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Book Thawra hattal nasr Revolution until Victory

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis of Thawra hatta’l nasr! – Revolution until Victory! is that the Arab uprisings of 2010–2011 were not a series of discrete national protests but a single, continent-spanning revolutionary wave driven by the structural crisis of world capitalism and the explosive contradictions of peripheral capitalist states. The book argues that these revolutions were fundamentally social — not merely political — in character, rooted in mass unemployment, rampant inequality, and the decay of the post-colonial state. The claim is that the Arab Revolution remains unfinished: the overthrow of individual dictators did not constitute victory, because the underlying class relations and the capitalist system itself were left intact. The title is the argument: revolution must continue until victory, meaning until the working class and poor take power and begin the transition to socialism.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on the classical Marxist tradition, particularly the theory of permanent revolution as developed by Leon Trotsky. The book applies this framework to the specific conditions of the Arab world: weak national bourgeoisies, dependent capitalist economies, and states that combine the formal trappings of independence with deep subordination to imperialism. The revolutions are understood as bourgeois-democratic in the tasks they face — land reform, national independence, democratic rights — but impossible to complete under capitalist property relations. The working class and urban poor, not the liberal opposition or the military, are identified as the only social force capable of carrying these tasks through. The analysis also draws on the Marxist theory of the state, rejecting the notion that regime change alone alters the class character of the state apparatus. The book situates the Arab Revolution within the general crisis of world capitalism, arguing that the 2008 global financial crash and its aftermath provided the objective conditions for mass upheaval.

Conjunctural Relevance

The book was published in 2011, at the height of the revolutionary wave, and its immediate relevance is to the events in Tunisia and Egypt from January to March of that year. It provides a day-by-day account of the Tunisian uprising that ousted Ben Ali and the Egyptian revolution that forced Mubarak from power, alongside analysis of the spreading unrest in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. The book identifies the key class forces in each country: the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) as a vehicle for working-class militancy; the Egyptian workers' strikes that escalated after Mubarak's fall; the role of the Muslim Brotherhood as a conservative force seeking to contain the revolution; and the military's function as the ultimate guarantor of the existing order. The book's relevance to the present conjuncture lies in its insistence that the revolutions were not defeated but betrayed — a claim that directly informs the RCI's analysis of the subsequent counter-revolution, the rise of Sisi in Egypt, the civil war in Syria, and the current wave of economic protests across the region.

Where the Argument Continues

The book is a compilation of articles from the first three months of 2011, and the argument continues in several directions. The RCI's ongoing coverage of the Arab world on marxist.com traces the trajectory of the Egyptian revolution through the 2013 coup and the restoration of military rule, the Tunisian experience under Ennahda and later authoritarian drift, and the Syrian revolution's transformation into a devastating civil war. The theoretical framework is developed further in Alan Woods' The Arab Revolution: A Marxist Analysis (2012) and in subsequent Against the Stream episodes analysing the regional counter-revolution. The book's analysis of the general crisis of capitalism as the backdrop to the Arab uprisings connects to the broader IDOM corpus on the 2008 crash and its aftermath, particularly Woods' The Global Crisis: A Marxist Analysis.

Connections

The book should be read alongside Trotsky's The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects, which provide the theoretical foundation. Within the IDOM corpus, it connects to Alan Woods' The Arab Revolution: A Marxist Analysis and to the ongoing series of articles on the Middle East published on marxist.com. The analysis of the state and the military in peripheral capitalist economies connects to the broader Marxist literature on Bonapartism and the military as a caste. The book's treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood as a bourgeois-conservative force should be read alongside the RCI's critiques of political Islam elsewhere in the corpus. For the global context, the book connects to the IDOM analysis of the 2008 crisis and the subsequent wave of austerity and protest movements worldwide.

Key Quotes

  1. "The Arab Revolution is not an isolated event but a manifestation of the general crisis of world capitalism."

  2. "The overthrow of a dictator is not the same as the overthrow of the regime. The regime is based on the power of capital, the landlords, the bankers and the military. As long as this remains intact, the revolution is unfinished."

  3. "The working class and the poor are the only force capable of carrying the revolution to its conclusion. The liberal opposition, the bourgeois democrats, the Islamists — all of them seek to stop the revolution halfway, to preserve the existing social order with a new face."

  4. "The events in Tunisia and Egypt have shown that the masses are not prepared to accept a change of faces at the top. They want a change of system. This is the meaning of the slogan: 'The people want the downfall of the system.'"

  5. "The Arab Revolution has dealt a severe blow to the plans of US imperialism and its allies in the region. But the counter-revolution is already regrouping. The revolution can only be consolidated by the expropriation of the capitalist class and the establishment of a workers' and peasants' government."

  6. "The crisis of the Arab regimes is a reflection of the crisis of world capitalism. The struggle for a better future in the Arab world is inseparable from the struggle for socialism on a world scale."