> Zizek, digestible for once:
>
> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n02/slavoj-zizek/the-revolt-of-the-salaried-bourgeoisie
>
>One could argue that the uprisings in Egypt began in part as a revolt of the salaried
>bourgeoisie (with educated young people protesting about their lack of prospects), but
>this was only one aspect of a larger protest against an oppressive regime. On the other
>hand, the protest didn’t really mobilise poor workers and peasants and the Islamists’
>electoral victory makes clear the narrow social base of the original secular protest.
Not sure Z knows what he's talking about here. The workers of Mahallah started the fire in 2008, rural mobilizations were extensive and very effective (Juan Cole has talked about this), and Tahrir was the culmination. The Islamists are not a unified group - the FJP looks more or less like the Egyptian version of the AKP. But that's about what you'd expect from any post-revolutionary semi-peripheral economy -- a corporatist politics, which puts some brakes on the plutocrats.
I'm not sure what to make of Z's complete inability to diagnose China's complex, sophisticated, and quite dynamic developmental state. We need something more productive than Politburo-bashing and invocations of sweatshops.
-- DRR