John B. Judis: Stop Calling It Egypt’s Revolution … because the country hasn’t yet had one
[John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.]
The massive protests that forced Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s departure have been widely described as a revolution. And that’s fine. If there is an Internet revolution, a Reagan revolution, and even an Obama revolution, then there has certainly been an Egyptian revolution. But there is another meaning of revolution that applies specifically to events like the French, Russian, or Chinese Revolutions. In this sense of the word, Egypt has not yet had a revolution; and the success of the protests will depend ultimately on whether it does have one. To add a further complication, whether Egypt does have a revolution could depend on American foreign policy.
Revolutions with a capital “R” don’t consist merely in replacing one set of governing officials with another, but in the transformation of the state itself—in the destruction and replacement of the older basis of state power. Revolutions produce a new form of government, and a new relationship between the government and the different classes and groups in a country. The French Revolution, for instance, spelled the end of France’s monarchy and the feudal class that sustained it.
What is the basis of state power? Max Weber (citing Leon Trotsky’s analysis of the Russian Revolution) wrote in his 1919 essay, “Politics as a Vocation,” that a “state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” That allows a government in the last resort to use armed force to defend itself against its foes. Revolutions have begun as large sections of a country’s police and armed forces go over to the side of the strikers or demonstrators; but they have sometimes devolved into civil war. In State and Revolution, Lenin wrote of “smashing the state” as a prerequisite of revolution; he didn’t mean creating anarchy; but rather seizing and dismantling the old regime’s source of power and replacing it with a new one.
In Egypt in 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser and a group of mid-level officers staged a coup that became a true revolution...
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The massive protests that forced Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s departure have been widely described as a revolution. And that’s fine. If there is an Internet revolution, a Reagan revolution, and even an Obama revolution, then there has certainly been an Egyptian revolution. But there is another meaning of revolution that applies specifically to events like the French, Russian, or Chinese Revolutions. In this sense of the word, Egypt has not yet had a revolution; and the success of the protests will depend ultimately on whether it does have one. To add a further complication, whether Egypt does have a revolution could depend on American foreign policy.
Revolutions with a capital “R” don’t consist merely in replacing one set of governing officials with another, but in the transformation of the state itself—in the destruction and replacement of the older basis of state power. Revolutions produce a new form of government, and a new relationship between the government and the different classes and groups in a country. The French Revolution, for instance, spelled the end of France’s monarchy and the feudal class that sustained it.
What is the basis of state power? Max Weber (citing Leon Trotsky’s analysis of the Russian Revolution) wrote in his 1919 essay, “Politics as a Vocation,” that a “state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” That allows a government in the last resort to use armed force to defend itself against its foes. Revolutions have begun as large sections of a country’s police and armed forces go over to the side of the strikers or demonstrators; but they have sometimes devolved into civil war. In State and Revolution, Lenin wrote of “smashing the state” as a prerequisite of revolution; he didn’t mean creating anarchy; but rather seizing and dismantling the old regime’s source of power and replacing it with a new one.
In Egypt in 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser and a group of mid-level officers staged a coup that became a true revolution...