Arab Revolutionary Thought in the Face of Current Challenges
By Elias Farah 1973
Prepared by Al-Moharer team
Ideological challenges today And Evolutionary Trends
In his writings published after the June defeat, the founder of the Baath Party, M. Aflaq, stated:
“The latest historical phase can almost be equated with a new revolution, a re-founding of the Party. A total and profound remodeling of its concepts, its ideology, its struggle and the prospects of its struggle has been completed. It is up to the Party’s militants, as well as all the other Arab militants, to find a new mode of action that is genuinely different from that of the past. Its grasp of reality must be stronger, its aims more ambitious; it must be able to take full advantage of the potential, the capacities and the latent potential of our nation which, for the last two decades, have only partly been tapped.” (Point of Departure, Noqtat-Al-bidâya, Second Edition, p. 119).
The Arab revolutionary movement must today be capable of facing two types of ideological challenge:
1. Subjective, internal challenges: they have been evoked in the numerous self-criticisms that have marked the progression of revolutionary ideology. Thanks to these self-criticisms, the weaknesses and deficiencies as well as the various aspects of under-development within the movement have been pinpointed.
2. Objective, external challenges: these are comprised of the present situation of the Arab struggle and its capacity to assume and go beyond the disaster the nation was subjected to on June 5, 1967. Given this state of affairs, it is necessary to understand the demands of the Arab revolutionary struggle from both the ideological and the practical point of view.
Let us now examine in more detail these two types of challenge.
1. Subjective, internal challenges
As we mentioned, there was a growing number of attempts to criticize ideological tenets. This healthy process, which characterizes the contemporary Arab revolution, allowed for a clearer definition of the errors and insufficiencies in various aspects of Arab ideology.
As early as 1950, Michel Aflaq wrote in an article entitled “The Global Ideological Movement” (in On the Baath Path, Seventh Edition, p. 34): “The Arab renaissance movement cannot do without a general philosophy of life, for it is a national liberation movement, a progressive movement, and therefore a movement marked by the profoundness of its views and its system of human values. It must necessarily be endowed with an ethical system and a general philosophical theory on man and the world“.
Ten years later, in 1960, the author presented in “The Historical Perspectives of the Baath Movement“, a retrospective analysis of the previous phase with its gains and insufficiencies: It remains for us to say that the Party’s efforts are still unsatisfactory as concerns methodical socialist investigations. In effect, the Party has not succeeded in elaborating a precise and detailed theory. In the years following its founding, the Party was content to affirm the principle of independence and the specific nature of the Arab road to socialism. But we should have gone beyond this elementary stage so that our ideology could evolve; by learning from other countries’ experiences, we should have broadened and enriched our ideology. This is one of the essential tasks facing the Ba’athist militants in the immediate future. (On the Baath Path, Seventh Edition, p. 54). In 1969, after the June defeat, comrade ‘Aflaq tried to define the fundamental causes behind the June defeat —the ills, the weak points and insufficiencies of that period: “What prevented the Arab revolution from coming to full flower, from attaining its goals in a wholly satisfactory manner, is that its conception of the people and the role of the proletariat, and particularly of the working class, is incorrect. That is the cause of our ills. Curing these ills will constitute a new point of departure, which will give fresh impetus to the revolutionary task of rejuvenation on the scale of the entire Arab homeland“. (Point of Departure, Second Edition, p. 125).
In 1970, the Secretary General of the Party gave the following résumé of his views on the Bath Party’s accomplishments during the thirty years of its existence:
Thirty years after the founding of our Party, I can say that it is the only movement in the Arab homeland to have succeeded in envisioning the future in a clear way. It is also the only movement to have succeeded in creating the basis for a militant Arab action of historical dimensions that is capable of resisting and persisting in the pursuit of all the aims of a contemporary Arab revolution. Nevertheless, to preserve the Party and to ensure that it reaches its goals —which are those of the entire Arab nation— it must remain faithful unto itself, forever in close touch with its ideological wellsprings and its original determination. Let it put itself into question; let it from time to time make a tour or inspection to measure the distance that may have grown up between itself and its own principles and determination. If necessary, it can then regain control. (Point of Departure, Second Edition, p. 157)
But if one wants to make Arab revolutionary ideology evolve so that its impact on the course of the Revolution will be even greater, then one must add to this first process a second, which is designed to grasp the nature of objective, external challenges. What exactly are these challenges?
2. Objective, external challenges
The challenge that Arab revolutionary thought must face before any other is that provided by the imperialist-Zionist forces. Endowed with the most up-to-date technology and a tremendous potential, these forces are fighting the Arab cause with formidable efficiency and according to well thought-out plans. Their aim is to deaden the vitality of the Arab revolution, wherever it shows itself, and to spread despair and a defeatist attitude or, in other words, to create a climate favorable to its own ends.
The second challenge is presented by the present political situation of the various Arab regimes, as well as by the forms of militant action, be they those of patriotic forces, progressive groups, those working for national liberation, the revolutionary forces in their entirety or the Palestinian Resistance movement. These regimes and militant forces are at present in a precarious situation created by the various weaknesses, deviations or ills that have nagged them. The essential points are as follows:
a) The imperialist-Zionist alliance has succeeded, in the name of common interests, in winning over to its cause a certain number of Arab regimes. Because of this, gigantic riches are now in the hands of reactionary regimes and are at the disposal of the nation’s enemies. Moreover, the maneuvering and plotting of the reactionary forces —a direct consequence of regimes that are imperialist satellites— has created a cancer that is spreading through the body of the Arab nation.
b) Certain non-reactionary regimes put small confidence in their people and, as a result, are weakened and hesitant and lack confidence. The imperialist-Zionist alliance takes advantage of the situation and maintains a permanent state of fear by playing up the difference between the forces it can command and the forces with which these regimes can oppose it. It raises all kinds of obstacles to stop these regimes from uniting, from drawing closer to one another, from quitting their isolation to overcome regional differences.
c) The damage done by disunity constantly hinders relations among the progressive, patriotic forces, the various sectors of the Arab Revolution and the Palestinian Revolutionary movement. Though all are conscious of the mistakes made during the period preceding the June defeat and although they all have given directives to undertake common action and to form a common front, they have succeeded only partially in creating genuine patriotic fronts on either a regional or national scale. And yet the strategic demands of the Arab revolution require that just such a front be established.
d) Today’s militant suffers from a split personality, a kind of psychological atomization. This is unquestionably a syndrome of the malady now crippling Arab militancy; it is nothing other than the continuing gap between theory and practice, between ambitions and desires on the one hand and aptness and capabilities on the other. The causes are diverse: some stem from the class origin of the leaders of the revolutionary movement; others are of a socio-cultural nature and arise from the general state of underdevelopment in our countries. There is also an external, coercive cause: the Arab nation is confronted with modern enemy forces that are determined to defend their interests and whose fierce ambition is diametrically opposed to the conditions necessary to bring about an Arab renaissance and to the vital needs of this nation, which must unite, liberate itself and institute socialism.
It is evident that the Arab Revolution is now going through a crucial phase in its evolution; it is at an historic crossroads. If there exists an effective answer to all the present ideological challenges, if there is a way to make the positive elements in our nation operative at this crucial stage, then it can only come from a return to the original sources of Arab Revolutionary ideology, along the lines defined by the founder of the Party:
“Militant struggle is the only way to make ideology evolve. It is through this struggle that we can acquire a profound and authentic revolutionary vision. At the present stage, the revolutionary struggle can only be led by revolutionary forces, for they are capable of being the junction-point between ideology and the people it addresses itself to: the armed proletarian masses“.