While it can be faulted, as with all social upheavals, the 1952 Revolution in Egypt advanced values the Egyptian people continue to revere and uphold, writes Salah Eissa* There must be a reason for the rather extravagant commemoration of the 1952 Revolution this year. In fact, there are probably several reasons, all political. With parliamentary elections approaching, the ruling party is keen to reaffirm its genealogical descent from this revolution. Some of its rivals have seized upon the occasion to refute this and charge that the ruling party has turned its back on the revolution and its goals and, therefore, does not merit the people's vote. Other opposition forces have gone so far as to claim that Egypt is in the grips of social and economic circumstances similar to those that prevailed just prior to the revolution and that another revolution is immanent. A third camp among the opposition has taken a stance somewhere in-between. It agrees that the NDP is a direct descendent of the revolution and holds that this pedigree is sufficient cause for another revolution that would eliminate all vestiges of the assault the 1952 Revolution waged on the people's rights and freedoms. Politics has a habit of spoiling things, including history. As the debate raged between the champions of the July Revolution and its detractors, the various participants gave themselves the right to remove this revolution -- as a historical event -- from its chronological and spatial context, to strip it of its surrounding international and regional balances and circumstances, and even to discard the domestic social conditions that prevailed at the time. Then they accorded themselves the further right to suppress some facts and magnify other details, and in general to turn history into a propaganda tool in the hope of winning cheap victories that would translate themselves into People's Assembly seats. Anyone who believes that Egypt should have remained in a state of revolution for 58 years, from 23 July 1952 to 23 July 2010 is blind to a fact of history. Revolutions are sudden upheavals in a society's normal life; they overturn an existing order and soon become the status quo. The 1952 Revolution was no exception. It overturned the monarchy and then became the ruling order with the promulgation of the 1956 Constitution whose fundamental underpinnings governed all successive constitutions, including the present one, and assured that the executive occupied a unique and totally dominant position over all other authorities. No less deluded are those who imagine that the 1952 Revolution can be cloned, in Egypt or elsewhere. With history, as in rivers, the same water cannot flow beneath a bridge twice. Evolution and change are the rule. In order to reproduce the 1952 Revolution, we would have to reproduce the world as it stood in 1952, the ideas and movements that were current at the time, the military bases that were still there, and the social forces and political parties and organisations that were contending with one another. Not only would we have to make sure that they all were aligned the same way, we would also have to clone the revolutionary leaders exactly as they were on the eve of 23 July some 58 years ago. Furthermore, we would have to recreate the same concerns, problems and circumstances, which means that to restage the 1952 Revolution today would not be a step forward, but rather a huge step backward. The real value of the July Revolution lies in the fact that it succeeded in formulating a theory for national liberation that added to the 1882 and 1919 revolutions that preceded it. It was a revolution tailored to its times in a bipolar world order, and to the needs of the people it championed. It honed the skill of capitalising on the contradictions between the superpowers instead of its predecessors' tactic of exploiting rifts in the colonialist front. It also seized upon the divide between the capitalist and socialist camps to assert itself as part of a third bloc consisting of national liberation movements around the world. Its vision of national liberation was not limited to the evacuation of foreign armies from Egypt. It embraced the rejection of outside intervention in domestic affairs and foreign pacts at the expense of the national will, the expulsion of foreign monopolies and the Egyptianisation of the economy, and the fortification of independence through development plans aimed at enhancing the capacities of the people, expanding public services, elevating the disadvantaged classes and promoting a higher level of social justice. As it moved to attain these aims, the July Revolution had to deal with some very powerful enemies at home and abroad. These grew more and more ferocious and determined as the revolution began to extend its intellectual, political and moral influence beyond its borders, establishing itself as a pillar of the global independence movement and one of the most instrumental forces in ending direct colonial occupation in the rest of the Arab world, Africa, Asia and Latin America. It evolved into one of the foremost revolutionary phenomena of the 20th century. While it won many of its battles and thwarted many conspiracies, it could not be expected to win them all or to beat all conspirators. It would also have to pay an exorbitant price for some its positions. But in the final analysis it contributed to creating and building a nation, an Arab world and an international environment that were different and better than before. Along the way, it committed mistakes that led to crisis, losses that could have been avoided, and needless conflicts with allies that sapped our strength and theirs to the benefit of our mutual enemy. It was also only natural that the many foreign and domestic conspiracies would engender a form of paranoia and an obsession with security that could be exploited by the security agencies to strengthen their power and control. The consequent dissemination of a police-state climate deprived the revolution of the ability to benefit from well- intentioned criticism, and it prevented the large corps of political elites who supported the aims of the revolution from safeguarding these aims. Such problems are the fate of all revolutions. In fact, the July Revolution may have had less than the average share of the negative phenomena associated with the regimes that emerged in Third World countries that had newly won their independence. But nor should this be our only criteria. We would not pass judgement on the French Revolution solely on the basis of the guillotine and "the terror" and ignore the storming of the Bastille, the National Assembly, and the beacon of "liberty, fraternity and equality" that that revolution gave the world. Nor would we judge the Mohammed Ali era on the basis of the massacre of the Mamelukes in the Citadel while ignoring his role in laying the foundations for modern Egypt. If we insisted upon such narrow criteria we might as well strike "revolution" from the historical lexicon. Times have changed. The July Revolution is nearing its 60th anniversary and it has become a historical phenomenon than can be neither called to life again nor cloned. But surely that should not be the point, because the lasting value of revolutions resides not in their concrete accomplishments, which are ephemeral, but in the values they establish. The July Revolution set four essential values that still remain alive: - National independence and the autonomy of the national will, and the refusal to concede any territory, to enter into any alliance that could undermine the national will, and to bow to pressures that are against the interests of the Egyptian people. - The right of the citizen to climb from the lowest to the highest rung of the social scale on the basis of his or her own efforts, talents and intelligence, rather than on the basis of gender or social or regional origins. - The commitment on the part of the state to guarantee a minimal standard of living for the poor and limited income classes. - The Egyptian people are part of the Arab nation. The governments that have succeeded one another for nearly six decades have all abided by these four essential values, even if they did so in different ways, as determined by the circumstances of their times or the exigencies and pressures they faced. These are the values the Egyptian people continue to cling to, and are the basis on which they judge their government and will continue to judge their governments for a long time to come. * The writer is editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper Al-Qahera .
