Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | A viable framework

		25 - 31 July 2002 Issue No. 596 Opinion	Current issue Previous issue Site map
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A viable framework
As circumstances have changed, what many saw as flaws in Egypt's revolutionary project are increasingly being hailed as strengths, writes Amr Elchoubaki*

If many of the circumstances that led to the July Revolution still persist the opposite is also true: at the beginning of the third millennium many circumstances, internationally and regionally, are vastly different to those that prevailed on the eve of the 1952 Revolution. After half a century, then, any analysis of the revolution must not only distinguish between constants and variables, between theory and practice, but must also take on board the contemporary framework within which the events of July 1952 and their ramifications occurred. Only by adopting such a detached perspective is it possible to understand the discrepancies between the causes the revolution espoused and, in accordance with the means and circumstances of its times, pursued, and its underlying value system which can, metaphorically at least, be considered as transcending this specific history.
The July Revolution embodied much of the spirit of the age of national liberation. The humanitarian, supranational and national principles that were its great motivators merit reconsideration in an age that might easily be characterised as post-national liberation. What were those values and what were the available means and methods to act on them?
The July Revolution offered a unique model for change. It succeeded in constructing a political system that embodied, to a remarkable degree, most of the components of the zeitgeist. It propounded a coherent ideology centring around the principles of freedom, social justice and Arab unity within a federated Arab order emanating from the will of the people. Towards the realisation of these ends it was to utilise a single state party system, then perceived as the quickest route to full national independence, and widespread nationalisation, contemporaneously viewed as the pathway to promoting social justice. And although the revolution regarded unity as a long-term historical goal, the rush into a shaky union with Syria, which disintegrated after barely three years, delivered a near fatal dose of poison to this enterprise.
It can be argued that the period between July 1952 and the tripartite aggression of 1956 constitutes the phase in which the revolution pursued its goals of national liberation and independence, and that the following period, beginning with the Egyptian-Syrian union and characterised by communal bonds between the Egyptian revolution and other Arab liberation movements, was one in which the revolution's pan-Arab referent crystallised.
The Nasserist revolution was unique among national liberation movements in that its horizons extended beyond the liberation of Egypt from British colonialism to the liberation of the Arab world and, indeed, of all peoples of the Third World. At both the theoretical and practical levels it was the Arab referent that lay at the core of political movement, one result of which was the criticisms -- domestically for waging battles on behalf of "the Arabs", internationally for meddling in the affairs of other countries -- heaped upon the revolution.
Yet Egypt supported revolutions in Yemen and Algeria not to exert its influence over those countries but rather to create an Arab order capable of standing against the forces of colonialism. Towards this end the revolution promoted a concept of regional unity based on the creative interplay between a common core of Arab culture and civilisation and respect for the individual characteristics of the various Arab peoples. This Pan-Arab project remains unique in that it represented an extension of the historic cultural continuum of the Arab world, standing in sharp contrast to the experience of Eastern Europe where the application of Marxist ideology came as a rupture, imposing such unlikely alliances as that between European Hungary and African Angola beneath the Marxist banner.
The revolution's appeal for Arab unity was not intended for political consumption: though it posited Arab unity as a political-cultural movement it never sought to create a pan-Arab organisation that might reduce unity to a mechanical, political party process which would ignore the cultural and social differences between Arab countries.
Pan-Arabism comprises two essential dimensions: on the one hand it draws upon the common bonds of civilisation, culture, language and shared political experience in the fight against colonialism and on the other, it must actively engage in the process of institution building, engaging a democratic process that provides for peaceful, democratic community and political party action working towards a homogeneity in laws, educational programmes, economic interaction, labour movements and other vital activities.
The July Revolution practiced this merging process in a manner that commands admiration. It accepted unity between Egypt and Syria only grudgingly, and in the face of exceptional circumstances, fully aware that the conditions necessary for any truly successful unification were not yet in place. When the union collapsed some Arab nationalists felt the revolution had erred by not acting to safeguard the union from the separatist coup. Abdel- Nasser, though, realised that such action would have ultimately led to bloodshed between Egyptians and Syrians. The July Revolution was more acute than many on the need to consider and respect regional differences.
The July Revolution was the antithesis of those movements that, in the name of Arab nationalism and Arab unity, acted like the bully on the block (think of what happened in Lebanon, think of Kuwait), promising that they would soon be embarking on the road to progress and democracy, just as soon as they had sorted out the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Ultimately it was the Palestinian Intifada that opened the eyes of the Arab people both to the powerlessness of pan-Arab sloganeering and the failure of isolationist solutions. Indeed, it is a poignant irony that it was the Palestinian cause that issued the second death certificate for Arab regimes: the first, issued in 1948, paved the way for the Nasserist revolution against regimes that were too weak to do anything but conspire with Zionist and British usurpers. Unfortunately only the moral and strategic impetus of Nasser's celebrated call -- "Our conflict with the enemy is one of existence, not borders"-- was taken on board by many officials of the Nasserist state. Heedless of the practicalities of the situation, their foolhardiness resulted in the defeat of 1967. Such scorn for practicalities in favour of the bravado of the powerless gave the enemies of the revolution a pretext to propagate a rhetoric that proclaimed that the crux of Egypt's problems resided in the revolution's desire to perpetuate a state of war with the Jewish State.
The period between the 1967 defeat to the October War of 1973 might be characterised as one of the discovery (or rediscovery) that rather more than a reiteration of Nasserist rhetoric was needed if Israel was to be contained. Competent political and military management of the brass tacks of the confrontation was essential. Yet it cannot be argued that this constituted a break from positions adopted earlier. The guiding principle on this issue remained not the dismantling of the Jewish state but its replacement by a democratic state in which Muslims, Christians and Jews would live side by side: the aim was not, as opponents and even some supporters of the July Revolution claimed, to sustain a permanent state of war, but rather to conduct the conflict through peaceful means while at the same time being prepared for war should the settlement process fail.
In today's post-national liberation era the on-going revolution must be prepared to invent new means to confront the Zionist state should the US succeed in imposing a "settlement" that ends direct Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. In practical terms, such a settlement will end the killings and flagrant human rights abuses perpetrated daily by the occupation army. This will diminish the ability to rally the Arab public to the levels of mobilisation that have characterised the first and second Intifadas. In such an event the battle will shift to peaceful means to combat the religious and ethnic discrimination practiced by the Zionist state, to secure the right of return for Palestinian refugees and to expose the record of oppression that characterises the history of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. Now is the time to prepare for this battle, which must be waged within the framework of a protracted multi-level, multi-phased confrontation.
The July Revolution was also a model of peaceful revolutionary change, the only one of its kind in history. Gamal Abdel-Nasser overturned the monarchy and declared a republican system without shedding a drop of blood. One hardly needs to recall the torrents of blood that flowed in the course of the French revolution, which lifted the banners of liberty, equality and fraternity, or the Bolshevik and Iranian revolutions, to underscore the uniqueness of Egypt's revolutionary experience.
Egypt's bloodless revolution succeeded in producing radical changes, one of which was to establish a new form of government based around a single state party, first the National Union and then the Arab Socialist Union. While some have claimed that this system was undemocratic, the revolution devoted considerable attention to the question of democracy. It was deemed essential to establish a clear link between national liberty and civil liberties and between social democracy and civil democracy. A manifestation of this linkage was that the parties mentioned above contained representatives of the major political forces in Egyptian society. They covered the political spectrum, from the Muslim Brothers, through adherents of the old Wafd Party to advocates of communism.
At the same time, however, it was necessary to contend with trends that fell into conflict with the revolution. One might suggest that there was little difference between the pre-revolutionary system and the post-revolutionary system, even as it developed following the death of Nasser, in that both tended to exclude certain forces from the political arena. But there was a difference. The July Revolution did in fact seek to embrace some of those forces within its political system while the pre-revolutionary period's governing system might be characterised as "government against the will of the people". In the period from 1919 to 1952 the Wafd Party, which routinely won the majority of the popular vote in parliamentary elections, was only allowed to rule for a total of five years.
In a very concrete sense, then, it is possible to assert that the July Revolution provided a model for a national alliance, having built a broad bloc of political forces united in their allegiance to the general principles of the revolution. As such, it is impossible to regard the revolution as a dictatorial coup that sought to eliminate all its political adversaries, though neither was it a "liberal" revolution that permitted its adversaries unrestricted free expression. Rather, the July 1952 Revolution was a major revolution that posited solutions for the social, economic and political problems facing Egypt and the Arab world, solutions that succeeded more often than not. The problem of democracy was one of the most complex and recalcitrant. This applied not only to Egypt but to virtually all governments that emerged from the national liberation struggle. It was difficult for these systems to "discover" the value of multiparty plurality when their most pressing priority was to secure national independence.
Egyptian communists once charged that the July Revolution under Abdel-Nasser adopted only a very lukewarm version of socialism. Its socialist legislation was not comprehensive enough and it gave too much scope to small and mid-level capitalism, they claimed. Ironically, those very critics today insist that the revolution erred too far left!
What has happened is that 23 years after the death of Nasser a full circle has been tuned, and legitimacy is at last being conferred upon Nasser's "middle of the road" socialism. From the beginning of the third millennium it appears that Nasserist socialism came close to embodying the spirit of social justice within the Arab-Islamic legacy. Simultaneously, it was not far removed from the experiences of the socialist parties in the democratic world, and, indeed, intersects at the political ideological level with tenets of the "third way" in present day Europe.
The July Revolution launched a formula for an alliance between the proletariat -- both workers and peasants -- and Egyptian capitalism. At a time when the very mention of capitalism in socialist rhetoric was virtually anathema, the revolution acknowledged a limited role for the private sector and mid-level capitalism alongside instituting a process of nationalisation to promote social justice. And if many of the strategies the revolution adopted to realise social justice have lost their validity in an age of increasing concern for social welfare and gradated tax systems, the blame for this can hardly be left at the revolution's door.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc triggered a profound upheaval in political thought throughout the world. Many of the ideological doctrines driving political action since World War II have fallen by the wayside. So, too, has the tendency to elevate the reading of doctrine, itself, over the reading of social and political realities. The world, in short, is up against a new set of problems and struggles of a different order.
Perhaps the experience of Marxism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe offers the most palpable example of this transition. In those countries doctrinal Marxism proved incapable of keeping pace with the changing times; its "revolutionary" slogans had long persisted in concealing practical crises in the form of over- cumbersome bureaucracies, corruption and occupational and political stagnation.
Many have accused the July Revolution of relying too heavily on trial and error, for failing to tightly formulate a political ideology and detailed agenda for revolutionary action as Marxism had done. Acting out of something akin to an inferiority complex, many Arab nationalists of the time sought to construct a closed ideological system capable of vying against its "competitors" in explaining the evolution of societies and the relationship between the material and the ideal. Their efforts proved futile. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the doctrinal ideologies, what was once considered a flaw of the July Revolution has proved a virtue. This was the revolution that could accommodate new modes of thought and more expansive mechanisms for political participation. Indeed, despite of the attempts of some to embalm it in rigid doctrinal moulds, the July revolutionary enterprise might be said to represent a flexible framework for political movement and action.
While the revolution adopted certain mechanisms that were appropriate to the circumstances in which it arose, and while from 1962 to 1967 sloganeering prevailed over attention to the details of social, political and occupational realities, the July Revolution ultimately proved a dynamic and adaptable enterprise. It offered a viable theoretical framework for a nationalist and humanitarian vision centred around national liberation and independence, social justice and Arab unity.
* The writer is a researcher at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.

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