The end of the Second World War gave birth to a new world marked by accelerated evolution, touching every sector of political, economic and cultural life. Faced with this new post-War world, thinkers have examined ideological trends, which appeared in the 20th century, and attempted to evaluate their importance and their aptitude to clarify the new situation, respond to its requirements and draw indispensable lessons. This current of criticism was the logical end of various attempts to sift out the characteristics of the post-War world and examine the orientations distinguishing this particular phase in the life of humanity.
In the present study, we shall try to define the political, economic, social and cultural trends which have modified the post-War world and examine ideological orientations in the world of today; we shall highlight the particular characteristics of this phase and reveal, through the general theoretic context, the framework in which Arab revolutionary strategy came into being.
Thinkers speak of the advent of new civilizations, which cannot fail to leave their mark on the post-War world—that of the masses, that of specialization, of bureaucracy, they also speak of scientific, industrial and technological revolutions and demographic, industrial and technological revolutions and demographic explosions, hitherto unknown. This is "the world of flux, of change". It is the frequency of these sudden explosions in the various sectors of social life, which characterize the post-War world.
After the War, the silence maintained by the different mass movements concerning concrete problems dissipated and gave rise to a movement of considerable dimension. Profound changes took place and relations between the countries of the world gained new life. Even antagonistic organizations abandoned their isolation and the distance separating them dwindled.
To gain an idea of the most important manifestations of these radical changes marking the post-War world, and the crises affecting contemporary ideology, we must direct our attention primarily to the political, economic, social and cultural trends of the period.
In studying world events in the various political contexts, which have given rise to yearly change in different countries, we perceive four essential trends:
The Trend of National Patriotic Freedom
The end of the Second World War corresponds to the end of colonialism. War brought about the fall of the British Empire — or what was left of it. It placed France in a new political universe. Liberation movements which had been developing in certain Asiatic countries began to produce positive results. The African continent began its fight for freedom. A new world began to take shape and to become aware of “the illness constituted by colonialism which had to be urgently cured.” It is for this reason that national liberation movements continued their struggle after the war. Whole continents abandoned the passive attitude, which had kept them on the fringe of international political activity and plunged them into active participation in international life. In 1945, 50 Member States attended the General Assembly of the United Nations. In 1960, the number of Member States on the United Nations Committee had risen to 100 and to 127 in 1970. In this way, 50 countries made their appearance on the international scene during the 15 years following the end of the war, parallel to this trend, a new phenomenon, known as neo-colonialism arose. It was an attempt to adapt the instruments of domination over under-developed countries to the new requirements of the political situation.
This state of things gave rise, at the very heart of the patriotic freedom movement, to various trends in the direction of new experiments and attitudes concerning neo-colonialism. Revolutionary trends appeared in these newborn countries, aiming at the transformation of the social and economic condition in a socialistic perspective. Reforming trends also came into being, but contented themselves with perpetuating quasi-colonialist relations with dominant powers and undertaking changes of a superficial nature, with no radical bearing on a given social condition. Their evolution remained within the framework of a capitalist society.
Fortified by such experience, revolutionary trends began to preoccupy themselves with major problems for revolution, particularly the creation or adoption of a theory able to serve as a basis for revolutionary action and capable of giving direction to changes and acting as a guide for revolutionaries.
2 - The Trend to Unity and Political Re-grouping
The post-War period was equally marked by the awakening of movements called upon to complete the task of national liberation by the realization of unity, the strengthening of the Nation's personality and action leading to the re-establishment of historic bonds linking together certain peoples, as in the past, or drawing together the various components of the same people, hitherto dispersed. These trends did not stop at reestablishing already existing links: they set out to create new bonds between peoples from various potentially strategic military zones or those who already constituted an economic community. They are not simply an expression of the ripening of political awareness, but are also a keen awakening to the vital circumstantial requirements of struggle with the enemy and natural evolution.
Thus, apart from the fact that it is a condition of national freedom, Arab unity is a target in conformity with the context in which the objective evolution of the contemporary world takes place.
After the war, the concept of unity compelled recognition and became generally accepted —even by reactionary governments— and this success was crowned in 1945 by the foundation of the Arab League. On paper, military, economic and cultural agreements were signed between 1948 and 1957, without ever reaching concrete form. It was not until 1958 that political unity between Syria and Egypt was at last effected; then, on April 17th 1963, the pact between Syria, Iraq and Egypt, agreeing to the pursuit of unity, was signed; and finally, after the defeat of June 1967, various attempts were made to find a new formula, capable of preserving unity from the possibility of further disasters.
Then the trend to unity became transformed. It had been marked by uncontrolled reactions and had hitherto been kept a prisoner by its own instinctive attitude, which revealed a deep hereditary inhibition rather than a stand dictated by revolutionary strategy and full awareness of the actual state of things. Particularly, after the defeat of June 1967, it affiliated with scientific revolutionary strategy, associating the concept of unity to that of armed combat and according a dominant role to the proletarian masses, the basis, and to the common front uniting progressive patriotic forces on the scale of the Arab Homeland.
After the war, the trend calling for political unity fused with the patriotic movement for freedom. Once liberated from the yoke of foreign domination, countries begin to seek a national or historic framework corresponding to their ideal and which, while consolidating it, give guarantees for long-standing independence. This explains the expansion of the trend towards unity in countries now freed —whether in Asia, Africa or South America — from the fetters of colonialism and its sequels, which have recovered their authenticity and regained awareness of their national personality.
In 1962, the Tunisian weekly "Jeune Afrique" published the result of an opinion poll carried out by a young Senegalese on a group of 300 African students living in twelve French university towns. Each of them was asked the following question:
"Do you think that, in the future, African countries will remain separate, will reach complete unity or group together in a federation?"
Replies were distributed as follows: Will remain separate........................ 3%
Will group together in a federation... 34%
Unity, the object of so many dreams, began to take concrete form during the first Congress of African States held in April, 1958, at Accra and during the summit Conference of the Organization for African Unity held in Cairo in July 1964. The proclamation of unity between Ghana and Guinea in 1959, the Addis Ababa Conference in 1960 and those of Casablanca , Monrovia and Brazzaville in 1961, and others which followed, all indicate a deep political urge and launch an appeal for the realization of African unity.
In South America this same trend to unity has developed since the war and has been able to surpass the theoretic stage and attain concrete reality. The Rio de Janeiro Conference, which took place between August 15th and September 2nd 1947, (signed at Petropolis on 30th August 1947) gave the movement form in the creation of an inter-American organization. Eleven Member States of the Organization of American States ratified the Bogotá Pact, signed in 1948, its aim was to draw these countries closer together and defend their cultural affinities. The Conference of Caracas concluded a cultural agreement in 1954. The San Juan Conference, held in 1959, arrived at the elaboration of a programme for unity. Even Europe saw the inception of various trends towards unity after the war. As early as 1945, during a visit to Belgium, General de Gaulle underlined the necessity of European unity. A year later, on September 19th, 1946, Winston Churchill stated at a conference given at Zurich University:
"It is our duty to build European unity on the model of the United States of America.”
On May 5th 1947, General Marshall took up the same idea when addressing Harvard University.
The foundation of the Council of Europe (which held its first session at Strasbourg on August 10th 1949) and the creation of the Common Market in March 1957 both concretized the idea of European unity. In this way, it is evident that the trend towards political and economic unity characterizes the post-War era.
Imperialist attempts —in conformity with international monopolist strategy and neo-colonialism— were nonetheless made to exploit or counter this trend to unity.
3 - Partisan Tendencies to sudden violent Change at the heart of Political Organizations
After the Second World War a series of major transformations took place in many countries within political organizations. Parallel to the anti-colonialist freedom movement and the trend to political unity, we have witnessed the fall of monarchies and the establishment of republican regimes, the adoption of a constitution by countries which previously had none, and the handing over of power to the Left and to revolutionary elements in countries governed by conservative parties or groups. And other surprises were still in store: military coups d'Etat, revolutions in the Third World, radical transformations throughout the world of social and political organizations in ever increasing number...
On account of its constancy and degree of violence, this situation gave rise to a deep and prolonged state of disquiet, widespread in political life, and attempts have been made as a result to seek out its underlying causes and find measures to recover the balance lost and go forward on sound progressive foundations. Here ideology decisively intervenes and produces the answers enabling us to remedy confused situations of this kind.
4 - The Division of the World into Political Clans
In the seventh volume of “L'Histoire Generale des Civilisations,” entitled “L'Epoque Contemporaine £ la Recherche d'une Civilisation Nouvelle,” Michel Crouzet emphasizes the difference between the post-War worlds following the First and Second World Wars. The major difference between the two resides, in his eyes, in the fact that the whole world became divided, after the last War, into two antagonistic clans.
After the Second World War, however, the world passed through two phases, of entirely different consequence. The first was marked by the Cold War between the socialist pro-Soviet bloc and the western pro-American bloc; the second by the pacific co-existence between the two blocs and the appearance on the scene of a third power, China. During the latter phase, the political map of the world was profoundly modified.
From 1945 onwards, signs of change began to take shape. A comparison of the components of the different political clans in the world of 1945, 1960 and 1970, clearly reveals this fact. *3.
Number of Member States 1945 1960 1970
Afro-Asiatic countries 13 46 67
Arab countries 5 10 13
South American countries 20 20 24
Commonwealth countries 6 9 26
Socialist countries 3 9 11
On examining the political affinity of each of these groups, we perceive that the young countries, which attained independence after the War, follow non-alignment policy. However, the division of the world into two blocs and the alternating virulence and moderation between the Soviet Union and the United States has somewhat evolved and make the general picture even more complex. Neither the socialist nor the western bloc was spared dissension and internal strife.
The map of the world is no longer static or easy to follow. International politics appear in varied aspects, with complex and intertwined relations. The wisdom of non-alignment has become a delicate and arduous matter in relation to post-War national liberation experiments; this stand is the political expression of a new revolutionary spirit, based on self-confidence, counting only on its own resources and aware of its responsibility to history. It declines blind conformity and holds to objective criteria, determining the close or estranged relations which govern policies on an international scale, in the light of attitudes adopted by great powers, and of problems on which depend on the destiny of independent peoples, who are the victims of injustice, fragmentation and under-development.
Notes
3 * Cf. Roger Pinto: International Organizations, p. 33. Thomas Hoft: Political Clans in the U.S.A. The. Encyclopedia Britannica (1970
The Revolutionary Arab Ideology