Bringing down tyranny

Bourgeois ascendency and the new forms of production based on financial capital and wage labour are historically linked to the Protestant movement and its Puritan offshoots (1). In reaction to ostentatious spending by the Roman Church and the aristocracy, the nascent ideology preached modest frugality. Instead of squandering incomes on vainglorious consumption, they should be productively invested in trade and industry, for the greater glory of God and the useful employment of His creatures. The Protestant burgher revolution was crushed in most of continental Europe, but it acquired political power in Switzerland, Holland, England and the North American colonies.

The overthrow of feudal structures and privileges and the profanation of royal absolutism that preceded capitalist society were inspired, nurtured and comforted by intense readings of the old and new biblical testaments. It was a fundamental surge that went back to the past to find a model for the future. And it began with the Holy Scriptures because these were the first idiomatic texts to be printed in large numbers. They were the nation’s common reference. The writings of ancient Athens and Rome were only accessible to the public some time later, and were instrumental in the second wave of bourgeois dominion, notably in France.

The move from the absolute rule of men in arms to the absolute rule of money protected by men in arms cannot be a peaceful passage. The military class with its aristocratic heritage repugns being the servant of shopkeepers. Confronting the rule of might with the rule of law takes convictions as much as courage. And opposing the established order needs the certainty of faith. This is especially true for those who are able to overcome the arms of power by virtue of their vast numbers, the working class. The rising class of commercial and industrial entrepreneurs used their religious beliefs, sincere or not, to galvanise the masses in their support. The Gospel message of equality and sacrifice could bring victory. But wherever it did, it was replaced by the biblical struggles of prophets and kings. And though “Cromwell and the English people had borrowed for their bourgeois revolution the language, passions and illusions of the Old Testament, when the actual goal had been reached, when the bourgeois transformation of English society had been accomplished, Locke drove out Habakkuk.”(2)

In Egypt to-day, the military aristocracy – land owners and army – still hold power. They are the anachronistic remnants of successive Ottoman and European imperial dominations that constrained most of the Arab speaking world to being mere spectators of historic social evolution. Facing them are the forces of a new order that has mobilised rural and urban workers with a return to the fundamentals of faith: humility and solidarity. The Moslem Brothers could have moved a step on the path to subordinating sheer might to the laws of capitalist production. But instead of taking power, they had it thrust on them unexpectedly and have lost it in the same manner. They had neither the means nor the time to subjugate the hand that holds the gun. And, for the time being, the passage from Hanbal to Averroes is compromised.

1. Max Weber of course, but also Marx.

2. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

And a detailed analysis of recent events in Egypt by Esam Al-Amin : http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/19/the-grand-scam-spinning-egypts-military-coup/