Arab socialism

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Arab socialism ( Arabic الاشتراكية العربية, DMG al-ištirākiyya al-ʿarabiyya ) is a variant of the so-called Third Way between communism ( socialism ) and capitalism .

features

Arab socialists emphasize central government ownership, private property shares, natural historical peculiarities in the Orient and Islam. After the publication of Ahmad Sa'id's book The Arab Socialism (1959), the term was used to distinguish it from the “radical, communist or state socialism ” of Eastern Europe.

The upheavals in Egypt in 1952 and Libya in 1969 were fundamental to Arab socialism : in a second phase of decolonization, nationalist military occupied the colonial superstructures. After the defeat in the Six Day War in 1967, Arab socialism lost ground.

There are differences to socialism with European characteristics

  • in Arab nationalism ,
  • in the instrumentalization of religion, especially Islam,
  • in the gradual, harmonious development instead of class struggle, violence and the dictatorship of a class,
  • in the preference of private and cooperative property over collective property.

The following factors made it difficult:

Since Arab socialism is generally poorly developed in theory, it is handled pragmatically with an enormous gap between claim and reality.

history

The Arabic word for socialism, ischtirākiyya , comes from the consonant root š-rk, which in pre-Islamic times denoted common property or polytheism ( shirk ) on the Arabian Peninsula , later also in Koran and Hadith texts. For the first time, an English-Turkish lexicon declared ishtirâk as "socialism" in 1861 .

The first Arab socialists split into communist, social democratic, nationalist and religious (such as Islamic) socialists.

The first anonymous socialist writings in Arabic originated from the minorities: the Greeks from Alexandria, Italians from Cairo, Christians from Lebanon and Copts from Egypt. Jewish immigrants and after 1905 Russian emigrants also propagated their socialist ideas. In 1910 the Journal of the First Arab Socialist Society appeared in New York. In 1915 the first works appeared in Arabic, such as the “Reform Catalog” by the Egyptian al-Mansuri.

In 1919 the first Arab communist parties emerged in Palestine. Egypt's first socialist party was founded in 1921, and in 1922 Husni al-Urabi founded the first communist party, a member of the Comintern . In the 1920s, “Internationalist Socialists”, led in Cairo by Comintern envoys like Joseph Rosenthal and Constantine Weiss, distinguished themselves from the “Arab Socialists”. Arab socialism then divided into social democratic, national and Islamic currents. The nationalist Arab Socialists, supported by the military, became the central trend after 1936. In 1941–1947, Michel Aflaq and Salah ad-Din al-Bitar founded the Ba'ath Party , which in 1953 merged with Al-Haurani's Arab Socialist Party.

The height of Arab socialism began in the mid-1950s, when officers around Nasser came to power in a coup in Egypt. The "Charter of National Action" of Egypt (1962) and the Egyptian Constitution of 1964 were fundamental in this regard. The "Charter of National Action" stated:

“The revolution is the way in which the Arab nation can break free of its shackles and the dark legacy that has weighed on it. ... (The revolution) is the only way to overcome the underdevelopment that has been forced upon it through oppression and exploitation ... and to meet the challenge that the Arabs and the other underdeveloped nations must face: the challenge of the amazing scientific discoveries that help to widen the gap between developed and backward countries ... ages of suffering and hope have finally created clear goals for the Arab struggle. These goals are the true expression of Arab consciousness and they are called freedom, socialism and unity. ... Freedom today means the freedom of the country and the citizens. Socialism has become both a means and an end: prosperity and justice. The path to unity is the general call for the restoration of the natural order of a single nation. "

- Department of Information, Cairo: Maschru al-mithaq (Cairo 1962), p. 13 ff .: Engl. Translation in: S. Hanna, GH Garner: Arab Socialism. London 1969, p. 344.

Society as a whole should rally around a government that represents the interests of all. It was declared that political democracy was impossible without social democracy, so public services, banks and insurance, heavy and medium-sized industries, foreign trade and communications should be owned by the general public. There should be equal opportunities between men and women, and health care and education should be available to all. Class divisions should be abolished in the country as well as the division between the Arab countries; Egypt in particular should also call for Arab unity across the other Arab governments. In the period that followed, the planned social reforms were vigorously tackled: minimum wages were set and the number of working hours restricted, the public health system was expanded, and a social security system was set up with part of the profits from industrial production . These measures initially led to a recovery in the Egyptian economy, which stagnated in 1964. The mass Arab Socialist Union party became a tool for conveying the government's intentions to the people, but not a mouthpiece through which the masses could express their criticism and suggestions. Nasser also failed to unite all the political forces in Egypt behind him: the Muslim Brotherhood accused him of pursuing secular politics under the guise of Islamic rhetoric; Marxists pointed to the contradiction between “Arab” and “scientific” socialism, which recognizes the existence of class conflicts and social differences even within a nation.

Nasser himself rejected the characterization of his politics as "Arab socialism":

“I declare that I have never propagated so-called Arab socialism. If you wanted to formulate Marxism in 20 points, I am ready to subscribe to 18 of them. The only two points that still separate us from the Marxists are the dictatorship of the proletariat and the relationship to religion. "

- Gamal Abdel Nasser : cit.in: History of the Arabs. Berlin (GDR) 1983, p. 115.

Outside Egypt, "Nasserism" gained popularity, also through the skillful use of radio, through which Nasser addressed the "Arab masses" directly. The radio station "Voice of the Arabs" called on the Arabs to revolution. The shows were so popular that sales of transistor radios tripled across the Arab world. When buying a radio, Arabs asked dealers to have a device "in which Ahmed Saied speaks". Saied was the chief commentator for "Voice of the Arabs". After 1967, violent Marxist-Leninist and Maoist groups formed among the Arab Palestinians . In Libya, after Gaddafi's seizure of power in 1969, popular socialism began to establish itself, which was theoretically justified in the Green Book (1975).

After the collapse of socialism in Europe in 1991, Arab socialists split into nationalist, secular and religious circles. The doctrine and practices of Saddam Hussein , who came to power in Iraq in 1979, are considered a nationalist-secular variant . At the beginning of the 1980s, an “Islamic left” was formed in Egypt around the Cairo philosophy professor Hasan Hanafi , which sought to unite socialism and religion.

Manifestations

  • Arab socialism Ahmed Ben Bellas (1963) and Houari Boumediennes in Algeria .
  • the state socialism Jafar an-Numairis in Sudan (1969).
  • the “Arab Socialism” of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his “ Arab Socialist Union ” (Unity Party, ASU), also known as Nasserism .
  • According to the Third Universal Theory in the Green Book of Muammar al-Gaddafi, who considered himself a student of Nasser, the former Libyan form of government, the Jamahiriya , was based on direct democracy - representative democracy is considered undemocratic, as not only Arabs and / or Muslims, but even non-Muslims have no direct influence on the actions of the government.
  • the "Arab socialism" of the Ba'ath Party (Socialist Party of the Arab Rebirth), which came to power in 1963 in Syria and Iraq (until 2003), but whose wings are mutually hostile, also known as Ba'athism .
  • Druze socialism in Lebanon , represented by the more personal than ideological views of the Druze leader Kamal Jumblat and his son and successor Walid Jumblat . The Jumblat Party ( Socialist Progressive Party , PSP) consequently entered into alliances with left ( al-Murabitun ) and communist forces during the civil war , but the relationship to “socialist” Syria was or is changeable.
  • the Republican brothers and sisters under the Sudanese intellectual Mahmoud Mohamed Taha (1909–1985). He developed a socialist approach that has its roots partly in the works of Marx and Hegel , but primarily in the world of ideas of Islamic mysticism . Taha and his supporters, the "Republican Brothers / Sisters", campaigned for a federal, democratic, secular and socialist Sudan and for equal rights for men and women. Taha was accused of apostasy several times and was sentenced to death and executed by the Numeiri regime in 1985 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Albert Hourani : The history of the Arab peoples. Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-596-15085-X , p. 489.
  2. ↑ Gerrit Hoekmann: Between olive branch and Kalashnikov. Münster 1999, ISBN 3-928300-88-1 , p. 34.
  3. ↑ Hasan M. Dudin: Between Marx and Mohammed: Arabian Socialism . Ed .: Mey Dudin. Createspace, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-1-5351-6286-9 , p. 123 .