- Record: found
- Abstract: found
- Article: found
Mubarak's Egypt — Nexus of Criminality
Abstract
Employing a Marxist framework, this article examines how neo-liberal agendas for development pursued by successive regimes in Egypt have been associated with violence, fraud and corruption. Encouraged by international financial institutions and Western governments, the Egyptian state became a means of channelling public resources into private hands, using complex relations of privilege among officials and oligarchs. The article examines a growing conviction among Egypt's people that the presidency and the ruling party represented a criminal enterprise. Addressing notions of “crony capitalism”, and the idea that the revolution of 2011 punished an aberrant political leader, it argues that bodies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have been party to consolidation of corrupt networks and development of an authoritarian state acting with impunity vis-à-vis the mass of Egypt's people. The article raises pressing questions about global responsibilities for state crime manifested at the local level.
Content
Author and article information
Notes
See, for example, Agha and Malley (2012).
Both the army and the opposition movement claimed some 17 million participants: see Mourad (2013).
Much of the judiciary was integrated into the regime's structures of patronage. Some judges, however, retained a measure of independence, and even resisted the state's routine practices of electoral fraud: see Lesch (2012).
See Marfleet (2013).
As demonstrated dramatically in November 2012 when President Mohamed Mursi, attempted to introduce constitutional amendments widely viewed as alien to the interests of the people. A demonstration of over 2 million people assembled at the presidential palace in Cairo, while city squares across Egypt were filled with protestors.
See also Green and Ward (2000, 2004), Stanley and McCulloch (2012) and Lasslett (2012).
For insightful analyses of the state, class relations and state crime see Green and Ward (2000, 2004).
For a comprehensive account of the anti-colonial movement see Beinin and Lockman (1987).
These legal provisions, together with greatly increased involvement of women in the workforce, initiated what Hatem (1992) describes as a period of “state feminism”.
Quoted in Baker (1978: 150). The idea of a “parasitic” class cannot be sustained within a Marxist approach: all ruling classes, or such classes in process of consolidation, pursue interests that are alien to those of subordinate classes. Haikal's reference is to public displays of wealth that appeared to violate the public values of the Nasser era.
In October 1976 Sadat participated in a cavalcade through central Cairo to mark the Suez Canal crossing three years earlier which had initiated war with Israel. As the president's car passed slowly through the streets thousands of people turned their backs in silent protest (witnessed by the present author).
Arafat (2009: 64) notes that, using his official positions, Osman sold off five state construction companies he claimed were no longer profitable, leaving his own firm with a monopoly of contracts in the Suez Canel zone.
Hinnebusch (1985: 109) shows how state and private sector networks worked to mutual advantage, producing “a growing web of marriage, political and business alliances”.
For assessments of the authoritarian-populist approach to regimes in the Middle East see Hinnebusch (1985), Stacher (2012).
See Baker (1978: 166); Hinnebusch (1985: 71); Posusney (1997: 137).
Hinnebusch (1985: 71). See also El-Hamalawy (n.d.).
See Sampson (1981) for an assessment of “borrowing for prosperity” and the outcomes for the Global South.
See Naguib (2009) for analysis of the changing agendas of Islamist currents and their economic, social and political programmes at this period.
In 1991 aid to Kenya was suspended by key donor states; in 1992 aid to Malawi was suspended by donor states and by the World Bank (Human Rights Watch 1992: 180–1).
Soon after coming to power he reached an accommodation with landowners whose property had been nationalized under Nasser: the state returned land to some 800 proprietors and a further 5,000 received compensation (Zaalouk 1989: 57). Other measures included new limits to state intervention in private enterprises, and incentives for foreign investors.
Quoted in Zaalouk (1989: 69).
All capitalist states are “predatory” in the sense that they facilitate the extraction of surplus from exploited classes. Soliman's characterization nonetheless has the virtue of identifying the Egyptian state as uninhibited in its efforts to draw wealth towards the Mubarak networks and increasingly aggressive in mobilizing against dissent.
For a terse account of political parties in Egypt from Nasser to Mubarak see Marfleet (2009).
The status of the army, and its investments and influence with the state, remains a key unresolved issue within the Egyptian revolution. See Marfleet (2012).
See Raghavan (2011), Khalil (2011).
See, for example, Hellman et al. (2000), on corruption in “transitional economies”.