Egypt and the ghost of Marx

Underlying dynamics in Egyptian politics reveal a classic struggle unfolding between two bourgeois classes, all in the context of a largely disregarded mass, writes Khalil El-Anani*

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With the Muslim Brotherhood having entered the Egyptian parliament carrying unprecedented weight, and with the final formation of the new Egyptian government, it can be said that "sociological" transformations have begun to show in the composition of Egypt's elite. The struggle in those elections between two primary poles, the ruling party and the Muslim Brotherhood, surpassed the political and extended to the social.

The competition between the Brotherhood and the ruling party appears as though it is a struggle between two primary classes, the first of which owns and rules -- the "nouveau riche" represented by the majority of candidates who ran under the banner of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) -- the second of which doesn't own and only tries to rule -- the "small bourgeois" that has just left the womb of the traditional middle class, withered deliberately through the last three decades of open door economic policy.

The first of these classes has thrived on the mistakes of prevalent economic policies and the contradictions between central planning and a market economy. It harvested its wealth by way of an alliance with the "ancient" government bureaucracy and was the first to benefit from the programmes of distorted structural reform -- its survival came to depend upon the reform programmes' continual fumbling. Despite the attempts of this class to hide behind the mantle of capitalism and a market economy, the scope of wealth it gained over the last decade has revealed its weakness. It has come to seem as though it were destroying the heritage of real Egyptian capitalism that shrunk with nationalisation measures taken in the 1950s and 1960s.

From a capitalism led by the state in the Nasser era to a capitalism "practised" by individuals in the Sadat era, the door was opened wide to monopolistic practices marred by financial and institutional corruption. In the end this resulted in a "catholic alliance" between capitalism and government bureaucracy, followed by the appearance of a new, uncontrolled class -- "bureaucratic capitalists" -- that does not embrace real capitalism as much as its slogans, and which is not led by any ethical or social framework in the practice of its economic activity. In its presence, the state appears to have become incapable of providing the most basic services to its citizens.

Given compliance with international standards for implementing structural reform programmes, the Egyptian state had no choice but to yield to the desires of this new class by providing loan guarantees and funding for its investment enterprises. This created a fixed entryway for the practice of new forms of corruption the likes of which the Egyptian economy had not seen since the era of Muhammad Ali. The scandal of "loan parliamentarians," in which nearly a billion pounds were dispersed, was naught but part of a greater epic of corruption that took place behind the walls of parliamentary immunity.

With the arrival of the third millennium it appeared as though a new class was being formed in the womb of the Egyptian regime. Its form resembled that of the "comprador bourgeoisie," so named by theorists of the dependency school. This elite relied on external support more than connections on the domestic front, the price of its incorporation into the global market paid by overlooking society's basic demands. Many of the economic laws that have been passed recently can be read in this context.

Since then, it has appeared as though the process of "disengagement" between the state and society that began in the mid-1970s has reached its fullest extent. It has become clear that the state is attempting to replace its social legitimacy with another that is class-based and which relies on wealth that has swelled over the last decade. This development resembles a deal in which the regime benefits from the extraordinary economic capabilities of the new class while shoring up foreign legitimacy through compliance with economic transformation programmes. The new rich, in turn, benefit from the inheritance of a centralised state by moving from the world of a shadow economy to the world of politics and legitimacy through the doors of parliament.

It was thus logical that the ruling party relied on the new rich to shore up its legitimacy. And it was not strange for the big businessmen to occupy the party's lists of candidates in the elections, followed by mini businessmen in the provinces in addition to those split from the party and covetous of winning a piece of the precious state "cake". The expenditure of the new rich on election campaigns, according to various estimates, surpassed one billion Egyptian pounds; especially given the cases of vote purchasing that took place without any oversight. The violent methods and thuggery some resorted to were nothing but a frank expression of an indomitable desire to enter parliament, at any price, in order to gain the protection of parliamentary immunity as a first step towards paying off the costs of the election campaigns before multiplying them in the future.

It was natural for this kind of situation to lead to the predominance of suppressed "social" grumbling among various sectors of the populace, particularly traditional professionals such as teachers, lawyers, doctors and engineers, in addition to the armies of the unemployed. It was possible for any organised power opposed to the ruling party to exploit this situation in its interest and reap its fruits without regard to its political or religious nature. This is what the second class -- the Muslim Brotherhood -- did. Over seven decades it has succeeded in securing its bases among large groups including the small bourgeois in the cities as well as low- ranking civil servants and a wide section of professional syndicate members and other marginalised groups that have suffered from the mistakes of development policies over the last three decades. This took place in the near total absence of another sector -- nearly 80 per cent of the electoral body -- that refused to enter a battle that didn't draw its interest except for the oddities of some candidates' electoral campaigns.

And so it was also natural for the Brotherhood's best results to come from the provinces of the north and south, in which social suffocation and economic want have reached extremes and where there has been a long history of animosity towards the practices of most members of the ruling party on the base level. Voting did not take place in favour of the Brotherhood as much as it was a spontaneous expression of the end of the monopolisation of the class of the "few" and the placing of a limitation on a deteriorating standard of living under whose burden live throngs of simple families.

In sum, the struggle between the Brotherhood and the ruling party in the past elections was nothing but a reflection of another struggle fiercer and more voracious milling throughout Egypt. That is the class struggle that has reached its furthest polarisation, and was revealed by the fierce competition between parliamentary candidates. Far from the magic of the Brotherhood's "solution" remains a challenge before its parliamentary representatives to break the circles of the comprador bourgeoisie and regain the heritage of the Egyptian middle class that has been lost among the measures of economic transformation. Moreover, it must extract the fuse of this struggle not only within parliament but also within the electorate itself. Is the Brotherhood powerful enough to do that? Or will the logic of deals prevail?

* The writer is a political analyst with Al-Siyasa Al-Dawliya magazine published by Al-Ahram.