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The initial demand was for the end of the Mubarak dictatorship and the creation of a democratic system that respected democratic rights -- the essential component of an authentic national democratic revolutionary process. However, the maturation of this process was arrested due to three factors: (i) the seizure of power by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) on 11 February, (ii) the channeling of mass dissent primarily into the electoral process, and (iii) the failure of the oppositional forces to organize sustainable mass structures to safeguard and consolidate the developing revolutionary situation.

This is important because the liberal appropriation of the term ‘revolution’ to describe everything from the events in Libya and Syria to the Green movement in Iran not only distorts social reality but also advances a dangerous narrative. That narrative suggests that revolutionary change takes place as a result of spectacle. It devalues organizing and building structures from the bottom up as unnecessary because it is the theater that is important; the episodic show; the display that refutes Gil Scott Heron’s admonition that ‘the revolution will not be televised!’

In fact, under President Morsi, the military never really went away. It maintained an independent space in the Egyptian state and economy.

For US policy-makers, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Morsi government were never seen as an alternative to Hosni Mubarak. Despite the repression meted out to members of the Muslim Brotherhood by the Mubarak regime, it was well understood that the Brotherhood was part of the Egyptian economic elite and open to doing business with the West. Therefore, Morsi was seen as an acceptable and safe civilian face to replace Mubarak while the US continued its influence behind the scenes through the military.

The class-based, social and economic interests of the military mean that it will oppose any fundamental transformation of the Egyptian economy and society, the ostensible aim of the ‘revolution.’ Significantly, this means that the power of the military is going to have to be broken if there is to be any prospect of revolutionary change in Egypt.

The demand for the end of the dictatorship was an awesome demonstration of people-power that created the potential for revolutionary change. The problem was that the dictatorship had severely undermined the ability of alternative popular forces to develop and acquire the political experience and institutional foundations that would have positioned them to better push for progressive change and curtail the power of the military. Unfortunately for Egypt, the force that had the longest experience in political opposition and organizational development was the Muslim Brotherhood.

when the Egyptian military -- a military that has not demonstrated any propensity for supporting democratic reforms -- intimated that it would step in, the mass position should have been ‘no to military intervention, change only by democratic means’ -- a position that a more mature and authentically independent movement might have assumed if it was not being manipulated by powerful elite forces internally and externally. It was wishful thinking that bordered on the psychotic for liberal and radical forces in the country and their allies outside to believe that a democratic process could be developed that reflected the interests of the broad sectors of Egyptian society while disenfranchising the Muslim Brotherhood, a social force that many conservatively suggest still commands the support of at least a third of the Egyptian population, and is the largest political organization in the country.

The powerful national elites that bankrolled the anti-Morsi campaign and their external allies, including Saudi Arabia and the US, have successfully set in motion a counter-revolutionary process that will fragment the opposition and marginalize any radical elements.