Crisis and class war in Egypt : social reproduction, factional realignments and the global political economy / Sean F. McMahon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McMahon, Sean F., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Working class--Egypt--History--21st century.

Working class.

Arab Spring, 2010-.

Social conflict--Egypt--History--21st century.

Social conflict.

Global Financial Crisis, 2008-2009.

Capitalism.

History.

Egypt.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 228 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

London, UK : Zed Books Ltd, 2017.

Summary:

In 2011, capital's crisis erupted in Egyptian society. This eruption, and subsequent politics, have been misrepresented as revolutionary, as the working class was - and is increasingly so - devalued and disempowered. In Crisis and Class War in Egypt, Sean F. McMahon critically analyses Egypt's recent political history. He argues that the so-called 'revolution' was the appearance of capital's destruction of the value of the Egyptian working class and an existential crisis for capital. In response, productive capital in the form of the military used, disposed of and replaced its junior partners in governing; first the predatory capital of the Mubarak state with the commodity capital of the Muslim Brotherhood, and then commodity capital with the finance capital of the Gulf Cooperation Council. These reconfigurations have been expressed in all manner of reactionary governmental arrangements including constitutions, legislation and currency reform. Extending today's analysis into the near future, McMahon sees the war of Egyptian society intensifying, and increasingly violent lives for Egyptian workers. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Introduction 1

Appearance and essence 1

Analytical framework: materialist dialectics 3

Vulgar and fetishistic literature 10

Structure of the book 27

2 Dialectical development of Egypt's crisis moment 30

Introduction 30

Producing the crisis of reproduction 32

Conclusion 69

3 Fetishisms and factions 71

Fetishisms 71

Factions of capital 76

Egypt's social war 99

Conclusion 109

4 Realignments and reform 111

Historicizing changing relations and their political forms of expression 112

Reform through crisis 120

2013 political transmutation 142

Conclusion 164

5 The coming eruption of crisis 166

Expressions of war 166

Contradictions at a higher stage 170

The sharper, the nearer 175.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-214) and index.

ISBN:

1783605030

9781783605033

1783605022

9781783605026

OCLC:

962788430