摘要:2011年6月，埃及左翼学者、第三世界论坛理事长、替代道路世界论坛主席萨米尔•阿明委托本刊发表其最新写作的文章《2011年：阿拉伯之春？》，认为穆巴拉克政权放弃了独立工业化努力，取消了社会平等和和谐的政策，支持反动的政治伊斯兰而全面引进新自由主义，使埃及沦为发达国家的边缘地区，从而导致埃及民众特别是青年重新政治化、左派激进化和民主中产阶级愤怒，最终使埃及陷入政治动荡。阿明同时认为，美国将通过支持反动的宗教力量来阻击埃及的真正民主化。作者同时指出，未来三大洲都可能继续出现动荡，而这和中心国家的衰落正好相遇，第三世界国家应争取更民主的未来。文章内容如下。
2011年伊始，阿拉伯世界接二连三地发生暴动。这场“阿拉伯之春”会带来阿拉伯世界的第二次觉醒吗？还是如我在《第三世界的觉醒》一书中所提的第一次觉醒一样，这些反抗也将止步不前、归于失败？如果前一种假设成立，阿拉伯世界的进步必将载入全球反帝国主义/反资本主义的光辉篇章；如果失败，阿拉伯世界则会继续徘徊在被主宰的边缘地带，无法成为重组世界的积极力量。
把这一地区泛称为“阿拉伯世界”而无视各国客观条件的差异是非常不合适的。所以，我以下的思考主要针对埃及——不可否认，它一直都在该地区的发展进程中扮演着重要角色。
埃及是资本主义边缘地带中第一个试图“崛起”的国家。早在日本和中国之前，19世纪初，穆罕默德•阿里（Mohammed Ali）就制定并实施了一项旨在振兴埃及及其马什里克（Mashreq）近邻的改革计划。这项伟大的实践持续了三分之二个世纪，直到19世纪70年代伊斯梅尔总督（Khédive Ismail）执政后半期才停滞不前。分析失败原因，当时工业资本主义的主要势力英国的残暴入侵不能不提：1840年入侵两次，70年代控制财权，1882年军事占领。英国锲而不舍地要把一个现代化的埃及扼杀在摇篮中。
崛起中的埃及被打败，又在被统治的边缘地带徘徊了近40年（1880—1920）。资本主义/帝国主义对其施加改造，以便服务于自身积累的需要。这种强制性倒退不仅打击了埃及的生产制度，也破坏了原有的政治和社会结构；它还不断强化保守反动的思想文化，以便把埃及控制在从属地位。
但埃及从来没有接受这种地位。因为这种执着的抗拒，接下来半个世纪（1919—1967），埃及出现了声势浩大的运动浪潮。它有三重目标：民主、独立、进步。虽然它们的表达方式有时狭隘而混乱，但它们是不可分割的整体。
随着1919年华夫脱党（Wafd ）的成立，埃及半世纪解放斗争的第一阶段侧重于民族独立和（资产阶级民主立宪的）政治现代化。这一设想的民主形式使埃及在去宗教化方面取得了进步。“正常的”选举不仅使科普特基督徒得到穆斯林的选票支持，更让他们得以担任国家要职。
但英国和由君主派、大地主及富农组成的国内反动集团合力阻挠华夫脱党领导下的埃及民主进程。20世纪30年代，西德基•帕夏（Sedki Pacha）的独裁统治（废除了1923年民主宪法）遇到了当时作为反帝民主斗争先锋的学生团体的坚决抵抗。所以，英国使馆和埃及王室支持以新“政治伊斯兰”中最反动的思潮（原教旨主义）为理论根源的穆斯林兄弟会的成立（1927年）并不是偶然。
面对意大利占领埃塞俄比亚和世界大战即将爆发的前景，英国不得不对民主势力做出让步：允许1936年华夫脱党重新上台执政，并于同年签订《英埃同盟》。二战让很多矛盾退居二线。1946年2月21日起，随着学生工人联合会的成立以及共产主义者的加入和工人运动的发展，斗争浪潮再次高涨。受到英国支持的埃及反动势力残酷镇压起义力量，并且动用支持西德基•帕夏第二任独裁统治的穆斯林兄弟会，但没能使运动噤声。华夫脱党重新执掌政权，宣布废除1936年的《英埃同盟》，苏伊士运河占领区内的游击战争也蓬勃开展，这些努力直到1951年“开罗纵火案”后才宣告失败。
“自由军官组织”1952年的第一次政变和1954年标志着纳赛尔掌权的第二次政变终结了这一阶段风起云涌的斗争浪潮。纳赛尔主义抹煞了1919—1952年的埃及觉醒史，只把“埃及革命”定位于1952年7月。当时很多共产主义者否认这一思想，认为1952年和1954年的政变旨在结束日益激化的民主运动。他们没有错，因为纳赛尔主义直到1955年4月万隆会议后才转变为反帝纲领。它不仅“缺乏民主”（禁止民众组织社团），也“取消”了所有形式的政治生活，由此产生的真空有利于政治伊斯兰乘虚而入。1955—1965年的短短10年，这一纲领就失去了活力。埃及发展迟缓给了改由美国统帅的帝国主义可乘之机，它以以色列为军事工具破坏埃及运动。埃及1967年的军事失败标志着它长达半世纪的运动高涨形势正式结束。纳赛尔选择了向右妥协的道路（“向资本主义全球化”开放），运动浪潮转入低谷。继任的萨达特加重了右倾趋势，把穆斯林兄弟会纳入专制统治内。穆巴拉克也在这条道路上越走越远。
接下来的运动低潮持续了近半个世纪（1967—2011年）。受制于自由主义全球化和美国战略的埃及不再扮演地区和全球的积极角色。美国的主要盟友沙特阿拉伯和以色列占据了当地舞台。以色列在埃及和一些海湾国家的默许下，在巴勒斯坦扩张殖民势力。
纳赛尔时代的埃及制定了一套虽有争议但和谐统一的经济社会制度。纳赛尔大胆发展工业化，希望摆脱埃及棉花出口国的殖民地位。这一制度下的收入分配对日益壮大的中产阶级有利，但也没有使普通民众陷于贫困。萨达特和穆巴拉克却摧毁了这一生产制度，取而代之的是建立在企业最大限度追求利润基础上的极其松散的制度，而那些企业很大部分只是帝国主义垄断资本的加工商。30年来备受世界银行称赞的所谓高增长率其实毫无意义，并且极端脆弱。与此同时，社会不平等加剧，失业率激增（年轻人首当其冲）。埃及形势一触即发；它也的确爆发了。
美国吹嘘的“制度稳定”建立在庞大的警察机器上，这导致了粗暴执法、罪行频发。帝国主义宣称：这一制度可以避免埃及成为伊斯兰国家。这只是一个粗鄙的谎言：这一制度已经把反动的政治伊斯兰纳入政权体系，给它教育、司法和国家电视广播的管理权。美国的表里不一正是为其目的服务的：对政治伊斯兰的实际支持摧毁了埃及社会应对世界现代化挑战的能力；对它“滥用职权”（如杀害科普特基督徒）的偶然揭露又证明了美国以“反恐”为名进行军事干涉的合法性。在穷人和中产阶级能够大规模移民到石油国家的情况下，这一体制似乎还可容忍；但当亚洲移民取代阿拉伯移民的劳工位置时，反抗活动就重新开始了。2007年的工人罢工，因为土地资本化而导致有可能被剥夺地权的小农的顽强抵抗，中产阶级内部民主抗议社团的形成（如凯法雅运动[Kefaya]和4月6日运动），预示了革命的爆发不可避免。我们由此进入了解放斗争高涨的新阶段。
民主运动的组成部分
埃及这场声势浩大的人民运动包含三支活跃力量：“重新政治化”的青年、激进的左派和民主中产阶级。
青年（100万左右）是运动的先锋。激进左派和民主中产阶级随后迅速加入。最初四天呼吁抵制游行的穆斯林兄弟会（以为游行很快会被镇压）在发现运动吸引了1500万民众后才参加进来。
青年和激进左派有三个共同目标：恢复民主（结束军警制）；制定有利于民众的经济社会政策（不再屈从于全球化的新自由主义）；实行独立的国际政策（不再屈从于美国的霸权主义和它控制全球的军事部署）。他们呼唤的民主革命是反帝的、社会的民主革命。
中产阶级的团结基本以民主为唯一目的，对当下的“市场”机制和埃及的国际关系并不一定持否定态度。
三大力量发出的游行号召很快得到了全埃及人民的响应。政府最初几日的疯狂镇压（1000多人死亡）并没有使青年及其盟军退缩。他们的勇气带动了1500万城乡民众走上街头示威抗议。这一声势浩大的场景改变了局势：希拉里和奥巴马意识到他们应该放弃支持穆巴拉克了；军队领袖也打破沉默，拒绝参加镇压，并最终舍弃了穆巴拉克及其主要幕僚。
运动的普及也带来了新的挑战，因为各个阶层远没有形成“和谐的阵营”。工人阶级的加入（500万劳动者）是具有决定意义的。他们通过一次又一次罢工不断完善2007年构建起来的组织形式。全国已有50多家独立工会。小农阶级因为取消土改有可能被剥夺地权，也进行了顽强抵抗，加剧了运动激化的趋势。还有数量众多的“穷人”，他们积极参加了2011年2月的示威游行，又往往在街区的人民委员会中任职以“捍卫革命”。竞赛由此展开：是兄弟会及其伊斯兰盟军还是民主联盟能与这些不明方向的民众结成有效的同盟？
在民主派与劳动者构建统一阵线方面，埃及取得的进步无法忽略。五个社会主义倾向的政党（埃及社会主义党、人民民主联盟、劳动者民主党、革命社会主义者党、埃及共产党）已于2011年4月组成“社会主义力量联盟”，为共同目标而奋斗。与此同时，参与运动的各个政治与社会力量（社会主义倾向的政党、各个民主党派、独立工会、农民组织、青年社团、社会机构等）组成了“国民议会”。穆斯林兄弟会和右派政党拒绝加入该议会，再次证明了它们反对运动深入下去的立场。国民议会大约有150名成员。
反对民主运动的反革命阵营
正如过去斗争的高涨阶段一样，这次的反帝社会民主运动也遇到了强大的反革命阵营。
反动集团由埃及的资产阶级领导。他们不是世界银行口中的成千上万个“创新型企业家”，而是与国家机器相勾结大肆敛财的百万富翁、亿万富翁，属于买办势力。他们积极支持埃及融入当代帝国主义全球化中，是美国的绝对盟友。在它的阵营里，有军队和警察的将领，有与国家和执政党（民族民主党）紧密相联的“文职人员”，还有宗教人士（穆斯林兄弟会的所有领导人都是亿万富翁）。当然，也有作为中小企业家的资产阶级存在，但他们已经成为买办资产阶级诈骗制度的牺牲品，往往处于加工商的地位，受到地方垄断集团的控制，而地方垄断集团又是外国垄断势力的传送带。这部分由真正企业家组成的资产阶级对民主运动抱有好感。
农村的反动势力也不容小觑。它由富裕的农民组成。这些富农是纳赛尔土地改革的主要受益者，取代了之前的大地主阶级。纳赛尔时期的农业合作社把小农和富农结合在一起，因此运行时主要对富农有利，但纳赛尔的体制还是设置了限制富农压迫小农的预防措施，是萨达特和穆巴拉克在世界银行的建议下废除了这些措施，使得富农得以加速淘汰小农。富农在现代埃及历史上总是充当反动角色，现在更是变本加厉。他们是保守伊斯兰教在农村的主要支持者，并且凭借与政权及宗教代表的紧密关系，主宰着农村的社会生活。此外，城市里的中产阶级很大一部分直接来自富农阶层。
这一反动集团拥有为之服务的政治工具：军队、警察、国家机构、特权政党（萨达特创立的民族民主党）、宗教机构、政治伊斯兰流派（穆斯林兄弟会和伊斯兰原教旨主义者）。美国给予埃及军队援助（每年15亿美元）从来不是为了增强埃及国防，恰恰相反，是为了借助腐败消除它国防强大的危险。凭此“援助”，军队高层得以掌控买办经济的重要环节。因此，负责执掌过渡时期的军队领袖并不是“中立的”，虽然他与镇压行动划清界限，希望保持中立形象。他执掌下的“文职”政府采取了一系列旨在阻止运动深化的反动措施，例如，反对罢工的法律（借口恢复国家经济），严格限制成立政党的法律（目的是只让因受旧制度支持而组织完备的政治伊斯兰派别有机会参加选举）。但是，虽然如此，军队在最后关头的态度依然无法预测。因为虽有干部贪污，也不是每个人都没有民族感情。此外，军队实际上一直被排除在有利于警察的政权之外。加上运动明确表示不希望军队进入国家领导层，军队最高统帅很有可能在将来退居幕后，放弃推出人马参与竞选。
不同于其他国家机器（新领导依然是旧制度下那批人），警察机构保持完好（没有对警方负责人提起任何诉讼），民族民主党的确在暴风骤雨中消失不见了，最高法院已经宣布了它的解散。不过，相信埃及资产阶级很快就会让它的新政党以这样或那样的名字重新诞生。
政治伊斯兰
穆斯林兄弟会是国家政权不仅容忍其存在、并积极支持其发展的唯一政治势力。萨达特和穆巴拉克让它管理教育、司法和电视三大基本机构。穆斯林兄弟会从来没有、也不可能“温和”，更谈不上“民主”。它的领袖是自封的，整个组织建立在对领袖命令的服从和执行上，不允许任何讨论。领导层完全由极度富裕的人（很大程度上得益于沙特阿拉伯、也就是美国的金融援助）组成，外围是中产阶级中的蒙昧主义者，基础是宗教协会通过慈善服务招募的平民（同样由沙特阿拉伯赞助），至于打击力量则是从流氓无产者中雇用来的非正规军。
穆斯林兄弟会赞同以市场为基础、完全依赖外部的经济体制，它实际上是买办资产阶级的组成部分。它反对工人阶级大罢工和农民为保留地权进行斗争。穆斯林兄弟会只在两方面“温和”：它拒绝提出一个经济社会纲领，所以不反对反动的新自由主义政策；它实际上接受美国在全球和该地区的军事控制部署。它是美国的有效盟友。（美国还有比沙特阿拉伯更好的盟友吗？而它正是兄弟会的幕后老板。）
但美国不能承认它在该地区的战略是建立“伊斯兰”政权，它必须假装伊斯兰势力让它“感到害怕”，这才能赋予它“长期反恐战争”的合法性。而这场战争的实际目的是：军事控制全球，保证美国—欧洲—日本独享世界资源。这种两面派手段还有另一优势：引发民众的“伊斯兰恐慌症”。欧洲对这一地区并没有特殊战略，只是日复一日追随着美国的脚步。目前最急迫的是揭穿美国的两面派手段——它有效地操控了民意，让民众上当受骗。美国（以及尾随其后的欧洲）最害怕的是埃及真正实现民主化，因为一个民主化的埃及必然质疑经济自由主义和美国及北约的侵略战略。美国一定会千方百计地阻挠埃及民主化，并以此为目的，不遗余力地支持穆斯林兄弟会。
帝国主义与政治伊斯兰在埃及的勾结既不新鲜也不特别。穆斯林兄弟会自1927年创立以来，一直是帝国主义和当地反动阵营的有利盟友，也一直是埃及民主运动的凶暴敌人。政治伊斯兰同样是美国及其盟友北约在穆斯林国家的战略伙伴。美国为塔利班提供武器和资金，在他们反对“共产主义”人民政权时（苏联进攻阿富汗前后）形容他们是“自由战士”，在他们关闭“共产党”创立的女子学校时宣称应该“尊重传统”！
埃及的穆斯林兄弟会受到伊斯兰原教旨主义的支持。原教旨主义者是极端分子，制造了很多起谋杀科普特基督徒的罪行。没有国家机器、尤其是司法体系（主要由兄弟会掌控）的默许，这样的行动是很难想象的！这种奇特的分工有利于穆斯林兄弟会装出温和的嘴脸；美国方面也假装相信这一点。但埃及伊斯兰教派内部对未来的走向还有激烈的斗争。埃及历史上占主导地位的伊斯兰教派是苏菲派（ Sufist），现在拥有1500万信徒。苏菲派开放、宽容，强调个人信仰而非宗教仪式。它一直受到政府的猜忌，但胡萝卜与大棒并用的政府又避免直接卷入针对该派的战争。海湾地区的瓦哈比教派与此相反：因循守旧，提倡仪式，把持异见者视为敌人。瓦哈比派发动了旨在消除苏菲派的战争，受到了政府的支持。今天的苏菲教徒已经去宗教化，他们号召政教分离，是民主运动的盟友。瓦哈比主义20世纪20年代由拉希德•里达（Rachid Reda）引入埃及，1927年后受到穆斯林兄弟会的推崇，但直到二战后海湾国家石油收益大增从而获得更多资金援助才活跃起来。
美国的策略：巴基斯坦模式
1967—2011年，主宰中东舞台的三大力量是美国、沙特阿拉伯和以色列。它们是非常亲密的盟友，都不愿意看到一个民主埃及的崛起，因为一个民主的埃及必定反对帝国主义，拒绝自由主义全球化，降低沙特阿拉伯和海湾国家的地位，重振阿拉伯人民的团结，迫使以色列承认巴勒斯坦国。
埃及是美国控制全球战略的绊脚石。美国及其盟友以色列和沙特阿拉伯的唯一目的就是使埃及的民主运动流产。为此，它们愿意看到由穆斯林兄弟会领导的“伊斯兰政权”的出现，这是永久控制埃及的唯一方法。
为了让兄弟会政府合法，大家一直谈论土耳其模式。但这仍是障眼法。因为位居幕后的土耳其军队虽然并不民主，还是北约的忠实盟友，却可以有效保证国家的“世俗化”。华盛顿方面公开宣布的计划来源于巴基斯坦模式：（“伊斯兰”）军队位居幕后，（“文职”）政府由一个或多个“选举出来的”伊斯兰政党负责。很明显，这种设想下的“伊斯兰”政府不会反对自由主义，不会推翻有利于以色列领土扩张的所谓《和平条约》，只会致力于实现“国家和政治伊斯兰化”，并继续残杀科普特基督徒！沙特阿拉伯自然会千方百计（从财力上）支持这一计划，因为它想拥有阿拉伯和穆斯林世界的霸权，就必须把埃及削弱到无足轻重的地位。
这种伊斯兰化模式是否可行？也许吧，但代价将是惨痛的暴力冲突。争论集中在旧政权宪法第二条：伊斯兰教法是国家立法的来源。这是埃及政治史上的新事物：无论是1923年宪法还是纳赛尔宪法都没有提到这一点，是萨达特在美国（“尊重传统”）、沙特阿拉伯（“《可兰经》取代宪法”）和以色列（“以色列国是犹太国”）的三重支持下把这一条款加进了他的新宪法。
穆斯林兄弟会希望建立神权政治（它对萨达特/穆巴拉克宪法第二条的拥护可以证明这一点），最近又提议设立“伊斯兰学者委员会”，负责审查所有法案是否与伊斯兰教法相符。那时，唯一的宗教政党把持政权，所有要求世俗化的政党变成“非法”，非穆斯林信徒（如科普特基督徒）被排斥在政治生活之外。尽管如此，美国和欧洲还煞有其事地郑重对待兄弟会最近“放弃”神权政治的声明——
一个机会主义的欺骗性声明（根本没有修改纲领！）。难道中情局专家不懂阿拉伯文吗？结论很明显：美国希望建立兄弟会政权而非民主派政权，因为前者可以保证埃及依然留在美国怀中，而后者很可能质疑埃及的从属地位。新近成立的“自由正义党”只是兄弟会的工具。兄弟会还转守为攻，成立了“工会”、“农民组织”和各种名目的“政党”，唯一目的就是分化工人、农民和民主人士正在构建的统一阵线，为反革命阵营服务。
埃及民主运动能在将来的新宪法中废除这一条款吗？要回答这个问题，我们需要回头审视一下现代埃及史中出现的政治、思想和文化争论。
我们发现，斗争高涨时期，公开表达的观点层出不穷，“宗教”问题退居二线。19世纪从阿里到伊斯梅尔的三分之二个世纪便是如此：“现代化”问题占据了历史舞台。1920—1970年同样如此：冲突主要在“资产阶级民主派”和“共产主义者”之间进行。纳赛尔主义废除了这场争论，代之以民众主义的、泛阿拉伯的、现代化的思潮。这一制度的矛盾为政治伊斯兰的回归开辟了道路。与此相反，斗争低潮时，言论多样性消失，伊斯兰复古主义在政权授意下把持了话语权。1880—
1920年，英国通过流放埃及现代主义思想家和行动家构建起这种复古态势。受其影响，里达在该时期末写出了极其反动的文章，班纳加以利用，创建了穆斯林兄弟会。1970—2010年同样如此。萨达特和穆巴拉克政权的官方言论实际上也是伊斯兰主义的，证明就是“伊斯兰教法”被写入宪法，穆斯林兄弟会被授予实权。我们不能低估这一时期去政治化的危害。
目前埃及的争论主要集中在所面临挑战的“文化”（实际上就是伊斯兰）内涵。积极的现象是：几周自由讨论之后，“伊斯兰教解决问题”的口号就在所有游行中消失不见，取而代之的是有关社会变革的具体要求（自由发表意见，自由成立政党、工会和其他社会组织，拥有工作权、土地权、教育权，抛弃私有化、实行国有化……）。但对手同样知道对“民主危险”组织反击：由武装部队最高委员会挑选的伊斯兰主义者组成的委员会对宪法做了无关痛痒的修改，然后匆匆忙忙在4月的全民公投中批准通过，但这些修改根本没有涉及第二条款。总统选举和议会选举预计2011年9月/10月举行。民主运动还在努力争取更长时间的“民主过渡”，以便自己的主张可以真正为不知所措的普通民众所知道。但奥巴马在暴动第一时间就作出选择：过渡简短有序（即不动摇国家机器），举行选举（让伊斯兰主义者获得期望的胜利）。无论是在埃及还是在别处，“选举”往往不是奠定民主的最好方式，却是终结民主进步活力的最好方式。
最后一点关于“腐败”。“过渡政府”强调会揭露腐败，威胁对相关人士提起诉讼。这一言论自然广受好评，尤其是很大一部分天真的民众。但只要分析一下深层次原因就会明白：“腐败”是资产阶级发展中必不可少的有机成分。这不是埃及的特殊情况，而是发展中国家的普遍现象：与国家政权相勾结是买办资产阶级崛起的唯一方式。
风暴区
毛泽东没有错，他说资本主义没有给亚非拉人民带来任何好处，发展中国家由此成了“风暴区”——反复斗争的地区，这些斗争有可能（但仅仅是可能）带来资本主义向社会主义过渡的革命进步。
“阿拉伯之春”就处于这样的现实中。它是有可能实现制度转变的社会斗争，可以载入社会主义的发展蓝图。这就是资本主义制度不能容忍其发展的原因。它会动员所有不稳定因素，施加经济和财政压力，甚至进行军事威胁。它会根据情况，或者支持法西斯或亲法西斯的解决方案，或者支持军事独裁政权的建立。帝国主义三巨头（美国、西欧和日本）领导人的话语中永远充满了两面性。
这篇文章里，我不想仔细分析阿拉伯世界的每一项运动（突尼斯、利比亚、叙利亚……），因为各国运动的组成部分不尽相同，它们融入帝国主义全球化的方式及它们的现行体制结构都各有差异。
突尼斯政变打响了第一枪，是对埃及人民的极大鼓舞。突尼斯运动的优势在于：布尔吉巴开创的半世俗化制度可能不会受到从英国流放回来的伊斯兰主义者的排斥。但突尼斯运动似乎没有能力改变本国已纳入自由资本主义全球化的外向型发展模式。
利比亚既不是突尼斯，也不是埃及，它们各自的敌对双方没有任何相通之处。卡扎菲一直都像小丑，从《绿皮书》就可以看出他毫无思想。自由主义加剧了社会困难，为最终的爆发提供了条件，而这种爆发又立刻被该国的政治伊斯兰和地方分裂势力所利用。利比亚从来就没有以一个民族的形式真正存在过。从地理上看，它位于马格里布和马什里克的交界处，两者的分割线正好从它中间穿过。昔兰尼加历史上属于希腊，后来归为马什里克；的黎波里有拉丁渊源，现在属于马格里布。因此，利比亚一直存在滋生分裂势力的土壤。目前还不知道班加西的“全国过渡委员会”有哪些成员，可能有民主人士，但肯定有伊斯兰主义者，最糟糕的是还有地方分裂分子。利比亚运动从一开始就是武装反抗的形式，而不是平民示威游行。此外，它马上向北约求援，为帝国主义军事干涉提供了可乘之机。它们的目标肯定既不是“保护平民”，也不是“实现民主”，而是控制石油、获取重要军事基地。当然，自从卡扎菲接受“自由主义”，西方就已经控制了利比亚的石油。但有卡扎菲在，我们永远不确定接下来会发生什么。更严重的是，卡扎菲从1969年起就要求英美撤出二战后建在该国的军事基地。美国最近需要把位于斯图加特的“非洲司令部”（美国全球军事部署的重要一环）转移到非洲，但非洲联盟拒绝接受，而一个驯服的利比亚自然会无条件接受美国及北约的一切要求。
目前为止，叙利亚起义派还没有宣布纲领。也许复兴党接受新自由主义、面对以色列霸占戈兰高地毫无作为是民愤爆发的根源，但不能排除中情局的介入（听说有军队从约旦进入德拉）。穆斯林兄弟会几年前挑起了哈马和霍姆斯的暴动，这次估计也不会与美国的阴谋毫无关系。美国的目的是终结叙利亚和伊朗的联盟，因为它是对黎巴嫩真主党和加沙哈马斯的有力支援。
“阿拉伯世界的反抗”并不是“风暴区”内部不稳的唯一体现。
曾有一波“革命”浪潮扫除了亚洲（菲律宾、印度尼西亚）和非洲（马里）的一些独裁政权（由帝国主义和当地反动集团建立），但帝国主义势力又扶植了接受新自由主义、符合它们外交利益的政府，以保证主要形势不变。
南美解放运动取得了实际进步，主要体现在：国家与社会民主化；继续采取反帝立场；实行进步的社会改革。
媒体喜欢把第三世界的“民主革命”与柏林墙倒塌后终结东欧“社会主义”的革命相提并论，这是赤裸裸的欺骗。因为无论当时东欧革命原因如何，革命前景都是该地区被西欧帝国主义吞并。事实上，之后沦为发达资本主义欧洲“边缘地区”的东欧国家也将迎来自己真正的革命。前南斯拉夫就已经有信号发出了。
预计三大洲都会发生可能带来进步的运动，成为前所未有的“风暴区”。但进步要变为现实，这些运动必须克服诸多障碍：一方面，克服运动自身的软弱，找到各组成部分的共同点，制定并实施有效战略；另一方面，挫败帝国主义三巨头的干涉（包括武力干涉），即使打着“人道主义”旗号也应摒弃，因为帝国主义不可能希望看到这些国家的进步与民主，它干涉成功后设置的傀儡政府将依然是民主的敌人。
国际舆论号召实行《国际法》：如果一国人民的基本权利受到践踏，原则上同意外来干涉。但向此方向努力的条件并不具备。“国际社会”并不存在，代表它的是美国大使以及紧随其后的欧洲大使。难道需要列出长长的单子说明这些干涉带来的后果是多么惨痛甚至残忍吗（例如伊拉克）？
第三世界人民的春天和资本主义的秋天
被我称为第三世界人民第二次觉醒浪潮的“阿拉伯之春”（第一次发生在20世纪，在新自由主义的资本主义/帝国主义反攻下失败）具有多种运动形式：或是矛头直指独裁统治的民愤爆发，或是新兴国家对国际秩序的质疑。“阿拉伯之春”与“资本主义之秋”（全球化、金融化的垄断资本主义正在衰落）恰好重合。和上世纪一样，这些运动的出发点是使位于制度边缘的国家和人民重新获得独立。所以，它们首先是反对帝国主义的，仅仅潜在反对资本主义。如果这些运动与帝国主义内部劳动者的觉醒相结合，全人类社会主义的曙光就可能出现了。不过，这不是白纸黑字写下的“历史必然”。资本主义的衰落可以开启向社会主义的长期过渡，也可以带领人类走上野蛮之路。美国及北约军事控制全球的计划，帝国主义中心国家民主的衰落，正在反抗的第三世界国家希望民主拒绝复古的态度，都对未来的走向发挥着作用。在人类解放与普遍野蛮两种前景相互较量的现在，世俗民主化的斗争具有决定意义。
补充阅读：
Hassan Riad，L'Egypte nassérienne，Minuit，1964.
Samir Amin，La nation arabe，Minuit，1976.
Samir Amin，A life looking forward，Memories of an independent Marxist，Zed，London 2006.
Samir Amin， L'éveil du Sud；Le temps des cerises，2008.
Gilbert Achcar，Les Arabes et la Shoah，Actes Sud，2009.
Samir Amin，La crise，sortir de la crise du capitalisme ou sortir du capitalisme en crise?；Le Temps des Cerises，2009.
Samir Amin，La loi de la valeur mondialisée；Le temps des cerises，2011.
Samir Amin，Pour la cinquième internationale；Le temps des cerises，2006.
Samir Amin，The long trajectory of historical capitalism；Monthly Review，New York，february 2011.
Gilbert Achcar，Le choc des barbaries，Ed Complexe，Bruxelles.
2011: An Arab Springtime?
25/08/2011| Samir Amin | Monthly Review 2011, Volume 63, Issue 05 (October)
The year 2011 began with a series of shattering, wrathful, explosions from the Arab peoples. Is this springtime the inception of a second “awakening of the Arab world?” Or will these revolts bog down and finally prove abortive—as was the case with the first episode of that awakening, which was evoked in my book L’éveil du Sud (Paris: Le temps des cerises, 2008). If the first hypothesis is confirmed, the forward movement of the Arab world will necessarily become part of the movement to go beyond imperialist capitalism on the world scale. Failure would keep the Arab world in its current status as a submissive periphery, prohibiting its elevation to the rank of an active participant in shaping the world.
It is always dangerous to generalize about the “Arab world,” thus ignoring the diversity of objective conditions characterizing each country of that world. So I will concentrate the following reflections on Egypt, which is easily recognized as playing and having always played a major role in the general evolution of its region.
Egypt was the first country in the periphery of globalized capitalism that tried to “emerge.” Even at the start of the 19th century, well before Japan and China, the Viceroy Mohammed Ali had conceived and undertaken a program of renovation for Egypt and its near neighbors in the Arab Mashreq [Mashreq means “East,” i.e., eastern North Africa and the Levant, ed.]. That vigorous experiment took up two-thirds of the 19th century and only belatedly ran out of breath in the 1870′s, during the second half of the reign of the Khedive Ismail. The analysis of its failure cannot ignore the violence of the foreign aggression by Great Britain, the foremost power of industrial capitalism during that period. Twice, in [the naval campaign of] 1840 and then by taking control of the Khedive’s finances during the 1870′s, and then finally by military occupation in 1882, England fiercely pursued its objective: to make sure that a modern Egypt would fail to emerge. Certainly the Egyptian project was subject to the limitations of its time since it manifestly envisaged emergence within and through capitalism, unlike Egypt’s second attempt at emergence—which we will discuss further on. That project’s own social contradictions, like its underlying political, cultural, and ideological presuppositions, undoubtedly had their share of responsibility for its failure. The fact remains that without imperialist aggression those contradictions would probably have been overcome, as they were in Japan.
Beaten, emergent Egypt was forced to undergo nearly forty years (1880-1920) as a servile periphery, whose institutions were refashioned in service to that period’s model of capitalist/imperialist accumulation. That imposed retrogression struck, over and beyond its productive system, the country’s political and social institutions. It operated systematically to reinforce all the reactionary and medievalistical cultural and ideological conceptions that were useful for keeping the country in its subordinate position.
The Egyptian nation—its people, its elites—never accepted that position. This stubborn refusal in turn gave rise to a second wave of rising movements which unfolded during the next half-century (1919-1967). Indeed, I see that period as a continuous series of struggles and major forward movements. It had a triple objective: democracy, national independence, social progress. Three objectives—however limited and sometimes confused were their formulations—inseparable one from the other. An inseparability identical to the expression of the effects of modern Egypt’s integration into the globalized capitalist/imperialist system of that period. In this reading, the chapter (1955-1967) of Nasserist systematization is nothing but the final chapter of that long series of advancing struggles, which began with the revolution of 1919-1920.
The first moment of that half-century of rising emancipation struggles in Egypt had put its emphasis—with the formation of the Wafd in 1919—on political modernization through adoption (in 1923) of a bourgeois form of constitutional democracy (limited monarchy) and on the reconquest of independence. The form of democracy envisaged allowed progressive secularization—if not secularism in the radical sense of that term—whose symbol was the flag linking cross and crescent (a flag that reappeared in the demonstrations of January and February 2011). “Normal” elections then allowed, without the least problem, not merely for Copts to be elected by Muslim majorities but for those very Copts to hold high positions in the State.
The British put their full power, supported actively by the reactionary bloc comprising the monarchy, the great landlords, and the rich peasants, into undoing the democratic progress made by Egypt under Wafdist leadership. In the 1930′s the dictatorship of Sedki Pasha, abolishing the democratic 1923 constitution, clashed with the student movement then spearheading the democratic anti-imperialist struggles. It was not by chance that, to counter this threat, the British Embassy and the Royal Palace actively supported the formation in 1927 of the Muslim Brotherhood, inspired by “Islamist” thought in its most backward “Salafist” version of Wahhabism as formulated by Rachid Reda—the most reactionary version, antidemocratic and against social progress, of the newborn “political Islam.”
The conquest of Ethiopia undertaken by Mussolini, with world war looming, forced London to make some concessions to the democratic forces. In 1936 the Wafd, having learned its lesson, was allowed to return to power and a new Anglo-Egyptian treaty was signed. The Second World War necessarily constituted a sort of parenthesis. But a rising tide of struggles resumed already on February 21, 1946 with the formation of the “worker-student bloc,” reinforced in its radicalization by the entry on stage of the communists and of the working-class movement. Once again the Egyptian reactionaries, supported by London, responded with violence and to this end mobilized the Muslim Brotherhood behind a second dictatorship by Sedki Pasha—without, however, being able to silence the protest movement. Elections had to be held in 1950 and the Wafd returned to power. Its repudiation of the 1936 Treaty and the inception of guerrilla actions in the Suez Canal Zone were defeated only by setting fire to Cairo (January 1952), an operation in which the Muslim Brotherhood was deeply involved.
A first coup d’état in 1952 by the “Free Officers,” and above all a second coup in 1954 by which Nasser took control, was taken by some to “crown” the continual flow of struggles and by others to put it to an end. Rejecting the view of the Egyptian awakening advanced above, Nasserism put forth an ideological discourse that wiped out the whole history of the years from 1919 to 1952 in order to push the start of the “Egyptian Revolution” to July 1952. At that time many among the communists had denounced this discourse and analyzed the coups d’état of 1952 and 1954 as aimed at putting an end to the radicalization of the democratic movement. They were not wrong, since Nasserism only took the shape of an anti-imperialist project after the Bandung Conference of April 1955. Nasserism then contributed all it had to give: a resolutely anti-imperialist international posture (in association with the pan-Arab and pan-African movements) and some progressive (but not “socialist”) social reforms. The whole thing done from above, not only “without democracy” (the popular masses being denied any right to organize by and for themselves) but even by “abolishing” any form of political life. This was an invitation to political Islam to fill the vacuum thus created. In only ten short years (1955-1965) the Nasserist project used up its progressive potential. Its exhaustion offered imperialism, henceforward led by the United States, the chance to break the movement by mobilizing to that end its regional military instrument: Israel. The 1967 defeat marked the end of the tide that had flowed for a half-century. Its reflux was initiated by Nasser himself who chose the path of concessions to the Right (the infitah or “opening,” an opening to capitalist globalization of course) rather than the radicalization called for by, among others, the student movement (which held the stage briefly in 1970, shortly before and then after the death of Nasser). His successor, Sadat, intensified and extended the rightward turn and integrated the Muslim Brotherhood into his new autocratic system. Mubarak continued along the same path.
The following period of retreat lasted, in its turn, almost another half-century. Egypt, submissive to the demands of globalized liberalism and to U.S. strategy, simply ceased to exist as an active factor in regional or global politics. In its region the major US allies—Saudi Arabia and Israel—occupied the foreground. Israel was then able to pursue the course of expanding its colonization of occupied Palestine with the tacit complicity of Egypt and the Gulf countries.
Under Nasser Egypt had set up an economic and social system that, though subject to criticism, was at least coherent. Nasser wagered on industrialization as the way out of the colonial international specialization which was confining the country in the role of cotton exporter. His system maintained a division of incomes that favored the expanding middle classes without impoverishing the popular masses. Sadat and Mubarak dismantled the Egyptian productive system, putting in its place a completely incoherent system based exclusively on the profitability of firms most of which were mere subcontractors for the imperialist monopolies. Supposed high rates of economic growth, much praised for thirty years by the World Bank, were completely meaningless. Egyptian growth was extremely vulnerable. Moreover, such growth was accompanied by an incredible rise in inequality and by unemployment afflicting the majority of the country’s youth. This was an explosive situation. It exploded.
The apparent “stability of the regime,” boasted of by successive U.S. officials like Hillary Clinton, was based on a monstrous police apparatus counting 1.200,000 men (the army numbering a mere 500,000) free to carry out daily acts of criminal abuse. The imperialist powers claimed that this regime was “protecting” Egypt from the threat of Islamism. This was nothing but a clumsy lie. In reality the regime had perfectly integrated reactionary political Islam (on the Wahhabite model of the Gulf) into its power structure by giving it control of education, of the courts, and of the major media (especially television). The sole permitted public speech was that of the Salafist mosques, allowing the Islamists, to boot, to pretend to make up “the opposition.” The cynical duplicity of the US establishment’s speeches (Obama no less than Bush) was perfectly adapted to its aims. The de facto support for political Islam destroyed the capacity of Egyptian society to confront the challenges of the modern world (bringing about a catastrophic decline in education and research), while by occasionally denouncing its “abuses” (like assassinations of Copts) Washington could legitimize its military interventions as actions in its self-styled “war against terrorism.” The regime could still appear “tolerable” as long as it had the safety valve provided by mass emigration of poor and middle-class workers to the oil-producing countries. The exhaustion of that system (Asian immigrants replacing those from Arabic countries) brought with it the rebirth of opposition movements. The workers’ strikes in 2007 (the strongest strikes on the African continent in the past fifty years), the stubborn resistance of small farmers threatened with expropriation by agrarian capital, and the formation of democratic protest groups among the middle classes (like the “Kefaya” and “April 6″ movements) foretold the inevitable explosion—expected by Egyptians but startling to “foreign observers.” And thus began a new phase in the tide of emancipation struggles, whose directions and opportunities for development we are now called on to analyze.
The components of the democratic movement
The “Egyptian Revolution” now underway shows that it possible to foresee an end to the neoliberal system, shaken in all its political, economic, and social dimensions. This gigantic movement of the Egyptian people links three active components: youth “repoliticized” by their own will in “modern” forms that they themselves have invented; the forces of the radical left; and the forces of the democratic middle classes.
Youth (about one million activists) spearheaded the movement. They were immediately joined by the radical left and the democratic middle classes. The Muslim Brotherhood, whose leaders had called for a boycott of the demonstrations during their first four days (sure, as they were, that the demonstrators would be routed by the repressive apparatus) only accepted the movement belatedly once its appeal, heard by the entire Egyptian people, was producing gigantic mobilizations of 15 million demonstrators.
The youth and the radical left sought in common three objectives: restoration of democracy (ending the police/military regime), the undertaking of a new economic and social policy favorable to the popular masses (breaking with the submission to demands of globalized liberalism), and an independent foreign policy (breaking with the submission to the requirements of U.S. hegemony and the extension of U.S. military control over the whole planet). The democratic revolution for which they call is a democratic social and anti-imperialist revolution.
Although the youth movement is diversified in its social composition and in its political and ideological expressions, it places itself as a whole “on the left.” Its strong and spontaneous expressions of sympathy with the radical left testify to that.
The middle classes as a whole rally around only the democratic objective, without necessarily objecting thoroughly to the “market” (such as it is) or to Egypt’s international alignment. Not to be neglected is the role of a group of bloggers who take part, consciously or not, in a veritable conspiracy organized by the CIA. Its animators are usually young people from the wealthy classes, extremely “americanized,” who nevertheless present themselves as opponents of the established dictatorships. The theme of democracy, in the version required for its manipulation by Washington, is uppermost in their discourse on the “net.” That fact makes them active participants in the chain of counterrevolutions, orchestrated by Washington, disguised as “democratic revolutions” on the model of the East European “color revolutions.” But it would be wrong to think that this conspiracy is behind the popular revolts. What the CIA is seeking is to reverse the direction of the movement, to distance its activists from their aim of progressive social transformation and to shunt them onto different tracks. The scheme will have a good chance to succeed if the movement fails in bringing together its diverse components, identifying common strategic objectives, and inventing effective forms of organization and action. Examples of such failure are well known—look at Indonesia and the Philippines. It is worthy of note that those bloggers—writing in English rather than Arabic(!)—setting out to defend “American-style democracy,” in Egypt often present arguments serving to legitimize the Muslim Brotherhood.
The call for demonstrations enunciated by the three active components of the movement was quickly heeded by the whole Egyptian people. Repression, extremely violent during the first days (more than a thousand deaths), did not discourage those youths and their allies (who at no time, unlike in some other places, called on the Western Powers for any help). Their courage was decisive in drawing 15 million Egyptians from all the districts of big and small cities, and even villages, into demonstrations of protest lasting days (and sometimes nights) on end. Their overwhelming political victory had as its effect that fear switched sides. Obama and Hillary Clinton discovered that they had to dump Mubarak, whom they had hitherto supported, while the army leaders ended their silence and refused to take over the task of repression—thus protecting their image—and wound up deposing Mubarak and several of his more important henchmen.
The generalization of the movement among the whole Egyptian people represents in itself a positive challenge. For this people, like any other, are far from making up a “homogeneous bloc.” Some of its major components are without any doubt a source of strength for the perspective of radicalization. The 5-million-strong working class’s entry into the battle could be decisive. The combative workers, through numerous strikes, have advanced further in constructing the organizations they began in 2007. There are already more than fifty independent unions. The stubborn resistance of small farmers against the expropriations permitted by abolition of the agrarian reform laws (the Muslim Brotherhood cast its votes in parliament in favor of that vicious legislation on the pretext that private property was “sacred” to Islam and that the agrarian reform had been inspired by the Devil, a communist!) is another radicalizing factor for the movement. What is more, a vast mass of “the poor” took active part in the demonstrations of February 2011 and often are participating in neighborhood popular committees “in defense of the revolution.” The beards, the veils, the dress-styles of these “poor folk” might give the impression that in its depths Egyptian society is “Islamic,” even that it is mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood. In reality, they erupted onto the stage and the leaders of that organization had no choice but to go along. A race is thus underway: who—the Brotherhood and its (Salafist) Islamist associates or the democratic alliance—will succeed in forming effective alliances with the still-confused masses and even to (a term I reject) “get them under discipline”?
Conspicuous progress in constructing the united front of workers and democratic forces is happening in Egypt. In April 2011 five socialist-oriented parties (the Egyptian Socialist Party, the Popular Democratic Alliance—made up of a majority of the membership of the former “loyal-left” Tagammu party, the Democratic Labor Party, the trotskyist Socialist Revolutionary Party, and the Egyptian Communist Party—which had been a component of Tagammu) established an Alliance of Socialist Forces through which they committed themselves to carry out their struggles in common. In parallel, a National Council (Maglis Watany) was established by all the active political and social forces of the movement (the socialist-oriented parties, the divers democratic parties, the independent unions, the peasant organizations, the networks of young people, numerous social associations). The Council has about 150 members, the Muslim Brotherhood and the right-wing parties refusing to participate and thus reaffirming their well-known opposition to continuation of the revolutionary movement.
Confronting the democratic movement: the reactionary bloc
Just as in past periods of rising struggle, the democratic social and anti-imperialist movement in Egypt is up against a powerful reactionary bloc. This bloc can perhaps be identified in terms of its social composition (its component classes, of course) but it is just as important to define it in terms of its means of political intervention and the ideological discourse serving its politics.
In social terms, the reactionary bloc is led by the Egyptian bourgeoisie taken as a whole. The forms of dependent accumulation operative over the past forty years brought about the rise of a rich bourgeoisie, the sole beneficiary of the scandalous inequality accompanying that “globalized liberal” model. They are some tens of thousands—not of “innovating entrepreneurs” as the World Bank likes to call them but of millionaires and billionaires all owing their fortunes to collusion with the political apparatus (corruption being an organic part of their system). This is a comprador bourgeoisie (in the political language current in Egypt the people term them “corrupt parasites”). They make up the active support for Egypt’s placement in contemporary imperialist globalization as an unconditional ally of the United States. Within its ranks this bourgeoisie counts numerous military and police generals, “civilians” with connections to the state and to the dominant National Democratic party created by Sadat and Mubarak, and of religious personalities—the whole leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood and the leading sheikhs of the Al Azhar University are all of them “billionaires.” Certainly there still exists a bourgeoisie of active small-and-medium entrepreneurs. But they are the victims of the racketeering system put in place by the comprador bourgeoisie, usually reduced to the status of subordinate subcontractors for the local monopolists, themselves mere transmission belts for the foreign monopolies. In the construction industry this system is the general rule: the “greats” snap up the state contracts and then subcontract the work to the “smalls.” That authentically entrepreneurial bourgeoisie is in sympathy with the democratic movement.
The rural side of the reactionary bloc has no less importance. It is made up of rich peasants who were the main beneficiaries of Nasser’s agrarian reform, replacing the former class of wealthy landlords. The agricultural cooperatives set up by the Nasser regime included both rich and poor peasants and so they mainly worked for the benefit of the rich. But the regime also had measures to limit possible abuse of the poor peasants. Once those measures had been abandoned, on the advice of the World Bank, by Sadat and Mubarak, the rural rich went to work to hasten the elimination of the poor peasants. In modern Egypt the rural rich have always constituted a reactionary class, now more so than ever. They are likewise the main sponsors of conservative Islam in the countryside and, through their close (often family) relationships with the officials of the state and religious apparatuses (in Egypt the Al Azhar university has a status equivalent to an organized Muslim Church) they dominate rural social life. What is more, a large part of the urban middle classes (especially the army and police officers but likewise the technocrats and medical/legal professionals) stem directly from the rural rich.
This reactionary bloc has strong political instruments in its service: the military and police forces, the state institutions, the privileged National Democratic political party (a de factosingle party) that was created by Sadat, the religious apparatus (Al Azhar), and the factions of political Islam (the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists). The military assistance (amounting to some $1.5 billion annually) extended by the US to the Egyptian Army never went toward the country’s defensive capacity. On the contrary. its effect was dangerously destructive through the systematic corruption that, with the greatest cynicism, was not merely known and tolerated but actively promoted. That “aid” allowed the highest ranks to take over for themselves some important parts of the Egyptian comprador economy, to the point that “Army Incorporated” (Sharika al geish) became a commonplace term. The High Command, who made themselves responsible for directing the Transition, is thus not at all “neutral” despite its effort to appear so by distancing itself from the acts of repression. The “civilian” government chosen by and obedient to it, made up largely of the less-conspicuous men from the former regime, has taken a series of completely reactionary measures aimed at blocking any radicalization of the movement. Among those measures are a vicious antistrike law (on the pretext of economic revival), and a law placing severe restrictions on the formation of political parties, aimed at confining the electoral game to the tendencies of political Islam (especially the Muslim Brotherhood), which are already well organized thanks to their systematic support by the former regime. Nevertheless, despite all that, the attitude of the army remains, at bottom, unforeseeable. In spite of the corruption of its cadres (the rank and file are conscripts, the officers professionals) nationalist sentiment has still not disappeared entirely. Moreover, the army resents having in practice lost most of its power to the police. In these circumstances, and because the movement has forcefully expressed its will to exclude the army from political leadership of the country, it is very likely that the High Command will seek in the future to remain behind the scenes rather than to present its own candidates in the coming elections.
Though it is clear that the police apparatus has remained intact (their prosecution is not contemplated) like the state apparatus in general (the new rulers all being veteran regime figures), the National Democratic Party vanished in the tempest and its legal dissolution has been ordered. But we can be certain that the Egyptian bourgeoisie will make sure that its party is reborn under a different label or labels.
Political Islam
The Muslim Brotherhood makes up the only political force whose existence was not merely tolerated but actively promoted by the former regime. Sadat and Mubarak turned over to them control over three basic institutions: education, the courts, and television. The Muslim Brotherhood have never been and can never be “moderate,” let alone “democratic.” Their leader—the murchid (Arabic word for “guide”—Führer) is self-appointed and its organization is based on the principle of disciplined execution of the leaders’ orders without any sort of discussion. Its top leadership is made up entirely of extremely wealthy men (thanks, in part, to financing by Saudi Arabia—which is to say, by Washington), its secondary leadership of men from the obscurantist layers of the middle classes, its rank-and-file by lower-class people recruited through the charitable services run by the Brotherhood (likewise financed by the Saudis), while its enforcement arm is made up of militias (the baltaguis) recruited among the criminal element.
The Muslim Brotherhood are committed to a market-based economic system of complete external dependence. They are in reality a component of the comprador bourgeoisie. They have taken their stand against large strikes by the working class and against the struggles of poor peasants to hold on to their lands. So the Muslim Brotherhood are “moderate” only in the double sense that they refuse to present any sort of economic and social program, thus in fact accepting without question reactionary neoliberal policies, and that they are submissive de facto to the enforcement of U.S, control over the region and the world. They thus are useful allies for Washington (and does the U.S. have a better ally than their patron, the Saudis?) which now vouches for their “democratic credentials.”
Nevertheless, the United States cannot admit that its strategic aim is to establish “Islamic” regimes in the region. It needs to maintain the pretense that “we are afraid of this.” In this way it legitimizes its “permanent war against terrorism” which in reality has quite different objectives: military control over the whole planet in order to guarantee that the US-Europe-Japan triad retains exclusive access to its resources. Another benefit of that duplicity is that it allows it to mobilize the “Islamophobic” aspects of public opinion. Europe, as is well known, has no strategy of its own in the region and is content from day to day to go along with the decisions of Washington. More than ever it is necessary to point out clearly this true duplicity in U.S. strategy, which has quite effectively manipulated its deceived public’s opinions. The United States (with Europe going along) fears more than anything a really democratic Egypt that would certainly turn its back to its alignments with economic liberalism and with the aggressive strategy of NATO and the United States. They will do all they can to prevent a democratic Egypt, and to that end will give full support (hypocritically disguised) to the false Muslim Brotherhood alternative which has been shown to be only a minority within the movement of the Egyptian people for real change.
The collusion between the imperialist powers and political Islam is, of course, neither new nor particular to Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood, from its foundation in 1927 up to the present, has always been a useful ally for imperialism and for the local reactionary bloc. It has always been a fierce enemy of the Egyptian democratic movements. And the multibillionaires currently leading the Brotherhood are not destined to go over to the democratic cause! Political Islam throughout the Muslim world is quite assuredly a strategic ally of the United States and its NATO minority partners. Washington armed and financed the Taliban, who they called “Freedom Fighters,” in their war against the national/popular regime (termed “communist”) in Afghanistan before, during, and after the Soviet intervention. When the Taliban shut the girls’ schools created by the “communists” there were “democrats” and even “feminists” at hand to claim that it was necessary to “respect traditions!”
In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood are now supported by the “traditionalist” Salafist tendency, who also are generously financed by the Gulf States. The Salafists (fanatical Wahhabites, intolerant of any other interpretation of Islam) make no bones about their extremism, and they are behind a systematic murder campaign against Copts. It is scarcely conceivable that such operations could be carried out without the tacit support (and sometimes even greater complicity) of the state apparatus, especially of the courts which had mainly been turned over to the Muslim Brotherhood. This strange division of labor allows the Muslim Brotherhood to appear moderate: which is what Washington pretends to believe. Nevertheless, violent clashes among the Islamist religious groups in Egypt are to be expected. That is on account of the fact that Egyptian Islam has historically mainly been Sufist, the Sufi brotherhoods even now grouping 15 million Egyptian muslims. Sufism represents an open, tolerant, Islam—insisting on the importance of individual beliefs rather than on ritual practices (they say “there are as many paths to God as there are individuals”). The state powers have always been deeply suspicious of Sufism although, using both the carrot and the stick, they have been careful not to declare open war against it. The Wahhabi Islam of the Gulf States is at the opposite pole from Sufism: it is archaic, ritualist, conformist, declared enemy of any interpretation other than repetition of its own chosen texts, enemy of any critical spirit—which is, for it, nothing but the Devil at work. Wahhabite Islam considers itself at war with, and seeks to obliterate, Sufism, counting on support for this from the authorities in power. In response, contemporary Sufis are secularistic, even secular; they call for the separation of religion and politics (the state power and the religious authorities of Al Azhar recognized by it). The Sufis are allies of the democratic movement. The introduction of Wahhabite Islam into Egypt was begun by Rachid Reda in the 1920′s and carried on by the Muslim Brotherhood after 1927. But it only gained real vigor after the Second World War, when the oil rents of the Gulf States, supported by the United States as allies in its conflict with the wave of popular national liberation struggles in the ’60s, allowed a multiplication of their financial wherewithal.
U.S. Strategy: The Pakistan model
The three powers that dominated the Middle East stage during the period of ebb tide (1967-2011) were the United States, boss of the system, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Three very close allies, all sharing the same dread that a democratic Egypt would emerge. Such an Egypt could only be anti-imperialist and welfarist. It would depart from globalized liberalism, would render insignificant the Gulf States and the Saudis, would reawaken popular Arab solidarity and force Israel to recognize a Palestinian state.
Egypt is a cornerstone in the U.S. strategy for worldwide control. The single aim of Washington and its allies Israel and Saudi Arabia is to abort the Egyptian democratic movement, and to that end they want to impose an “Islamic regime” under the direction of the Muslim Brotherhood—the only way for them to perpetuate the submission of Egypt. The “democratic speeches” of Obama are there only to deceive a naïve public opinion, primarily that of the United States and Europe.
There is much talk of the Turkish example in order to legitimize a government by the Muslim Brotherhood (“converted to democracy!”). But that is just a smokescreen. For the Turkish Army is always there behind the scene, and though scarcely democratic and certainly a faithful ally of NATO it remains the guarantor of “secularism” in Turkey. Washington’s project, openly expressed by Hillary Clinton, Obama, and the think tanks at their service, is inspired by the Pakistan model: an “Islamic” army behind the scene, a “civilian” government run by one or more “elected” Islamic parties. Plainly, under that hypothesis, the “Islamic” Egyptian government would be recompensed for its submission on the essential points (perpetuation of economic liberalism and of the self-styled “peace treaties” permitting Israel to get on with its policy of territorial expansion) and enabled, as demagogic compensation, to pursue its projects of “Islamization of the state and of politics” and of assassinating Copts! Such a beautiful democracy has Washington designed for Egypt! Obviously, Saudi Arabia supports the accomplishment of that project with all its (financial) resources. Riyadh knows perfectly well that its regional hegemony (in the Arab and Muslim worlds) requires that Egypt be reduced to insignificance. Which is to be done through “Islamization of the state and of politics”; in reality, a Wahhabite Islamization with all its effects, including anti-Copt pogroms and the denial of equal rights to women.
Is such a form of Islamization possible? Perhaps, but at the price of extreme violence. The battlefield is Article 2 of the overthrown regime’s constitution. This article stipulating that “sharia is the origin of law” was a novelty in the political history of Egypt. Neither the 1923 constitution nor that of Nasser contained anything of the sort. It was Sadat who put it into his new constitution with the triple support of Washington (“traditions are to be respected”!), of Riyadh (“the Koran is all the constitution needed”), and of Tel Aviv (“Israel is a Jewish State”).
The project of the Muslim Brotherhood remains the establishment of a theocratic state, as is shown by its attachment to Article 2 of the Sadat/Mubarak Constitution. What is more, the organization’s most recent program further reinforces that medievalistical outlook by proposing to set up a “Council of Ulemas” empowered to assure that any proposed legislation be in conformity with the requirements of sharia. Such a Religious Constitutional Council would be analogous to the one that, in Iran, is supreme over the “elected” government. It is the regime of a religious single superparty, all parties standing for secularism becoming “illegal.” Their members, like non-Muslims (Copts), would thus be excluded from political life. Despite all that, the authorities in Washington and Europe talk as though the recent opportunist and disingenuous declaration by the Brotherhood that it was giving up its theocratic project (its program staying unchanged) should be taken seriously. Are the CIA experts, then, unable to read Arabic? The conclusion is inescapable: Washington would see the Brotherhood in power, guaranteeing that Egypt remain in its grip and that of liberal globalization, rather than that power be held by democrats who would be very likely to challenge the subaltern status of Egypt. The recently created Party of Freedom and Justice, explicitly on the Turkish model, is nothing but an instrument of the Brotherhood. It offers to admit Copts (!) which signifies that they have to accept the theocratic Muslim state enshrined in the Brotherhood’s program if they want the right to “participate” in their country’s political life. Going on the offensive, the Brotherhood is setting up “unions” and “peasant organizations” and a rigamarole of diversely named “political parties,” whose sole objective is foment division in the now-forming united fronts of workers. peasants. and democrats—to the advantage, of course, of the counterrevolutionary bloc.
Will the Egyptian democratic movement be able to strike that Article from the forthcoming new constitution? The question can be answered only through going back to an examination of the political, ideological, and cultural debates that have unfolded during the history of modern Egypt.
In fact, we can see that the periods of rising tide were characterized by a diversity of openly expressed opinions, leaving religion (always present in society) in the background. It was that way during the first two-thirds of the 19th century (from Mohamed Ali to Khedive Ismail). Modernization themes (in the form of enlightened despotism rather than democracy) held the stage. It was the same from 1920 through 1970: open confrontation of views among “bourgeois democrats” and “communists” staying in the foreground until the rise of Nasserism. Nasser shut down the debate, replacing it with a populist pan-Arab, though also “modernizing”, discourse. The contradictions of this system opened the way for a return of political Islam. It is to be recognized, contrariwise, that in the ebb-tide phases such diversity of opinion vanished, leaving the space free for medievalism, presented as Islamic thought, that arrogates to itself a monopoly over government-authorized speech. From 1880 to 1920 the British built that diversion channel in various ways, notably by exiling (mainly to Nubia) all modernist Egyptian thinkers and actors who had been educated since the time of Mohamed Ali. But it is also to be noted that the “opposition” to British occupation also placed itself within that medievalistical consensus. The Nadha (begun by Afghani and continued by Mohamed Abdou) was part of that deviation, linked to the Ottomanist delusion advocated by the new Nationalist Party of Moustapha Kamil and Mohammad Farid. There should be no surprise that toward the end of that epoch this deviation led to the ultra-reactionary writings of Rachid Reda, which were then taken up by Hassan el Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It was the same again in the ebb-tide years 1970-2010. The official discourse (of Sadat and Mubarak), perfectly Islamist (as proven by their insertion of sharia into the constitution and their yielding essential powers to the Muslim Brotherhood), was equally that of the false opposition, alone tolerated, which was sermonizing in the Mosque. Because of this that Article 2 might seem solidly anchored in “general opinion” (the “street” as American pundits like to call it). The devastating effects of the depolarization systematically enforced during the ebb-tide periods is not to be underestimated. The slope can never easily be reascended. But it is not impossible. The current debates in Egypt are centered, explicitly or implicitly, on the supposed “cultural” (actually, Islamic) dimensions of this challenge. And there are signposts pointing in a positive direction: the movement making free debate unavoidable—only a few weeks sufficed for the Brotherhood’s slogan “Islam is the Solution” to disappear from all the demonstrations, leaving only specific demands about concretely transforming society (freedom to express opinions and to form unions, political parties, and other social organizations; improved wages and workplace rights; access to landownership, to schools, to health services; rejection of privatizations and calls for nationalizations, etc.). A signal that does not mislead: in April elections to the student organization, where five years ago (when its discourse was the only permitted form of supposed opposition) the Brotherhood’s candidates had obtained a crushing 80% majority, their share of the vote fell to 20%! Yet the other side likewise sees ways to parry the “democracy danger.” Insignificant changes to the Mubarak constitution (continuing in force), proposed by a committee made up exclusively of Islamists chosen by the army high command and approved in a hurried April referendum (an official 23% negative vote but a big affirmative vote imposed through electoral fraud and heavy blackmail by the mosques) obviously left Article 2 in place. Presidential and Legislative elections under that constitution are scheduled for September/October 2011. The democratic movement contends for a longer “democratic transition,” which would allow its discourse actually to reach those big layers of the muslim lower classes still at a loss to understand the events. But as soon as the uprising began Obama made his choice: a short, orderly (that is to say without any threat to the governing apparatus) transition, and elections that would result in victory for the Islamists. As is well known, “elections” in Egypt, as elsewhere in the world, are not the best way to establish democracy but often are the best way to set a limit to democratic progress.
Finally. some words about “corruption.” Most speech from the “transition regime” concentrates on denouncing it and threatening prosecution (Mubarak, his wife, and some others arrested, but what will actually happen remaining to be seen). This discourse is certainly well received, especially by the major part of naïve public opinion. But they take care not to analyze its deeper causes and to teach that “corruption” (presented in the moralizing style of American speech as individual immorality) is an organic and necessary component in the formation of the bourgeoisie. And not merely in the case of Egypt and of the Southern countries in general, where if a comprador bourgeoisie is to be formed the sole way for that to take place is in association with the state apparatus. I maintain that at the stage of generalized monopoly capitalism corruption has become a basic organic component in the reproduction of its accumulation model: rent-seeking monopolies require the active complicity of the State. Its ideological discourse (the “liberal virus”) proclaims “state hands off the economy” while its practice is “state in service to the monopolies.”
The storm zone
Mao was not wrong when he affirmed that really existing (which is to say, naturally imperialist) capitalism had nothing to offer to the peoples of the three continents (the periphery made up of Asia, Africa, and Latin America—a “minority” counting 85% of world population!) and that the South was a “storm zone,” a zone of repeated revolts potentially (but only potentially) pregnant with revolutionary advances toward socialist transcendence of capitalism.
The “Arab spring” is enlisted in that reality. The case is one of social revolts potentially pregnant with concrete alternatives that in the long run can register within a socialist perspective. Which is why the capitalist system, monopoly capital dominant at the world level, cannot tolerate the development of these movements. It will mobilize all possible means of destabilization, from economic and financial pressures up to military threats. It will support, according to circumstances, either fascist and fascistic false alternatives or the imposition of military dictatorships. Not a word from Obama’s mouth is to be believed. Obama is Bush with a different style of speech. Duplicity is built into the speech of all the leaders of the imperialist triad (United States, Western Europe, Japan).
I do not intend in this article to examine in as much detail each of the ongoing movements in the Arab world (Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, et.al.) The components of the movement differ from one country to the other, just like the forms of their integration into imperialist globalization and the structures of their established regimes.
The Tunisian revolt sounded the starting gun, and surely it strongly encouraged the Egyptians. Moreover, the Tunisian movement has one definite advantage: the semi-secularism introduced by Bourguiba can certainly not be called into question by Islamists returning from their exile in England. But at the same time the Tunisian movement seems unable to challenge the extraverted development model inherent in liberal capitalist globalization.
Libya is neither Tunisia nor Egypt. The ruling group (Khaddafi) and the forces fighting it are in no way analogous to their Tunisian and Egyptian counterparts. Khaddafi has never been anything but a buffoon, the emptiness of whose thought was reflected in his notorious “Green Book.” Operating in a still-archaic society Khaddafi could indulge himself in successive “nationalist and socialist” speeches with little bearing on reality, and the next day proclaim himself a “liberal.” He did so to “please the West!” as though the choice for liberalism would have no social effects. But it had and, as is commonplace, it worsened living conditions for the majority of Libyans. Those conditions then gave rise to the well-known explosion, of which the country’s regionalists and political Islamists took immediate advantage. For Libya has never truly existed as a nation. It is a geographical region separating the Arab West from the Arab East (theMaghreb from the Mashreq). The boundary between the two goes right through the middle of Libya. Cyrenaica was historically Greek and Hellenistic, then it became Mashreqian. Tripolitania, for its part, was Roman and became Maghrebian. Because of this, regionalism has always been strong in the country. Nobody knows who the members of the National Transition Council in Benghazi really are. There may be democrats among them, but there are certainly Islamists, some among the worst of the breed, as well as regionalists. From its outset “the movement” took in Libya the form of an armed revolt fighting the army rather than a wave of civilian demonstrations. And right away that armed revolt called NATO to its aid. Thus a chance for military intervention was offered to the imperialist powers. Their aim is surely neither “protecting civilians” nor “democracy” but control over oilfields and acquisition of a major military base in the country. Of course, ever since Khaddafi embraced liberalism the Western oil companies had control over Libyan oil. But with Khaddafi nobody could be sure of anything. Suppose he were to switch sides tomorrow and start to play ball with the Indians and the Chinese? But there is something else more important. In 1969 Khaddafi had demanded that the British and Americans leave the bases they had kept in the country since World War II. Currently the United States needs to find a place in Africa for its Africom (the US military command for Africa, an important part of its alignment for military control over the world but which still has to be based in Stuttgart!). The African Union refusing to accept it, until now no African country has dared to do so. A lackey emplaced at Tripoli (or Benghazi) would surely comply with all the demands of Washington and its NATO lieutenants.
The components of the Syrian revolt have yet to make their programs known. Undoubtedly, the rightward drift of the Baathist regime, gone over to neoliberalism and singularly passive with regard to the Israeli occupation of the Golan, is behind the popular explosion. But CIA intervention cannot be excluded: there is talk of groups penetrating into Diraa across the neighboring Jordanian frontier. The mobilization of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been behind earlier revolts in Hama and Homs, is perhaps part of Washington’s scheme seeking an eventual end to the Syria/Iran alliance that gives essential support to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
In Yemen the country was united through the defeat of progressive forces that had governed independent South Yemen. Will the movement mark a return to life of those forces? That uncertainty explains the hesitant stance of Washington and the Gulf States.
In Bahrein the revolt was crushed at birth by massacres and intervention by the Saudi army, without the dominant media (including Al Jazeera) having much to say about it. As always, the double standard.
The “Arab revolt,” though its most recent expression, is not the only example showing the inherent instability of the “storm zone.”
A first wave of revolutions, if that is what they are to be called, had swept away some dictatorships in Asia (the Philippines, Indonesia) and Africa (Mali) which had been installed by imperialism and the local reactionary blocs. But there the United States and Europe succeeded in aborting the potential of those popular movements, which had sometimes aroused gigantic mobilizations. The United States and Europe seek in the Arab world a repetition of what happened in Mali, Indonesia, and the Philippines: “to change everything in order that nothing changes!” There, after the popular movements had gotten rid of their dictators, the imperialist powers undertook to preserve their essential interests by setting up governments aligned with their foreign-policy interests and with neoliberalism. It is noteworthy that in the Muslim countries (Mali, Indonesia) they mobilized political Islam to that end.
In contrast, the wave of emancipation movements that swept over South America allowed real advances in three directions: democratization of state and society; adoption of consistent anti-imperialist positions; and entry onto the path of progressive social reform
The prevailing media discourse compares the “democratic revolts” of the third world to those that put an end to East-European “socialism” following the fall of the “Berlin Wall.” This is nothing but a fraud, pure and simple. Whatever the reasons (and they were understandable) for those revolts, they signed on to the perspective of an annexation of the region by the imperialist powers of Western Europe (primarily to the profit of Germany). In fact, reduced thenceforward to a status as one of developed capitalist Europe’s peripheries, the countries of Eastern Europe are still on the eve of experiencing their own authentic revolts. There are already signs foretelling this, especially in the former Yugoslavia.
Revolts, potentially pregnant with revolutionary advances, are foreseeable nearly everywhere on those three continents which more than ever remain the storm zone, by that fact refuting all the cloying discourse on “eternal capitalism” and the stability, the peace, the democratic progress attributed to it. But those revolts, to become revolutionary advances, will have to overcome many obstacles: on the one hand they will have to overcome the weaknesses of the movement, arrive at positive convergence of its components, formulate and implement effective strategies; on the other they will have to turn back the interventions (including military interventions) of the imperialist triad. Any military intervention of the United States and NATO in the affairs of the Southern countries must be prohibited no matter its pretext, even seemingly benign “humanitarian” intervention. Imperialism seeks to permit neither democracy nor social progress to those countries. Once it has won the battle, the lackeys whom it sets up to rule will still be enemies of democracy. One can only regret profoundly that the European “left,” even when its claims to be radical, has lost all understanding of what imperialism really is.
The discourse currently prevailing calls for the implementation of “international law” authorizing, in principle, intervention whenever the fundamental rights of a people are being trampled. But the necessary conditions allowing for movement in that direction are just not there. The “international community” does not exist. It amounts to the U.S. embassy, followed automatically by those of Europe. No need to enumerate the long list of such worse-that-unfortunate interventions (Iraq, for example) with criminal outcomes. Nor to cite the “double standard” common to them all (obviously one thinks of the trampled rights of the Palestinians and the unconditional support of Israel, of the innumerable dictatorships still being supported in Africa).
Springtime for the people of the South and autumn for capitalism
The “springtime” of the Arab peoples, like that which the peoples of Latin America are experiencing for two decades now and which I refer to as the second wave of awakening of the Southern peoples—the first having unfolded in the 20th century until the counteroffensive unleashed by neoliberal capitalism/imperialism—takes on various forms, running from explosions aimed against precisely those autocracies participating in the neoliberal ranks to challenges by “emerging countries” to the international order. These springtimes thus coincide with the “autumn of capitalism,” the decline of the capitalism of globalized, financialized, generalized, monopolies. These movements begin, like those of the preceding century, with peoples and states of the system’s periphery regaining their independence, retaking the initiative in transforming the world. They are thus above all anti-imperialist movements and so are only potentially anti-capitalist. Should these movements succeed in converging with the other necessary reawakening, that of the workers in the imperialist core, a truly socialist perspective could be opened for the whole human race. But that is in no way a predestined “historical necessity.” The decline of capitalism might open the way for a long transition toward socialism, but it might equally well put humanity on the road to generalized barbarism. The ongoing U.S. project of military control over the planet by its armed forces, supported by their NATO lieutenants, the erosion of democracy in the imperialist core countries, and the medievalistical rejection of democracy within Southern countries in revolt (taking the form of “fundamentalist” semi-religious delusions disseminated by political Islam, political Hinduism, political Buddhism) all work together toward that dreadful outcome. At the current time the struggle for secularist democratization is crucial for the perspective of popular emancipation, crucial for opposition to the perspective of generalized barbarism.
Complementary Readings
Hassan Riad, L’Egypte nassérienne (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1964)
Samir Amin, La nation arabe (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1976)
Samir Amin, A life looking forward, Memories of an independent Marxist (London: Zed Books, 2006)
Samir Amin, L’éveil du Sud (Paris: Le temps des cerises, 2008)
The reader will find there my interpretations of the achievements of the viceroy Muhammad Ali (1805-1848) and of the Khedives who succeeded him, especially Ismail (1867-1879); of the Wafd (1920-1952); of the positions taken by Egyptian communists in regard to nasserism; and of the deviation represented by the Nahda from Afghani to Rachid Reda.
Gilbert Achcar, Les Arabes et la Shoah (Arles: Actes Sud, 2009)
The best analysis of the components of political Islam (Rachid Reda, the Muslim Brotherhood, the modern Salafists).
Concerning the relationship between the North/South conflict and the opposition between the beginning of a socialist transition and the strategic organization of capitalism, see:
Samir Amin, La crise, sortir de la crise du capitalisme ou sortir du capitalisme en crise ?(Paris: Le Temps des Cerises, 2009)
Samir Amin, The law of worldwide value (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011)
Samir Amin, The world we wish to see (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008)
Samir Amin, “The Trajectory of Historical Capitalism and Marxism’s Tricontinental Vocation,”Monthly Review 62, no. 9 (February 2011)
01/10/2011| Samir Amin | Monthly Review 2011, Volume 63, Issue 05 (October)
The year 2011 began with a series of
shattering, wrathful explosions from the Arab peoples. Is this springtime the
inception of a second “awakening of the Arab world?” Or will these revolts bog
down and finally prove abortive—as was the case with the first episode of that
awakening, which was evoked in my book L’éveil du Sud (The Awakening
of the South)? If the first hypothesis is confirmed, the forward movement of
the Arab world will necessarily become part of the movement to go beyond
imperialist capitalism on the world scale. Failure would keep the Arab world in
its current status as a submissive periphery, prohibiting its elevation to the
rank of an active participant in shaping the world.
It is always dangerous to generalize about
the “Arab world,” thus ignoring the diversity of objective conditions
characterizing each country. So I will concentrate the following reflections on
Egypt, which is easily recognized as playing and having always played a major
role in the general evolution of its region.
Egypt was the first country in the
periphery of globalized capitalism that tried to “emerge.” Even at the start of
the nineteenth century, well before Japan and China, the Viceroy Mohammed Ali
had conceived and undertaken a program of renovation for Egypt and its near
neighbors in the Arab Mashreq (Mashreq means “East,” i.e. eastern
North Africa and the Levant). That vigorous experiment took up two-thirds of
the nineteenth century and only belatedly ran out of breath in the 1870s,
during the second half of the reign of the Khedive Ismail. The analysis of its
failure cannot ignore the violence of the foreign aggression by Great Britain,
the foremost power of industrial capitalism during that period. A number of
times, in the naval campaign of 1840, then by taking control of the Khedive’s
finances during the 1870s, and finally by military occupation in 1882, England
fiercely pursued its objective: to make sure that a modern Egypt would fail to
emerge.
Certainly the nineteenth-century Egyptian
project was subject to the limitations of its time since it manifestly
envisaged emergence within and through capitalism, unlike Egypt’s second
attempt at emergence—which we will discuss further on. That project’s own
social contradictions, like its underlying political, cultural, and ideological
presuppositions, undoubtedly had their share of responsibility for its failure.
Yet, the fact remains that without imperialist aggression those contradictions
would probably have been overcome, as they were in Japan.
Beaten, emergent Egypt was forced to
undergo nearly forty years (1880–1920) as a servile periphery, whose
institutions were refashioned in service to that period’s model of
capitalist/imperialist accumulation. That imposed retrogression struck—over and
beyond its productive system—the country’s political and social institutions.
It operated systematically to reinforce all the reactionary and medievalistic
cultural and ideological conceptions that were useful for keeping the country
in its subordinate position.
The Egyptian nation—its people, its
elites—never accepted that position. This stubborn refusal in turn gave rise to
a second wave of movements which unfolded during the next half-century
(1919–1967). Indeed, I see that period as a continuous series of struggles and
major forward movements. It had a triple objective: democracy, national
independence, and social progress. These three objectives, however limited and
sometimes confused their formulations, were inseparable one from the other—an
inseparability marking modern Egypt’s integration into the globalized
capitalist/imperialist system of that period. In this reading, the chapter
(1955–1967) of Nasserist systematization is nothing but the final chapter of
that long series of advancing struggles, which began with the revolution of
1919–1920.
The first moment of that half-century of
rising emancipation struggles in Egypt had put its emphasis—with the formation
of the Wafd in 1919—on political modernization through adoption (in
1923) of a bourgeois form of constitutional democracy (limited monarchy) and on
the reconquest of independence. The form of democracy envisaged allowed
progressive secularization—if not secularism in the strict sense of that
term—whose symbol was the flag linking cross and crescent (a flag that reappeared
in the demonstrations of January and February 2011). “Normal” elections then
allowed, without the least problem, not merely for Copts (native Egyptian
Christians) to be elected by Muslim majorities but for those very Copts to hold
high positions in the State.
The British put their full power, supported
actively by the reactionary bloc comprising the monarchy, the great landlords,
and the rich peasants, into undoing the democratic progress made by Egypt under
Wafdist leadership. In the 1930s the dictatorship of Sedki Pasha, abolishing
the democratic 1923 constitution, clashed with the student movement then
spearheading the democratic anti-imperialist struggles. It was not by chance
that, to counter this threat, the British Embassy and the Royal Palace actively
supported the formation in 1927 of the Muslim Brotherhood, inspired by
“Islamist” thought in its most backward “Salafist” version of Wahhabism as
formulated by Rachid Reda. This was the most the most reactionary
version—antidemocratic and against social progress—of the newborn “political
Islam.”
The conquest of Ethiopia undertaken by
Mussolini, with world war looming, forced London to make some concessions to
the democratic forces. In 1936 the Wafd, having learned its lesson, was allowed
to return to power and a new Anglo-Egyptian treaty was signed. The Second World
War necessarily constituted a sort of parenthesis. But a rising tide of
struggles resumed already on February 21, 1946, with the formation of the
“worker-student bloc,” reinforced in its radicalization by the entry on stage
of the communists and of the working-class movement. Once again the Egyptian
reactionaries, supported by London, responded with violence, and to this end
mobilized the Muslim Brotherhood behind a second dictatorship by Sedki
Pasha—without, however, being able to silence the protest movement. Elections
had to be held in 1950 and the Wafd returned to power. Its repudiation of the
1936 Treaty and the inception of guerrilla actions in the Suez Canal Zone were
defeated only by setting fire to Cairo (January 1952), an operation in which
the Muslim Brotherhood was deeply involved.
A first coup d’état in 1952 by the “Free
Officers,” and above all a second coup in 1954 by which Nasser took control,
was taken by some to “crown” the continual flow of struggles and by others to
put it to an end. Rejecting the view of the Egyptian awakening advanced above,
Nasserism put forth an ideological discourse that wiped out the whole history
of the years from 1919 to 1952 in order to push the start of the “Egyptian
Revolution” to July 1952. At that time many among the communists denounced this
discourse and analyzed the coups d’état of 1952 and 1954 as aimed at putting an
end to the radicalization of the democratic movement. They were not wrong, since
Nasserism only took the shape of an anti-imperialist project after the Bandung
Conference of April 1955. Nasserism then contributed all it had to give: a
resolutely anti-imperialist international posture (in association with the
pan-Arab and pan-African movements) and some progressive (but not “socialist”)
social reforms. The whole thing done from above, not only “without democracy”
(the popular masses being denied any right to organize by and for themselves)
but even by “abolishing” any form of political life. This was an invitation to
political Islam to fill the vacuum thus created.
In only ten short years (1955–1965) the
Nasserist project used up its progressive potential. Its exhaustion offered
imperialism, henceforward led by the United States, the chance to break the
movement by mobilizing to that end its regional military instrument: Israel.
The 1967 defeat marked the end of the tide that had flowed for a half-century.
Its reflux was initiated by Nasser himself who chose the path of concessions to
the right (the infitah or “opening,” an opening to capitalist
globalization of course) rather than the radicalization called for by, among
others, the student movement (which held the stage briefly in 1970, shortly
before and then after the death of Nasser). His successor, Sadat, intensified
and extended the rightward turn and integrated the Muslim Brotherhood into his
new autocratic system. Mubarak continued along the same path.
The following period of retreat lasted, in
its turn, almost another half-century. Egypt, submissive to the demands of
globalized liberalism and to U.S. strategy, simply ceased to exist as an active
factor in regional or global politics. In its region the major U.S.
allies—Saudi Arabia and Israel—occupied the foreground. Israel was then able to
pursue the course of expanding its colonization of occupied Palestine with the
tacit complicity of Egypt and the Gulf countries.
Under Nasser Egypt had set up an economic
and social system that, though subject to criticism, was at least coherent.
Nasser wagered on industrialization as the way out of the colonial
international specialization which was confining the country in the role of
cotton exporter. His system maintained a division of incomes that favored the
expanding middle classes without impoverishing the popular masses. Sadat and
Mubarak dismantled the Egyptian productive system, putting in its place a
completely incoherent system based exclusively on the profitability of firms,
most of which were mere subcontractors for the imperialist monopolies. Supposed
high rates of economic growth, much praised for thirty years by the World Bank,
were completely meaningless. Egyptian growth was extremely vulnerable.
Moreover, such growth was accompanied by an incredible rise in inequality and
by unemployment afflicting the majority of the country’s youth. This was an
explosive situation. It exploded.
The apparent “stability of the regime,”
boasted of by successive U.S. officials like Hillary Clinton, was based on a
monstrous police apparatus counting 1,200,000 men (the army numbering a mere
500,000) free to carry out daily acts of criminal abuse. The imperialist powers
claimed that this regime was “protecting” Egypt from the threat of Islamism.
This was nothing but a clumsy lie. In reality the regime had perfectly
integrated reactionary political Islam (on the Wahhabite model of the Gulf)
into its power structure by giving it control of education, of the courts, and
of the major media (especially television). The sole permitted public speech
was that of the Salafist mosques, allowing the Islamists, to boot, to pretend
to make up “the opposition.” The cynical duplicity of the U.S. establishment’s
speeches (Obama no less than Bush) was perfectly adapted to its aims. The de
facto support for political Islam destroyed the capacity of Egyptian society to
confront the challenges of the modern world (bringing about a catastrophic
decline in education and research), while by occasionally denouncing its
“abuses” (like assassinations of Copts) Washington could legitimize its
military interventions as actions in its self-styled “war against terrorism.”
The regime could still appear “tolerable” as long as it had the safety valve
provided by mass emigration of poor and middle-class workers to the
oil-producing countries. The exhaustion of that system (Asian immigrants
replacing those from Arabic countries) brought with it the rebirth of
opposition movements. The workers’ strikes in 2007 (the strongest strikes on
the African continent in the past fifty years), the stubborn resistance of
small farmers threatened with expropriation by agrarian capital, and the
formation of democratic protest groups among the middle classes (like the
“Kefaya” and “April 6” movements) foretold the inevitable explosion—expected by
Egyptians but startling to “foreign observers.” And thus began a new phase in
the tide of emancipation struggles, whose directions and opportunities for
development we are now called on to analyze.
The Components of the Democratic Movement
The “Egyptian Revolution” now underway
shows that it possible to foresee an end to the neoliberal system, shaken in
all its political, economic, and social dimensions. This gigantic movement of
the Egyptian people links three active components: youth “repoliticized” by
their own will in “modern” forms that they themselves have invented; the forces
of the radical left; and the forces of the democratic middle classes.
Youth (about one million activists)
spearheaded the movement. They were immediately joined by the radical left and
the democratic middle classes. The Muslim Brotherhood, whose leaders had called
for a boycott of the demonstrations during their first four days (sure, as they
were, that the demonstrators would be routed by the repressive apparatus) only
accepted the movement belatedly once its appeal, heard by the entire Egyptian
people, was producing gigantic mobilizations of 15 million demonstrators.
The youth and the radical left sought in
common three objectives: restoration of democracy (ending the police/military
regime), the undertaking of a new economic and social policy favorable to the
popular masses (breaking with the submission to demands of globalized
liberalism), and an independent foreign policy (breaking with the submission to
the requirements of U.S. hegemony and the extension of U.S. military control
over the whole planet). The democratic revolution for which they call is a
democratic social and anti-imperialist revolution.
Although the youth movement is diversified
in its social composition and in its political and ideological expressions, it
places itself as a whole “on the left.” Its strong and spontaneous expressions
of sympathy with the radical left testify to that.
The middle classes as a whole rally around
only the democratic objective, without necessarily objecting thoroughly to the
“market” (such as it is) or to Egypt’s international alignment. Not to be
neglected is the role of a group of bloggers who take part, consciously or not,
in a veritable conspiracy organized by the CIA. Its animators are usually young
people from the wealthy classes, extremely “Americanized,” who nevertheless
present themselves as opponents of the established dictatorships. The theme of
democracy, in the version required for its manipulation by Washington, is
uppermost in their discourse on the “net.” That fact makes them active
participants in the chain of counterrevolutions, orchestrated by Washington,
disguised as “democratic revolutions” on the model of the East European “color
revolutions.” But it would be wrong to think that this conspiracy is behind the
popular revolts. What the CIA is seeking is to reverse the direction of the
movement, to distance its activists from their aim of progressive social
transformation and to shunt them onto different tracks.
The scheme will have a good chance to
succeed if the movement fails in bringing together its diverse components,
identifying common strategic objectives, and inventing effective forms of
organization and action. Examples of such failure are well known—look at
Indonesia and the Philippines. It is worthy of note that those bloggers—writing
in English rather than Arabic(!)—setting out to defend “American-style
democracy” in Egypt often present arguments serving to legitimize the Muslim
Brotherhood.The call for demonstrations enunciated by the three active
components of the movement was quickly heeded by the whole Egyptian people.
Repression, extremely violent during the first days (more than a thousand
deaths), did not discourage those youths and their allies (who at no time,
unlike in some other places, called on the Western Powers for any help). Their
courage was decisive in drawing 15 million Egyptians from all the districts of
big and small cities, and even villages, into demonstrations of protest lasting
days (and sometimes nights) on end. Their overwhelming political victory had as
its effect that fear switched sides. Obama and Hillary Clinton discovered that
they had to dump Mubarak, whom they had hitherto supported, while the army
leaders ended their silence and refused to take over the task of
repression—thus protecting their image—and wound up deposing Mubarak and
several of his more important henchmen.
The generalization of the movement among
the whole Egyptian people represents in itself a positive challenge. For this
people, like any other, are far from making up a “homogeneous bloc.” Some of
its major components are without any doubt a source of strength for the
perspective of radicalization. The 5 million strong working class’s entry into
the battle could be decisive. The combative workers, through numerous strikes,
have advanced further in constructing the organizations they began in 2007.
There are already more than fifty independent unions. The stubborn resistance
of small farmers against the expropriations permitted by abolition of the
agrarian reform laws (the Muslim Brotherhood cast its votes in parliament in
favor of that vicious legislation on the pretext that private property was
“sacred” to Islam and that the agrarian reform had been inspired by the Devil,
a communist!) is another radicalizing factor for the movement. What is more, a
vast mass of “the poor” took active part in the demonstrations of February 2011
and often are participating in neighborhood popular committees “in defense of
the revolution.” The beards, the veils, the dress styles of these “poor folk”
might give the impression that in its depths Egyptian society is “Islamic,”
even that it is mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood. In reality, they erupted
onto the stage and the leaders of that organization had no choice but to go
along. A race is thus underway: who—the Brotherhood and its (Salafist) Islamist
associates or the democratic alliance—will succeed in forming effective
alliances with the still-confused masses and even to (a term I reject) “get
them under discipline”?
Conspicuous progress in constructing the
united front of workers and democratic forces is happening in Egypt. In April
2011 five socialist-oriented parties (the Egyptian Socialist Party, plus the
Popular Democratic Alliance—made up of a majority of the membership of the
former “loyal-left” Tagammu party, the Democratic Labor Party, the “Trotskyist”
Socialist Revolutionary Party, and the Egyptian Communist Party—which had been
a component of Tagammu) established an Alliance of Socialist Forces through
which they committed themselves to carry out their struggles in common. In
parallel, a National Council (Maglis Watany) was established by all the active
political and social forces of the movement (the socialist-oriented parties,
the diverse democratic parties, the independent unions, the peasant
organizations, the networks of young people, and numerous social associations).
The Council has about 150 members, the Muslim Brotherhood and the right-wing
parties refusing to participate and thus reaffirming their well-known
opposition to continuation of the revolutionary movement.
Confronting the Democratic Movement: The
Reactionary Bloc
Just as in past periods of rising struggle,
the democratic social and anti-imperialist movement in Egypt is up against a
powerful reactionary bloc. This bloc can perhaps be identified in terms of its
social composition (its component classes, of course) but it is just as
important to define it in terms of its means of political intervention and the
ideological discourse serving its politics.
In social terms, the reactionary bloc is
led by the Egyptian bourgeoisie taken as a whole. The forms of dependent
accumulation operative over the past forty years brought about the rise of a
rich bourgeoisie, the sole beneficiary of the scandalous inequality
accompanying that “globalized liberal” model. They are some tens of
thousands—not of “innovating entrepreneurs” as the World Bank likes to call
them but of millionaires and billionaires all owing their fortunes to collusion
with the political apparatus (corruption being an organic part of their
system). This is a comprador bourgeoisie (in the political language current in
Egypt the people term them “corrupt parasites”). They make up the active
support for Egypt’s placement in contemporary imperialist globalization as an
unconditional ally of the United States. Within its ranks this bourgeoisie
counts numerous military and police generals, “civilians” with connections to
the state and to the dominant National Democratic party created by Sadat and
Mubarak, and of religious personalities—the whole leadership of the Muslim
Brotherhood and the leading sheikhs of the Al Azhar University are all of them
“billionaires.” Certainly there still exists a bourgeoisie of active small and
medium entrepreneurs. But they are the victims of the racketeering system put
in place by the comprador bourgeoisie, usually reduced to the status of
subordinate subcontractors for the local monopolists, themselves mere
transmission belts for the foreign monopolies. In the construction industry
this system is the general rule: the “greats” snap up the state contracts and
then subcontract the work to the “smalls.” That authentically entrepreneurial
bourgeoisie is in sympathy with the democratic movement.
The rural side of the reactionary bloc has
no less importance. It is made up of rich peasants who were the main
beneficiaries of Nasser’s agrarian reform, replacing the former class of
wealthy landlords. The agricultural cooperatives set up by the Nasser regime
included both rich and poor peasants and so they mainly worked for the benefit
of the rich. But the regime also had measures to limit possible abuse of the
poor peasants. Once those measures had been abandoned, on the advice of the World
Bank, by Sadat and Mubarak, the rural rich went to work to hasten the
elimination of the poor peasants. In modern Egypt the rural rich have always
constituted a reactionary class, now more so than ever. They are likewise the
main sponsors of conservative Islam in the countryside and, through their close
(often family) relationships with the officials of the state and religious
apparatuses (in Egypt the Al Azhar University has a status equivalent to an
organized Muslim Church) they dominate rural social life. What is more, a large
part of the urban middle classes (especially the army and police officers but
likewise the technocrats and medical/legal professionals) stem directly from
the rural rich.
This reactionary bloc has strong political
instruments in its service: the military and police forces, the state
institutions, the privileged National Democratic political party (a de facto
single party) that was created by Sadat, the religious apparatus (Al Azhar),
and the factions of political Islam (the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists).
The military assistance (amounting to some $1.5 billion annually) extended by
the United States to the Egyptian Army never went toward the country’s
defensive capacity. On the contrary, its effect was dangerously destructive
through the systematic corruption that, with the greatest cynicism, was not
merely known and tolerated but actively promoted. That “aid” allowed the
highest ranks to take over for themselves some important parts of the Egyptian
comprador economy, to the point that “Army Incorporated” (Sharika al geish)
became a commonplace term. The High Command, who made themselves responsible
for directing the Transition, is thus not at all “neutral” despite its effort
to appear so by distancing itself from the acts of repression. The “civilian”
government chosen by and obedient to it, made up largely of the less
conspicuous men from the former regime, has taken a series of completely
reactionary measures aimed at blocking any radicalization of the movement.
Among those measures are a vicious anti-strike law (on the pretext of economic
revival), and a law placing severe restrictions on the formation of political
parties, aimed at confining the electoral game to the tendencies of political
Islam (especially the Muslim Brotherhood), which are already well organized
thanks to their systematic support by the former regime. Nevertheless, despite
all that, the attitude of the army remains, at bottom, unforeseeable. In spite
of the corruption of its cadres (the rank and file are conscripts, the officers
professionals) nationalist sentiment has still not disappeared entirely.
Moreover, the army resents having in practice lost most of its power to the
police. In these circumstances, and because the movement has forcefully expressed
its will to exclude the army from political leadership of the country, it is
very likely that the High Command will seek in the future to remain behind the
scenes rather than to present its own candidates in the coming elections.
Though it is clear that the police
apparatus has remained intact (their prosecution is not contemplated) like the
state apparatus in general (the new rulers all being veteran regime figures),
the National Democratic Party vanished in the tempest and its legal dissolution
has been ordered. But we can be certain that the Egyptian bourgeoisie will make
sure that its party is reborn under a different label or labels.
Political Islam
The Muslim Brotherhood makes up the only
political force whose existence was not merely tolerated but actively promoted
by the former regime. Sadat and Mubarak turned over to them control over three
basic institutions: education, the courts, and television. The Muslim
Brotherhood have never been and can never be “moderate,” let alone
“democratic.” Their leader—the murchid (Arabic word for
“guide”—Führer) is self-appointed and its organization is based on the
principle of disciplined execution of the leaders’ orders without any sort of
discussion. Its top leadership is made up entirely of extremely wealthy men
(thanks, in part, to financing by Saudi Arabia—which is to say, by Washington),
its secondary leadership of men from the obscurantist layers of the middle
classes, its rank and file by lower-class people recruited through the
charitable services run by the Brotherhood (likewise financed by the Saudis),
while its enforcement arm is made up of militias (the baltaguis) recruited
among the criminal element.
The Muslim Brotherhood are committed to a
market-based economic system of complete external dependence. They are in
reality a component of the comprador bourgeoisie. They have taken their stand
against large strikes by the working class and against the struggles of poor
peasants to hold on to their lands. So the Muslim Brotherhood are “moderate”
only in the double sense that they refuse to present any sort of economic and
social program, thus in fact accepting without question reactionary neoliberal
policies, and that they are submissive de facto to the enforcement of U.S.
control over the region and the world. They thus are useful allies for
Washington (and does the United States have a better ally than their patron,
the Saudis?) which now vouches for their “democratic credentials.”
Nevertheless, the United States cannot
admit that its strategic aim is to establish “Islamic” regimes in the region.
It needs to maintain the pretense that “we are afraid of this.” In this way it
legitimizes its “permanent war against terrorism” which in reality has quite
different objectives: military control over the whole planet in order to
guarantee that the United States-Europe-Japan triad retains exclusive access to
its resources. Another benefit of that duplicity is that it allows it to
mobilize the “Islamophobic” aspects of public opinion. Europe, as is well
known, has no strategy of its own in the region and is content from day-to-day
to go along with the decisions of Washington. More than ever it is necessary to
point out clearly this true duplicity in U.S. strategy, which has quite
effectively manipulated its deceived public’s opinions. The United States (with
Europe going along) fears more than anything a really democratic Egypt that
would certainly turn its back to its alignments with economic liberalism and
with the aggressive strategy of NATO and the United States. They will do all
they can to prevent a democratic Egypt, and to that end will give full support
(hypocritically disguised) to the false Muslim Brotherhood alternative which
has been shown to be only a minority within the movement of the Egyptian people
for real change.
The collusion between the imperialist
powers and political Islam is, of course, neither new nor particular to Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood, from its foundation in 1927 up to the present, has
always been a useful ally for imperialism and for the local reactionary bloc.
It has always been a fierce enemy of the Egyptian democratic movements. And the
multibillionaires currently leading the Brotherhood are not destined to go over
to the democratic cause! Political Islam throughout the Muslim world is quite
assuredly a strategic ally of the United States and its NATO minority partners.
Washington armed and financed the Taliban, whom they called “Freedom Fighters,”
in their war against the national/popular regime (termed “communist”) in
Afghanistan before, during, and after the Soviet intervention. When the Taliban
shut the girls’ schools created by the “communists” there were “democrats” and
even “feminists” at hand to claim that it was necessary to “respect
traditions!”
In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood are now
supported by the “traditionalist” Salafist tendency, who also are generously
financed by the Gulf States. The Salafists (fanatical Wahhabites, intolerant of
any other interpretation of Islam) make no bones about their extremism, and
they are behind a systematic murder campaign against Copts. It is scarcely
conceivable that such operations could be carried out without the tacit support
(and sometimes even greater complicity) of the state apparatus, especially of
the courts which had mainly been turned over to the Muslim Brotherhood. This
strange division of labor allows the Muslim Brotherhood to appear moderate:
which is what Washington pretends to believe.
Nevertheless, violent clashes among the
Islamist religious groups in Egypt are to be expected. That is on account of
the fact that Egyptian Islam historically has been mainly Sufist, the Sufi
brotherhoods even now grouping 15 million Egyptian muslims. Sufism represents
an open, tolerant, Islam—insisting on the importance of individual beliefs
rather than on ritual practices (they say “there are as many paths to God as
there are individuals”). The state powers have always been deeply suspicious of
Sufism although, using both the carrot and the stick, they have been careful
not to declare open war against it.
The Wahhabi Islam of the Gulf States is at
the opposite pole from Sufism: it is archaic, ritualist, conformist, declares
enemy any interpretation other than repetition of its own chosen texts, and is
enemy of any critical spirit—which is, for it, nothing but the Devil at work.
Wahhabite Islam considers itself at war with, and seeks to obliterate, Sufism,
counting on support for this from the authorities in power. In response,
contemporary Sufis are secularistic, even secular; they call for the separation
of religion and politics (the state power and the religious authorities of Al
Azhar recognized by it). The Sufis are allies of the democratic movement. The
introduction of Wahhabite Islam into Egypt was begun by Rachid Reda in the
1920s and carried on by the Muslim Brotherhood after 1927. But it only gained
real vigor after the Second World War, when the oil rents of the Gulf States,
supported by the United States—allies in its conflict with the wave of popular
national liberation struggles in the 1960s—multiplied its financial
wherewithal.
U.S. Strategy: The Pakistan Model
The three powers that dominated the Middle
East stage during the period of ebb tide (1967–2011) were the United States,
boss of the system, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Three very close allies, all
sharing the same dread that a democratic Egypt would emerge. Such an Egypt
could only be anti-imperialist and welfarist. It would depart from globalized
liberalism, would render insignificant the Gulf States and the Saudis, would
reawaken popular Arab solidarity, and force Israel to recognize a Palestinian
state.
Egypt is a cornerstone in the U.S. strategy
for worldwide control. The single aim of Washington and its allies Israel and
Saudi Arabia is to abort the Egyptian democratic movement, and to that end they
want to impose an “Islamic regime” under the direction of the Muslim
Brotherhood—the only way for them to perpetuate the submission of Egypt. The
“democratic speeches” of Obama are there only to deceive a naïve public
opinion, primarily that of the United States and Europe.
There is much talk of the Turkish example
in order to legitimize a government by the Muslim Brotherhood (“converted to
democracy!”). But that is just a smoke screen. For the Turkish Army is always
there behind the scene and, though scarcely democratic and certainly a faithful
ally of NATO, it remains the guarantor of “secularism” in Turkey. Washington’s
project, openly expressed by Hillary Clinton, Obama, and the think tanks at
their service, is inspired by the Pakistan model: an “Islamic” army behind the
scene, a “civilian” government run by one or more “elected” Islamic parties.
Plainly, under that hypothesis, the “Islamic” Egyptian government would be
recompensed for its submission on the essential points (perpetuation of
economic liberalism and of the self-styled “peace treaties” permitting Israel
to get on with its policy of territorial expansion) and enabled, as demagogic
compensation, to pursue its projects of “Islamization of the state and of
politics” and of assassinating Copts! Such a beautiful democracy has Washington
designed for Egypt! Obviously, Saudi Arabia supports the accomplishment of that
project with all its (financial) resources. Riyadh knows perfectly well that
its regional hegemony (in the Arab and Muslim worlds) requires that Egypt be
reduced to insignificance, which is to be accomplished through “Islamization of
the state and of politics”—in reality, a Wahhabite Islamization with all its
effects, including anti-Copt pogroms and the denial of equal rights to women.
Is such a form of Islamization possible?
Perhaps, but at the price of extreme violence. The battlefield is Article 2 of
the overthrown regime’s constitution. This article stipulating that “sharia
(the Islamic canon) is the origin of law” was a novelty in the political
history of Egypt. Neither the 1923 constitution nor that of Nasser contained
anything of the sort. It was Sadat who put it into his new constitution with
the triple support of Washington (“traditions are to be respected”!), of Riyadh
(“the Koran is all the constitution needed”), and of Tel Aviv (“Israel is a
Jewish State”).
The project of the Muslim Brotherhood
remains the establishment of a theocratic state, as is shown by its attachment
to Article 2 of the Sadat/Mubarak Constitution. What is more, the
organization’s most recent program further reinforces that medievalistic outlook
by proposing to set up a “Council of Ulemas” empowered to assure that any
proposed legislation be in conformity with the requirements of sharia. Such a
Religious Constitutional Council would be analogous to the one that, in Iran,
is supreme over the “elected” government. It is the regime of a religious
single superparty, all parties standing for secularism becoming “illegal.”
Their members, like non-Muslims (Copts), would thus be excluded from political
life. Despite all that, the authorities in Washington and Europe talk as though
the recent opportunist and disingenuous declaration by the Brotherhood that it
was giving up its theocratic project (its program staying unchanged) should be
taken seriously. Are the CIA experts, then, unable to read Arabic? The
conclusion is inescapable: Washington would see the Brotherhood in power,
guaranteeing that Egypt remain in its grip and that of liberal globalization,
rather than that power be held by democrats who would be very likely to
challenge the subaltern status of Egypt. The recently created Party of Freedom
and Justice, explicitly on the Turkish model, is nothing but an instrument of
the Brotherhood. It offers to admit Copts (!) which signifies that they have to
accept the theocratic Muslim state enshrined in the Brotherhood’s program if
they want the right to “participate” in their country’s political life. Going
on the offensive, the Brotherhood is setting up “unions” and “peasant
organizations” and a rigamarole of diversely named “political parties,” whose
sole objective is to foment division in the now-forming united fronts of
workers, peasants, and democrats—to the advantage, of course, of the
counterrevolutionary bloc.
Will the Egyptian democratic movement be
able to strike Article 2 from the forthcoming new constitution? The question
can be answered only through going back to an examination of the political,
ideological, and cultural debates that have unfolded during the history of
modern Egypt.
In fact, we can see that the periods of
rising tide were characterized by a diversity of openly expressed opinions,
leaving religion (always present in society) in the background. It was that way
during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century (from Mohamed Ali to
Khedive Ismail). Modernization themes (in the form of enlightened despotism
rather than democracy) held the stage. It was the same from 1920 through 1970:
open confrontation of views among “bourgeois democrats” and “communists”
staying in the foreground until the rise of Nasserism. Nasser shut down the
debate, replacing it with a populist pan-Arab, though also “modernizing,”
discourse. The contradictions of this system opened the way for a return of
political Islam. It is to be recognized, contrariwise, that in the ebb-tide
phases such diversity of opinion vanished, leaving the space free for
medievalism, presented as Islamic thought, that arrogates to itself a monopoly
over government-authorized speech. From 1880 to 1920 the British built that
diversion channel in various ways, notably by exiling (mainly to Nubia) all
modernist Egyptian thinkers and actors who had been educated since the time of
Mohamed Ali. But it is also to be noted that the “opposition” to British
occupation also placed itself within that medievalistic consensus. The Nadha (begun
by Afghani and continued by Mohamed Abdou) was part of that deviation, linked
to the Ottomanist delusion advocated by the new Nationalist Party of Moustapha
Kamil and Mohammad Farid. There should be no surprise that toward the end of
that epoch this deviation led to the ultra-reactionary writings of Rachid Reda,
which were then taken up by Hassan el Banna, the founder of the Muslim
Brotherhood.
It was the same again in the ebb-tide years
1970–2010. The official discourse (of Sadat and Mubarak), perfectly Islamist
(as proven by their insertion of sharia into the constitution and their
yielding essential powers to the Muslim Brotherhood), was equally that of the
false opposition, alone tolerated, which was sermonizing in the Mosque. Because
of this Article 2 might seem solidly anchored in “general opinion” (the
“street” as American pundits like to call it). The devastating effects of the
depolarization systematically enforced during the ebb-tide periods is not to be
underestimated. The slope can never easily be reascended. But it is not
impossible. The current debates in Egypt are centered, explicitly or
implicitly, on the supposed “cultural” (actually, Islamic) dimensions of this
challenge. And there are signposts pointing in a positive direction: the movement
is making free debate unavoidable—only a few weeks sufficed for the
Brotherhood’s slogan “Islam is the Solution” to disappear from all the
demonstrations, leaving only specific demands about concretely transforming
society (freedom to express opinions and to form unions, political parties, and
other social organizations; improved wages and workplace rights; access to
landownership, to schools, to health services; rejection of privatizations and
calls for nationalizations, etc.). A signal that does not mislead: in April
elections to the student organization, where five years ago (when its discourse
was the only permitted form of supposed opposition) the Brotherhood’s
candidates had obtained a crushing 80 percent majority, their share of the vote
fell to 20 percent! Yet the other side likewise sees ways to parry the
“democracy danger.” Insignificant changes to the Mubarak constitution
(continuing in force), proposed by a committee made up exclusively of Islamists
chosen by the army high command and approved in a hurried April referendum (an
official 23 percent negative vote but a big affirmative vote imposed through
electoral fraud and heavy blackmail by the mosques) obviously left Article 2 in
place. In the eyes of the corrupt elements still in charge, the legislative and
presidential elections under that constitution, scheduled for October/November
2011, are clearly meant to perpetrate a grand democratic fraud. The democratic
movement, in contrast, seeks a longer “democratic transition,” which would
allow its discourse actually to reach those big layers of the Muslim lower
classes still at a loss to understand the events. But as soon as the uprising
began Obama made his choice: a short, orderly (that is to say without any
threat to the governing apparatus) transition, and elections that would result
in victory for the Islamists. As is well known, “elections” in Egypt, as
elsewhere in the world, are not the best way to establish democracy but often
are the best way to set a limit to democratic progress.
Finally, some words about “corruption.”
Most speech from the “transition regime” concentrates on denouncing it and
threatening prosecution. At present, Mubarak, his wife, and some others are
arrested, but what will actually happen remains to be seen. This discourse on
corruption is certainly well received, especially by the major part of the
naïve public. But the transition regime takes care not to analyze its deeper
causes and to teach that “corruption” (presented in the moralizing style of
American speech as individual immorality) is an organic and necessary component
in the formation of the bourgeoisie—and not merely in the case of Egypt and of
the Southern countries in general, where if a comprador bourgeoisie is to be
formed the sole way for that to take place is in association with the state
apparatus. I maintain that at the stage of generalized monopoly capitalism
corruption has become a basic organic component in the reproduction of its
accumulation model: rent-seeking monopolies require the active complicity of
the State. Its ideological discourse (the “liberal virus”) proclaims “state
hands off the economy” while its practice is “state in service to the
monopolies.”
The Storm Zone
Mao was not wrong when he affirmed that
really existing (which is to say, naturally imperialist) capitalism had nothing
to offer to the peoples of the three continents (the periphery made up of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America—a “minority” counting 85 percent of world
population!) and that the South was a “storm zone,” a zone of repeated revolts
potentially (but only potentially) pregnant with revolutionary advances toward
socialist transcendence of capitalism.
The “Arab Spring” is enlisted in that
reality. The case is one of social revolts potentially pregnant with concrete
alternatives that in the long run can register within a socialist perspective.
This is why the capitalist system, monopoly capital dominant at the world
level, cannot tolerate the development of these movements. It will mobilize all
possible means of destabilization, from economic and financial pressures up to
military threats. It will support, according to circumstances, either fascist
and fascistic false alternatives or the imposition of military dictatorships.
Not a word from Obama’s mouth is to be believed. Obama is Bush with a different
style of speech. Duplicity is built into the speech of all the leaders of the
imperialist triad (United States, Western Europe, and Japan).
I do not intend in this article to examine
in as much detail each of the ongoing movements in the Arab world (Tunisia,
Libya, Syria, Yemen, et al). The components of the movements differ from one
country to the other, just like the forms of their integration into imperialist
globalization and the structures of their established regimes.
The Tunisian revolt sounded the starting
gun, and surely it strongly encouraged the Egyptians. Moreover, the Tunisian
movement has one definite advantage: the semi-secularism introduced by
Bourguiba can certainly not be called into question by Islamists returning from
their exile in England. But at the same time the Tunisian movement seems unable
to challenge the extraverted development model inherent in liberal capitalist
globalization.
Libya is neither Tunisia nor Egypt. The
ruling group (Khaddafi) and the forces fighting it are in no way analogous to
their Tunisian and Egyptian counterparts. Khaddafi has never been anything but
a buffoon, the emptiness of whose thought was reflected in his notorious Green
Book. Operating in a still-archaic society Khaddafi could indulge himself in
successive “nationalist and socialist” speeches with little bearing on reality,
and the next day proclaim himself a “liberal.” He did so to “please the West!”
as though the choice for liberalism would have no social effects. But it did have
such effects, and, as is commonplace, it worsened living conditions for the
majority of Libyans. Those conditions then gave rise to the well-known
explosion, of which the country’s regionalists and political Islamists took
immediate advantage. For Libya has never truly existed as a nation. It is a
geographical region separating the Arab West from the Arab East (the Maghreb from
the Mashreq). The boundary between the two goes right through the middle
of Libya. Cyrenaica was historically Greek and Hellenistic, then it became
Mashreqian. Tripolitania, for its part, was Roman and became Maghrebian.
Because of this, regionalism has always been strong in the country. Nobody
knows who the members of the National Transition Council in Benghazi really
are. There may be democrats among them, but there are certainly Islamists, some
among the worst of the breed, as well as regionalists. The president of the
National Council for the transition is Mustafa Muhammad Abdeljelil, the judge
who condemned the Bulgarian nurses to death, was rewarded by Khaddafi, and
named Minister of Justice from 2007 to February 2011. For that reason the prime
minister of Bulgaria, Boikov, refused to recognize the Council, but his
argument was not given any follow up by the United States and Europe.
From its outset “the movement” took in
Libya the form of an armed revolt fighting the army rather than a wave of
civilian demonstrations. And right away that armed revolt called NATO to its
aid. Thus a chance for military intervention was offered to the imperialist
powers. Their aim is surely neither “protecting civilians” nor “democracy” but
control over oilfields and acquisition of a major military base in the country.
Of course, ever since Khaddafi embraced liberalism the Western oil companies had
control over Libyan oil. But with Khaddafi nobody could be sure of anything.
Suppose he were to switch sides tomorrow and start to play ball with the
Indians and the Chinese? More important perhaps than oil are the gigantic
underground water resources of Libya. Kaddafi was considering with the African
Sahelian countries a possible use of this resource vital for the Sahel. That is
now over. Well-known French companies will get access to this water to make a
“more profitable” use of it, probably to produce agrofuels. No doubt that was
the reason for the early, eager involvement of the French in the “humanitarian
intervention.”
But there is something else more important.
In 1969 Kaddafi had demanded that the British and Americans leave the bases
they had kept in the country since World War II. Currently the United States
needs to find a place in Africa for its Africom (the U.S. military command for
Africa, an important part of its alignment for military control over the world
but which still has to be based in Stuttgart!). The African Union refused to
accept it, and until now no African country has dared to do so. A lackey
emplaced at Tripoli (or Benghazi) would surely comply with all the demands of
Washington and its NATO lieutenants.
The components of the Syrian revolt have
yet to make their programs known. Undoubtedly, the rightward drift of the
Baathist regime, gone over to neoliberalism and singularly passive with regard
to the Israeli occupation of the Golan, is behind the popular explosion. But
CIA intervention cannot be excluded: there is talk of groups penetrating into
Diraa across the neighboring Jordanian frontier. The mobilization of the Muslim
Brotherhood, which had been behind earlier revolts in Hama and Homs, is perhaps
part of Washington’s scheme seeking an eventual end to the Syria/Iran alliance
that gives essential support to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
In Yemen the country was unified through
the defeat of progressive forces that had governed independent South Yemen.
Will the movement mark a return to life of those forces? That uncertainty
explains the hesitant stance of Washington and the Gulf States.
In Bahrain the revolt was crushed at birth
by massacres and intervention by the Saudi Army, without the dominant media
(including Al Jazeera) having much to say about it. As always, the double
standard.
The “Arab revolt,” though its most recent
expression, is not the only example showing the inherent instability of the
“storm zone.”
A first wave of revolutions, if that is
what they are to be called, had swept away some dictatorships in Asia (the
Philippines and Indonesia) and Africa (Mali) which had been installed by
imperialism and the local reactionary blocs. But there the United States and
Europe succeeded in aborting the potential of those popular movements, which
had sometimes aroused gigantic mobilizations. The United States and Europe seek
in the Arab world a repetition of what happened in Mali, Indonesia, and the
Philippines: “to change everything in order that nothing changes!” There, after
the popular movements had gotten rid of their dictators, the imperialist powers
undertook to preserve their essential interests by setting up governments
aligned with their foreign-policy interests and with neoliberalism. It is
noteworthy that in the Muslim countries (Mali and Indonesia) they mobilized
political Islam to that end.
In contrast, the wave of emancipation
movements that swept over South America allowed real advances in three
directions: democratization of state and society; adoption of consistent
anti-imperialist positions; and entry onto the path of progressive social
reform.
The prevailing media discourse compares the
“democratic revolts” of the third world to those that put an end to East
European “socialism” following the fall of the “Berlin Wall.” This is nothing
but a fraud, pure and simple. Whatever the reasons (and they were
understandable) for the East European revolts, they signed on to the
perspective of an annexation of the region by the imperialist powers of Western
Europe (primarily to the profit of Germany). In fact, reduced thenceforward to
a status as one of developed capitalist Europe’s peripheries, the countries of
Eastern Europe are still on the eve of experiencing their own authentic
revolts. There are already signs foretelling this, especially in the former
Yugoslavia.
Revolts, potentially pregnant with
revolutionary advances, are foreseeable nearly everywhere on those three
continents which more than ever remain the storm zone—by that fact refuting all
the cloying discourse on “eternal capitalism” and the stability, the peace, the
democratic progress attributed to it. But those revolts, to become
revolutionary advances, will have to overcome many obstacles. On the one hand
they will have to overcome the weaknesses of the movement, arrive at positive
convergence of its components, formulate and implement effective strategies; on
the other they will have to turn back the interventions (including military
interventions) of the imperialist triad. Any military intervention of the
United States and NATO in the affairs of the Southern countries must be
prohibited no matter its pretext, even seemingly benign “humanitarian”
intervention. Imperialism seeks to permit neither democracy nor social progress
to those countries. Once it has won the battle, the lackeys whom it sets up to
rule will still be enemies of democracy. One can only regret profoundly that
the European “left,” even when it claims to be radical, has lost all
understanding of what imperialism really is.
The discourse currently prevailing calls
for the implementation of “international law” authorizing, in principle,
intervention whenever the fundamental rights of a people are being trampled.
But the necessary conditions allowing for movement in that direction are just
not there. The “international community” does not exist. It amounts to the U.S.
embassy, followed automatically by those of Europe. No need to enumerate the
long list of such worse-than-unfortunate interventions (Iraq, for example) with
criminal outcomes. Nor to cite the “double standard” common to them all
(obviously one thinks of the trampled rights of the Palestinians and the
unconditional support of Israel, of the innumerable dictatorships still being
supported in Africa).
Springtime for the People of the South and
Autumn for Capitalism
The “springtime” of the Arab peoples is
akin to that which the peoples of Latin America have experienced for two
decades. It represents what I have referred to as the second wave of awakening
of the Southern peoples. The first wave unfolded in the twentieth century, only
to be ended by the counteroffensive of neoliberal capitalism/imperialism. This
second awakening is taking various forms: from explosions aimed against those
autocracies that have linked their fate to neoliberalism to challenges by
“emerging countries” to the international order itself. This new springtime in
the South thus coincides with the “autumn of capitalism,” that is the decline
of the capitalism of globalized, financialized, generalized monopolies. These
movements begin, like those of the preceding century, with peoples and states
of the system’s periphery regaining their independence, retaking the initiative
in transforming the world. They are thus above all anti-imperialist movements
and so are only potentially anti-capitalist.
Should these movements succeed in
converging with the other necessary reawakening, that of the workers in the
imperialist core, a truly socialist perspective could be opened for the whole
human race. But that is in no way a predestined “historical necessity.” The
decline of capitalism might open the way for a long transition toward
socialism, but it might equally well put humanity on the road to generalized
barbarism. The ongoing U.S. project of military control over the planet by its
armed forces, supported by their NATO lieutenants, the erosion of democracy in
the imperialist core countries, and the medievalistic rejection of democracy
within Southern countries in revolt (taking the form of “fundamentalist”
semi-religious delusions disseminated by political Islam, political Hinduism,
and political Buddhism) all work together toward that dreadful outcome. At the
current time the struggle for secularist democratization is crucial—both for
its strengthening of popular emancipation, and its opposition to generalized
barbarism.
07/2012| Samir Amin/支晓兰 译 |《国外理论动态》2012年第7期
从2010年12月17日发端于突尼斯的所谓“茉莉花革命”算起，“阿拉伯之春”在西亚北非肆虐已有一年有余。在这期间，西亚非洲的动荡使得埃及、利比亚、也门威权政权相继倒台，叙利亚和伊朗局势成为新的热点。然而，仔细考察这些事件的发展过程，特别是所谓“阿拉伯之春”初步显现出来的阶段性成果，不难发现西方国家的战略密谋。埃及左翼学者萨米尔•阿明继《2011：阿拉伯之春》后再次在非洲新闻网站“Pambazuka News”上撰文，精辟总结了阿拉伯革命一年的发展历程。他认为革命的到来并非毫无预兆，而是民众情绪在国内外反动势力长期剥削下的爆发。在过去的一年中，伊斯兰政党先后在突尼斯、埃及取得了大选的胜利，但这不是民主的胜利，而是与美国和海湾国家的长期支持分不开的。阿明认为，帝国主义国家的目标绝非在大中东地区建立“民主”，而是推行“遏制加削弱”政策，矛头直指新兴国家。
为什么会出现所谓的“阿拉伯之春”
2011年的阿拉伯人民起义（包括突尼斯、埃及、巴林和也门，之后是叙利亚）并非毫无征兆，与西方国家的专家相比，至少在许多阿拉伯的左派活动家们看来是如此。
在万隆会议和不结盟运动时期（1955－1970年），阿拉伯国家处于争取更美好未来和更平等国际体系的斗争的所有人民、民族和国家组成的共同阵线的最前沿。阿尔及利亚的民族解放阵线，与布迈丁和纳赛尔时期的埃及，复兴党统治时期的伊拉克和叙利亚，以及南也门共和国，在这一时期具有共性。按照西方的标准来看（一党专政的政治体制），它们并不是所谓的“民主”政权。即使按照我们的标准即人民真正掌握权力来评判，它们也不符合民主的标准。然而，在这些国家和人民眼中，这些政权却是合法的。因为它们取得了一些实际的成果：民众教育、医疗和其他公共服务、工业化和就业保障，以及伴随着独立倡议和反帝斗争而出现的社会向上流动的能力。所以，它们遭到了西方的强力打压，尤其是通过以色列的屡次入侵。
在这一框架下，这些政权在短时期内，也就是在20年时间里，取得了它们能够实现的所有成果，但很快由于内部制约和矛盾失去了发展势头。这与苏联解体巧合，进一步刺激了帝国主义“新自由主义”的进攻。这些国家的统治阶级为了维护统治，不得不选择放弃并屈服于新自由主义全球化的要求。其结果只能是社会生活水平急剧下滑，在民族大众国家时代所取得的有益于大众阶级和中产阶级的成果在短短几年之内全部丧失。贫困和大规模失业成了采取新自由主义政策后的正常结果。这些都为此次变革提供了客观条件。奇怪的是，那些呼唤西方拯救的“民主革命”的口头支持者们竟然是热情支持新自由主义联盟的国家领导人。
因此，爆发此次起义并非意料之外，而且之前已经出现了许多迹象，例如，埃及2007年8月大罢工，小农反对富农征田进程的抗争，一些新兴中产阶级组织（比如“肯飞亚”运动）的抗议等等。
政治伊斯兰在突尼斯和埃及大选中的胜利
突尼斯大选（2011年10月举行）为右翼阵营上台清理了道路。右翼阵营包括复兴党（穆斯林兄弟会）和自称为布尔吉巴主义者（突尼斯首任总统布尔吉巴的追随者）的政客，这些人之前是本•阿里政权的追随者。这一政治联盟依赖议会多数，该议会的任务是负责制定新宪法。
这一新政权在经济持续发展的情况下可能会取得一些民主进步（尊重多元化和言论自由以及停止最糟糕的警察镇压制度），但在关键的社会问题上（妇女权利、世俗教育和国家）可能会倒退。
我们有必要记住突尼斯革命运动并没有挑战对本•阿里时代的依附型发展模式，反而认为这种模式“有效”，并接受了世界银行的表述。突尼斯革命满足于批判警察镇压制度，和对由总统家庭成员控制的所有“王室”产业征税。这一些还算令人满意。而且公众（除被孤立的左派外）并没有认识到正是这种依附型发展的模式导致了社会条件的恶化，进而导致大规模的起义的爆发。新的执政联盟不会改变由突尼斯第一任总统布尔吉巴所开创的发展模式，而是注入了新因素以巩固所谓的伊斯兰特殊主义（Islamic particularism）。
突尼斯的新总统马祖吉恰好是被本•阿里镇压的前左翼活动家，但是他似乎并不理解什么是真正的经济“自由主义”。奇怪的是，这位总统2012年2月在突尼斯组织召开了“叙利亚问题”会议，竟然间接支持西方对叙利亚的干预。
在埃及，伊斯兰主义者取得了更大规模的胜利。政治伊斯兰的成就、它在公众中根深蒂固的影响以及“社会伊斯兰化”呼声的增强可能会出现什么情况呢？只是一次选举胜利吗？要回答这个问题还需要重新揭示它成功的原因。
无论如何，伊斯兰政党的胜利（至少在埃及）不仅仅是故事的结局。在西方势力眼中必不可少的经选举产生的议会的“合法性”，受到同样具有合法性的争取社会进步以及政治和社会生活的真正民主化的斗争的质疑和对抗。
然而，只要这一运动的主要力量没有达到一定的认识水平，仍然支持具有破坏性的自由主义政治经济，仍然与美国主导的全球化结盟，那么这种激进化的斗争就依然面临巨大的阻力。但是在观念方面的进步还是显而易见的。
伊斯兰政党的成功
我曾论及这些成就背后的社会生活的非政治化是纳赛尔主义政权惯用手法所致。需要注意的是，纳赛尔主义政权并不是采用这种方法的唯一体制。事实上，大部分南方发展中国家首次觉醒浪潮中的大多数民粹主义政权也采取类似的方法运作。同样，现存的社会主义政权也采用这样的方式，至少在革命之后，当这些政权进入政权巩固阶段时，这种方法事实上是民主的。
所以，共同点就在于民主实践的废除。当然，我并不是将民主和多党选举等同起来。民主实践的恰当含义是尊重多元化的政治观点和政治方案，并尊重其组织。因为政治化需要民主，只有那些与当局意见不一致的人享有言论自由时，民主才存在。但是，取消整合不同政治观点的权利和消除政治化的做法最终导致灾难不可避免。
这次灾难通过复归过去古老的观点（宗教的或是其他的）显示出来，同时也表现在对“消费型社会”计划的接受上，这种社会基于巩固所谓的“个人主义”趋势之上。这种趋势不仅在从这种发展方式中的中产阶级中流传，而且贫困阶层也呼吁分享显然属于最低限度的福利，虽然这已经是最简单不过了，但还是不存在其他可以接受的选择。所以，我们必须把它看成是大众的合法要求。
在伊斯兰社会，去政治化普遍采用明显的或形而上学式的“回归”到“伊斯兰”这种形式体现出来。所以，在纳赛尔时期只允许发布清真寺的言论和官方观点，而且在萨达特和穆巴拉克时期也是如此。这些言论被用来阻止引入社会主义作为替代方案。之后，这些“宗教”言论得到了萨达特和穆巴拉克的鼓励，以应对由于埃及屈服于帝国主义全球化而导致的生活水平的不断恶化。这就是为什么我说政治伊斯兰并非穆斯林兄弟会标榜的那样属于反动派，而是统治集团的一个有机组成部分的原因。
解释政治伊斯兰的成功还需要进一步澄清帝国主义全球化的成功与穆斯林兄弟会提出的口号之间的关系。
全球化所导致的恶果已经向经济和社会生活的非正规部门扩散，而这些部门正是大多数埃及人的主要收入来源（数据显示为60％）。因为穆斯林兄弟会有能力在这种情况下运作，所以它已经成功导致了这些部门生产活动的膨胀并确保了更大规模的再生产。穆斯林兄弟会以它简单的政治文化而广为人知。这种政治文化仅仅满足于承认伊斯兰关于私有财产观念的“合法性”与“自由”市场的关系，而不考虑这些活动的本质，这些基本的经济活动无力推动国家经济发展。
此外，海湾国家提供的资金导致了这些经济部门的繁荣，因为这些国家设立了大量的小额贷款和赠款作为这些经济部门的启动资金。伴随着这些部门膨胀的慈善事业（诸如诊所之类的）的发展，也要归因于海湾国家的支持。海湾国家并不想为埃及经济生产力的发展出力，而只看重“无业流民”式的发展，因为作为发展中国家的埃及如果经济得到恢复，就将终结海湾国家的主宰（这些海湾国家是建立在接受社会伊斯兰化的基础上的），终结美国的主宰（美国把埃及视为受极度贫困影响的买办国家），终结以色列的主宰（以色列把埃及视为犹太复国主义面临的主要对手）。 打着“伊斯兰”旗号的政治组织与隐藏其后屈服于占主导地位的帝国主义式资本主义的当局结成了轴心，造成了民众的赤贫。这种情况不只发生在埃及。这是大多数阿拉伯－伊斯兰社会的共同特征。这种轴心正在伊朗起作用，在那里，霍梅尼主义从一开始就掌握了“巴扎（“巴扎”意为集市――译者注）经济”的主导权。这也是导致索马里灾难的原因所在，它使索马里从现代世界国家名单上除名。
那么，我们对政治伊斯兰在埃及（和其他国家）的统治的可能性还能有什么期盼呢？目前存在的一种主流媒体观点认为，政治伊斯兰的胜利是不可避免的，因为伊斯兰的自我认同主宰了我们社会的现实，而且是一个被拒绝的现实，这样，这个现实就选择了强行建立。
然而，这一论断完全忽视了另一个现实，也就是去政治化进程是人为的结果，如果没有去政治化，政治伊斯兰也不能强加于其社会之上。而且，这种观点认为：“政治伊斯兰的上台没有任何风险，因为这只是暂时的，从中产生的政权是注定要失败的，届时公众舆论必将与其背离。”这正如认为穆斯林兄弟会在违背它们利益的情况下选择履行民主原则一样。然而，美国政府明显接受了这一观点，美国民众在这种媒体制造出来的舆论的影响下也接受了这种观点。许多埃及人和阿拉伯知识分子显然也认可了这一观点，也许是出于偶然，也许是他们缺乏清晰的思想。
但这是一个错误。人们应该清楚，假如让政治伊斯兰掌控政权，如果不是“永远”，但至少也是在很长一段时间内（50年？让我们看一下伊朗的例子）将会持续强加这种统治。在这段“转型”期，其他国家将持续发展，我们却发现自己落在了最后。所以我根本不把穆斯林兄弟会看作是“伊斯兰政党”，相反，它首先是个反动党，如果它试图掌握政权，这就意味着为帝国主义体制提供了最好的保障。
关于萨拉菲主义
穆斯林兄弟会和拉希德•里达为萨拉菲主义添加了蒙昧主义成分。它公开反对“自由”主义（所以也反对民主），在他们看来，人类的本性在于他／她生为伺候他的创作者的奴隶（注意这个词），就如一个奴隶就要服侍他／她的主人一样。当然，这一主义并没有解释这个创造者在现代世界的具体要求。例如，他是否接受工资的不断上涨？这就通过自称垄断知识的“科学家／乌勒玛”教士的独裁专制为“伊朗式宗教统治”开辟了道路。
萨拉菲主义是现代性的敌人，因为现代性基于解决世俗问题和人类社会其他问题时的人类创造性的权利之上。而且创造性需要自由和自由的批判思维，而这正是萨拉菲主义所反对的。那么，那些因为教授学生如何使用电脑和“商业管理”知识而声称“属于现代世界”的萨拉菲主义领导者是什么样的人呢？这些言论不仅仅是一个实实在在的滑稽剧，而且，这里真正占主导地位的是当前的资本主义式帝国主义，他们只是在练习这种“仆人艺术”，除此之外，再无他意。
只有在克服这些缺点并接受自由原则后，现代性才算开始，自由是开发一个国家的能力，使其真正积极进入现代世界的必要条件。穆斯林兄弟会和萨拉菲派相互协调，分工完成任务。穆斯林兄弟会需要一份民主的“证书”，奥巴马授予了它，为了达到这种效果，它们与萨拉菲主义“极端分子”“分离”了。
阿尔及利亚民主改革是否具备条件？
在万隆会议和不结盟运动时期，埃及和阿尔及利亚在“南方的觉醒”运动中占有重要地位。这两个国家在民族／国家构建中取得了真正称得上是“后殖民”的成功进展，尽管存在一些局限，但它们的经济和社会生活取得了显著进步，在继续迈向自由的道路上播下了希望的种子。然而，这种进程被迫中断了，它们的国家和社会都退回到了帝国主义统治模式。
阿尔及利亚的模式似乎具有比埃及更强的持续性，这体现在它们后来抗腐蚀的能力上，所以阿尔及利亚的统治阶级仍然分为爱国势力和买办阵营。在有些时候，这种相互对立的特点显示在统治阶级的同一个人身上。这与埃及的情况不同，在萨达特和穆巴拉克统治时期，埃及的统治阶级完全抛弃了民族主义的价值取向。
导致这种不同的原因有两个。
阿尔及利亚的解放战争导致意识形态和社会生活方面都孕育了激进倾向。这不同于埃及。一方面，在埃及，诸如以1919年革命开始的解放浪潮，经过了高涨和退却的时代，在二战后产生的激进主义种子生根之前产生了纳赛尔主义。之后发生了模棱两可的1952年政变，阻止了解放运动的激进化发展。紧接着，在1954年发生了纳赛尔主义者政变，修正了右翼倾向，但是，这种修正采取了精英主义道路，将可以积极参与这一运动的民众排除在外。另一方面，我们必须考虑到独立后的阿尔及利亚从法国殖民统治模式那里继承的破坏性的后果，阿尔及利亚的“传统”社会已经瓦解，因此独立后的阿尔及利亚新社会被赋予了无处不在的平民主义特点。因此，对“平等”的要求成了阿尔及利亚公民行为和观点的显著特征，所有其他阿拉伯国家都无法比拟。这也与埃及的历史形成了鲜明的对比，从穆罕默德•阿里帕夏开始，埃及的统治阶级就开始影响社会演进和埃及复兴计划。埃及的计划仍然处于倡导现代化的贵族的影响之下，因此它也逐渐变成了“贵族资产阶级”的计划。
这两点不同也造成了应对政治伊斯兰崛起挑战的不同状况。就像侯赛因•贝拉鲁菲在他的著作（《阿尔及利亚的民主：改革还是革命》，尚未出版）中阐释的那样，阿尔及利亚的政治伊斯兰早就暴露了它的丑恶嘴脸，并经历了失误和挫败。但这并不意味着政治伊斯兰已经成为过去，不会复兴。从这个角度来说，阿尔及利亚和埃及存在很大的区别，埃及的政治伊斯兰在公众心目中仍然享有“合法性”。而且，买办资产阶级和政治伊斯兰的联盟仍然是主轴心的代表，它将保障依附性资本主义发展模式在埃及的统治地位。
因此，至少在短期来看，我们可以想象这两国面对当前挑战时的不同发展，因为我们不能排除阿尔及利亚有控制改革的可能性。至少这种可能性具有一定的现实性，而想象埃及可以避免民众运动与反动的“伊斯兰／买办”联盟集团的暴力冲突并有所发展简直是不可思议。
而且，在把埃及和阿尔及利亚列入“新兴”国家候选名单的两个阿拉伯国家时，它们也代表了那种没能达到这种水平的悲惨模式。尽管统治阶级在这次失败中起了关键作用，但是也不能忽视其他社会阶级、知识分子和行动主义者在这一政治运动中的责任。
提到马格里布阿拉伯国家时，大家认为摩洛哥王国是另一个改革的正面例子，因为这个国家通过和平的方式取得了渐进民主改革的成就。我对摩洛哥实现这种目标的可能性持保留意见，因为这一变革从一开始就受国王诏令的制约，这一诏令首先排除了所有对建构这一计划的依附性资本主义模式的质疑。
而且，只要摩洛哥人民仍然满足于宗教－王朝体制（因为国王是“信士们的长官”），这些受限制、有缺陷的改革就不能为真正的民主开辟道路。也许这就是摩洛哥为什么不能理解西撒哈拉问题重要性的原因所在，西撒哈拉的自由民为拥有伊斯兰教的另一种解释而自豪，这种解释不要求他们向真主以外的任何人乃至国王下跪。
叙利亚的灾难
叙利亚复兴党政权过去属于民族民众运动实践（虽然不算民主），其形式与纳赛尔主义及万隆会议时代出现的其他实践类似。当在这种框架下取得真正成就的局限性越来越明显时，哈菲兹•阿萨德转向了另一个计划，一方面试图将维持民族主义的爱国主义与反对殖民主义立场结合起来，另一方面从向右翼－保守势力的妥协中获利，这体现在“开放”（自由化）中，类似于1967年战败后纳赛尔采取的的路线。
这一计划的后续历史非常明朗。1970年纳赛尔逝世后，埃及立刻毫无保留地倒向了以美国、海湾国家和以色列为轴心的反动势力。
在叙利亚，这一“开放”也导致了类似于其他国家的后果。那就是，贫民阶层的社会生活急剧恶化，从而也损坏了政权的合法性。当前的情况是，叙利亚政府面临的仅仅是针对镇压的抗议。穆斯林兄弟会利用这一时机以“反动派”的姿态出现。因此，帝国主义国家和同盟领导下的整套计划不是“将叙利亚人民从独裁统治中解救出来”，而是以美国在伊拉克和利比亚建立的那种模式摧毁叙利亚国家。
这里同样存在三方在追求以下目标时明显的利益关系：（1）对美国来说，需要破坏阻碍其巩固对该地区控制的伊朗／叙利亚／真主党联盟；（2）以色列想让叙利亚分裂为一些宗派主义小国家；（3）对于海湾国家而言，就是在瓦哈比派的模式下确立“逊尼派”的专制统治，尽管这种独裁将建立在杀戮和灭绝阿拉维派、德鲁兹派和基督徒的基础之上。阿萨德政府面临这一可能的危险命运时，仍然不能做出唯一有效的反应，这种反应应当排除使用暴力，进行真正的改革，因为唯一可以被各方接受的途径是诚恳的谈判，这是加强民主阵线的必要条件。尽管有人试图消除民主阵线的声音，不过目前他们的力量仍然在基层存在着。单纯反对针对所谓的“伊斯兰／萨拉菲”恐怖主义的国家恐怖主义毫无意义。
结论
1．当前帝国主义在这一地区（“大中东”）的战略目的绝不是建立一些“民主”政权。它们的目标是通过所谓的伊斯兰政权的支持来破坏这些国家和社会，而这些伊斯兰政权保证了“无业流民式发展”（用我已故的朋友A．G．弗兰克的话说）的继续，也就是继续贫困化。最终出现的被世界银行赞誉的“高速增长”毫无意义，它是以对自然资源的掠夺为基础的，给大多数人带来的只是收入分配的不公平和日益贫困化。
伊拉克是这一地区的“模式”。萨达姆•侯赛因的独裁专制被至少三个（甚至更多的）恐怖主义政权所取代，这些恐怖主义政权打着“宗教”（逊尼派和什叶派）和种族（库尔德人）的口号，彻底毁灭了一系列的基础设施和工业，有计划地屠杀了成千上万的精英分子，特别是工程师和科学家，并破坏了教育系统（这在萨达姆时期还不错），将其降级为教授宗教和商业的学校。
这也是针对叙利亚的目标。
这样，回过头来看鼓吹“民主”最起劲的竟然是卡塔尔的埃米尔和沙特阿拉伯的国王也就不奇怪了。这是一场闹剧。
2．土耳其在与美国一起（不要忘记土耳其是北大西洋公约组织的一员）实施这一计划的过程中扮演了一个积极的角色。土耳其在哈塔伊省建立了营地，招募新兵并训练向叙利亚渗透的杀手（“所谓的穆斯林教徒”）。
3．美国对突尼斯和埃及的民众起义表示“惊讶”。它们打算通过发动由它们支持的小团体武装起义“抢占”类似的可能运动。这种战略已经在利比亚（现在已经是一个分裂的国家）试验成功，现在正在叙利亚试行。
下一个目标是伊朗，以发展核武器为借口，因为这影响到了以色列，没有美国部队的积极介入，以色列无法实现拥核。不论人们如何评价伊朗的政权（事实上与“伊斯兰统治”市场经济有关！），伊朗确实是美国军事控制这一地区的一个障碍。因此，必须消灭这个国家。
4．当代帝国主义的终极目标是针对一些对它们构成威胁的新兴国家（中国首当其冲）发动先发制人的战争，“遏制和削弱”这些国家。还有俄罗斯，如果它能够成功取得军队的现代化，就能终止美国的军事独裁。
这意味着所有的南方国家处于依附地位，这种观念还要确保全球的自然资源都为三方（美国、欧洲和日本）为了它们的利益独自使用，任由它们掠夺和浪费。所以，这意味着无业流民越来越多，贫困化越来越严重，恐怖主义政权越来越多。除此之外，当代资本主义不能带来其他任何东西。
