This paper investigates the interaction between workers and activists/intellectuals in Egypt against the background of neoliberal reform or increasing “accumulation through dispossession” (Harvey 2006) since the nineties. It is based on fieldwork conducted between 2008-2011. The main argument is that the saliency of working class industrial action during the last decade has interpellated layers of activists and intellectuals from political parties, NGOs , newspapers, etc. – orienting them “back to class” and encouraging the formation of class-based subjectivities. Conversely, activists and intellectuals have injected the movement with notions of a political struggle for democracy and civil rights. The totality of these relations are analyzed through an application of a combined paradigm which incorporates Hegelian, Marxian, Vygotskian perspectives and elements from Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). The dialectic between workers and activist-intellectuals is defined as a Subject: a shared system of activity striving towards self-consciousness and self-determination (Blunden 2010). In addition, the role and nature of Egyptian activist-intellectuals are theorized from a Gramscian frame of reference, which distinguishes not only between organic and traditional intellectuals, but also between their political, technical, ideological and aesthetical functions. Within the Subject two different processes are entwined. On the one hand, class struggle brings about a spontaneous rise of activist-intellectuals from the ranks of the workers themselves. On the other hand, existing activist-intellectuals are incorporated in the unfolding system of activity through a specific mode of cooperation: solidarity. Apart from solidarity there are also processes of colonization and commodification at work which attempt at subsuming working class subjectivities into other projects: Islamism, nationalism, liberalism, etc. The workers’ struggle in the industrial city of Mahalla al-Kubra serves as a concrete case-study of the development of a shared system of activity between workers and activist-intellectuals based on solidarity. Lastly, the impact of the Egyptian revolution on the development of the Egyptian class Subject is discussed, highlighting its role in bringing this shared system of activity to a new level of organization and consciousness.