Modernization theory:

The American political system is pluralistic and claims to link democratic legitimacy with high level of public participation. The system is supposed to combine freedom and order. The inherent contradiction is ostensibly resolved by the freedom to upward mobility to combat inequality.

But it does not work that way. The rich get richer, while unemployment is at 9.7%, one in five children live in poverty, and 47 million do not have health insurance (2012).

           State is a necessity, but its desirability is not unquestioned. 1 State prevails in greater or lesser intensity in all human communities. Security, material well being and social order are supposed to be dependent upon it. 2 But equality, freedom and self esteem are negated by it.3. The critical question is if the two sets of values are compatible with each other.

            Marx argues that democratic state is a contradiction in terms. Liberal democratic academics contend that state is a process and so is in a flux and always changing.

            Arthur Bentley (4), whom political scientists have followed especially in the U.S.A (5) reduces all politics to observable behavior (6). He assumes that motive of political action is rational and material; otherwise it could not be shared with others.

            The masses in a democracy do not always pursue their own interests because they have been brain washed by the captive media, academicians and the establishment into believing that institutions, laws and values work for the interest of every one, when in fact they only serve the interest of the corporations.

            David Truman deals with the issue rather well in his work (7).

            Political freedom is the capacity to change constantly and political development is the willingness to change continually. Not to change is to be submerged in ignorance.

            It is claimed that democracy is the only system, which permits constant, adaptive and random change and therefore accords with nature and commitment to the process itself. Apologists offer that it is not the actuality, but the potential for freedom, equality, justice, security and well-being, which legitimates democracy (8).

            Paul Kress and David Greenstone, and other academics treat Bentley’s position as too rigid. Greenstone found its resolution in class (9).

            Pluralism justifies an inequitable distribution of power and wealth, self-esteem and status quo for a long time.

            In the U.S.A, rigidities of the system are manifested in the acquisition of control over public interest by pressure groups and often through government de-regulation (US media and other industries/commerce/manufacturing). Neoliberals advocate abolition of the regulatory role for the state. Libertarians see state as the enemy of freedom.

            Individual human behavior is determined by rational pursuit of self-interest, while collective outcomes may be detrimental to majority interest. The economist Amrtya Sen, “No summation of individual preferences will yield a collective choice that is universally acceptable (10)

            Free market theorists conceive of collective outcomes as essentially unpredictable, while the point of Marxist’s rational choice is that collective outcomes are predictable as individual choice can be predicted by class. If it is possible to control, rulers will be tempted to do so.

            In so far as liberalism is defined in terms of free market rationality, liberal government must follow logically consistent principles. Limits on individual rational choice must be self-imposed. If the bounds of individual rational choice are determined by the state, it is not a liberal state.

            Liberal politics should eventually break down due to contradiction between individual and collective choice. Authoritarian governments might successfully reproduce themselves. The stronger body of literature would have it that liberal government would replace authoritarian ones.

            Autonomy of the state requires the belief that state has no interest of its own and its sole function is to overrule the market decisions, which are detrimental to collective interest. But with out the minimalist state, liberal government will fail. Denial of autonomy implies that state is the instrument of a class. Bureaucratic elite act with societal allies. Mercur Olson contends that group processes are structured and predictable (11).

            It is up to the government to restore change whenever a group has established its own interest as public interest, but that is easier said than done as all developed states are controlled by corporate interest and the less developed ones by satraps in collaboration with The Evil Quad-landowners, clergy, army and bureaucrats.

            Liberal approach to modernization theory is (12) based on Parson’s action system under which interpersonal relations are determined by existing culture (13) and Bentelyan theory under which intentionally motivated interpersonal relations are determined by existing culture. Liberal theory argues that democracy would result as long as change was introduced in the social system (14). Deutsch’s social mobilization attributed process of change to non-government social forces (15).

            Liberal theory subordinates the interest of developing nations to the ruling class of the West especially of the U.S.A, and a radical call for expansion of interference in developing countries (16).

            Conservative theory of development is opposite to the idea that pragmatic change which holds nothing sacred is beneficial. Huntington argues that the highest political value is effective government; that parties and bureaucrats create political order with out which franchise will lead to chaos and decay. Break down of order in newly independent countries led to conservative emphasis on centrality of the role of the state. (17).

            The biggest difficulty in less developed countries is trying to combine liberal domestic program encouraging change with foreign military involvement, which resists change.

            The notion of the autonomy of the state depends upon whether the state is Western or third world. In the former courts, parties and bureaucrats lend stability and continuity and in the latter represent arbitrariness of the government. Courts in the U.S.  favor the rich (18).

             Neo-Marxist Developmental theory:

            The point of Marxist theory is that revolution is necessary and beneficent. Marx’s theory is the progressive consequence of the spread of capitalism in the world. Marx’s Asiatic mode of production and Lenin’s theory of Imperialism, that finance capitalism was the highest and final stage of capitalism, predict world revolution (19).

Dependency theory:

A few Marxist intellectuals have worked on development theory with out reference to Soviet policy. Andre Gunder Frank contends that international economic relations of exchange between capitalist states and underdeveloped states cause and perpetuate under development (20).  Less developed countries (LDCs) have no choice but to sever relations with capitalist countries and that cannot happen with out revolution.His work has been criticized for disregard of class structures and faith in autarchic development for all.

Underdevelopment is caused by unequal exchange and by differential in surplus value caused by relations of production and structurally determined lower return in LDCs. In order to perpetuate that, Capitalist mode of production creates symbiosis with Asiatic or feudal mode of production to prevent latter’s collapse (21). Revolution is unlikely unless some part of society can function as industrial proletariat (22). China and Vietnam are given as examples that peasants/landless agricultural laborers can provide base for revolution (23).

Capitalist development has not taken place in the third world, even though the West is in the stage of late capitalism and capitalism does not appear to be growing weaker. Loan on the USA and outsourcing are signs not of weakening of capitalism but of its spreading out.

Geoffrey Kay holds that prolongation of the agony of late capitalism is due to the mode of production in LDCs, which results in production of surplus value in metropolitan countries (24). Proletariat of LDCs is less well off in absolute terms, but is relatively less exploited, and less likely to rebel. The super exploitation of the capitalist working class is not immediately discerned because the relative productivity of labor is so high. But in due course the most exploited class will, according to Marx, prove itself to be the most revolutionary class.

            Not so conservative theorists offer the concept of associated development, Bureaucratic-Authoritarian world systems theory and a Revisionist theory of social revolution (25). They support the possibility of advance development in a stable liberal system with out revolution.

Humanist Marxism:

             It emphasizes individual/collective emancipation; an adoption of aspects of psychoanalytic theory. It has an imprint of Heidegger’s existentialism, and his concept of authenticity (26). Marxism was therefore taken as an ideology; Franz Fanon in his “The Wretched of the Earth” offers the most eloquent critique of imperialism (27). It encouraged a number of revolutions.

Structural Marxism:

Louis Althusser is credited with offering it. He insisted that it was an evolving science, the fulfillment of which depended upon the completion of the task begun in Das Kapital and that it was a comprehensive theory. His colleagues accused him of justifying Stalinism and undoing Marxism by offering it as a dogma. He did, however, offer a theoretical basis for convergence of functional theory and Marxism. This cross-fertilization was accomplished by his disciples and partial adaptation of the perspectives of Antonio Gramsci (28). It also reinvigorated the liberal theory of development to a surprising extent.

Pure modes of production might not exist but their nature can be understood by the dominant tendencies. Liberal theory is a guide to the capitalist mode of production.

Nicos Poulantzas, the most influential among structural Marxists, argues for the relative autonomy of the state in Capitalist Mode of Production (CMP) and that Bonapartism was the consequence of the incomplete bourgeois revolution in France (29). The dominance of the apparatus of the state, or of bureaucratic-authoritarianism in third world countries, is due to partial success of bourgeois revolution and the autonomy of the state in CMP. It is unstable as CMP is dominant but bourgeois is not hegemonic. This may be regarded as stalemate between the traditional/feudal class and the emergent bourgeois class or Althusserian concept of structure in dominance v Gramiscian disastrous equilibrium (30). Poulantzas is inclined to the view that third world bureaucratic-authoritarianism is a preliminary or incomplete stage of the CMP.

He defines class as the self-interested behavior of agents of production (individuals) who stand in differentiated relationship to economy (owners of means of production).

Class conflict results in a contest for control of the state when the classes are mature in organized-bourgeoisie and proletariat in advanced capitalist society with a socialist party (31).

Since it is the purpose of bourgeoisie to mask its power, the state must be relatively autonomous in political fact. Bourgeoisie political dominance is achieved via a coalition with other forces (religion) (32).

Autonomy of the state protects the dominant class from its own excesses.

John Taylor offers an explanation on why capitalist development remains incomplete in the third world and emphasizes articulation of modes of production (that is capitalists in developed countries sustaining their agents in less developed ones), not dependency, and that capitalist and pre-modern modes of production have become inter-dependent. (33).

South America:

F.H.Cardoso and Enzo Felleto have argued that the nature of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist class in peripheral countries was not necessarily directly determined by the needs of metropolitan capitalism. (34).

Peter Evans has emphasized (in a case study of Brazil) of the struggle between the capitalist bourgeoisie and military rulers (35).

Guillermo O’ Donnell asserts that agrarian oligarchy is supplanted by an early stage of capitalism sustained by wide popular nationalist support. When the limits of early capitalist development are reached, the capitalist-proletarian alliance is dissolved. The haute proletarian allies with techno/military to stave off economic crisis consequent upon import substitution. Capitalist development requires an export economy, cutting consumer imports and bringing wages down, increasing savings and capital imports. Bureaucratic authoritarianism is brought in by Multinational Corporations (MNCs) to replace nationalist regimes. (36).

The state claims popular legitimacy, yet serves the interests of MNCs.

WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY:

Immanuel Wallerstien’s theory appears to be a modification of Lenin’s theory of imperialism except that it does not look upon core-periphery relationship inevitably leading to demise of capitalism (37).  He proposes that states can move from periphery and drop out of core. It is the disarticulation of political and economic world system that has permitted capitalism to survive and prosper. World capitalist system cannot be changed piece meal. Semi-periphery is chosen for the start, but they are likely to succumb to threats and blandishments of the core countries, so a movement would not start.

The International character of capitalism militates against revolution. Prospects for world revolution are dim. Capitalist system precludes equal exchange and inequality is the basis of capital accumulation. World socialist system can produce equality but not affluence. Capitalist system is necessarily exploitative.

Later capitalism is not late but original capitalism. Signs of demise of late capitalism would be transformation into imperialism, finance capital and Markets. Wallerstien uses a good deal of Marxist frame-work to refute it.

Asian Mode of Production and Revolution:

J.A.Goldstone refers to Barrington Moore and Theda Skopol in, ‘The Comparative and Historical Review of Revolutions’ in the Annual Review of Sociology (38). He points out that variation in relations between landlords and peasants were crucial in determining the course of political change (39). Skopol, he writes, “Demonstrates that social revolutions have not arisen mainly from acts of powerful revolutionary movements but from the breakdown and paralysis of state administration (1979)” (40).

           In so far as revolution is caused by the failure to transform agriculture, it may be lead to authoritarianism as in China, but where bourgeoisie elite succeeds in integrating agriculture with state and world markets, we get bourgeoisie parliamentarianism as in India. Parliamentary democracy makes the task of the progressives more difficult (41).

The linkage of international and national is conjunctual in Skopol’s analysis. In the pre-revolutionary situation we have a neo-patrimonial bureaucracy, segments of which are identified with feudal classes (42). Revolution is not historically necessary and not based on inevitable class struggle (43).

Emphasis on peasant revolution is used as a common factor shared by the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions. Peasant revolt is not a clear or a direct consequence of change in the mode of production. It is a consequence of exploitation. Where they are not well organized, the government will be able to control them (England, Prussia and Japan) (44).

Moore separated democracy from revolution and asserted link between democracy and bourgeoisie (45).

Revolution is the product, not the cause of change. Bourgeoisie democracy is the product of confluence of state and bourgeoisie. Democracy is a conjunctual phenomenon linked to inadequacies of authoritarian states and skillful bargaining of liberals (46). It appears as an alternative to crisis and may be connected to international pressure (47)

Neo-Marxists perceive a class link between bourgeoisie and democratic state. Modern states produce congenial conditions conducive to capitalist development but bourgeoisie are passive beneficiaries of the modernization of states. Bourgeoisie become subordinate allies of bureaucratic/military oligarchy, which is the historical equivalent of absolutist monarchy. And there is no difference between bourgeoisie democracy and bourgeoisie autocracy in the more usual Marxist position.

Bonapartism was the result of failures of democracy and democratization in Latin America and has been interpreted as the struggle between bureaucratic/military rulers and big bourgeoisie. (48).

Crises:

Primarily concerned with consequences of contradiction between the demand of political participation and the need of administrative autonomy, its theorists are concerned with interests of the repressed majority demanding participation. O’Donnell talks about crisis of early capitalism which leads to bureaucratic/authoritarian regime to suppress participation and redistribution. Reassertion of democratic aspirations leads to overthrow of bureaucratic/authoritarian regime. Habermas talks of late capitalism, but the problem again was the unfulfilled promise of democracy and egalitarianism (49).

Marxists postulate inevitable breakdown of capitalism as a consequence of internal contradictions. O’Donnell’s crisis of peripheral capitalism is due to premature success of early capitalism and the expectations that the success gives rise to.

Clearly there is a great difference between absolutism challenged by a traditional parliament and a military/bureaucratic regime challenged to restore modern pluralizing institutions. According to Perry Anderson, European absolutism was the highest development of feudalism and there is such a thing as bourgeoisie revolution (50). Political crisis of absolutist states are different from those of bourgeoisie state.

In Turkey, Egypt and Iran the old regime collapsed under the dual burden of external challenges and inner strains.

Skopol asserts that Iranian revolution was different in that it was the product of rapid modernization and disruption of traditional society, the security forces were “Rendered ineffective with out defeat…pressures from abroad…or contradictory conflict between the regime and ruling classes…” and the revolution was ‘deliberately’ made by mass based social movement (51). Dispossessed land lords, Bazaaris and artisans got together with clerics to mount it.

 In Turkey governments were dismissed and parties were banned on orders of the higher judiciary backed by the army till the early 21^stcentury. In Iran the supreme religious leader can sack the president and the parliament and over rule either. In Egypt, Mubarak did not even have the saving grace of the flair or sophistication of Sadat. Following an upheaval in Tunisia, he was forced out by public demonstration in January/February 2011, when the army refused to crush the demonstrations and promised to restore the electoral process. Demonstrations in other Arab countries followed. Gadhafi’s attempt at suppression did not succeed due to Western intervention. Saudis sent troops into Bahrain. Bashar Assad of Syria has the support of the ruling class in Syria and is fighting the dissidents in a more effective way than Mubarak and Gaddafi could. In the event, the army overthrew the legitimately elected government in Egypt.

There has been little application of Latin American analysis on Arabs or North Africa, Mid East, Israel, Iran or Pakistan (52).

Classic development theory considered the military to be the vanguard of modernizing middle class. David Lerner and Manfred Halpern found that urbanization, education, media and western culture were breaking down the traditional society (53). “The new middle class would build the state…make it eventually democratic (54). Islam was not considered a formidable barrier. The paradigmatic case was Turkey.

The possible emergence of an assertive bourgeoisie or capitalist class was ignored and the central political conflict was thought to be between modernized intelligentsia and the traditional strata of landowners, rentiers, petty bourgeoisie and clerics.

Traditional orthodoxy and fundamentalism were antipathetic to political development (55). It is totally misleading to equate Islam and culture in any Mid-Eastern country. It is more accurate to see Islamic symbols as instruments wielded by the rulers.

Gillner, “Through History of Islam”, there has been a pendulum swing between emotional Islam of the illiterate to the pharisaic (self righteous-Pharisee, a Jewish sect –street observance of rites- 56).

Bernard Lewis, “Centralization of state authority and search of popular support will lead Middle Eastern regimes to become more Islamic”(57). And Islam is an undirected but still a very powerful force in politics…the lack of education…leadership has so far restricted the scope of Islam and inhibited religious movements from being serious contenders for power …”(58).

Ernest Gillner distinguishes between Shia and Sunni Islam. Former has a symbologism of martyrdom and revenge (59). Sunni Islam lacks structures and uses symbols to facilitate mass fanaticism, “The scripturalist reforms made reform movement’ definitive’ and have rendered Islam a normative unity…that makes Islam into powerful political force” (60). “In itself the normative structure of Islam is unusually open to adaptation…needs of liberal bourgeoisie…maintaining social peace, protects private … property and …freedom of choice”. No other cultural region is as deeply concerned about the threat of cultural penetration and westernization as Mid-East and the central symbol of anxiety in Islam (61).

Attacks on development theory, liberal or Marxian, argues for the need to penetration of Western culture and capitalism (62). The theory is parochial, imperialist and unsophisticated.

Islam unlike Protestantism is an infertile ground for capitalism and AMP prevailed through Islamic history (63). There is an alternative form of development not only compatible with Islam, but may be the fullest expression of Islam under modern conditions (64).

            Capitalism and Islam:

            Maxine Rodinson in his “Islam and Capitalism” takes up the issue of the backwardness of the Islamic world. He is committed to the values of political freedom and equality (65).

            Liberal and Marxist theories of modernization hold that it is a singular phenomenon of historic significance for all non-western societies that modernization to some degree means westernization and alienation. Could there have been an Islamic alternative, which was prevented by imperialism/Capitalism, which they might return to.

           One revisionist aspect of aspect of Rodinson’s neo Marxism is his rejection of Asian mode of Production, the Marxian idea that it produces stagnation rather than conflict, struggle, contradiction, dialectic change and revolution. Rodinson claims that the West got there first (modernism) and therefore Muslims have to follow the path of Capitalism (66). Samir Amin argues that the Muslim world ought to be able to bypass the capitalist stage to reach socialist stage and in stead of integrating with the West, should challenge the western economic order (67). According to Rodinson, existence of economic enclaves in medieval Islam is sufficient to prove that the creed was not against capitalism or had AMP (68).

            Rodinson does not regard Capitalism and Socialism as different in essence. The mode of production is the same, though the relation of production is different.

Oreintalists interpret Islamic history as growth and development followed by decline and disintegration. Rodinson contends that the Muslim world does indeed have a history in the sense of historical materialism. Samir Amin writes of the continuity of a single century for over twelve centuries and Gran criticizing Amin proposes six centuries for the dominant patrimonial-tributary formation of the Abbasid period.

       The Neo-Marxists try to define the development process in the Muslim world in terms of classes, while the liberal analysts do in terms of socialization of the elite (69).

To say that Islam is intrinsically anti-capital is derivative of the view that Islam was inimical to progress. It reflects the self perceived superiority of the West and affected the Muslim elite.

          The provision of slavery, status of women, system of justice and caliphate were offered as proof of need to reform, if Muslims were to catch up with the modern world. In the economic field Shariah provisions regarding usury, gambling and their derivative judgments regarding banking, stock market, corporations and speculation hindered progress.

          But Islam emerged in a mercantile setting; the language of the Koran reflects commercial culture. Merchants were very close to the ruling elite and Islam guaranteed property rights, commercial contracts and wage labor. Liberal Muslims take pains to assert that Islamic law need not be so rigid and Muslim regimes were flexible in this respect

           Rodinson agrees with Muslim apologetics that ruler/ulema/ merchants did make adjustment to prevailing mode of production. He asserts that Islam is rational and commercial and Muslims were always able to work around Koranic injunctions. Early Islam endeavored to integrate tribes with commercial and cultural elite. It is not essential to give up core principles, so Islam cannot be responsible for backwardness of Muslims. (In Pakistan interest that the banks pay is called Mark Up. Islamic mortgage in the West keeps the ownership in the hands of the lender, calculates the overall cost on the basis of initial cost plus interest which would have accrued over the period of mortgage in a conventional loan and divides the whole into installments. The net result is that the buyer pays interest but can not claim it in taxes).

        Proscription of usury and of certain kinds of transactions was no barrier to continuation of pre-Islamic capitalist practices and that the Koranic revelations did not bring any moral economic system which was fundamentally different from any other existing system, and was no bar to capitalistic practices (70).

Islam is not a barrier to socialism or capitalism. As an ideology, it may serve any political design (Khomeini, Saddam, Sadat, Saudi Kings, Gadhafi or Zia). Socialism is morally preferable for its humanitarian values which it shares with philosophers of enlightenment and will produce the most just society.

         There is nothing distinctive about capitalism under Islam. It is just as exploitative, ruthless and unjust.

        In Iran, Mujahideen e Khalq (a radical group) believed it was possible to synthesize Marxism and Islam. Ayatollah Beheshti offered that a mid-way was possible. The Shah tried to introduce capitalism. Fidayeen (a more militant group) wanted to exploit the legitimate symbols of Islam to establish socialism. Clerics collaborated with Marxists, but marginalized them later by using their greater hold on masses. Iranian masses have not yet broken the shackles of their wretchedness to comprehend the contradiction between their own and the clergy’s interests.

In Islam and Capitalism, first published in 1966, Edward Said praised the work of Rodinson and like Rodinson has defended Islam against its critics (71). Samir Amin in the Arab Nation, Nationalism and Class Struggle, attempted to apply his ‘law of unequal development’ to Arab history (72). Amin rejected the Trotskyite view that socialism can come only in a developed capitalist world.

Max Weber holds that belief system and socio-economic system must have some sort of relationship, if they are to last. The relationship between them might be circular, reciprocal or even simultaneous. Weber has studied Protestantism, Hinduism and Judaism. There is no comparable study of Islam.

Weber followed Marx that capitalism is the characteristic form of modernity. Mature capitalism, according to Gramsci would have a balance between political dominance of the bourgeoisie and their ideological-cultural hegemony (73).

Weber contends that land holding and hedonistic adaptation of Islam to the desires of the warrior class prevented the rise of capitalism. Turner insists that Islam accomodates several vocabulary of motives-Sunni ascetic/legalistic, Shia emotional, messianic, Sufi mystical, otherworldly reverence of saints, and ideologies like Kharjite and Mutaazila and offers a multi-faceted whole and agrees with Rodinson that limited capitalist enterprise existed under caliphs (74). He accepts that warrior ethic is hedonistic and incompatible with capitalism. Weber believed that asceticism was a requisite of capitalism. Turner agrees with Orientalists that lack of capitalism in Mid-East is due to prevalence of patrimonialism and backwardness of Islam due more to scripturalism than hedonism.

 Turner insists that Christian and Islamic mysticism were different. Islam nicely blended ascetic and mystical, rational and passionate, Sunni and Shia and holds that Weber was wrong in not realizing the difference and for believing that Islam was dominated by orgiastic Sufi beliefs. Islamic mysticism was in social, communicative and functional contrast to Christian mysticism’s other worldly view, which led to grotesque episodes of suicide.

Turner following Weber believes that orthodox Islamic ideology resulted from alliance between Ulema and Umayyad/Abbasid dynasties. Orthodox Sunni ideology was never able to come to terms with the Shia theory of charismatic leadership: Charisma was transferred to Shariah law, order and obedience became essential to the well being of “Umma ” (the mythical concept that all Muslim belong to one ‘nation’).

Mutaazalite (rationalist) movement, after a temporary success, was relegated to the status of a rejected heresy. Its failure is offered as the reason of Muslim backwardness in science and technology. The failure also produced patrimonialism, which promoted order but not rationalism.

Ismailia rationalism was more severely suppressed. It implied that a personified God like Jesus was more functional than abstract Allah.

Turner asserts that the reason for failure of capitalism in Islam must be looked for in the failure of proto-capitalistic elements to achieve political dominance due to patrimonialism which prevented the emergence of urban bourgeoisie. Agreeing with Sami Zubaida “Not the attitudes in Islam but the political position of merchant classes vis a vis dominant military-bureaucratic classes…” He argues that capitalism is spreading in the Mid-East, but the protestant work ethic is spreading only in the intelligentsia, bureaucracy and the military, rather than among capitalists (neo-patrimonial class) and the historical process is being subverted by substitution of western ethos for Islam as a result of the call for secularization. He offers that Muslim populations may yet reject the “mimetic” secularization.

In a second work, Turner repents his lapse into Orientalist mode.

The best example of theoretical blending of Orientialism may be found in what Turner calls “No revolution thesis” according to which the essential ideological difference between Christianity and Islam accounts for absence of a revolutionary tendency in Islam (75)

Samir Amin in the “Arab Nation” predicts that Egypt will emerge as the leader of Arab states and will transform the mode of production and that Egypt will play an unparalleled role in world wide social transformation (76).

Unless inspired by Nasser, it is difficult to imagine that Amin would contemplate such a central role for Egypt. He dismisses Nasser’s regime as petit bourgeoisie incapable of reaching beyond the notion of national independence. He ignored the fact that Nasser brought Egypt in the forefront of non-aligned movement, created public sector economy, instituted land reforms, challenged capitalist domination, intimidated Arab states and cajoled Soviet leadership; so promising did he appear as an anti-imperialist that both USSR and the Communist Party of Egypt fully supported him.

Marxists take themselves as heirs of Nasserism and want to restore it, but there seems to be little likelihood of Egypt playing even a peripheral role much less central.

 Egypt’s defeat in 1967 undid Nasser; its isolation after Camp David reflects loss of Nasserist hegemony.

Samir Amin offers the opinion that Egypt’s mode of production was a tributary one (extraction of supplies from agriculture to towns) rather than feudal of medieval Europe. Elsewhere it was mercantile… Arab nation is a mercantile integration rather than capitalist production.

Islamic Liberal State:

Islamic liberal state is possible as Islam has few, if any institutional prescriptions. The virtual silence on the question of state institutions allows Muslims to establish any kind of institution. Nevertheless, they propose an Islamic state.

The other school would justify establishment of liberal institutions like parliament, elections and civil rights, based on specific Islamic legislation deduced from canonical sources and from the example of early caliphate. But there is an inherent contradiction. The institutions would be based on divine law, rather than pluralism, capitalism, and tolerance.

Those who play down the difference between fundamentalism and liberalism are only trying to entice masses by using religious symbols.They try to convince themselves that fundamentalism is a benign force waiting to be guided by their Islamic liberalism. It may well be argued that liberalism is too weak in doctrinal support to withstand fundamentalism.

Many observers are fearful that fundamentalists would establish a theocratic state and call it liberal or democratic because it was Islamic.

Post Khomeini revolution, governments and westernized intellectuals among Muslims are horrified at the prospect of a revolutionary force led by Mullahs. But Egyptian Marxists are convinced that Sunni Islam would never produce a Khomeini.  (77).

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. (27) Fanon, Frantz, “The Wretched of the Earth”, (New York: Grove, 1968

. (28) Benton, Ted, “The Rise and Fallof Structural Marxism: Althusser and his Influence,” (London: Macmillan, 1984), p 67.

. (29) Poulantzas, Nicos, “Political Power and Social Classes”, 178-193, trans T. O”Hagan, (London: NLB, 1975);

. (30) Ibid, pp 259-262

  (31) Ibid, p 101

 . (32). Ibid, 247, 286, 296 ff

 . (33) Taylor, “From Modernization to Modes of Production,”, pp 266, 274, 275.

 (34). Sebastian, Thomas, “Globalization and Uneven Development: Neocolonialism, Multinational Corporations, Space and Society,” (Jaipur, India.: Rawat Publications, 2007).

  (35) Evans, Peter, “Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State and Local Capital in Brazil,” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979);

 (36) Collier, David, (ed.), “The New Authoritarianism in Latin America,” p 387 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), p 387.

. (37) Wallerstein, Immanuel, “The Modern World System: I (New York: Academic Press, 1974), p 348.

. (38) Goldstone, J.A, “The Comparative and Historical Study of Revolutions” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol 8, (eds.), Turner Ralph H and Short, James F Jr, (Palo alto, 1982), pp 187-207.

. (39) Ibid, p 194.

. (40) Ibid, pp 193-94.

. (41) Moore, Barrington, “Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy,” (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 468 ff.

. (42). Skopol, “States and Social Revolution,” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp 116 and 154

. (43) Ibid, pp 285-86

 (44) Ibid, pp 112-7.

 (45) Furet, Francois, “Penser la Revolution Francaise,” (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), pp 123-125

 (46) O’Donnell, G. and Schmitter, P. C. and Whitehead L, (ed.), “Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies”, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

 (47) Whitehead, Lawrence, “International Aspects of Democratization”, in “Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives,” O’Donnell, G, Schmitter, P. C and Whitehead, L., (eds.), (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1986), pp 3-46

. (48) Przeworski, Adam, “Some Problems in the Study of Transitions to Democracy,” in O’Donnell, “Transitions From Authoritarian Rule,”, pp 47-62

 (49) Collier, “The New Authoritarianism,”

 (50) Anderson, Perry, “Lineages of the Absolutist State”, (London, Verso, 1979), 18 ff.

 (51) Skocpol, Theda, “Rentier State and Shia Islam in Iranian Revolution,” Theory and Society 11 (Amsterdam, 1982), p 267.

. (52) Zartman, William, “Political Science”, in Leonard Binder, (ed.), “The Study of Middle East”, (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1976), pp 265-325

 (53) Lerner, Daniel, “The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East,” (New York, Free Press, 1958), p 45

 (54) Halpern M, “The Politics of Social Change in the Mid East and North Africa,” (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1963), 52, 221-23

 (55) Lewis, Bernard, “The Return of Islam,” Commentary 61:1 (January 1976), pp 39-49

 (56) Gellner, Ernest, “A Pendulum Swing Theory of Islam,” The Philosophical Forum 2:2 (Winter 1970-71), pp 234-44.

. (57) Lewis, “The Return of Islam,” pp 44-48.

  (58) Ibid, pp 48-49.

  (59) Gellner, Ernest, “The Moslem Reformation”, The New Republic, (November 22, 1982), p 27.

 . (60) Ibid, pp 25-30

. (61) Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim, (ed.), “Arab Studies Quarterly: The Islamic Alternative,” 4:1-2 (Spring 1982), p 143

 . (62) Rodinson, Maxime, “Islam and Capitalism”, trans. Brian Pearce, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978), pp 58-68.

  (63) Turner, Bryan S., “Weber and Islam”, (London: Routledge and Kagan Paul, 1974).

 . (64) Hanafi, Hasan, “The Relevance of the Islamic Alternative in Egypt”, in Abu-Laghoud, Arab Studies Quarterly, pp 54-55

. (65) Rodinson, Maxine, “Islam and Capitalis,” trans. Brian Pearce, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979).

 (66) Ibid, pp 136-184;

 (67) Amin, Samir, “The Arab Nation, Nationalism and Class Struggle”, trans. Pallis, Michael, (London: Zed Press, 1978), 111; 6 (68) Ibid, pp 67-68;

 (69) Amin, “The Arab Nation”, pp 19;

 (70) Rodinson, “Islam and Capitalism”, 136-165;

 (71) Said, Edward W, “Orientalism”, (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), pp 326, 335, 350;

 (72) Amin, “The Arab Nation”, p 87;

 (73) Adamson, Walter L, “Hegemony and Revolution,” (Berkeley, Univerdity of California Press, 1980) pp 169 f;

 (74) Turner, Brain, “Weber and Islam”, (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974) pp 137 f;

 (75) Turner Brian, “Marxism and the End of Orientalism”, (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978), p 67;

 (76) Amin, “The Arab Nation”, p 114;

Dr. S. Akhtar Ehtisham
Blog syedehtisham.blogspot.com
All religions try to take over the establishment and if they fail, they collaborate with it, be it feudal or capitalist.