Arab Socialism

asser began, with no plan at first, to build a large public sector by nationalizing the property of all British, French, and Belgian nationals after the tripartite aggression. Then in 1960, because the local business classes refrained from investing in industry, Nasser nationalized Banque Misr and all its associated industrial, financial, and commercial concerns and adopted a five-year plan.

The July 1961 “socialist decrees” nationalized most nonagricultural enterprises and lowered the ceiling on agricultural land ownership for an individual to a hundred feddans (then fifty feddans in 1969). In 1962, the National Charter proclaimed Arab socialism as the official ideology of the state and established the Arab Socialist Union as its sole party.

Arab socialism, like African socialism and other anti-Marxist varieties of socialism in the Third World, pursued economic development following the Soviet model of rapid industrialization while also raising the level of consumption of the popular classes. Egypt did not have sufficient capital to realize this project without expropriating the large landowners and pursuing a more radical agrarian reform. But Nasser opposed mobilizing the peasant majority for a class struggle against the pillars of the old regime.

Egyptian Arab socialism mimicked many other aspects of Soviet rule, including its most unsavory antidemocratic practices. High-ranking officers with little economic experience became managers of large public-sector firms, forming an often inept or corrupt state bourgeoisie.

Arab socialism bettered the lives of workers in public enterprises and the state bureaucratic apparatus, who obtained stable employment and social benefits like health care and pensions. All Egyptians received subsidized basic commodities and free public education from kindergarten to university level, while children of workers and peasants gained much greater access to higher education.