Draft:Socialism in Egypt

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Socialism in Egypt as a political movement dates back to the early 20th century during the founding of the Egyptian Socialist Party in 1921. Despite facing severe state repression throught the eras, Egyptian organized labor has consistantly fought for greater worker rights against expliotative captialism. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser developed a special type of Third-World Socialism, dubbed Nasserism, which inspired many Arab and African socialist movements - such as the FLN in Algeria and the Third International Theory in Libya. While Egypt transtioned towards capitalism under President Anwar Sadat, Egyptian socialists have remained as harsh critics of privatization and neo-liberalism in Egypt. Workers uprisings in early 2000s Egypt under president Hosni Mubarak eventualy exploded into the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.

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History[edit]

Kingdom of Egypt[edit]

Due to a struggling economy and failed expensive projects, the Khedive of Egypt formed a national debt council to oversee repayment. This council, which was run by wealthy foriegn investors, gradually eroded the national soverientity of the Egyptian state, especially after Egypt declared bankruptcy in 1876. Further financial concessions sparked the 1882 uprising against the government and its ruling landlord class. After a British intervention defeated the uprising, Britain established the 'vieled protectorate', as Egypt became a de-facto British colony run by the Consuls-General, beginning with Lord Cromer.

Economically, the Egyptian state was heavily reliant on agriculture, namely cotton, which alone accounted for 93% of exports in 1914.[1] While a small industrial sector existed, the British administration's harsh austerity measures crippled the Egyptian state's ability to develop an indegenous economy, instead preversing power into the hands of small, British-friendly large land owning class. With the emergence of modern capitalism in the late 1800s, the Egyptian economy transformed into a system of labor contracts, as peasents were no longer able rely on their agricultural product alone, instead needing to rely on seasonal wage work.[2] Native Egyptian workers were paid were litlle, and often subject to fraud or abuse. At the start of World War One, the Khedivate itself was abolished in place of the Sultanate of Egypt, a more explict British dictatorship under martial law, after the British feared that Khedive Abbas II was planning on joining the Central Powers.[3] During the conflict, the Egyptian Labour Corps (ELC) was drafted by the British during their campaign against the Ottoman Empire. The workers were responsible for back breaking work such as draining swamps and building railroads for the British army. Laborers in the corps were subjected to a distinct collective racial oppression, such as flogging by British oversearers. As William Knott, a British conscientious objector wrote:

The treatment of these Egyptians is a scandal. They [the British] talk about modern civilization and abolishing slavery, yet these men have taskmasters paid by the British government to whip them like dogs with long leather whips. Even the British and Australians kick and bully them unmercifully.[4]

By recruiting Egyptians from all over the country and subjecting them to abysmal conditions, the British had inadvertently linked the national movement with the labor movement. Up to 200 police officers were killed in upper Egypt in incidents directly related to Labour Corps recruitment.[5] ELC workers who fought against brutal conditions launched major muntinies against the British, exploding in 1917. As one British soldier noted:

At daybreak this morning we were all called back to quell a disturbance among the Egyptians. They were refusing to work on account of one of their members sentenced to a flogging. . . . They were very threatening and commenced to come at us with sticks and stones. . . . First a volley of two rounds were fired overhead, then two rounds at their feet, then the Officers gave the order to let them have it. Five were killed and 9 or 10 wounded. This settled them. . . . It was an awful sight, and the effect of the sight of blood on the Egyptians was instantaneous. Even our officers turned their heads.[6]

1919 Revolution[edit]

After the war, a group of nationalist politicians led by Saad Zaghloul demanded an Egyptian delegation (Arabic: Wafd) to demand Egyptian independence at the Paris peace conference. However, the British colonial administrators refused, sparking the 1919 Egyptian revolution. The resulting mass protests of Egyptians and the struggle between the Wafd, the monarchy and the British eventually culminated in declaration of Egyptian independence in 1922, the Egyptian Constitution of 1923, and the election of Zaghoul as prime minister in 1924. Egyptian workers were pivotal during the revoluion; labor uprisings and strikes paralyzed the economy in what was the first mass movement in Egyptian history as Egyptians began to develop both a national and class consciousness. Peasents (called fallaheen in Arabic) cut railway and communication lines to weaken British retributive violence.[7] After Zaghoul and the Wafd were arrested on March 8th, tram workers and taxi drivers went on strike, a few days later, all forms of transportation ceased to exit.[8] By the 29th, management agreed to create a council to investigate claims of abuse by tram workers, but the workers demanded for representatives to participate in the council on an equal basis. In the end, the government agreed to the worker's demands, including higher wages. Wage workers refused to work unless Zaghoul and the Wafd were freed and demanded complete independence. The British compared the situation in Egypt witht the Russian Revolution around the same time:

Landowners and omdehs generally were reported seriously alarmed at the attitude of the fellaheen, the damage done to property, cattle lifting, danger to the water supply and the likelihood of further unrest. They were becoming exasperated with Cairo and the "effendi" agitators to whose activities their losses were attributable; while they were uneasy at the appearance amongst the fellaheen of what, from their point of view, they regarded as the worst symptom of Bolshevism, namely the proposal to partition large estates for the benefit of the small holders and landle.[9]

While in Paris, Zaghloul instructed his group to only focus on Egyptian independence to "the exclusion of all other targets that are usually apt to discredit political movements".[10] Zaghloul was not interested in socialism and, as did the Wafd party as a whole even post-Zaghloul, rejected a pure revolutionary approuch, instead pushed for gradualist negotiations - only using mass protests for leverage in negotiations and not as means in-and-of themselves to achieve independence. The Indian socialist M. N. Roy critisized Zaghloul for abondoning revolutionary struggle, writing:

The latest political events in Egypt signify the collapse of opportunist centrism. They prove how history has deprived the colonial bourgeoisie of a consistent revolutionary role. ... In a rather peculiar way, Egypt is enjoying all the sensations of a bourgeois revolution. Feudalism and reactionary bureaucracy are defeated; imperial exploitation will be carried on in the future through the medium of the native bourgeoisie. The basis of imperial rule is widened, but the revolutionary consciousness of the anti-imperialist hosts will also be quickened. Thus grows the struggle, and the day is drawing nearer when the people of Egypt will be free, in spite of the fact that British Imperialism, embodied in King Fuad, has secured the loyally of Zaghlul Pasha. It will simply help the revolutionary forces to lose another illusion.[11]

First Egyptian Communist Party[edit]

It was during the 1919 revolution that Joseph Rosenthal believed that the time was right to establish an Egyptian communist party. Rosenthal was interested in Marxism even before immigrating to Egypt in 1897 and had helped establish some of the first unions in Egyptian history, namely the cigarette workers union.[12] In 1921 he formed the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT), reaching a membership of 20,000 by 1923.[13] The Egyptian Socialist Party was formed in the same year, uniting many labor unions to coordinate factory strikes. From late 1921 to early 1922, eighty-one strikes broke out in fifty factories.[14] In late December 1921, Rosenthal met with Makram Ebied, a member of the Wafd, where they agreed to continue the strikes and "keep the fire of enthusiasm burning in the students, for Zaghlul must conduct the negotiations with Great Britain".[15] At it peak, the organization had roughly a thousand members, mostly in Alexandria and Cairo.[16] The Daily Worker, a socialist newspaper in America, called for British workers to support the Egyptian national movement and for Egyptian workers to work with the ECP and demand complete independence.[17]

The Wafd, however, was not led by workers or socialists, but by the educated upper classes, mostly nationalist students and lawyers, whose main interests were protecting the middle class and landed elites.[18] The Wafd attempted to control and direct the workers to further its agenda - the complete removal of British influence from Egypt. The Wafd would later create their own unions, but these Wafdist controlled unions were instead used to suppress the workers movement. Zaghloul was determined to use the labor movement for Wafdist interests; his government dissolved the communist-oriented CGT and replaced it with the Wafd-led National Labour Union.[19]

A British report in June 1922 illustrate the enormous support the Wafd had among the workers, to the dismay of the socialists:

An Egyptian workman dressed in a gallabieh asked to be allowed to speak. He was given permission by El Orabi, who did not know him personally and who told the audience that he (the workman) would be responsible for his own words. The workman then spoke in poetical form of his misery at the commencement of the war and of his career in the Egyptian Labour Corps, where he had been obliged to work to keep his family, although he hated the English. He ended his poem by two verses about Zaghlul Pasha, at the mention of whose name the audience broke into cheers for Zaghlul. Husni-el-Orabi did not hide his annoyance caused by the fact that members of the Egyptian Socialist Party should so compromise their principles of Socialism by cheering a Nationalist leader.[20]

"For the same reasons, the struggle that the Egyptians merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of Egyptian national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism; whereas the struggle that the British "Labour" Government is waging to preserve Egypt's dependent position is for the same reason a reactionary struggle, despite the proletarian origin and the proletarian title of the members of the government, despite the fact that they are "for" socialism".[21]

The early ESP was plagued by internal disputes and divisions, namely between moderates in the Cairo wing who sought to insert the movement as a left-faction of the Wafd and more hardline members in the Alexandria section who believed the party should exist independently of the Wafd. The Egyptian Fabian Salama Mousa, an early member of the party, critisized Rosenthal as a "radical", declaring "Our loyalty to Egypt must be stronger than our loyalty to socialism. Independence is our primary goal and socialism is secondary."[22] Ultimatly, Mousa would leave the movement; the ESP changed its name to the Egyptian Communist Party when it joined the Cominterm in 1922.[23] Rosenthal himself would be ousted from the party during an internal power stuggle with Husni al-Urabi. In 1924, the party launched stikes in Alexandria demanding the recognition of their trade unions, the introduction of an eight-hour workday, and legislation for the protection of employees. Workers seized the factories, leading to mass arrests and police survailance of the party. In the end, socialist movements were forced underground during the inter-war years due to both external suppresion and internal division. The Wafd under Zaghloul crushed the early independent ECP in a wave of arrests in by March.[16]

The Egyptian Left and the Wafd[edit]

Traditional Marxist theory argued that liberal revolutions developed before socialist revoutions. As Egypt was a mostly feudal country with limited capitalism, an immediate socialist revolution was not possible.

According to Joseph Stalin, there were three types of "eastern" countries:

  1. Countries that had little or no proletariat and were quite undeveloped industrially.
  2. Countries that were underdeveloped industrially and had a relatively small proletariat.
  3. Countries that were capitalistically more or less developed and had a fairly large national proletariat.

Egypt, according to Stalin, was a type 2 nation "where the national bourgeoisie has already split up into a revolutionary party and a compromising party, but where the compromising section of the bourgeoisie is not yet able to join up with imperialism". Stalin argued that the Communists should therefore abandon forming a united national front against imperialism, instead forming their own organization. This bloc would criticize the national bourgeoisie for choosing to compromise with the imperialists - since the Wafd believed in negogiations with the British as opposed to armed struggle - as well as directly fighting imperialism themselves.[24][25] The Comintern in 1926 described the Wafd as "an Egyptian Kuomintang along its own lines, and still in the first stage of its development”, ordering the ECP to reorganize as an "Egyptian left-Kuomintang".[26]

Fuad Mursi, founder of the leftist Raya group, explained the goal of Egyptian communists as:

We were not asking workers to make a socialist revolution but . . . the national democratic revolution.. . . We were concentrating on the national question, getting rid of British colonialism and imperialism—not only the monarchy, the remnants of feudalism and Egyptian monopolies ... We were asking the workers to concentrate on the national democratic question in the field of politics and to change their working conditions in the economic field.[27]

Mursi argued that the working class, petite bourgeoisie, peasants, and progressive intellectuals were progressive revolutionary force, while the large landowners, foreign capitalists and the national bourgeoisie were reactionary to national liberation.[28] The leftist DMNL organization instructed its members to vote Wafd in the 1950 election in races without socialist candidates.[29] However, some socialists rejected an alliance with the Wafd - viewing it as a completly unrevoluiontary party. Saad Zahran, an early member of the ECP, commented:

We accepted the Stalinist point that the grand bourgeoisie was not nationalist and therefore could not be allies. Instead, we said that our allies must be the poor and middle-level peasants and workers. We saw the Wafd as the client of imperialism and we opposed the other communist groups that wanted to make an alliance with it. Our interest was to lessen the Wafd's effect especially on the peasants.[30]

Leader of the Wafd, Mostafa al-Nahhas: "The realization of the legitimate interests of the workers is in the employers’ interest, just as ensuring the legitimate interests of the employers is in the workers’ interest. You understand that the Wafd government is the people’s government, and that in the vanguard of this faithful people are her sons the workers, whom I know to be the trustworthy soldiers of the Wafd and its strong arm!’[31]

Suppression and re-birth[edit]

During the late 1920s and 1930s, union politics and workers organizations, such as the General Federation of Labour Unions, were mostly Wafd dominated, as the Wafd relied on them for votes in exchange for tepid support of labor rights.[32] The Wafd heavily relied on its unions for its fight against the autocratic 1930 constitution, which increased the powers of the King, successfully getting it repealed after years of strikes and protests. The ECP supported the Wafd in their common goal of reinstating the 1923 constitution.[33]

By 1936, much had changed. King Farouk ascended to the throne at the age sixteen after the death of his father. The Wafd signed a treaty with the British government, agreeing to lower the number of British troops in Egypt (except for the Suez Canal and in times of war), yet fell short from complete independence - grealty damaging the Wafd's credibility and beginning the slow decline of the Wafd. In Europe, the rise of fascism frightened many observers in Egypt, who looked for inspiration in the left.[34] One such place of inspiration was a local bookstore owned by Henry Curiel.[35] During World War Two, Curiel founded the Egyptian Movement of Natoinal Liberation (EMML), a Marxist party.[36] Even while in prison in 1942, Curiel still organized dissent - he led a hunger strike along with members of the Muslim Brothers for better conditions.[37] Another leftist party was Iskra, founded by Hillel Schwartz. The Soivet Union's victory over Nazi Germany at Stalingrad planted it as a potential anti-imperialist power for Egyptians.[38]

The war had accelerated the national movement, as local nationalists demanded for complete independence as a reward for Egypt's participation. When the Allied soldiers left Egypt, wartime workers were fired and unable to find work.[39] This, as well as growing land scarcity and higher prices, led to an increase in the intensity of the national movement all across the political spectrum. At the beginning of the 1945/1946 school year, left-wing students called for a strike against renewing the Anglo-Egyptian treaty and the rejection of any defensive pact with Britian. On the ninth of February 1946, thousands of students held a general conference at Cairo University and later marched toward Abdeen palace across the Abbas Bridge. There, the army and police brutally attacked the protesters, killing over twenty protesters and injuring 84.[40] The students and local union workers formed the National Commitee for Students and Workers (NCSW) ten days later, which called a general strike on the 21st.[41] The EMNL and Iskra worked together with the NCSW in the student councils and strikes.[42][43] Tens of thousands of workers joined the movement, resulting in the largest protests in Egypt since 1919. In response, British prime minister Clement Attlee ordered British troops to evacuate its troops except for the Suez Canal.[44]

The main issue with the NCSW was its lack of organization, since the quickly accerlerating events made a concrete leadership impossible.

The National Committee of Workers and Students was a very fluid body,- that is why almost anyone who participated in the national movement in 1946 or 1947 can say that he was, at one time or another, a member. People were coming and going all the time. People used to drop out and others used to come and replace them. It wasn't a very circumscribed body so that sometimes people used to be members without being elected. People would just be there carrying out assignments or tasks within the Committee.[45]

Though Prime Mininster Ismail Sidqi successfully quieted the movement through mass arrests of leftists and protesters, strikes and student protests would continue the next year - led in part by Curiel's Democratic Movement for National Liberation (DMNL).[46]

On the eve of the monarchy[edit]

Republic of Egypt[edit]

Nasser[edit]

Sadat[edit]

Mubarak[edit]

21th century[edit]

2011 revolution[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Beinin & Lockman 1988, p. 9.
  2. ^ Beinin & Lockman 1988, p. 24.
  3. ^ McKale, Donald M. (1997). "Influence without Power: The Last Khedive of Egypt and the Great Powers, 1914-18". Middle Eastern Studies. 33 (1): 20–39. doi:10.1080/00263209708701140. ISSN 0026-3206. JSTOR 4283845.
  4. ^ Andersoon, Kyle J (2021). The Egyptian Labor Corps: Race, Space, and Place in the First World War. University of Texas Press. p. 118. ISBN 9781477324547.
  5. ^ Goldberg 1992, p. 270.
  6. ^ Andersoon 2021, p. 151.
  7. ^ Goldberg 1992, p. 272.
  8. ^ Beinin & Lockman 1988, pp. 90–96.
  9. ^ Goldberg 1992, p. 275.
  10. ^ Nuri El-Amin 1989, p. 28.
  11. ^ "M.N. Roy: The Political Somersault in Egypt (January 1923)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2024-02-22.
  12. ^ Rim Naguib (2022-05-01). On Rosenthal (Comics Zine).
  13. ^ Ginat 2011, pp. 30–32.
  14. ^ Ginat 2011, p. 58.
  15. ^ Ginat 2011, p. 60.
  16. ^ a b Ginat 2011, p. 111.
  17. ^ "Against British Capitalism in Egypt". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2024-02-22.
  18. ^ Abdel Ghafar 2017, p. 26.
  19. ^ Ginat, Rami (2003). "The Egyptian Left and the Roots of Neutralism in the Pre-Nasserite Era". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 30 (1): 7. doi:10.1080/1353019032000059063. ISSN 1353-0194. JSTOR 3593243.
  20. ^ Beinin & Lockman 1988, p. 142.
  21. ^ "The Foundations of Leninism". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2024-02-22.
  22. ^ Ginat 2011, p. 65.
  23. ^ "Resolution on the Egyptian Socialist Party - Resolution from the Fourth Congress 1922". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2024-03-07.
  24. ^ "The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples of the East". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2024-03-07.
  25. ^ Ginat 2011, pp. 146–147.
  26. ^ Ginat 2011, p. 167.
  27. ^ Botman 1988, p. 22.
  28. ^ Botman 1988, p. 109.
  29. ^ Joel Gordon "Nasser's Blessed Movement: Egypt's Free Officers and the July Revolution" page 31. "The DMNL insisted on the Wafd's right, as the majority party, to govern. From prison in 1949, DMNL leaders issued a manifesto instructing members to vote Wafdist if known communists or working-class candidates did not contest a given seat in the 1950 poll. Throughout the two years of Wafdist rule the DMNL, while ever pressing for formation of a popular front, reiterated its support for the Wafd. A manifesto printed in February 1951 explained that the DMNL "has always drawn a distinction between the Wafd and all other bourgeois political parties." Unlike its rivals, the Wafd, "because of its makeup and history never rested in the least bit on reaction or imperialism." Endorsement for the majority party evolved over the course of the year to public denunciation of the government and support for the Wafdist Vanguard"
  30. ^ Botman 1988, p. 111.
  31. ^ Beinin & Lockman 1988, p. 229.
  32. ^ Beinin & Lockman 1988, pp. 209–217"Although the Wafd ultimately prevailed in the struggle for control of most of the unions in 1935, it was able to do so only at the cost of severely weakening the movement as a whole."
  33. ^ Ginat 2011, pp. 195–196"The ECP emphasized Mustafa al-Nahhas’s leading role in the social turmoil" .... " Indeed, Nahhas, a shrewd politician, was a master in attracting the support of the working classes by declaring that he constantly strove to improve their lives and working conditions, “but the imperialists and their lackeys in the country depicted this as if the Wafd was trying to use the workers for its own political purposes.” The Wafd, Nahhas noted confidently, “has no need for this, because it has [the trust] of all the people, including the workers, who are the hope of civilization and the prime fighters for victory, for the constitution and independence
  34. ^ Ginat, Rami (2014-07-15), "8. The Rise of Homemade Egyptian Communism: A Response to the Challenge Posed by Fascism and Nazism?", Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism, University of Texas Press, pp. 195–216, doi:10.7560/757455-011, ISBN 978-0-292-75746-2, S2CID 240079451, retrieved 2023-07-03
  35. ^ Botman 1988, p. 38.
  36. ^ Beinin & Lockman 1988, p. 326.
  37. ^ Ginat 2011, p. 261.
  38. ^ Botman 1988, p. 33"In fact, the Soviet Union was but a blank space on the world map to most Egyptians before the battle of Stalingrad firmly implanted its image on the Egyptian leftist consciousness. "Just as the October victories created Chinese Communism, so Stalingrad gave birth to Egyptian Communism," stated an Egyptian communist bulletin"
  39. ^ Beinin & Lockman 1988, p. 260"Most of the workers employed by the allied armies were unskilled recent migrants from the countryside who could not be expected to return there after the war because of the land shortage."
  40. ^ Abdel Ghafar 2017, p. 42.
  41. ^ Beinin & Lockman 1988, p. 341.
  42. ^ Ginat 2011, p. 270.
  43. ^ Botman 1988, pp. 61–62.
  44. ^ Abdalla 1985, p. 75.
  45. ^ Botman 1988, p. 61.
  46. ^ Beinin & Lockman 1988, pp. 349–362"However, although the government succeeded for the moment in preserving the regime and destroying many of the opposition organizations, it was not prepared to carry out substantive social reforms to eliminate the conditions that had given rise to the mass movement. This guaranteed that as soon as the repression was eased, the opposition movement would reassert itself."

Further Reading[edit]

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