Even though the ‘state’ features prominently in the rhetoric of the Egyptian regime, and the need to preserve it against the “people of evil”, is cited as the main rational for the horrendous repression unleashed by the regime, there has been little analysis of the nature of the Egyptian state. Neither by intellectuals nor members of the opposition.
Indeed, the idea of the importance of the state, in its current form, is hegemonic in Egyptian political circles, and an implicit view is adopted that it is an undifferentiated, blunt, instrument, easily democratized through elections. This completely ignores the lesson of the coup of 2013, where the state apparatus undermined a democratically elected president, and easily removed him from power, with popular support. Hence, there is an urgent task to understand the nature of the Egyptian state, placing it in within its local context, as well as, the position of Egypt in the global capitalist system.
In order to understand the nature of the current Egyptian state, one needs to understand its historical evolution. The founding of the modern Egyptian state can be traced back to Mohamed Ali, the Ottoman ruler of Egypt that came to power after a popular uprising in the early 19th century. The new Ottoman ruler had the personal goal of securing his position and that of his family after him; hence, he embarked on a modernization project that revolved around building a modern army, consisting of peasant conscripts.
