Of Success and Greed: The New Business Class Turns into Capitalist Oligarchy

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the distributional consequences of economic reforms in Egyptian society, showing how an entrepreneurial elite managed to amass an outstanding amount of wealth, and to translate it successfully in political power. However, the attempt at consolidating authoritarian rule under new economic foundations — what is termed here neoliberal authoritarianism — was likely to fail from its outset. This is because of the discontent created both within regime and in society at large by the rise of the capitalist oligarchy.