Reading Marx in Cairo

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Asia Times

""Every giant presupposes a dwarf ... Caesar the hero leaves behind him the play-acting Octavianus." - Karl Marx

When Egypt's new strongman, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, called on his supporters to show their solidarity with the army on Friday (July 26), the 57th anniversary of nationalization of the Suez Canal by the charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser, this author's instinct reaction was to re-read Karl Marx's 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon for the sake of historical analogy. [1]

In Marx's book we find a timeless grasp of farcical repetitions in history, by comparing the French coup of December 1851 by a nephew of the great Napoleon who, even though he lacked the minutest genius of his uncle, called himself Emperor Napoleon III. From Marx's point of view, the 1851 coup was a caricature of Napoleon's coup of 1799, above all due to the "grotesque mediocrity" of the nephew.

In comparison, Sisi, whose ruthless snipers massacred dozens of demonstrators in Cairo and other cities in cold blood on Friday, is not even a pale replica of the pan-Arabist Nasser who ended the 72-year British domination of Egypt and thus became a hero of post-World War II anti-colonialism. Rather, Sisi increasingly resembles another Augusto Pinochet, much like what Marx's comrade-in arms, Friedrich Engles, wrote of Napoleon III as "the little corporal and his band of marshals".

Since President Mohamed Morsi's overthrow on July 3, Egypt's new emperor Sisi has descended the path of brutal dictators, showing little or no mercy to his opponents, and giving clumsy speeches about "confronting terrorism" as a lame excuse to unleash his rein of terror on a large section of the population that opposes the coup.

Ironically, Sisi wants to have it both ways: to earn legitimacy by linking himself with Nasser's proud legacy while at the same time attacking the deposed president Morsi for doing precisely what Nasser did in the mid-1950s: that is, promulgating a new constitution that largely monopolized power in his authoritarian hands......

This pseudo-Nasser, all consumed by enemies within, is operating as a force of social disunity and discord, thus guaranteeing a doomed result. The secular nationalist and liberal forces that back him are bound to lose legitimacy by mere association with Cairo's new Pinochet, whose call for "national unity" is now drowned in the Nile. At this stage, what the future holds for Egypt is unclear, yet Sisi's place along the list of farcical leaders in Marx's narrative is already a sealed fate. "Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle," Marx wrote, and the same caricature is apt in the circumstances of the latest edition of thinly disguised military rule in Egypt."