A poster with a picture of the head of the Egyptian Armed Forces, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, is pictured in Cairo, Egypt. August 2013. Michael Kappeler/DPA/PA ImagesThe peculiar
case of the Arab middle class came to the fore during a dinner with some
friends and their parents in Germany. As I was sitting there enjoying my meal,
the mother of a friend, aware of my opposition to the military regime in Egypt,
started to attack me for my views.
What was clear
to me in her verbal tirade is the inherent fear of social upheaval; the loss of
what she perceived to be “Egypt”, which to me appeared to revolve around housing
compounds, shopping malls and jobs in multinational companies.
The fear was
palpable and real, which made me think once again about the inability of the
Arab middle class to produce intellectuals capable of providing an ideological
project that can envision and lead the process of social transformation.
This class
seems to have become the main bulwark of support for Arab dictators, providing
support for repression and wide spread state violence. Unlike other
revolutionary crises, the Arab intelligentsia did not perform a progressive
function.
On the
contrary, they provided justification for repression and were easily coopted by
the ruling military elites. This can be attributed to the ideological and class
consciousness of the Arab middle class, traceable back to Nasserism and its
material backbone, state capitalism, which played a significant role in the
ascendance of this class.
Based on the
Nasserist doctrine, ideas of class struggle, political pluralism, and social
conflict were considered dangerous Marxist intrigues and were replaced by ideals
of social harmony and cohesion.
For example, a
union of the nation’s productive forces was introduced into the official
doctrine and included the middle class, working class, and peasantry, led by the
military. These groups would consistuite the “people”.
Opponents of
the regime, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the communists, were considered
to be outside this organic construction. Class consciousness was deliberately replaced by national consciousness, a feature that
would become the hallmark of the urban middle class.
Even though
many aspects of Nasserism collapsed and state capitalism is all but gone, the
notion of social harmony as the natural state of affairs, with the clear
hierarchy of classes and the trumping of national consciousness over class
consciousness, remains hegemonic.
This has had a
number of repercussions on the intellectual development of the urban middle
class. Even though still a small minority, this class has recast itself as the representative
of the nation with its class norms, practices and interests. The country has
become the nation of the urban middle class, marginalizing and ignoring the
vast majority who no longer fit into this narrative.
The most
prominent example of which is the reaction to the transfer of two Egyptian
islands in the Red Sea from Egypt to Saudi Arabia. This transfer elicited the
first mass protests, led by the middle class, against the regime. A reaction
that is entirely consistent with the nationalist image this class holds of
itself as the “protector” of national sovereignty.
On the other
hand, there is mounting evidence of mass abuses and extrajudicial killings in
Sinai. This, however, has produced no response from the same class, as the
inhabitants of Sinai are not considered part of the “people”.
This notion of
natural social harmony also acted to define the urban based protest movement,
anchored in the middle class, as a reformist movement that has had no desire to
take over the state apparatus. The primary goal during revolutionary upheaval was
to pressure military elites to achieve short-term strategic goals, like the
removal of Mubarak, rather than wide scale social transformation. The military
was seen as a naturel ally that embodies national interests.
As such, there
is no inherent hostility between these two social groups. The aim was to
restore the natural equilibrium of harmony, which was seen as having been
disrupted during the late Mubarak era as class conflict had intensified to a
degree that could no longer be ignored.
Thus, the aim
of the protest movement was a restoration of the “old” through the
liberalization of the political system without any economic or social
transformations that would lead to deep structural changes.
The urban middle
class is averse to situations where class conflict is heightened and thus
justifies repression by the state. Class conflict is seen as an existential
threat to the nation.
This outlook has
paved the way for the proliferation of conspiracy theories. Those participating
in social protests are identified as outsiders and, naturally, agents of
hostile powers who are hoping to disrupt social harmony and destroy the nation.
The primary
focus of the urban middle class is to preserve the nation, which it implicitly
identifies as an extension of itself. This has had a significant impact on the
intellectual development of the Arab middle class, and the political movement
that arose from it.
The Muslim
Brotherhood, with its roots in the middle class, for example, did not have a
coherent ideological vision of social transformation; they were limited to a
project of individual moral reform, which they argued would eliminate moral
decay and government corruption.
On the other
hand, the left and the Nasserists, who are more sympathetic to the working
class, did not attempt to lead and radicalize the labor movement. They chose to
focus on limited economic demands from the paternalistic state, ignoring the
social realities of the urban poor who played an integral role during the mass
protest of 2011 and 2012.
These examples
illustrate the condition of the Egyptian intelligentsia who are still under the
stranglehold of Nasserist ideals of social harmony. This has had a number of repercussions
on the political climate of modern Egypt.
First, they
focused their attention on issues of corruption and governance, rather than
social structures and their historical development. Thus, the dominant notion is
that if a limited number of elites are changed, societal issues will be resolved.
The removal of a sitting leader becomes their grandest goal.
Second, there
is clear denial of Arab societal problems being the product of social
structures and social struggle, since the view of natural social harmony would
then be shattered. This stunts Arab intellectual development, causing it to act
as a tool for the justification of existing elite structures rather than a way
to challenge and alter them.
Third, the
casting of the middle class as the embodiment of the nation marginalizes the
vast majority of the other classes and relegates them to the background, which impedes
the creation of cross-class coalitions.
Finally, and
most importantly is the development of a siege mentality by the urban middle class
in situations of revolutionary crisis when class conflict is heightened. This
only results in the urban middle class coming into closer alliance with
military elites, who are viewed as the only protection against those who
threaten their perception of the nation.
Thus, rather
than perform a progressive function, it provides justification for state
repression and violence, even though the military elites are accumulating
wealth at the expense of all the classes, including the middle class.
Unless there is
a substantial change in the view among Arab intellectuals of class conflict and
social struggle as drivers of social change, the development of a revolutionary
framework will be limited and the Arab intelligentsia will only act as junior
partners in state repression and the degradation of Arab societies.