Science & Society, Vol. 78, No.

1, January 2014, 1140

11
Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Egypt
BRECHT DE SMET
ABSTRACT: The 2011 Egyptian revolution and its concrete out-
comes of military rule and Muslim Brotherhood governance
demand a thorough analysis that transcends the archetypical
binaries of revolution and counter-revolution, uprising and tran-
sition, dictatorship and democracy. A Gramscian interpretation,
deploying the concepts of historical bloc, passive revolution, and
Caesarism, embeds the contemporary events within a historical
process of post-colonial state formation and reconfguration and
the local implementation of global neoliberal accumulation strate-
gies. These lineages elucidate the capacity of the Armed Forces
to play a specifc Caesarist role during the revolutionary process.
The January 25 insurrection and its counter-revolutionary appro-
priation by the military and the Brotherhood are rendered intel-
ligible as alternating moments of one and the same process, in
which the revolutionary mobilization of the masses is intersected,
on the one hand, by hegemonic relations between ruling and
subaltern groups, and, on the other, by political fghts internal to
these discrete factions.
A
T THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY of the Egyptian Revolution
of January 11, 2011, labor historian Joel Beinin provocatively
posited that: The January 25 Revolution is not over. Rather,
it has not yet occurred (Beinin, 2013). He argued that the popular
uprising had been swiftly outmaneuvered by the Supreme Council of
Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood. The state appara-
tus remained largely intact, and there was no fundamental change in
the political and economic relations of power. Beinin refrained from
categorizing the January 25 insurrection as a revolution because its
outcomes appeared all but transformative. This consequentialist
historical perspective echoed Theda Skocpols classical definition of
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12 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
a revolution as a process that not only entailed class-based revolts
from below, but also rapid, basic transformations of a societys state
and class structures (Skocpol, 1979, 5). Thus, a particular outcome
of the revolutionary process is turned into a primary determinant of
its categorization as a revolution. This means, on the one hand, that
a process can only be discerned as a revolution post factum, and, on
the other, that the notion of a failed revolution becomes problematic,
since its success the conquest, break-up, and transformation of
state power (cf. Lenin, 1976) becomes a precondition of its defini-
tion. In the case of Egypt, this would imply that the successes of the
counter-revolution are evidence that there is no genuine revolution
unfolding.
However, it was not social scientists who first defined the Tuni-
sian and Egyptian uprisings as a revolution, but the protagonists
themselves. As a concept it emerged spontaneously from the ranks
of the protesters who tried to make sense of their own collective
and collaborative mass activity. Shifting the focus of analysis from
outcomes to agencies, the substance of revolution appears as: the
forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their
own destiny (Trotsky, 2001, 1718). This subject-centered concept
of revolution places the punctuated and non-linear development of
subaltern self-determination, self-consciousness, and self-organization
at the heart of its analysis.
From the perspective of the subaltern classes, revolution is the
process through which they (attempt to) reconfigure the exist-
ing historical bloc
1
to their advantage. The January 25 insur-
rection thus constituted an explosive and salient moment within
a protracted, molecular process of economic strikes and politi-
cal protests that stretched back to the early 2000s (ZDB, 2013).
Conversely, the dynamic of counter-revolution is shaped by agents
whose practices, strategies, and discourses aim to protect and con-
solidate the status quo.
Despite the conceptual clarity of these ideal-typical struggles, the
actual processes of revolution and counter-revolution are intersected,
1 Gramscis concept of historical bloc has two dimensions. First, it points to a vertical
coherent ensemble of political and economic forces. Second, it represents a horizontal
alliance of classes and groups under the umbrella of a national-popular will (Morton, 2007,
9697).
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REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 13
on the one hand, by hegemonic
2
relations between ruling and sub-
altern groups, and, on the other, by political fights internal to these
factions. By itself, the simple dichotomy between revolutionary and
counter-revolutionary forces cannot function as a complete ana-
lytical framework to understand the complex patchwork of political
projects and alliances in Egypt today. In order to understand the
unfolding process of post-insurrectionary transformation in Egypt, it
is necessary to grasp precisely why certain political powers are able to
exert leadership over the masses.
Drawing on a Gramscian framework, I explore the historical
lineages of the military soft coup that deflected the spontaneous
uprising of January 25. Gramscis concepts of passive revolution,
Caesarism, and transformism offer interpretative instruments for
an understanding of the current process as neither a victorious revolu-
tion, nor a triumphant restoration.
The Nasserist Lineage
On Thursday, February 10, 2011, for the first time since the begin-
ning of the January 25 protests, the military emerged as an explic-
itly autonomous participant in the revolutionary process through the
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which consisted of the
Defense Minister, the Chief of Staff, and other high-ranked officers of
all military services, districts, and departments (Kandil, 2011). The mere
fact that the SCAF convened independently from the president was
proof that a silent coup was taking place. CNN quoted an anonymous
senior Egyptian official: Its not a coup, its a consensus (Guardian,
2011b) a growing consensus among Egypts capitalist class fractions
and foreign allies, such as the USA, that Mubaraks days were numbered
and that the military was the only stable sphere of the state apparatus
able to contain the revolutionary flood (cf. Amar, 2011; Shenker, 2011).
2 Whereas for Lenin the notion of hegemony served as a category in the analysis of proletar-
ian strategy (Morton, 2007, 88), for Gramsci it became a key concept in the theory of state
formation. The historical development of the modern, bourgeois integral state contained
the internal differentiation of civil and political society. The class rule of the bourgeoisie was
based on both domination and hegemony. Whereas domination is naked and top-
down class rule, whereby the ruled are the passive object of the integral state, hegemony is
the active consent to the ruling class leadership because of its prestige, its directive capaci-
ties, its cultural aura, its ability to manage society and resolve societal problems, etc. For
the bourgeoisie, hegemony was the capacity to present itself as a progressive and leading
force in society and to represent its own particular interests as the general good.
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14 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
Curiously, despite the critical attitude of organized activists vis--vis
the role of the Armed Forces, the broad masses cautiously welcomed
the intervention of the military, embracing and kissing soldiers and
conscripts, giving them flowers, food, and drink, talking and discussing
with them, and demanding that our brothers in the national armed
forces clearly define their stance by either lining up with the real
legitimacy provided by millions of Egyptians on strike on the streets,
or standing in the camp of the regime that has killed our people, ter-
rorized them and stole from them (Guardian, 2011a). Opposition
figures such as el-Baradei called upon the army to save the country
now or it will explode (Guardian, 2011c).
These interpellations of the Armed Forces as a potential revolu-
tionary ally for the masses were not only the product of a simple naivete
towards the real interests of the military, or, conversely, a calculated
pragmatism not to confront the armed bodies of the state; they also
represented deeply entrenched historical expectations of the army
as a national and popular force for change. This lineage was firmly
rooted in the Nasserist experience of the 1950s and 1960s, which still
resonates in contemporary Egyptian politics.
3
Fragments of Nasserist
ideology were still entrenched within popular common-sense notions
about social justice, relations between state and economy, and
anti-imperialism. For many Egyptian workers and farmers, the his-
torical figure of Gamal Abd al-Nasser remained an icon of liberation
because of his domestic redistributive and social welfare politics and
his prestigious role in the non-aligned movement.
In the eyes of leftist political activists and intellectuals, however,
the Nasserist heritage was much more ambiguous. The novelist Alaa
al-Aswany offered an intuitive glimpse of the contradictions that oper-
ated at the core of the Nasserist project:
I do not think it was a coup, rather a coup supported by a real revolution.
Nasser was a great leader and he did very positive things for Egypt. . . . many
Egyptians had, for the frst time, the opportunity to enjoy a good education,
3 For example, in the post-Mubarak presidential elections of May 23 and 24, 2012, Hamdeen
Sabahi, leader of the neo-Nasserist al-Karama (Dignity) party, surprisingly came in third,
with 20.72% of the votes, after Muhammad Morsi and Ahmed Shafq (Ahramonline, 2012).
In militant Alexandria, Sabahi even won the frst round with 34% (Ali, 2012). Sabahis
popularity among Egypts working classes was only partially derived from his implacable
opposition toward the Mubarak regime from the 1970s onward, and his humble background
as a fsherman (Ibrahim, 2012).
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REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 15
health care, food, because of Nassers revolution. . . . But also we shouldnt
forget that the current dictatorship and regime is based on Nasser. Every-
thing: the security state, the control system, the elections . . . everything is
based on this regime. The irony is that he established a dictatorship while
he didnt need it. Nasser was supported to the extent that in any free elec-
tions he would have easily gained a majority. That was not the case with the
presidents who came after him. He was the one who built the dictatorship
machine. And the problem with this machine is that everyone can use it.
Everything is ready for the dictatorship, the security, the torture. If you are
in the driving seat you just push the button and the regime will keep on run-
ning. (Personal communication with Alaa al-Aswany, November 26, 2010.)
Despite the 1919 anti-colonial popular uprising, the emergence of
militant trade unions from the 1920s onward, and huge movements of
students and workers after World War II, it was the Nasserist episode
that consolidated a particular, and arguably distorted, concept of
revolution, which was understood as a particular process of radical
decolonization, economic and political modernization, social justice,
and nation building in Egypt and the Arab world. Already in the 1960s
and 1970s academic narratives of Nasserism, the military was pre-
sented as a relatively progressive, transformative force (cf. Hurewitz,
1969; Vatikiotis, 1972). In contradistinction to the conservative ruling
elites, which were tied to the interests of foreign colonial capital and
domestic landed property, the military and its leading petty-bourgeois
stratum in particular (cf. Halpern, 1963) appeared as a modern and
national political agent that acted as a substitute for the absent arche-
typical bourgeoisie. From the 1970s onward, the developmental and
democratic failures of the Arab socialist states provoked a critique
of these perspectives (Picard, 1990, 1989). Some of these analyses
even rejected the transformative capacity of the military, regarding the
nationalist coups as forms of premodern continuity rather than mod-
ernist change (cf. Perlmutter, 1974). Others recognized the (failed)
modernization efforts of the regime, but denied any revolutionary
character of the military dictatorship, citing its violent and authoritar-
ian politics vis--vis workers and farmers (Beinin, 2013).
In order to understand these contradictions, authors operat-
ing within a Gramscian tradition have categorized the Nasserist
intervention as a form of passive revolution (e.g., Cox, 1987, 210;
al-Shakry, 2011). However, as I argue below, this regime label
creates more problems than it solves: by itself, it cannot explain
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16 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
in a satisfactory manner the complex interdependency between
popular masses and state elites, nor the transformative shift from
Nasser to Sadat and Mubarak. Thus Gramscis notion of Caesa-
rism appears as an additional, yet indispensable, conceptual tool
to understand the contemporary dialectic between subaltern actors
and ruling groups.
Passive Revolution
The term passive revolution was first deployed by Gramsci to
understand the Risorgimento as a process of revolutionizing, but
non-revolutionary formation of a modern Italian state (Thomas, 2009,
146). Italys road to modernity differed from the archetypical tra-
jectory of France, in which the bourgeoisie led the popular masses
to a revolutionary overthrow of Ancien Rgime forces. First, the Ital-
ian modernization and state formation process was molecular and
gradual, instead of consisting of explosive ruptures. Small reforms
and concessions deferred or deflected far-reaching structural trans-
formations (Gramsci, 1971, 109). Second, the old ruling classes were
not removed from power, but renegotiated positions of governance
within the newly emerging political and economic relations (Sassoon,
1982, 132). In addition, the moderate modernizers, such as Cavour,
were able to absorb the radical vanguard, personified in Garibaldi
and Mazzini, into their own ranks. Gramsci denoted this process by
the term transformism (Gramsci, 1971, 5859). Third, Italys mod-
ernization was based on a weak, limited, or restricted hegemony.
Whereas hegemony presupposes coercion as one of the extensions
of its substance as class direction, the reverse holds true for passive
revolution, where political leadership is peripheral to its primary deter-
mination of domination (Gramsci, 1971, 59). The moderates did not
exercise leadership as the bourgeoisie over the other classes, but as a
class fraction they dominated the Italian bourgeoisie as a whole. By
leaning on the state apparatus, the moderates solved the riddle of class
leadership in a bureaucratic and technocratic way (Gramsci, 1971,
1046). Fourth, Gramsci understood the self-consciousness or lack
thereof of the actors involved as an important determinant of the
capacity for passive revolution. A fundamental reason why the Ital-
ian moderates succeeded in absorbing the radicals was that whereas
Cavour was aware of his role (at least up to a certain point) in as much
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REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 17
as he understood the role of Mazzini, the latter does not seem to have
been aware either of his own or of Cavours . . . (Gramsci, 1971, 108).
Passive revolution is then possible when (a particular fraction of) the
ruling class has a deeper self-awareness of its historical role than its
antagonists.
Gramsci expanded passive revolution as a criterion to cases of
state formation beyond Italy, to those countries that modernize the
state through a series of reforms or national wars without undergo-
ing a political revolution of a radical Jacobin-type (Gramsci, 1996,
232). Passive revolution characterized the process of capitalist transi-
tion after the failed revolutions of 1848, when the revolutionary opti-
mism and radical Jacobinism of the bourgeoisie were shattered by the
uprisings of the subaltern classes that had once consented to its rule.
The revolts revealed the particular interests behind the bourgeoisies
universal political project, but the subaltern subjects were unable
to forge a hegemony of their own, leaving the ruling classes in power.
Passive revolution was thus understood as the cynical mode of gover-
nance of a class, whose rule was not based on a rousing ethico-political
project or universal liberation myth, but on the disorganization and
fragmentation of its oppositional forces.
Gramsci also indicated that the concept of passive revolution
was useful for the interpretation of the political economy of capital-
ist restructuring (Buci-Glucksman, 1979, 222) indeed, of every
epoch characterized by complex historical upheavals (Gramsci, 1971,
114). In his writings on Americanism and Fordism, the Italian Marx-
ist discussed the gradual yet total restructuring of the capitalist social
formation as a passive revolution aimed at fighting the falling rate of
profit (Gramsci, 1971, 279280). At this point, the meaning of passive
revolution is almost interchangeable with that of reformism (For-
gacs, 2000, 428). Italian Fascism also incorporated an aspect of passive
revolution as it offered an answer to the problematic, particular to Italy,
of both capitalist restructuring and transition by expanding and rein-
forcing the direct role of the state in the process of surplus extraction.
From a criterion of interpretation of the historical particular process
of Italian state formation, the concept of passive revolution came
to denote the methodology of restructuring political and economic
relations within a historical and global framework of capitalist crisis
(Morton, 2007, 71) the reconstitution by elites of what Gramsci
called a historical bloc.
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18 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
The Nasserist CoupRevolution
As Omnia al-Shakry (2011) indicated, the Nasserist episode shared
many similarities with Gramscis notion of passive revolution. From
a birds-eye perspective, Egypts colonial and semi-colonial histori-
cal bloc had been in crisis since the mass revolts of 1919. Through-
out the three decades following Egypts formal independence, the
indigenous industrial bourgeoisie was not able to develop itself as
a coherent class-for-itself, but it remained a fragmented, amorphous
collection of economic actors, subjugated to domestic landlords and
international capital groups, and thus incapable of leading an anti-
imperialist hegemonic bloc (Clawson, 1978, 21; Farah, 2009, 31). Up
to 1952 strikes, protests, riots, and revolts especially by workers and
students destabilized and disorganized central state power. The
development towards revolution from below was deflected (Marfleet,
2011; cf. Cliff, 1963) by the coup of the Free Officers on July 23, 1952,
which initiated an authoritarian transformation from above.
Nasserism quickly revealed itself as a particular elite methodology
of politicaleconomic transition towards capitalist modernity. As the
main predicament for the nations development was grasped as the
twin evils of imperialism and feudalism, the military clique sought to
create a new historical bloc that subjugated these social and political
forces to their rule through industrialization and full sovereignty. At
first, the Nasserist state saw its role merely as the midwife of spontane-
ous industrial development by private capital groups (Beinin, 1989,
73; Johnson, 1973, 4). However, the domestic and foreign industrial
capitalists that were courted by the state proved to be fickle allies for
economic development, which led to an expansion of the state into
the domain of industrial accumulation. The Socialist Decrees of 1961
nationalized, in one stroke, large-scale industry, banking, insurance,
foreign trade, utilities, marine transport, airlines, many hotels and
department stores. The public sector became the dominant industrial
producer and investor (Aoude, 1994).
In order to subsume the population under its modernizing proj-
ect, the state had to create the terrain of a modern civil society in the
shape of mass trade unions, professional syndicates, public companies,
universities and schools, women, youth, and children organizations,
cultural clubs, peasant associations, etc., which drew, for the first time
in Egypts history, the majority of the population into the activity of
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REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 19
mass civil institutions. However, the Nasserist state regarded these
structures rather as instruments of popular mobilization than participa-
tion (Bayat, 1993, 66). The people was conceptualized as a passive
source of legitimacy, instead of an active, self-determining force. The
process of politicaleconomic transformation was supported by trans-
formist politics and coercive consent. At first, the Nasserist state tried
to absorb industrial capitalists into its emerging bloc. The reluctance
of domestic entrepreneurs and Western financial actors to invest in
the states industrialization schemes stimulated the socialist turn of
the regime. Nasserism proved more successful in absorbing subaltern
groups and the communist opposition through subsequent waves
of coercion and integration. Farmers were integrated through land
reforms, but their own spontaneous occupations of landed property
were violently suppressed (Marfleet, 2011). Mass education and guar-
anteed state employment granted working-class graduates a stable
future. Nasserist domination over the workers movement was secured
by a combination of unilateral and far-reaching social reforms, high
wages, repression of leftist activists and intellectuals, and state-led cor-
poratism (al-Shakry, 2011). Strikes and independent worker actions
were prohibited, but, from 1957 onward, proletarian bargaining power
was secured by the state-controlled General Federation of Egyptian
Trade Unions (GFETU) (Bayat, 1993, 68). The radicalization of eco-
nomic policies in the 1960s and the rapprochement with the Soviet
Union stimulated the integration of leftists as loyal personnel into the
state apparatus e.g., expressed in the formation of the Arab Socialist
Union (ASU) in 1962 and the Egyptian Socialist Youth as a Marxist
cadre school in 1965 (Johnson, 1973, 4). When in 1964 communist
prisoners were released, the two biggest communist organizations
voluntarily dissolved themselves into the ASU (BL, 1987, 583-4). The
Egyptian Left struggled to grasp the class nature of the Free Officers
and their societal transformations. The failure to understand this false
friend stimulated both opportunist and sectarian politics vis--vis the
Nasserist project, which expanded the capacity of the state to absorb
the fragmented leftist opposition.
This sketchy narrative seems to confirm the interpretation of Nas-
serism as an almost classical case of passive revolution. One crucial
element is missing, however, which could serve as an explanation for
the enduring vigor of the Nasserist tradition today. For Gramsci, pas-
sive revolution was the ability of the bourgeoisie to reform political
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20 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
and economic structures in an epoch where its ethico-political legiti-
macy had been compromised. He considered the transformation
of the Italian and German social formations in the 19th century
as revolutionrestorations, because they were presided over by a
cynical capitalist class lacking a radical Jacobin moment (Thomas,
2009, 147). Contrariwise, the Nasserist transformation constituted a
politicaleconomic act of Jacobins who were not supported by their
own bourgeoisie. Despite its authoritarianism, the Nasserist project
expressed by its strong political leadership, its cultural prestige, and
its vanguard role in the Arab nationalist and non-aligned movement
radiated a strong ethico-political dimension up until the 1967 Six
Day War. From a globalhistorical perspective, Nasserism was not a
part of the cynical retreat of European liberalism in the 19th century
from its revolutionary myth of freedom, equality, and fraternity, but
one of the driving forces of the national liberation movement in the
Third World. Unlike the 19th-century Italian Moderates, Nassers top-
down politics of transformism and coercive consent did not serve to
scaffold a crumbling hegemony; rather, it merely complemented a
broad, bottom-up popular consent to his rule. Alaa Al-Aswany stressed
that Nasser was supported to the extent that in any free elections
he would have easily gained a majority (personal communication,
November 26, 2010). The perceived capacity of the Nasserist state to
lead the nation and defend the common good was of central impor-
tance to the continuation of military rule.
Moreover, the mass movements that disorganized state power in
the run-up to the 1952 coup constituted both a springboard and an
obstacle for the Free Officers. By leaning on the spontaneous upris-
ing and the trade unions, they were able to hijack the movement in
order to conquer state power for themselves, but the mobilization of
workers, students, farmers, and lower-middle-class groups also gener-
ated a historical debt to these subaltern forces. Thus, the absorption
of subaltern actors into the Nasserist integral state was not only the
result of regime policies, but the negotiated outcome of an enduring
political and economic struggle.
In other words, the interpretation of Nasserism as a passive
revolution successfully reveals the contours of its substance as an
authoritarian project of modernization, but it conceals the histori-
cal social and political relations that determined its populist and
even socialistic character. In order to understand Nasserism as a
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REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 21
revolutionrestoration initiated from above, but supported from
below, Gramscis concept of passive revolution has to be comple-
mented by his notion of Caesarism.
Caesarism
In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx (2009) discussed
a situation of societal crisis in which a state or state-faction bereaves the
ruling class of its direct and formal political power. The state appears
to balance between the classes and gains a level of autonomy vis--
vis its constituent classes. However, it still articulates the interests of
the ruling class and acts as its diligent guardian. Gramsci elaborated
upon the concept of Bonapartism through his concept of Caesa-
rism, which can be said to express a situation in which the forces
in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner; that is to
say, they balance each other in such a way that continuation of the
conflict can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction (Gramsci,
1971, 219). The stalemate is solved by the intervention of a third
force . . . from outside, subjugating what is left (Gramsci, 1971, 219).
To the common interpretation of Bonapartism as an essentially
right-wing phenomenon, Gramsci added that there were progressive
and reactionary forms:
Caesarism is progressive when its intervention helps the progressive force to
triumph, albeit with its victory tempered by certain compromises and limita-
tions. It is reactionary when its intervention helps the reactionary force to
triumph in this case too with certain compromises and limitations, which
have, however, a different value, extent, and signifcance than in the former.
(Gramsci, 1971, 219.)
Moreover, the Italian Marxist distinguished between the classic,
military form of Caesarism in nations without a fully developed civil
and political society, and the modern type that can be brought about
by the financial and political power of small groups or individuals
(Gramsci, 1971, 220). Finally, he discussed the difference between
quantitative and qualitative Caesarism. Whereas qualitative Cae-
sarism changed and developed the form of the state, its quantitative
variant was content with a mere continuation of existing state practices
(Gramsci, 1971, 222).
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22 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
In Gramscis writings, the conceptual relation between Caesa-
rism and passive revolution is not immediately clear. Robert Cox, for
example, understood Caesarism as the instrumentality of passive
revolution (Cox, 1987, 192). Because of its populist character, he
labeled Nasserism as a radical Caesarism (Cox, 1987, 243). How-
ever, Coxs intellectual deployment of the concepts of passive revolu-
tion and Caesarism established a typology of state forms, while Gramsci
stressed that these categories were, respectively, a criterion of inter-
pretation (Gramsci, 1971, 114) and a a generic hypothesis, a socio-
logical schema (Gramsci, 1971, 221). Whereas the notion of passive
revolution draws attention to the contradictory unity of reform and
restoration in the capitalist age, Caesarism highlights the direction,
pace, and class nature of the process.
In Egypt, factions of the military constituted a semi-independent,
external social force, which was able to solve the protracted and
undecided power struggle between the nationalpopular forces and
the semi-colonial ruling bloc of landlords, the Palace, and British
capital. Nasserist Caesarism was relatively progressive, because the Free
Officers took the side of the popular masses against feudalist and
imperialist forces. Although the Free Officers had delivered the death
blow to the old semi-colonial bloc by using military force, they did not
base their rule solely on coercion. Similar to the French bourgeois state
that emerged triumphantly from the revolution of 1789, the Nasserist
project contained an ethico-political dimension, which mobilized
and inspired the masses. This progressive aspect did not wane, but
was strengthened in successive waves of nationalization, social legisla-
tion, and absorption of communist and trade unionist individuals and
groups into the state apparatus. In addition, Nasserism was a qualita-
tive Caesarism, as it transformed the Egyptian social formation in a
revolutionary way. Ironically, Nassers Arab socialism proved to be
the most efficient way to appropriate and embed pre-capitalist social
forms in capitalist relations of production.
4
4 Acknowledging the progressive aspect of Nasserism does not entail a denial of its counter-
revolutionary role. While the state was heir to the class forces that generated it, the Free
Offcers regime was a military dictatorship that subordinated the subaltern classes to its
rule. In the same way, Gramsci recognized the progressive and qualitative element in
Italian Fascism i.e., a methodology to overcome the organic crisis of bourgeois rule
through mass mobilizations and far-reaching reforms without labeling the movement as
a revolutionary emancipatory force (Forgacs, 2000, 248).
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REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 23
A nuanced reading of Nasserism is not only important to under-
stand its contemporary ambiguous legacy, but also to differentiate
between Nassers passive revolution and the transformation that was
initiated by his successors Sadat and Mubarak. Both entailed authori-
tarian, top-down reforms, but represented opposed class interests.
From a Neoliberal War of Maneuver . . .
Gramsci remarked that the difficulty in analyzing forms of passive
revolution was not to discern elements of reform and restoration, but
to see whether in the dialectic revolution/restoration it is revolu-
tion or restoration which predominates . . . (Gramsci, 1971, 219).
In this sense, the transition from Nasserism to the historical blocs of
Sadat and Mubarak could be interpreted as a shift from a progressive
and qualitative Caesarism to a reactionary and quantitative process of
restoration by counter-reforms.
From the 1960s onward, there was a contradiction between the
states political populist consumption policy, oriented towards
generating consent from the masses, and the economic investment
demands of developmentalism, which necessitated productivity, low
costs, and labor discipline (Cooper, 1979, 4823). It became obvious
that the system could not sustain both capital-intensive industrializa-
tion and high levels of consumption (BL, 1987, 459). Prices and taxes
were increased; the workweek was increased from 42 to 48 hours with-
out compensation; forced savings were deducted from monthly wages;
paid holidays were cancelled; and so on (Posusney, 1996, 219). The
economic malaise and the Six Day War defeat shattered the dream
of Arab socialism and weakened Nasserist hegemony. The Nasserist
bloc was forced to change its accumulation strategy and to recompose
its class alliances. Under the rule of Sadat in the 1970s, Caesarism
consolidated its civil, reactionary, and quantitative turn.
Since the coup of the Free Officers in 1952, the army had become
the ruling stratum of Egyptian society. The Armed Forces became a
patchwork of semi-autonomous and contending spaces within the
state the Army, Air Defense, Air Force, Navy, Intelligence Services,
Republican Guard, Ministry of Defense, etc. which were ruled by
their generals as small fiefdoms. After the Six Day War, Nasser himself
began to sidetrack the role of the Armed Forces in political society,
shifting the balance of power from the Ministry of Defense to the
G4254.indd 23 10/24/2013 9:15:29 AM
24 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
Ministry of Interior, and moving towards a dictatorship of the police
rather than the military (Springborg, 2009, 10). President Sadats
democratic revolution consolidated this demilitarization of the rul-
ing stratum and the state apparatus (Tucker, 1978, 6). In 1974, his
political position strengthened by the October War of 1973, the Presi-
dent announced the Infitah, a program of economic liberalization
and reintegration in the world market, aimed at attracting foreign
investment (Bayat, 1993, 778; Farah, 1986, 224; Lachine, 1977, 45).
The Open Door policy signaled a new accumulation strategy that
reoriented Egypts domestic economic structure towards neoliberal
changes in the global economy (cf. Cox, 1987, 21844).
After the Camp David negotiations of 1978, the Armed Forces not
only lost their central political role, but also their military function
within the new bloc. The USA helped to transform the post-Nasserist
military into a stable and reliable state structure that could be directly
domesticated and contained through military aid. To appease the
officers, Sadat granted them economic concessions: to run shopping
malls in Egypt, develop gated cities in the desert and beach resorts
on the coasts. And they are encouraged to sit around in cheap social
clubs (Amar, 2011). From Caesarist overlords, the generals degener-
ated into petty capitalists, whose mediocre surpluses were artificially
shielded from private and public competition. In this manner, from
a dominating class fraction, the generals evolved into a subaltern
ally of a newly emerging transnational ruling bloc consisting of state
bureaucrats, public sector managers, powerful landlords, subcontrac-
tors, new and traditional layers of the domestic bourgeoisie,
5
foreign
capitalist investors, and the USA.
Sadats Caesarism was a qualitative transformation of Egypts social
formation, embedded within the global passive revolution of neoliber-
alism. Egypt, together with Pinochets Chile, constituted the vanguard
of this anti-popular reconfiguration in the Global South (Callinicos,
5 Under Nasser, Egypts economy had never been fully nationalized and pockets of private
accumulation continued to exist in agriculture, trade, and some industrial sectors. Because
domestic trade was left relatively free and prices of consumer goods were only infuenced
through subsidies, commercial capitalists fourished (Cooper, 1979, 499). The industrial
bourgeoisie developed new activities to accumulate capital, especially as subcontractors for
the government. Without the full liquidation of the private sector, the growth of the public
sector stimulated a proportional expansion of the subcontracting companies (al-Khafaji,
2004, 247). State capitalism strengthened private capitalists within its protective womb
(Marfeet, 2011), who, ironically, favored more liberal economic policies (Cox, 1987, 243).
G4254.indd 24 10/24/2013 9:15:29 AM
REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 25
2011). Such a radical reconstitution of the existing political and eco-
nomic relations required an offensive war of maneuver: sweeping
changes to the historical bloc by a confrontational class struggle
instead of war of position of molecular or quantitative transfor-
mation, e.g., by a broad strategy of transformism (cf. Gramsci, 1971,
243). Despite Sadats attempts at establishing Islam and bourgeois
democracy as new ideological forms, his hegemonic project could
not generate a convincing and mobilizing ethico-political dimension.
Whereas the progressive moment predominated in Nassers passive
revolution, Sadats attempt to radically reconfigure the populist histori-
cal bloc along neoliberal lines was quickly revealed as a cynical process
of restoration that excluded the demands of subaltern allies such as
workers and small-scale farmers. The rule of Sadat and his successor
Mubarak was no longer determined by their positive hegemonic
leadership and prestige, but by their negative ability to maintain
their political opponents and subaltern classes in a fragmented or
economiccorporate state (cf. Thomas, 2009, 152).
The repression of the 1977 bread riots insurrection and the
Camp David negotiations increasingly alienated even its new Islamist
allies from the Sadat state (Farah, 1986, 126). The failure of the states
transformism of political Islam eventually led to the Presidents assas-
sination in 1981.
. . . To a War of Position and Back
Even though Sadats politicaleconomic project was designed as
an offensive passive revolution, it was turned into a defensive process of
transformation due to an unforeseen reconfiguration of its economic
base and the specter of mass revolt (Bayat, 1993, 768; Beinin, 2001,
157). From the second half of the 1970s, a steady stream of revenues
from migrant workers remittances from the Gulf region, foreign
loans and diplomatic, military, and economic aid, and tariffs from
the re-opened Suez Canal, oil, and tourism, rendered a confronta-
tion with Nasserist industrial relations unnecessary. Despite a process
of deindustrialization and the collapse of the political consensus,
the public sector continued to expand until the mid-1980s and the
state was able to sustain its redistributive polices (RW, 2008, 190).
The spontaneous emergence of a semi-rentier economy shifted the
accumulation strategy of the ruling strata from dispossession (and
G4254.indd 25 10/24/2013 9:15:29 AM
26 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
thus class confrontation; cf. Harvey, 2003) to rent seeking (and thus
governance by means of state redistribution of external revenues
among the population) (Roccu, 2012, 12).
The defensive turn of the passive revolution entailed a softening
of the coercive dimension of the regime. Political prisoners were
released, civil rights such as freedom of press and association were
reinstated to a limited degree, and parliamentary elections were held.
The political detente of the Mubarak 1980s constituted a tactical
retreat of the dictatorship, leaving limited spaces open in civil and
political society for contentious politics that remained subordinated
to the interests of the state. The Emergency Law, banning of strikes,
demonstrations, parties, and critical newspapers, and military courts
safeguarded the states domination over the political opposition
(Marfleet, 2011). Mubaraks political transformism was successful,
as it absorbed opposition parties such as the leftist al-Tagammu and
the liberal al-Wafd, and, to a lesser extent, movements such as the
Muslim Brotherhood.
The actions of the workers movement in this decade were primar-
ily defensive and apolitical, aimed at achieving particular economic
demands and restoring the strong bargaining position of the working
class towards the redistributive state (Beinin, 2009, 234). Mubaraks
quantitative passive revolution and molecular reconfiguration of the
ruling bloc extended the life-form of Nasserist hegemonic relations
in the workplace, encouraging workers to display their economic pro-
ductivity and political loyalty to the state in exchange for material con-
cessions (Posusney, 1996, 233). Thanks to the economic base of rent
accumulation and distribution, Mubarak temporarily succeeded in the
formation of a new post-populist bloc: a gradual reform of political
and economic relations by a state that included rather than excluded
class allies and opponents in its project, although they remained in a
subaltern position vis--vis the ruling class fractions.
However, from the second half of the 1980s onward, rental income
decreased and the state prudently began to push for neoliberal reform.
Worker actions and the resistance of the corporatist labor bureaucracy
postponed harsh measures until the beginning of the 1990s (Beinin,
2001, 159). The foreign debt rose to more than $38 billion (US)
and the budget deficit increased to over 20% (RW, 2008, 225). The
Gulf War of 1991 led to the return of many migrant workers, who
flooded the domestic labor market. It also resulted in the collapse
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REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 27
of tourism, compounding the fiscal crisis (Mitchell, 2002, 276). The
dry spell in rental income, combined with the reluctance of state
and private capital groups to invest in the productivity of agriculture
and industry, necessitated a new strategy of accumulation that would
drive up the rate of profit by increased exploitation and dispossession.
The domestic crisis of rent-based accumulation and foreign pressure
by the USA, IMF, and World Bank forced the ruling classes war of
position back to an offensive passive revolution (Farah, 2009, 41). In
1991 Egypt accepted an Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment
Program (ERSAP) inspired by the neoliberal paradigm of the Wash-
ington consensus (Bush, 2007, 1599). The ERSAP aimed to contain
and decrease foreign debt and inflation, by cutting state subsidies on
consumer goods, privatizing public companies, liberalizing markets
and prices, freezing wages, commercializing agricultural lands and
implementing a flat tax.
The new and aggressive accumulation strategy required a political
reconfiguration of the post-populist bloc; i.e., the exclusion of subal-
tern forces, the absorption of new allies, and the subduing of fractions
of the capitalist class (Roccu, 2012, 16). The offensive turn of the
passive revolution was not supported by a strengthening of the ruling
cliques political prestige and leadership, but it combined antagonis-
tic class struggle with limited hegemony. In fact, the ruling bloc was
further restricted instead of expanded, and already absorbed allies
and opponents were alienated and ejected instead of consolidated.
First, the higher echelons of the Armed Forces saw their political
and economic power within the bloc diminished (Kandil, 2011). The
generals began to feel a deep resentment towards their foreign, espe-
cially American, donors (Amar, 2011; Kandil, 2011), and towards the
rising faction of neoliberal crony capitalists around Gamal Mubarak,
the Presidents son (Amar, 2011). This marginalization of the military
within the ruling bloc accelerated the trend initiated by Sadats civil
Caesarism.
Second, workers and farmers were increasingly excluded from
the neoliberal bloc. The ERSAP restored economic growth and the
rate of profit by decreasing wages and benefits, by exploiting work-
ers in the private sector, by expropriating farm lands and increasing
land rents (Farah, 2009, 41, 44; Mitchell, 1999, 463). Third, the lim-
ited spaces for opposition within the political and civil spheres were
further restricted. From 1990 onward, state control over elections
G4254.indd 27 10/24/2013 9:15:29 AM
28 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
and parliament was increased. In 1999 government passed a law that
decreed that all NGO-type organizations had to reapply for a license
to operate legally in Egypt. NGOs that engaged in political activities
were banned (Mitchell, 1999, 465). Such measures severely restricted
the capacity of the state to absorb political opponents.
Various movements and struggles prepared the way for the Janu-
ary 25 uprising in the two decades that preceded it. Throughout the
1990s new groups, centers, parties, and movements emerged, which
organized and educated a generation of activists with fresh ideas and
methods of struggle. Street politics was reborn in the 2000s, with the
demonstrations in solidarity with the Second Palestinian Intifada in
2000; the sit-ins against the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon;
and the Kefaya (Enough) movement against presidential rule. These
civildemocratic movements were entwined with the economic pro-
tests and the struggles of workers, farmers, slum-dwellers, and villagers
against the violent accumulation strategy (cf. De Smet, 2012; ZDB,
2013). Here I will not dwell on these antecedents of the revolution,
nor on the dynamic of the January 25 uprising itself, but immediately
jump back to the intervention of the Armed Forces in the revolu-
tionary process.
January 25 and Caesarism
The exploration of the Nasserist lineage above renders the suc-
cessful intervention of the SCAF and its relatively swift demise in
the revolutionary process intelligible. Already a few months after the
uprising, scholar Bassem Hassan claimed that the way things have
been unfolding since last January resembles more Gramscis notion
of Caesarism than the scenario of a victorious popular revolution
(Hassan, 2011, 4). Moving onto the political scene, as if in a histori-
cal drama they were doomed to repeat, the Armed Forces halted the
spontaneous uprising by presenting themselves as a Caesar able to
solve Egypts Gordian knot with a stroke of their sword.
For the SCAF, a Caesarist intervention was necessary, because, just
as in 1952, the best way to halt the independent development of the
revolutionary process was to lead and thus control it. A Caesarist inter-
vention was possible, because, just as in 1952, the Armed Forces were
perceived as a national force defending the general good, instead of
as a state structure with particular interests of its own (Hassan, 2011).
G4254.indd 28 10/24/2013 9:15:29 AM
REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 29
Ironically, the military was able to play the part of Caesar, not because
of its strength, but because of its forced retreat from political society,
which had inoculated the institution from popular criticism of the
escalated state domination, oppression, and exploitation over the
preceding two decades. In contradistinction to the civil institutions
of the Mubarak regime apart from the judiciary the Egyptian
Armed Forces had retained their nationalpopular aura.
However, the political and economic circumstances of the Caesa-
rist intervention of 2011 differed fundamentally from those of 1952.
The Free Officers of 1952 elaborated a progressive political and eco-
nomic vision of fighting feudalism and imperialism, achieving social
justice, and developing the country. This ethico-political and national
popular dimension lent their Caesarist intervention a progressive and
qualitative character. The SCAF, however, was pushed into the role
of Caesar, which it only reluctantly played to save its own particular
interests. The political and economic interests of the generals did not
fully coincide with those of the crony capitalists, the ruling National
Democratic Party (NDP), or the Ministry of Interior; but neither did
they correspond with those of the revolutionary masses. The civil
democratic demands also threatened the remaining privileges of the
Armed Forces within the neoliberal bloc.
The SCAF eventually became caught up between the defense of
its own particular interests and the expectations of the masses. Taking
the lead in the revolutionary process agreed with the dominant senti-
ment among protesters that the Armed Forces were on their side.
Conversely, the generals were pressured to act because the interpel-
lation of the people and the army: one hand started to affect the
rank-and-file soldiers. To open fire on the largely peaceful protesters
would have broken the spell that conjured the image of the Armed
Forces as defenders of the nationalpopular interest. In order to pre-
vent solidarity between soldiers and protesters, the SCAF had to take
the lead in deposing the President, which satisfied the expectations
of both popular masses and soldiers (cf. Stacher, 2011).
By sacrificing the Mubarak clan and dealing blows to the neo-
liberal capitalists, the NDP, and the Ministry of Interior, the SCAF
hoped to renegotiate a stronger political and economic position for
itself within the ruling bloc (Springborg, 2012). The SCAF had no
interest in reinforcing the public sector, which became evident in its
opposition to court rulings in favor of workers wanting to renationalize
G4254.indd 29 10/24/2013 9:15:29 AM
30 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
some of the privatized companies. Concessions to workers, instead,
constituted an ad hoc political tactic of dealing with their social move-
ments, than a fundamentally new economic policy. Egypts debt cycle
and the interventions of transnational capital which continued to
push for neoliberal reforms severely limited the space for politi-
cal and economic reforms (Maher, 2011). In the end, the generals
were not against neoliberal reform in itself, but they despised the
fact that they werent the main beneficiaries of the accumulation by
dispossession (Armbrust, 2011). Deploying the Gramscian criterion,
the military Caesarism of 2011 appeared as essentially reactionary and
quantitative: a restoration that, because of the strength of the revo-
lutionary wave, could not be but a kind of distorted revolution itself.
Many analysts stressed that the SCAF genuinely desired a swift
transition of power in order to continue its economic and mili-
tary activities. However, Joshua Stacher observed that one should
not . . . mistake the armys reluctance to govern for aversion to rule
(Stacher, 2011). The Caesarist intervention had thrown the burden
of political leadership upon the Armed Forces, and while the generals
wished to fortify their economic and political clout within the ruling
bloc, they had neither the capacity nor the will to develop hegemony
over the whole of society. Instead, the generals preferred to rule by
civil proxy.
Yet, once in control of the state apparatus, the SCAF was loath
to abdicate in favor of any of the civil forces, which it could not
trust with the task of securing its political and economic privileges.
Especially with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists, the military
caretakers developed a lovehate relationship, which reflected both
their desire for a stable, powerful, and conservative civil ally, and
their anxiety of losing grip over the post-insurrectionary transition
process, i.e., the top-down passive revolution that had to replace the
active, bottom-up revolution of the masses.
Islamist Caesarism?
The purely military phase of the post-insurrectionary period was
short-lived, as the March 19, 2011 constitutional referendum, parlia-
mentary elections, the writing of the constitution, and the presidential
elections shifted the counter-revolution towards a civil form. Instead of
representing a genuine process of revolutionary democratic change,
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REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 31
elections and referenda constituted formidable weapons of restora-
tion. First, they reoriented revolutionary politics from the spontane-
ous and bottom-up spheres of the street and the workplace to the
restricted and top-down controlled domains of the state. Moreover,
the focus on elections strengthened the growing divide between the
narrowly defined political fight for democracy, and the economic
struggles of workers, farmers, and the urban poor. Second, by atom-
izing the collective subject of the protesters into individual voters,
the qualitative majority in the streets was reduced to a quantitative
minority in the polling booths. The voices of the active vanguard were
drowned in the silence of a passive majority that had not (yet) drawn
the same revolutionary conclusions as the militant layers.
6
Third,
the rapid pace and repetition of elections not only demobilized the
streets, but they also channeled the time and energy of activists into
centrifugal and tiresome discussions and negotiations about party pro-
grams and alliances while there existed an urgent need to connect
the political vanguard to its mass base of workers, farmers, and the
urban poor (Kandil, 2011). Fourth, elections and referenda became
moments in which the spontaneous and popular demands of the
uprising bread, freedom, and social justice were pushed into
the background, and new political themes, such as religion, came to
the forefront. The shift to identity politics especially fortified the
position of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists.
During the first days of the January 25 insurrection, Muslim Broth-
erhood leaders had been fearful of state repression if they were to
participate in the protests, and suspicious of the autonomous dynamic
of a mass movement they could not control. However, the Brother-
hood was drawn into the demonstrations, because, on the one hand,
its rank-and-file members had already joined the uprising (Alexander,
2011, 544), and, on the other, the organization recognized the insur-
rection as an opportunity to renegotiate its position within the ruling
bloc. Muslim Brothers stood side by side with the other protesters and
6 Trotsky discussed this predicament with regard to the Russian Revolution of 1917: A minority
of the revolutionary class actually participates in the insurrection, but the strength of that
minority lies in the support, or at least sympathy, of the majority. The active and militant
minority inevitably puts forward under fre from the enemy its more revolutionary and
self-sacrifcing element. . . . But the situation changes the moment the victory is won and its
political fortifcation begins. The elections to the organs and institutions of the victorious
revolution attract and challenge infnitely broader masses than those who battled with arms
in their hands (Trotsky, 2001, 186).
G4254.indd 31 10/24/2013 9:15:29 AM
32 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
were often among the most militant and resilient demonstrators and
occupiers. After the fall of Mubarak, the attitude of the leadership
changed, however, as it cautiously supported the SCAFs soft coup,
calling upon protesters to leave Tahrir Square and start negotiations
with the military council (cf. Alexander, 2011). The explosion of
worker strikes, which, at first, had been welcomed as an integral part
of the democratic revolution, was now condemned by Brotherhood
leaders as destabilizing and particularist (personal communication
with Hisham Fouad, March 13, 2011).
In the period leading up to the parliamentary elections of Novem-
ber 2011, the Brotherhood leadership chose to play the humble part
of power broker between the generals and the popular masses (Alex-
ander, 2011, 536). However, the Brotherhoods landslide electoral
victory in the parliamentary elections of autumn 2011, and the abject
failure of the SCAF to provide political leadership, encouraged the
Brotherhood to go on the offensive. Within political society there
emerged a situation of dual power between the Islamist-dominated
parliament and the Ministry of Defense. The Muslim Brotherhood and
the Salafists had argued for swift parliamentary elections in order to
cash in on their organizational and discursive advantage vis--vis other
opposition forces. At the beginning of 2012, however, they realized
their victory was a pyrrhic one, as parliament was still governed by
the old constitution that did not even grant them the right to form a
cabinet of their own choice. A race began between parliament, which
established a committee to write a new constitution that would expand
its powers, and the executive i.e., the SCAF which began legal
proceedings to contest the constitutionality of parliament. On June
14, 2012, the High Constitutional Court dissolved parliament, and
the SCAF took over legislative powers preparing the outcome of
the final round of the presidential elections that were held on June
16 and 17, 2012.
The electoral run-off between Muhammad Morsi, the formal can-
didate of the Brotherhood, and Ahmed Shafiq, widely perceived as
the candidate of the SCAF and the old regime, represented a choice
between two wings of the counter-revolution: for or against Islamic
fundamentalism or military dictatorship. However, because the elec-
tions were presented as a constitutive element of revolutionary trans-
formation, both factions had to articulate their particular interests
in the universalist language of popular revolution and the common
G4254.indd 32 10/24/2013 9:15:29 AM
REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 33
good. Both Morsi and Shafiq displayed Caesarist tendencies, as they
claimed to be the only revolutionary force able to contain the danger
of military or fundamentalist counter-revolution.
Morsis victory gave momentum to the civil turn of Caesarism.
After a year in power, the SCAF had become a select and self-centered
clique that was unable to affirm its domination over the whole Armed
Forces, let alone the other ruling class factions, or society at large.
Within the Armed Forces, a growing number of officers was dissatisfied
with the ham-fisted political leadership of the SCAF. The apparent rep-
etition of the Nasserist tragedy ended up as a short-lived farce. Rather
than a profound demilitarization of the state, Morsis constitutional
declaration of August 12, 2012 which retired the SCAF generals
and granted the President their executive and legislative powers
signaled a deal between the Brotherhood and oppositional officers,
offering a division of labor within the unfolding passive revolution:
in exchange for protection of the militarys economic interests and
privileges, the Armed Forces would leave the reorganization of the
state to the Brothers. This consensus was affirmed in the new constitu-
tion of December 26, 2012, which shielded the defense budget from
parliamentary oversight, and asserted that the Minister of Defense
was chosen from the ranks of the Armed Forces. The Brotherhood
succeeded in replacing or absorbing the personnel of most state insti-
tutions, except for the judiciary, which had always enjoyed relative
independence vis--vis the executive and legislative branches of power
(Springborg, 2012; Wagih, 2012).
Crisis of Caesarism
The Muslim Brotherhood faced the conundrum of building a
post-Mubarak historic bloc that integrated the interests of its own
business elites with the concerns of the military generals, the radical
conservative agenda of the Salafists who pressured the organiza-
tion from the right and the revolutionary demands of the popular
masses, who had catapulted the Islamists into power. The Brother-
hoods inability to offer political leadership and forge a national con-
sensus around the constitution, to democratize the so-called deep
state the civil and military state structures that grew out of the
Nasserist dictatorship and to solve the economic crisis, constituted
obstacles to its ambition to become the core of a new, hegemonic,
G4254.indd 33 10/24/2013 9:15:29 AM
34 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
ruling bloc. Moreover, even though the division of post-insurrectionary
politics along sectarian religious lines had steered the political debate
into a discursive domain dominated by Muslim Brothers and Salafists,
it also made it much more difficult for those forces to present them-
selves as the universal expressions of the national, Egyptian interest.
On November 22, 2012, President Morsi issued a new constitu-
tional declaration, which temporarily granted him absolute execu-
tive and legislative powers. The declaration was a pre-emptive strike,
shielding the Brotherhoods crumbling presidency from any attack
within political society until a constitution was ratified that offered a
stable legal framework to continue the Islamist-led passive revolution
(Wagih, 2012). Although Morsis decision called tens of thousands
of concerned Egyptians back to the streets, unlike the unity of the
people against the regime during the January 25 uprising, this time
around the mass sit-ins and demonstrations were divided between
popular forces protesting the rise of a new Mubarak or Pharaoh,
and Brotherhood sympathizers supporting the Presidents firm deci-
sion to protect the revolution. In Caesarist fashion, Morsi did not
dispute the oppositions charge that political power was increasingly
centralized and concentrated into his hands, but he claimed that this
was necessary to defend the democratic transition against those who
wanted to sabotage reform.
In the eyes of his followers, Morsis claim was not without base,
as the presence of so-called feloul elements supporters of the
former regime within the anti-Brotherhood camp weakened its
claim to represent the genuine subject of the January 25 Revolution
(Wagih, 2012). Despite its claims to constitute a revolutionary third
way between the Brotherhood and the deep state, the oppositional
National Salvation Front (NSF) united semi-feloul rightists such as
Amr Moussa, liberal democrats such as Muhammed al-Baradei, and
leftist Nasserists such as Hamdeen Sabahi under one broad umbrella
of vague civil politics. At best, the civildemocratic coalition only
advanced a political critique of Mubaraks passive revolutions prac-
tices of domination, coercion, and exclusion, and did not reveal the
connection of these superstructural forms to historical and recent
transformations in Egypts economic structure.
The entrenched stand-off between the Muslim Brotherhood and
these civil opposition forces indicated Morsis failure to act as a Cae-
sar, transcending the contradictions in the political sphere, or even to
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REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 35
absorb his opponents in an Islamist transformism. Yet, the dominant
dichotomy also emphasized the success of the capitalist classes and
the deep state in deflecting popular revolutionary demands for
democracy and redistribution of wealth. Islamist, military, and civil-
democratic elites were able to subsume political activists, intellectuals,
and subaltern groups under their discrete political projects. These
vertical hegemonic alliances cut through attempts of grassroots
revolutionaries to forge horizontal ties between subaltern actors:
workers, farmers, unemployed youth, urban poor.
The Burden of Past Generations
Since the uprising against Hosni Mubarak on January 25, 2011,
initial and often nave hopes for a swift democratic transition have
turned into a cynical pessimism, due to the (lack of) concrete out-
comes of the process. However, the success of the counter-revolution
should not be confused with the absence of a revolutionary process. In
order to understand the current dialectic of revolution restoration,
an analysis of the various actors and their contemporary and historical
relations is in order. Here I focused on the lineage of military rule,
because of the key role the generals played in deflecting the insur-
rection and initiating a passive revolution.
The core of my argument is that the soft coup of the SCAF was
accepted by the revolutionary masses because of the Armed Forces
enduring aura as a national, progressive and transformative institution,
derived from the Nasserist era. Due to the militarys gradual loss of real
political and economic power in recent decades, it had been largely
inoculated against the growing criticisms of the regime. However, the
contemporary generals had different interests than the anti-imperialist
and anti-feudal Free Officers of 1952, faced a strong and confident
revolutionary movement, and were unwilling and unable to combine
their authoritarian rule with the inclusion of subaltern actors in the
ruling bloc. Facing increasing discontent, the SCAF was kicked out of
government by its civil ally, the Muslim Brotherhood, but the fading
into the political background of the military apparatus did not mean
that it gave up its ambition to rule.
At the conceptual level, Gramscian notions of passive revolution,
transformism, and Caesarism serve as criteria of historical interpre-
tation, rather than as archetypical political forms. Gramscis shades
G4254.indd 35 10/24/2013 9:15:29 AM
36 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
of Caesarism enable an understanding of the qualitative difference
between Nassers and Sadats passive revolution, the changing position
of the military, the relation between domestic and global transforma-
tions, and the exclusion of subaltern actors from the reconfigured his-
torical bloc. The dynamic of neoliberal passive revolution as a war of
maneuver in the 1970s and 1990s2000s stands in contrast to Mubaraks
war of position in the 1980s, and connects to strategies of accumula-
tion, coercive consent, transformism, and subaltern forms of resistance.
This Gramscian interpretation renders both the revolutionary
January 25 insurrection and its counter-revolutionary appropriation
intelligible as alternating moments of one and the same process. It also
reveals the historical and contemporary constraints of revolution and
restoration within the Egyptian social formation. If the substance of
the January 25 revolution is a subaltern war of movement against the
aggressive reconfiguration of the post-populist bloc along neoliberal
lines, then it can only succeed by overthrowing the existing domestic
and transnational class alliances and their strategy of accumulation by
dispossession. The democratic revolution cannot succeed except by
a fundamental reform of the economic structure, and the economic
structure cannot be reformed unless political power is captured and
appropriated by a subaltern counter-bloc. However, the current politi-
cal class collaboration among social-democrats, communists, liberals,
right-wing nationalists, and Nasserists in the face of a greater evil,
be it the Brotherhood or the deep state, renders a radical subaltern
coalition and hegemony impossible and only serves to reinforce the
current process of restoration.
Addendum (early July 2013)
The spontaneous mass protests of the Tamarod (Rebellion) move-
ment against Morsis presidency on June 30, 2013, and the subsequent
military intervention on July 3, illustrated the necessity to overcome
the simplistic conceptual dichotomy between coup and popular
revolution, and the usefulness of passive revolution and Caesa-
rism as analytical categories to understand the unfolding process.
In the eyes of the anti-Morsi protesters, the Muslim Brotherhood had
hijacked and betrayed the revolution. The army was conceived of as an
instrument of popular power to get rid of the Brotherhood and revive
the revolutionary process. In the eyes of the pro-Morsi demonstrators,
G4254.indd 36 10/24/2013 9:15:29 AM
REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT 37
Tamarod undermined the democratic transition process and paved
the way for the return of the military to power thus it represented
a counter-revolutionary force. The fight between the Brotherhood
leadership and the generals over state power was articulated within
the revolutionary movement, splitting it along sectarian lines, with
protesters in each camp genuinely believing they represented the
revolution. In this sense, the Brotherhood and the deep state con-
tinued to fragment and subsume subaltern street politics under verti-
cal hegemonic alliances that cut through the horizontal binary of
popular revolution versus elite counter-revolution.
Even though Tamarod represented a new high point in the revo-
lutionary process, re-politicizing broad layers of the populace, and
re-constituting grassroots instruments of popular power, the generals
Caesarist maneuver temporarily succeeded in re-imposing military
hegemony upon the process of passive revolution. As, in general,
Tamarod protesters were reluctant to return to the SCAF era, the
military immediately delegated governing power to its civil allies.
The challenge for revolutionary actors remained to counter balance
the pacifying reforms from above, with the expansion and devel-
opment of popular committees, independent trade unions, and
opposition parties from below.
B. De S.
Department of Confict and Development Studies
Ghent University
Universiteitstraat 8
Gent, Belgium 9000
brecht.desmet@ugent.be
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