and in that way follow in Sadat’s and Mubarak’s footsteps.

 

It would help matters to fill in the content of the interim state with something other than personality. The idea of using technocrats suggests that the current executive, including the interim president, would like the state to function. But the attempt to give it revolutionary content in the form of El Baradei’s appointment as prime minister has already cost the coalition one of its constituents, the Salafists. The subsequent appointment of the economist El Beblawi seems to be a compromise between the two approaches.

Another danger derives from the contradictions between the military and the revolution. The revolution blamed the military for deaths that happened while Mubarak was still in power but got little satisfaction from the courts. Now the courts, the military, and the police share in an interim state that has also involved itself in the deaths of civilians, and is at the same time aligned with the other set of revolutionaries. Thus another split could either separate the interim state from the revolution entirely, or force the Brotherhood out of the revolution entirely. The answer to this case is of course the same as the answer already given: fill in the content of the state with the revolution as a whole.

But this depends on what the Brotherhood are willing to do. Negotiating for participations involves abandoning the claim of legitimacy. Well…prisoners are not ordinarily permitted to negotiate at all. Bringing them to the table would already be a concession to legitimacy. Yet the mood is not conducive to accepting such a gesture as a concession. At least the violence has abated for now.

The State Department thinks Mr. Morsi ought to be let out of close confinement. But these are revolutionary times. They ought to wrap their heads around that. Mr. Morsi will be let out when the military deems the danger of civil war between armed political factions, with themselves as umpire, to have abated. What’s a little imprisonment, even if false, compared to that?

 

Which brings me around to another standpoint for viewing the question, the standpoint that applied the first time the military injected itself into the role of political executive for the Egyptian Arab Spring: that as preserver of the nation and people the Egyptian military does not consider itself subject to civilian control. So could it ever become part of a revolution that stands for that principle? Could it become an element of a revolutionary state that had adopted that principle? So to the extent the secular liberals advocate civilian control of the military, the coalition is, again, unstable, and at least in this particular could lend itself to counter-revolution.

My notes say, “That’s enough. I’m well ahead of the facts again.”

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. 

Secretary Kerry Travels Abroad

He’s making it look like the period in which the revolutions in Syria and Egypt will still be self-determining is coming to an end.

In Egypt at any rate. There he sits down with Morsi and the big bourgeoisie, putting the revolution face to face with the counter-revolution. He tells them to patch things up with the International Monetary Fund. It’s good advice.

Then he sits down with some of the representatives of the opposition within the revolution (they are still too fractured all to agree to attend) and tells them, I imagine, that he had already told Morsi to safeguard the rights of women, religious minorities, etc. And maybe those who did attend will be satisfied with that.

Thus Secretary Kerry’s vision for Egyptian unity: sitting down with the parties and making suggestions backed by a relatively few American bucks…as if the revolution had never occurred and was not occurring and they were not, dialectically speaking, mortal enemies.

So it goes when a historically decisive entity decides it would like to impose its will on the self-determinations of a revolution taking place within an entity of the same order, but not the same magnitude. Moreover, as the representative of national capitals, the IMF is a dialectical entity of a different order, but also of great magnitude. It’s a powerful external combination for ending the revolutionary period in Egypt.

In Syria, a decisive act ending the bloody course of self-determination the parties are currently pursuing would be welcome. At least Secretary Kerry is avoiding the Cold War spectacle of two proxy armies, one wielding Russian weapons, the other American, at war with each other while their suppliers watch. I’ve already argued that not arming the Free Syrian Army was a fearful, self-absorbed mistake. At this point, Bashar’s fall would not come years or months from now, but weeks – even if the Russians and Iranians continue to resupply him with ordinance – were the FSA suitably armed. How many Syrians die in a week? in a month? Are their actual victims less precious than the merely putative victims of merely putative terrorism? How many Syrian lives would the Secretary like to throw into this balance?

Because frankly, Al Qaida has no intercontinental reach anymore that I can detect. Maybe the government can detect it. To me, it consists of warlords leading armed gangs, in deserts rather than streets, that hide their bullying and theft behind the mask of a stern religion that ignores several millennia of human progress. And the only people they have killed lately, contrary to their original principles, are mostly Muslims.

Anyway, to paraphrase Churchill, at least it’s a policy, even if it’s wrong. That’s better than the previous Secretary seems to have done. As a policy, it might even lead somewhere.

The Counter-Revolution Speaks

When I got home from the Institute of World Affairs forum at UW-Milwaukee last week, my wife asked me, “Was it good?”

I said, “I’m not sure. I’d have to know who pays his salary before I could tell whether he’s lying or not.” – the salary in question being that of Salah Brahimi, the featured speaker. He’d proven to be well-connected and well-informed, but glib and unprincipled.

Brahimi was billed as a guide to the second Obama administration on questions of policy towards the Arab Spring and the Islamic world in general. But his welter of facts didn’t lead to principles for policy or action. Instead the guidance was to consider fundamentalist elements in the revolutions “toxic” and therefore “fascist.”

Unfortunately, no political philosophy I am aware of defines fascism in terms of toxicity. Maybe the political scientists in the audience could say the same about their discipline. Yet Brahimi calls some of the Islamists fascists for about the same reason a teenager’s parents might be called fascists: he’s unhappy with them.

Equally unfortunately, those were the tactics Brahimi used all evening. Instead of principled, reasoned argument, we heard personal attacks, loaded words, conspiracy theories…

...and false dichotomies. It is not the case that a political system or party that is not recognizably bourgeois and democratic in the Western style must therefore be fascist. Like it or not, the Moslem Brotherhood have made a revolution successfully in Egypt. That they did it in their own behalf – by itself – no more makes them fascists that it makes Mohammed Morsi a candidate to be dictator-for-life. To show that some of their beliefs and policies are “toxic” from the standpoint of Western liberal democracy is not to show that they are putting the elements of a totalitarian state, or a cult of personality, into place. Neither does their failure so far to build a successful state, toxic as that might be, necessarily indicate they have a hidden agenda.

Actually, Brahimi pays his own salary as head of his own consulting firm. He earns it because, as I say, he’s well-connected and well-informed. He also has “friends” in Egypt. But now the question is, who are his clients? If you ask, who would like to discredit Morsi and the Brotherhood, you might get several different answers. But the liberal secular parties in Egypt can’t afford Brahimi’s salary. Mubarak’s old cronies, the ones who paid him for the privilege of looting the Egyptian people for 30 years, can.

The taxpayers of the state of Wisconsin, who fund the Institute, paid Brahimi an honorarium for his services. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is also a sponsor of the forum. Thanks for the coffee! But, or so it seems, he was already being well paid for what he did: tell lies for the counter-revolution in Egypt.

Morsi shows his hand…

…it’s a revolution based on party, but in his party, class interests are submerged, or at any rate entangled, in religious interests. One can say that, in the end, he might do about as well as Cromwell did.

Which isn’t so bad because, even after the reaction in favor of the Stuart monarchy deprived the Puritans of the state, the Glorious Revolution restored or confirmed their political rights and religious freedom as Dissenters from the state religion. The political solution then reached is still the basis of the British constitutional monarchy.

Other than Cromwell’s, it’s difficult to find examples of revolutions by or in favor of religious parties. Does Lutheranism count? No, because the German princes adopted Lutheranism, really on behalf of their states – it gave them independence from the papacy.

The Huguenots didn’t start as a revolutionary party, but rather as a legitimate party in the Estates-General of France. Though they became involved in a struggle for the state, a struggle that gained them for a time the control of some of the provinces, its grounds were mainly dynastic and factional rather than revolutionary. Yet they, like the Dissenters, numbered many petit bourgeoisie among their faithful.

Other instances match up even less well. The first establishment of the Caliphate was more in the nature of conquest than revolution. It was no more revolution than the Israelites establishing themselves in the Holy Land. Anyhow it’s hard to see how you could have a revolution in favor of anything resembling the Caliphate. Neither did the first Xians aim at control of the state through revolution but rather gained it much later, and not at revolutionary speed but through conversion.

So there’s little guidance from history on the question about the fate of a revolution conducted by a religious party. Now, to show that that is what we are dealing with, I have to show that Morsi has left the path of revolution based on objective class interests. It may also be possible to show that the interests of a religious party as such are not objective in the same sense, if at all – but that would be for another post.

The move to claim vacant or vacated powers was necessary, as I claimed in a post some time ago, to forestall the judiciary, the armed forces already having withdrawn their opposition to the Brotherhood’s revolution and their claim to control of the state. Morsi offered this particular explanation of his action in approximately these terms at one subsequent point. At another point, I seem to recall, he expressed regrets at the appearance of impropriety the appropriation of power gave. Yet the judiciary were prevented from dissolving the constitutional convention in the way they’d dissolved parliament. I believe this, not absolutism, was Morsi’s primary, even his only, aim.

It was not necessary use the appropriated powers to forestall the secular parties, as they had already absented themselves, perhaps not entirely, but sufficient to the purpose, from the process. To the extent Morsi named the Brotherhood and its allies to fill vacant seats and offices, to the extent his original or acquired powers as president were used to stack the convention and control its outcomes, then, he was carrying out the revolution of a religious party, and not a revolution more broadly based on objective class interests.

Nobody ever reported whether Salafists were named to any such vacant seats, the journalists apparently preferring to lump them with the Brotherhood. I have argued that failing to make distinctions on this point is a mistake, and probably an item of Western prejudice, and I am still wondering whether any Salafists had a hand in drafting or approving the constitution, and if so, which if any of their positions were incorporated to it.

So the instrument was hurriedly approved through a process the seculars could not interfere with. And the seculars, having read it, at last found unity, but too late. It’s like what Lenin did to the Kerensky government. It’s like what the German kings did while the German parliament argued with itself after 1848, until the counter-revolution reestablished its state. If the Founding Fathers had conducted themselves the way the secular parties in Egypt have….

Maybe you get my point. There’s a time for talk, but if you’re still talking while another party is taking concrete steps to gain the state, then…you’re free to continue talking after that party becomes the state – maybe. I suppose in this case, since Morsi let them vote, he will also let them talk, if not agitate. The decisive actions have already been taken and the result is what the Brotherhood wanted it to be.

So now the seculars are united, even if only negatively, and they have begun another round of revolutionary agitation. Meanwhile steps are being taken to implement the constitution the people – some of them – voted to adopt. The Shura Council seems to have been given and to be exercising some of the vacant legislative powers, either permanently or during the interim until a new parliament is elected. And they were substantially reappointed by Morsi from his party and in preference both to the minions of the former regime and the seculars – more evidence that the Egyptian revolution has lately been appropriated to the agenda of that religious party.

The seculars thus face an unpleasant choice between trying to get themselves elected under an Islamist constitution, or sitting out the election and trying to make a revolution against the revolution. I guess the French did this a few times during their revolution, but only because it was able, in addition to obliterating the previous regime, to consume itself. I don’t detect that kind of ruthlessness in El Baradei or the people he represents – but who can say?

It’s not Left Adventurism…

…but it’s not right opportunism either. The revolution in Egypt is passing into the hand s of an individual who, it may be hoped, occasionally asks himself, “What would Lenin do?”

Though the circumstances differ greatly, Morsi’s task of getting rid of the “interim” government does not differ in principle from Lenin’s task of getting rid of the Kerensky government.

The longer the secular liberal parties sit on their hands, the smaller their influence on the result. Morsi is steering the middle course as well as any revolutionary who ever had a chance to gain control of the state. It’s time for them to get on board.

The Crisis

In a crisis, a revolutionary must know what to do. One of the things to know is whether it is really a crisis, and not to be panicked by an unexpected reverse or mere threat. This much speculative philosophy can also know. But to predict the result is beyond its power, precisely because it is the time for individuals to act, and philosophy cannot predict even the action, much less the result, of the determinations of individual subjectivity.

It’s good to know that, even in the time of crisis, the Egyptian revolution is still behaving like a revolution. And more particularly that it recognizes the counter-revolution for what it is, and is able to see the courts and the military as the face or maybe the agent of the counter-revolution.

It’s a crisis because the counter-revolution brought it on. Consider their actions, words, and decrees:

·    The courts dissolved the body that was charged with making a new constitution, on grounds of what is left of the old constitution. Logically, to say nothing of the political meaning of the decree, it’s begging the question, which is what the constitution and the state should and will be. (I understand the convention had already become frustrated with itself, and so nothing was done at the time.)

·    The military too are using what is left of the old constitution, that is, the instrument created by the state the revolution was against, to justify their efforts to crush the revolution.

·    The courts have dissolved parliament. What if parliament dissolves the courts? Seems to me the French solved a similar problem in a similar way.

·    Meanwhile, all the functions the courts have taken away from the revolution, including the legislative power, they have given to the military.

·    Thus the military will appoint the constitutional convention, they say. What if the president appoints his own? Suppose further two constitutions are drawn up. Then who decides?

·    And the military want to write themselves an existence separate from and alongside the civil state into the constitution, to include their own budget under their sole control. How will they fund it? Why don’t they give themselves the power of taxation to boot?

All that’s left undone is “firmness,” fraud, arrests, violent confrontation, and a coup – in that order. There’s no reason a really efficient despotism can’t be oligarchic. Burma, for instance.

All this – the counter-revolution putting forth its strength – suddenly makes the revolution seem rather weak. It once looked (to me at least) as if the Brotherhood might be able to leverage the parliament and the presidency together to complete the revolution. It’s now apparent that the revolution never gained control over the state apparatus, nor any part of it. Even if parliament refuses to dissolve itself, it has no physical assets with which to oppose the counter-revolution.

So now the only thing to do is return to the Square. Unfortunately the police are one of the state elements that did not come under the revolution’s control. Thus begins the cycle of fraud, arrests, violence.

Someone could ask, will the secular revolutionaries go to the Square? Maybe they have gone. Or does the counter-revolution seem to them the lesser of two evils? At least some of them must have voted for Shafiq. Poor fools! Soon they may find their reward.

Unfortunately, you can’t dissolve the military. But sweeping the courts out of existence, or at least denying that they exist, is the right thing to do. The revolution can judge through its own tribunals. It’s been done. Here’s a case in which, in order to take the state into its own hands, the revolution has to take the law into its own hands.

Moving to the Left

The liberal/secular vote, split in the first presidential round between two candidates with about 20% each, from here looks now to be the largest bloc of uncommitted voters in Egypt. One can’t say simply they are the largest bloc of voters, for that would mean they should have outpolled the Brotherhood for control of parliament. Neither can one say whether some of them will sit out the election either, even though that would resemble left adventurism.

Yet, had these parties settled on a single candidate, that candidate would be running against Morsi, rather than the counter-revolutionary Shafiq. It’s a typical failing of liberal revolutionists – allowing relatively minor differences of policy to create a split, rather than pursuing a sounder, unified political and electoral strategy. I am thinking of the German parliament after the 1848.

As it is, their opportunities are not entirely lost, as both remaining candidates are moving to the left in order to gain adherents in their bloc. For Morsi, this means less Sharia, more civil liberty. For Shafiq, it means dissembling, as he can have no real intention other than to govern in behalf of the big bourgeoisie.

Meanwhile the courts continue to display their alignment with counter-revolutionary elements. Acquitting the police, letting Mubarak and his family – just barely – live, failing to punish the despoliation of Egypt by Mubarak’s big bourgeois friends: this just energizes the revolution. A revolution with energy is not likely to be defeated if allowed to go to the polls.

Then what? Even the Western journalists are beginning to see how difficult it will be for Morsi to govern. And without a new constitution, the revolution itself will not have been won.

The vision of the Arab Spring perhaps out shines this reality – but that’s what visions do, don’t they? It’s harder to envision the courts taking Shafiq off the ballot than it is to envision people in the Square agitating against a ballot with his name on it. But if the courts did, and the name weren’t, the whole election would take a giant step leftward.