Draft:Socialism in Egypt

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 throughout the eras, Egyptian organized labor has consistently fought for greater worker rights against exploitative capitalism. 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 transitioned towards capitalism under President Anwar Sadat, Egyptian socialists have remained as harsh critics of privatization and neoliberalism in Egypt. Workers uprisings in early 2000s Egypt under president Hosni Mubarak eventually exploded into the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.

History

Kingdom of Egypt

'Capitalism without Capitalists'

During the reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha in the early 1800s, the Egyptian economy began to enter the modern capitalist era. Muhammad Ali focused on growing grain and cotton for European markets in exchange for capital for industrialization. Cotton was grown at scale so that by 1836 it accounted for 80% of Egyptian exports. However, since the government maintained a monopoly on cotton production with workers who were conscripted in a semi-feudal system, the historian Mourad Wahba described this stage of the Egyptian economy as "capitalism without capitalists". The Egyptian state seized large swaths of what was then privately owned peasant land; so much so that by 1907, over 90% of Egyptian rural families did not own enough land for subsistence, or had no land at all. To live, they either worked for large estates, rent land, or become wage workers. Muhammad Ali's successors later borrowed irresponsible amounts for foreign debt to pay for their lifestyles.

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 foreign investors, gradually eroded the national sovereignty 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 'veiled protectorate', as Egypt became a de-facto British colony run by the Consuls-General, beginning with Lord Cromer. Cromer would balance the budget, at the expense of native Egyptian industry. As the historian Afaf Marsot explains:

By the turn of the century Cromer had rendered Egypt solvent, albeit at the expense of Egyptian industry, and had transformed agriculture into a monoculture, cotton, to feed the mills of Lancashire. The cultivation of tobacco was prohibited and an excise tax imposed on imported tobacco helped to balance the budget. Attempts to set up local industries were discouraged by Cromer, who loaded them with tariffs equal to the taxes paid on imported goods, rendering them non-competitive. Textiles, which should have thrived using Egyptian cotton, were deliberately discouraged so that cotton could be exported. Egypt was relegated to becoming a provider of raw materials for Britain.

Economically, the Egyptian state was heavily reliant on agriculture, namely cotton, which alone accounted for 93% of exports in 1914. While a small industrial sector existed, the British administration's harsh austerity measures crippled the Egyptian state's ability to develop an indigenous economy, instead preserving 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 peasants were no longer able rely on their agricultural product alone for food, instead needing to rely on seasonal wage work. Native Egyptian workers were paid were little, and often subject to fraud or abuse. By the turn of the century, the first unions and strike actions hit Egypt, when coal dockworkers in 1900 and cigarette rollers in 1899 organized the first unions in Egyptian history. At the start of World War One, the Khedivate itself was abolished in place of the Sultanate of Egypt, a more explicit British dictatorship under martial law, after the British feared that Khedive Abbas II was planning on joining the Central Powers. 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 overseers. 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.

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. ELC workers who fought against brutal conditions launched major mutinies 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.

Early Socialists and Labor Movement

Salama Musa, 1924

While no socialist party existed until the 1919 Egyptian revolution, Marxist ideas began to spread among Egyptian students in Europe at the turn of the 20th century. By 1908, there were around 600 Egyptian students in Europe, mostly France but also the UK and Germany, who founded student organizations with close ties to the local socialist movements in their respective countries. Salama Mousa studied in England and joined the Fabian Society, while students in France had a close relationship with French socialists. Mousa's first writings on socialism in 1913 are considered the first Arabic works regarding the topic. In 1915, Mustafa al-Mansuri wrote Tarikh al-Mathahib al-Ishtirakiyah (The History of Socialist Ideologies), declaring on the industrial revoltution:

"There is no sane person who wants to return to the dark ages ... Thus, we have to have the machines serve man rather than compete with him. But how can we do this when the morals of the machines cannot be changed and the capitalists have the expense of the pain and toiling of the laborers? ... The only way to bring happiness to mankind is to abolish private ownership and the place capital in the hands of the workers themselves."

Later in 1919, al-Mansuri published two books, one a translation of Tolstoy and the other a commentary on economist Henry George with regards to how Georgism can be applies to Egypt. Another early Arab socialist around this time was the Syrian Niqula al-Haddad. Haddad had met the American socialist Eugene Deebs and started an Arab socialist society in New York in 1910, later moving to Egypt. Haddad argued against reformists, instead making the case for a socialist system where "every individual should enjoy all the result of his labor on the basis that people who share labor should also share its fruits, each according to his work".

1919 Revolution

Demonstrations of tram workers in Cairo during the 1919 Revolution

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 Zaghloul as prime minister in 1924. Egyptian workers were pivotal during the revolution; 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. Peasants (called fallaheen in Arabic) cut railway and communication lines to weaken British retributive violence. After Zaghloul 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. 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 Zaghloul and the Wafd were freed and demanded complete independence. The British compared the situation in Egypt with the Russian Revolution around the same time:

Saad Zaghlul - first leader of the Wafd

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.

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". In June of 1919, Zaghloul sent a letter to leaders of the Wafd movement back in Egypt, declaring:

"The Wafd does not approve the leaflets which indicate that the Egyptians depend on the Germans and applaud the victory of the Bolsheviks. These leaflets benefit our enemies in their claim that the Egyptian movement has connections with the Germans and the Bolshevik movement".

The connections between the Wafd in 1919 and the Bolshevik movement are unclear. According to the Egyptian politician Hafez Afifi Pasha, the Russian delegation at Paris promised to drive the English out of Egypt by financially supporting the Wafd and supporting the movement in their propaganda. However, the historian Mohammed Nuri El-Amin argues that a Wafd-Bolshevik alliance was exaggerated by British intelligence.

Zaghloul was not interested in socialism and, as did the Wafd party as a whole post-Zaghloul, rejected a pure revolutionary approach, 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 criticized Zaghloul for abandoning 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.

First Egyptian Communist Party

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. In 1921 he formed the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT), reaching a membership of 20,000 by 1923. 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. 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". At it peak, the organization had roughly a thousand members, mostly in Alexandria and Cairo.

"Do not despair. Keep a brave heart. The advanced workers of all countries are coming to your aid. Expose the shameful conduct of the Egyptian government. UNITE AROUND YOUR COMMUNIST PARTY. Demand the release of the imprisoned communists. Demand a determined and irreconcilable struggle against British imperialism for the complete and real independence of Egypt."

Harry Pollitt, Sen Katayama, M.N. Roy, "Against British Capitalism in Egypt", Daily Worker.

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. 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.

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.

"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".

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. Salama Mousa, an early member of the party, criticized 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." Ultimately, Mousa would leave the movement; the ESP changed its name to the Egyptian Communist Party when it joined the Comintern in 1922. Rosenthal himself would be ousted from the party during an internal power struggle with Husni al-Urabi. The government planned to deport Rosenthal since November 1922. However, since he was born in Ottoman Palestine, he was not a citizen of any European country. His legal status remained in limbo until agreeing to a deal with Zaghlul where he would be allowed to remain in Egypt only if he refrained from socialist activities. In 1924, the party launched strikes 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 surveillance of the party. In the end, socialist movements were forced underground during the inter-war years due to both external suppression and internal division. The Wafd under Zaghloul crushed the early independent ECP in a wave of arrests in by March.

The Egyptian Left and the Wafd

Traditional Marxist theory argued that liberal revolutions developed before socialist revolutions. 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 negotiations with the British as opposed to armed struggle - as well as directly fighting imperialism themselves. 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".

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!’

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.

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. The leftist DMNL organization instructed its members to vote Wafd in the 1950 election in races without socialist candidates. However, some socialists rejected an alliance with the Wafd - viewing it as a completely reactionary 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.

After breaking with the Wafd, the ECP denounced the party as an enemy of the workers movement:

The Wafd is the party of bourgeois, landowning counter-revolutionary national reformism. It unites the rich capitalists, lawyers, speculators and liberal landowners, who, for fear of a people's revolution, favour a deal with the enslavers of Egypt and count on receiving some small remuneration in return. This is the party which deceives the entire population, the party of national treason ... the entire history of the Wafd since 1919 is the history of its struggle against the revolutionary workers, peasants, and toilers in general. When the Wafd was in power, all independent class-conscious workers' organisations and all revolutionary organisations were destroyed. The Wafd is afraid of the revolutionary victory of the workers and peasants, and with its strength and means endeavours to block it ... There can be no successful and victorious revolutionary struggle with them. Between the camp of the Wafd and the camp of the People's anti-imperialist and agrarian peasant revolution lies an impassable gulf. To overthrow the imperialist yoke it is necessary to break and destroy the influence of the Wafd on the masses, its influence on the workers, peasants and petit bourgeoisie.

Egyptian Economy between Revolutions

By the end of the first World War, an urban Egyptian working class had emerged, although Egypt's economy was still heavily centered on agriculture owned by a few large-land owners. However, real wages remained stagnant, if not falling, since the war when accounting for a 25% increase in cost of living. Egyptian workers faced brutally long hours, while basic food items such as meat and eggs were considered a luxury, and paid vacations, sick pays and worker compensation were a rare sight.

Suppression and re-birth of the Egyptian Left

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. 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.

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 - greatly 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. One such place of inspiration was a local bookstore owned by Henry Curiel. During World War Two, Curiel founded the Egyptian Movement of National Liberation (EMML), a Marxist party. 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. Another leftist party was Iskra, founded by Hillel Schwartz. The Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany at Stalingrad planted it as a potential anti-imperialist power for Egyptians.

Henri Curiel, founder of the DMNL

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. 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 Britain. 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. The students and local union workers formed the National Committee for Students and Workers (NCSW) ten days later, which called a general strike on the 21st. The EMNL and Iskra worked together with the NCSW in the student councils and strikes. 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.

The main issue with the NCSW was its lack of organization, since the quickly accelerating 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.

Though Prime Minister 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).

Position on Palestine and Zionism

"Jews were potential Zionists, but that anyhow all Zionists were communists, and he looked at the matter as much from the point of view of communism as from the point of view of Zionism"

British ambassador Ronald Hugh Campbell describing position of Mahmoud Al-Nuqrashi - the Egyptian P.M during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war,

Joseph Rosenthal, himself the son of Eastern-European Jews and was born in Ottoman-era Palestine, was an anti-Zionist; he accepted the Marxist opinion that Zionism was reactionary and only a socialist revolution would solve the "Jewish Question". Later Egyptian socialists also criticized Zionism as imperialist; Ahmad Sadiq Sa‘d argued that Zionism was a tool of British imperialism to secure British interests in the region. Egyptian Jewish socialists were firm in their anti-Zionist stance: Yusuf Darwish was firmly anti-Zionist and supported the 1936 Palestinian revolt, Marcel Israel founded the Jewish Anti-Zionist League, while Henri Curiel disagreed with the league's harsh stance, instead taking a more neutral line of a binational solution. As the historian Joel Beinin explains:

While there can be no legitimate doubt that Curiel and the EMNL ideologically rejected Zionism, Curiel freely admitted that he and his group had violently opposed the Jewish Anti-Zionist League, regarding its political line as a “grave error” that had led to “provocative scenes” with the middle-class Jews of Dahir. He believed Iskra’s decision to accept the government’s dissolution of the League on the eve of unification with the EMNL was a tacit admission of the bankruptcy of Iskra’s entire political approach. Curiel apparently thought that by refraining from attacking Zionist ideology directly (just as the DMNL did not criticize Islamic belief and observances) he could more easily convince Egyptian Jews not to identify with Zionism. His unwavering confidence in his political credo often led him to engage confirmed opponents in dialogue, and many times he did win them over. Yet Curiel’s rivals regarded his personalistic political style and excessive tactical flexibility as opportunism, which not only opened him to accusations of being a Zionist but also undermined the status of Egyptian Jews in both the communist movement and the country at large. More “provocative scenes” like the one in Dahir, which was favorably noted in the nationalist Egyptian press, might have persuaded more Egyptian nationalists that Egyptian Jews were generally not Zionists.

However, the situation changed when the Soviet Union endorsed partition by voting for UN Resolution 181. The USSR believed that two nations, a Jewish and an Arab nation, were already in existence in Palestine and that they could not live in peace, so partition was needed. The DMNL, the largest socialist movement at the time, later shifted its view into endorsing the Soviet position. The DMNL still believed in the eventual unification of the two states through reconciliation, despite the efforts of the "Arab reactionary elements". The party newspaper described it as:

We do not want to take Palestine away from the Arabs and give it to the Jews, but we want to take it away from imperialism and give it to the Arabs and Jews----Then will begin the long struggle for rapprochement between Arab and Jewish states.

During Egpyt's war against Israel, martial law was used to suppress the communist and worker's movement under the government of El Nokrashy. Curiel was later deported to Italy in 1950.

On the eve of the monarchy

"I own 8000 feddans. Do you think I want Egypt to go communist?"

Wafd politician Fuad Sirageddin Pasha in a conversation with the US Ambassador,

In 1950, the Wafd were elected to power for the last time, with a socialist party earning a seat the parliament. al-Nahhas began a campaign of full Egyptian independence with the full withdrawal of British forces from the canal zone. In 1951, he abrogated the 1936 treaty, declaring the presence of British troops in Egypt from then on unlawful. Guerrilla warfare was unleashed on the canal, as small cadres of Egyptians join the battle against British imperialism. 80,000 Egyptian workers left their jobs in the British administration, as laborers refused to work in British factories and railway workers, customs officials, airline employees, and longshoremen re­fused to handle British supplies. There was high hopes for reform, as the new generation of Wafdists, dubbed the "Wafdist Vanguard", emerged as a left-wing faction within the party. However, political squabbling both within the party and the cabinet failed to produce adequate reforms, specifically regarding the land situation.

By the last few years on the monarchy, many socialist factions were in existence, dividing the Egyptian left.^[1] The main division was between the DMNL, the larger party that stressed a united front for national independence, the newly reorganized Egyptian Communist Party, led by Fuad Mursi and Ismail Sabri Abdullah. The ECP was more rigid in its form, rejected the loose structure of the DMNL and accepting a more leftist position. The Wafd continued its anticommunist position, Curiel was deported to Italy in 1950.

Republic of Egypt

Members of the Free Officers. Front row from left: Abdel Latif Boghdadi, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Mohamed Naguib, Abdel Hakim Amer, Salah Salem. Mohamed Anwar Sadat. Back row from left: Hussein el-Shafei, Khaled Mohieddin, Gamal Salem, Kamal el-Din Hussein, Hassan Ibrahim, Zakaria Mohieddin.

See also: 1952_Egyptian_revolution

Discontent within the army had grown stronger since the Second World War, so that after the war with Israel, a political movement within the Egyptian military dubbed "The Free Officers" was formed with the goal of overthrowing the regime.

The goals of the officers were laid out in its six principles:

• the elimination of imperialism and its collaborators
• the ending of feudalism
• the ending of the monopoly system
• the establishment of social justice
• the building of a powerful national army
• the establishment of a sound democratic system

The DMNL was given advance knowledge of the coup through Ahmad Hamrush, the leader of the DMNL's military branch. Hamrush then passed the information on to other members of the DMNL, such as Khalid Muhyi al-Din^[2] and Ahmad Fuad. Khalid himself personally introduced Nasser to Ahmad Fuad, the liaison between the DMNL's central committee and military, in either late 1949 or early 1950. The DMNL agreed to disseminate the officers' political pamphlets via their networks. The DMNL agreed to support the movement, despite it not being an explicitly Marxist group, because they saw the group as the best weapon against the liberal-capitalist feudal monarchy. After the coup of July 23rd 1952, the DMNL believed that they can inject Marxist ideas to move the revolution. However, the Officer movement initially was not anti-capitalist; one of the firsts enacted reforms reduced the minimum requirement for companies to have native Egyptian shareholders from 51% to 49%, allowing foreign investors to hold a majority stake.

After King Farouk was overthrown, a new government was proclaimed, the Revolutionary Command Council, with Mohammed Naguib as president - an older more conservative officer. The first major crisis the regime faced was a major protest at Kafr al-Dawwar, just twenty days after the coup. Kafr al-Dawwar was a small industrial city with two large textile factories and a workers' housing complex. The average daily wage was 17 piasters a day, low even for Egyptian standards. The workers were motivated by the RCC's revolutionary slogans, demanding their rights "in the name of Muhammad Naguib and the revolution". The workers at the plant rose on August 12th, demanding improved conditions.

The company called the police, who barricaded the workers inside the factory. Some workers throw rocks at the police. In the ensuing battle, two offices were set on fire and one worker was killed, with many wounded. The head of police contacted the army to put down the rebellion, who sent five hundred soldiers. The next day, trade unionist Mustafa Khamis led two demonstrations. The second demonstration led to a number of deaths. As Muhammad Metwalli al-Sha'rawi recalled:

When the first demonstration of Mustafa Khamis was marching past the factory, one Aziz al-Jamal, nephew of Husayn al-Jamal, General Director of the Misr Company, fired some shots. At that point, the soldiers thought that the demonstration was armed. . . . The forces sent shots into the air, not hitting anyone and dispersing the crowd. Meanwhile, Mustafa Khamis tried to pass over the bridge in order to lead his group behind the second line of demonstrators. Mistakenly, he was later blamed for the killing of the soldiers despite the fact that his demonstration. . . had no connection with the place in which the soldiers were killed. He came from the housing area whereas the other demonstration passed by al-Mahmudiyya Canal.

On the 14th, a hastily summoned court was created to try Mustafa Khamis and Ahmad al-Bakri, the strike leaders. In just four days, they were sentenced the death by hanging, performed on the factory grounds. Khalid Muhyi al-Din explained the situation:

The military court gave Khamis and Bakri the death penalty but there was resistance in the Council to this. I remember Gamal Abdul Nasser. . . and I think Yusuf Siddiq, although I am not sure about him . . . were against the decision. The majority were in favor. We tried to postpone it, we tried to have a judgment other than the death penalty . . . but the Council wanted to make the workers and the people afraid of any activity that sabotaged the government ... They said "if we let workers strike and burn factories we will not be able to control them. So we must treat them like soldiers and make them afraid* Also, they were afraid of the workers, and at this time there was the Soviet Union and communism. In the back of their minds they were afraid of this---- It was a tragedy.

While other communist movements denounced the hangings, the DMNL was still attempting to maintain a relationship between them and the RCC, maintaining hopes that they could influence the officers to the left. The DMNL applauded a new law limiting land ownership to 200 feddans, 300 for large families, passed on September 9th, 1952, pointing to this as evidence of successful leftist influence. Ismail Sabri Abd Allah of the ECP gave a different view:

We were confused first because of two contradicting things. We thought that objectively the overthrow of the King was something very positive but due to our political education we believed that nothing good and durable could come from the army. The army was a tool of oppression, conservative by definition, and to us there was nothing that could be called a progressive coup d'etat. We were against coups. We were for revolution. In the first days our position was ambiguous, saluting the overthrow of the King but asking the military to fraternize with the population and form neighborhood committees and village committees of workers and soldiers...Then there was a strike at Kafr al-Dawwar. The army intervened and two leaders of the strike were hanged. Then we said that this is a fascist regime.

In total, around 550 communists were arrested from 1952-1955. In January 1953, the new regime arrested DMNL members - including both Hamrush and Siddiq. As a response, the DMNL demanded to "put an end to the fascist regime of Najib". Since political parties were banned by this point, the non-Officer political currents united to form the "National Democratic Front" - an alliance of the remaining socialists and Wafdist liberals in the country. Around the same time, the leftist splinter groups united to form the United Communist Party. However, these opposition movements were too little too late; Nasser and his officer corps were able to secure their power by 1954. Khalid Muhyi al-Din explained the reason that:

the movement of 1954 failed because people were not ready to come back to the old political system. They were not in favor of real democratic life. They wanted a strong leader to reform the country. The democratic trend was found only among lawyers, students and some parts of the working class. But the majority of people were in favor of keeping the situation as it was because there was a probability of reform. So the coup succeeded ... The population was fed up with the old system and it thought that the mistakes of the past came directly from the multi-party system.

Nasser

After securing a political victory over both Naguib in the RCC and over the remaining political opposition in the country, Nasser was free to implement his economic reforms.

“The workers don’t demand; we give”.

Reforms

Agricultural Reforms

Further information: Land reform in Egypt

Talks of agrarian reform had been in discussion since the 1940's as politicians attempted to remedy the deep inequality in land holdings in the country. In 1944, the first project for limiting land ownership was proposed to the Egyptian senate at 50 feddans, later raised to 100 feddans before being defeated in 1947. By this time later into the kingdom's history, many in the Egyptian political sphere: from the NCSW and labor unions on the left, to Mustafa al-Nahhas and the Wafdist Vanguard on the center, to Ismail Sidqi and Sayyid Qutb on the right, and even the US State Department recognized the necessity of land reform; the issues remained on where to put the exact legal limit as well as whether reform was either a step towards communism or the cure against it.

On September 9th 1952, a land reform law was passed, declaring a ceiling of 200 feddans per person as well as a 100 feddan increase for families for more than one child, as well as distribution and the establishment of agricultural co-operatives. This law made the state the largest land proprietor, as the acreage not yet distributed netted the government a profit north of £E2.7 million in 1955, beginning the construction of a land bureaucracy

List of Egyptian socialist movements

Communist

• Egyptian Communist Party (1921–1923)
• Progressive Liberation Front (1948–1950)
• Democratic Movement for National Liberation (1947–1955)
• Egyptian Communist Organisation (1948–1954)
• Unified Egyptian Communist Party (1955–1957)
• United Egyptian Communist Party (1957–1958)
• Egyptian Communist Party (Raya Group) (1949–1958)
• Workers and Peasants Communist Party (1946–1958)
• National Committee for Students and Workers (1945–1946)
• Iskra (1942–1947)

Notes

^ These include the main ones: DMNL (Arabic acronym would be HADITU - al-Harakah al-Demoqratiyah lil Tahrur al-Watani), Iskra, and the second Egyptian Communist Party as well as smaller factions such as The Workers Vanguard, Red Star, the Union of Peace Partisans and The New Dawn, as well as countless others.

^ Khalid Muhyi al-Din was never a formal member of the DMNL, though he was on the left of the Free Officers movement and had connections with the DMNL's military wing.

Online Resources

• "The rise and fall (and rise and fall) of the Egyptian Left" (2023), a series of interviews by Phil Butland and Helena Zohdi with Hossam el-Hamalawy

Further Reading

• Sallam, Hesham (2022). Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231554947. Retrieved 17 April 2024.
• Abdel Ghafar, Adel (2017). Egyptians in Revolt: The Political Economy of Labor and Student Mobilizations 1919-2011. Routledge. ISBN 9781138656109. Retrieved 17 April 2024.
• Beinin, Joel (11 November 2015). Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804798648.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Ide, Derek Alan (2015a). Socialism without Socialists: Egyptian Marxists and the Nasserist State, 1952-65 (Thesis). University of Toledo. Archived from the original on 2024-02-08. Retrieved 8 Feb 2024.
• Ginat, Rami (2011). A History of Egyptian Communism: Jews and Their Compatriots in Quest of Revolution. Lynne Rienner Pub. ISBN 9781588267597.
• Beinin, Joel; McLachlan, Donald J.; Duboc, Maire (2010). "The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt" (PDF). Solidarity Center.
• El-Hamalawy, Hossam (December 2001). January, 18 and 19, 1977: "Uprising of Thieves" or an Aborted Revolution? (Thesis). American University of Cairo. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-09-22. Retrieved 29 October 2024.
• Posusney, Marsha Pripstein (1997). Labor and the State in Egypt : Workers, Unions, and Economic Restructuring. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231106924.
• Ginat, Rami (1997). Egypt's Incomplete Revolution: Lutfi al-Khuli and Nasser's Socialism in the 1960s. Routledge. ISBN 9780714642956.
• El Shafei, O. (1995). Workers, Trade Unions and the State in Egypt, 1984-1989. American University in Cairo Press
• Gordon, Joel (1992). Nasser's Blessed Movement: Egypt's Free Officers and the July Revolution (PDF) (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195069358.
• Hamed, Raouf Abbas (1990). "The Egyptian Labour Movement Between the World Wars" (PDF). Journal of Asian and African Studies (Tokyo) (39): 13–27.
• Beinin, Joel (1990). Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Eqypt and Israel 1948-1965. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520070363.
• Ismael, Tareq Y.; El-Sa'id, Rifa'at (1990). The Communist Movement in Egypt, 1920-1988. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815624974.
• Beinin, Joel; Lockman, Zachary (1988). Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954. LB-Tauris. ISBN 9780691055060.
• Botman, Selma (1988). The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939-1970. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815624431.
• Goldberg, Ellis J. (1986). Tinker, Tailor, and Textile Worker: Class and Politics in Egypt, 1930-1952. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520053533.
• Abdalla, Ahmed (1985). The Student Movement and National Politics in Egypt, 1923-1973. Al Saqi Books. ISBN 9780863561177.
• Abdel-Malek, Anouar (1968). Egypt: Military Society : the Army Regime, the Left, and Social Change Under Nasser. Random House. ISBN 9781199904164.

Biographies:

• Perrault, Giles; Cumming, Bob (1997). A Man Apart: The Life of Henri Curiel. Zed Books. ISBN 9780862326593.

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.4159/harvard.9780674367326.c23/html

https://merip.org/1982/07/egypts-transition-under-nasser/

https://marksist.net/node/1620

This page will be placed in the following categories if it is moved to the article namespace.

Categories:

• Socialism in Egypt