Hani Shukrullah's excellent 'People's History of the Egyptian Revolution' - http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/4/81690/Opinion/A-people%E2%80%99s-history-of-the-Egyptian-revolution-.aspx - talks of the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood in their year in government to make a single attempt
"to deal with the massive inequities of a nation lorded over by the insatiable greed of a bunch of plunder-hungry Oligarchs with one foot in the state, the other in business, producing next to nothing, but consuming voraciously.
While it's true that the Oligarch as individuals produce nothing, I think that this is a little one-sided to omit the Oligarchs' need to exploit their workers which in turn requires that they invest in the machinery and raw materials needed to make what will be sold - it is hoped - at a profit. As Marx points out, the capitalist's own consumption is a robbery on the process of accumulation. However, he also talks of 'the prestige cost of capital', that is, the expenditure of making the business (and its owner) look credible. Banks have to have posh facades. And, no doubt, Oligarch's need huge houses, yachts etc.
What is certainly true is that there is an insatiability at the heart of each and every Oligarch. Insatiability usually goes with a narrow focus on the object of desire and an inability to look at the big picture. That is, an inability to see the massive destructiveness of their pursuit of profit, destroying both the human beings caught up as workers and consumers and also destroying the natural world, an inability to see the unsustainability of it all. The uprising that started on 25 January saw the masses step onto the stage of history. They are still there. The revolution, for that is what it is, whatever Hugh Roberts might argue - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n17/hugh-roberts/the-revolution-that-wasnt - more of that anon - has arisen precisely out of the need to stand up to the insatiable voraciousness of our rulers.
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