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 | The Roots of Revolt

A conceptually rich, historically informed, and interdisciplinary study of

the contentious politics emerging out of decades of authoritarian neolib-
eral economic reform, The Roots of Revolt examines the contested polit-
ical economy of Egypt from Nasser to Mubarak, just prior to the Arab
Uprisings of 2010-11. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted across
rural and urban Egypt, Angela Joya employs an ‘on the ground’ approach
to critical political economy that challenges the interpretations of Egyp-
tian politics put forward by scholars of both democratization and
authoritarianism. By critically reassessing the relationship between dem-
ocracy and capitalist development, Joya demonstrates how renewed
authoritarian politics were required to institutionalize neoliberal reforms
demanded by the International Monetary Fund, presenting the real world
impact of economic policy on the lives of ordinary Egyptians before the
Arab Uprisings.

angela joya is Assistant Professor of International Studies at the

University of Oregon. Her research focuses on the impact of neoliberal
globalization on the lives of workers and peasants. She is currently
researching grassroots responses and alternative models of development
among the anti-extractivist movements in North Africa. She is the author
of numerous articles in journals such as British Journal of Middle East
Studies, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Mediterra-
nean Politics, International Journal of Middle East Studies and Review of
African Political Economy and has conducted fieldwork in Egypt, Tunisia,
Palestine, Jordan and Turkey, Greece and France.
The Roots of Revolt
A Political Economy of Egypt from
Nasser to Mubarak

angela joya
University of Oregon
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
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education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108478366
DOI: 10.1017/9781108777537
© Angela Joya 2020
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2020
Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd, Padstow Cornwall
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Joya, Angela, 1980- author. | Cambridge University Press.
Title: The roots of revolt : a political economy of Egypt from Nasser to Mubarak /
Angela Joya.
Other titles: Political economy of Egypt from Nasser to Mubarak
Description: First Edition. | New York : Cambridge University Press, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019038886 (print) | LCCN 2019038887 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781108478366 (Hardback) | ISBN 9781108745758 (Paperback) |
ISBN 9781108777537 (ePUB)
Subjects: LCSH: Protest movements–Egypt–History–21st century. |
Self-immolation–Political aspects–Egypt. | Egypt–History–Protests, 2011–2013. |
Egypt–Social conditions–21st century. | Egypt–Politics and government–21st century. |
Arab Spring, 2010-
Classification: LCC DT107.87 J69 2020 (print) | LCC DT107.87 (ebook) |
DDC 962.05/5–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038886
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038887
ISBN 978-1-108-47836-6 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Contents

List of Figures and Tables page vii

Acknowledgements viii
1 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt 1
The Purpose and Scope of the Study 1
Capitalism and Democracy in Mubarak’s Egypt 3
Resilient Authoritarianism and Networks of Privilege 9
Capitalism against Democracy 11
Accumulation by Dispossession 15
Class, State and Society in the Middle East 21
From Dispossession to Resistance to Revolt 32
Sources 34
Structure of the Book 35
2 The Developmentalist State and the Market
Economy: From Nasser to Sadat 37
From Independence to Arab Socialism 37
The Contradictions and Limits of Arab Socialism 49
Economic Liberalization under Anwar Sadat 52
Class, Property and State Power 61
Crisis and Conflict: The Outcomes of Infitah 63
Conclusion 66
3 “We Need the Government to Unleash Us,
the Tigers”: Mubarak and the Neoliberal Turn 68
Accumulation, Dispossession and the Transformation of the State 68
The Crisis of the 1980s 72
The Neoliberal Turn, 1991–1995 76
The Minister of the Poor, 1996–1999 83
From Crisis to Consolidation, 1999–2004 87
The Government of Businessmen, 2004–2011 91
Neoliberal Class Formation 96
Conclusion 108

v
vi Contents

4 “We Feed the Nation”: The Military as a Fraction of Capital 110

The Military as a Class Fraction 110
From Nationalist Revolution to Infitah 114
The Military under Mubarak 120
The Military and Economic Liberalization 126
Conclusion 137
5 The Mosque and the Market: The Muslim Brotherhood 139
The Muslim Brotherhood: Islam, the Market and the
Moral Economy 139
Islamism against the State: The Brotherhood 143
Islam against the Left: The Brotherhood under Sadat 147
The Brotherhood under Mubarak 152
Conclusion 166
6 “Strike like an Egyptian”: Workers and the
Collapse of the Authoritarian Bargain 167
The Corporatist Compromise and the Authoritarian State 167
Labour Market Dualism and Informality in the Egyptian
Labour Market 170
Privatization, Liberalization and the Decline of the Corporatist
Compromise 174
Increased Employer Power, Unemployment and Informality in
the Labour Market 179
The Rise of Worker Protest 186
Conclusion 194
7 “You Let the Dogs Eat the Peasants”: Peasants, Small
Farmers and Accumulation by Dispossession 195
Agricultural Liberalization 195
Accumulation by Dispossession and Agrarian Change 197
Contentious Politics, Collective Action and Class Struggle 224
Conclusion 227
Conclusion 229
Egypt under Mubarak 230
Accumulation by Dispossession and the Fragmentation of
Egyptian Capital 233
Neoliberal Authoritarianism and Contentious Politics 235
Bibliography 237
Index 269
Figures and Tables

Figures
1 Military expenditures, 1990–2010 page 129
2 Manufacturing growth rate, 1991–2010 177
3 Public sector employment, 2005–2014 178
4 Unemployment, total (percent of total labour force)
(modelled ILO estimate) 183
5 Unemployment, youth total (percent of total labour force
ages 15–24) 183
6 Days not worked due to strikes and lockouts by
economic activity 184
7 Land-based violence in Egypt, 1997–2010 210

Tables
1 The Washington Consensus page 4

vii
Acknowledgements

I am grateful to many organizations and individuals for their support

over the many years that it has taken to research and write this book.
When I first began researching the topic of social conflict and social
change in Egypt in 2005 as part of my doctoral thesis, I was sup-
ported by generous grants from the International Development
Research Center (IDRC) as well as the Social Sciences and Human-
ities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). After arriving at the
University of Oregon in 2014 as an assistant professor in the depart-
ment of International Studies, I began work on this book. I am
grateful to the Department of International Studies and my colleagues
at the University of Oregon for their support over the years. I am also
grateful to the University of Oregon’s Underrepresented Minority
Recruitment Program major grant, which allowed me to take time
off teaching and carry out further research and fieldwork in Egypt in
2014 and after.
The research and writing of this book spanned many years. While at
York University, I learned the foundations of critical political econ-
omy, state theory and theories of social change from Leo Panitch, Greg
Albo, David McNally and George Comninel. In the field of Middle
East political economy, I have benefited immensely from the research
and support of Ray Bush, Raymond Hinnebusch and Adam Hanieh as
colleagues whose works have been insightful as I worked through my
own arguments in this book.
Over the years, other colleagues in Middle East Studies and critical
international political economy have provided moral support and
encouragement and have either read or listened to aspects of the
arguments developed in this book: Adam Hanieh, Jillian Schwedler,
Mark LeVine, Sune Haugbolle, Laryssa Chomiak, Koen Bogaert, Sami
Zemni, Habib Ayeb, Ted Swedenberg, Hendrik Kraetzschmar, Paola
Rivetti, Lucia Sorbera, Estella Carpi, Gennario Gervasio, Ashraf El

viii
Acknowledgements ix

Sherif, Brecht de Smet, Sabine Dreher, Hannes Lacher, Sam Knafo,

Julian Saurin and Ingar Solty.
At the University of Oregon, Michelle McKinley, the director of the
Center for the Study of Women in Society, has shown unwavering
support for my research, by discussing it and publicizing it.
I owe a big thank you to the staff at Cambridge University Press and
especially my editor Maria Marsh who received the manuscript with
great enthusiasm and sent it out for review. I am grateful to the
anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, which helped
sharpen particular aspects of the book.
Over the course of my fieldwork in Egypt, which began in 2005, I
was welcomed by friends, colleagues and ordinary Egyptians. In Cairo,
I met Soad Hamed, who not only introduced me to colloquial Egyptian
Arabic, but also took a leap of faith and decided to accompany me on
my first major fieldwork journey across various governorates in Egypt.
Her generosity, kindness and support over the course of this first leg of
fieldwork enabled me to feel comfortable knocking on doors in villages
and small towns across Egypt and interviewing ordinary Egyptians. I
would also like to acknowledge the support of Dr. Emad El-Din Aysha,
a dear friend over many years as I kept returning to Egypt. Dr. Emad’s
network of friends and colleagues at Al Gumhuriyya and at the Ameri-
can University in Cairo (AUC) helped me navigate my way in securing
important documents and accessing officials relevant for my research.
The staff at the AUC’s Social Research Center allowed me to borrow
their documents and resources. I would also like to thank Pr. Tewfik
Aclimandos for the fruitful conversations in Cairo and for introducing
me to relevant policy makers.
I feel a sincere gratitude towards all the ordinary Egyptian men and
women across the country, in villages and in the big cities that were
always willing to speak with me and share their life experiences and
their struggles. It is their stories that breathed life into theories of
political economy and social change that constitutes the core of this
book.
Finally, my family has provided emotional support over the course
of this research. I could not have completed this book or the research
for it without the support and love of Geoff, my husband who has
never tired of patiently listening to me and asking me questions, which
ultimately helped me in developing and polishing the arguments in the
book. During my absences over the years, Geoff has been there for our
x Acknowledgements

girls, Sophia and Mischka, keeping them happy, caring for them and
ensuring that I do not feel guilty while being away from them.
I dedicate the book to the ordinary Egyptians in rural and urban
Egypt whose struggles against injustice and inequality inspire me.
Their resilience in the face of numerous challenges provides hope for
a better world.
1
| Neoliberal Authoritarianism
in Contemporary Egypt

The Purpose and Scope of the Study

Over the span of two weeks in mid-January 2011, reports of numerous
self-immolations were surfacing in Cairo. On January 17, Abdou Abdel
Monaam, a small restaurateur, set himself on fire in protest against a
law preventing restaurant owners from buying subsidized bread, for-
cing him to buy bread at five times the subsidized price. On the same
day, Mohamed Farouk Hassan, a lawyer, railed against rising prices
before setting himself on fire. These immolations, clearly in emulation
of the events that sparked the uprisings in Tunisia, sought to ignite the
fires of popular protest against the Mubarak regime in Egypt.
On January 25, 2011, on a day intended to commemorate Egypt’s
police forces, tens of thousands of Cairenes flocked to Tahrir square in a
self-declared “day of rage.” The popular call of “ash-shab yurid isqaat
an-nizam,” meaning, “the people demand the overthrow of the regime,”
kept getting louder as the protest picked up momentum over the course
of the day. A rare event in the Arab world, the escalating protests shook
the foundations of the Mubarak regime, which had ruled for more than
three decades. Those on the streets represented people from all walks of
life: doctors, pharmacists, teachers, tax collectors, factory workers, tech-
savvy youth, women and the unemployed. The outpouring of public
anger that filled squares in the main urban centres was broadcast
around the world by Al Jazeera. At least two sets of demands captured
the media’s attention: civil and political rights, and an end to police
brutality. What the media did not sufficiently cover were the demands
for “bread, freedom and social justice.”
The Egyptian uprising fell closely on the heels of similar events in
Tunisia, leading scholars and media commentators to try to identify
the causes that could explain both cases. Ragui Assaad (2011) argued
that Egypt was unable to turn its youth bulge into an opportunity
owing to its inability to implement economic policies that would

1
2 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

transform the youth bulge into human capital. Adeel Malik (2011)
echoed this analysis and blamed the persistence of “a development
model based on a leviathan state and greased by oil and aid windfalls.”
Ali Kadri blamed the uprisings on increasing unemployment, under-
employment and inequality, resulting from failed economic policies,
broken political institutions and a corrupt elite (Partridge, 2011).
While these analyses shed light on the conditions that afflicted the
Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), we learn little as to
how these conditions came to be, why they intensified over the past
three decades and the relationship between market liberalization and
worsening socioeconomic conditions and intensifying social conflicts.
Focusing entirely on “Middle Eastern” factors disconnected from
global developments ignores the fact that, soon after Egyptians occu-
pied Tahrir Square demanding “bread, freedom and social justice” and
an end to Mubarak’s authoritarian regime, the Occupy Wall Street
movement would occupy Zuccotti Park to protest increasing inequality
and call for an end to corporate rule in the United States. In Athens and
Madrid, the Aganaktisménoi (the Indignant Citizens Movement) and
the 15-M movements were protesting the imposition of austerity in the
wake of the global financial crisis. Far from being limited to Egypt or
Tunisia, popular uprisings against what critics refer to as neoliberal-
ism – and the dominant economic forces that imposed and benefitted
from neoliberalism – really did seem to be “kicking off everywhere” in
2011 (Mason, 2012).
There is a need, therefore, to situate the region within the develop-
ments underway in the broader global economy. Doing so enables us
to better understand the relationship between domestic processes of
socioeconomic change and political conflict, and changes in global
institutional structures and processes of capital accumulation. Ignoring
the effects of neoliberalism on the region determines how we under-
stand the prehistory of the Arab uprisings. Focusing solely on internal
factors for the uprisings marginalizes the role of international actors –
particularly the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – in the reshaping
of the socioeconomic relations of Egypt. This book tells the story of the
dramatic social transformation that took place in Egypt in the context
of the development of new strategies of capital accumulation occurring
under the rule of Hosni Mubarak. While not an analysis of the Egyp-
tian uprising per se, the book focuses on the dispossession and
the dislocations resulting from the neoliberal policies implemented at
Capitalism and Democracy in Mubarak’s Egypt 3

the behest of the IMF, the World Bank, and a rising class fraction
of neoliberal oriented capitalists within Mubarak’s ruling National
Democratic Party (NDP) from the 1990s onward. While the Egyptian
chapter of the Arab uprisings played out with its own national charac-
teristics, it was very much a part of larger processes of change and
contestation in response to decades of neoliberal globalization.

Capitalism and Democracy in Mubarak’s Egypt

Under Mubarak, Egypt has undergone a dramatic process of economic
liberalization in response to the economic crisis experienced by most
states in the MENA region during the mid-1980s. During this period,
most countries in the MENA were burdened with staggering levels of
external debt resulting not only from trade deficits incurred through
import substitution industrialization, but also from the aggressive
monetary policies pursued by the US Federal Reserve – the so-called
Volcker Shock of 1979–1981.1 The second oil shock of 1979 aggra-
vated this dramatic increase in debt, ensuring that it would escalate
into a full-blown debt crisis. As a result, inflation, unemployment and
poverty ensued. By 1986, Egypt’s unemployment rate stood at 14.7
percent, its trade deficit stood at $1.3 billion and inflation reached 23.8
percent (Ikram, 2006, p. 211).2 As a result, many commentators
believed that the statist model of economic development put in place
in many MENA countries after the attainment of independence was no
longer able to deliver the goods to its citizens and became delegitimized
in the eyes of reformers and citizens alike.
By the late 1980s, a new elite consensus – the Washington Consensus3
emerged as the basis of the new development project of the international
financial institutions. The Washington Consensus identified the postco-
lonial developmental state and its interventionist policies (extensive state

1
The Volcker shock refers to US Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker’s decision to
dramatically increase interest rates, beginning in 1979. This was done in response
to the decreasing value of the dollar over the course of the 1970s.
2
During the same year, unemployment in Tunisia stood at 16.1 per cent, Morocco
at 16.3 per cent and Algeria at 16.9 per cent (World Bank, 2018t). Growth
averaged 6.5 per cent throughout the 1990s (World Bank, 2018f).
3
The Washington Consensus was formulated by John Williamson in 1989–90 as a
background paper at a conference at the Institute of International Economics
with the main goal of assessing the relevance of development economics as it had
been practiced in Latin America.
4 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

ownership, public subsidization of basic goods, wealth redistribution

schemes, etc.) as the reason for the crises afflicting the Global South. To
resolve these crises, policy-makers proposed numerous structural adjust-
ment policies. First, dramatic reductions in public expenditure through a
general tightening of fiscal discipline would eliminate deficits and lower
outstanding public debt. Second, the privatization of state-owned enter-
prises and the elimination of public subsidies would create new markets
in the private sector. Third, the deregulation of economic activity would
increase business competitiveness. Fourth, the liberalization of interest
rates would facilitate the growth of financial services in the private
sector. Fifth, the reform of the tax system would reduce the economic
costs of doing business. Sixth, trade liberalization would enhance com-
parative advantage, and decrease the costs of imports and outstanding
trade deficits. Seventh, the liberalization of foreign direct investment
would stimulate growth by opening the economy to foreign investors.
Eighth, public funding for infrastructure, education and healthcare
would increase economic returns and enhance income distribution.
Ninth, a competitive exchange rate would stimulate export growth,
helping to reduce the trade deficit. Finally, the concerted protection of
property rights would send positive signals to foreign investors and
stimulate growth.

Table 1 The Washington Consensus

Policy Intended Outcome

Fiscal discipline Eliminate deficits and reduce public debt

Privatization Attain fiscal discipline and create markets
Deregulation Increase business competitiveness
Interest rate liberalization Stimulate the growth of finance capital
Tax reform Reduce the costs of doing business
Trade liberalization Enhance comparative advantage and
reduce trade deficits
Liberalization of foreign direct Stimulate growth through foreign
investment investment
Fund infrastructure, education Improve income distribution
and healthcare
Protection and enforcement of Provide security for capital
property rights
Competitive exchange rate Stimulate the growth of exports
Capitalism and Democracy in Mubarak’s Egypt 5

This so-called consensus effectively rationalized policies that had

already been imposed on countries in Latin America, starting with
Chile after the coup that established the Pinochet dictatorship.
Williamson effectively provided a coherent policy framework for the
neoliberal model of development that would be imposed on the rest of
the Global South over the course of the 1990s.
In response to this debt crisis, Egypt, as well as other MENA states
like Tunisia and Morocco, implemented numerous structural adjust-
ment programs (SAPs) intended to liberalize the economy. These SAPs
were promoted by the international financial institutions that were
instrumental in consolidating the Washington Consensus and bore a
striking resemblance to the liberal reforms being pursued in other parts
of the Global South, such as Mexico, Argentina and Chile from the
early 1980s.
Many scholars of the Middle East viewed the neoliberal reforms of
the period in a positive light, believing that they would resolve the
economic problems of the region and promote democratization. There
are two important elements to this literature. The economic argument
rests on an assumption that markets are more efficient than the state in
the allocation of capital, resources and labour. Against the statism of
the postcolonial period, market-based development will result in
higher levels of growth and job creation. The political argument rests
on the assumption that promoting economic liberalization restrains
state power – and the authoritarian tendencies of the Egyptian state in
particular – and empowers civil society, which then becomes the agent
of democratization.
The economic argument in favour of economic liberalization rested
on the general belief that eliminating the constraints on capital –
through both deregulation and privatization – would enable firms
and entrepreneurs to respond to price signals, rather than political
objectives, and increase the efficiency of their economic activity. This
increased efficiency would lead to increased productivity, which would
stimulate domestic and foreign investment. This increased investment
would result in general economic expansion – both in the sense of
growing existing businesses and creating new ones – and generate job
growth, which would drive down Egypt’s high unemployment rate and
increase rates of participation in the labour market.
During the 1990s, the proponents of economic liberalization were
numerous. Following in the footsteps of Francis Fukuyama’s (1993)
6 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

pronouncement that the collapse of Soviet communism was akin to

the “end of history,” numerous liberal economists celebrated the
triumph of capitalism. The World Bank’s resident economist in Egypt,
Marcelo Giugale (1993) argued that structural reforms – entailing the
removal of subsidies for consumer goods, privatization of public
corporations and liberalization of trade and finance – were unavoid-
able if Egypt wanted to return to economic growth. Jeffrey Sachs, the
architect of “shock therapy” in the former Soviet Union, promoted
substantive privatization of Egypt’s state-owned enterprises, arguing
that such radical liberalization was Egypt’s “only real choice” to grow
its way out of an economic crisis that was the result of its post-colonial
statist growth model. Once reformed, Sachs argued, Egypt “could well
become one of the fastest growing countries in the next decade”
(1996, p. 30). Waterbury and Richards (1996) lauded the prospect
of economic liberalization in the Arab World and supported the
Washington Consensus, believing that it would correct the failures
of the growing trade deficit sustained by foreign borrowing that
ultimately drove up inflation.4 El-Erian and Sheybani (1997) argued
that investment would be stimulated by reforms that increased the
ability of firms to generate capital, access foreign exchange and repat-
riate profits. High levels of taxation, strict labour laws and other
“rigidities” would discourage investment and undermine the pro-
spects for growth. Alonso-Gamo, Fedelino and Horvitz (1997,
p. 29) argued that “most of the empirical work performed so far has
shown a positive impact of openness on growth.” Excessive govern-
ment intervention and price distortions from subsidies discourage
trade and investment, and therefore growth and employment. More
specifically, large public sector deficits “tend to slow down growth, by
reducing available credit to the private sector and crowding out
private investment” (Alonso-Gamo et al., 1997, p. 29). As such, they
conclude that “the progressive liberalization process underway in
the region could play a crucial role in raising the growth potential of
Arab countries” (Alonso-Gamo et al., 1997, p. 27). Finally, Maskus
and Konan (1997, p. 275) argued that “Egypt’s greatest potential
gains come from removing its administrative trade barriers while
adopting globally free trade.” All were in agreement that the general

4
However, in the 2008 edition of their book, they confessed to uncritically
supporting economic liberalization.
Capitalism and Democracy in Mubarak’s Egypt 7

liberalization of the Egyptian economy was the only way to resolve the
country’s economic problems.
Other scholars viewed economic liberalization as a necessary and
sufficient condition for the expansion of freedom and the curtailing of
authoritarian state power. Insofar as economic liberalization imposes
constraints on the state and empowers the forces of civil society, it was
argued, market-led reforms weaken authoritarianism and strengthen
democracy. In this sense, the proponents of liberalization in the
MENA region resemble the proponents of democratization in other
parts of the Global South that proliferated in the 1990s as part of
Huntington’s so-called third wave of democratization. For Harik
(1992) and Luciani (1994), economic liberalization will undermine
the rentier character of many Middle Eastern states, particularly those
dependent on oil rents that support the repressive nature of these
states. Henry and Springborg (2001, pp. 6–8) linked the lack of
development in the region to the prevalence of bloated state sectors,
dependence on oil rents, the power of authoritarian elites and the
general weakness of civil society. Economic liberalization, they
argued, would undermine the economic basis of patronage and
clientelism that supports authoritarianism by eroding the regime’s
monopoly over resources and assets. Liberalization would, therefore,
strengthen civil society and chip away at the crony capitalism rampant
in the Egyptian economy. As the state recedes, a middle class grows in
its place, which has an interest in further democratization. Insofar as
capitalist forms of private property are at the root of liberalization,
private property and privatization facilitate democratization. Beach
and O’Driscoll (2003, pp. 27–28) viewed economic liberalization in
Hayekian terms, arguing that it would bring “democratic capitalism
to the Arab world” because the “system of private property is the
most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own
property, but scarcely less for those who do not.” According to them,
the wide dispersion of economic ownership (allegedly) constitutive of
capitalism precludes the ability of any individual – or institution –
attaining enough power to control the lives of others. In this way,
capitalism is necessarily democratic.
However, the 1990s was a difficult decade for the MENA region
and Egypt in particular. On average, growth rates were lower than
they were in the 1980s, official unemployment remained high
(8 percent in 1999) and income inequality remained higher at the
8 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

end of the decade than it did at the beginning.5 Indeed, after initially
supporting the Washington Consensus, Richards and Waterbury
(2008, p. 261) later argued that there was no “strong evidence that
countries that embraced much of the Washington Consensus per-
formed markedly better than those who eschewed many of the recom-
mended changes.” Politically, Egypt was not faring much better. The
emergency laws that Mubarak implemented after the assassination of
Sadat in 1981 were still in effect, the main political opposition – the
Muslim Brotherhood – was still formally banned, hindering the com-
petitiveness of parliamentary elections, and executive power remained
unelected and unaccountable. On top of this, political tensions
increased with the Luxor massacre in 1997.
During this time, some critical scholars pointed out that economic
liberalization in the MENA region was neither reducing unemployment,
poverty and income inequality, nor was it facilitating democratization.
As early as 1995, Farsoun and Zacharia warned that increasing social
polarization resulting from “increased inequalities among the social
classes” will “undermine the social basis of democracy in the Arab
world” (1995, p. 275). What is being established in the Middle East,
they argue, is a process of “[e]conomic and political liberalization . . .
imposed by ruling elites from above while the repressive state agencies
that existed heretofore remain intact in the new electoral regimes that
are used to suppress (and in some cases, as in Jordan and Morocco,
co-opt) all opposition” (Farsoun and Zacharia, 1995, p. 277). In the
case of Egypt, Mitchell (2002, p. 282) argued that liberalization “did
not remove the state from the market or eliminate profligate public
subsidies.” Rather, “subsidized funds were channeled into the hands
of a relatively small number of ever powerful and prosperous finan-
ciers and entrepreneurs.” In the case of Tunisia, King (2003, pp. 3–4)
argues that “economic liberalization . . . coincided with coalition pol-
itics that changed a populist authoritarian regime to one . . . designed
to bolster large landowners and the urban bourgeoisie.” As a result,
“accelerated marketization in Tunisia has been associated with the
hardening of authoritarianism” (King, 2003, p. 5). These critiques,
however, were marginalized during the market-based euphoria of
the 1990s.

5
In 1990, the Gini coefficient was at 0.32 while in 1998 it had increased to 0.328,
after a decrease in the middle of the decade.
Resilient Authoritarianism and Networks of Privilege 9

Resilient Authoritarianism and Networks of Privilege

As the time lag between economic liberalization and democratization
in Egypt grew, and as the continuity of neoliberalism in the context of
the post-revolutionary military rule of General Si-Si became increas-
ingly clear (Joya, 2017), studies of “resilient authoritarianism” have
become more prominent. Demmelhuber (2011, p. 146) argues that
during the 1990s the Egyptian elite “recognised the desirability of
reforms, but were concerned that these reforms might ultimately
undermine their power, their privileges and their political logic of
authoritarianism.” In a similar vein, Wurzel (2009, pp. 98–99) argues
that structural reforms have been “designed and implemented in
order to stabilize the authoritarian regime in the face of increasing
economic and political problems.” In other words, political consider-
ations took precedence over the proper implementation of the struc-
tural economic reforms needed to “lay the foundations necessary to
make the national economy more competitive on the international
scene” (Wurzel, 2009, p. 99).
In an earlier study, Albrecht and Schlumberger (2004) argued that
the democratization literature is rooted in teleological assumptions of
political development. Rather than asking why democracy has failed to
take root in the Middle East, scholars should turn their focus to the
persistence of authoritarian political systems. This process in turn
requires shifting focus from searching for “changes in regime type”
to “changes at the subsystemic level,” that is, “changes within a
regime” (Albrecht and Schlumberger, 2004, p. 385). Albrecht and
Schlumberger identify five core strategies employed by authoritarian
regimes to implement “change for stability” at the subsystemic level to
“foreclose the emergence of autonomous social forces” (2004, p. 386
emphasis in the original).6 This focus on subsystemic changes has given
rise to the use of network analysis to demonstrate the ways in which

6
The first is the establishment of structures of legitimacy and strategies of
legitimation, which include the incorporation of a democratic discourse in daily
political life. Second, the circulation of elites within the political system to ensure
the existence of an adaptable ruling elite. Third, the creation of Western-style
institutions – electoral laws, constitutional reforms, political decentralization and
so on. Fourth, co-optation of potential social threats to the stability of the
political order, such as trade unions, social movements and other interest groups
and civil associations (including business associations). And finally, the use of
external influences to transform constraints into opportunities.
10 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

the Mubarak regime controlled in reform process by co-opting the

Egyptian business elite.
A network refers to a “regular set of contacts of similar social
connections among individuals or groups” (cited in Wurzel, 2004,
p. 102). Network analysts substitute “interaction” for individual
action, owing to the extent to which individuals are “embedded”
within their networks. This is meant to introduce an element of “soci-
ality” that is said to be absent in traditional economic approaches to
class. For Heydemann (2004), the networks of importance here are
“networks of privilege.” As the term suggests, networks are more fluid
than relations of class, given the extent to which the latter are defined
in relationship to property. In one of the more insightful network
analyses of Egypt’s reform process, Sfakianakis (2004, p. 78) argues
that liberalization “provided space for new networks to emerge in an
institutional and social environment that had long sustained privileged
ties between business and state.” The reform process, however, “did
not operate as a zero–sum game pitting one set of business actors
against others, based on their fixed positions within the Egyptian
political economy” (Sfakianakis, 2004, p. 93).
The networks associated with Egypt’s liberalization process are,
therefore, highly fluid to the point where network analysis threatens
to become a descriptive narrative of the rise of new elites within the
various networks of privilege in Egyptian society, rather than an
explanation. For example, Sfakianakis (2004) argues that once the
“whales of the Nile” had used their access to the regime to benefit
from liberalization, they then became opponents of further liberaliz-
ing reform. The members of this new network, argues Sfakianakis,
sought to “delay economic liberalization but also to prevent compe-
tition outside their ranks from prospective domestic competitors”
(2004, p. 93).
Yet this overstates the extent to which Egyptian business elites
sought to stall further reform and obscures how the business oppor-
tunities pursued by these elites related to a broader regime of capital
accumulation. What is absent from network analysis is an understand-
ing of how these business networks are situated within the changing
strategies of capital accumulation characteristic of Egypt’s relationship
to the global economy during the so-called globalization decade. As
will be shown in Chapter 3, the liberalization process gave birth to a
fraction of Egyptian capital that coalesced around the construction,
Capitalism against Democracy 11

tourism and real estate sectors. While network analysis sees this either
as a relatively contingent outcome of the competition between net-
works of businessmen, or as a result of cronyism and authoritarian
politics, it can be better understood as an emerging strategy of capital
accumulation linked to various transnational interests that are depend-
ent upon processes of what Harvey (2003) calls accumulation by
dispossession, to be discussed in the section on “Accumulation by
Dispossession.”
There is, however, another sense in which the network analysis used
in the authoritarian resilience literature fails to decisively break from
the assumptions underpinning the earlier liberalization and democra-
tization literature. Like the democratization literature, there is an
implicit assumption that economic liberalization is supposed to
empower the growth of an independent, democratically oriented busi-
ness class. The fact that capitalist development has occurred under the
auspices of the authoritarian regime of the NDP contradicts the funda-
mental contours of what Wood (1991, pp. 2–8) calls the “bourgeois
paradigm” of capitalist development. For example, El Tarouty’s
(2016, p. 56) study of businessmen, clientelism and authoritarianism
in Egypt is intended to show how “different types of co-option of
parliamentary businessmen prevented them from playing a democra-
tizing role, and thus helped renew Mubarak’s authoritarianism.” In
this way, the resilient authoritarianism thesis seems to be the opposite
side of the same coin as the liberalization/democratization literature of
the 1990s.

Capitalism against Democracy

The problem with these responses, however, is that they fail to address
the assumptions at the heart of their interpretations of liberalization
and democratization. The literature on economic liberalization
assumes that the neoliberal growth model is sustainable in the sense
that it results in “inclusive growth.” Rooted in supply-side economics,
it presumes that granting capital greater mobility, access to resources
and discretion over their workforce will result in a growth of invest-
ment that creates jobs and benefits workers, thereby decreasing
unemployment and inequality. However, as some critical minded lib-
eral scholars pointed out at the time, the 1990s was a period of
dramatically rising inequality and discontent in the context of modest
12 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

increases in growth across the globe – despite the dramatic increases in

productivity (Rodrik, 1997; Stiglitz, 2002). This being the case, it
stands to reason that the disappointing economic outcomes of neolib-
eral reforms may be a result of the reforms themselves, rather than
their supposedly half-hearted implementation by corrupt regimes.
After all, if income inequality was growing in the liberal democracies
as well as in authoritarian regimes like Egypt, one can hardly explain
the failure of neoliberalism as the result of the authoritarian sabotage
of neoliberal reforms. Indeed, the argument of this book is that the
persistent economic problems of contemporary Egypt are the product
of the very neoliberal policies proposed by liberal reformers.
The democratization literature tends to equate the growth of market
forces with the emergence of a proto-democratic civil society that will
push for greater democratization (Wood, 1990). Economic liberaliza-
tion will result in growing affluence among a nascent middle class that
will push liberalization into the political sphere, thereby leading the
movement for democratization. Organizationally, this entails the
development of autonomous business associations that will champion
democratization in the process of reform. At a conceptual level, this
interpretation presumes a kind of spillover effect in which the removal
of economic constraints will carry over into a dynamic of democra-
tization. In this sense, the market is understood to be a realm of
freedom against a coercive state (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, p. 65).
However, the formal separation between economic and political
spheres (i.e., markets and states) obscures the extent to which capitalist
social property relations are composed of power relations in them-
selves and that states in capitalist societies play a crucial role in main-
taining those power relations (more on this in Accumulation by
Dispossession). The assumption that civil society represents a coherent
agent of social change with a commitment to democratization glosses
over the divergent interests that comprise the groups within civil
society and their relationship to democracy (Overbeek, 2000,
pp. 173–174; Polanyi, 1944). While all civil society actors may have
an interest in strengthening the rule of law and introducing a regime of
individual rights that protect them from arbitrary state power, they
may not all have an interest in democratizing the policy-making pro-
cess or redistributing power within society. In this sense, what the
democratization literature conceives of as democracy may be better
understood as political liberalization – the extension of certain civil
Capitalism against Democracy 13

and political rights of negative liberty, but not necessarily the oppor-
tunities for participation in the political process or radical redistribu-
tions of wealth and power. In other words, political liberalization may
accommodate certain political and civil rights, but not necessarily
“bread, freedom and social justice.”
In a more historical and empirical manner, other scholars have
demonstrated that, even in Europe, democratization trailed the devel-
opment of capitalism by approximately a century. When democracy
was eventually institutionalized, it was in response to pressures from
below, not by the initiative of liberal-minded elites acting out the logic
of market reforms. Ruling elites were pushed to implement democratic
reforms by grassroots agitation against the market, often by the
working class. Therborn (1977, p. 3) points out that in nineteenth and
early twentieth century Europe and North America, “prevailing bour-
geois opinion held that democracy and capitalism (or private property)
were incompatible.” Far from initiating a bold new era of democra-
tization against the established aristocratic order, the bourgeoisies
everywhere “remained obsequious in their relations with the venerable
notables of land and office” (Mayer, 2010, p. 79). As a result, European
political institutions “were established by elites for the purpose of
preserving and extending their social and economic power, and they
were continually compromised and undermined by efforts to preserve
privilege and to forestall the acquisition of power by subordinate groups
and classes” (Halperin, 1997, p. 168). As a result, before 1945, Europe
“in common with parts of the Third World . . . experienced partial
democratization and reversals of democratic rule” (Halperin, 1997,
p. 168). Even when liberal democracies were established in the twenti-
eth century, political and business elites often sought ways to diminish
the political power of the working classes that democratization entails
by manipulating the formal institutions of democracy (Pilon, 2013).
We see a similar phenomenon in the Arab states of the Middle East in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century under colonial rule.
Colonial powers such as Britain reproduced a colonial division of labour
between itself and Arab states by “encouraging a more general economic
development under the control of notable classes and foreign intermedi-
aries” (Bromley, 1994, p. 107). In a comprehensive study of the state in
the Arab world, Ayubi (1995) argues that the legacy colonialism in the
Middle East is the existence of a weak bourgeoisie dependent on “com-
pradour” capitalists during the colonial period. Playing virtually no role
14 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

in the nationalist and democratic movements of the mid-century, they

ultimately became dependent upon their own nation-states throughout
the post-war period. This is not just a case of the missing bourgeoisie as
an agent of democratization. Far from emerging as the leader of a
nationalist movement for democratic independence, the Egyptian busi-
ness class actively collaborated with the colonial authorities to benefit
from the spoils of colonialism. As Vitalis (1995) argues in his study of
Egypt in the 1930s and 1940s, the “politics of investment in Egypt was
ultimately less a struggle between foreign and local capital than a
conflict among local investors for access to resources and control over
the rents represented by industry building” (1995, p. xii).
In light of these critiques of market forces and civil society, there is
no reason to believe that economic liberalization will foster democra-
tization. Indeed, some scholars have argued that as neoliberalism
deepens it becomes increasingly authoritarian (or “post-democratic”),
even in contexts where liberal democracy has been long established
(Bruff, 2014; Cahill, 2014; Crouch, 2004). Bruff’s (2016) conception
of authoritarian neoliberalism is a useful corrective to the assumptions
that underpin the resilient authoritarianism that has become prevalent
in the scholarship of contemporary Egypt. Far from being an acciden-
tal consequence of “messy” neoliberal reforms, Bruff (2016, p. 107)
argues that authoritarianism is endemic to the neoliberal experience, in
the sense that “state-directed coercion insulated from democratic pres-
sures is central to the creation and maintenance of this [neoliberal]
political-economic order, defending it against impulses towards greater
equality and democratization.” One of the consequences of this notion
of neoliberal authoritarianism is to “expand more traditional concep-
tualizations of authoritarianism to capture more appropriately con-
temporary processes” (Bruff, 2016, p. 107). Indeed, authoritarianism
is not just about the exercise of arbitrary, brute force (of which there
are plenty of examples in Egypt, detailed in Chapters 7 and 8); authori-
tarianism is also “observed in the reconfiguring of state and institu-
tional power in an attempt to insulate certain policies and institutional
practices from social and political dissent” (Bruff, 2014, p. 115). For
example, in his 1996 address to the Egyptian Centre for Economic
Studies, Jeffrey Sachs recommended that Egyptian reformers should
not announce the reforms they seek to implement, “because that will
invite opposition, and you will get antibodies all around to stop the
process, and reform will never happen” (1996, p. 41). Instead,
Accumulation by Dispossession 15

neoliberal reformers should “just do it.” It is not surprising then that in

the MENA region the authoritarian nature of the state continued to
play a crucial role in the consolidation of neoliberalism throughout the
1990s and 2000s. When the demands of the Tahrir Square protesters
evolved from political liberalization to demands for “bread, freedom
and social justice,” the threat to the economic interests of the dominant
propertied class became apparent. Indeed, it is one of the central
arguments of this book that neoliberalism in Egypt required the per-
sistence of authoritarian rule and that in the initial phases of the Arab
uprisings, neoliberalism was threatened by populist upheaval from
below, until military rule was reinstated by General Si-Si and Egypt
returned to the path of neoliberal development.
In the end, economic liberals were either blind to the dislocations
caused by the neoliberal economic reforms they promoted, or they
resigned themselves to the belief that such dislocations were the neces-
sary means by which to attain the growth needed to build the affluent
society they sought. However, in light of recent admissions by the IMF
that neoliberal policies may have been responsible for exacerbating
economic inequality and jeopardizing economic growth, this belief
can no longer be seriously entertained.7 Similarly, those espousing the
belief that economic liberalization fosters democratization adhered to
formalistic notions of procedural democracy that reduced democratiza-
tion to the neoliberal notion of the “rule of law” and the Schumpeterian
notion of elections between competing elites (Schumpeter, 1950). How-
ever, as economic policies in the liberal democracies of the West become
increasingly shielded from democratic input, it becomes increasingly
clear that neoliberalism – while promoting political liberalization – has
only a contingent relationship with democratization proper.

Accumulation by Dispossession
Any analysis of the political economy of contemporary Egypt must
proceed from an understanding of capitalist development. Far from
representing a quantitative expansion of commercial or market-based
activity, capitalism represents a qualitative transformation in the way
7
See Ostry, Prakash and Furceri (2016). The IMF has also recently admitted that
redistributive policies aimed at increasing taxes on the rich – that is, the very types
of policies espoused by the critics of neoliberalism – will not damage the prospects
for economic growth. See Elliot and Stewart (2017).
16 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

markets function (Polanyi, 1944; Wood, 2002). As Polanyi points out,

the markets of pre-capitalist societies remain “embedded” in non-
economic social relations – such as custom and religion – and subor-
dinated to the goals of preserving the social order. In a similar vein,
Marx and Engels characterized the economic activity of pre-capitalist
societies as being oriented toward the “[c]onservation of the old modes
of production in unaltered form” (1967, p. 83). Because of the
embeddedness in non-economic social relations, pre-capitalist social
formations are oriented toward goals unrelated to the accumulation of
profit, such as the normative characteristics of social life. For example,
in Greco-Roman antiquity, Marx points out, that “[w]ealth does not
appear as the aim of production . . . The enquiry is always about what
kind of property creates the best citizens” (1964, p. 83). The import-
ance of this observation is that traditional conceptions of property, of
the land and of community often run up against the transformative
nature of capitalist development in ways that tend to be highly disrup-
tive to the inhabitants of those traditional communities.
By way of contrast, capitalism is composed of a system of social
property relations in which the organization of social labour and the
mobilization and distribution of resources are determined by the
imperatives of profit maximization rather than by the concrete needs
of a society. The “disembedding” of the market from non-economic
social relationships does not mean, however, that capitalism is devoid
of power relations; nor does the fact that workers under capitalism are
juridically free mean that they are free from political forms of oppres-
sion. The state remains a crucial guarantor of capitalist property rela-
tions, often in ways that involve the use of violence and repression. In
the case of societies undergoing a transition to capitalism, state-based
violence and repression becomes a necessary means of expanding the
market through the expropriation of small producers, and the bound-
aries between the coercive use of “public” power for private gain often
become blurred.
The expansion of the capitalist market entailed acts of violence and
coercion that are downplayed in liberal accounts of capitalist devel-
opment (Hayek, 2014; Perelman, 2000; Smith, 1937).8 However,
8
For example, Hayek (2014, pp. 103–104) dismisses as “myth” the claim by Marx
that “a propertyless proletariat is the result of a process of expropriation, in the
course of which the masses were deprived of those possessions that formerly
enabled them to earn their living independently.”
Accumulation by Dispossession 17

Marx (1976, p. 874) argued that capitalist property relations were the
historical product of conquests, enslavement, robbery, murder
and other acts of violent expropriation. During the last third of the
fifteenth century,

the great feudal lords, in their defiant opposition to the king and Parliament,
created an incomparably larger proletariat by forcibly driving the peasantry
from the land, to which the latter had the same feudal title as the lords
themselves, and by usurpation of the common lands . . . The dwellings of the
peasants and the cottages of the labourers were razed to the ground or
doomed to decay [to make way for the sheep walks]. (Marx, 1976, p. 879)

This process of “so-called primitive accumulation” also entailed the

expropriation of church estates whereby “[t]he estates of the church
were to a large extent given away to rapacious royal favourites, or sold
at nominal price to speculating farmers and townsmen, who drove out
the old established hereditary sub-tenants in great numbers, and threw
their holdings together. The legally guaranteed property of the poorer
folk in a part of the church’s tithes was quietly confiscated” (1976,
pp. 881–882). In this sense, Marx (1976, pp. 874–875) argued that
“[s]o-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the
historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of produc-
tion.” This pre-history of capitalism was therefore a violent process of
accumulation through the enclosures of land, the commodification of
resources and the transformation of non-market forms of use-value
into value. Consequently, direct producers were rendered market
dependent as non-market access to the means of production and social
reproduction were removed.
At the same time, capitalism is an inherently crises-ridden mode of
production, as Marx and Engels argued in The Communist Manifesto.
In contrast with pre-capitalist modes of production, characterized by
crises of supply, capitalism is uniquely characterized by crises of
over-accumulation, in which the increasing productivity of capital coin-
cides with its declining profitability. Harvey calls the over-accumulation
of capital a condition in which “idle capital and idle labour supply
could exist side by side with no apparent way to bring these idle
resources together to accomplish socially useful tasks” (Harvey, 1992,
p. 180). A crisis of over-accumulation results in “idle productive cap-
acity, a glut of commodities and an excess of inventories, surplus money
capital (perhaps held as hoards), and high unemployment” (Harvey,
18 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

1992, p. 181). Since the 1970s, the advanced capitalist economies of the
West have increasingly experienced such crises of over-accumulation.
This “never-ending and eternal problem” for capitalism can only
be resolved temporarily, and one of the means of managing such crisis
is through what Harvey refers to as a “spatial fix,” in which excess
capital and surplus labour are “absorbed” through processes of
geographical expansion. Liberalization in the Global South (in this
case Egypt), is therefore not an automatic response to the failures
of import substitution industrialization (which were also tied to
developments in the West), but rather a political project to transform
the conditions under which Western capital can be realized in the
global periphery. The implication of this “globalization project”
(McMichael, 2012; see Chapter 5) is that “non-capitalist territories
should be forced open not only to trade (which could be helpful) but
also to permit capital to invest in profitable ventures using cheaper
labour power, raw materials, low-cost land, and the like” (Harvey,
2003, p. 139).
This spatial fix can manifest itself in different strategies of capital
accumulation. The first, associated with the New International
Division of Labour of the 1960s, facilitated the relocation of manufac-
turing capital to jurisdictions in the Global South characterized by
cheaper labour, lax environmental standards and untapped natural
resources. This strategy is associated with the development of export
processing zones and other enclaves of export-oriented industrializa-
tion. The second is related to the decline of economic nationalism in
the Global South and the rise of finance capital in the West (and more
recently, the Gulf Cooperation Council). It is associated with the
creation of real estate and housing markets, tourism sectors and invest-
ment in construction and the materials required for such sectoral
development. Given the relationship between this strategy of accumu-
lation and existing regimes of urban and rural property rights in
countries that have experienced statist forms of development associ-
ated with economic nationalism or socialism, it is accompanied by
processes of dispossession that affect workers, peasants and small
farmers who benefited from land reforms and protected urban housing
markets in the post-colonial period.
While these two strategies of accumulation are by no means mutu-
ally exclusive, the latter strategy is most closely associated with what
Accumulation by Dispossession 19

I refer to as the neoliberal fraction of capital within the NDP. It is not

surprising, then, that the primary beneficiaries of many key neoliberal
reforms were the construction, real estate and tourism industries, all of
which had strong ties to the emerging neoliberal faction within the
NDP. The coherence of this group and its relationship to this particular
strategy of accumulation leads to its characterization as a “fraction” of
capital. The liberalization process facilitated the creation of this neo-
liberal class fraction in a number of ways. First, the liberalization of
urban and rural property markets opened up new opportunities for
land speculation that brought construction, real estate and tourism
together. Second, the privatization of state-owned enterprises enabled
the acquisition of construction firms and cement and steel companies
to be integrated into the financialized real estate economy. But it also
enabled businessmen to buy up state assets either for the purpose of
reselling at a profit or – and perhaps more important – for merely
acquiring the land upon which those firms resided. In this way, privat-
ization, coupled with liberalized investment laws and liberalized hous-
ing and land markets, opened Egypt up to a trinity of tourism,
construction and real estate development.
There is, however, another side to these strategies of capital accu-
mulation that are often not recognized in mainstream economics. This
other side refers to the class-based component of these accumulation
strategies – what Harvey calls “accumulation by dispossession” – in
which assets – labour, land, resources, state assets and services – are
released from communal regulation and into the sphere of the market
where “[o]veraccumulated capital can seize hold of such assets and
immediately turn them to profitable use” (Harvey, 2003, p. 149). As
such, these assets “become commodified, thereby “opening up . . . new
territories to capitalist development and to capitalist forms of market
behaviour” (2003, p. 156). Crucially, for this study, accumulation by
dispossession can occur either as a way of resolving a crisis of over-
accumulation in capitalist centres or it can be carried out by “deter-
mined entrepreneurs and developmental states” who want to “‘join
the system’ and seek the benefits of capital accumulation directly”
(2003, p. 153). In this way, the developments on the ground in the
peripheral areas of countries of the Global South – like Egypt – are
related to the broader conjunctures of capital accumulation at the
global level. Notable instances of accumulation by dispossession
20 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

include the mass privatization of state industries in the socialist bloc

after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in China after its embrace of
liberalization in the late 1970s. The crisis-ridden nationalist regimes of
the Global South, such as Egypt, Syria, India, Mexico and Argentina
also underwent significant processes of accumulation by dispossession
under the auspices of IMF administered SAPs between the late 1970s
and early 2000s. In many instances, these forms of accumulation
resulted in widespread land-grabbing by global multinational corpor-
ations with the help of corrupt and authoritarian regimes. Finally, in
the liberal democratic west, accumulation by dispossession assumed
the form of the re-commodification of de-commodified public goods
and services, a phenomenon that has only intensified since the global
financial crisis.
While global capital – financial capital in particular – is increasingly
mobile and free from institutional and spatial regulations, it is not the
case that the state has retreated from economic life (Berberoglu, 1987,
2003; Gamble, 2009). Disciplinary neoliberalism is aimed at changing
national constitutions, domestic labour laws, and property laws to
lock in neoliberal reforms and make them difficult to reverse. At the
domestic level, this has resulted in states shifting from Keynesian
forms of market redistribution to neoliberal forms of market
discipline (Gamble, 1988). In the case of countries like Egypt, this
requires the wholesale transformation of the state and the develop-
ment of practices of authoritarian neoliberalism – to be discussed at
greater length in Class, State and Society in the Middle East. At the
global level, the IMF, the World Bank, and now the World Trade
Organization serve as “structures of harmonization of national pol-
icies” enforcing a politics of neoliberal convergence through the
imposition of SAPs (Cammack, 2004; Overbeek, 2000, p. 177). As
a result, neoliberalism has involved “extensive and invasive interven-
tions in every area of social life,” in the sense that it has imposed “a
specific form of social and economic regulation based on the promin-
ence of finance, international elite integration, subordination of the
poor in every country and universal compliance with US interests”
(Saad-Filho & Johnston, 2005, p. 4). In short, the expansion of the
neoliberal project is paramount to generalizing the imperatives of the
capitalist market and, in the process, creating a new set of rules and
laws that sanction the newly created power of capital through increas-
ingly disciplinary states.
Class, State and Society in the Middle East 21

Class, State and Society in the Middle East

An analysis of contemporary Egyptian capitalism requires both class
analysis and a conceptualization of the state. As Marx pointed out,
capitalism is a form of socioeconomic organization predicated on
relations of class exploitation. Class, in this sense, is conceived as an
historically constituted social relationship that is experienced as a
relationship between those who either own or control resources and
the means of production and those who must labour for a living.9 In
this sense, it is a relation of surplus extraction between a class of direct
producers and a class of appropriators. Yet, classes are not monolithic
and, as we will see in the case of Egypt, the dominant class tends to be
organized along the lines of class “fractions” related to different
sectors of the capitalist economy.
Through class analysis, the MENA region can be studied in the
context of the development of neoliberal capitalism, and its impact
on the states and social relations of the region. However, transposing
Marxian conceptions of class analysis onto the Global South requires
an appreciation of the specificity of the various social relations under
study and their differentiation from the European context within
which Marxism was developed. In particular, countries of the Global
South, including those of the MENA region, are characterized by a
greater role for the peasantry, for small independent producers, and for
those working in informal urban labour markets (Alavi & Shanin,
1982; Bernstein, 2010; Shanin, 1972). In this way, their class compos-
ition tends to differ greatly from the so-called advanced capitalist
economies of the West.
The groundwork for such class analysis in the scholarship on the
Middle East and North Africa was laid by Hanna Batatu (1978, 1999)
in his comprehensive studies of the evolution of the class structures of
Syrian and Iraqi society throughout the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Beinin’s and Lockman’s work has provided a wealth of
information on the development of organized labour in the Middle
East, with a particular emphasis on the tensions between state domin-
ated trade union confederations and militant rank-and-file unionists
that helps to dispel the myths of a passive Arab working class (Beinin,

9
For an insightful conceptual discussion of class as an historical process and
relations, see (Wood, 1995) Chapter 3.
22 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

2001, 2016a; Beinin & Lockman, 1987). Ray Bush’s work has
focused on the evolution of class relations in the Egyptian countryside,
particularly during the context of the liberalization of land tenures
(Bush, 1999, 2002). From a more explicitly political economy per-
spective, Hanieh’s work on the regional integration of the Gulf States
into the global capitalist economy and the nature of capital accumu-
lation in the Middle East as a whole has opened up important avenues
for understanding the sociopolitical conflicts of the region (Hanieh,
2011, 2013).
When examining the development of capitalism in the MENA
region through class analysis, it needs to be pointed out that there
tends to be greater disunity and fractiousness among the propertied
classes of the region. This fractiousness results in greater instances
of intra-class conflict among competing fractions of capital. The
reform process of the 1990s and 2000s exacerbated this fractious-
ness, ultimately resulting in the political conflict of the immediate
post-2011 period.
In The Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx discusses the competition
between various fractions of the capitalist class in nineteenth-century
France in the context of the rise of Louis Bonaparte (Marx, 1973). In
this sense, class fractions refer to “divisions within a class which are
rooted in the differential position occupied by certain of its sections
within the relations of production” (Göran Therborn, 1978, p. 157).
This notion of class fractions has carried over into the analysis of the
sectoral composition of capitalist classes in twentieth century Europe
by a number of neo-Marxists, including Gramsci (1971) and Poulant-
zas (1973).10
More recently, Gramscian scholars working within international
political economy have used the notion of class fractions in the context
of neoliberal globalization. According to Van der Pijl (1989, p. 11), a
class fraction is a group of economic actors within the propertied class
that are “unified around a common economic and social function in
the process of capital accumulation and sharing particular ideological
propensities organically related to those functions.” It is through
organizing over a long period that a certain fraction gains dominance
over others and plays a leading role in devising accumulation strategies

10
For a critique of the Poulantzian conceptualization of class fraction, see Clarke
(1978).
Class, State and Society in the Middle East 23

at the level of the state. While corporate elite networks facilitate the
dominance of one fraction over other fractions of the capitalist class,
“[a]ny formulation of the general capitalist interest is, however, always
formulated from the perspective of what is only a section or ‘fraction’
of total capital, a fraction that has temporarily achieved a leading
position within the capitalist class” (Apeldoorn, 2002, p. 26).
Within the context of Western capitalism, the relevant fractions of
capital are often conceptualized in accordance with their sectoral loca-
tion in the economy and their integration into the global economy (i.e.,
a functional and geographical differentiation). On the one hand, indus-
trial or productive capital is differentiated from financial or money
capital in relationship to their economic function. At a different level,
national capital that is oriented toward the domestic market is differen-
tiated from transnational capital that is oriented toward the export
market. According to this formulation, national capital has different
economic interests than transnational capital, and industrial capital has
diverging interests from those of finance capital. Before the internation-
alization of capital, domestically oriented industrial capital was central
to the development strategies of states in the MENA region and was
“more embedded within society and its institutions, laws, regulations”
(Apeldoorn, 2002, pp. 28–29). Given that its fate was “more directly
tied to the fate of the populations who live in the spaces where indus-
trial capital is located, and of the states that exercise political rule within
those spaces,” it was “oriented towards the principle of social protec-
tion” (Apeldoorn, 2002, p. 28). Managers of state-owned industries
played a crucial role in carrying out development strategies and produ-
cing for the domestic market and supporting policies of economic
nationalism, such as subsidies on basic goods. This fraction of capital
was instrumental in guiding state policy in this phase.
By way of contrast, finance or money capital is disembedded from
the society within which it operates; it is “abstracted from the produc-
tion process” and comes to “express the power of capitalist property
outside of and external to any specific process of commodity produc-
tion” (Harvey, 1982, p. 284). As a result, the orientation of finance
capital “tends to be organised around what Polanyi called the principle
of economic liberalism,” or what we are calling here, neoliberalism
(Apeldoorn, 2002, p. 28).
While finance capital favours policies that reduce barriers to export
markets, domestically oriented productive capital may feel threatened
24 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

by the relaxation of trade barriers. This is where tensions can develop

between the different fractions of capital. It is possible for economic
reforms that benefit transnational financial capital to weaken domes-
tically oriented fractions of productive capital. However, it is also
possible for industrial capital, oriented toward the domestic market,
to develop strategies of survival by establishing networks with finance
capital. In this latter case, it is useful to recognize Chesnais’ (2016)
distinction between financial capital and finance capital. The former
refers to “the simultaneous and intertwined concentration and central-
ization of money capital, industrial capital and merchant or commer-
cial capital as an outcome of domestic and transnational concentration
through mergers and acquisitions,” and financial capital, which refers
to “concentrated money capital operating in financial markets”
(Chesnais, 2016, p. 5).
The strength of a hegemonic fraction of capital depends on the
success of its dominant accumulation strategy. If transnational finance
experiences a crisis, a window may open for a different fraction of
capital to step up and determine a new strategy for accumulation.
Under the hegemony of a new fraction of capital, accumulation strat-
egies might be reformulated to reduce social tensions. However, global
capitalism is a dynamic phenomenon, and the liberalization of trade
and finance has repercussions on the configuration of class fractions. In
this sense, Chesnais’s conceptualization of financial capital – and its
implications for the constitution of a hegemonic class fraction or
power bloc becomes important. Chesnais (2016, p. 8) argues that, in
“the context of the liberalization and globalization of capital, a
merging of finance capital as ‘process’ and as ‘power’ has progressively
taken place, leading effectively to the formation within states of a
single power bloc.” This process of competing and evolving class
fractions can perhaps help us to understand the character of elite
competition in Egypt during the period of economic liberalization.
In the context of Egypt, these fractions of capital tend to be organ-
ized into different political formations and business associations.
National productive capital is organized through the Federation of
Egyptian Industry (FEI). Formed in 1922, the FEI served to foster the
development of an indigenous class of industrial capitalists. Under
Nasser, the organization was subordinated to the developmental state
by way of the Ministry of Supply and the Ministry of Trade and
Industry to facilitate an industrial policy conducive to economic
Class, State and Society in the Middle East 25

nationalism. During this period, the FEI president was appointed by

the Ministry of Industry, the rationale being that the grassroots elec-
tion of the presidency by the various member chambers would result in
the dominance of one or two sectors of the economy. By contrast, the
appointment of the presidency by the Minister of Industry sought to
overcome these sectoral divisions in favour of a national economic
vision. In the commercial sectors of the economy, the Federation of
Egyptian Chambers of Commerce served a similar function and shared
a similar organizational structure that subordinated it to the Ministries
of Supply, Trade and Economy. Both organizations were oriented
toward the import substitution industrialization developmental policy
of the Nasser regime and therefore representative of national fractions
of Egyptian capital.11
As a nationally based institution tasked with the security of the
nation, the military – as an economic actor – has played an important
role as a fraction of national capital in Egypt’s post-war history. The
most important conjuncture in the development of the military’s
expanding role in the economy was the 1980s when Egypt was inte-
grated into the global economy. Through the Armed Forces Land
Projects Agency, the military entered into joint ventures with private
capital in agriculture and food production, port maintenance, urban
planning, tourism, hotels and luxury housing, furniture, ship manu-
facturing and repair, technology and electronics and textile produc-
tion. The expansion of the army’s role in the domestic economy went
hand in hand with its expansion in the political economy of the
MENA region and the global economy. This period also tested the
army’s power when it faced competition by the newly emerging neo-
liberal class fraction around Mubarak. This expansion of the mili-
tary’s economic and political power reflects the evolution of the
military as a fraction of the ruling class. With the historical legacy of
one of the most significant Arab armies, the Egyptian military has
experienced a process of fundamental socioeconomic transformation
that has enabled it to accumulate power vis-à-vis other fractions of the
dominant class.
The transnational, financialized fraction of capital, referred to as
neoliberals in this book, is “composed of a tiny grande bourgeoisie

11
For a more detailed discussion of both the EFI and the FECC, see Fahmy (2002),
Soliman (1998), and Bianchi (1985, 1989).
26 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

intimately integrated into Western capital,” whose interests and

“dynamism rests essentially on the (rapid) accumulation of capital
through service activity rather than through the exploitation of land
or labor” (Farsoun, 1997, p. 25). Organizationally, this fraction of
capital is represented by several private business organizations that
emerged outside of the official state-dominated FEI and Federation of
Egyptian Chambers of Commerce. The most important indigenous
business association emerging out of the private sector is the Egyptian
Businessmen’s Association, which was formed in 1982 with the finan-
cial support of the Egyptian-American Businessmen’s committee. More
than one-half of its membership is clustered around construction,
consulting and advertising, and tourism and transportation, reflecting
the fact that “most of the investments of Egyptian businessmen are in
consumer rather than productive sectors of the economy” (Fahmy,
2002, p. 170).
Alongside the Egyptian Businessmen’s Association are three
important joint business organizations that bring together Egyptian
and American capital. The Egyptian-American Businessmen’s
Association was created in 1975 through an agreement between
Nixon and Sadat; the American Chamber of Commerce was formed
in 1982 under Mubarak, after a visit to Washington, DC, by Sadat
just before his assassination; and the Egyptian-American Presidential
Council, established in 1995 by an initiative between Mubarak and
then U.S. Vice President Al Gore. These associations tied emerging
Egyptian private sector business interests to American capital and
played a prominent role in driving the liberalization process in the
1990s. For example, the American Chamber of Commerce was the
official representative of the Egyptian private sector during the nego-
tiations with the IMF and World Bank in the late 1980s. Other, less
prominent Egyptian business associations partnered with inter-
national capital and forged ties to the neoliberal government of
2004 included the Egyptian-British Business Association and
Egyptian-Dutch Business Association. Perhaps more significantly,
the Egyptian-American Presidential Council, composed of equal pro-
portions of Egyptian and American business representatives, sought
to bring together the prominent Egyptian millionaires and the presi-
dent of the FEI and bring them onboard the liberalization process.
Controversially, the council strongly advocated for the elimination of
subsidizes and the wholesale privatization of the entire Egyptian
Class, State and Society in the Middle East 27

economy – policy proposals that were in line with the conditions of

the loan agreement signed between Egypt and the IMF in 1991.
Finally, Islamist capital is organized in the ranks of the Muslim
Brotherhood, which has financial links to states in the Persian Gulf.
The socioeconomic profile of the Brotherhood as a class fraction is
rather complex. On the one hand, the traditional leadership comes
from the ranks of the large landowning class that was threatened by
Nasser. On the other hand, it also enjoys support among private sector
actors, including traders, and small and mid-sized manufacturers. By
1980, eight out of the eighteen families who dominated Egypt’s private
sector belonged to the Brotherhood, and their businesses constituted
approximately 40 percent of private sector enterprises. The growth of
this Islamist fraction of capital was facilitated by the creation of Islamic
investment companies that were linked to the nouveau riche rather
than to the older, elitist Brotherhood. In this sense, it does not fit neatly
into the typology of class fractions as elaborated; rather, it seems to
straddle both the domestic and transnational and the productive and
financial categories. The ways in which the Brotherhood articulates
this complexity and the form it has taken in contemporary Egypt will
be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 6.
State-led industrialization empowered nationally oriented capitalists
while marginalizing the merchants, traders and small business owners
that formed the support base of Islamist organizations like the Muslim
Brotherhood. As a formally banned organization, the Brotherhood was
unable to form a legitimate business association to represent the inter-
ests of its members to the state. The Brotherhood persevered through
charity work and by establishing economic ties with relevant Gulf
States, Qatar in particular. In the current era of neoliberalism, where
structural adjustment policies pursued by a financialized transnation-
alist propertied class fraction oversaw the dismantling of the statist
model of nationalist industrialization, space has opened up for the
emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood as a class fraction. Despite
residual claims to being the stewards of an Islamic “moral economy”
(Dalacoura, 2016), the Muslim Brotherhood has accommodated itself
to neoliberal capitalism as a fraction of Egyptian capital vying for
dominance within the state (Gerges, 2012). After the collapse of the
Mubarak regime in 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood formed the Egyp-
tian Business Development Association in an attempt to establish itself
among the formal business community.
28 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

The ultimate goal of the competition between various fractions of

capital is control of the Egyptian state. Within the Marxist tradition,
the state “is never a neutral or passive mediator” (Therborn, 1978,
p. 181), but rather plays a central role in the reproduction of social
relations and is deeply implicated in the relations of exploitation,
domination and rule. Against the proponents of pluralism (Dahl,
1961, 1973), therefore, the Marxist tradition insists that the capitalist
state disproportionately represents the interests of capital against the
interests of workers and social movements. Questions regarding the
specific relationship between the state and the capitalist class resulted
in the so-called state debate of the 1970s. The debate examined
whether the state’s role in the reproduction of capitalist social relations
was the result of the “instrumentalist” relationship between the capit-
alist class and the state elite, or the structural dependence of the state
upon the processes of capital accumulation (Miliband, 1969, 1970,
1973; Poulantzas, 1969, 1973, 1976). By the end of the 1970s, the
Marxian position posited the “relative autonomy” of the state from
capital as a means of acknowledging the structural dependence of the
state on capital while recognizing the contested nature of the state
apparatus itself (Esping-Andersen, 1976). This relative autonomy pos-
ition came at a time when a reinvigorated Weberian position sought to
reassert the autonomy of the state vis-à-vis capital, in a context defined
by the increasing assertiveness – and political success – of capitalist
business associations (Evans, Rueschemeyer & Skocpol, 1985; Nor-
dlinger, 1982).12
Most of these debates on the state take the institutionally developed
capitalist states of the West as a starting point. In particular, Weberian
approaches emphasize the importance of bureaucratic rationality and
administrative capacity. The administrative and institutional develop-
ment of these states date back to the early modern period and con-
tinued throughout the nineteenth century (Anderson, 1974; Mooers,
1991; Wood, 1991). This process of bureaucratic and administrative
development – in particular, the development of systems of public
finance, public administration and judicial oversight – accelerated as
a result of the two world wars (Halperin, 2004).

12
For two substantive critiques of the statist approach, see Cammack (1989,
1990). For a discussion of the employers’ offensive of the 1980s, see Hyman and
Elger (1981) and Pontusson and Swenson (1996).
Class, State and Society in the Middle East 29

However, the states of the Global South – and the Middle East
in particular – are the product of Western colonialism and have
experienced processes of formation different to the states of Europe.13
As the arbitrary product of colonial powers, the territorial integrity
of such states was contested by competing centres of power in the
post-independence period. The seizure of state power by revolutionary
nationalist movements in Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Syria and Iraq,
introduced ambitious projects of nationalist economic development,
industrialization and political modernization. While the drive toward
modernization and industrialization took the form of statist authori-
tarianism, the political institutions and administrative capacities of the
Middle Eastern state remained weak and underdeveloped, as the old
colonial apparatuses were abolished, and post-colonial elites struggled
to consolidate their new institutions. In contrast with the charges of
oriental despotism levelled at post-colonial Middle Eastern states by
orientalist scholars (Wittfogel, 1959), this authoritarian tendency was
a symptom of the institutional weakness of Middle Eastern states
rather than an indication of their strength (Ayubi, 1995; Migdal,
1988; Owen, 2004).
In fact, the European notion of oriental despotism – applied in
broad-brush fashion to almost all states of the East – is rooted in the
propensity of authoritarian rulers to redistribute the surplus to the
popular classes to maintain social order and preserve traditional socio-
economic hierarchies. These authoritarian legacies have led liberal
critics to lament the inability or unwillingness of Middle Eastern states
to respect the rule of law and effectively enforce the rights of private
property.14 Chaudhry (1994, p. 3) argues that states in the Global
South lack the administrative capacities to “regulate, define, and
enforce property rights” and to “dispense law.” Despite their strong
appearance, their capacity to tax is “strictly circumscribed.” This
becomes a problem because to “successfully make the ‘transition’ to
a market economy, these capacities become absolutely necessary.” In a
similar vein, De Soto (2001, p. 33) argues that states cannot effectively

13
For a provocative treatment of the subject that treats European states as equally
subject to institutional underdevelopment and colonial interference, see
Halperin (1997).
14
Such critiques can be traced all the way back to James Harrington’s seventeenth-
century critique of the Ottoman state, which he characterized as an “empire of
men” rather than an “empire of laws.” See Harrington (1992, p. 20).
30 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

act on behalf of capital in the absence of formal property rights and

proper legal institutions. It is the tendency of authoritarian states to
arbitrarily redistribute the wealth of society and violate the rights of
private property that is the primary obstacle to capitalist development,
not authoritarianism per se.
Recent developments in the MENA region constitute an integral part
of the expansion of capitalism as a global system. The rise of a global
neoliberal orthodoxy has facilitated the rapid transformation of social
relations in the region over the past three and a half decades. Neolib-
eral globalization began to take hold in the region during the 1980s
and the 1990s through a series of SAPs implemented in response to the
crisis of Arab statism in the mid-1980s. As in the liberal democracies
of the West, the emerging neoliberal orthodoxy in the MENA region
did not entail a retreat of the state from the economy. Rather, the
international financial institutions charged with global economic gov-
ernance advocated a new role for the state. The World Bank outlines
this new role in detail in its 1997 World Development Report called
The State in a Changing World, in which it advocated a shift from the
planned economies of the era of ‘Third Worldism” to the free markets
of the post-Cold War period (World Bank, 1997). This new role required
states to provide infrastructure for private investors, to strengthen judi-
cial institutions with the goal of enforcing the rights of private property,
to promote of business friendly environments for the growth of private
firms, to allow the unrestricted repatriation of profits, and to substan-
tially open up the economy to the private sector.
This new role was only new, however, in cases where post-colonial
states had engaged in paternalistic forms of statist economic develop-
ment and social protection, such as in many Middle Eastern countries.
The capitalist democracies of the West had long institutionalized
property-based legal regimes and have a long record of enabling pri-
vate sector development. In the MENA region, however, securing the
absolute right of private property required a different kind of interven-
tionist state that could legislate and act on behalf of capital rather than
in the interest of Arab socialism or economic nationalism. In short, the
World Bank was advocating for the creation of institutionally robust
capitalist states in parts of the Global South where statist forms of
industrialization once dominated.
For the World Bank the ideal state is a state that actively reproduces
capitalist social relations by ensuring that the short-term interests
Class, State and Society in the Middle East 31

of capitalists do not undermine the system of capital accumulation.

The report points out that while “[s]tate dominated development
has failed . . . so will stateless development.” Against the strictures
of classical liberalism, the World Bank now recognizes that
“[d]evelopment without an effective state is impossible” (World Bank,
1997, p. 25). The bank is advocating a larger role for the state in
“protecting and correcting markets” (Panitch, 1998, p. 15). It could
also be said that the bank is advocating a larger role for the state in
creating markets in the first place. The state accomplishes this develop-
mental role by maintaining a degree of relative autonomy from capit-
alists and their particularistic interests. To do so, the state requires the
legal, bureaucratic and coercive apparatuses that can guarantee the
continuation of the capitalist system regardless of who or what party is
in power. Only by doing so will Middle Eastern states establish the
“politically organized and legally defined stability, regularity and pre-
dictability in its social arrangements” that capitalism requires (Wood,
2002, p. 178).
For the proponents of liberalization, the task of a peripheral capital-
ist state is to overcome conflicts among elites and to institutionalize
“a culture of the market” (Chaudhry, 1994, p. 7). The former task
requires the creation of “alternative institutional mechanisms for
resolving conflicts and the revitalization, creation, or legalization of
corporate groups in civil society” (Chaudhry, 1994, p. 7). The latter
task requires promoting and legitimizing self-interest as the motivating
factor behind economic activity. Thus, the final prerequisite entails the
redefinition of legal rights of individuals, which would replace pre-
capitalist, communitarian notions of rights. These changes entail
struggles over land, resources and space and involves local commu-
nities, workers, peasants and the unemployed against more powerful,
organized groups of landlords and capitalists. As a result, this has been
perhaps the most important and most contentious aspect of the transi-
tion to a market economy. De Soto (2001, p. 35) argues that the
creation of capitalist property relations is “nothing short of a revolu-
tionary process” as it is not merely providing deeds of ownership, but
rather a process of linking property and social relations together in a
web of market interdependence.
This takes us back to the process of accumulation by dispossession.
In places like Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, accumulation by dispos-
session was well underway by the mid-1990s. The privatization of
32 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

state-owned enterprises, the deregulation of urban housing markets

and the privatization of agricultural land subjected workers and
peasants to increasing precariousness. This process of accumulation
by dispossession entailed the “commodification and privatization of
land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations, conversion of
various forms of property rights . . . into exclusive private property
rights, suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of
labour power and the suppression of alternative, indigenous, forms
of production and consumption” (Harvey, 2003, p. 74).

From Dispossession to Resistance to Revolt

To insist on the compatibility of neoliberal capitalism and authoritar-
ianism is not, however, to suggest that the authoritarian state remains a
monolithic and all-powerful entity looming over a passive, subject
population. Despite the tendency of scholars of authoritarianism
to view the region as one “frozen in time and space, with passivity
becoming tautological to an Arab characteristic,” the Middle East, and
contemporary Egypt in particular, remains a highly contentious polit-
ical space, as the events of 2011 demonstrate (Gerges, 2015, p. 10).
The uprisings in Tahrir Square did not erupt out of the nothing.
Resistance to the kind of accumulation by dispossession discussed in
this book was building over the course of the 1990s and 2000s. While
numerous books have sought to analyse the “movements of the
squares” as a form of “contentious politics” against the tendency of
the theorists of authoritarianism to downplay the agency of Arab civil
society, this book focuses on the resistance of those who, for the most
part, have been written out of the Arab uprisings narrative: the
workers, the peasants and the small tenant farmers. Conspicuously
absent from both Gerges’ (2015) and Lynch’s (2014) collections is a
recognition of the contentious politics between class actors in the
Middle East. While Lynch’s book contains one chapter on labour
movements in the Middle East, neither study focuses on the struggles
between tenant farmers and landlords in the context of agrarian trans-
formation.15 In this sense, the contentious politics dealt with in this

15
This is despite the fact that Tarrow’s (2011) work, from which the current wave
of contentious politics is derived, discusses the phenomenon of the spontaneous
peasant-based land occupation.
From Dispossession to Resistance to Revolt 33

book are rooted in the experience of dispossession by essentially class-

based actors. Arguably, the first and most articulate ‘theorist’ of con-
tentious politics was Marx himself, with his insistence on the impact
that class conflict has on shaping the contours of history.
This contentious politics occupies a broad spectrum of resistance.
Some of this resistance assumes the conventional forms of working-
class agitation: strikes, sit-ins, protests and violent confrontation with
security forces. In the Egyptian context, the struggle of workers is
compounded by the fact that they are struggling against their employ-
ers, the regime and the leadership of the official trade union movement,
which, over time, has become integrated into the state apparatus. Thus,
the resistance of workers includes the struggle to form independent
working-class organizations such as free trade unions.
The resistance of the small producers of rural Egypt tends to be more
disorganized, spontaneous and dispersed. As the cooperatives of the
Nasserist era became integrated into the neoliberal project of agrarian
transformation, the collective locus of rural life underwent a dramatic
transformation. No longer vehicles of peasant organization against the
depredations of landlords, the cooperatives became another institution
of authoritarian neoliberalism, compelling the small producers of rural
Egypt to voice their dissent in new and less organized ways as they
faced the forces of dispossession.
Such forms of contentious politics and spontaneous resistance calls
to mind the types of resistance engaged in by the artisans, plebeians
and dispossessed peasants of early industrializing England, chronicled
so vividly by E. P. Thompson (1963), or the rural protests and the
‘primitive rebels’ that formed the subject of the work of Hobsbawm
(1971; 1969) and Rudé (1995). Hobsbawm (1971, p. 2) acknowledged
the “undetermined, ambiguous or even ostensibly ‘conservative’ char-
acter of such movements” in the absence of any well-articulated ideol-
ogy. This recalls Polanyi’s earlier depiction of a “countermovement”
against the expansion of the market, characterized as a “reaction
against a dislocation which attacked the fabric of society, and which
would have destroyed the very organization of production that the
market had called into being” (Polanyi, 1944, p. 136). In a contem-
porary Middle Eastern context, Asef Bayat has written about the
“nonmovements” that have emerged to help shape the contours of
Arab society. Nonmovements “are the shared contentious practices of
a large number of fragmented people whose similar but disconnected
34 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

claims produce important social change in their own lives and society at
large, even though such practices are rarely guided by an ideology,
recognizable leadership, or organization” (Bayat, 2017, p. 106).
While Polanyi’s countermovement brought together working class
and landed class actors – including members of the landed aristoc-
racy – as “those most immediately affected by the deleterious action of
the market” (Polanyi, 1944, p. 138), Bayet’s nonmovement is popu-
lated solely by the “dispossessed,” of the “quiet, pervasive, and endur-
ing encroachment of the poor people on the propertied, the powerful,
and the public in their quest for survival and bettering their lives”
(Bayat, 2017, p. 106).

Sources
My intention in this book is to capture the contested process of political
and economic change by bringing in the views and experiences of not
only the elite, but also those of the peasants and workers as Egypt
experienced deeper economic integration beginning in the 1990s. In this
regard, qualitative approaches to political economy more adequately
convey these contested processes than do the economic statistics pro-
vided by official statistics. The aim of the qualitative research compon-
ent is to gain an in-depth understanding of how workers and peasants
experienced the process of change that was triggered by the liberaliza-
tion of land and housing markets across the country.
The research for this book is based on extensive fieldwork conducted
in Egypt between 2005 and 2008 that consisted of extensive interviews
with workers, peasants, government policy makers and representatives
of the Muslim Brotherhood. These unstructured interviews were con-
ducted over a period of four years (2005–8) in thirteen out of a total of
twenty-seven Egyptian governorates, including Cairo. These interviews
offer a window into how social agents experienced the changes in
social relations that occurred as part of the strategy of accumulation
by dispossession. The interviews also shed light on how these social
agents, coming from different class backgrounds, interpreted the
nature of the social change and how they viewed the role of the state
and how they reacted to policies that changed their social status and
the extent of control they exercised over their lives and communities.
These interviews are supplemented by an extensive analysis of a
wide variety of official documentation produced between 1990 and
Structure of the Book 35

2010 by the Egyptian government and Egyptian state institutions,

Egyptian businesses and international financial institutions like the
IMF and the World Bank. Research of this documentation entailed
archival work at the Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation et Juridi-
ques in Cairo as well as the Social Research Centre of the American
University in Cairo. Other official documentation was accessed in the
archives at L’institute du Monde Arabe in Paris, France. These
included Arabic, French and English language sources.

Structure of the Book

This book is not about the causes of the Arab Uprisings that deposed
Mubarak in the early months of 2011. Rather, this book is about the
broader historical changes underway in the contemporary political
economy of Egypt. Suffice it to say that these changes provided fertile
ground for the rising wave of discontent that ultimately brought down
the regime in January 2011. However, how these dramatic socioeco-
nomic changes related to the outbreak of the Arab uprisings in Egypt is
no doubt a complex issue that must form the subject of its own study.
The book is organized into three sections. Chapter 1 provides a
conceptual and historical background for the period of economic
liberalization. They explore the processes of state and class formation
through an examination of the Egyptian state and economy in the post-
colonial period (1952), and the ways in which new class fractions
emerged as a result of various economic models pursued by Egypt’s
post-colonial leaders (Nasserism, Sadat, and Mubarak). Chapter 2
examines the political economy of Egypt from the creation of the
developmentalist state under Gamal Abdel Nasser to the rise of the
market economy under Anwar Sadat. The chapter situates the shifts in
Egyptian political economy within the context of global economic
changes, shifting regional alignments and emerging class struggles.
Chapter 3 – Mubarak and the Neoliberal Turn – charts the rise to
power of a neoliberal class fraction that is closely associated with the
policies of economic liberalization and state transformation. The chap-
ter explores the accumulation strategies of this class fraction and the
legal, institutional and economic reforms of the state that facilitated the
accumulation of capital during these two decades.
Chapter 4 explores the evolution of the military as an increasingly
cohesive class-based organization with aspirations to consolidate its
36 Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Contemporary Egypt

economic and institutional power. Similarly, Chapter 5 examines the

emergence of the Brotherhood as a politically marginalized organiza-
tion rooted in a contradictory social base with historical grievances
against both the state-oriented industrialists of the Nasserist period
and the neoliberals of the Mubarak era. With ties to Qatari capital, the
Brotherhood ultimately attempts to make peace with the emerging
neoliberal order in the years before the uprisings. The chapter traces
the Brotherhood’s attempts to establish their influence within the econ-
omy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, despite their political margin-
alization from official state institutions.
The final chapters examine the ‘contentious politics’ of liberal
reform (Gerges, 2015). Chapter 6 examines the impact of neoliberal
reforms on workers over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s and
chronicles the struggles of Egyptian workers – both inside and outside
the official trade union movement – against the ongoing transform-
ations of the labor market. Chapter 7 examines the states’ sustained
assault on the customary rights of the peasantry and on the traditional
social relations that constituted the Egyptian socioeconomic order. As
the most blatant instance of accumulation by dispossession, peasants
experienced increased levels of exploitation and economic insecurity as
their tenure rights were exterminated and as they became subject to
state sanctioned expropriation. Finally, Chapter 8 explains the signifi-
cance of this study for an understanding of the uprisings in Egypt and
Mubarak’s subsequent deposition in January 2011.
2
| The Developmentalist State
and the Market Economy
From Nasser to Sadat

From Independence to Arab Socialism

While Egypt was granted formal independence from British colonial
rule in 1922, it remained tied to British imperial interests. Despite some
agitation from nationalists, the urban economy was linked to the
export of cotton and failed to develop industries that could absorb
rural surplus labour. Throughout this period, Egyptian society was
dominated by the ruling family and a small group of landed families
that owned most of the agricultural land of the country, while most
peasants and small farmers lived in impoverished conditions. The
dominance of the cotton-producing fraction of the landed class and
the cotton-exporting bourgeoisie signified a general continuity with
nineteenth-century social property relations.
Egyptian society was marked by gross inequalities during this
period. By the late 1940s, 20 percent of cultivated land was owned
by 0.1 percent of the population, and 13 percent of cultivable land was
held by small, nearly landless landowners who comprised 75 percent of
the landholding population (Bush, 2009, pp. 52–53). By 1950, 60 per-
cent of the rural population was landless (Beinin, 2001, p. 118). The
political and economic systems were dominated by an alliance of
landowners and industrialists who had benefited from British colonial
rule. Industrialization remained limited in scope, because only con-
sumer goods industries linked to the export sector, such as food
processing and textiles production, had been developed. Only 3.6
percent of Egyptian firms employed ten or more workers (Beinin &
Lockman, 1987, p. 263). This “contradictory and uneven develop-
ment” resulted in the creation of a fragmented and heterogeneous
working class characterized by “a large number of workers employed
in very small enterprises producing labour-intensive and capital-poor
conditions where the distinction between employer and employee was
often not very sharp,” and a large number of workers employed in

37
38 The Developmentalist State and the Market Economy: Nasser to Sadat

“large-scale mass production industries” (Beinin & Lockman, 1987,

p. 265). As a result, a large number of workers toiled in conditions
resembling Lipietz’s notion of “primitive Taylorization” (1987, p. 74):
low wage, labour-intensive work lacking basic labour rights, “designed
to extort as much surplus-value as possible,” while “no attempt is
made to reproduce the labour force on any regular basis” (Lipietz,
1987, p. 76).
The landowners and industrialists expanded their share of wealth
during World War II, either through monopoly pricing or through
joint ventures with various European powers. However, no long-term
vision for economic development, social justice or redistribution of
wealth was conceived by the ruling class.
The period between 1945 and 1952 was a turbulent one as the gap
between the rich and the poor increased, leaving many without the
means to a decent livelihood. The continued presence of the British and
the collaboration of the Egyptian elite with them mobilized public
protest in support of an anti-imperialist struggle. In 1952 an organized
faction within the military – the Free Officers – came to power in a
coup with the intent of ridding Egypt of both the descendants of
Muhammad Ali’s dynasty as well as the lingering British political and
military presence.
In 1952, a group of radical Free Officers within the army lead a coup
against King Farouk and began to implement a revolutionary process of
social, economic and political change. Ideologically speaking, the Free
Officers represented a heterogeneous group composed of nationalists,
technocrats and socialists. The technocrats believed that science and
technology, coupled with proactive bureaucratic intervention and plan-
ning, could resolve Egypt’s developmental problems. The nationalists
wanted the public sector to take the lead in building state capitalism by
fostering the growth of specific sectors of the economy and providing
resources to the private sector. The socialists believed in the need to
include the popular classes in the process of economic development.
The fourth group was associated with the traditional ruling classes and
supported the development of the private sector and wanted to distance
Egypt from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. As the revolution
unfolded, it was impossible for these groups to reach an agreement on a
grand strategy for economic development and the means to carry out
such a program. Sadowski captured the irreconcilable characteristics
and ideologies of the Free Officers when he wrote that,
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 Mon Sauveur Jésus-Christ, vous êtes le véritable agneau de Dieu
immolé pour effacer nos péchés; faites par votre grâce qu'ayant reçu
le pardon de nos péchés, nous menions une vie nouvelle, et
accordez-nous la charité et la paix avec notre prochain, que vous
avez tant recommandées, et qui est si nécessaire pour avoir part aux
effets et aux grâces de la sainte communion.

AU DOMINE NON SUM DIGNUS.

Lorsque le prêtre va communier, il dit trois fois avec un profond sentiment

de son indignité: Domine, non sum dignus, c'est-à-dire, Seigneur, je ne suis
pas digne que vous entriez en moi; mais dites seulement une parole, et mon
âme sera guérie. Quand nous ne communions pas réellement, nous devons
toujours communier spirituellement, en demandant à Jésus-Christ de nous
donner son esprit par la participation de sa grâce.

Seigneur, quoique je sois très-indigne par mes péchés et mes

infidélités de m'approcher de votre autel, et de vous recevoir par la
communion, j'ose vous supplier de me donner quelque part à vos
miséricordes. Daignez m'accorder la grâce de participer à la vertu de
votre sacrifice; éclairez mon esprit, fortifiez ma volonté et purifiez
mon cœur pour ne penser qu'à vous, pour ne vouloir et n'aimer que
vous, et pour l'amour de vous; faites par votre grâce que je désire
de ne vivre, de ne souffrir et de ne mourir que pour vous.

AUX DERNIÈRES ORAISONS.

Le prêtre demande les fruits de l'excellent sacrifice qui vient d'être offert à
Dieu; ce sont la rémission des péchés, la grâce d'une sainte vie, et le mérite
de la vie éternelle.

Mon Dieu, accordez-nous, en vertu du sacrifice que nous venons

de vous offrir, la rémission de nos péchés et toutes les grâces qui
nous sont nécessaires pour nous sauver. Donnez-nous surtout un
amour ardent pour vous, une grande crainte de vous déplaire, un
grand désir et un grand soin de vous plaire, l'application à nos
devoirs, la patience dans les afflictions, la douceur et la charité pour
bien vivre avec tout le monde, l'humanité, la pureté, la tempérance,
la mortification de nos sens, un grand détachement des biens, des
plaisirs et des honneurs de ce monde, un grand dégoût et une sainte
horreur des folles joies du siècle; un véritable esprit de pénitence,
qui nous inspire une vive douleur des péchés de notre vie passée, un
désir sincère de les expier, et une ferme résolution de n'y plus
retomber et d'en éviter toutes les occasions. Enfin, mon Dieu,
donnez-nous toutes les grâces nécessaires pour mener une vie
chrétienne, suivie d'une sainte mort et d'une heureuse éternité.

À L'ITE MISSA EST.

Le prêtre, se tournant vers le peuple, l'avertit par ces mots que le sacrifice
de la messe est achevé. Il donne ensuite la bénédiction au nom de la sainte
Trinité.

QUAND LE PRÊTRE DONNE LA BÉNÉDICTION.

Dieu tout-puissant et tout miséricordieux, Père, Fils et Saint-

Esprit, bénissez-nous par Jésus-Christ, et que cette bénédiction nous
soit un gage de la bénédiction que vous donnerez un jour à vos élus.

AU DERNIER ÉVANGILE.

Avant de quitter le saint autel, le prêtre dit l'Évangile de saint Jean, qui
annonce l'éternité du Verbe et la miséricorde qui l'a porté à prendre notre
chair et à habiter parmi nous. Demandons d'être du nombre de ceux qui le
reçoivent et deviennent ses enfants.
 Seigneur, gravez par votre grâce votre Évangile dans nos esprits
et dans nos cœurs, afin que nous ne suivions plus l'égarement de
nos pensées, la fougue de nos passions ni le déréglement de notre
cœur; mais que nous nous soumettions entièrement à tout ce que
vous demandez de nous, et que nous réglions toutes nos démarches
sur les maximes de votre saint Évangile, et non sur les maximes et
sur les coutumes corrompues du monde.

PRIÈRE APRÈS LA MESSE.

Mon Dieu, je vous remercie des grâces et des bonnes résolutions

que vous m'avez inspirées pendant le saint sacrifice de la messe;
donnez-moi la grâce de les mettre toutes en pratique. Faites que je
montre par ma conduite le reste de la journée, que ce n'est pas en
vain que j'ai offert avec le prêtre ce saint sacrifice; faites-moi
souvenir que je viens de vous présenter, par Jésus-Christ, mon âme,
mon corps, ma vie, mon travail, mon occupation, mes biens, tout ce
que je suis et tout ce que j'ai. C'est pourquoi je dois avoir grand soin
de les employer à votre service, par l'intercession de la sainte Vierge
et de tous les Saints. Ainsi soit-il.

VÊPRES DU DIMANCHE.

V. Deus, in adjutorium meum intende.

R. Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina.
V. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui sancto.
R. Sicut erat in Principio, et nunc et semper, et in secula
seculorum Amen.

PSAUME 109.
 Dixit Dominus Domino meo: * Sede à dextris meis,
Donec ponam inimicos tuos * scabellum pedum tuorum.
Virgam virtutis tuæ emittet Dominus ex Sion: * Dominare in
medio inimicorum tuorum.
Tecum principium in die virtutis tuæ in splendoribus Sanctorum; *
ex utero ante luciferum genui te.
Juravit Dominus, et non pœnitebit eum: * tu es sacerdos in
æternum secundùm ordinem Melchisedech.
Dominus à dextris tuis: * confregit in die iræ suæ reges.
Judicabit in nationibus, implebit ruinas; * conquassabit capita in
terrâ multorum.
De torrente in viâ bibet; * proptereà exaltabit caput.
Gloria Patri, etc.

PSAUME 110.

Confitebor tibi, Domine, in toto corde meo; * in concilio justorum

et congregatione.
Magna opera Domini, * exquisita in omnes voluntates ejus.
Confessio et magnificentia opus ejus, * et justitia ejus manet in
seculum seculi.
Memoriam fecit mirabilium suorum misericors et miserator
Dominus: * escam dedit timentibus se.
Memor erit in seculum testamenti sui: * virtutem operum suorum
annuntiabit populo suo.
Ut det illis hæreditatem gentium, * opera manuum ejus veritas et
judicium.
Fidelia omnia mandata ejus, confirmata in seculum seculi, * facta
in veritate et æquitate.
Redemptionem misit populo suo: * mandavit in æternum
testamentum suum.
 Sanctum et terribile nomen ejus: * initium sapientiæ timor
Domini.
Intellectus bonus omnibus facientibus eum: * laudatio ejus manet
in seculum seculi.

PSAUME 111.

Beatus vir qui timet Dominum, * in mandatis ejus volet nimis.

Potens in terrâ erit semen ejus: * generatio rectorum benedicetur.
Gloria et divitiæ in domo ejus: * et justitia ejus manet in seculum
seculi.
Exortum est in tenebris lumen rectis: * misericors et miserator et
justus.
Jucundus homo qui miseretur et commodat, disponet sermones
suos in judicio: * quia in æternum non commovebitur.
In memoriâ æternâ erit justus, * ab auditione malâ non timebit.
Paratum cor ejus sperare in Domino, confirmatum est cor ejus: *
non commovebitur donec despiciat inimicos suos.
Dispersit, dedit pauperibus, justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi:
* cornu ejus exaltabitur in gloriâ.
Peccator videbit et irascetur, dentibus suis fremet et tabescet; *
desiderium peccatorum peribit.

PSAUME 112.

Laudate, pueri, Dominum; * laudate nomen Domini.

Sit nomen Domini benedictum, * ex hoc nunc et usque in
seculum.
A solis ortu usque ad occasum, * laudabile nomen Domini.
Excelsus super omnes gentes Dominus, * et super cœlos gloria
ejus.
 Quis sicut Dominus Deus noster, qui in altis habitat, * et humilia
respicit in cœlo et in terrâ.
Suscitans à terrâ inopem, * et de stercore erigens pauperem.
Ut collocet eum cum principibus, * cum principibus populi sui.
Qui habitare fecit sterilem in domo, * matrem filiorum lætantem.

PSAUME 113.

In exitu Israel de Ægypto, * domus Jacob de populo barbaro;

Facta est Judæa sanctificatio ejus; * Israël potestas ejus.
Mare vidit et fugit; * Jordanis conversus est retrorsùm.
Montes exultaverunt ut arietes, * et colles sicut agni ovium.
Quid est tibi mare, quod fugisti? * et tu, Jordanis, qui conversus
es retrorsùm?
Montes exultâstis sicut arietes? * et colles sicut agni ovium?
A facie Domini mota est terra, * à facie Dei Jacob.
Qui convertit petram in stagna aquarum, * et rupem in fontes
aquarum.
Non nobis, Domine, non nobis: * sed nomini tuo da gloriam,
super misericordiâ tuâ et veritate tuâ;
Nequando dicant gentes: * Ubi est Deus eorum?
Deus autem noster in cœlo: * omnia quæcumque voluit, fecit.
Simulacra gentium argentum et aurum, * opera manuum
hominum.
Os habent, et non loquentur * oculos habent, et non videbunt.
Aures habent, et non audient; * nares habent, et non odorabunt.
Manus habent, et non palpabunt; pedes habent, et non
ambulabunt; * non clamabunt in gutture suo.
Similes illis fiant qui faciunt ea, * et omnes qui confidunt in eis.
Domus Israel speravit in Domino: * adjutor eorum et protector
eorum est.
 Domus Aaron speravit in Domino: * adjutor eorum et protector
eorum est.
Qui timent Dominum, speraverunt in Domino: * adjutor eorum et
protector eorum est.
Dominus memor fuit nostri, * et benedixit nobis.
Benedixit domui Israel; * benedixit domui Aaron.
Benedixit omnibus qui timent Dominum, * pusillis cum majoribus.
Adjiciat Dominus super vos, * super vos et super filios vestros.
Benedicti vos à Domino, * qui fecit cœlum et terram.
Cœlum cœli Domino: * terram autem dedit filiis hominum.
Non mortui laudabunt te, Domine, * neque omnes qui
descendunt in infernum.
Sed nos qui vivimus, benedicimus Domino, * ex hoc nunc et
usquè in seculum.

CAPITULE.

Benedictus Deus, et Pater Domini nostri Jesu Christi, Pater

misericordiarum, et Deus totius consolationis, qui consolatur nos in
omni tribulatione nostrâ.
Deo gratias.

HYMNE.

Lucis Creator optime,

Lucem dierum proferens,
Primordiis lucis novæ,
Mundi parans originem.

Qui manè junctum vesperi

Diem vocari præcipis,
Tetrum chaos illabitur,
Audi preces cum fletibus.
 Ne mens gravata crimine,
Vitæ sit exsul munere,
Dùm nil perenne cogitat,
Seseque culpis illigat.

Cœleste pulset ostium,

Vitale tollat præmium,
Vitemus omne noxium,
Purgemus omne pessimum

Præsta, Pater piissime,

Patrique compar Unice,
Cum Spiritu Paracleto,
Regnans per omne seculum.

Amen.

CANTIQUE DE LA SAINTE VIERGE.

Magnificat * anima mea Dominum;

Et exultavit spiritus meus, * in Deo salutari meo.
Quia respexit humilitatem ancillæ suæ: * ecce enim ex hoc
beatam me dicent omnes generationes.
Quia fecit mihi magna qui potens est, * et sanctum nomen ejus.
Et misericordia ejus à progenie in progenies, * timentibus eum.
Fecit potentiam in brachio suo: * dispersit superbos mente cordis
sui.
Deposuit potentes de sede, * et exaltavit humiles.
Esurientes implevit bonis, * et divites dimisit inanes.
Suscepit Israel puerum suum, * recordatus misericordiæ suæ.
Sicut locutus est ad patres nostros, * Abraham et semini ejus in
secula.
Gloria Patri, etc.
 À COMPLIES.

V. Converte nos, Deus, salutaris noster;

R. Et averte iram tuam à nobis.
V. Deus in adjutorium, etc.

PSAUME 4.

Cùm invocarem exaudivit me, Deus justitiæ meæ: * in

tribulatione dilatasti mihi.
Misereri mei, * et exaudi orationem meam.
Filii hominum, usquequò gravi corde? * ut quid diligitis vanitatem,
et quæritis mendacium?
Et scitote quoniam mirificavit Dominus Sanctum tuum: * Dominus
exaudiet me, cùm clamavero ad eum.
Irascimini, et nolite peccare; * quæ dicitis in cordibus vestris, in
cubilibus vestris compungimini.
Sacrificate sacrificium justitiæ, et sperate in Domino; * multi
dicunt: Quis ostendit nobis bona?
Signatum est super nos lumen vultûs tui, Domine; * dedisti
lætitiam in corde meo.
A fructu frumenti, vini et olei sui * multiplicati sunt.
In pace in idipsum dormiam, * et requiescam;
Quoniam tu, Domine, * singulariter in spe constituisti me.

PSAUME 30.

In te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in æternum; * in justitiâ

tuâ libera me.
Inclina ad me aurem tuam, * accelera ut eruas me.
Esto mihi in Deum protectorem et in domum refugi, * ut salvum
me facias.
 Quoniam fortitudo mea et refugium meum es tu, * et propter
nomen tuum deduces me et enutries me.
Educes me de laqueo hoc quem absconderunt mihi: * quoniam tu
es protector meus.
In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum: * redemisti me,
Domine, Deus veritatis.

PSAUME 90.

Qui habitat in adjutorio Altissimi, * in protectione Dei cœli

commorabitur.
Dicet Domino: Susceptor meus es tu, et refugium meum; * Deus
meus, sperabo in eum.
Quoniam ipse liberavit me de laqueo venantium, * et à verbo
aspero.
Scapulis suis obumbrabit tibi, * et sub pennis ejus sperabis.
Scuto circumdabit te veritas ejus, * non timebis à timore
nocturno.
A sagittâ volante in die, à negotio perambulante in tenebris, * ab
incursu et dæmonio meridiano.
Cadent à latero tuo mille et decem millia à dextris tuis: * ad te
autem non appropinquabit.
Verùmtamen oculis tuis considerabis, * et retributionem
peccatorum videbis.
Quoniam tu es, Domine, spes mea: * Altissimum posuisti
refugium tuum.
Non accedet ad te malum, * et flagellum non appropinquabit
tabernaculo tuo.
Quoniam Angelis suis mandavit de te, * ut custodiant te omnibus
viis tuis.
In manibus portabunt te, * ne fortè offendas ad lapidem pedem
tuum.
 Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis, * et conculcabis leonem
et draconem.
Quoniam in me speravit, liberabo eum: * protegam eum,
quoniam cognovit nomen meum.
Clamavit ad me, * et ego exaudiam eum:
Cum ipso sum in tribulatione; * eripiam eum et glorificabo eum.
Longitudine dierum replebo eum, * ostendam illi salutare meum.

PSAUME 133.

Ecce nunc benedicite Dominum, * omnes servi Domini.

Qui statis in domo Domini, * in atriis domûs Dei nostri.
In noctibus extollite manus vestras in sancta; * et benedicite
Dominum.
Benedicat te Dominus ex Sion: * qui fecit cœlum et terram.

HYMNE.

De lucis ante terminum,

Rerum Creator, poscimus,
Ut pro tuâ clementiâ
Sis præsul et custodia.

Procul recedant somnia,

Et noctium phantasmata;
Hostemque nostrum comprime,
Ne polluantur corpora.

Præsta, Pater omnipotens,

Per Jesum Christum Dominum,
Qui tecum in perpetuum
Regnat cum Sancto Spiritu.

Amen.
 CAPITULE.

Tu autem in nobis es, Domine, et nomen sanctum tuum

invocatum est super nos; ne derelinquas nos, Domine Deus noster.
Deo gratias.
R. br. In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum. In. V.
Redemisti me, Domine, Deus veritatis. Commendo. Gloria. In.
V. Custodi nos, Domine, ut pupillam oculi. R. Sub umbrâ alarum
tuarum protege nos.

CANTIQUE DE SAINT SIMÉON.

Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, * secundùm verbum tuum,

in pace.
Quia viderunt oculi mei * salutare tuum
Quod parasti, * ante faciem, omnium populorum,
Lumen ad revelationem gentium, * et gloriam plebis tuæ Israel.
Gloria, etc.
Ant. Salva nos, Domine, vigilantes; custodi nos dormientes, ut
vigilemus cum Christo et requiescamus in pace.

ORAISON.

Nous vous supplions, Seigneur, de visiter cette demeure, et

d'éloigner d'elle toutes les embûches de notre ennemi; que vos
saints Anges y habitent, pour nous conserver en paix, et que votre
bénédiction soit toujours sur nous. Par notre Seigneur.
Que le Seigneur soit avec vous.
Rendons grâces à Dieu.

Les Complies étant finies, on dit à voix basse:

 Gratia Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et caritas Dei, et communicatio
Sancti Spiritûs sit cum omnibus vobis.
R. Amen.

Après l'office, on dit tout bas:

Pater, Ave, Credo.

ANTIENNES À LA SAINTE VIERGE.

PENDANT L'AVENT.

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quæ pervia cœli Porta manes, et Stella

maris, succurre cadenti, surgere qui curat populo: tu quæ genuisti,
Naturâ mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem. Virgo priùs ac posteriùs:
Gabrielis ab ore, Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.
V. Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ.
R. Et concepit de Spiritu sancto.

ORAISON.

Répandez, s'il vous plaît, Seigneur, votre grâce dans nos âmes,
afin qu'ayant connu par la voix de l'Ange l'Incarnation de Jésus-
Christ votre Fils, nous arrivions, par sa Passion et sa Croix, à la gloire
de sa Résurrection. Par le même Jésus-Christ notre Seigneur. Ainsi
soit-il.

APRÈS L'AVENT.

V. Post partum Virgo inviolata permansisti.

 R. Dei Genitrix, intercede pro nobis.

ORAISON.

Ô Dieu, qui, en rendant féconde la virginité de la bienheureuse

Vierge Marie, avez assuré au genre humain les récompenses du salut
éternel, nous vous prions de nous faire éprouver dans nos besoins
combien est puissante auprès de vous l'intercession de celle par
laquelle nous avons reçu l'auteur de la vie, Jésus-Christ votre Fils.

DE LA PURIFICATION AU JEUDI SAINT.

Ave, Regina cœlorum;

Ave, Domina Angelorum;
Salve, Radix; salve, Porta,
Ex quâ mundo lux est orta.

Gaude, Virgo gloriosa:

Super omnes speciosa:
Vale, ô valde decora,
Et pro nobis Christum exora.

V. Dignare me laudare te, Virgo sacrata.

R. Da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos.

ORAISON.

Dieu de bonté, accordez à notre faiblesse les secours de votre

grâce: et comme nous honorons la mémoire de la sainte Mère de
Dieu, faites que, par le secours de son intercession, nous
ressuscitions de nos iniquités; nous vous en supplions par le même
Jésus-Christ. Ainsi soit-il.
 DE PAQUES À LA TRINITÉ.

Regina cœli, lætare, alleluia:

Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia,
Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia.
Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.

V. Gaude et lætare, Virgo Maria:

R. Quia surrexit Dominus vere.

ORAISON.

Ô Dieu, qui avez daigné réjouir le monde par la résurrection de

votre Fils notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ; faites, s'il vous plaît, que, par
la Vierge Marie sa mère, nous goûtions les joies d'une vie éternelle
et bienheureuse. Par le même Jésus-Christ notre Seigneur. R. Ainsi
soit-il.

DE LA TRINITÉ À L'AVENT.

Salve, Regina, mater misericordiæ, vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra,

salve. Ad te clamamus, exules Filii Evæ; ad te suspiramus gementes
et flentes in hâc lacrymarum valle: Eia ergo Advocata nostra, illos
tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte; Et Jesum, benedictum
fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exilium ostende, ô clemens, ô pia
ô dulcis Virgo Maria!
V. Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genitrix,
R. Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.

ORAISON.
 Dieu tout-puissant et éternel, qui, par la coopération du Saint-
Esprit, avez préparé le corps et l'âme de la glorieuse Vierge Marie,
pour en faire une demeure digne de votre Fils, accordez-nous la
grâce, pendant que nous célébrons sa mémoire avec joie, d'être
délivrés, par son intercession, des maux présents et de la mort
éternelle. Nous vous en supplions par le même Jésus-Christ notre
Seigneur. Ainsi soit-il.

PROSE À LA SAINTE VIERGE.

Inviolata, integra et casta es, Maria,

Quæ es effecta fulgida cœli porta.

Ô Mater alma, Christi carissima,

Suscipe pia laudum præconia;

Nostra ut pura pectora sint et corpora,

Te nunc flagitant devota corda et ora.

Tua per precata dulcisona,

Nobis concedas veniam per secula

Ô benigna! ô benigna! ô benigna!

Quæ sola inviolata permansisti.
 TABLE DES CHAPITRES.
Pages.
Avertissement des éditeurs. 1
Préface. 3
LIVRE PREMIER.
AVIS UTILES POUR ENTRER DANS LA VIE INTÉRIEURE.
Chap. I. Qu'il faut imiter Jésus-christ, et mépriser toutes les
vanités du monde. 15
Chap. II. Avoir d'humbles sentiments de soi-même. 18
Chap. III. De la Doctrine de vérité. 20
Chap. IV. De la Prévoyance dans les actions. 25
Chap. V. De la lecture de l'Écriture sainte. 26
Chap. VI. Des affections déréglées. 28
Chap. VII. Qu'il faut fuir l'orgueil et les vaines espérances. 29
Chap. VIII. Éviter la trop grande familiarité. 32
Chap. IX. De l'obéissance et du renoncement à son propre
sens. 33
Chap. X. Qu'il faut éviter les entretiens inutiles. 35
Chap. XI. Des moyens d'acquérir la paix intérieure, et du soin
d'avancer dans la vertu. 37
Chap. XII. De l'avantage de l'adversité. 40
Chap. XIII. De la résistance aux tentations. 42
Chap. XIV. Éviter les jugements téméraires, et ne se point
rechercher soi-même. 47
Chap. XV. Des œuvres de charité. 48
Chap. XVI. Qu'il faut supporter les défauts d'autrui. 50
Chap. XVII. De la vie religieuse. 53
Chap. XVIII. De l'exemple des Saints. 54
Chap. XIX. Des exercices d'un bon religieux. 58
Chap. XX. De l'amour de la solitude et du silence. 62
Chap. XXI. De la componction du cœur. 67
Chap. XXII. De la considération de la misère humaine. 71
Chap. XXIII. De la méditation de la mort. 76
Chap. XXIV. Du jugement et des peines des pécheurs. 81
Chap. XXV. Qu'il faut travailler avec ferveur à l'amendement
de sa vie. 86
LIVRE DEUXIÈME.
INSTRUCTION POUR AVANCER DANS LA VIE INTÉRIEURE.
Chap. I. De la conversation intérieure. 95
Chap. II. Qu'il faut s'abandonner à Dieu en esprit d'humilité. 100
Chap. III. De l'homme pacifique. 102
Chap. IV. De la pureté d'esprit, et de la droiture d'intention. 105
Chap. V. De la considération de soi-même. 107
Chap. VI. De la joie d'une bonne conscience. 109
Chap. VII. Qu'il faut aimer Jésus-Christ par-dessus toutes
choses. 113
Chap. VIII. De la familiarité que l'amour établit entre Jésus et
l'âme fidèle. 113
Chap. IX. De la privation de toute consolation. 119
Chap. X. De la reconnaissance pour la grâce de Dieu. 124
Chap. XI. Du petit nombre de ceux qui aiment la Croix de
Jésus-Christ. 128
Chap. XII. De la sainte voie de la Croix. 132
 LIVRE TROISIÈME.
DE LA VIE INTÉRIEURE.
Chap. I. Des entretiens intérieurs de Jésus-Christ avec l'âme
fidèle. 141
Chap. II. La vérité parle au dedans de nous sans aucun bruit
de paroles. 143
Chap. III. Qu'il faut écouter la parole de Dieu avec humilité;
et que plusieurs ne la reçoivent pas comme ils le devraient. 146
Chap. IV. Qu'il faut marcher en présence de Dieu dans la
vérité et l'humilité. 151
Chap. V. Des merveilleux effets de l'amour divin. 155
Chap. VI. De l'épreuve du véritable amour. 160
Chap. VII. Qu'il faut cacher humblement les grâces que Dieu
nous fait. 164
Chap. VIII. Qu'il faut s'anéantir soi-même devant Dieu. 168
Chap. IX. Qu'il faut rapporter tout à Dieu comme à notre
dernière fin. 172
Chap. X. Qu'il est doux de servir Dieu et de mépriser le
monde. 174
Chap. XI. Qu'il faut examiner et modérer les désirs du cœur. 178
Chap. XII. Qu'il faut s'exercer à la patience, et lutter contre
ses passions. 180
Chap. XIII. Qu'il faut obéir humblement à l'exemple de Jésus-
Christ. 184
Chap. XIV. Qu'il faut considérer les secrets jugements de Dieu
pour ne pas s'enorgueillir du bien qu'on fait. 187
Chap. XV. De ce que nous devons dire et faire quand il s'élève
quelque désir en nous. 191
Chap. XVI. Qu'on ne doit chercher qu'en Dieu la vraie
consolation. 194
Chap. XVII. Qu'il faut remettre à Dieu le soin de ce qui nous
regarde. 197
Chap. XVIII. Qu'il faut souffrir avec constance les misères de
cette vie, à l'exemple de Jésus-Christ. 199
Chap. XIX. De la souffrance des injures, et de la véritable
patience. 202
Chap. XX. De l'aveu de son infirmité, et des misères de cette
vie. 205
Chap. XXI. Qu'il faut établir son repos en Dieu, plutôt que
dans tous les autres biens. 209
Chap. XXII. Du souvenir des bienfaits de Dieu. 214
Chap. XXIII. De quatre choses importantes pour conserver la
paix. 218
Chap. XXIV. Qu'il ne faut point s'enquérir curieusement de la
conduite des autres. 222
Chap. XXV. En quoi consiste la vraie paix et le véritable
progrès de l'âme. 224
Chap. XXVI. De la liberté du cœur, qui s'acquiert plutôt par la
prière que par la lecture. 227
Chap. XXVII. Que l'amour de soi est le plus grand obstacle qui
empêche l'homme de parvenir au souverain bien. 230
Chap. XXVIII. Qu'il faut mépriser les jugements humains. 234
Chap. XXIX. Comment il faut invoquer et bénir Dieu dans
l'affliction. 236
Chap. XXX. Qu'il faut implorer le secours de Dieu, et attendre
avec confiance le retour de sa grâce. 238
Chap. XXXI. Qu'il faut oublier toutes les créatures pour
trouver le Créateur. 243
Chap. XXXII. De l'abnégation de soi-même. 247
Chap. XXXIII. De l'inconstance du cœur, et que nous devons
tout rapporter à Dieu comme à notre dernière fin. 250
Chap. XXXIV. Qu'on ne saurait goûter que Dieu seul, et qu'on
le goûte en toutes choses, quand on l'aime véritablement. 252
Chap. XXXV. Qu'on est toujours, durant cette vie, exposé à la
tentation. 255
Chap. XXXVI. Contre les vains jugements des hommes. 258
Chap. XXXVII. Qu'il faut renoncer entièrement à soi-même
pour obtenir la liberté du cœur. 261
Chap. XXXVIII. Comment il faut se conduire dans les choses
extérieures, et recourir à Dieu dans les périls. 264
Chap. XXXIX. Qu'il faut éviter l'empressement dans les
affaires. 266
Chap. XL. Que l'homme n'a rien de bon de lui-même, et ne
peut se glorifier de rien. 268
Chap. XLI. Du mépris de tous les honneurs du temps. 272
Chap. XLII. Qu'il ne faut pas que notre paix dépende des
hommes. 274
Chap. XLIII. Contre la vaine science du siècle. 276
Chap. XLIV. Qu'il ne faut point s'embarrasser dans les choses
extérieures. 279
Chap. XLV. Qu'il ne faut pas croire tout le monde, et qu'il est
difficile de garder une sage mesure dans ses paroles. 281
Chap. XLVI. Qu'il faut mettre sa confiance en Dieu, lorsqu'on
est assailli de paroles injurieuses. 285
Chap. XLVII. Qu'il faut être prêt à souffrir pour la vie éternelle
tout ce qu'il y a de plus pénible. 289
Chap. XLVIII. De l'éternité bienheureuse, et des misères de
cette vie. 293
Chap. XLIX. Du désir de la vie éternelle, et des grands biens
promis à ceux qui combattent courageusement. 298
Chap. L. Comment un homme dans l'affliction doit
s'abandonner entre les mains de Dieu. 303
Chap. LI. Qu'il faut s'occuper d'œvres extérieures, quand
l'âme est fatiguée des exercices spirituels. 309
Chap. LII. Que l'homme ne doit pas se juger digne des
consolations de Dieu, mais plutôt de châtiment. 311
Chap. LIII. Que la grâce ne fructifie point en ceux qui ont le
goût des choses de la terre. 314
Chap. LIV. Des divers mouvements de la nature et de la
grâce. 317
Chap. LV. De la corruption de la nature, et de l'efficace de la
grâce divine. 323
Chap. LVI. Que nous devons nous renoncer nous-mêmes, et
imiter Jésus-Christ en portant la Croix. 328
Chap. LVII. Qu'on ne doit point se laisser trop abattre quand
on tombe en quelques fautes. 332
Chap. LVIII. Qu'il ne faut pas chercher à pénétrer ce qui est
au-dessus de nous, ni sonder les secrets jugements de Dieu. 335
Chap. LIX. Qu'on doit mettre toute son espérance et toute sa
confiance en Dieu seul. 341
LIVRE QUATRIÈME.
DU SACREMENT DE L'EUCHARISTIE.
Exhortation à la sainte Communion. 347
Chap. I. Avec quel respect il faut recevoir Jésus. 350
Chap. II. Combien Dieu manifeste à l'homme sa bonté et son
amour dans le Sacrement de l'Eucharistie. 358
Chap. III. Qu'il est utile de communier souvent. 364
Chap. IV. Que Dieu répand des grâces abondantes en ceux
qui communient dignement. 369
Chap. V. De l'excellence du Sacrement de l'autel, et de la
dignité du Sacerdoce. 374
Chap. VI. Prière du chrétien avant la Communion. 378
Chap. VII. De l'examen de conscience, et de la résolution de
se corriger. 380
Chap. VIII. De l'oblation de Jésus-Christ sur la Croix, et de la
résignation de soi-même. 385
Chap. IX. Que nous devons nous offrir à Dieu avec tout ce qui
est à nous, et prier pour tous. 388
Chap. X. Qu'on ne doit pas facilement s'éloigner du la sainte
Communion. 392
Chap. XI. Que le Corps de Jésus-Christ et l'Écriture sainte sont
très-nécessaires à l'âme fidèle. 398
Chap. XII. Qu'on doit se préparer avec un grand soin à la
sainte Communion. 404
Chap. XIII. Que le fidèle doit désirer de tout son cœur de
s'unir à Jésus-Christ dans la Communion. 408
Chap. XIV. Du désir ardent que quelques âmes saintes ont de
recevoir le Corps de Jésus-Christ. 411
Chap. XV. Que la grâce de la dévotion s'acquiert par l'humilité
et l'abnégation de soi-même. 414
Chap. XVI. Qu'il faut dans la Communion exposer ses besoins
à Jésus-Christ, et lui demander sa grâce. 417
Chap. XVII. Du désir ardent de recevoir Jésus-Christ. 420
Chap. XVIII. Qu'on ne doit point chercher à pénétrer le
mystère de l'Eucharistie, mais qu'il faut soumettre ses sens à
la Foi. 424

FIN DE LA TABLE.
 LECTURES
DU LIVRE DE L'IMITATION,
DIVISÉES

Selon les différents besoins des

Fidèles.
Pour les Prêtres.
Livre I. — Ch. 18, 19, 20, 25.
— II. — Ch. 11 et 12.
— III. — Ch. 3, 10, 31, 56.
— IV. — Ch. 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 18.
Pour la préparation à la Messe et l'Action de grâces, voyez page 404
et suiv.: Avant et après la Communion, et, de plus, tous les
chapitres indiqués pour les personnes pieuses.

Pour les Séminaristes.

Livre I. — Ch. 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25.
— III. — Ch. 2, 3, 10, 31, 56.
— IV. — Ch. 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 18.
 Pour ceux qui s'adonnent à l'étude, particulièrement à celle de la
Philosophie et de la Théologie.
Livre I. — Ch. 1, 2, 3, 5.
— III. — Ch. 2, 43, 44, 48, 58.
— IV. — Ch. 18.

Pour les Personnes affligées de leur peu de progrès dans l'étude.

Livre III.—Ch. 29, 39, 41, 47.

Pour les Religieux et les Religieuses.

Les chapitres indiqués ci-avant pour les Séminaristes. Ceux indiqués
ci-après pour les personnes pieuses.

Pour les Personnes pieuses.

Livre I. — Ch. 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25.
— II. — Ch. 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12.
— III. — Ch. 5, 6, 7, 11, 27, 31, 32, 33, 53, 54, 55, 56.

Pour les Personnes affligées et humiliées.

Livre I. — Ch. 12.
— II. — Ch. 11,12.
— III. — Ch. 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 29, 30, 35, 41, 47, 48,
49, 50, 52, 55, 56.

Pour les Personnes trop sensibles à leurs souffrances.

Livre I. — Ch. 12.
— III. — Ch. 12.

Pour les Personnes tentées.

Livre I. — Ch. 13.
— II. — Ch. 9.
 — III. — Ch. 6, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 30, 35, 37, 47, 48, 49,
50, 52, 55.

Pour les Peines intérieures.

Livre II. — Ch. 3, 9, 11, 12.
— III. — Ch. 7, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 30, 35, 47, 48, 49, 50,
51, 52, 55, 56.

Pour les Personnes inquiètes de l'avenir, de leur santé, de leur

fortune, du succès d'une démarche.
Livre III.—Ch. 39.

Pour les Personnes qui vivent dans le monde, ou qui sont distraites
par leurs occupations.
Livre III.—Ch. 38, 53.

Pour les Personnes attaquées par la calomnie ou la médisance.

Livre II. — Ch. 2.
— III. — Ch. 6, 11, 28, 36, 46.

Pour les Personnes qui commencent à se convertir.

Livre I. — Ch. 18, 25.
— II. — Ch. 1.
— III. — Ch. 6, 7, 23, 25, 26, 27, 33, 37, 52, 54, 55.

Pour les Personnes pusillanimes, faibles ou négligentes.

Livre I. — Ch. 18, 21, 22, 25.
— II. — Ch. 10, 11, 12.
— III. — Ch. 3, 6, 27, 30, 35, 37, 54, 55, 57.

Pour une Retraite.

Livre III. — Ch. 53. Pour s'y disposer.
— I. — Ch. 20, 21.
 Ch. 22. Misères de la vie.
Ch. 23. La mort.
Ch. 24. Le Jugement et l'Enfer
— III. — Ch. 14.
Ch. 48. Le Ciel.
Ch. 59. Pour clore la Retraite

Pour obtenir la Paix intérieure.

Livre I. — Ch. 6, 11.
— II. — Ch. 3, 6.
— III. — Ch. 7, 23, 25, 38.

Pour les Personnes dissipées.

Livre I. — Ch. 18, 21, 22, 23, 24.
— II. — Ch. 10, 12.
— III. — Ch. 14, 27, 33, 45, 53, 55.

Pour les Pécheurs insensibles.

Livre I. — Ch. 23, 24.
— III. — Ch. 14, 55.

Pour les Personnes oisives.

Livre III.—Ch. 24, 27.

Pour ceux qui écoutent les médisances.

Livre I.—Ch. 4.

Pour les Personnes portées à l'orgueil.

Livre I. — Ch. 7. 14.
— II. — Ch. 11.
— III. — Ch. 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 40, 52.

Pour les esprits querelleurs et opiniâtres.

Livre I. — Ch. 9.
— III. — Ch. 13, 32, 44.

Pour les Personnes impatientes.

Livre III.—Ch. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.
(Parag. 5 du Chap. XIX. Prière pour demander la patience).

Pour les Désobéissants.

Livre I. — Ch. 9.
— III. — Ch. 13, 32.

Pour les Personnes causeuses.

Livre I. — Ch. 10.
— III. — Ch. 24, 44, 45.

Pour ceux qui s'occupent des défauts des autres et négligent les
leurs.
Livre I. — Ch. 11, 14, 16.
— II. — Ch. 5.

Pour les Personnes qui ont une dévotion fausse ou mal entendue.
Livre III.—Ch. 4, 6, 7.

Pour inspirer la droiture d'intention.

Livre III.—Ch. 9.

Pour les Personnes trop susceptibles.

Livre III.—Ch. 44.

Pour celles qui s'attachent trop aux douceurs de l'amitié humaine.

Livre I. — Ch. 8, 10.
— II. — Ch. 7, 8.
 — III. — Ch. 32, 42, 45.

Pour celles qui se scandalisent de la simplicité ou de l'obscurité des

Livres saints.
Livre I.—Ch. 5.

Pour les Personnes portées à la jalousie.

Livre III.—Ch. 22, 41.
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