The Long Revolution of the Global South. Samir Amin
protests in Egypt. Here are the salient points:
The disposal of public assets must be subject to systematic investigation. Detailed studies—the equivalent of good audits—are in fact available for many of these transactions and for the prices corresponding to the value of specified assets. Given that the “purchasers” of these assets did not pay these prices, ownership of these acquired assets must be legally transferred, following a court-ordered audit, to public limited companies, with the state as a shareholder equal to the difference between the actual value of the assets and the prices paid by the buyers. The principle should be applicable to everyone, whether these buyers are Egyptian, Arab, or foreigners.
The law must set the minimum wage (this was in 2012) at the level of 1,200 LE per month (or 155 euros at the current exchange rate, the equivalent purchasing power of 400 euros). This rate is lower than in many countries with a GDP per capita comparable to that of Egypt. The minimum wage must be linked to a sliding scale and the trade unions made responsible for monitoring its implementation. It will be applied to all activities of the public and private sectors.
Given that the beneficiaries of freedom of pricing, that is, the private sector that dominates the Egyptian economy, have already decided to set their prices closer to those of competing imports, the measure can be implemented and will only have the effect of reducing the margins of monopoly rents. This readjustment does not threaten the balance of public accounts, bearing in mind the savings and the new tax legislation proposed below. Adopting a maximum wage, set at 15 times the minimum wage, will reinforce the proposals made by the movements involved.
Workers’ rights—conditions of employment and loss of employment, working conditions, insurance plans for health/unemployment/pensions—must involve major three-way consultations between trade unions, employers, and the state. Independent trade unions established through the struggles of the last ten years should be given legal recognition, including the right to strike (still “illegal” in current legislation). A “survival benefit” should be set up for the unemployed, for which the amount, the conditions of access, and the funding should be subject to negotiations between the unions and the state.
The enormous subsidies granted to private monopolies by the budget must be abolished. Here again, detailed studies undertaken in these areas demonstrate that the abolition of these advantages would not threaten the profitability of the activities in question, but only reduce their monopoly profits.
New tax legislation must be adopted, based on progressive taxation for individuals and a 25 percent increase in the taxation rate for profits of businesses employing more than 20 workers. The extremely generous tax exemptions granted to Arab and foreign monopolies must be abolished. Taxation of small and medium businesses, currently often much heavier (!), should be lowered. The proposed rates for the upper personal income brackets, 35 percent, remains small in comparison with other nations.
A precise calculation was carried out, demonstrating that all of the measures proposed above would not only make it possible to eliminate the current deficit (for 2009–2010), but even generate a surplus. The surplus would be used to increase public spending on education, health, and public housing subsidies. The reconstruction of a public social sector in these areas does not imply discriminatory measures against private activities of the same kind.
Credit must be placed under the control of the Central Bank. The extravagant credit terms granted to the monopolies must be eliminated, and credit expanded for active small businesses or ones that could be created as a result. Detailed studies have been conducted in all these artisanal, industrial, transport, and service activities. It has been demonstrated that candidates (particularly among unemployed graduates) who are willing and interested in taking the initiative in creating businesses and employment do exist.
Concerning the agrarian question, the current demand of the movement is simply the adoption of laws that make it more difficult to evict farmers who are unable to pay the rents demanded of them, as well as to expropriate indebted small-scale property owners. In particular, the movement advocates the return to legislation setting the maximum farm rents (deregulated through successive agrarian reform laws). Organizations of progressive agronomists have produced detailed and well-argued projects for stimulating the development of small-scale farmers. These include improved irrigation methods (drip systems, for example), choice of rich and intensive crops (legumes and fruits), upstream freedom from state control for input and credit suppliers, and downstream freedom for the creation of marketing cooperatives combined with consumer cooperatives. But increased communication between these agronomist organizations and small-scale farmers needs to be established. The legalization of actual farmers’ organizations and their federation at provincial and national levels should help move them in this direction.
The plan of immediate action summarized in the preceding paragraphs would certainly begin to stimulate healthy and viable economic growth. The argument advanced by its liberal detractors—that it would ruin any hope of obtaining new capital investment from foreign sources—does not make sense. The experiences of Egypt and other countries, particularly in Africa, who have agreed to comply fully with the strictures of liberalism and have abandoned their own autonomous development plans, show that this does not “attract” foreign capital despite their uncontrolled opening (actually, precisely because of it). Foreign capitalists are simply content to raid the resources of the countries concerned, supported by the comprador state and crony capitalists. By contrast, emergent countries that actively implement national development projects offer real possibilities to foreign investors who are willing to become part of these national projects, where they accept the restrictions imposed by the national state and the consequent adjustment of their profits to reasonable rates.
Mohamed Morsi’s government, composed exclusively of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, immediately proclaimed its unconditional support for all the principles of liberalism, took steps to hasten implementation of those principles, and, to this end, deployed all the means of repression inherited from the fallen regime. Public awareness that there was no change ultimately led to the gigantic movement of June 30, 2013, which lies behind the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood. The leading aspects of the program of immediate demands that I have presented here focus only on the economic and social parts of the challenge. The movement also discusses its political aspects: the proposed constitution, democratic and social rights, and the essential affirmation of a “citizens’ state” (dawla al muwatana) as opposed to the theocratic state (dawla al gamaa al islamiya) of the Muslim Brotherhood.
(THIS TEXT WAS DRAFTED BY ME IN OCTOBER 2012 AND DISTRIBUTED WIDELY, IN THE WIDELY READ DAILY SHOROUK, AMONG OTHERS.)
Algeria: The Impact of the April 17, 2014 Elections
The two experiences of Algeria and Egypt have many characteristics in common. The ruling class in the two countries, built on the cadres of Boumediennism and Nasserism, respectively, was fundamentally similar. Their projects were identical and, consequently, should be described in the same way. They were genuinely national and popular projects (and not demagogic populist), although not very democratic. It is not important that each described itself as “socialist,” which they were not and could not be. In the two cases, the achievements were significant, to the point that they truly transformed the society from top to bottom for better and not for worse. But also, in both countries, these achievements rapidly reached the limitations of what they could deliver and, sinking into their (identical) internal contradictions, could not prepare the radicalization and democratization required to extend those achievements. Yet, beyond these similarities, the differences should be pointed out.
Algerian society had been subjected to major destructive attacks because of colonization. The state and power of the pre-colonial aristocracy had been eradicated. The new Algerian society that was born from the reconquest of independence had nothing in common with that of the pre-colonial era. It had become a plebeian society, characterized by a very strong aspiration to equality. The Algerian war of liberation had produced, naturally, a social and ideological radicalization. This aspiration to equality is not found, with the same force, anywhere else in the Arab world—not in the Maghreb (just think about the strength of the age-old tradition of respect for the monarchy in Morocco!) or the Mashreq. By contrast, modern Egypt was built from the beginning (starting