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Agrarian Bourgeoisie, Semiproletarians, and the Egyptian State: Lessons for Liberalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Robert Springborg
Robert Springborg
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
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Extract

From Morocco to Iraq, Arab polities and economies appear to be liberalizing. The holding of comparatively free elections, easing of media censorship, and invigoration of associational activity have accompanied relaxation of political control by single parties. Economic liberalization has paralleled these political changes. Privatization, currency devaluations and partial flotations, rejuvenation of capital markets, reductions of subsidies on basic consumer goods, and other elements of economic liberalization packages have been adopted in varying degrees in the political economies of the Arab republics and, to a lesser extent, in the Arab monarchies.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , November 1990 , pp. 447 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

Author's note: I am greatly indebted to Clement Henry for his insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

1 Harris, Nigel, “New Bourgeoisies?,” The Journal of Development Studies, 24, 2 (January, 1988), 237–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 247.

3 North, Douglass C., “A Framework for Analyzing the State in Economic History,” in Exploration in Economic History, 16, 3 (01, 1979), 249–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cited by Waldner, David A. in “The Politics of Industrialization in Egypt, South Korea and Japan,” unpublished paper (Berkeley: University of California, Department of Political Science, 12, 1987), p. 5.Google Scholar I would like to thank David Waldner for alerting me to the relationship between states, markets, and development and literature relevant to this topic.

4 Johnson, Chalmers, “Political Institutions and Economic Performance: The Government-Business Relationship in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan,” in Deyo, Frederik, ed., The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism (Ithaca, N.Y., 1987), p. 140.Google Scholar

5 Ibid.

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7 Ibid., p. 167.

8 For examples of political roles played by these classes in state capitalist African political economies, see Kasfir, Nelson, ed., State and Class in Africa (London, 1984)Google Scholar, in which appears Joseph, Richard A., “Class, State, and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria,” pp. 21–38.Google Scholar On the role of the rural notability in Egypt, see Binder, Leonard, In a Moment of Enthusiasm: Political Power and the Second Stratum in Egypt (Chicago, 1978).Google Scholar

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14 USAID, Country Development Strategy Statement. FY 1986 (Washington, D.C., 1984), p. 6.Google Scholar

15 The major agronomic differences in these two methods are that capitalist landowners use canal rather than micro or sprinkler irrigation, do not plant intensively or use trellises to support vines and trees, use locally available rather than imported plant varieties, and apply fewer of the specialized chemicals available for these crops on world markets. They also do not seek to produce top quality produce to service speciality markets.

16 The Anna apple, for example, first developed in Israel and specially adapted to desert conditions and micro-irrigation, is now commonly planted in reclaimed areas in Egypt.

17 Land planted in strawberries declined from 2,500 feddans in 1979 to less than 1,000 feddans in 1983, while peach orchards, which had reached 3,000 feddans in 1980, did not expand for the next five years. These figures are from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, Statistic Year Book, Arab Republic of Egypt (Cairo, 1986), p. 42Google Scholar; Bredahl, Maury et al. , Supply and Demand for Southern Mediterranean Horticultural Products (Cairo: USAID, 09, 1985), p. 30.Google Scholar

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19 Agricultural Census, p. 5.

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22 Gilbert, Roger, “Decisions Hamper Development,” Meed International (10 1985), 20–22.Google Scholar

23 Ibid.

24 Agricultural Census, p. 5.

25 Adams, Richard, Development and Social Change in Rural Egypt (Syracuse, N.Y., 1986)Google Scholar, passim; Commander, Simon, The State and Agricultural Development in Egypt since 1973 (London, 1987), pp. 43–57Google Scholar; Hopkins, Nicholas S., Agrarian Transformation in Egypt (Boulder, Colo., 1987), pp. 51–66Google Scholar; Radwan, Samir and Lee, Eddy, Agrarian Change in Egypt: An Anatomy of Rural Poverty (London, 1986), pp. 30–79.Google Scholar

26 Richard Adams, private communication to the author, August 19, 1989.

27 Agricultural Census, p. 9.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Mahmoud, Omar Saad El Din, “The Role of State, Private, and Foreign Capital in Egypt” (M. A. thesis, The American University in Cairo, 1984), p. 10.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., p. 28.

32 This is the term used in the Egyptian press, which frequently attacks oligopolistic control of fruit and vegetable markets.

33 In the early 1980s, for example, 5 firms accounted for over half of Egypt's flower exports, with an additional 49 companies competing for the remaining small market share. Tomato marketing is similarly bifurcated between large and small operators. The 10 largest businesses in 1980 handled over half of all tomato exports, while the remaining 115 firms averaged only 24 tons of exports each, which would have provided a gross return in the Saudi market, for example, of only $24,000 and a net return of about a quarter of that amount. El-Saadany, Hosam, Waly, Nagla, and Simmons, Richard L., Feasibility of Cut Flower Exports (USAID Agricultural Development System, working paper no. 161) (Cairo, 05 1983)Google Scholar; and Megahid, Waheed Ali, Fresh Vegetable Export Channels: An Example of Tomatoes (USAID Agricultural Development Systems Project, working paper no. 70) (Cairo, 03 1982).Google Scholar

34 For an account of the parasitical nature of the “new bourgeoisie” involved in foreign trade, see Zaalouk, Malak, Power, Class and Foreign Capital in Egypt: The Rise of the New Bourgeoisie (London, 1989), pp. 118–57.Google Scholar

35 For various examples, see ibid.Bremer, Jennifer Ann, “Alternatives for Mechanization: Public Co-operatives and the Private Sector in Egypt's Agriculture” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1982).Google Scholar

36 Statistical Year Book, p. 50.

37 Megahid, , Fresh Vegetable Exporting Channels, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

38 Country Development Strategy Statement, Table c-3; Bredahl, , Supply and Demand, p. 57.Google Scholar

39 Ibid.

40 See, for example, Johnston, Bruce and Kilby, Peter, Agriculture and Structural Transformation: Economic Strategies in Late-Developing Countries (London, 1975), pp. 127–81.Google Scholar See also various chapters in Hollist, W. Ladd and Tullis, F. LaMond, eds., Pursuing Food Security: Strategies and Obstacles in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East (Boulder, Colo., 1987)Google Scholar; Richards, Alan, “Introduction,” in Richards, Alan, ed., Food, States, and Peasants: Analyses of the Agrarian Question in the Middle East (Boulder, Colo., 1986)Google Scholar; de Janvry, The Agrarian Question. That uneven, unequal development fostered by “business conservatives” impeded the broader process of development in some historical European settings by restricting demand is argued by Gourevitch, Peter, Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986).Google Scholar

41 de Janvry, Alain, “Comments on Chapter Two,” in Hollist, and Tullis, , Pursuing Food Security, p. 39.Google Scholar

42 Agricultural Census, p. 5.

43 Statistical Year Book, p. 69.

44 Agricultural Census, p. 5.

45 Mahmoud, , “The Role of…Capital in Egypt,” p. 23.Google Scholar

46 For the most recent investigation of wage rates in rural Egypt, see Richards, Alan, “Agricultural Employment, Wages, and Government Policy in Egypt during and after the Oil Boom,” unpublished manuscript prepared for the International Labor Organization, Cairo, Egypt (12, 1989).Google Scholar

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48 Investment and Free Zones Authority, Integrated Agribusiness in Egypt: Sectional Survey Six, (Cairo, 1982), pp. x, 30–31.Google Scholar

49 The annual allocations to the private-sector loan program increased from an average of $15 million between 1975 and 1982 to $77 million in 1986. For details see Springborg, Robert, Mubarak's Egypt: Fragmentation of the Political Order (Boulder, Colo., 1989), p. 258.Google Scholar

50 This was widely known as the “Wali Plan,” named after one of its authors, Minister of Agriculture Yusif Wali. It was first drafted in consultation with U.S. advisers provided by USAID. It appeared in various forms, one of which was Wali, Yusif et al. , Strategy for Agricultural Development in the Eighties for the Arab Republic of Egypt (Center Agriculture and Rural Development, International Development Series, Report no. 9) (Ames, Ia., 06 1982).Google Scholar

51 See, for example, President Mubarak's speech to a joint sitting of the al-Sha'b, Majlis and al-Shura, Majlis, reproduced in full in al-Ahram (03 9, 1986)Google Scholar; and his comments while visiting the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation a year later, in al-Ahram (03 17, 1987), p. 14.Google Scholar

52 Mubarak began almost immediately after the riots by the Central Security Force on February 25–26, 1986, to emphasize food self-sufficiency in his public statements about agriculture. Minister of Agriculture Yusif Wali followed suit, but he typically coupled ritualistic statements of support for self-sufficiency with other seemingly contradictory goals. See, for example, Wali's speech to the opening session of the agricultural mechanization conference in April 1986, in which he declared “that agricultural policy aims to realize food self-sufficiency and to support exports of agricultural commodities” (al-Akhbar [04 28, 1986], p. 1).Google Scholar

53 As a result of disputes with governmental agencies over these issues, two large agribusinesses managed by the Bechtel Corporation were deprived of power, hence water, at critical times in the 1985 and 1986 growing seasons. Despite repeated appeals to the minister of agriculture, Bechtel was unable to obtain clarification of policies. Interview with Richard Prior, manager, Bechtel Agribusiness Division, Cairo, March 4, 1986.

54 These efforts led to rental increases, abrogation of local committees to adjudicate disputes between landlords and tenants, transfer of control over inputs from agricultural cooperatives to the fiscally more conservative and politically neutered governmental agricultural bank, the return of some previously confiscated land to its original owners, and the official and unofficial relaxation of the ceiling on land ownership.

55 Al-Mudhākara al-Majlis al-Sha'b (Proceedings of the Majlis al-Sha'b) (01 19, 1986), p. 64.Google Scholar

56 The draft legislation was provided to the author by Ahmad Abd al-Akhar, chairman of the National Democratic Party's Agriculture Committee. Some of its provisions were published in al-Ahram al-Iqtisadi, February 24, 1986.

57 That this was the government's calculation was affirmed by Sa'd Hajras, chairman of the Agriculture Committee of the Majlis al-Sha'b, in various conversations with the author, January–June 1986.

58 See, for example, Hussayn, Jamal al-Din, Qablu al-Fātiha al-Burliman (Before the Opening of Parliament), Ruz al-Yusif, 11 10, 1986Google Scholar; and the statement by Minister of Agriculture Yusif Wali reported in ***Jalal al-Hammamsi's weekly column in al-Akhbar, al-Dakhan fil-Hawa' (Smoke in the breeze), 12 11, 1986.Google Scholar

59 The opposition newspaper, al-Wafd, reported that, as a result of government policy, the national cattle herd had dropped from 5 million to 3.5 million head over the preceding twelve months. al-'Ata, Sayyid Abd, al-Hummā al-Qulâ'ī Tuhaddidu Tharwatna al-Hayawaniya bi-Ingirad (Foot and mouth disease threatens our livestock with extinction), al-Wafd, 05 21, 1987.Google Scholar

60 One manifestation of problems associated with poorly developed infrastructure and inadequate production linkages is substandard quality. A survey of German flower importers, for example, revealed that of the sixteen importing countries from which they receive flowers, Egypt ranks last in quality. See El-Saadany, Feasibility of Cut-Flower Exports.

61 This figure was provided to the author by Robert Mitchell, Senior Project Officer, USAID, Cairo, interview, January 22, 1986.

62 Supply and Demand for Southern Mediterranean Horticultural Products, p. 30. The political opposition, which had made much of the widening food gap, seized on the problems associated with the strawberry industry to embarrass the government. Al- Wafd, for example, dubbed the minister of agriculture, who had strongly advocated strawberry production for exports, al-Malik al-Farawla (the strawberry King.

63 The advantage of low overheads enjoyed by the traditional sector is well illustrated by a characteristically Egyptian form of market dualism. In front of the boutique fruit and vegetable stalls and mini-markets in the wealthy districts of Cairo are to be found merchants selling produce and other wares from the sidewalks outside for a much lower price than that demanded across the threshold. In addition, the break-even point for small food retail shops in Cairo is 47 percent of weekly sales, while for large outlets it is 72 percent. Not surprisingly, Cairo in the mid-1980s had 40,000 traditional food outlets, 200 modern mini-markets, and fewer than 10 supermarkets. Bender, Filmore E., “Egyptian Food Distribution Systems: An Assessment and Recommended Plan of Action” (Cairo, 1986).Google Scholar Rodney Wilson has noted with regard to the Saudi financial sector that traditional moneychangers' low overheads combined with consumer preferences has enabled the traditional financial sector to maintain a large market share despite the establishment of modern financial institutions. See Wilson, Rodney, Banking and Finance in the Arab Middle East (New York, 1983), pp. 13–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64 Arab Republic of Egypt: Economic Management in a Period of Transition (Washington D.C., 1978), p. 2Google Scholar; cited in Adams, Richard H., “Development and Structural Change in Rural Egypt, 1952–1982,” World Development 13, 6 (1985), 71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This ratio calculated from figures presented in the Agricultural Census, p. 5.

65 Hopkins, Nicholas S., “The Social Impact of Mechanization,” in Richards, Alan and Martin, Philip L., eds., Migration, Mechanization, and Agricultural Labor Markets in Egypt (Boulder, Colo., 1983), p. 188.Google Scholar

66 Agricultural Census, calculated from figures on p. 8.

67 Janvry, De, The Agrarian Question, p. 113.Google Scholar

68 Figures for 1961 and 1965 reported in Zaytoun, Mohaya A., “Income Distribution in Egyptian Agriculture and Its Main Determinants,” in Abdel-Khalek, Gouda and Tignor, Robert, eds., The Political Economy of Income Distribution in Egypt (New York, 1982), pp. 268–306.Google Scholar Latest figures are from the Agricultural Census, p. 5.

69 See Table 2 in Springborg, Robert, “Rolling Back Agrarian Reforms in Egypt,” Merip Middle East Report (forthcoming).Google Scholar

70 Figures from 1974–75 and 1977–78 are from Zaytoun, p. 277; those for 1982 are from the Agricultural Census, p. 5.

71 Hansen, Bent, The Political Economy of Poverty, Equity and Growth: Egypt and Turkey (New York, to appear 1991), appendix.Google Scholar I would like to thank Bent Hansen for making his manuscript available to me.

72 Radwan, and Lee, , Agrarian Change in Egypt, pp. 74–75.Google Scholar

73 Adams, , “Development and Structural Change in Rural Egypt,” p. 711.Google Scholar

74 Commander, , The State and Agricultural Development, p. 225.Google Scholar

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid., p. 169.

77 Radwan, and Lee, , Agrarian Change in Egypt, p. 117.Google Scholar

78 Ibid., p. 119.

79 Ibid., p. 115; and Commander, , The State and Agricultural Development, p. 140.Google Scholar

80 Commander, , The State and Agricultural Development, pp. 73, 127.Google Scholar

81 Ibid., p. 127. Both Adams and Hopkins found female participation rates in the agricultural labor force to be lower in Upper Egypt, which presumably can be attributed to social constraints of the more traditional society of that region.

82 Agricultural Census, pp. 121–22.

83 Ibid., p. 115.

84 Janvry, De, The Agrarian Question, p. 88.Google Scholar

85 Population, Housing, and Establishment Census, 1986, Preliminary results (Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics) (Cairo, 06 1987), p. 3.Google Scholar

86 Commander, , The State and Agricultural Development, p. 123.Google Scholar

87 Radwan, and Lee, , Agrarian Change in Egypt, p. 77.Google Scholar

88 Commander, , The State and Agricultural Development, p. 25.Google Scholar

89 Production of lentils, for example, dropped from 32,000 tons in 1952 to 10,000 tons in 1984. During that period yields increased only slightly, from 3.45 to 3.69 ardebs per feddan. Statistical Year Book, pp. 46, 49.

90 An increasing share of cane is processed into refined sugar, a growing demand for which has been stimulated by the urban-oriented soft-drink market. Molasses, formerly a staple of the peasant diet, is now expensive and increasingly difficult to obtain. 'Ala' al-Din Mustafa, 'Ayn Tabaq al-'Asal wal-Tahina? (Where is the dish of honey and tahina?), Uktuber, 10 15, 1986, pp. 27–29, 60.Google Scholar

91 Radwan, and Lee, , Agrarian Change in Egypt, pp. 75–97.Google Scholar

92 Egypt: Current Economic Situation and Growth Prospects (Washington, D.C., 1985), p. 7.Google Scholar

93 The mechanization program has been consistently justified on the grounds of a rural labor shortage, for which the government has provided no substantiation other than to refer to increasing wage rates, which in any case have risen at a lower rate than nonagricultural labor. The most thorough recent survey of the rural labor market suggests that no labor shortage exists and that mechanization will exacerbate unemployment; see Richards, “Agricultural Employment.”

94 Commander, , The State and Agricultural Development, p. 39.Google Scholar

95 Ibid., p. 196.

96 Bremer, Jennifer, “Privatization of Agricultural Input Supply: Constraints and Opportunities for Reform,” (USAID, Agricultural Policy Analysis Project) (Cairo, 02 1986).Google Scholar

97 “Feed Industry Threatened by Maize Quota.”

98 I am indebted to William Janssen, Deputy Director for Agriculture, USAID Cairo, for this information.

99 Kishk et al., Survey of Small Holders.

100 Similarly, the chairman of the National Democratic Party's Agriculture Committee and longtime apparatchik, Ahmad Abd al-Akhar, along with a bevy of other administrator-politicians, formed in the early 1980s the joint venture Giza Company for Food Security. The facilities it has already constructed and those on the drawing boards will make it the largest producer and processor of tomatoes in Egypt, as well as a significant producer of chickens and chicken feed.

101 Commander, , The State and Agricultural Development, p. 140.Google Scholar

102 Ibid., p. 282.

103 Janvry, De, The Agrarian Question, pp. 224–54.Google Scholar

104 Egypt: Arbitrary Detention and Torture under Emergency Powers. (Amnesty International: MDE 12/01/89) (London, 05 1989).Google Scholar