TINKER, TAILOR, AND TEXTILE WORKER: CLASS AND POLITICS IN EGYPT 1930-1954.

摘要

Tinker, Tailor, and Textile Worker is a study of the influence of Communist leadership in the labor movement of a less developed country, namely Egypt, in the recent past. Although some studies have been made on why Communists can have pervasive influence in some--but not all--sectors of the work force, they are not very useful in understanding both the tenacity with which such leadership is found in some sectors and the difficulty such leaders have in extending their influence to other sectors of the economy. There are two important findings: first, that Communists are self-consciously fighting a struggle to "modernize" the work force and second, that the way in which workers' demands for security are conceptualized and institutionalized has far-reaching economic consequences. Specifically, this study seeks to illuminate the problem by a close focus on the identification of the Communist movement in Egypt in the 1940's with textile workers in the Cairo and Alexandria areas. At the same time, the study suggests why other forms of leadership, especially nationalist and Muslim, were found in other sectors of the labor force. Through an examination of artisanal labor as well as the work force in the sugar, tobacco, petroleum, and textile industries several important explanatory variables emerge as critical to explain the political orientations of trade union leaders. Initially labor market segmentation explains why peasants were grouped in some seasonal and highly mechanized industries, such as sugar milling or cotton ginning while trained semi-skilled labor was more common in the tobacco and textile industries. Thus the social origins of the workers in different industries are significantly different. To the degree that peasant society corresponds to the notion of traditional society, some industries have a distinctly traditional work force, while others--where Communists are most firmly implanted--are far less so. After such a segmentation of the labor force, largely a result of investment strategies, several variables affect the choices available and meaningful to workers and their leaders. These are the policy of the state to the particular industry, the bureaucratic structure of the industrial setting itself, the history of past organizational efforts in the industry, and the kinds of allies workers can find in the society at large.