I wrote this in several parts for the Egypt thread a while ago but I think it is better placed here. It's a bit long but there you go
The onion analogy. The dialectics of the Egyptian revolution. part 1
I have been thinking the past few days about the significance of Mubarak's removal and his replacement by a military government.
In particular the claim that the fall of Mubarak is merely window dressing and means nothing of substance has changed. Merely the replacement of one dictator with another.
This view however, is a a-historical and static view of the Egyptian revolution, an event which can only be understood, not as an event but as an ongoing and fluid PROCESS.
Think of the Egyptian state as an onion, an entity of many layers, and wrapped around itself to protect and pursue and legitimise its interests. Every layer serves a multiple purpose, it plays its role in protecting the onion as a whole, it plays the part of projecting its own power, and fundamentally it serves to protect the layer beneath from being exposed.
What we are witnessing is the stripping away of several of those layers and in the process the revealing of previously hidden layers beneath.
What do those layers consist of and why are they important
The first is the fiction of civilian government and in particular the presidency. This layer serves the dual purpose of first focussing the anger of the masses on an INDIVIDUAL rather than a regime. Mubarak must go, and in doing so serves to protect and to HIDE the multiple layers beneath. The Egyptian state knows that if popular anger grows enough they can sacrifice that layer, without sacrificing the whole onion. But they resist and they fight precisely because peeling back this layer reveals the fresh skin beneath. The layers below are no longer protected, they stand naked and exposed and are now directly answerable to the peoples wrath.
The layer below consists of the civil security apparatus and this serves the purpose of focussing anger on the civilian apparatus and therefore protecting both the layers representing civilian institutional apparatus and crucially the military beneath. We saw this very clearly when the military appeared on the streets after the defeat of the police and were cheered. As the masses confront the state it is quickly exposed. It directly confronts the masses and attempts to crush the movement as the regime desperately attempts to prevent the first layer from being peeled back. (we could argue in fact that the apparatus of civilian control is in fact the first layer, either way it falls in the process of the uprising to remove the first) It is peeled back , the police are defeated, and it falls in the process of peeling back the the first. In doing so it is exposing the next layer.
The next layer constitutes the whole fiction of constitutional and institutional rule, the constitution, the executive and parliamentary branches, the judiciary, the media, the whole fiction of civilian rule. This layer is still intact, though damaged. On defeating the police the masses burnt down the NDP offices and other symbols of NDP rule but it now faces the real of danger of peeling away entirely which explains the focus on constitutional niceties etc and the fight to peel it back is crucial because below it is the real fruit of the onion, the raw power of the military. Military rule means the desperate attempt to prevent the layer representing the entire regime from peeling away.
The first and second falls, the third is under attack and then the next is exposed, The military appear on the streets and move to protect the burning remnants of the layer above. They are now exposed. They are forced to allow the layers above to fall, they are now directly answerable to the peoples demands. No longer can they hide in the shadows, no longer stand back as the stones fly or the clubs fall.. They take power, the pressure of the revolution has destroyed the fictions that previously protected and cushioned their power from being directly answerable to the masses. Now there is nothing betweeen them and the peoples attempts to bring down the whole regime.They are now directly responsible to the masses. It is no longer the clubs of the civil security that break heads it is their bayonets and tanks. They are now naked. The demands of the revolution are now directed not at Mubarak, not at the police, not at the TV stations or the newspapers, not at the NDP or parliament or concerned with constitutional tinkering. The demands of the masses are now directed at them. And these are demands they simply cannot meet.
Every concession has been dragged from them. The skins of the onion have been peeled away one by one, no, not peeled, torn away at the cost of lives and bloodand yet still the demands that caused this revolution are not met. The fiction so carefully laid of "the army and people are one" is now being tested. The military can't meet those demands. The fire of the revolution is now stripping away this fiction. Round two will see a strengthened mass movement and a weakened state with no more onion skins to sacrifice.
At the core, protected by the military (indeed in many cases consisting of the military) is the vast business and economic interests served by the regime. The military's huge ownership of factories and land, the billionaire business interests whose wealth and power they owe to the regime. Now they hide behind soldiers with bayonets and tanks and guns, peering nervously over their shoulders directly into the eyes of their class enemy. Without the military they are now naked and defenceless before the people and a social revolution becomes a possibility as the movement becomes a movement of a class aware of itself, in itself, aware of its enemy and aware of its own power to sweep them into the dustbin of history.
This is why Mubarak's fall is a victory, not a total victory of course, the onion is still intact though weakened and minus its many layers, but the victory is in the successful stripping away of the onions skin, layer by layer and the exposing of the layers beneath
To consume the whole onion however the masses need the weapons to replace it. This is the realm of social revolution and to tear away the next layer there is a desperate need for leadership. This is the task facing the movement now, to grow from a protest movement to a movement capable of taking power.
