Revolution Is The Choice Of The People

Anne Alexander

Description

More than ten years on from the Egyptian revolution of January 2011, Anne Alexander looks at the great wave of revolts that have shaken the region in the decade since, examining the political economy of the Middle East, the nature of the regimes and the factors which shaped the upheavals. Using a Marxist analysis, it examines the fate of those revolts, the emergence of counter-revolutionary forces and the potential for renewed uprisings and more far-reaching change in the years ahead. 'Anne Alexander's book provides an in-depth account of the power structures and popular resistance in the Middle East. A must read for activists, academics and anyone who's interested in the region's history and future.' Hossam el-Hamalawy

Sujets

• Activism

Informations

• Publié par: Bookmarks
• Date de parution: 06 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781914143113
• Langue: English

Extrait

Revolution is the Choice of the People
by Anne Alexander



First edition published by Bookmarks in 2022
Bookmarks Publications Ltd
c/o 1 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QE
bookmarksbookshop.co.uk




ISBN 978-1-914143-10-6 paperback
ISBN 978-1-914143-11-3 Kindle
ISBN 978-1-914143-12-0 epub
ISBN 978-1-914143-13-7 pdf




Typeset by Kev Kiernan for Bookmarks Publications
Cover design by Simon Assaf
Printed by Halstan Co, Amersham, England
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Section 1: The cycle of revolution and counter-revolution
Chapter 1 What makes a revolution?
Chapter 2 The deluge: 2011-12
Chapter 3 The ebb and the flow: 2013-22
Section 2: The roots of revolution
Chapter 4 States, capitals and markets: the making of the Middle East
Chapter 5 The short state capitalist era and its long legacy
Chapter 6 Neoliberalism: a realignment of the state and capital
Chapter 7 Politics in the neoliberal era
Section 3: Agents of change
Chapter 8 Neither bread nor freedom : the conditions for popular revolt
Chapter 9 The revival of the workers movement
Chapter 10 Partners in revolution? Women and the uprisings
Section 4: The crisis of the state and the permanent revolution
Chapter 11 Faust s bargain: the failure of reformist strategies
Chapter 12 You became a whip in the hands of the powerful
Chapter 13 The permanent revolution and the conditions for dual power
Chapter 14 Egypt, Syria, Sudan: Results and prospects
Conclusion The revolutionary party
Acknowledgments
The first person who deserves credit for this book reaching publication is Colm Bryce of Bookmarks, who suggested the idea to me that I should write something for the anniversary of the Arab revolutions. That was in 2020, and at the time we both thought it would all be wrapped up in time for January 2021. To his credit, Colm has stuck with the project throughout, despite numerous detours and a delay of a year and a half after the original planned publication date. Without his dogged persistence it would never have been finished and I am very grateful for that.
Yet in many ways the longer time has not been wasted, as the book would have been much poorer without reflection on the development of the revolutionary process in Sudan where, following the military coup in October 2021, Resistance Committees took the lead in re-igniting the popular movement. This is one of the dilemmas of writing about revolutions while they are happening, instead of safely relegated to history: the creativity and sheer invention of the people who have chosen revolution will always surprise you. The difficulty is knowing when to stop, when to close the pages.
I have learnt a great deal from Sudanese activists over the past three years, and many of those conversations have fed into this book, especially those with Muzan Alneel, Mohamed Abelrahman, Marwa Kessinger and Rania Obead, Fatima Rushwan and colleagues from the Sudanese Uprising Support Group in Edinburgh. Some of those discussions have also been part of work to build solidarity with the Sudanese Revolution through MENA Solidarity, the network of trade unionists and activists I helped to found in 2011. Miriam Scharf, Donny Gluckstein and Louise Regan have all played a crucial role in this process and which has formed part of the bedrock on which this book as an intellectual project is based.
MENA Solidarity and the wider networks it connects to have been an essential element in the process of writing. Unlike an academic research project, this book has grown out of attempts to build practical solidarity with some of the movements discussed here. I want to thank Alice Finden, Luke Bhatia, Irang Bak, Andy Reid and the many other people who keep MENA Solidarity going. Sheila Amrouche made a huge contribution to our coverage of Algeria which helped me understand much better the dynamics of the uprising there in 2019, and also read through the manuscript of this book, making careful comments (and reminding me not to forget the North African dimensions of the regional revolution).
Jad Bouharoun was also one of several generous readers, and someone who has shaped the final outcome through many years of discussions. Other comrades who gave their time to read the whole or part included Gianni Del Panta, Sheila McGregor, Charlie Kimber, Martin Empson, Muzan Alneel and Hossam el-Hamalawy.
The impact of the Egyptian Revolution and counter-revolution is a thread which runs throughout this project and the ideas articulated here are forever indebted to the many Egyptian comrades I have been lucky enough to know and work with over the past 30 years. In particular, books and articles I have co-authored with Mostafa Bassiouny and Sameh Naguib played a key role in developing some of the ideas here. I would also like to thank Ahmed Ezzat for sharing his recollections of the development of the Popular Committees for the Defence of Revolution. There are many other comrades in Egypt whose experiences and ideas have fed into this project, and I am sorry not to be able to acknowledge that in full.
Much of the theoretical framework for the book was tested out in the reading group I set up on Crisis, Resistance and Revolution in the Middle East during 2020. Oisin Challen Flynn, Nadia Sayed, Naima Omar, Irang Bak, Ethan Pratt, Richard Donnelly and Hared Abdullah joined the group and their contributions to the discussions we had helped shape the arguments outlined here. Thanks are also due to Alex Callinicos and Joseph Choonara as editors of International Socialism for publishing many of the articles which allowed me to develop the foundations of the book s arguments, and to comrades on the editorial board and beyond whose comments enriched both the content and the writing.
Discussions with John Rose on the questions of dual power and the failures (and occasional victories) of communist movements in the 20th century helped to clarify my thoughts and stimulated new sets of questions. In particular I have learnt from him that the questions which might be unanswerable or even unknowable are the most important to keep asking.
It is customary at this point to move on to personal thanks, especially to harassed and exasperated family members for forbearance. Like everyone who writes anything, I am aware that the space and time to create is all too often a privilege, and I am immensely grateful to my sons and partner for putting up with all the emotional baggage and late nights working which came with writing this book.
D.N., you know who you are-thank you for reading it and for believing in me even when I didn t believe in myself.
Thanks too to Simon Assaf for designing a very striking cover and to Kev Kiernan for all his work on the layout of the book.
Finally, it is also customary to also to add the caveat that none of the above can be held responsible for errors and omissions in the text. One person who can certainly be absolved of that responsibility is Phil Marfleet, who quite sensibly read part of the draft and suggested strongly that I should take an extra few months before finishing it. I have on this occasion ignored his advice, but in many ways he is partially responsible for the project itself, since he was one of the people who first showed me that it is possible to write with rigour and commitment without giving up on acting in the world to change it.
Anne Alexander
19 June 2022
Freedom, peace and justice Revolution is the choice of the people
Sudanese protesters chant, April 2019
Introduction
The theoretical framework that underpins this book draws especially on the work of major figures from the classical revolutionary Marxist tradition, including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and his fellow Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, and Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, a leader of the German Revolution of 1918-9. The idea that writers who lived more than a century ago, when the global capitalist system was at a very different stage of development, have anything important to say about the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa during the past ten years is not something I take for granted. 1 Yet, one of the goals of this book is to make a renewed case for Marxism as critical to both theory and practice for revolutionaries, by showing how the fundamental building blocks of the revolutionary Marxist tradition are essential for understanding of why and how revolutions happen, how they succeed and fail, and what we can do to influence their outcomes.
One major reason to take seriously the views of the thinkers in the classical Marxist tradition, whose work forms the bedrock of the theoretical framework developed here, is that they were all active revolutionaries who paid a heavy cost in their personal lives, enduring exile, prison and even death for their commitment. Another set of reasons to be interested in the potential application of theories of revolution developed by Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg to the experience of the contemporary Middle East lies in the fact that all of them were concerned with the specific problems faced by countries outside the centre of the capitalist system. They paid close attention to grappling with the challenges of revolution in contexts where the immediate antagonists of popular insurrectionary movements were usually ruling classes which were themselves under pressure in multiple ways from the predatory major powers, whose internecine struggles for supremacy fundamentally shaped the terrain on which the drama of revolution played out.
Yet clearly this tradition cannot be the sole source of insights for understanding the Middle East and North Africa s revolutionary decade. There are plenty of ways in which the Marxist thinkers of the classical period could not adequately prepare an analysis fit for the 21 st century because of the ways the world has changed since their time. Nor should everything they wrote