Contemporary fellow travellers: Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists and the theory and political practice of Marxism

Helena Zohdi

Third World Quarterly, 2025, vol. 46, issue 11, 1324-1341

Abstract: Within academic discourses of postcolonial theory, much has been written on whether and how Marxism can be drawn on to understand the ‘postcolonial world’ and, in this regard, what the relations between Eurocentrism and Marxism are. In practice, Marxism remains a core analytical framework for many emancipatory movements from the Global South, as is the case for Egyptian organisation of Revolutionary Socialists, whose popularity grew during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. The following paper is based on anthropological research with Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists in exile and the political underground. It showcases that many academic postcolonial debates sideline the agency of Marxist social actors from the Global South, their theoretical and practical endeavours, and their own modes of knowledge production. It is through the agency of Revolutionary Socialist social actors that Marxism travels from below, is translated, (re)read, debated, and materialises itself in given contexts. I highlight how Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists utilise Marxism as a living theory in their contemporary political practice and argue that their practice in exile as fellow travellers can be understood as a reconfiguration of the concept of travelling theory into travelling theory from below. Herein the centrality of social actors’ practice in grasping theory manifests itself.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2024.2412649

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