Notes On Socialism In The Middle East
Thomas, Norman
In no sense do these notes pretend to the blessed adjective "definitive." They are based on impressions derived from observations, conversations, interviews, meetings, and a little reading...
...They are based on impressions derived from observations, conversations, interviews, meetings, and a little reading during a six weeks' trip in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel...
...Bitar apparently has not saved the Baath Party from dissolution...
...III In Israel socialism is Western in origin and outlook...
...I1 In contrast to the communists, socialists, at least those who are articulate, have some suspicion of Moscow and some regard for democracy...
...The result is the establishment of a national enclave in an unfriendly Arab world...
...Their emphasis, however, is on production and, as one of them explained, in their class struggle the good capitalist who invests and manages so as to increase production can be their ally against the bad...
...ence in the climate and nature of such discussions from the hot debates of the years following World War I in our Western world...
...As a result I cannot form or impart a clear picture of socialism in the Middle East—certainly not a socialism with a platform on which Arab and Israeli socialists could unite...
...Its program in today's world cannot be simply derived from Marx or any of its great teachers...
...And I for one would not want political parties to function formally in American labor unions...
...When we were in Egypt, Nasser had expressed a hope that his National Union—which in some sense is to take the place of the political parties no longer allowed to function as such —would be democratic socialist in point of view...
...As for international affairs the foreign policy of Israel has been made by Ben Gurion and his comrades of Mapai with pretty general support of a Zionist nationalist movement...
...And our friend, Bitar, is in the cabinet—a fact which gives me hope for the future...
...But, as with all other Arabs, their main passion is nationalism or rather pan-Arabism...
...Some American religious agricultural communities did very well for one, two or three generations while the religious bond held them...
...In Egypt the religious factor was illustrated by a personal experience...
...He is clearly an advocate of the welfare state, but said that he could not use as much money for schools as he would like...
...The National Union, as nearly as I could gather, is open to all Egyptians, and has no binding creed except "loyalty...
...This fact came out in private conversations in Lebanon and Israel with Arabs...
...I should argue that communism generally has become a special form of state capitalism...
...They merely think, with sublime disregard of history, that they can outsmart Big Brother Khrushchev, their champion against a Western imperialism of which an expansionist Israel is the wedge to divide Arabian brothers...
...So far letters that I have written to Arab friends on their plans for continuing the work of the Baath Party have been unanswered...
...And that takes money, much of which the government must provide...
...Apparently its members on principle don't wear neckties, which to the visitor chiefly distinguishes them from Mapai...
...There is no economic formula which will lead to utopia, important as are economic arrangements in men's striving for plenty, peace, freedom and that fraternity which must be the spiritual basis for the good society of our dreams...
...This anti-American now lives in what is sometimes called the American section of Beirut...
...In Syria and Lebanon they are the chief obstacles to communism's spread among the people...
...In the countries I visited communism has varying degrees of strength...
...Otherwise they would be, as certain Polish immigrants have said they feared, very like Russian kolkhozes in their pressure on individuals...
...Jumblatt, leader of the principal socialist party, from which, since his defeat for parliament, there have been defections, owed much of his political strength to the fact that he, by family position, is a leader of the Druse religious minority...
...In such cases, it exacts representation on the board of directors, roughly in proportion to what it puts in, and of course it claims the right, in a general sort of way, to direct the whole economy...
...Definitely the socialists like the Baath party in Syria don't want that...
...It tries to go to the workers or the people in countries where a working class in our Western sense is just emerging...
...Lebanon itself is deliberately organized to preserve a balance between religions...
...Don Peretz and myself that there was now rather serious popular rather than governmental discrimination against Copts...
...Socialist kibbutzim or non-religious agricultural collective communities are usually pretty well tied to one or another of these parties...
...Their nationalism, they insist, is to be distinguished from the nationalisms of the West which in combination with capitalism have led to imperialism...
...So do Arab socialists—except when they think of Israel...
...But Bitar's work resulted in the exclusion of the dangerous el-Azam from Nasser's provisional cabinet...
...It is a necessity if Egypt is to provide any kind of life for a population growing at the rate of 500,000 a year that her economy be industrialized...
...It serves as an agency to certify the loyalty of the contending candidates in various elections...
...It cannot count to the degree that they did on human rationality...
...Peretz reminded him that he had denied this emphatically when he had talked with him some months earlier...
...IV Lest to any reader what I have written should seem censorious to a degree unwarranted by any achievement of Western international socialism, I hasten to admit that it is not only Arab socialism or Israeli socialism but democratic socialism everywhere which is pretty well bound by the spirit and the institutions of the various nations within which it works...
...Everywhere as we talked about socialism or communism, I was aware of the vast differ...
...You were with a !Moslem...
...When men and women love them and work in them as Joseph Baratz worked in the kibbutz which he so charmingly describes in his Village by the Jordan, they are an asset to humanity...
...Had it not made an agreement with him that would raise living standards and so destroy communism...
...It is true, as he reminded me, that last summer there were hot campaigns between individuals in different parliamentary constituencies...
...But nowhere is it imitating Mao's approach in China—at least not with any obvious success...
...And even then there is a chance that this Asian socialist federation may serve as provider of a meeting ground, if not as a mediator, for the comrades in the whole Middle East...
...more, I think, are privately if not publicly cautious...
...To deal with that evil, his government had banned parties on the electoral front, but had not suppressed the expression of political ideas...
...He assured me of his continuing interest in improving the conditions of the Egyptian people...
...Even now the growing form of agricultural settlement is the much looser cooperative or moshay...
...But this labor state within a state is hardly the answer to the need for socialist forms of organization in the struggle against bureaucratic controls...
...As far as I could learn they have a not too well developed welfare and pro-labor program with some degree of interest in land reform...
...But its origins were Marxist and socialist and it is still so regarded in the East...
...In no sense do these notes pretend to the blessed adjective "definitive...
...Its public slogans are reformist and ultra nationalist, and it is pathetically dependent on Moscow...
...But that did not prove indefinitely communicable...
...Even in Israel the fact that all workers belong to, and can vote in, the central organization which itself owns many of the industries in which they must work does not solve the problems of the relation of management and workers...
...I asked the President why he banned parties, including the Socialist party...
...As for your el-Azims, of course they don't want communism...
...Will the secular idealism of the socialist kibbutz fare better...
...It may, as its leaders hope, suggest similar action in small new nations like Ghana...
...This does not mean that the Middle East is or desires to be under communist control...
...As for the kibbutzim they have served Israel well...
...And at the very time of our visit the Egyptian parliament was showing considerable independence in inquiring into allegations of wasteful management in the so-called "liberation" province—an area which had been set aside for agricultural development along semi-collectivist lines under state direction...
...1 Let's begin with Middle Eastern—and Asian—communism...
...To this emancipating movement they will provide, as others, they believe, cannot, such true inspiration and guidance that it will be a blessing not only to Arabs but mankind...
...Socialism in Egypt, or more precisely Nasser's idea of it, has become more important since our return to the United States—and since this article was first written...
...In countries where there has never been political democracy or a tradition of individual rather than group freedom it is comparatively a matter of indifference that on the road to power a Stalin or a Mao has found so many millions of human beings expendable...
...There can be no inherent socialist internationalism in the process of achieving or maintaining such an enclave...
...Some Lebanese Christians are passionate pan-Arabists...
...Mapam is the most Marxist or least nonMarxist of these parties...
...Moreover, I had listened to an hour's lecture on Arab socialism by one of Beirut's leading intellectuals...
...In Syria where the party led by Bogdash has had some strength it had to swallow the Kremlin's loan agreement with that supreme opportunist, Minister of Defense el-Azim, the great landowner, nicknamed the Red Millionaire, who assured a businessmen's convention that Mos cow was now anti-communist...
...Men, groups and classes cherish their prejudices at least as much as they cherish their economic interests to which those prejudices frequently run counter...
...This view of Israel with America behind her, an America controlled by Zionists, is almost universal in the Middle East, though it is less strong among socialists in Syria and Lebanon than among most non-socialists...
...At this there was some revolt in the Syrian party, how serious depends upon your informant, but it was put down by Bogdash and the party continues its appeal as even more devotedly pan-Arabist than its rivals...
...But Mr...
...And I had had interviews with officials, opposition leaders and plain people too numerous to record...
...Given the peculiar circumstances of the formation of little Israel the Histadrut has done a remarkable job...
...By now it is definitely non-communist though like most Asian socialists it thinks pretty well of the Yugoslays...
...They do have some aspirations for democracy...
...A socialist intellectual, a Copt, was telling Dr...
...His reply was that when he took over the government of Egypt he was appalled at the corruption of political parties and their furious partisanship...
...Therefore, the government, for example, had put money into the new steel plant...
...In both cases the nationalist adjective is more important than the socialist noun...
...I questioned the President about his understanding of democratic socialism and got no very clear answer...
...Indeed, except for a few hard core Communists, everywhere that I have been from Indonesia to Egypt, communism in the East has to many people an almost mystical appeal as a short cut whereby the supposedly "spiritual" East can quickly acquire the material wealth of the West and in the process thumb its nose at its former masters, the "democratic" nations of Western Europe...
...Of these facts and the history of the years since socialism failed to stop or effectively to protest World War I, today's socialism in every continent must take full account...
...Of course," he replied...
...Nasser has carried over his opposition to political parties in the provisional rules governing the United Arab Republic...
...Otherwise such differences as there are are rooted at least as much in Israeli history and attitudes toward Zionism as in socialist doctrine...
...Some of the most devoted pan-Arabist socialists are, nominally, Christians, but by no means all Christians are sure that pan-Arabism is a secular entity independent of Islam...
...Israel has three socialist parties of this Western type and under proportional representation they function not only in the state but in the powerful labor organization, the Histadrut...
...In action Israeli socialism in the state and in the Histadrut is very pragmatic...
...In what nation, by the way, cannot a similar statement be made...
...I went abroad to listen rather than to speak, but before I came home I had spoken and been questioned at public student meetings in the American universities in Cairo and Beirut, at off-record conferences first with Arab and then Jewish students at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, at a radical "opposition" Arab club in Lebanon and at an informal meeting under Baath—the Socialist Party of Syria presided over by that excellent man, Salah el-Bitar...
...And this Moslem was his friend and socialist comrade...
...It is fair to add that Israeli socialists do keep, like Western socialists, some international conscience and desire for international federation...
...But only if they are the voluntary choice of their members who are inspired by a common idealism...
...That excellent man, Salah el-Bitar, a leader of the Baath Party and foreign minister in the Syrian coalition cabinet, appears to have been the man above all others who brought negotiations for unity between Egypt and Syria to a more rapid consummation than was generally expected...
Vol. 5 • July 1958 • No. 3
