Egypt's Paralyzed Revolution

...According to the official line, it had always been understood that he would serve only briefly, that his was a government of planning to be followed by one of execution...

...The very process by which this law was passed marked an important event in the Mohieddin administration...

...But it would be wrong to assume that the asu has played only a negative role in Egypt's politics...

...As such programs must, Sabry's has now crashed too: but not before the asu again gained some political benefits as the defender of the masses against the bureaucracy...

...In the last 18 months the cost of living has increased approximately 25 per cent, but salaries and wages have been largely frozen...

...With it becoming increasingly difficult to transfer money abroad, Egyptian pounds have begun to move into private investments in large office and apartment buildings (and into new boutiques opened by European ladies and black marketeers in the elegant shopping sections of Cairo and Alexandria...

...Without the development of community systems to reorient popular thinking about family planning, not to mention the social problems, the Revolution is not going to get very far...

...Successive governments have failed to work out a viable relationship between Nasser's Revolutionary leadership and the management of the economy...

...The Revolution must engender a radical skepticism about existing assumptions and patterns of social conduct...

...Improved public services requiring additional taxes could also seriously affect its financial position...

...The quality of medical care for the masses remains appallingly low by American standards, but the increasing number of rural and urban slum health centers is providing improved treatment for lower classes...

...While he has not succeeded at what seems virtually impossible where the people have so little sense of community, he has at least exhibited an ability for failing with a flair...

...Assembling technical leaders from the government and economic sectors in a series of three meetings in the fall of 1965, he also gave special attention to the suggestions of managers of socialized factories on ways to remove antiquated controls...

...Although this pleasant explanation probably saved face for him among the less informed masses, it convinced few...

...The leadership seems to be complying with this...

...Instead, for the purposes of public consumption and its own self-support, the Revolution has fallen back on the belief that Egypt's fundamental economic and political problems can be solved by the same techniques used to build the Aswan High Dam or to run the Suez Canal...

...and a restiveness among the middle and lower classes as shortages of consumer commodities continue and prices rise...

...His government had hardly begun long-range planning...

...But Nasser apparently believed Mohieddin should be replaced by either Soliman, the "hero of the Aswan High Dam," or Mahmud Younes, the "hero of the Suez Canal...

...Abdul Moneim El Kais-suny, who served as Vice Premier of Financial and Economic Affairs in the Mohieddin regime and has held important economic posts since 1954, was not reappointed...

...Soliman's report also underlined the social disintegration attending this economic stagnation: a developing malaise among the managers of public enterprises...

...Under Sabry, on the other hand, the asu has shown a sympathy for the total destruction of the old and the total rebuilding of the new...

...All the familiar devices of Egyptian rural exploitation were there, including the issue of blank promissory notes to the peasants...

...Soli-man's belated policy statement to the nation last December, for example, merely restated the myriad problems confronting the country: idling production in socialized enterprises...

...But his "engineering" solutions are not likely to gain Egypt the hard currency it needs to feed its booming population and meet even the limited expectations of the Revolution...

...a cynicism among the younger civil servants...

...The Soliman government says it wants to continue the program, but so far the efforts of the two regimes have not achieved broad acceptance for either method...

...From the outset, Mohieddin was harassed by its left-wing, particularly by Aly Sabry, his predecessor as Prime Minister who had left him a listless, problem-ridden country that was almost without foreign exchange...

...Indeed, the history of Mohieddin's regime, and Soliman's performance to date, are testimony to the fact that the Revolutionary leadership is split, floundering and weary...

...The tragedy in Egypt is that after almost 15 years, the Revolution is still unable to recognize all this?or, put another way, to define itself...

...Late last spring Sabry managed to use the murder of a peasant in the Delta to press a major attack on "agrarian feudalists," and he uncovered some really unsavory exploitations of peasants by old land-holding families whose lands were long ago supposed to be divided up under the Revolution's socialization laws...

...Though Soliman has tried to create the illusion of a "government of execution," his recommendations to date have consisted of a few tinkering devices, such as lengthening the working day in factories where there is thought to be some hope for the production of marketable goods...

...While both are outstanding engineering feats, they are achievements in overcoming exigent problems rather than planning for future progress...

...It is uncertain, though, whether the middle class was more impressed by the scandals uncovered or by the wave of property confiscations that followed...

...Sabry was assigned the task of turning the asu into a major political force, marking the Junta's third attempt to form a grass-roots political movement...

...Immediately upon assuming office, on October 2, 1965, he made it clear that he intended to put the economy on a more rational basis, and that he looked upon the market as a neutral, scientific mechanism that was a perfectly proper socialist control device...

...In international affairs Nasser has at times demonstrated skill and courage, but here too the solutions and explanations he proffers are oversimplified...

...and it is certainly understandable that he tried...

...The orientation of the Soliman government is clearly reflected in its political appointments...

...Only a typical Egyptian unwillingness to be completely committed to any social movement seems to keep the asu from becoming a very real threat to the status quo...

...ployment in public and private industries...

...The previous government of Zakaria Mo-hieddin was dismissed before it was allowed to come to grips with the issue...

...Though still seriously limited, primary level education is now available to about 80 per cent of all children between the ages of five and eleven...

...and a demoralization of the civil service caused by the flood of 20,000 new university graduates a year into a bureaucracy that still thinks and is organized for a rural society...

...At the time that Mohieddin was considering an administrative reform emphasizing greater autonomy for managers of state enterprises, Sabry forced through the inner circles of the Revolutionary command (where Mohieddin also sat) a crash program aimed at "cleaning up the mess" in the Port of Alexandria, at Cairo Airport, and in the quarantine and licensing services...

...Under these circumstances, it is quite possible that the government will turn to the large amounts of concealed liquid assets (perhaps by calling in all currency and replacing it at a reduced ratio in the case of large sums) to start the next stage of the elusive Egyptian Plan...

...Short-run cash needs are at present being met by what are considered to be stringest economies, but these measures do not begin to touch the extraordinarily wasteful practices of the Egyptian bureaucracy...

...Another vivid example of the Revolution's paralysis is the plight of the government's family-planning drive, pushed strongly under Mohieddin, which has sought to encourage the use of oral contraceptives or intra-uterine devices...

...A sensitive politician, he has a fine tactical sense for transforming into important events what might otherwise pass for trivia...

...Long-run prospects for significant foreign investment aid are slight because of the government's unwillingness to undertake an overt or concealed devaluation of the Egyptian pound, despite the urging of both the International Monetary Fund and Russian specialists...

...There are times, indeed, when it seems that Egypt has no friends anywhere...

...It has made the operation of the Suez Canal and of the building of the Aswan High Dam the central symbols of the Revolution...

...It was the prime mover behind a major attempt to force the sprawling bureaucracy to improve its efficiency and attitude toward the public...

...Out of seven new ministerial appointees, five are former military men, indicating that the Revolutionary leadership has decided not to open top political posts to civilians...

...So far, though, no successor has been named...

...Moreover, Dr...

...The First Five-Year Plan was financed in large part by the nationalization of foreign and quasi-foreign businesses in Cairo and Alexandria...

...Sabry, recognizing this strong peasant resistance, has given little assistance to the drive...

...At the end of last December, the Soliman government announced a complete reorganization of the program and retirement of its ineffective administrator...

...The weird presence of government-imported luxury goods from France and England which the upper class buys with cold cash, but which sells way above the average monthly wages of workers and even middle-level bureaucrats, has not helped this situation...

...The bureaucracy remains untouched by the Revolution, and its infiltration by the military has isolated it still more from the dynamic currents of the society...

...The final version of the bill was far less bureaucratic than the original, with the changes representing the work of a number of influential members on the Assembly's Economics Committee and of advisors from the intellectual community...

...The Revolutionists' original plan, in 1952, was to serve briefly, clean up the corruption, then go back to the barracks...

...Opening up channels for talent to move from the lower classes into higher echelons is a threat to the middle class' revolutionary gains...

...It must encourage people to become civic-minded, and persuade them that innovation must be accepted as a continuing challenge if their society is indeed to be marked by "sufficiency and justice...

...The middle class would be content to have the leadership adopt a static conception of order emphasizing "efficiency...

...Mohieddin's encouragement of real Assembly discussion and his toleration of serious revisions in a major piece of legislation were significant incentives to men who have been working to create a role of respectable independence for the Assembly within the existing political framework...

...As one observer said in describing Nasser's decision, "The President tossed a coin and it came up tails...

...And while the press boasts of a long outdated United Nations' report that found Egypt's prices among the lowest in the world, supposedly making it a prime tourist attraction, there are recurring shortages of everything from soap to spare parts for manufacturing...

...high unemployment in some sectors with underemPhillip Dorn, a previous contributor, is a free-lance writer who specializes in Egyptian affairs...

...With no due process, a special Commission on Agrarian Feudalists, headed by Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer (still clearly President Nasser's fair-haired boy) proceeded to encourage further exposures of feudalist activity and to punish by dispossession...

...In a dynamic world economy marked by political revolutions throughout the underdeveloped nations, the penalty for domestic economic and political stagnation is internal chaos...

...the failure to develop foreign markets...

...By refusing to open up the government to fresh ideas from the progressive elements in Egyptian society, Nasser may well have sealed the fate of his Revolution...

...Ironically, until now the asu, itself one of the most bureaucratic institutions in Egypt, has been a close ally of the old-time administrative bureaucracy...

...And where they would require middle class youth to move from the comforts of Cairo and Alexandria and work in the Delta and Nile Valley villages, they are also a threat to social status...

...If the books were now closed on the history of the Revolution, however, the major change in Egypt since 1952 would be the dispossession and exile of thousands of semi-Egyptians????Greeks, Italians, and especially Jews????who were the core of the financial and commercial community...

...But to turn to the international arena, as he has repeatedly done since early September, is simply to avoid the pressing internal problems...

...After almost five months in office, Prime Minister Mohammed Sidky Soliman has managed to do little more than order new studies of the already intensively-studied economy, and confirm the failure of Egypt's leaders to establish a program for future development...

...He ended or sharply reduced the large government subsidies of food and household items, and curbed the heavy spending of the urban middle- and lower-middle classes by restricting consumer credit and increasing taxes...

...But while Mohieddin's government was less nihilistic than those of his predecessors, it made little progress toward a coherent political and economic system and was far from uninhibited in the effort...

...It is uncertain whether the government can rise above the demands of political antagonists within the medical profession and appoint an energetic leader capable of changing the attitudes in the villages...

...In fact, the next stage of the much talked about Egyptian Economic Plan????supposed to have been started over a year ago, and at one time intended as a Seven-Year Plan????has yet to be produced...

...And the reliance on the technicians only serves to point up the inability to create new institutions for social and economic advancement...

...As a result, he had become the symbolic leader of the younger generation of technocrats and intellectuals who were beginning to prick out a path toward a more open economy...

...For these younger men, too Mo-hieddin had been a breath of fresh air...

...In the Egyptian context, this means destroying the encrusted traditions of the bureaucracy, and beyond that, of society itself...

...The Middle East, of course, remains a world of intrigue, lending some truth to Nasser's suspicion that the Arab world is not united in its stand against Israel...

...Both are hostile to the new generation of free-enterprise managers, and both believe Egypt should be moved under tight controls toward what Nasser calls a condition of "sufficiency and justice...

...These people and their Coptic associates (ethnic Egyptians who have largely remained, but are increasingly tempted to emigrate) have been replaced by civil servants, military and the new manager class in socialized enterprises...

...There is an enormous amount of "hidden" money in Egypt, despite the government's efforts to direct it toward "socially-useful" enterprises...

...There seemed a good chance that techniques would be developed for bringing Egypt's superb fruits, vegetables, and flowers into European markets...

...And it even seemed possible that Egypt would somehow free itself of such hair-brain schemes as the Nasr (Victory) automobile works????a futile effort to gain hard currency by trying to sell sloppily built Fiats to rich Middle Easterners who are perfectly happy with their Mercedes-Benz or Rolls Royces...

...Since the publication of the 1962 National Charter (a set of basic Revolutionary principles), it had been widely assumed that the government would make no further moves to nationalize large segments of the economy...

...One of the first top-drawer intellectuals to be recruited for public service by the Revolutionary leadership, Kaissuny was the most important link between the intellectual community and the ruling Junta...

...So far the Revolution is middle class, Arab and Moslem...

...They developed into a continuing government when the web of cabal politics and the lack of alternatives forced them to remain in control...

...Mohieddin, it is reported, tried twice to resign before finally succeeding...

...Ultimately, however, the asu and the bureaucracy must part company...

...For the present Nasser has demonstrated that he can control the inner group of the Revolutionary leadership, playing off the politically-oriented asu against the economically-oriented, free-enterprise minded conservatives...

...But it is this same middle class that is now putting pressure on the Revolutionary leaders to slow down the process of social change...

...As the work of the Amer Commission continues, the upper-class has become concerned about the possibility of the Commission moving against their large real estate holdings in the big cities...

...Egypt's Revolution, like any revolution, should not be judged so much by its immediate record of redressing social injustices as by whether or not it has established itself as the permanent vehicle for a continuing orderly process of modernization...

...But the Alexandria wholesale fish trade is currently being nationalized, and last summer Nasser announced that the state would take over most of the construction industry and all of the wholesale sector...

...By assigning the prosecution of the feudalists to the Amer Commission, it should be noted, Nasser neatly undercut Sabry's drive, yet not before the asu had reaped a good amount of political capital...

...And it is revealing of Egypt's present politics that for close to a week after he took office, the press devoted more space to Sabry and his new duties as Secre tary General of the Arab Socialist Union (asu) than to the new Prime Minister...

...The masses were amused, but the middle class was enlightened and a bit shocked...

...The bureaucracy, in particular its older agencies, is already overwhelmed by university graduates drawing pay and competing for promotion under a "full employment" policy, but performing no useful function...

...Now fear is spreading that the government's next step will be to appropriate large private buildings...

...It was under Mohieddin, too, that thinking about quality rather than quantity production began...

...The government is hard pressed for cash to meet immediate operating expenses and the Revolutionary leadership has nearly exhausted its easily accessible stock of capital resources for investment...

...In the spring of 1966, the National Assembly passed a new Corporations Law which, with the Yugoslav experience clearly in mind, granted plant managers much greater managerial autonomy and promised further advances in the relationship between managers and central control authorities...

...Afew important changes have been achieved since they came to power in such areas as education and social services, and these in turn have led to some tapping of previously untouched peasant and worker talent...

...Managers were encouraged to explore methods of integrating Egyptian productive capacity into the world pattern...

...Nor has the decision to dump on to the domestic market thousands of home-assembled refrigerators, TV sets, and other consumer appliances intended for the dollar-rich sheiks of Kuwait, concealed Cairo's inability to find a market for them...

...The Egyptian Revolution, he says, is threatened by "bad men" in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Jordan as well as by the big imperialists and Israel...

...Discreet in his initiatives, he nonetheless attempted to infuse Arab Socialism with economic realism and managerial imagination...