Egyptian Workers and “Their” Intellectuals: The Dialectical Pedagogy of the Mahalla Strike Movement

Abstract

This article analyzes the development of the Egyptian workers' movement in the face of the 25 January Revolution through the notion of dialectical pedagogy. This Gramscian concept is extended by a Vygotskyan analysis of the reciprocal learning processes, which stimulate a proletarian activity system to overcome its economic-corporate predicament. The concrete case study of the Mahalla strike movement (2006–2008) elucidates the transformative-instructive dynamics of autoprolepsis and heterolepsis and the importance of solidarity in developing the worker Subject. The 25 January Revolution expanded the proletarian Zone of Proximal Development and created new possibilities and constraints for the development of the workers' movement.

Notes

¹Vygotsky himself asserted the applicability of his concepts to processes of sociogenesis (Wertsch, 1985), as do contemporary researchers (Collins, 2000; Del Rio & Alvarez, 2007; Kilgore, 1999). However, because Vygotsky almost exclusively studied human ontogenesis—with at its core the “top-down” model of teacher–pupil instruction—his psychological insights cannot be straightforwardly applied to the domain of the social sciences (Blunden, 2010; Collins, 2002)

²There are exceptions of course, such as Cooper's (2005) impressive study of learning processes in a South African trade union, and Shah-Shuja's (2008) “Zones of Proletarian Development” (2008)—even though its elaboration is “ultimately a failure” (Cox, 2010).

³I draw especially on Peter Thomas's (2009) authoritative reading of Gramsci.

⁴This trajectory is obviously a conceptual “scheme” that does not reflect real, historical, and “combined” developmental phases of worker Subjects (Gramsci, 1971, p. 182). It is useful, however, in offering us an image of the logic of the development of a worker activity system toward an emancipatory movement.

⁵Although the story of the sociogenesis of the Egyptian working class begins in the 19th century (cf. Beinin & Lockman, 1987), in this article I concentrate on the transition from a moral economy to neoliberalism.