Thursday, July 4, 2013

L'Etat, C'est Nous: Who will control the Egyptian state?

The Egyptian military stands in the way of revolution, and the revolutionaries will again have to take it on directly.

AN EXCELLENT LONG ARTICLE AND RECOMMENDED READING
By Mark LeVine
Al-Jazeera

".....The Egyptian military stands in the way of revolution, and sooner or later the revolutionaries will again have to take it on directly.The question is: Who does the Egyptian state belong to, the military and the power elite, or the people?  If the revolutionaries who have won two extraordinary victories in less than three years can find a way to keep the tens of millions of Egyptians who took to the streets to oust Morsi in the ring and on their side, they might just win the fight. But to do that they will need to develop and articulate the kind of progressive ideology that economic, political and religious elites around the world have spent decades doing everything in their power to delegitimise. It's a battle whose stakes involve us all."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

read trotsky's history of the russian revolution. the army won't break or turn until there is effective political leadership of the revolutionary left. this is a long term struggle. the left will need to keep the revolutionary spirit alive, while building political capacities to contest for power. it took two decades -- and the experience of WW1 -- for the Bolsheviks to make deep inroads in the military. But when that happened, the insurrection was handled brilliantly and paved the way for "all power to the soviets." again, read trotsky on this.