Workers World, Vol. 13, No. 10
The wholesale purge of cabinet ministers and hundreds, if not thousands, of lower-ranking government officials by UAR President Sadat unquestionably heralds a very sharp turn to the right. The depth of this turn cannot at this moment be accurately determined, but that it will have profound significance can scarcely be denied. The ill-concealed delight with which the capitalist press here greeted the new turn in Egyptian affairs is one clue to its real meaning.
What has occurred in the last few days in Egypt is nothing less than a coup d’etat carried out under cover of mass arrests to “prevent a coup.” The coup came in what now appears to be two very definite stages. The first stage was the ouster of Ali Sabry, long regarded as the focal point of leftist opposition and pro-Soviet leanings in the government. What invested his ouster with enormous political significance was that it came practically on the eve of Secretary of State Rogers’ first visit to the Egyptian capital.
It was as though Sadat had sent a signal to the Secretary of State indicating a turn in the foreign policy of the Egyptian government. Of course, all this might be properly regarded as a mere coincidence were it not for what followed next. The second stage of the coup was the purge of virtually all the important cabinet ministers (except for the foreign minister). That this second event took place two days after Rogers’ second visit to Cairo, can be regarded as a coincidence only by the most naïve and credulous.
This is not to say that Washington managed the whole affair. But there is scarcely a capitalist newspaper in America which has failed to express satisfaction with the outcome of the struggle in the UAR. The only concern in Washington and on Wall Street at the moment is that the Sadat group may have isolated itself so much from the masses, and possibly from the military, that it is unable to reach the kind of accommodation with the U.S. which only strong, massive support can guarantee. Indeed, Sadat’s ascendency over his rivals may be short-lived and the purges may have so weakened his social and political support that he will be unable to effectively carry out any fundamental change and will have to coast along for a time, veering a little to the left now and then while pursuing at the most opportune moment the shift to the rights.
Sadat’s coup is the logical and inevitable outcome of the tragic suppression of the heroic Palestinian struggle of last September. The events of last September in Jordan marked a turning point in the struggle of the Arab people. The defeat of the Palestinians was a blow to all of the revolutionary elements in the Arab world. It simultaneously revived all the rightist elements in the Middle East. The defeat of every revolutionary movement brings in its wake inevitable reaction in all the surrounding areas. This was first shown in Syria, later in the Sudan.
What has happened in Egypt is the culmination of the series of events which had their immediate origin in the “peace” maneuvers launched by Nixon and Rogers a year ago and which evidently found favor in Moscow and also in Cairo. This so-called “political settlement” idea, so carefully cultivated in Washington and Moscow, and approved by all the conservative and reactionary forces in the bourgeois governments of the Middle East, had as its principle objective the strangulation of the Palestinian guerrilla movement.
Alarmed by this giant conspiracy to destroy any hope of ever regaining their homeland, the Palestinian guerrillas launched some of the most spectacular moves calculated to dramatize and situation of the Palestinian people and the imminent danger of their hopes being dashed by the conspiracy of the so-called super-powers who were hell-bent on wiping out this popular resistance movement. It was during these crucial days that King Hussein, with the help of U.S. tanks and planes, launched a massive assault on the Palestinian guerrilla movement and well-nigh drowned it in blood.
All of the bourgeois Arab governments, with the exception of an initial Syrian tank foray, sat on their hands while Hussein and his mercenaries literally wiped out thousands upon thousands of Palestinian people. It was this victory of U.S.-Jordanian reaction which paved the way for the Sadat coup. Had the guerrilla movement been successful, had the Arab masses been rallied to the military defense of the focal point of the revolutionary struggle in the Arab world, had the Soviet Union offered revolutionary support to the Palestinian guerrillas instead of treacherous deals with Washington, the Sadat coup could not have taken place.
Of course, this is not to say that the guerrilla movement of the Palestinian people is finished. It has suffered a heavy defeat, but like the heroic workers and peasants of Russia in 1905, and like the Chinese Red Army in 1934, the Palestinian guerrillas have had their dress rehearsal for the revolution; now what they face is the long march to Yenan.
Sadat’s coup may ultimately have the same significance for the Egyptian masses as the September days have had for the Palestinian people. Sadat will be unable to solve a single fundamental question which faces the Egyptian masses. His coup will encourage the imperialists to become more aggressive and the Israeli puppet regime will be stimulated to further adventures rather than to return the captured territory which it holds as a result of the 1967 imperialist aggression against the Arab peoples.
On the other hand, in spite of the pronounced turn to the right, there is always the outside possibility that a section of the nationalist bourgeoisie could still assert themselves somehow, even in the new setting. Some years ago, when Ben Bella was ousted in Algeria, it appeared there would be a full-scale counterrevolution. But as it turned out, there was only a temporary shift to the right without a real qualitative change. It is just possible that this may happen in Egypt. But it is only one of the variants of development.
Sadat’s coup will certainly destroy the myth of “Arab socialism.” The revolution which overthrew Farouk, ousted the British and brought Nasser to power was a very great event for the entire Arab world and ushered in a whole series of revolutionary developments in that part of the world. It sounded the death knell of open colonialist on the Arabian peninsula. This revolution, however, was a political revolution as distinguished from a social revolution.
A political revolution changes the form of class rule, whereas a social revolution wrests power from one class and hands it over to another class. The Nasser revolution brought in its wake significant social reforms and cut the claws of the landed aristocracy, confiscating some of the landed feudal estates. But it left the basic class relations intact. The bourgeoisie remained in power. The workers and peasants continued to be exploited.
The industrialization which followed that revolution fattened the bourgeoisie, made the workers and peasants more numerous but did little to change their basic conditions of life. Improvements over conditions under the previous regime were remarkable, of course, but the exploitation of the workers and peasants continued at an accelerated pace under the same social class.
The nationalist bourgeoisie has a two-fold character. On the one hand, it is interested in ridding the country of foreign domination. On the other hand, it is a possessing class interested in the exploitation of the masses and as such has an interest in maintaining close collaboration with the imperialist bourgeoisie. The nationalist bourgeoisie is torn by an insoluble contradiction. On the one hand, it wants to fight imperialism; on the other hand, it wants to continue to exploit the masses at home just as much as the foreign imperialists want to.
In the struggle against the foreign bourgeoisie, the national bourgeoisie dons the cloak of anti-imperialism and socialism. The Arab Socialist Union, the only legal political party in Egypt, calls itself socialist but is in reality (and always has been) the fundamental political organization of the Egyptian bourgeoisie. Just as the Congress Party of India calls itself socialist but is in reality the organization of the most substantial section of the Indian bourgeoisie, so it is with the Arab Socialist Union.
The historical lesson revealed by the transition from Nasser to Sadat illustrates the limitations of the nationalist bourgeoisie in a formerly colonial country in its struggle against imperialism. This same lesson was learned in the case of Sukarno in Indonesia and in a considerable number of underdeveloped countries in Asia and Africa where nationalist leaders have run the spectrum from “anti-imperialist” all the way to becoming outright puppets of the most brutal repression of the native people – the Syngman Rhees, the Diems, and that classical example, Chiang Kai-shek.
The nationalist bourgeoisie is incapable of subordinating its class interests in exploiting and robbing the mass of the population to the struggle against imperialism. The nationalist bourgeoisie is constantly torn by a thousand inner contradictions arising from the fact that it is a possessing class interested in private property and exploitation. Now and then, it throws up leaders who, for a time, put up a struggle against imperialism. But more often than not, the nationalist bourgeoisie tends to compromise with the imperialists, to capitulate and to downright surrender.
Only the urban workers and peasants and the enlightened urban and rural petty bourgeoisie led by a Marxist-Leninist party can consistently fight against imperialism. Only they can bring a proletarian socialist revolution which puts an end to imperialism.
Last updated: 11 May 2026