While sitting idly in jury duty over the past couple of days, it began to dawn on me that events in Egypt provide an excellent case study for evaluation of different hypotheses I’ve seen advanced on the Marxism list and other left-oriented listservs over the past decade or so. (Please excuse the way I have phrased this. This is a function of serving as a sounding board for my wife as she pursued her dissertation for the better part of this same period.)
These are the points that I will be covering in this post in the light of ongoing events in Egypt: 1. Does economic crisis lead to revolutionary upsurges? Why did Egypt erupt now rather than at some other time in the past 30 years or so? What is the relationship between mass suffering and mass protest? 2. Mass action versus bold “exemplary” actions. What is the difference between the battle over Tahrir Square and breaking Starbucks windows? 3. What will lead to fascist bids for power? What conditions could have led to the attack on Tahrir Square, which comes straight of the Nazi Party’s cookbook? Why are such attacks so unlikely in the U.S. now? 4. Was the left wrong to emphasize political Islam as the most likely expression of radical politics in the Middle East? 5. Given the contacts between key activists in Egypt and the American State Department, can we assume that the U.S. is orchestrating events from behind the scenes as was the case in “color revolutions” of the recent past? 6. Does Egypt need a revolutionary party? If so, how can it be built? full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/reflections-on-the-egyptian-revolution/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
