This paper explores a pre-memory of the 1960s and 70s socialist and communist trends in Egypt. Specifically, it places in conversation conceptions of the citizen and society in early socialist writings of the 1920s with liberal formulations of writers and surrealist painters in 1930s and 40s, pointing to the legacies of such notions during Nasserism and their return in Arab ‘spring’ slogans and aesthetic movements. First, I address the socialist writings of Salama Musa (1887 – 1958), focusing on his practical approach to a socialist society through his critiques of British literature. I then move to Taha Husayn’s (1889 – 1973) imagined nation detailed in his 1938 Mustaqbal al-Thaqafa fi Misr [The Future of Culture in Egypt], focusing on the responsibilities he allots to elites and citizens through his conversations with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and André Gide. Finally, I refer to the surrealist Art and Freedom Group, organized by the poet George Henein (1914 – 1973) and the painter Ramses Yunan (1913 – 1966). I analyze Henein’s exchanges with André Breton about the ideal community and the role of aesthetic education, and Yunan’s critique of Husayn’s definition of culture and citizen in Mustaqbal in the group’s review al-Tattawur (1940). The same movement returns later in the review al-Majalla al-jadida [The new Magazine], passed on by its founder Salama Musa to Yunan. The various constructions pivot around the roles of the intellectual elite and the regular citizen. Such critiques of representation, citizen responsibilities and society offer an alternative view of the state to the one that emerges with Nasserism and the later Marxists of 1970s. The paper compares the literary, philosophical adaptations of Musa and Husayn to the surrealists’ aesthetic to locate the role that culture or thaqafa played in mapping the citizen as consumer in/of aesthetic production. It asks: What is the connection between these earlier formulations and the widespread but as yet ill-defined Arab socialism of today? How do the Egyptian Marxists of the 60s relate to them, and what are the possible affinities between Nasser’s vision and that of the early socialists?