Hamza Hamouchene & Katie Sandwell (eds) - Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region

About twenty years ago me, and a large number of other activists, attended an environmental conference in London. One of the workshops at the event included a presentation on DesertTec, a plan to produce vast quantities of energy from solar power by covering large areas of the Sahara desert in soal panels. I think it is fair to say that at the time, myself, and the rest of the activists there, where impressed with this technical solution to the transition away from fossil fuels. Criticism at the time focused on how nation states, and capitalist interests, would prevent this happening.

But since then the work of activists and scholars, including the authors and editors of this important book, have taught activists like myself to think about things differently. What we were essentially told in that seminar was an old lie - that large parts of Africa are essentially empty, ripe for use by the developed world, and in doing this, some wealth might well trickle down into local economies who could use it to improve their situation. It is an old lie, and its shameful that we fell for it then. Today the environmental movement today is much more aware of the need for Climate Justice in the Global South, but there is still much work to do, and this book is an important contribution.

The Arab Region, to use the name from this books title, is simultaneously the origin of the vast majority of the oil that is helping cook the planet, and one of the places where climate change is already causing enormous suffering for ordinary people. But, as this important book explains, the people of the region are not passive victims. They are people who can, and are, fighting for an alternative sustainable future while, at the same time "the Gulf countries are working to ensure they remain at the centre of the global energy regime".

The contributing authors' essays approach this conundrum in various ways by looking at various different countries and experiences. Most essays focus on different aspects of the energy question. These explore a common contradication - that states in the Middle East and North Africa have enormous potential for renewable energy, while frequently relying for their economic existence on fossil fuels. It is a contradication easily exploited by the energy multinationals. This is a point made by Hamza Hamouchene in his discussion on "green" hydrogen in North Africa:

The drive for green hydrogen and the push for a hydrigen economy has already gained support from major European oil and gas companies, which see it as a back door to the continuation of their operations, with hydrogen being extracted from fossil gas (the production of grey and blue hydrogen). It is thus becoming clear that the fosssil fuel industry wants to preserve the existing natural gas and pipeline infrastructure.

He concludes, "it is a deeply erroneous assumption that any move towards renewable energy is to be welcomed and that any shift from fossil fuels, regardless of how it is carried out, is worthwhile." The problem is, as he points out, not fossil fuels but "their unsustainable and destructive use in order to fuel the capitalist machine."

The Arab Region has, of course, been the victim of colonial history and imperialism. The ongoing geo-political reality of this situation means that any transition will, unless capitalism is challenged, "maintain the same practices of dispossession and exploitation that currently prevail, reproducing injustices and deepeing socioeconomig exclusion". Before we agree to such projects, we need to question who, what and why they are being done. With this in mind Hamouchene cautions a younger me about DesertTec!: 

This Desertec vision lends itself to the agenda of consolidating fortress Europe and expanding an inhuman regime of border imperialism, while trying to tap into the cheap energy potential of North Africa, which also relies on undervalued and disciplined labour.

Similarly, writing on energy in Sudan, Razaz H. Basheir and Mohamed Salah Abdelrahman, note that the current plan for energy there "relies on the full and unconditional adoption of neoliberal reforms dictated by international financial institutions". 

A second aspect to this, is that various regimes in the region are able to use the potential for renewable energy to "greenwash" their existence. Look at how Egypt and the UAE hosted COP27 and COP28 for this reason. But in one of the strongest chapters in the book Manal Shqair explores this with a timely look at the case of Israel. "Israel", she writes,

has always depicted itself as a dry coutnry which, despite this, and unlike its Arab neighbours, has developed the tecnology needed to efficiently manage its scarce water resources and mitigate the climate crisis... According to this narrative... Israel alwasys seeks to put its technology at the service of its prached neighbour Jordan.

Israel and Jordan's agreement to swop water for renewable energy seems then like a perfect match. But it has two consequences. Firstly it legitimises the settler colonial state, and secondly, it forces Jordan to rely on imported fossil fuel, because it is locked into an agreement with Israel to send energy over for water desalination. 

Shqair explores how Israel has stolen land, water and other natural resources from the Palestinians, and used these to strengthen its own hand. She concludes: 

The dehumanisation of the colonised, and the complicity of Arab states in this, are greenwashed by the EU and Israel as they collaborate in what is portrayed as a transition to a greener future and a lower-carbon economy.

Many authors however emphasise that the people of the region are not passive in the face of this inequality. There are some remarkable accounts of struggle against governments and multinationals against projects that destroy land and displace people, or for more equitable and just use of resources. In an important chapter on the neglected subject of agriculture in North Africa, Saker El Nour writes on the importance of "pressure from below, infoprmed by the needs and aspirations of small-scale farmers, peasants and farm workers, who remain indispensable in a just transition in the region and beyond". Similarly in an account of mining and renewable energy in Morocco, Karen Rignall writes that the "resource conflicts" often allow communities to "imagine and experiment with a different kind of politics or approach to rural governance. This new imaginary can be considered an emergent politics of the commons." She cautions that those arguing for "just transition" cannot ignore these inputs and ideas, and impose a "predetermined frame of analysis" or crutially tries to substitute existing social movements.

This review can only touch on a few of the articles. But running through all the chapters are two main themes. The first of which is that existing strategies for energy and sustainable transitions are trapped by the logic of a global capitalist system, that sees the region as crucial to the continued accumulation of capital, primarily in the Global North (though China is increasingly imposing its own interests). Thus the interests of the USA and Europe and the fossil fuel corporations that are so closely tied to them, tend to shape what governments across the Middle East and North Africa are planning. This distorts things in a way that rarely offers anything to the mass of the local populations, and in some cases, actively destroys their lives through pollution and displacement. Indeed, the greenwashing associated with energy plans actively empowers the worst states in the region. So Jawad Moustakbal is surely right to conclude about Morocco, in a way that could be applied across the region:

There will be no just transition as long as the energy sector remains under the control of foreign transational companies and a local ruling elite that is free to plunder the state and generate as much profit as it wishes, within a culrutre of authoritarianism and nepotism. The debt system and PPPs are a major obstacle to any model of popular sovereignty, including energy sovereignty.

But there is something else that runs through the book - this is the potential for popular revolt. While few chapters explore the "Arab Spring" in detail, the book carries with it a sense that mass radical change is necessary and possible. As Christian Henderseon concludes the book:

The pressures that led to the Arab revolutions of 2010 and 2011 have not been resolved; deep structural reconfiguration is still needed. It is not too early to foresee how these quandaries will develop but the Guld states are not immune from popular calls for democarcy, equity and redistribution that define the just transition.

I would go further. Without the sort of mass struggles that brought down dictators and rulers across the region, and without those struggles developing into popular movements for democratic control of the economy, we won't see the sort of transition that the region, and the world, desperately needs.

Dismantling Green Colonialism is probably one of the most important books published on climate justice this year. Every activist should try and read it, to learn more about the realities of the Arab Region, the barriers to change and the movements trying to shape a sustainable future.

Recommended read: Interview with Hamza Hamouchene about the book

Related Reviews

Alexander - 'Revolution is the Choice of the People': Crisis & Revolt in the Middle East & North Africa
Alexander & Bassiouny - Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers & the Egyptian Revolution
Ayeb & Bush - Food Insecurity & Revolution in the Middle East & North Africa
El-Mahdi & Philip Marfleet - Egypt: The Moment of Change
Shenker - The Egyptians: A Radical Story

Anne Alexander - 'Revolution is the Choice of the People': Crisis & Revolt in the Middle East & North Africa

Anne Alexander has been analysing and writing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for many years. As a socialist and trade unionist she has been instrumental in building solidarity with the revolutions that swept the region from 2011 and, more recently, with uprisings in Tunisia, Algeria and the Sudanese Revolution. As such she is uniquely placed to analyse the rebellions, and I've been looking forward to this book for some time.

'Revolution is the Choice of the People' is simultaneously a study of the underlying causes of rebellion in the MENA regions and a celebration of those revolutions. Some of the most inspiring sections are those were Alexander discusses the events of the revolutions, particularly that of Egypt in 2011. But this book is far more than a historical account. It is an unparalleled contemporary Marxist discussion of revolution in the modern world and deserves to be widely read by radicals. 

Alexander summarises the importance of the revolutions:

The revolutionary wave which swept the Middle East in 2011 showed the potential for a region united horizontally through the ties of social class which connected the fates of the impoverished majority with each other and pitted them against the kings, generals and big businessmen who rule. It demonstrated the possibility of a future where ordinary people could liberate themselves from all kids of oppression, whether on grounds of gender or religious belief. This promise was both explicitly written into the demands of popular protests and strikes, which raised anti-sectarian slogans and implicit in the mass participation of women and oppressed religious groups.

She emphasises the role of the organised working class, showing that where they were central to revolutions in 2011, the revolutionary process went furthest. This is also true of the more recent "second wave" rebellions in countries like Algeria and Sudan where strike action has proved decisive at key points. 

The revolutions of 2011 had contemporary triggers, but some of the most valuable sections of  Alexander's book are where she locates the revolutions in the context of the regions' history. Both the colonial past, and the imperialist present - which means that in addition to the impact of European colonialism, US and Soviet imperialism, Alexander also discusses the regional forces that shape economic and political context. Her sections on the role of Israel in the context of US Imperialism and how this shapes the Palestinian resistance are particularly insightful.

The more recent economic context centres on the "neoliberal turn" in the region, which say, she argues, a shift in the role of the state "towards a focus on its role as facilitation and organisation of capital accumulation and a relative reduction in direct production or provision of services". This helped create the conditions of revolt by undermining the support structures of the masses and forcing groups of workers into confrontation with the state and employers. The close links between the state, big business and the military in many countries helped this process - and framed the ruling class response to rebellion.

The direct impact of this is obvious in Egypt and Sudan where, following the initial successes of the revolution in removing dictators, the military quickly moved to position itself as a key part of the state in a "transitionary" period. In both countries the military waited to consolidate its position, before trying to enact a counter-revolution. In Egypt that process has been bloody success for the Generals, but in Sudan it has been partially blocked by the revolution - though as I write this the situation is in flux. Alexander underlines the "Faustian bargain between civilian opposition leaders and the military." She continues:

Despite the difference in their political ideologies, Islamists in Egypt and the heterogenous mixture of "technocrats", representatives of "traditional" Islamic Parties and reformist movements making up the civilian FFC [Forces, Freedom and Change] component of the Sudanese Transitional Government found themselves facing versions of the same problem. The generals had no intention of relinquishing their dominant role in the state.

The question of the State then becomes of supreme importance. Alexander explores how even radical reformist movements in the MENA region have failed to understand the role of the state and thus led movements into traps placed by the counter-revolutionaries. She shows how theories of change based on "non violence", including those argued by Western academics like Erica Chenoweth, fail in their aim of bringing democratic change because they do not aim to defeat the state machine. 

Returning to the classical Marxist tradition Alexander shows how the ideas developed by Marx and Engels and then developed by Lenin, Trotsky and other revolutionaries, are directly applicable to the MENA revolutions. This is not to say that the ideas of those thinkers can simply be transferred without development. Alexander points out, for instance, that in the MENA region military institutions have "acted as direct agents of capital accumulation" with an enormous involvement of military officers in capitalist enterprises. She explains that this is distinct, but complementary to the "classic role played by military institutions in capitalist states as indirect agents of capital accumulation, as mapped out by Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Karl Liebknecht". A great strength of Alexander's book is how she develops classical Marxism to understand contemporary capitalism in the region.

In addition to her writing on the contemporary revolutionary struggle, there is much in this book of wider interest. In addition to the aforementioned sections on Palestine, the sections on Syria are also important, as part of a fascinating discussion about "workers' power". Alexander contrasts the different revolutions, showing how self-organisation of workers - organisation that poses the potential to become the basis for an alternative workers' state to the capitalist state - developed, or didn't develop. There were small beginnings of this process in Egypt, and the revolution in Sudan has thrown up thousands of Resistance Committees. In Syria the process was limited by the military response of the regime, which transformed the revolution into open warfare, as well as the self imposed limitations of areas which were often run through cross-class organisation, rather than being based on workers' control.

Here we return to the question of workers. In her discussion on neoliberalism, Alexander makes a point which is frequently forgotten. Neoliberalism is "still capitalism" and "capitalism needs workers". The fact that the MENA region has a huge and powerful working class meant that workers' revolt was always a possibility. The Egyptian revolution in particular went furthest in 2011 because its workers' had seen a succession of major revolts over the preceding decades that had created networks of activists who understood how to organise. The centrality of workers to capitalist production gives them enormous strategic power. As Alexander concludes:

As we have seen, the presence of organised workers engaged in mass strikes often proved decisive in shaking loose the grip of authoritarianism enough to open a period of political reforms or at least creating conditions for ordinary people to take some of their democratic rights to assemble and organise by storm. Conversely, the absence of the organised working class from the field of battle with the regimes generally correlated with the early militarisation of the counter-revolution and a rapid descent into civil war.

In too many cases, workers were used as a stage army to win concessions at particular moments of struggle. Instead, Marxists see workers' as the force for change, a force that can create the basis for a new state based on workers' control. Crucial to victory, however, will be the presence of organised revolutionaries. As Alexander shows, even small numbers of revolutionaries can make a difference. Yet their forces were too small to be decisive in 2011. Socialists in Sudan today are having similar arguments. This book is, in no small part, a contribution to developing socialist organisation today.

As I finished reading 'Revolution is the Choice of the People' rebellion exploded in Sri Lanka. Hundreds of thousands of impoverished working people stormed the presidential palace and overthrew the President. Even in the few days since it has become clear that the analysis that Alexander makes in her book is of crucial importance for millions of people around the world today. Capitalism can only offer economic crisis, ecological disaster and war. Anne Alexander's marvellous book is an inspirational look at how we have fought in the past, and how we can win today. Every socialist should read it.

Related Reviews

Alexander & Bassiouny - Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers & the Egyptian Revolution
Ayeb & Bush - Food Insecurity & Revolution in the Middle East & North Africa
Shenker - The Egyptians: A Radical Story
El-Mahdi & Marfleet - Egypt: The Moment of Change
Gonzalez & Barekat - Arms and the People: Popular Movements and the Military from the Paris Commune to the Arab Spring
Berridge, Lynch, Makawi & De Waal - Sudan's Unfinished Democracy: The Promise & Betrayal of a People's Revolution

Jack Shenker - The Egyptians: A Radical Story

In early 2011 millions of people around the world were captivated by the Egyptian Revolution. I remember rushing out of meetings to the pub so we could watch the latest news from Cairo - had Mubarak gone or not? For the first time, mainstream and social media gave millions a ring side seat in a revolution. The Egyptian Revolution was part of the wider rebellions often labelled as the "Arab Spring". Rightly, Jack Shenker argues that the term is part of sanitising the revolutions of their radical content, remoulding them as pro-Western struggles whose participants were more interested in creating the sort of neoliberal society favourable to the Whitehouse and the European Union.

Shenker's book shows that the reality was very different. The Egyptian Revolution was the most thoroughgoing of the Middle Eastern risings and it was characterised very much by a desire to build a radically different sort of society. The moment when the Egyptian military finally decided that Mubarak had to go coincided with a massive explosion of workers' strikes. Once the working class began to move, the situation threatened far deeper changes than simply toppling a few politicians and military leaders.

Search for images of the Egyptian Revolution today and you will almost certainly find pictures of the massive crowds that occupied Tahrir Square. This occupation became symbolic of the revolution itself and inspired countless attempts to mimic it around the world. The idea that a free space where alternative ideas and organisation could flourish with existing society was incredibly attractive and dovetailed with the ideas of a fair few radical thinkers. It was if by sheer weight of the imagination, politicians and states could be overthrown. The scale of the occupation, the regime's attack on Tahrir, the fight by its participants to defend the space nonetheless did give the space an important place in the revolution. But we must be wary of placing to much utopian hope on such occupations. As Shenker cautions:

there is a danger in projecting too much of the revolution on to this single square, and thus confining the revolution in space and time… Focusing too closely on Tahrir ignores a panoply of revolutionary  struggles, and it leaves the factories and farms and schools and alleyways and minds in which revolution is raging dangling far off the edge of the page, alongside the dozens of other city squares across Egypt where battles were won and occupations mounted.

More recent commentators on the Sudanese revolution have, in my opinion, fallen into a similar trap to those who abstracted Tahrir from wider revolutionary context. But Shenker does celebrate what happened in that crowded square and how Tahrir symbolised wider aspirations: 

it embodied something more fundamental about the revolution—an action of creation, one that has coloured Egypt’s politics irrevocably ever since. In Tahrir, Egyptians built something different from Mubarak Country: a different set of borders, a different set of social relations, a different narrative about  who they were and what they could do.

Tahrir did not come from nowhere. In fact the site was the location of numerous smaller protests, many of which had been brutally suppressed by the Egyptian state. Shenker describes the deep roots of discontent in Egypt; struggles by local communities over their environment, their housing and their agriculture; small, brave and important democracy protest movements which fed the atmosphere that would eventually explode in 2011 and the economic struggles of workers and peasants. Shenker emphasises that "the first strand, and arguably the most critical, was the fight-back by workers against the structural violence and redistribution from poor to rich that accompanied neoliberalism." He explains:

By the twenty-first century, economic liberalisation under the tutelage of the international financial institutions had eroded that alliance, and workers increasingly saw the state itself as a the facilitator of colonialism of a different order. In the final years of Mubarak's reign, workers'; embroiled virtually every category of workplace you can think of in confrontation. By 2011, they would play a critical role in toppling the president altogether.

The role of workers in the Egyptian revolution is a neglected part of many accounts of 2011. Thankfully this is rectified in Shenker's book, where some of the most inspiring passages describe workplaces were workers are in control and have kicked out corrupt managers, or have won massive concessions. Likewise some of the most tragic are the way that the post-Mubarak regime and the Muslim Brotherhood quickly moved to demobilise the strikes and workers' action.

Shenker himself was close to much of the action, reporting from Egypt over many years and being at the heart of events during key moments before and after the revolution. His breathless excitement comes through as the January 25th protests are suddenly so much more than the small democracy protests he's witnessed over the years. At the other extreme we feel his terror as he is trapped in a police van, possibly heading for a beating or worse and his desperation as the people's gains are crushed by Sisi's counter-revolution. It is brilliant writing, exhilarating, personal but most of all giving ordinary Egyptians - from farmers and labourers to revolutionary socialists and feminist activists - their voice. There are also some joyous (and fascinating) accounts of talks with bosses and politicians who've been shrunk by the revolution.

It is also a remarkable work of historical research. Shenker shows how Egypt's history has been shaped by colonial and imperialist forces right till the present day. The neoliberalism that Mubarak and his predecessors imposed arising out of the position that Egypt has as a regional power and international state, especially during and immediately after the Cold War. 

Because Shenker takes the long view, which sees the Egyptian Revolution not as a sudden outburst of anger, but as a working class reaction to deep seated inequalities and oppression, it is hard not to conclude that the Egyptian Revolution will rise again in the future. While we must be wary of historical parallels, perhaps 2011 was Egypt's 1905? At the moment though, the counter-revolution has triumphed and tens of thousands of activists remain in jail. 

But at some point the contradictions of Egyptian society will bring people out onto the streets again. A renewal of the revolution will mean overcoming many real obstacles, but the objective circumstances will force people into conflict with the Egyptian state. As Shenker concludes:

Ultimately, Mubarak Country is built on an assumption of fear and dependency; pre-revolution and now, it relies not on a stable system of governance, but on the perpetuation of mental shackles, on a belief that nothing more is possible. The problem with mental shackles is that poverty and exclusion tend to rust them, and they are hard to maintain when new generations, new minds, keep bursting on to the scene. Perhaps this is why Sisi... has been particularly determined to oppress the very youngest... These are not the actions of a state that is confident in its own survival; they are the actions of a state which knows its authority has been irreparably damaged, and that Revolution Country clings on amid the fissures.

Jack Shenker's book is a masterful account of a particular revolution, an insight into the revolutionary process itself. It reminds us that workers' revolution is not something of the past, but a reality for capitalism today. Reading this book I was reminded of the excitement of 2011, the sense that the world was changing and how we all got a brief glimpse of a different social order. In that sense The Egyptians is far more than a historical account, its a lesson for radicals everywhere.

Related Reviews

Ayeb & Bush - Food Insecurity & Revolution in the Middle East & North Africa
El-Mahdi & Marfleet - Egypt: The Moment of Change
Alexander & Bassiouny - Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers & the Egyptian Revolution
Gonzalez & Barekat - Arms and the People: Popular Movements and the Military from the Paris Commune to the Arab Spring
Berridge, Lynch, Makawi & De Waal - Sudan's Unfinished Democracy: The Promise & Betrayal of a People's Revolution

Habib Ayeb & Ray Bush - Food Insecurity & Revolution in the Middle East & North Africa

For revolutionary socialists the perhaps the most inspiring events of the last decade were the Revolutions that took place in the Middle East during the so-called Arab Spring of 2011. The term Arab Spring obscures a much more deep rooted and revolutionary process and books like Habib Ayeb and Ray Bush's recent publication are important because they explore the revolutionary dynamics at the core of these mass movements. Ayeb and Bush's book focuses on a key aspect of the struggles, but one that is often ignored - the role of the peasantry. They focus on events in the two key countries for the events - Egypt and Tunisia.

One of the central demands of the Egypt Revolution in January 2011 was the call for Bread Freedom and Social Justice. This echoed demands from Tunisia in December of the previous year. The authors argue that this shows the "issue of sustained access to affordable food" was at the centre of the revolutionary outbreaks. The slogan, "carried the rural and peasant signature of popular risings" and shows the "similar origins and progressions" of the revolutions in the two countries. Indeed Ayeb and Bush go further and argue that both revolutions had at their heart agrarian demands. The Tunisian revolution famously began when Mohamed Bouaziz self-immolated outside a police station following repeated harassment. This short description however masks how Bouaziz and his family had been activists in long standing social movements about land, food and the right to work and sell produce. These, and similar groups of activists also helped create the conditions were mass protests didn't just explode in response, but networks existed to drive the revolution forward.

Similarly in Egypt the authors argue that the roots of the other throw of Mubarak in 2011 lie much earlier - in particular in movements that arose in the early 1990s against the "counter-agrarian reform Law 96" which had a number of implications for peasants and small farmers, but most significantly it drove the dispossession of small-farmers from their land. While the movement was ultimately unsuccessful, it did leave a legacy. Ayeb and Bush explain:

It is significant that the persistence of rural struggles and networks for change in Egypt's countryside after the 1990s were more fluid than those centred in urban struggles. There emerged and important network of social resistance to state brutality that was orchestrated through the mis of security forces, police and military in the countryside.

They continue by detailing a history of rural struggle in the period between small-farmers and peasants against landowners and landlords, and security forces. The repression was significant, but not all powerful.

Rural locations were ripe for intimidation and violence, imprisonment and torture and harassment of the poor. But this did not prevent resistance, direct action and even the use of the courts to try and hold landlords to account and to at least slow the return of feudalism.

While I disagree with the use of the word "feudalism" here, it is important to acknowledge, as the authors do, that there was a significant history of agrarian class struggle that helped lay foundations for the events of 2010 and 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt.

In fact from the1970s onward both Tunisia and Egypt saw a sustained period of neoliberalism that systematically destroyed many rights and protections that peasant produced had. The authors detail how in Egypt, for instance, attempts to protect and encourage food self-sufficiency in Egypt had led to the Nasser government protecting and nationalising land. But through the 80s and 90s, both countries saw the dispossession of small producers on a huge scale, a transition to agriculture aimed at the export market and the destruction of farming that could feed the countries. 

On the one hand, the state abandoned its social role in favour of the most disadvantaged strata and classes. On the other hand, the state mobilised all its means, especially financial, to serve the dominant economic and political groups. In agriculture this meant the end of support and subsidies for small farmers and peasant agriculture and the financial, fiscal and political support for agribusiness and capitalist agriculture oriented towards export.

Thus the agrarian policies of both Tunisian and Egyptian governments laid the basis for mass discontent. The focus of the authors on the forgotten recent history of the peasantry and small-farmers in the two countries fills a gap for those trying to understand the revolutionary process in the Middle East. However at times I did feel that because the authors focused on rural issues and the peasantry they ended up neglecting other forces in society. For instance the implications of the "War on Terror" and the Palestinian question as issues that drove discontent with Mubarak. Ayeb and Bush mention, for instance, the strikes in Mahalla, but only in passing yet these struggles and others are closely linked to wider agrarian issues. The authors argue that the mass protests (particularly in Tahrir Square) involved millions of people including peasants, as well as workers and the urban poor. However this isn't developed and I'd have liked more material on the role of the peasantry in the overthrow of Mubarak and the wider movement - what was taking place in the villages and rural areas. This felt undeveloped in the book.

Post 2011 the authors show that repression has held back movements in urban and rural areas. However they point out that there is an ongoing need for further struggles. Poverty, inequality continue to blight rural communities in both countries and, in particular, neoliberalism continues to concentrate wealth and land in the hands of a small minority of landowners. There remains a real need to struggle against poverty and inequality as well as a sustainable, sustainable food system for countries in the Middle East.

At the heart of this is a critique of the way that colonialism and imperialism have underdeveloped and destroyed (and continue to do so) the agricultural systems of countries like Egypt and Tunisia. They conclude:

There cannot be any successful emulation of Western development models in Egypt and Tunisia or elsewhere in the Third World. Instead a new system of self-reliance, of 'becoming aware' is necessary for Egypt and Tunisia to establish a successful alternative to the policies and outcomes of imperialism. The new alternative requires a process of partial delinking from the world economy, for a political agenda of sovereign states to work in solidarity and to also develop incrementally a strategy for socialism that would necessarily involve the empowerment of the peasantry.

I would have liked to have this fleshed out further. What might socialism in the Middle East mean for small, agricultural producers? What would the freeing up of resources by a workers and peasant government in Egypt (for instance) mean? Indeed while removing the economic and political shackles placed on the peasantry of the Middle East is crucial, making them part and parcel of governing a socialist society is the key to their emancipation. Here I think that we might learn much from the experience in Russia in the immediate aftermath of 1917.

Despite my criticisms there is much of interest in this book and the authors are to be congratulated for making sure this neglected aspect to the Arab Spring is highlighted. For those trying to understand contemporary Middle Eastern politics, and argue for a sustainable, socially just agriculture there is plenty of material here to mull over.

Related Reviews

Alexander & Bassiouny - Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers & the Egyptian Revolution
El-Mahdi & Marfleet - Egypt: The Moment of Change

Philip Ziegler - Omdurman

In September 1898, a British Army including units of Egyptian and Sudanese troops and numbering around 25,000 (the majority of whom were colonial soldiers) destroyed an enormous Mahadist force of over 50,000. The carnage was enormous, the heavily armed British force killed 12,000 enemies, wounding 10,000 more and capturing thousands. In the process they lost less than 100 themselves. The Sudanese Mahadist army under Abdullah al-Taashi, known by his title as the Khalifa, was only superior in terms of numbers. His forces were armed with few rifles, some small arms, but mostly spears. The British had maxim guns, repeating rifles and were supported by heavily armed gunboats. Victory was bloody, with accounts of British troops slaughtering the wounded, causing outrage back home. Even Winston Churchill, a man rarely bothered by unnecessary killing, called it "inhumane slaughter".

Philip Ziegler's book is a well written account of the military events, but little else. Ziegler gives a brief account of the death of General Gordon less than a decade before Omdurman, and shows how the latter battle was popularly seen as Colonial revenge for that defeat. But in reality the attack on Sudan in 1989 had little real purpose to it. As Ziegler explains:

What is certain is that the British had no economic incentive for invading the Sudan; the conventional caricature of the greedy imperialist grabbing the raw materials of the less developed countries has no application here... What in fact eventually induced the British government in 1896 to undertake the expedition was neither benevolent imperialism nor a belated lust for revenge but the needs of European politics. It was Lord Salisbury's wish to shore up the Triple Alliance and do something to please Italy and Germany which made intervention in the Sudan seem desirable.

Leaving aside the idea that Imperialism is only ever for resources or economic benefit, it is notable that Britain had little reason for entry into Sudan. When they did so it was very much driven by the self-interest of the British ruler in Egypt, the Sirdar, General Kitchener. Less than two decades before the outbreak of World War One, it is notable that a few senior figures in that war appear in the Sudan - Kitchener and Douglas Haig are just two.

The bloody victory at Omdurman was greeted with popular rejoicing back at home, not least because it was covered by a significant number of embeded journalists, some of whom, like Winston Churchill, were also officers and were certainly not neutral in proceedings. Churchill himself figures highly in these pages, not least because of his detailed account of the campaign and his self-serving arrogant letters home about events. The last cavalry charge in British Army history took place at Omdurman, with Churchill in pole position. For the public back home the charge became a much celebrated event, though Ziegler makes it clear that it was relatively unnecessary, confused and could easily have ended in tragedy. Ziegler details the aftermath - the British razing much of Omdurman and the Khalifa's palace - and the disappointment of the troops when they found little to loot. Churchill considered the victory to prove the superiority of his race and nation; though the inept and chaotic leadership described by Ziegler certainly doesn't back this up.

This is an easily read well written military account. Those looking for background to Sudan's later history or a greater understanding of Britain's imperial role in Northern Africa will need to go elsewhere. If you're simply after an account of Omdurman there's probably no better single volume history.

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John Romer - A History of Ancient Egypt: Volume 2

The first volume of John Romer's history of Ancient Egypt is a brilliant examination of the rise of the Egyptian state from hunter-gatherer communities. So I was excited to read the follow up volume some four years later. Here Romer looks at more familiar periods, yet unlike the first volume this history covers the period when there are written records, on the monuments, tombs and papyrus remains. Some of these will be familiar to students of the period, but to the casual reader they offer fascinating insights into the lives of people in the pharaonic state.

It is sobering to realise that much of the grand building work of the Eygptians was done with the simplest of bronze age tools. That they could erect enormous Pyramids and build elaborate tombs, filling them with materials from around the Middle East, is because of the enormous surplus of grain that the Nile could provide. This enabled the Pharaohs to employ large numbers of workers, as well as build major trade networks. Both of these aspects are themes of Romer's books and its fascinating to see how we can trace these networks that stretch hundreds of miles away from the Nile.

But what is central to Romer's history is the Egyptian state and how its very nature was shaped by the world it arose from. Take his description of the workers that produced the Great Pyramid at Giza. It was

a vast product of the labours of large numbers of those small gangs who cuts its stones with integrity and care and set them as straight and true as the irrigation ditches in the Nile fields.

Those small-sized gangs, were working in state-wide coordinating and under a consistent and masterful direction. So whilst the rural nature of that workforce is apparent in the qualities of each and every stone they laid, so the firm and subtle manner of the pharaonic administration is equally apparent in the Great Pyramid's astonishing accuracy and consistency over long years of construction. This... had been a state whose culture had not been founded on brute force or notions of national boundaries, but whose identify had flowed outwards from the royal residence, the courtly rituals, its building yards and craftsmen's workshops.

In other words, this was a state that was very different from that imagined by film-makers in Hollywood which transferred the ideals of 20th century capitalism back three or four thousand years. Romer spends much of this book examining how we have viewed ancient Egypt through the lens of contemporary thought, and the book deals, to a certain extent on how our understanding has been transformed as Egyptology has itself been shaped and re-shaped.

One part of this, as noted in the quote above, is that Romer points out that the Ancient Egyptians had no concept of "Egypt". Nations meant nothing. So while this was a class society, based on exploitation, it wasn't a class society in the way we think of capitalism or European feudalism.

Writing about the military imagery on the tomb of Ankhtifi, a governor, nobleman and senior figure overseeing farming and religion under King Neferkare (approx 2200 BCE) Romer noes that

Rather than the generals leading conquering armies up and down the valley of the Nile... these images and texts are more likely to record the exploits of little bands of local militia patrolling the various regions of the lower Nile, maintaining, in the absence of central state control, the ancient pharaonic virtue of good order for their local populace.... the fearful links between war, nationhood and sovereignty..were not yet forged; those very concepts.. had no existence in that distant past. There are as many donkeys as soldiers drawn on the walls of Ankhtifi's tomb chapel... where fine food, civic welfare and the good life are presented as their owners' ambitions and accomplishments.

In other words, Ancient Egyptian society cannot be understood in terms of contemporary social relationships or culture. It has to be understood in its own context. This might seem obvious, but Romer shows how countless historians and archaeologists have made this mistake in the past, and continue to do so.

It is particularly important to understand this when looking at the things that the ancient Egyptians revered. For instance, they are know for their luxurious grave goods, expensive jewellery and so on.

Yet, this was "a society without money, in which nothing was counted as explicitly economic or political" and "the prime purpose of the acquisition of such goods was not to gain prestige or possessions in the modern manner".

To explain this, Romer looks at a treasure trove found buried  full of goods that had been imported from far away. The chests of treasure are

best seen as holding goods brought from regions far outside the orbit of the state and buried seed-like in the house of a court god, between the seen and unseen world - an act that had beautifully expressed a concept which is explicitly stated in later texts, that the domain of pharaoh encompasses all earthly things.

While Egypt was a class society, its rulers maintained their rule and their position by performing a real function for the mass of society - keeping things on track, organised and balanced. The production of material goods had real benefits for a minority, but this was not the driving force of society as a whole.

John Romer focuses on the nature of the Egyptian state, so those looking for a history of daily life in Ancient Egypt won't really find it here. Nor is this quite as readable as the first volume as there is much less of a historical narrative. Nevertheless together with volume one, this is an essential read that puts other works on the period in a very real context. I hope it isn't four years before the final volume arrives.

Related Reviews

Romer - A History of Ancient Egypt: From the First Farmers to the Great Pyramid
Romer - Ancient Lives: The Story of Pharaohs' Tombmakers

Basma Abdel Aziz - The Queue

**Spoilers**

This is one of the most extraordinary novels that I have read in many years. It is being favourably compared to Orwell's 1984 or Kafka's The Trial. Certainly there are many similarities with these works that depict the difficulties faced by individuals confronted by brutal authoritarian rule and faceless bureaucracy. But to simply see this novel as being a Kafkaesque nightmare of bureaucracy gone mad is, in my opinion, too miss its essential context. This is, of course, the Egyptian Revolution.

First published in 2013 and only recently translated here, the book fits the period after Mubarak had been overthrown and anticipates the fall of Morsi and the rise of el-Sisi. As such we get a novel depicting the country in a state of political and economic uncertainty, easily exploited by the new order.

Set in a nameless Middle Eastern country in the aftermath of the "Disgraceful Events" when protests and riots against the country's dictatorship were brutally suppressed. Immediately after these "events", a new, faceless authority "The Gate" appears and from it an endless stream of commands, decrees and laws are made. At first these seem relatively benign, but as the Gate imposes its will it becomes harder and harder to function without the right paperwork.

Then the Gate closes. And the story centres on those who end up queueing outside waiting for the Gate to open. In particular we follow those trying to help their friend, Yehya, who was injured during the Disgraceful Events, and who has a bullet lodged inside him. His friends struggle to get help from the doctors, who are themselves trapped by rules that prevent them assisting. The bureaucracy clamps down harder and harder, statements follow statements. "Bullets were used by the protesters, not the security forces" the Gate declares. "Bullets were not used at all", "Foreigners are to blame", "There was no Disgraceful Event".

Various characters in the Queue represent different forces in the Revolution. There's the religious activist, convinced that only a strict adherence to religion will prevent social decay. There's young women who are fighting sexism and harassment and trying to organise against the state, and there is a man who truly believes his cousin who died in the security forces was actually a hero. There's even a brilliant little discussion about the role of social media as an organising tool.

But behind all this is the imposing monolith of The Gate. As a metaphor for an authoritarian state it's perfect. But the brilliance of this novel isn't this idea alone, nor the depiction of the un-moving queue of increasingly desperate people waiting outside - though the descriptions of the interactions in the queue are wonderful. What is fantastic in the way the author shows how the authoritarian state serves only its interests, and how this destroys some people's illusions, makes some people give up hope and forces others to try and fight back.

Anne Alexander & Mostafa Bassiouny - Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers & the Egyptian Revolution

The overriding image that many people have of the Egyptian Revolution that began on January 25 2011 is of the thousands of people gathering in Cairo's Tahrir Square. This "Republic of Dreams" was indeed for many commentators the Egyptian Revolution. While Tahrir Square was inspiring, "uniting Muslim and Christian, secular and Islamist activists against Mubarak's regime", it is only part of the story, and in fact, not the most important part.

This important recent book discusses the crucial role of Egypt's enormous and powerful working class during the Revolution. Mubarak's fall came, not through the masses in the squares of the major cities, but through the strike wave that spread early in the revolution. That is not to belittle the mass demonstrations. Without those mass actions there would likely have been no strikes, but putting the workers at centre stage enables us to both understand the dynamics of the revolution, as well as the successes, so far, of the counter-revolution.

Anne Alexander and Mostafa Bassiouny lay out the 20th century history of Egypt, describing the growth of the working class and its victories and defeats. This history is important - the process that brought Mubarak to power, also helped shape a workers' movement that was effectively an appendage of the state. While there have been enormous changes to Egypt's industry and its working class, and the neoliberal era has seen many of these, industry remains central to the economy. The authors write that

the last thirty years have demonstrated that the industrial working class remains central to the strategy of accumulation pursued by the Egyptian ruling class in the neoliberal era. It is a working class that has been restructured, and suffered some heavy defeats in the process, but not a class that is in the process of disappearing.

It is also a class that has seen significant victories and, in the early years of the 21st century in reaction to the changes imposed by neoliberalism, as well as wider political questions such as the anti-war and pro-Palestinian movements began to flex its muscles. The authors note, for instance, the way that neoliberal "reforms" impacted on education helped to shape radical demands by teachers during and after the revolution.

Ministry of Education newly qualified teachers have found it difficult to obtain permanent contracts. Tens of thousands are employed in hourly paid work as supply teachers, or teach classes in public schools for no pay at all, in order to be allowed the chance to compete in giving private lessons to the same children after... fee-paying lessons are largely institutionalised and essentially compulsory... with the school administration and the Ministry of Education taking a cut of the profits.. the example of the teachers' strikes since the revolution - which consistently linked demands to improve teachers' pay and conditions to calls for the banning of private lessons- demonstrates that this process is not an insurmountable obstacle to collective action... in the process of taking collective action, the teachers transformed themselves from agents of the market into a powerful force leading the fight for an education system for all.

The fact that the existing unions were an extension of the state bureaucracy meant that as workers' struggles grew, new, independent unions sprang up. Often these were lead by activists who wanted new forms of organisation, free of the limits imposed by the state, lead by the rank and file with a leadership held accountable to the membership. The authors trace the growth of these important unions, noting however the difficulties in sustaining these models of work-place and industrial organisation when struggle subsided, or under the impact of the counter-revolution, or even the actions of the international NGO and union movement which helped to impose a western model on the movement.

"The Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions supports the demands
of the people's revolution and calls for a general strike of Egyptian workers,"
Photo by www.arabawy.org

The revolutionary process frequently led to those "drawn into the orbit of the workers' movement, adopting forms of collective action and organisation", such as fishermen, hospital doctors, tourist Nile boat operators and even mosque imams. One notable emergent union group, the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions formed in Tahrir Square, and the authors note that while "they formed only a small fraction of the huge crowds, activists from the tax collectors' union, with their banners and trademark blue baseball caps, were very visibly an organisation in the midst of a sea of individual protesters."

As the revolution subsided, the lack of independent political organisations of the working class meant that reformists of various shades were able to move to the revolution's head. The authors note the process by which this happened, and how revolutionary demands were first used and sidelined. In particular, the role of the Muslim Brotherhood is discussed in detail. Vague suggestions by Morsi that the MB would "improve the conditions of workers and peasants" led to a number of promises. But as the authors point out,

Careful reading of the policies of Morsi's 'Renaissance Project' revealed a different goal: the articulation of a neoliberal programme clothed in the rhetoric of reform.

It is this that brought the workers movement and wider revolutionary activists back into conflict with Morsi and his government. A key question was Tathir, the cleansing of the old system of Mubarak's corrupt bureaucrats and followers. Tathir from below in workplaces - the sacking of a Mubarak era manager, or the changing work place conditions, or temporary workers' control opened up an opportunity for workers to see themselves differently and to see a new way of organising the system. The authors give a number of impressive and inspiring examples of when and where this process began. But there was an emerging and growing contradiction, fueled by the lack of mass revolutionary, working class leadership

Participation in the revolution transformed millions of ordinary people from passive victims of history to its makers, but they state they confronted on 25 January 2011 remained essentially intact. Meanwhile the legitimacy of the largest former Islamist opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, had already been badly damaged by the failure to achieve meaningful political and social reforms.. .This deepening contradiction helps to explain why on 3 July 2013, the Armed Forces under the leadership of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi... was able to intervene decisively and turn the Muslim Brotherhood's crisis in the face of an explosion of popular anger to the advantage of the core institutions of Mubarak's state.

The revolution in Egypt has been setback. But the authors are also clear that it is not over. One of the most important gains has been that hundreds of thousands of people have engaged in a political and social process which has changed them. This echoes the experiences of those in some of history's greatest revolutionary movements. Like Russia in 1917 or Paris in 1871, the authors note that one of the most important experiences for Egyptians has been the way in a minority of workplaces workers experienced direct democratic control,

"Its organic expression in workplace struggles has largely been based on the idea that workers' leaders should be elected delegates, not representatives; it fuses executive and legislative authority and breaches the separation between political and social struggles enforced by bourgeois democracy"

The revolutionary movement in Egypt will rise again. A generation of workers learnt invaluable lessons between 2011 and 2013. But one lesson that we can all learn, is that revolutionary organisation must be built today. Alexander and Bassiouny finish with the importance of that organisation in Egypt, but for activists everywhere, the building of socialist organisation must remain an immediate task if we are to build on the movements that will continue to arise as capitalism tries to make ordinary people pay the price of bosses greed.

Kent Flannery & Joyce Marcus - The Creation of Inequality

Subtitled How Our Prehistoric Ancestors set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery and Empire this is a very important, and extremely well researched book that traces the development of human society from egalitarian hunter-gatherers to class divided, unequal societies like monarchies.

The authors argue that the first human societies where ones dominated by generosity, sharing and altruism. These societies also hand numerous internal checks to try and protect that egalitarian nature. For instance, both Eskimo and !Kung people have been shown to have used marked hunting arrows to determine who killed an animal. But the !Kung mixed up these arrows so no one really knew who had been the successful hunter. These two societies, and many other hunter-gatherer communities used ridicule and humour to downplay success and prevent anyone gaining a position above others. While successful hunters were cherished, they were expected to downplay their skills and share the fruits of their victories.

Flannery and Marcus have tried not to use studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers. Understanding that almost all of these groups are now changed by their contact with globalised capitalism, the authors instead have looked at records from the earliest encounters with hunter-gatherers. They then attempt to look at historical evidence for similar behaviour in the past. In fact, the greatest strength of this book is its rigorous attempt to find evidence for all aspects of the author's theories at different stages of human history and in different places.

As hunter-gatherers developed technology and skills, their social organisation developed as well. With the development of clan based societies, it was possible for inequality to appear. At first this was simply the difference between someone who had skills or experience over those who didn't. But with the rise of agriculture, the ability to store surplus food meant that "Big Men" could arise who could give others food. In time, some of these people, or even whole lineages could crystallise out into a wider class.

The authors then explore how these early unequal societies might become monarchies or other types of stratified groups, discussing how groups learn from each other, destroy each other, or even revert back to different social organisations.

This is a very important book, and I encourage everyone who has an interest in early human societies to read it. This review deliberately doesn't do the book, or the authors justice as I have written a more detailed and lengthier review for elsewhere.

My extended review of this book for the International Socialism Journal 140 can be read here.

Related Reviews

Lee - The !Kung San: Men, Women & Work in a Foraging Society
Stringer - Homo Britannicus
Leacock - Myths of Male Dominance
Engels - Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

John Romer - A History of Ancient Egypt: From the First Farmers to the Great Pyramid

The very idea of Ancient Egypt conjures up some obvious images; the pyramids and Sphinx in Giza, frescoes and carvings showing boats plying the Nile or impressive statues and grave goods. This is not surprising, as these monuments are both impressive and photogenic. Yet they make up only a small part of Egypt's ancient history, a culmination of thousands of years of life near the Nile and the history of the area continued long after the pyramids were built into the era of classical Greece and Rome.

John Romer's earlier books have looked at particularly aspects of ancient Egypt. In particularly I was impressed by his exploration of the daily life of a section of Egypt's more ordinary population, the tomb builders who worked in the Valley of the Kings. That book Ancient Lives included a detailed description of some extended strike action by the workers. But Romer's latest book takes on a far larger task, an account of the whole history of Ancient Egypt. He is well qualified to do this having spent many years excavating and studying the period and this, the first volume of two, is a wonderful book that will set the standards for writing about Egypt for a long time.

Romer begins his tale with the earliest of people who live in the area that we now think of as Egypt. We know a little about the hunter-gatherer nomads who lived in the area, but the real story begins with the farming communities that hunted, grew food and fished on the northern shores of the Faiyum Oasis, a few hundred miles west of modern Cairo. The climate then was different and one of the factors that shaped the eventual growth of the ancient population was a changing environment that helped force the earliest farmers to the banks of the Nile. The arid conditions of the Egyptian desert preserve the legacy of these farmers from perhaps 7000 years ago. When excavated their grain bins were found to not only to contain grain, so well preserved that curators tried to germinate them later, but also the tools and reed baskets had also survived. Thus begins the story of a people who transformed the Nile region using the most rudimentary of tools, yet produced stunning buildings, tombs and artworks. The pyramids after all, were made with bronze age technology.

At the heart of John Romers' story though, is the tale of the growth of the Egyptian State. It took many centuries before what we know as ancient Egypt came to exist. Romer takes pains to explain the neolithic revolution that led to farming becoming the dominant mode of production along the Nile. But he also argues that the particular nature of the Nile, the extreme fertility of the soil meant that those farmers could support a large non-agricultural work force at a very early point in history. Here-in lies the secret of the rapid growth of the Egyptian state, but also its ability to mobilise and sustain large numbers of workers in its monument building phase. During the building of the Great Pyramid, Romer estimates that a tenth of the working population were not working on the fields, but were engaged in building or providing the networks of exchange to support the pyramid builders.

Romer sees the development of this state as central to the development of the wider Egyptian world. While discussing King Narmer, the earliest Pharaoh who united Upper and Lower Egypt, Romer writes that:

"the formation of Narmer's state had provided the foundations of a truly orignal order for [a] society that would last for millennia and which, as Pharaoh's Egypt, became a wonder of the ancient world.... a commonly used term like 'kingdom' appears to be appropriate. Yet the Pharaonic state stands at the beginning of all that. It was created from the ground up, without the benefit of an exemplar and, indeed, without the aid of writing or the presence of a national faith."

In this development of the state, the King or Pharaoh comes to represent the very state itself. Indeed,

"when ancient Egyptian scribes referred to Pharaoh's kingdom in non-literary texts, they used terms like 'residence' - that is the royal residence - to denote the controlling centre of the networks of trade and traffic, tithing and taxing, that operated in the regions of the lower Nile."

Kings like Narmer were often portrayed as warlike and violent. Early Egyptian history certainly was violent, many of the kings of this period, including Narmer, where buried with hundreds of murdered people around them. They are often depicted in the act of vanquishing an enemy, yet much of the migration and spread of the people northwards from the sites where the early Egyptian state developed was marked by peaceful co-existence with those who had come from the Levant. Extensive trade networks developed and cultural ideas, such as design of buildings and farming were taken up and shared by communities from different areas. I liked for instance that in the midst of one enormous Naqqadrian cemetery lies a grave of an individual buried in a traditional way from the Middle East.

All this could only be supported by the agricultural produce from the Nile, and the earliest technological innovations were the irrigation channels and pools built along the banks to trap the annual flood. Such methods are still used in other parts of Africa and one reason we know something about ancient farming patterns is that they lasted until very recent times. The ancient state was never far from the farming and the water that allowed the desert kingdom to flourish. This is why on a giant mace head, archaeologists have found an image of "a man... wearing what would become the White Crown of Upper Egypt, in the act of opening a water channel with the stroke of a farmer's adze... it is improbable that this unique object.... does not reflect something of the age in which it had been made."

In the language of Historical Materialism, the immense surplus that could be obtained from agricultural on the banks of the Nile (sometimes two or three crops a year) meant that the forces of production developed rapidly. Within a few centuries of the early Naqqadrian state and the rule of Narmer, the enormous pyramids were being built. This required a complex and developed state to organise the networks of trade and distribution of food, as well as the movement of stone and metal from quarries and mines. Egypt then as an agricultural state and Romer argues convincingly that the ancient cities were not places as we might imagine them today, but places of residence of the state's workers. Those who oversaw the production process.

Towards the end of the book, Romer laments  that we know very little about these ancient people.

"Our real knowledge of these ancient people hardly extends beyond their pyramids, their tomb chapels and names and titularies. We know nothing, for example, of those who carried [Queen] Hetep-heres in her palanquin, and though we possess her very intestines, we know nothing of the woman or the queen at all."

It is for this reason that much of the this book is dominated by discussions of architecture, pottery or stonework. Yet this is never boring, Romer has tried to draw out a history of people based on what they did to shape the world around them in order to survive. As he aptly points out, the images they have left are less a depiction of what is taking place and more a depiction of the state itself. As the ancient Egyptian state matured, its monuments and buildings also evolved. The very act of building the enormous pyramids also shaped the state and created the conditions of further building works. Our vision of ancient Egypt is thus in turn a reflection of what the ancient state itself did. As Romer concludes, "the greater part of what survives from early Egypt is exactly what those ancient people took pains to store and thus preserve within the dryness of the desert."

John Romers' book is a unique and magnificent read. It is accessible and well written, though if I have one minor criticism it is that the pictures seem old and of low-quality, a few higher resolution images of the objects being described would have been welcome. But this is a minor complaint about what is an essentially materialist account of the rise of the ancient Egyptian state. I recommend it, and look forward to the companion volume with great anticipation.

Related Reviews

John Romer - Ancient Lives; The Story of the Pharaohs' Tombmakers
Shaw - Ancient Egypt - A Very Short Introduction
Verner - The Pyramids: Their Archaeology and History
Kurth - The Temple of Edfu - A guide by an Ancient Egyptian Priest

Naguib Mahfouz - Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth

Novels set in the ancient world often suffer because the author feels obliged to describe the alien surroundings. We end up reading all about the buildings, the food, the sounds to the great detriment of the story.

Naguib Mahfouz's short novel of ancient Egypt is an exception. For Mahfouz, the story is the most important part and there are only the vaguest of descriptions. Ancient Egypt here comes across to us through the voices, ideas and religions of its inhabitants rather than an authors attempt to evoke the world.

But it is not just the style that makes this a unique book. The story is a series of interviews with prominent ancient Egyptians, all of whom are linked - through marriage, servitude, or blood to the Pharaoh Akhenaten. Historical Akhenaten, the father of King Tutankhamen, forcibly changed religious practises, pushing aside the old polytheistic beliefs and encouraging worship of a single god, Aten (or Ra). This caused enormous social and political problems and with Akhenaten's death Egypt only gradually returned to more normal religious practise. Much of the construction projects associated with Akhenaten were dismantled.

The novel centres on the turmoil created by Akhenaten's beliefs, in particular his visions of a single god. As he encourages the worship of this "One God", he preaches love over violence and revenge. But Egypt's bureaucratic and religious structures are too closely linked with the old ways and economic crisis, military invasion and rebellion threaten the whole order.

Akhenaten; Dweller in Truth centres on the series of interviews conducted by the scribe Meriamun with members of Akhenaten's court to attempt to understand what took place. Twenty years after the events, many of those involved find their stories shaped by their own contemporary interests, or a wish to portray themselves in a more favourable light. Conflicting accounts, rumour and propaganda come together to muddy the true story and the reader is left to sort out in their own mind, what really happened. This is a clever novel, its brevity hides a complex and powerful tale. A good book to while away a cold-autumn evening.

Related Reviews

Graves - I, Claudius
Graves - Claudius the God

Fernand Braudel - The Mediterranean in the Ancient World

Fernand Braudel is one of those historians whose work looms large over his area of specialty. Braudel however was a historian whose work knows few limits and his influence is enormous. References to his writings and ideas crop up regularly in books and their bibliographies. He is also, rightly, associated with a new wave of historical teaching, helping to sweep clear the stuffy corridors of European academia, though he was himself pushed to the fringes by those who he challenged, spending some years teaching in South America.

This book is one that is probably his most accessible. Certainly, it is shorter than his three volume Capitalism and Material Life 1400-1800 which might be considered his most important work.

For Braudel, the Mediterranean Sea was one of the key factors in the development of human civilisation. In a latter chapter in this book, while writing of the Roman Empire, Braudel says that "The Mediterranean did indeed operate as a mechanism tending to bring together the countries scattered round its immense perimeter. But the sea did not itself spin the web in which it was captured alive." He then continues;

"But the very fact that the Mediterranean, while in thrall to Rome, was still a living entity with a healthy pulse of its own, meant that all its cultural goods continued to circulate, mingling ideas and beliefs, and bringing about a uniformity in material civilization which has left traces still visible today."

In other words, Braudel's thesis is that the Sea permitted, through trade and the exchange of ideas, widely diverse cultures and communities to mix, mingle and come together. On this is based he argues, the triumph of the Roman Empire, the strength of Ancient Greece and the spread of civilisation, ideas and experience from East to West.

It would take a naive student of history to argue against this. There is no doubt that the Mediterranean permitted travel and communication over enormous distances, in a way that wasn't possible in other parts of the ancient world. However, I think that Braudel uses this to substitute for any other attempt to understand human society. He seems at odds when trying to understand the dynamics of particular civilisations. He makes, for instance, no attempt to explain the underlying dynamics of particular economies. So he discusses Ancient Greece and barely mentions slavery, even though when mentioning Ancient Greek currency he quotes the value of a "woman skilled at doing many tasks" as being four oxen.

This isn't a superficial problem. It means that Braudel cannot get to grips with changing dynamics of civilisation. The Roman Empire peaked at a much larger than say the Greek city states, not because they were more vicious Imperialists, but because the economic dynamic of their society was more efficient at extracting surplus value from slaves. Occasionally the author gets close to a deeper understanding. His discussion on why their was no industrial revolution in the ancient world, despite their understanding of technology and science, lays the blame in an economic system - slavery - that meant innovation was unnecessary. This is an argument that owes much to the Marxist ideas of historical change, but it seems that Braudel is consciously trying to find a explanation of history that avoids Marxism, or perhaps is cherry picking ideas in an attempt to create a new historical method.

As a result of these problems, Braudel can be immensely frustrating. Here's a comment he makes on the Greek city states, which were he says, "a strange little world, very different from the medieval town in western Europe. The latter was quite separate from the countryside; it was self-contained". Even under modern capitalism, cities are still linked to the countryside. Medieval towns were even more closer to rural areas. Economically they were very dependent on peasants coming into urban areas to sell produce. In fact towns grew up around the market, and were not cutting themselves off.

Braudel is quick to see economic systems in terms of a simplistic understanding of economic dynamics. He declares the city of Carthage as "capitalist" because it is based on trade. Again a superficial explanation of a more complex dynamic.

The sheer scope of Braudel's history here is impressive. Yet it is necessarily superficial. He covers pre-class societies up to the fall of Ancient Rome. As a result I found that his prose was at times dull. The author crams detail in, leaving the reader lost and breathless. It is almost like Braudel is making up for historical superficiality through declaring his immense personal knowledge a particular time.

Of course, the book is dated, but this is not a criticism of Braudel. He clearly bases his work on some of the most up to date writings and ideas available. Today though, some of this seems very dated. Does anyone today believe that the existence of "megalithic monuments" in places as diverse and distant as northern Europe, Thailand, India and Madagascar imply a "civilization of huge stones... propagated by sea"?

While Braudel's work is clearly of importance, it seems weak and superficial to me. At points I found the writing a real struggle, though perhaps this is a problem of translation rather than writing. His book is less an explanation of the importance of the Mediterranean Sea and more a collection of interesting facts about different societies. His attempts to gather this into a grand narrative are unconvincing.

Rabab El-Mahdi & Philip Marfleet - Egypt: The Moment of Change

Revolutions these days seem two a penny. Mass strikes and protests did for Tunisia's dictator Ben Ali in what seemed like a few days. Egypt's Mubarak held on for longer, but as the mass of people in Cairo's Tahrir Square refused to give up in the face of the state's repressive force and strikes broke out across the country, even he couldn't remain in power. As I write this, Libya's Colonel Gadaffi appears to only have the most brutal of methods left to secure his position.

The authors of this collection of essay's published in 2009 are all political activists, if not revolutionary socialists. But they cannot have foreseen the events that have shaken the Middle East. The book though, is not dated by recent events. If anything it is even more relevant and I would argue, it is a crucial read for all those trying to understand the Egypt Revolution. Revolution is a process - and what happens is dependent on what has gone before. Egypt: the Moment of Change is about what has gone before.

Each chapter of the book looks at a particular aspect of Egypt's history and political/economic situation. All of them come together to give a unique picture of why the revolution broke out and who the major forces are. Egypt as a society is dominated by one key economic factor - the continued attempts to open up the economy to the free market. Pushed, over the past two decades by a variety of "economic advisers", who mostly hailed from Washington, the Egyptian state has been quick to sell off assets - state companies, land and so on, to outside investors. Such profiteers have helped drive up the cost of living for ordinary people, making the very richer even richer, and the majority of the people poorer.

Here is the contradiction that is so visible to the visitor - high security compounds and shopping malls - which allow in the rich, but deny access to the poor. It's why Egypt has experienced a variety of strikes and protests over the years. The corruption, the rising price of food, lack of access to jobs and drinking water combine to create a society bubbling over with indignation.

Various forces have sought to push this process forward and hold it back. The Trade Union movement up until 2011 was very much one of state unions. These existed to close down workers action, prevent strikes and form deals with the bosses. Union officials were little more than hired functionaries of the state, and many did very well out of this relationship. Various democracy organisations have exploded onto the streets over the years. The  Kifaya movement (meaning Enough) in 2004 did a lot to prove the state was not all powerful. Many brave men and women suffered indignation, brutality, torture and sexual assault because they dared to call for change. The chapter on these movements by Rabab El-Mahdi is particularly interesting because it shows how much the global movement against the Iraq War and in support of the Palestinian people helped to encourage things.

But economic factors aren't the only reason for this uprising. This repressive state, with its allegiance to the US and it's failure to stand up against oppression in the wider Middle East, in particular the question of the Palestinians and the US War on Terror, has been part of generating wider discontent and radical ideas.

The repression that Mubarak's state forces imposed on those prepared to stand up for something different is horrific. But it certainly wasn't the result of a few rotten apples. Aida Seif El-Dawla's chapter on state repression puts torture as an endemic and central part of the repressive process - on that exists and is supported at every level. Combined with the huge amounts of corruption amongst state functionaries and this leads to enormous brutality, often with little or no evidence.

But this state force effectively melted away in Tahrir Square. The police proved ineffectual at stopping a real mass movement. The army, itself a bloated and influential body, swollen on US "aid" dollars, were also unable to make a difference. But this must in part be due to the close links between a mass conscript army and the ordinary people of Egypt.

The struggles for land, against repressive taxation and corrupt landlords, the mass strikes that have shaken Egypt over the last five years have a common root. Those who argue today that Mubarak's fall was simply to do with the use of twitter or facebook, misunderstand the social processes that developed over years, involving many different actors, which culminated in the overthrow of the dictator. Mubarak's downfall is not the end of the story. The Egyptian Revolution has a longer road to travel. The struggle for justice and democracy, or access to water and decent food, for proper wages and the right to organise at work, will not be won by dispensation from a benevolent army council - it will have to be fought for. The Egyptian people have shown over the years that they are up to this task. We can wish them well and be inspired for our own struggles for justice.

This short book is an invaluable resource for all those wanting to get to the bottom of the process. It comes highly recommended and should be required reading. I hope they write a follow-up which details the revolutionary year of 2011.

Further Reading

A more detailed review from Socialist Review is here.

Socialist Worker (UK) continues to have unrivalled coverage and analysis from Egypt and the wider Middle Eastern struggles. Editor Judith Orr's eyewitness accounts were inspirational. Further analysis pieces will no doubt follow, though this article by Alex Callinicos on whether the revolution was a coup or not, is particularly useful.

For more on the mass strike movement prior to 2011 this article from the IS Journal by one of the contributors to Egypt: The Moment of Change, is very useful. An interview with an Egyptian socialist one the strike movement from 2007 is also interesting, in particular because it looks briefly at the relationship between socialists and the Muslim Brotherhood in various struggles.