The Arab Ba'th Socialist Party, by Kamel S. Abu Jaber
Gendzier, Irene L.
Quoting an interview with the veteran socialist, Akram Hourani, Kamel Abu Jaber reports that when asked to whom he felt closer—a British socialist or a Saudi Arabian Sheikh, Hourani...
...Regarding Israel as a Western state in their midst, suspicious of its socialist claims, the members of the Ba'th continue to reject the possibility of a dialogue with the Israeli Left...
...The absence of a large proletariat, the pressure of a landhungry peasantry, the desire for Arab unity, and the continued public adherence to Islam are some of the reasons for this rejection...
...By its name it declared its refusal to confirm the "artificial boundaries drawn by foreigners," and it objected to the Arab League on the ground that its existence confirmed that partition...
...Published in 1966, therefore, before the onset of recent tension and war, Kamel Abu Jaber's book has lost none of its timelines...
...In this respect, Abu Jaber's book has its limitations, since he fails to consider fully these generational and ideological differences...
...it held its first national convention in 1947...
...The desire to achieve a lasting independence for the entire Middle East led it to oppose the creation of Israel, which it saw as a Western state forcibly imposed in its midst...
...These differences extend from the question of cooperation with Nasser to the matter of land redistribution...
...Yet the Ba'th has been neither as successful as its founders wish it to be, nor as much of a failure as its enemies like to assume...
...Events of the past few months, culminating in the lightening war of June in the Middle East, strongly bear out the accuracy and the paradox of this position...
...And here again, it is useful to recognize the differences that exist among the Ba'thists themselves, the militant extremists on the one hand and the moderates on the other...
...Ba'thists are the first to point out that while conditions in the Middle East may bar easy acceptance of Communism or Marxism, they do not bar differing conceptions of socialism...
...In 1949 the party won three seats in the Syrian Parliament, a number that climbed to 16 five years later and eventually brought the Ba'th into the Cabinet in the summer of 1956...
...Here the Ba'thists have withheld approval from Marxist conceptions of materialism, internationalism, class struggle, and the dictatorship of the proletariat...
...The Ba'thists have not forgotten, however, that the Soviet government voted for the seating of the new State of Israel in 1948...
...Quoting an interview with the veteran socialist, Akram Hourani, Kamel Abu Jaber reports that when asked to whom he felt closer—a British socialist or a Saudi Arabian Sheikh, Hourani replied, "the Saudi Arabian Sheikh without any question...
...Committed partisans of the Ba'th would claim that there was less evil in an alliance with a feudal Saudi Sheikh than in one with the heirs of the imperialist tradition in the Middle East...
...Even after Syria and Lebanon had been granted their legal independence by France, the presence of foreigners was a reminder of how distant the goal of true independence remained...
...Indeed, the French Communist party, in collaboration with the Blum government in 1936 accounts for their disillusionment with Communism as an allegedly anti-imperialist force...
...In the midst of crisis, the socialists of the Arab Ba'th (Resurrection) Party did not hesitate to unite with some of their less progressive brothers...
...Political considerations may explain the party's changing attitude toward the U.S.S.R., yet this is less true in its assessment of classic Marxist theory...
...The defeat of the Arab states in the debacle of 1948 was a turning point in recent Middle Eastern history...
...The Ba'th, claiming to be an Arab and not exclusively a Syrian party, had already spread to neighboring Lebanon and Jordan before Syria entered into the brief and difficult union with Egypt in 1958...
...Moreover, the end of the mandate system did not mean the reintegration of the separate regions of the Middle East, which perpetuated what some considered a grave injustice...
...In large measure it explains the eclectic doctrine evolved by the Ba'thists...
...This has not prevented the Ba'th from cooperating with the Communist party in Syria, nor has it blunted its sympathy for the Soviet bloc...
...Both the pragmatic policies of Nasser and the more doctrinaire leanings of the Syrian Ba'thists reflect the preference for "totalitarian democracy" that is common to left-wing reformers of the Middle East...
...The most obvious competitor in this area is Egypt, whose pragmatic trial-anderror policies have recently been restated in terms designed to make them more attractive to sophisticated reformers...
...On the basis of the Sixth Party Convention held in 1963, it is clear that the majority adhered to these principles while reaffirming the desirability of working with Nasser for eventual Arab unity...
...But Western socialists, even those fully capable of understanding such an evaluation, would be wise to question the history and theory that have been accumulated in its defense...
...To these should be added the effect of the confusion between Marxism and Soviet policy, which persisted for so long...
...The central experience of Syrian patriots of all political persuasions has been the struggle for independence, and consequently, their relationship with the West...
...In explaining the complicated events that led up to the creation of Syro-Egyptian union in 1958 and that subsequently brought about its demise in 1961, Abu Jaber does justice to the divisions that separate Nasser and the Syrian Ba'thists...
...For the first generation of Ba'thists, and especially for its two leaders Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, socialism was the only correct alternative to capitalism and Communism...
...In the writings of its theoretical leader, Aflaq, it remains a plan designed to transform the Arab world from its present situation to a condition in which social justice and economic and political equality will prevail...
...nor that local Communists were not enthusiastic partisans of Arab nationalism, i.e., Arab unity, until after the 1956 transformation of the Soviet position...
...One may well hope that this seemingly eternal block will eventually be overcome...
...Despite its modest membership—ten mem hers in the first three years—it adopted an ambitious program that distinguished it from its competitors in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East...
...But this choice cannot be attributed solely to the exigencies of war, it is part of the complex nature of Arab socialism and its most sophisticated variant, the Arab Ba'th Socialist party...
...The idea of regeneration contained in the term Ba'th refers to the moral transformation of the Arab people which is to precede and accompany material changes...
...Arab socialism has been described as the social content of Arab nationalism and as the foundation for the creation of a popular democracy...
...the link was Arabhood rather than socialism...
...The history of the Ba'th party is an excellent introduction to this subject...
...For the Ba'thists—until February 1966 at least—Nasserism has been unexpectedly useful in that it had forced the party to redefine its position on the questions of liberty, pluralism, the principles of collective leadership and democratic centralism...
...The Ba'th party was founded in Damascus in 1943 by a small group of intellectuals...
...Two years after the breakup of the U.A.R., in 1963, the Ba'th succeeded in toppling the Qasim regime in Iraq and one month later, in March, it repeated this performance in Syria, thus regaining power in its home base...
...In Syria alone, in the period between 1949 and 1953, there were three coups d'etat, 21 cabinet changes, and two military dictatorships...
...Among the progressive reformers promising largescale change and a severe limitation of Western influence, two continue to be outstanding: the leaders of the Egyptian revolution and the members of the Arab Ba'th Socialist party...
...In the course of their political education, Aflaq and Bitar learned much from both Marx and the French Communists...
...From these two conditions, the struggle for independence and the desire to reunify the Arab world, the Arab Ba'th Socialist party derived a number of its programs...
...However, the attitude described above is not shared by a number of younger Ba'thists, who generally have greater interest in the applicability of Marxist and Leninist analyses to local conditions...
...but in the interval it is useful to recall that the obstacles to such a rapprochement involve all of the grievances that have come to characterize the relations of the Arab world, and the Arab Left, with the West...
...From this undisguised failure came the desire to reform the corrupt regimes, the administrative mismanagement, and the military obsolescence that were considered the cause of the Arab disaster...
...In the new political groupings that emerged, two issues were fundamental: the extent to which collaboration with the West was possible, and the extent to which internal reform could be implemented...
...The vital moral connotations in Aflaq's writings may be of little importance to the current regime which is not noted for sentiment or mysticism...
...In its struggle against the remnants of Western imperialism, the old proverb, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," is a practical guide...
Vol. 14 • September 1967 • No. 5
