Book review: Old regimes and the future of the Egyptian revolution

Khalil Kalfat shares with Ahram Online insights from the book by Tocqueville on the revolution

Al-Nizam Al-Qadim wal-Thawra Al-Ferenseya (The Old Regime and the French Revolution) byAlexis de Tocqueville, translated by Khalil Kalfat, Cairo: National Centre for Translation, 2010
The National Centre for Translation's publication of The Old Regime and the French Revolution, originally written by Alexis de Tocqueville and translated to Arabic by Khalil Kalfat, comes at a time when the urgent questions about revolutions and their definition, contexts and results are in debate. Tocqueville's book was originally written 60 years after the French revolution of 1789. It shows how impossible it is for anyone to foresee revolutions in general whatever they say about social and political conditions heading for them.
Khalil Kalfat is a left-wing activist as well as a literary critic; he is a writer and political thinker besides his knowledge of languages and many translations, including Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro and The Psychiatrist as well as Borges. He wrote analytical books besides, on the Asian production model, Arab nationalism, and the Palestinian crisis; his 1982 book The Palestinian Crisis, for some, was seen as a blow to the Palestinian resistance.
Kalfat finds Tocqueville's book relevant to the Arab world despite the fundamental difference in the historical context between the two revolutions. In the introduction Tocqueville explains, "The book I present now isn't at all a history of the French revolution, for this history is written in greater ways than I would ever think of rewriting it; but rather a study of that revolution." The book is more a study of the old regime than an account of the revolution as such. The three volumes start with the nature of the revolution itself, but the second describes the physical features of that regime, and the last discusses why the revolution happened in France and no other western European country.
Tocqueville presents a series of questions in the first section: What is the true subject of the revolution? What is its unique form? Why exactly did it happen? What did it achieve? He refutes contradictory judgments, explaining that the subject was not destroying Christian authority or weakening political power, nor was it a political revolution, but rather took the form of religious revolutions, judging by its thought and the principles it preached. But what the revolution really did was to complete a long path started long before, which would have continued without it but only through a very long and gradual process, considering what the old regime had actually achieved.
The second section with its 12 subsections details the "physical" aspects, with details about the nature of the old regime, which the revolution sought to free from the restrictions and shackles of the monarchy and feudalism, reducing its role to that of overseeing a capitalist society. Tocqueville here researches the older French society to try and underpin the differences in the sequence of events between France and the rest of Europe.
According to Tocqueville, the old regime does not comprise social conditions, but rather the crisis in then; not the feudalist or aristocratic society, but a late era of these when they are torn by contradictions. Here the civil system is separate from the political regime, and civil inequality(the remains of aristocracy and feudalism) from political equality (everyone submits to the king). On this basis the revolution started in France because it had already been started under the title of the Old Regime, meaning that "the old regime" actually represented the first revolution before the revolution. The title represents the period of centralisation of authority, from the time of Louis XIII (1610-1643) to that of Louis XVI (1774-1791), which is a relatively short period.
Contextualising the Egyptian Revolution
Kalfat compares the historical sequence of the French political revolution (1789, 1830,1848) and that of the Egyptian revolution of January 2011. He tracks the outcomes of political revolution in the context of social revolution, despite all the variation and particularities. The revolution will remove the barriers in the way of capitalist transformation, opening closed doors for the development and establishment of capitalist civilisation. Dictatorship will however start from top: this the age of terrorism, invasion of other countries and all forms of oppression; the dream of equality and freedom will disappear.
In Kalfat's own words:
The historical context of our Egyptian revolution is quite different, for it is more similar to third world revolutions and their coups, which were eventually adopted by the people, not so much a social revolution. Egypt, like many other previously colonised countries, had started out since early stages of development in a large cage of population revolution without production revolution, never turning to capitalism but continuing as backyard for global capitalism. This led to the observed dependency despite the independent façade maintained by international law. The struggle, therefore, is between this popular political revolution on the on hand, and this dependency with its local associations on the other; between the powers of democracy, secularism, civilisation and the deprived classes, and the counterrevolution expressed through state institutions, political Islam and the rich class, with international capitalism led by the USA a well as the Arab backwardness led by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the powers of political Islam whether the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis or the Sufis. This revolution is thus facing a heavy battle for which it may not be ready but through which it might have the chance to grow.
Despite the fact that the road to historical evolution that enables true independence and catching up with the capitalist civilisation is not present in our revolution since it is not a social revolution, there is, however, an only hope for democracy from below, fast growing and able to battle in a hit-and-run context for the rights and freedoms of people. There is no escaping the fear of a new dictatorship, and the old regime regrouping without Mubarak or his leaders. But between the hopes and fears there is a mere shade, and the key to this revolution's success is to continue the struggle, using all forms available for revolutionary legitimacy against the counterrevolution with all its institutions and sectors.