counterpunch.org/2013/07/12/egypt-at-the-crossroads-2/ MORE EXCERPTS: [D]ecades of organizing mutual aide societies and social service networks among the poor, ... , gave popular legitimacy to the Brotherhood. Its followers were recruited from the disaffected within the margins of society. This was the ample social base from which the Freedom and Justice Party was organized in January of 2011. ... The leader[ship]... of the Brotherhood ... is composed of elements from the liberal professions and small-scale industrialists that developed during the waning days of British domination. (In reality, the British protectorate lasted until 1952.) In the heart of the Brotherhood’s leadership one will find engineers, doctors and local capitalists with interests in manufacturing whose operations often employ hundreds of workers. In sum, the power of this group is the result of an alliance between small capital and the declassed elements of society they have been able to mobilize. ... So called “political Islam” is the logical form nationalism takes in societies in which all ... see religion as the most effective ideological tool to complement the brutal repression of the working masses. ... [T]he economic program of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing more than an attempt to break the stronghold of larger-scale, local capitalist interests concentrated in the Egyptian State (more specifically within the armed forces) and aligned to international capital. Like all small-scale capitalists suffocated by monopoly, they demand an opening of the market and an end to state control held by elements with which they have conflict. They perceive this state monopoly to be buttressed by foreign interests. As such, they are the representatives of reactionary small capital whose economic nationalism embraces free markets. ... The legacy of Nasser lay in developing the mechanisms by which the armed forces could serve as the institutional framework for this capital accumulation. Both Sadat and Mubarak deepened this practice. Through the Ministry of Military Production, the military directors of state enterprises have been able to exploit the labor of hundreds of thousands of workers to whom they pay abysmally low wages to ensure the maximum .... The ties between the upper crust of the military and both the public sector and private enterprises are vast and well known. Indeed, the extent of wealth accumulated by this militarist clique is so great that they were recently able to function as financiers to the non-militarized sectors of the State. ... The Egyptian “opposition” is composed of a heterogeneous mass. ... On the one hand we find a liberal faction of this opposition composed of another sector of the petty bourgeois that is “enlightened” and “very democratic.” Groups such as [Tamarod], the Constitutional Party, etc. that have entered the National Salvation Front highlight their secularism and promote a vision of modernity. They are classic liberals and Mohamed ElBaradei is their best-known representative. ... The tacit alliance between this liberal faction and the army is based on demagogy on the one hand and the quest to eliminate a rival on the other. ... . For the militarists, the immediate political objective consists in propping up a political force sufficiently credible to calm the discontent for the moment without interfering with either its economic interests or its relations with the West. Their immediate target is small capital, which has dared to challenge its monopoly from parliament and the non-militarized apparatuses of the State. They are keenly aware, however, that the greater threat to their power comes from below. The liberals achieve an opportunity to administer the State in exchange for a pledge to not interfere with the economic interests of the military or international finance capital. Their prize consists of the crumbs that are left to them. There is another important faction of the opposition composed of workers, only some of which are organized, and the radicalized youth. They are the true catalysts of the processes unleashed even if they may lack organizational coherence for the moment. The mobilization of this progressive force is a popular and spontaneous response to the perpetual crisis that afflicts the Egyptian economy; an economy that is oriented towards exports in which the recent and abrupt changes in trade relations (It is interesting to note that since the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood agricultural imports e.g. wheat, corn, from the United States to Egypt have been reduced to zero.) have aggravated an already precarious problem of unemployment and high consumer prices. They have joined the National Salvation Front to spread their vision of the future, which combines political freedom and a call to end extreme social and economic inequity. ...
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 06:32:48 +0000
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