about its oppressors.3 The internationalisation of capital is certainly a valuable analytical starting point. Elsewhere Clawson has dealt in more historical detail with the way the circuits of capital are internationalised.4 But however useful his perspective is, it remains incomplete without an analysis of the precise relationship between the various circuits of international capital and pre-capitalist modes of production, and on this point he is weak. Such an extension of his outlook would provide some crucial _ elements lacking in his analysis of Egypt: an explanation of class alliances and an investigation of the transformation of the labour process. Clawson fails to probe the actual relationship between 'capital's advances' and the reorganisation of production, and conse- quently fails to examine the locus of class conflict. The dynamics of capitalist production are therefore never specified, and the nature of capitalist 'development' in its historical totality is not conceptualised. The Origins of Commodity Production Clawson argues that Egyptian cotton production arose as a result of the needs of commodity capital undergoing a process of internationalisa- tion. Long-staple cotton thus became a commodity for foreign capital- ists, whilst production within Egypt remained organised along pre- capitalist lines. 'The internationalisation of capital', he writes, 'not any conditions internal to Egypt, was the primary factor behind the growth of cotton production, and therefore of the market, in Egypt' (P80). Yet it ought to be asked, why did the Egyptian state under Muhammad 'Ali choose to begin commercial production of cotton for export? Marxist tradition argues that the penetration of capitalism into pre-capitalist societies requires a high degree of violence to break the resistance of
speaking masses had undergone a process 0 f proletarianisation parallel to the gradual but steady loss of their 'people-class' nature. This evolu- tion meant that the Jewish workers, pedlars and artisans, as an exploited sector within an oppressed non -territorial national minority, were not better off than the surrounding peasantry. This peasantry was usually the cannon-fodder for the most reactionary and chauvinist movements in eastern Europe, and was often mobilised in order to perpetrate all sorts of anti-Jewish riots, including the infamous pogroms. Hence, the seeds of later tragic developments in eastern Europe can be traced to the fact that these oppressed groups, the Jewish workers and the non-Jewish peasantry and working class, had a mutual distrust and prejudice which practically prevented any cooperation between them. In these circumstances, it is not acceptable by any standard to demand of the Jewish parties and factions a self-critique of chauvinistic attitudes, without demanding the same ofthose political organisations which represented the non-Jewish eastern European peasants, workers and middle classes. It is certainly regrettable that, even today, Jews of eastern European descent hold prejudices against eastern European ethnic groups; One must not forget however that the anti-Jewish prejudices of these (mainly peasant) ethnic groups had far more tragic consequences for the Jews, in terms of human lives and suffering, than Jewish chauvinism against them could have ever had. During the Second World War, the majority of Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian peasants (with honourable exceptions) were indifferent to the fate of the Jews; in spite of their own suffering under Nazi occupation, many of these peasants participated in the infamous Einsatzgruppen18 which murdered nearly a million Jews. As a survivor of the Holocaust,
London. Also in Jewish Revolutionariesfrom Marx to Trotsky, op cit. 14 This behaviour 0 f left -wing radical Jews is even more pronounced today, since a 'Jewish identity' has become for the extreme left synomous with Zionism. Therefore, many left-wing anti-Zionist Jews are more radical in this respect than non-Jewish militants. 15 This type of Judeophobic manipulation of anti-Zionism is common in Stalinist antisemitism. See two essays in Robert Wistrich's Anti-Zionism in the USSR: From Lenin to the Soviet Black Hundreds: Adam Diolkose, '''Anti- Zionism" in Polish Communist Party Politics and W. Oschlies, 'Neo-Stalinist Anti-Semitism in Czechoslovakia'. See also Nathan Weinstock's introduction to Abram Leon, op cit, pp48-54. 16 My understanding of the term 'anti-semitism' is that explained by Maxime Rodinson in 'Quelques idées simples sur I' Anti-Semitisme', Revue des Etudes Palestiniennes, vol 1, Beirut 1981, (Published in Paris). For a comprehensive treatise on antisemitism see Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1975. 17 Shahak's mystification of the peasantry is similar to that found in most populisms in agrarian societies (as for example, eastern Europe). It is also a characteristic of the Russian 'narodniki'. See Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Gellner, op cit. 18 The Einsatzgruppen were units especially used by the Nazis to murder the Jews left behind the frontlines of the German military advance in the USSR. They were formed largely by Polish, Ukranian and Lithuanian peasants who collaborated with the Nazis. 114 Book Reviews Nikki R. Keddie, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of
often residing in one room. No family has an income sufficient to meet 124 Book Reviews its needs; people are so poor they are afraid to accept hospitality because they are unable to repay it. Miserable though they are, their dreams are not of radical social change, but of advance within the existing system. In 1972, when the study was completed, the neighbour- hood had little good to say about Nasser, the former nationalist leadq-, or for his brand of socialism. His government like all others was regarded as corrupt and bureaucratic and the slum dwellers rarely availed themselves of the benefits of his public welfare programme: nobody believed that anything cheap or free could be trusted. They longed instead for what they saw as the stability and relative prosperity of life under British rule. But the focus of the book is not upon this - it is upon the lives of the women in these families. The slum areas with their narrow streets and decaying buildings are the women's territory and their flats are their domain. The men keep away, spending their time at work or in the cafes. It is unmanly to sit in the home with the women and children. The women are all, in the convehtional sense of the term 'housewives', dependent on a male wage earner and with little or no income- generating activity of their own. Their mornings are spent on house- work; the rest of the day and much of the evening is taken up with sustaining, forming or breaking the complex web of alliance with other women which is an integral part of the daily struggle to make ends meet. In most cases the only wage earners are husbands and fathers, as children generally leave home when they begin to work. For women to