ABSTRACT

This chapter analyzes the way in which the European model of the popular front was transposed and adjusted to the Egyptian situation. It focuses on the paradigm of the front and the “minimum” and “maximum” programs of the Comintern. More than a tactic to acquire political power, the popular front was an ideological program that supplied the terminology and logic for Egyptian communists to integrate Egypt conceptually into a “modernist,” universal scheme of history. Some sections of the communist movement, like Iskra, even rejected Egyptianization as “chauvinistic." Egyptian nationalism was integrated in and subordinated to the communist program. All the communist groups advocated state intervention through economic planning. The agrarian reforms planned by the New Dawn group and Iskra consisted essentially in transforming the small-scale peasant economy into a large-scale modernized economy based on the use of the most recent techniques and agricultural machines.