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Book Review: Brecht De Smet, Gramsci on Tahrir: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Egypt

The revolutionary events of late 2010 in Tunisia not only reinvigorated the mass emancipatory politics in the Arab world but also inspired social movements all around the globe. For many, particularly on the Left, the Arab Spring – the term often used for these revolutionary waves – was not wishful thinking of the possibility of a permanent revolution. Rather, it signified a real possibility of a transition from political to social emancipation by the popular mass movements. In reality, however, these mass uprisings have led to either devastating civil wars or the restoration of the old ruling classes. Brecht De Smet’s Gramsci on Tahrir is an endeavour to understand the dynamics of the revolution and restoration in Egypt by deploying Gramsci’s concepts. The book is organised into two parts: ‘On the Subject of Revolution’ and ‘Gramsci in Egypt’. The first part is a theoretical discussion where concepts such as permanent revolution, passive revolution and Caesarism are explored. Rather than presenting these concepts schematically and logically, the author allows an organic emergence of the concepts through an investigation of the constitution of capitalism in Europe. To avoid being Eurocentric, De Smet argues that a dialectical deployment rather than ‘quotation-mongering’ of Gramsci’s concepts provides ‘conceptual threads that weave together a new narrative, which engages with problems relevant to our time and place’ (p. 3) as in the case of the Egyptian revolution. The second part, comprising five chapters, scrutinises the history of Egypt from the nineteenth century to 2015, linking its historical trajectory to the expansion of capitalism as the world-historical process in order to analyse the January 25 Revolution. After dealing with Egypt’s subordination to British Imperialism during the nineteenth and the early twentieth century and Nasserism as a form of Caesarism, the recent revolution is interpreted as a mass mobilisation against the global neoliberal offensive. It is argued that the inability of the Egyptian working class to establish its hegemony over the revolution due to the lack of a directive centre precipitated the consolidation of the counterrevolution in a Caesarist form under the leadership of the Commander-in-Chief, el-Sisi. This is undoubtedly one of the most interesting and provocative analyses of the Egyptian revolution, documenting its complexity and dynamics in a convincing way. The book is certainly a worthwhile read due to the fact that the author makes Gramsci’s concepts relevant to the understanding of our era in a comprehensible way.