Selma Botman The Rise of Egyptian Communism 1939-1970. Syracuse University Press. Syracuse, NY, 1988

(International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol 22, No.3 August 1990).

The early 1920's saw the establishment of communist movements in Egypt, Palestine, and Lebanon. Of the three movements, the history of Egyptian communism has been the subject of numerous studies in Arabic, many by authors who had been associated with one or another of the many Marxist groups which made up the communist movement in Egypt.

Despite this long history, and despite the fact that sectors of the Egyptian working class had begun to organise into trade unions prior to the establishment of the Egyptian Communist party in 1921, the Egyptian communist movement, except for a brief period in the late forties, has never played a prominent role in Egyptian political life. Moreover, with the exception of two brief periods, first in the early 1920's and again in the mid 1950's, a single communist party did not exist and rival marxist groupings laid claim to being the authentic embodiment of Egyptian communim.

Ms.Botman correctly lists the predominant features of Egyptian communism: first, the existence of separate and rival groups; second, the narrow social base of the movement; and, third an inability to diffuse ideas and generate support within the ransk of the peasantry and a consequent failure to crerate a mass movement. What is missing is an analytical perspective which would explain the reasons for this failure and an examanation of the internal debates which preoccupied the various Marxist groups. Of all Middle Eastern communist movements, the Egyptian case is perhaps unique in providing a body of theoratical work in the political and cultural fields.

The reader is presented with a varied history of Egypt, starting with the beginning of the century and including references to the Mubarak regime and the rise of Islamic fundemantalism. In the belief that by giving a glimpse of the kind of people recruited into leftist circles "it is possible to gain an insight into the world of communist culture", personal biographies of a large number of communist activists are presented. The role of Egyptian Jews in the movement, characterised from an avowedly Zionist perspective as "a people without links to a national homeland", is given prominence, with the psychological explanation that Jews became communists "to find self realisation and a place for themselves in a society in which they are a minority." The motivation for the relatively large number of Greeks and Italians who also played an improtant role in the early history of Egyptian communism is not made clear.

While clearly sympathetic to the movement, to the extent of uncritically reproducing the views of former members she has interviewed (most of whom seem to express the views of a single faction), Botman protrays the movement as one pre occupied with ideological squabbles, fragmented by personal rivalries, and suffering from a sense of insecurity that left it open to the blows of the repressive state apparatus.

The role of minoreties in the formation of Middle Eastern communist parties is a subject often brought to the fore in order to explain both the failure of these parties to establish a mass following and their consequent marginality in national political life. An examantion of the facts, however, shows that this is not the case. The Iraqi Communist Party is a case in point. Established by members of minority groups and having a large proportion of Jewish activists until the early 1950's, the Iraqi Communist Party became one of the largest and strongest communist parties in the Middle East, and at one time a dominant political force in Iraq itself. Despite repeated attempts to destroy it, first under the monarchy, and later under the Baathist regimes, it has exhibited an amazing capacity for survival and reorganisation. The Lebanese-Syrian communist party was likewise established by "foreigners" (Armenians, Jews, Kurds), yet it succeeded in building an effective party organisation and played a significant role in the political process. Even the Palestine Communist Party, whose early founders were Jewish immigrants, succeeded in striking roots. By the forties it was able to field a strong Arab communist organisation, with a solid base in the Arab laboaur movement, and strength within the ranks of the Arab intelligentsia. The reasons for the failure of the Egyptian communist movement have to be sought elsewhere. Neither the national origins of some of its adherents nor such technical shortcomings as the absence of security suffice to explain why, in the country with the largest working class, and one with a relatively well developed trade union tradition, the movement failed to develop a mass following.

Perhaps the largest drawback of Botman's study is the absence of any discussion of the fierece debates which raged within the Egyptian communist movement. Issues such as the national problem, the role of the national bourgeoisie, the theory of the noncapitalist path to development, Nasserism, the policy of popular fronts, and the Palestine war, were highly divisive and coantributed to the party's dissolution in 1965. An even larger question which which Egyptian Marxists grappled concerned the role of a communist party in a backward capitalist country. Was the fate of Egyptian communism determined primarily by internal factors, or was it linked to Soviet policies towards the Nasserite regime, and by extension to other revolutionary nationlist regime in the underdeveloped world ?

It is perhaps too much to expect such wide ranging answers from this slim volume, and especially when the author treats the history of Egyptian communism during the critical Nasserist period in a mere seventeen pages. But while readers may have to look elsewhere for a deeper understanding of the successes and fialures of the movement, it is clear that Egyptian communism, despite its organisational shortcomings, has left a strong and lasting imprint on the character of the Egyptian intelligentsia.