An Undying Dream of Sovereignty and Liberation: Anouar Abdel-Malek’s Egypt: Military Society

The Zionist entity’s genocide in Gaza has heightened the need to understand the role of Egypt in the Arab World, notably in light of its arrest of activists protesting the genocide and the central role it has played in enforcing the blockade on Gaza since 2007. Since signing the Camp David Accords in 1978, Egypt has become ever more entrenched within the US-led imperialist system, imposing neoliberal economic policies and dismantling its earlier role, during the Presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser, as a bastion of sovereignty and development in Afro-Asia. It is thus imperative to analyse this era in order to gain historical perspective and allow for a more comprehensive analysis of Egypt’s contemporary condition. Revisiting Anouar Abdel-Malek’s seminal work, Egypt: Military Society: the Army Regime, the Left, and Social Change under Nasser, offers an ideal means through which to gain such an informed perspective.

Originally published in 1962 in French – with a translated English edition appearing in 1968, just a year after the Six Day War – Abdel-Malek’s study tackles the transformation of the Egyptian state and the role of its army using a Marxist lens.¹ Its aim is to analyse a certain historical materialist continuity – since the times of Pharaonic Egypt – in the Egyptian state and army’s “tendency to unity, to centralism, to concentration” over the political and economic apparatuses in Egyptian society.² This tendency, according to Abdel-Malek, is not the result of a superstructure – in this case, ideology – that acts independently from the productive forces of Egypt. Rather, it is the result of the precarious position of the Nile Valley, with its floods, which makes the centralised state take on the task of building dams and distributing the surplus. The productive forces (the base) – the floods of the Nile Valley, Egypt’s majority peasant population, and the lack of exploitable land beyond the Nile Valley – in turn, shaped the ideology of the state in the socioeconomic spheres towards state-led planning and the micromanagement of the economy in society: the need for dams, irrigation, and agrarian planning.

It is through this analysis that Abdel-Malek presents a sociological, macroeconomic, and political description of Egypt before the Free Officers’ Revolution of 1952 and the subsequent changes – both positive and negative – that took place under Nasser’s sovereign republican welfare state project, which the author describes as an extension of the all-imposing presence of the state in economic planning and political life.

As such, this review will explore the Nasserist welfare state, its achievements and shortcomings up until the Naksa, while arguing that the political right – that seeped into Egyptian political discourse after the fall of the republican unity with Syria – represented a destructive force that went on to control post-Nasser Egypt, signing the Camp David Accords while surrendering the welfare state to economic neoliberal capitulations represented by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank’s conditional aid. Central to this discussion will be the losses of 1967 and 1973 and how they, along with the rise of Anwar Sadat dismantled an ideology of resistance to western imperialism.

The Life of Anouar

Before delving into the content of the book, a brief biographical description of Abdel-Malek is needed both to assess his position vis-à-vis Nasser’s project, as well as his views on Marxism and its application in the Arab context. Born in Cairo to a Coptic family in 1924, Abdel-Malek’s childhood and adolescence was marked by the ascension of a number of centrifugal political forces in Egypt: independent politicians – propped up by Britain and representing the industrial and technocratic bourgeoisie;³ the big tent of the Wafd Party that represented, in Abdel-Malek’s words, “the genuine expression of the entire nation, asserting itself as the authentic, […] tenacious, noisy, and steadfast representative of the national will” with a big section of landowners, rural and urban middle classes, government employees and merchants, as well as agricultural and urban workers serving as its constituency;⁴ the nationalist right with fascist sympathies represented by Young Egypt and the Socialist Party, with the latter’s name intended to cynically capitalise on the rise of the popularity of socialism in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.

There was also the Muslim Brotherhood, which fought against any potential National Front between the Wafd and the Communists in the name of religion and sowed confusion in Egypt during its reigns of terror against Egyptian political figures and civilians;⁵ and the Communists represented by Iskra and the Egyptian Movement for National Liberation and their subsequent merger group, the Democratic Movement for National Liberation.

During this ebb and flow cycle of political mobilisation and repression by the alliance of the British and the Egyptian bourgeoisie – landowning and industrial – Abdel-Malek chose Marxism as his political compass and joined the Democratic Movement for National Liberation. Palestine, however, would form a decisive factor in his evolution as a self-described National Marxist:

“The Egyptian Communist Movement had two directions: it had an internationalist direction, and another national direction. The first direction, which was the predominant direction in the Second [Communist] Movement from 1939-1949, envisioned accepting the Partition [of Palestine]. The second direction rejected [the Partition Plan] in the fiercest manner, and this was the reason for the fragmentation of the Egyptian Communist Movement […] I had the honor to be part of the central command of the National Marxist current in Egypt.”⁶

It was argued by Egyptian Communists who supported the partition of Palestine that the class development of Arab societies was still backwards (i.e., feudal) and that the nascent Israeli settler society represented the first capitalist force in the Arab World, within which class struggle could be waged as it was perceived to be one social step ahead of Arab societies. On this basis, support for the Partition Plan of 1947 gained a veil of legitimacy for the adherents of the “internationalist” wave.⁷ This dogmatic perception of Marxism, that does not account for imperialism, settler-colonial regimes, and that the capitalist mode of production indeed permeated the Arab World through foreign domination,⁸ prevailed for the Arab Communist parties during this period. This erroneous argument, that pitted Abdel-Malek’s staunch anti-Zionism against a (then) large section of Egyptian Communists, prompted him, along with his long-time comrade and friend, Shohdi Attia al-Shafei (to whom Egypt: Military Society is dedicated) to split from the Democratic Movement for National Liberation to create the Democratic Movement for National Liberation: Revolutionary Bloc, representing the anti-Zionist Marxist current in Egypt.⁹

The rest of Abdel-Malek’s life was marked by repression by the nascent Free Officers movement, followed by exile in France, and multiple fruitful academic publications that contributed to Arab thought. In addition to Egypt: Military Society, his analysis of Orientalism in “Orientalism in Crisis,” published in 1963, stands out; his study served as one of the chief inspirations for Edward Said when he produced his most celebrated book Orientalism over a decade later.¹⁰ A series of his other works explored the themes of national sovereignty, heritage, social revolution, and the rise of the East (chiefly China) on the world stage. The two volumes of Social Dialectics, China in the Eyes of Egyptians, The East Wind, among other works, were published in French, English, and Arabic. These works served an entire generation of thinkers and contributed to discussions surrounding issues of sovereignty and national liberation, and underlined the necessity of breaking away from colonial epistemological molds. Abdel-Malek passed away in 2013, leaving behind him a legacy of writings that remain pertinent and illuminating today.

Pre-1952 Egypt

It would be a monumental task to discuss Abdel-Malek’s work in full. It is thus imperative to provide the defining aspects that characterise his thesis on the historical specificity of Egypt. His four parts, divided into fourteen chapters, cover four periods: pre-1952; 1952-1956; 1956-1960; 1961-1967. It will be delineated below to offer the author’s insights into the socioeconomic and political reality of Egypt.

The first period (pre-1952) starts with a general outlook on the class formation of Egypt, tackling both the superstructural and infrastructural dynamics rooted in the persistence of the agrarian question in Egypt and the various political forces that either maintained it or favored reforming it – to the extent of which their class interest allowed them to. To this end, the Communists and Wafdists stand out. The former displayed an initial suspicion towards peasants as they only focused on mobilizing workers, while the latter favored a liberal reform policy that aimed not to upset their big tent constituency – which included the landed aristocracy that was exploiting the peasants.¹¹ The tumultuous agrarian situation on the eve of 1952 is summed up by agriculture being outpaced by population growth; 68 percent of Egypt’s population belonging to the indentured peasantry; and the fact that six percent of landowners held 65 percent of arable land.¹² This prompted national discussions on the agrarian question – with only a few political forces that represented the interests of landowners, completely rejecting this discussion. Touching upon the industrial question before the eve of 1952, Abdel-Malek states that “the monopolist character of the Egyptian industrial economy was visible everywhere: in the sugar and cement industries, in the distilleries, in chemical fertilizers, but above all within the group of industrial companies set up or brought together by the Bank Misr.”¹³ Bank Misr, later to be nationalised in 1960-1961, represented a monopoly in which foreign participation was substantial. As such, Egyptian industry (mainly light industry) was largely in service of the imperialist foreign and domestic financial and industrial bourgeoisie interests. There was also the question of the British occupation and guerrilla attacks against it by clandestine organisations that were prevalent throughout the pre-1952 period to varying degrees. The popular guerrilla resistance at the Suez Canal Zone, occupied by British forces, reached its peak during that period, with Britain and King Farouk of Egypt feeling threatened. The guerrilla resistance attacks culminated in the 1952 Ismailia massacre of the (predominantly peasant) Egyptian police by the British army, sparking popular demonstrations throughout Egypt. King Farouk responded quickly, arresting thousands, suspending the constitution, imposing a nationwide curfew, and dismissing the Egyptian government.¹⁴ The army, sidelined from the political picture but deeply affected by the seeming impotence of the political forces within Egypt to achieve change – despite the growing popular discontent that Abdel-Malek touted as a “genuine popular revolution”¹⁵ – decided to act. This background of joint palace-imperialist domination was the catalyst for the Free Officers to begin reshaping Egypt into a modern industrial welfare state. In the eyes of the Free Officers Movement, the political deadlock that destabilised Egypt had to end.

National Construction, Sovereignty, and Pan-Arabism

The rise of the Free Officers in 1952 in the second period (1952-1956) – after deposing King Farouk and thereby abolishing the monarchy which held supreme political power in Egypt – was inaugurated with a number of key events including the worker uprising at Kafr al-Dawwar and the Free Officers’ repression of it through the execution of its leaders, the agrarian reform of 1952, and the banning of the entirety of the political parties in Egypt.¹⁶ The Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), the official body of the Free Officers, created the Liberation Rally in an effort to centralise political decision-making power. Political repression followed, with the Muslim Brotherhood’s assassination attempt of President Nasser in Alexandria serving as the driving factor towards greater state control of politics.

Economic steps were also taken with the agrarian reform of 1952 which had varying degrees of success in terms of allocation to the peasantry, but not in terms of stripping the upper landed bourgeoisie of its economic power nor increasing the amount of agricultural productivity per acre.¹⁷ This was amended in 1958 and 1961 to abolish any residues of the upper landed bourgeoisie in Egypt as the original agrarian reform only improved the situation of the middle-class peasantry. The path towards industrialisation was a consistent pattern throughout Nasser’s rule, as was the modernisation of the military, which compelled him to reject American arms control and buy weapons from Czechoslovakia and the socialist bloc. The Egyptian state’s search for arms before the Czech arms deal of 1955 had been controlled by Britain, France, and the United States. Limited quantities of weapons were given to Egypt for the dual purpose of maintaining Zionist military supremacy in the region while trying to assuage Egypt’s fears of being militarily unequipped. The strategy failed given the consistent demands for arms that might change the qualitative balance of power in favor of Egypt. Whenever talks over arms that would change Egypt’s military standing started, they were conditioned on the basis of Egypt’s adherence to a mutual defense treaty with Europe and the US but “this Cairo would not give.”¹⁸

The broader context of course was US imperialism’s staunch opposition to any form of sovereign development and means of defense against Israel – a development Abdel-Malek described as “nationalitarian construction,”¹⁹ a term that Abdel-Malek created to delineate the difference between nationalism – a Eurocentric construct of the Westphalian state that had negative, perhaps fascistic, connotations in his eyes – and the type of national consciousness that the Global South has accumulated as a result of its anti-imperialism. In this respect, nationalitarianism serves as an impetus for increasing South-South cooperation; nonalignment; and pride of one’s own heritage and political project in the face of Western attacks on sovereignty rather than a mode of exclusion à la European nationalisms. This opposition to the West steered Egypt towards the socialist bloc and the Non-Aligned Movement, taking the planning of Nehru’s India as an inspiration for Nasser’s socialist state project.²⁰ Financing a modern industrial welfare state required funds, which prompted the nationalisation of the Suez Canal. The subsequent failed aggression on Egypt by Israel, France, and Britain only strengthened the hold of Nasser’s project and made him the most popular figure of resistance to foreign domination in the Arab World, as well as to large sections of the oppressed throughout the world.

Nasser’s seeds of pan-Arab political consciousness were sowed through the interconnected nature of Egypt and Palestine, with Nasser citing the annual Egyptian demonstrations against the Balfour Declaration as the catalyst for the development of his political thought.²¹ The Nakba too, and his participation in the war effort against Zionism in the now-ethnically cleansed Palestinian village of al-Faluja, made him cognisant of the fact that Palestine is not separate from Egypt – nor the entirety of the Arab World at large. Fighting imperialism and building a nationalitarian welfare state that guarantees a safety net for the working class and peasantry was emphasised by Nasser as the solution for both Egypt and Palestine’s plights.

Fighting imperialism was the start of the third period (1956-1961) with the 1956 Tripartite Aggression (i.e., “the Suez Crisis”) against Egypt as a result of the loss of British and French colonial prestige with the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company a few months before the neocolonial attack. This period was also marked by the state oscillating between relaxation (1956-1958) and repression (1959) of the political forces of Egypt (chiefly communists); the nationalisation of foreign banks (1957); positive neutrality and nonalignment which stimulated both US and USSR economic aid in service of Egypt’s national development (starting in 1955, but accelerating during the period 1956-1961);²² the commencement of the two five-year plans of 1960 that emphasized the role of state planning and the goal of “doubling national income in all sectors of the economy”;²³ the nationalisation of monopoly banks, chiefly Bank Misr;²⁴ the development of a pan-Arab socialist ideology that fueled the enthusiasm for state planning (1956-1961); as well as the rise and fall of Egyptian-Syrian republican unity in the form of the United Arab Republic (1958-1961). These events, which represent the defining features of the period, serve as the general outline of how the army and the state envisioned an industrial welfare state and what it did in service of that goal – or rather, how the productive base shapes the ideology of the state.

Development in 1961, Defeat in 1967, and Neoliberal “Peace” in 1978

The fourth and final period assessed by Abdel-Malek is the years 1961-1967. For the sake of highlighting the contemporary relevance of Abdel-Malek’s work, I shall continue this analysis up to the post-Camp David present. This fourth period marked the state’s conslidation of its grip over Egyptian economic life through the July 1961 nationalisations of large and medium-scale private enterprises,²⁵ the proclamation of the Charter of National Action in 1963, and the creation of the Arab Socialist Union as a successor to the National Union. The rationale behind the nationalisations was legitimised after appealing to private capital to contribute to Egypt’s development to no avail. To drive the point further, Abdel-Malek says the following of the landed bourgeoisie, which is also evidently true for all sectors of the “national” bourgeoisie: “[T]he landed wing of the bourgeoisie refused to be reconverted, to invest in industry for its own profit. It reinforced itself in its apartment buildings, its bank accounts, its exports of capital, its pasha style of living.”

It is at this point that both Nasser and Abdel-Malek reach an agreement in principle – one cannot rely on the initiative of the bourgeoisie, however national it appears to be. The base determines the ideology of the state once again. The removal of the political isolation of the bourgeoisie, despite stripping them of their economic power, however, thrust them into the political life of Egypt in the context of the National Congress of Popular Forces. Through this avenue, the right attempted to stifle Nasser’s attempts at development through polemical, but unproductive, discussions surrounding the draft of the new Charter of National Action of Egypt.²⁶ Despite right-wing intrusion, talk of socialist development, inspired by the Indian and to a lesser extent Yugoslavian examples, emerged. Whatever this pathway of development may have been, be it socialist or not, it undoubtedly improved the living standards of the working classes in contrast to the crippling stranglehold of the post-Nasser neoliberalism.²⁷

Nasser’s rapid centralisation and his expansion of the welfare state in the periods of 1964-1967 made imperialism go to work through the tool of Israel, resulting in the Six Day War of 1967. Nasser needed to be discredited and the right needed to be bolstered as a result of his fall from grace. To put it simply, and as described by Ali Kadri’s central thesis in the Unmaking of Arab Socialism: “[The] two principal defeats by, and losses of territory to, Israel in 1967 and 1973, and many others that followed, left behind more than mere destruction of assets and loss of human lives; the Arab World […] lost its ideology of resistance, Arabism, and its associated socialism.”²⁸
The turn towards neoliberalism, then, must be understood as a crushing of the state-led project that Nasser had been building, with all of its shortcomings and benefits. Regardless of whether it was truly socialism, as Ali Kadri put it, or state-led capitalism; this is about developing the means of production while protecting the welfare state from domestic and foreign threats. The now-loose grip of the Egyptian state over worker and peasant security following the “advice” of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – the conditional “aid” that Nasser would’ve rejected – and the rise of the right following Nasser’s death, as represented in the figure of Anwar Sadat, which precipitated the normalisation of Camp David in 1978 – all of this erased Egypt’s national sovereignty in the face of its most principal threat: the Zionist entity, after Palestine had served as Nasser’s point of personal political development. It is clear that the events of 2011, the rise (and fall) of Mohammad Morsi, and Sisi’s consolidation of power have not fundamentally changed the reality of a post-Camp David Egypt.

Historical Specificity Evaluated

Abdel-Malek’s thesis on the historical specificity of Egypt, which he argues tends towards the centralisation of the state apparatus and its control of the economic and political life through the army, is weaved throughout the book. A Gramscian analysis of hegemony permeates his writing to cover the ideological dynamics of the army, the upper landed and industrial bourgeoisie, the working classes, and the intellectuals. The dialectic of the superstructure (the state’s ideology) and the base (the productive forces and the development stage of Egypt) is emphasised by Abdel-Malek.

The reality of neoliberalisation and the hegemony of the army as an imposing police state, in direct congruence with the loss of Egypt’s regional and international prestige and symbolism, begs the question: how valid is Abdel-Malek’s theory of Egyptian specificity? To investigate this, one must look at how Abdel-Malek later flipped the dynamic of the economic base and the superstructure; by subordinating the productive forces to the “centralist” ideology of the Egyptian state and army, Abdel-Malek applied the same argument of historical specificity since the times of the Pharaohs. Centralism and specificity later became an ideology for the state rather than simply the product of geographical constraints and the productive forces that shape Egypt. This change was elaborated upon by Abdel-Malek during an April 1974 seminar titled “The Crisis of Civilisational Development in the Arab World.” The revision of his analysis of historical specificity prompted a harsh critique from Mahdi Amel, a prominent Arab Lebanese intellectual and member of the Lebanese Communist Party: “With [specificity], the author isolates a certain superstructural phenomenon aspect from the historical materialist base that produced it, rendering it a phenomenon above history itself – an ahistorical phenomenon!”²⁹

Amel went on to argue that Abdel-Malek’s assertions of an ideological specificity that permeates the state and the army, without taking into account the productive forces that shape and mold the ideology, contradict the essence of Marxism-Leninism. Mahdi Amel ended his critique by praising the earlier conception of historical specificity in Abdel-Malek’s Egypt: Military Society, because it is consistent with the Asiatic mode of production as articulated by Karl Marx.³⁰ What prompted Abdel-Malek to view the superstructure as more important than the base is unclear. What was clear, however, was that the right wing that Abdel-Malek warned about, in light of Nasser’s 1967 defeat, did come to power in Egypt and continues to rule it to this day, as it abets a genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The question of Nasser, his rule, and the subsequent shredding of the welfare state he built, cannot be reduced to the abstract notion of a police state that represses political freedoms. What was evident from Nasser’s development project (as inspired by his interactions with the Palestinian cause) was the intention to create a sovereign welfare state able to defend itself, serving as an example of resistance against colonialism. Nasser’s failure to arm the people after 1967 – despite constant popular requests – reflects his refusal to trust the very masses who had rejected his resignation in the aftermath of al-Naksa (i.e., “the Six Day War”).³¹ It is through the improvement of the conditions of the working class and arming them against Israel and the resurgent right that national liberation and sovereignty can be achieved and acute crises can be faced. Nasser’s aversion to this idea constituted a greater error than his persecutions of communists, the defeat of 1967, or the end of Egypt’s unification with Syria.³²

Palestine and Egypt

Here, the importance of Abdel-Malek’s Egypt: Military Society makes itself apparent: it lies in discussing the historical specificity of the relationship between the army, the state, and the people in Marxist terms while not diminishing the impact of the Nasserist period. Serving as a reminder of the other possibilities before the Six Day War of 1967, this book sheds light on an enduring dream and a guide for true national construction that mixes elements of the state, the army, and the people in the process of building sovereignty – be it political or economic. Abdel-Malek’s dismissal of the superstructure (pan-Arab socialism, for example) in favor of a materialist point of view must be emphasised as one of the shortcomings of his book, with him dismissing Nasser’s political development as being emotionally-driven and lacking revolutionary substance. Ali Kadri, in contrast, paid more attention to the pan-Arab socialist ideology while accounting for the factors behind its fall and the deformation of the productive base after Sadat’s infitah³³ that reduced working class and peasant social security while reorienting state control of the private enterprises into the hands of a rightist bourgeois elite who propped up an ideology of defeat after the wars of 1967 and 1973 with the Zionist entity. Ali Kadri perfectly described post-Nasser Egypt as follows: “Egypt’s current rate of abjection and the malnutrition of its children could only bespeak of tragedy incurred in wartime-like conditions”³⁴

The domestic economic forces that rose in post-Nasser Egypt are important to highlight. One example that came to the spotlight recently is Ibrahim al-Arjani and his Hala Company, which levies exorbitant fees to Gazans escaping genocide through the Rafah Crossing in collaboration with the ruling regime. On the other hand, healthcare, funding of public universities, and state subsidies on bread have all been cut based on the “advice” of the IMF and the World Bank since Sadat’s rise to power. Child malnutrition, as a result of food insecurity and the lack of agrarian planning, has reached alarming heights. In 2014, one out of five children under the age of five had stunted growth, with incidences of anemia reaching 27 percent of children.³⁵ Neoliberalism, as such, can be seen as an attempt at politically disempowering Egypt by increasing its reliance on foreign aid while worsening the conditions of the working class and the peasantry to the lowest possible point.

Nasser’s rule should be contrasted with the subsequent bastardisation of the role of the state in the political and economic fields under Sadat and his successors. The images of Zionist forces proudly waving the Israeli flag in the face of idle Egyptian soldiers, during the invasion of the Rafah Crossing in May 2024, serves as a reminder of how an entire army – a people’s army, as said by Abdel-Malek – has been subordinated to imperial diktats. Later in the same month, the killing of two Egyptian soldiers by the Israeli military was a direct affront to Egypt’s national sovereignty. Nonetheless, Egypt has not responded – neither diplomatically nor otherwise. For Egypt to return it to what it once was, as a model of national liberation that – though not perfect – built an extensive welfare system for the working class, it is clear that Camp David and neoliberalism must be abolished. Analysing Egypt through the connection between its welfare state and the Palestinian cause is of great utility to the interconnected Egyptian-Palestinian struggles – the two causes for which both Nasser and Abdel-Malek fought.

Ameed Faleh is a Palestinian student at al-Quds University and a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.