Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“ The paradox of the Egyptian left is not by any means unique. The gradual sidelining of class by identity conflicts in national politics has been part of a global trend, or what I describe in  Classless Politics  as ‘ more identity, less class’.” —Hesham Sallam, 2022 The root of it – although Sallam does not mention this is the theoretical dependence on the Stalinist approach to change and the ‘national bourgeoisie’ – was “ the communists’ capitulation to Abdel-Nasser in 1965.” That “would shape the left’s political fortunes for decades. More immediately, it meant that as the era of  infitah  commenced, the left was in disarray, lacking the leadership to unify the dispersed (albeit troublingly loud) opposition to Sadat’s right-wing administration.” “The legacies of Islamist incorporation (and their role in centering battles over the religious identity of the state) steered many sectors of the left, as epitomized by Al-Tagammu, toward culture wars and away from...

“Sallam interrogates the changing roles of leftists and Islamists in relation to political power in Egypt. Why, for example, did the Islamist movement dominate the political arena in Egypt since the late 1970s? Why, in the era of neoliberal economic assault on the working class, did the Left fail to organize a class politics around economic disenfranchisement? And finally, did autocrats provide Islamist groups with a space for political organization and maneuver denied to those that challenged the state’s economic liberalization schemes? ” The Egyptian Left, “without a mass political movement to lead or organize, became obsessed with culture rather than class war, tailing the state in its fight against “terrorists” and “religious fascists.” This alienated the Left from exactly the social groups that it historically needed to challenge economic and social inequality — a recipe for political irrelevance.” How ironic, and how similar to most of the Western Left! “On the eve of the revolut...