Arab Revolutionary Thought in the Face of Current Challenges
By Elias Farah 1972
Prepared by Al-Moharer team
Chapter VIII
The revolutionary movement Confronted with the challenges of the present phase
The rapid and unexpected development of science and technology, and the level of civilization attained by the world today, have clarified certain conditions and certain basic facts indispensable for successful action, regardless of its orientation or application, (whether it be revolutionary, non-revolutionary or counter-revolutionary action).
The primary, and most important condition, is the ability to grasp, in its totality, a particular given situation, taking into consideration the general international framework into which it fits, so that the nature of its structures and the laws governing it can be understood; equally, the ability to gauge the different currents of the conjuncture, to foresee political, cultural and socio-economic evolutions during a given period and be able to predict events and go beyond the problems of the moment, so that, fully aware of possible transformations, directions can be delineated and consequences subdued.
In this way, revolution in the contemporary world is no longer either a matter of faith or of enthusiasm: neither is it simply a reaction to a given, negative event nor a spontaneous re-grouping of combative impulses. Revolution implies an analysis of the internal evolution of society and its relationship to the evolution of the contemporary world. Revolution implies knowledge, and it exacts a scientific approach, because it entails planning and rational organization, devoid of all formalism. It is a creative act. To be a revolutionary means being able to take initiatives of historic significance and having a deep sense of responsibility: it entails being forever resolute, ready for sacrifice, for endurance and self-forgetfulness.
Revolution cannot be genuine and worthy of its name unless, even imperfectly, all these conditions are united. It cannot co-habit with ignorance of laws governing the phase of history in which it takes place, nor of the social conflicts it is attempting to resolve. It can only transform reality if leaders, and the solid basis, through knowledge and the rules of conduct which they have adopted, show themselves capable of resolving objective contradictions, all the time respecting the march of history and the interest of the most highly revolutionary social classes.
No revolution in the world today can make sure of victory unless it is endowed with arms against which the enemy is powerless. The ambition of triumphal revolution is not the acquisition of the same arms and the same strengths as the enemy: triumphal revolution taxes its ingenuity to acquire arms unavailable to the enemy, to surpass him, to neutralize his power and to make his assets inoperative and unavailing.
The revolutionary Arab movement was able to launch on this scientific, revolutionary path when it acquired:
- a revolutionary ideology
- a pan-Arab organization
- the means to develop popular strife and to undertake armed combat.
As a result of its ideology, the Arab revolutionary movement has been able to derive an exact, scientific picture of reality, taking into account the general framework of the evolution of the contemporary world and the ideologies dividing it. By establishing a national organization, it has been able to develop on sound basic principles, the path of revolutionary unity —the only possible way decisively to bring disunity to an end. Regionalist logic has been surpassed, methods of grouping together unresolved problems and coordinating deeply— opposed contradictions —which, in the long run, perpetuate division— have been removed. Through its adherence to the principle that action belongs above all to .the masses, the Arab revolutionary movement puts its stakes on the only historic power capable of palliating the nation’s weaknesses and the misbalance in the battle opposing it to the Imperialist-Zionist reactionary alliance. In this way, the balance can weigh in the Revolution’s favor. Certain weak points, however, certain defects, and certain lacunae have escaped notice and have affected and hindered the progress of the movement. Mistakes have opened breaches enabling negative elements to have their way. The extension of plans hostile to revolution, the infiltration of counter-revolutionaries into the very heart of the movement and its consequent deterioration, are among these factors of self-evident gravity.
The Arab revolutionary movement’s inability to grasp the considerable importance of its own ideology, to study its mainsprings and develop them to the maximum, certainly constitutes one of its gravest imperfections. Nothing has so far been done to delineate the content and the bearing of new concepts of unity, liberation, and socialism: the methodical study of theoretical precepts has not been undertaken: consequently, with vulgarization out of the question, the masses have had no access to ideology.
On the other hand, there has been no definition of Arab revolutionary strategy. The interaction of the various aspects of revolutionary action (theory, strategy and practice) has never been established, and the balance governing this interaction has not been found. This hiatus has facilitated deviations and internal misrepresentation.
Another of the movement’s weaknesses was caused by the absence of any opening to international revolutionary thought and by the fact that the movement had not managed to incite sufficient interest in the Arab world, particularly as far as innovations in the Third World and the ideology of the new Left, were concerned.
Errors and weaknesses were, however, not only of an ideological nature. They have not been absent from an organizational level throughout the quarter of a century already covered by the Arab militant campaign. The preponderance of formalism and the excessive use of traditional criteria have encouraged regionalist tendencies, subjective relationships and power dealings. The movement took an insufficient interest in the revolutionary, social structures of the Party and centered its efforts inadequately on the working-class: because of this, it found itself unable to respond to the ever-increasing requirements conflict imposed, and revealed itself in the end to be in discord with its own principles.
The movement, also, only succeeded partially in mobilizing, organizing and awakening the people, so failing to establish sound and stable links with the revolutionary advance guard and the masses. In fact, only such links could offer satisfactory resistance to opportunism and adventurism: they alone would be in a position to preserve the movement from any action- methods foreign to popular struggle. It is evident that the failure of the movement to reach fulfillment, to clarify its ideology and perfect its organization (which would have enabled it to respond to the necessities of the fight opposing the Arab Revolution to a well-organized enemy, armed with ultramodern equipment, acting methodically, and with unlimited interests and ambitions in the Arab homeland) is linked to the conjugated presence of under-development and disunion, and in the continuation of non-revolutionary intellectual schemas and action-methods at the very heart of the revolutionary movement itself.
It should also be stated that yet another factor, which has undermined the movement, lowered its potential and severed it from its historic sources —there where it could indeed have drawn its strength— was due to the fact that in the eyes of the masses, it had never entered into a serious and audacious chapter of self-criticism. The people found themselves removed from the truth, uninformed of the exigencies of the struggle for unity, freedom and socialism, non-participant in the annihilation of hostile projects aimed at their very lives. Destructive forces made the most of this weakness: pockets of reactionaries and adventurers, which had managed to form at the heart of the movement, were able to carry out their sabotage mission: they shook the Arab revolutionary movement to its foundations, damaging its ideology, its organization and striking at the popular masses. Discrediting campaigns took place, and conspiracies hatched on a vast scale, with method and ferocity: the aim of all this was the destruction of revolutionary structures, the deforming of their essence and their reduction to a heap of contradictions. Paralyzed, these structures would fall away of their own momentum. The internal crises shaking the movement would prevent them having any real impact on events. It would linger on in fear and apathy. At the same time, ostentatious slogans would abound; but their aim would in no way be the filling of such and such a gap, the curing of such and such a weakness: neither would it point to methods of cure nor to factors encouraging a recovery of strength.
These are the reasons the Arab nation suffered the defeat of June 5th, 1967, and found itself facing a new phase in its history. The logic prevailing and the errors made were denounced and rejected. It is our party, the Arab Baath Socialist Party, which bears the main responsibility for the inadequacy of action methods. It is the Party’s desire to become the artisan of the re absorption of the crisis now tearing the Arab revolutionary movement apart. But this is only possible if the Party begins with itself, and on condition that it cures its weaknesses; it will only be in a position to assume its responsibilities if transformed into a veritable revolutionary fortress, through its ideology and its organization, able to gather together all the militants of the Arab homeland and give them the chance to acquire determination and invulnerability to a marked degree, and to delineate for them the path of revolution. The movement must bar the way to all forms of sabotage, to all conspiracies fomented by the Imperialist-Zionist reactionary alliance, conceived to undermine the Arab nation and its revolution, and above all, our own Party. For this to come to pass we must go back to the sources of our history, for it is there that the Arab revolutionary movement can find its strength.
1. The Ideological Combat
The movement must go deep into the sources of Arab revolutionary ideology. According to specific critical methods it must study and elaborate tactics capable of aiding its evolution, Campaigns must be undertaken with a view to eliminating all vestiges of bourgeois thinking, of regionalist tendencies, and opportunities for despotism and profiteering. Such campaigns can promote real ideological unity, and through them, a homogeneous method for approaching strategic and ideological problems can be invented. They can increase and deepen our awareness of crises shaking the movement and help us to gauge the exigencies of Arab revolutionary action in the present phase. They will also provide an opening to international revolutionary ideology. They will put an end to the destructive activities of those who abide by schemas incapable of adaptation to Arab Revolution and its ideology.
2. National Organization
The ideology of the Arab Revolution is the theoretical basis on which National organization, which is the living concretization of this ideology, can be rebuilt. Because the Arab revolutionary movement omitted to pay sufficient attention to its ideology, national organization has suffered. It has been neglected to such an extent that it has diminished into a network of routine relationships of a formal nature, incapable of responding to the exigencies of unitary ideology and to the necessities of an arduous struggle to counter disunion.
Of all the sectors of the Arab Revolution, our Party alone has been able to safeguard national organization; but attacks led methodically against the Baath have been highly detrimental to its organization, to its leaders, to its structures and to its internal relationships, thereby considerably diminishing its efficiency.
Our Party has come through many crises. It has never wavered. It has maintained its strength, but it is covered with wounds. One absolute necessity, if we are to avoid such crises, is the nurturing of the fundamental instrument of militant combat, peculiar to Arab revolution. It must be developed, not only on a Party-scale, but also equally on the scale of the Arab Nation in its entirety, endeavoring particularly to create a popular national front throughout the Arab homeland. It is equally necessary to activate campaigns denouncing regionalist tendencies, the withdrawal of each region into itself, bureaucratic tendencies which identify themselves in certain cases with their own idea of national organization—a mechanical and abstract one, which looks on militants as soul-less pawns, not as human-beings fighting for a cause. These militants, in fact, are battling for Man and for the Nation, for the future of Man and the whole human race; they have great responsibilities in history. By assuming these responsibilities, they will be the artisans of one of the most remarkable of human realizations, the felling of disunion, the removal of under-development, of imperialism, Zionism, class-exploitation and reaction.
The problems of national organization can only be attacked efficiently and skillfully if our attempts are rooted in deep and sincere belief in unity. Faith and action are dialectically connected: this implies that national organization must be the concretization of the idea of unity and its true reflection, bearing in mind most particularly that at no moment in their history have Arabs so much needed to unite.
Unity, we repeat cannot be dissociated from the primary cause of the Arab Revolution that of liberation, which will assail defeatist projects and conspiracies hatched against Palestine and the Arab hegemony of the Arabian Gulf. This unity whose ultimate aim is liberation, is today the target of various tentative towards belittlement, falsification and of conspiracy, which can only be refuted and opposed, efficiently and decisively, by a national, revolutionary organization —in fact, by the Baath. Our Party is in urgent need of our care and efforts. We must seek out every weakness and cure it by truly revolutionary methods. Victory over disunion will begin to become a reality when this primordial task is accomplished, when, fortified by unified ideology and strategy in which tendencies and attitudes are harmonized, a national organization is established. Such an organization would be in a position to direct the battle efficiently, to close the doors on despair, foresee reversal and defeat, and place the Arab Nation on its future road.
Our Party has followed this path for the third of a century. It is the most capable—and therefore the most responsible—of thrusting open the gates of hope, of self-confidence, of faith in the ineluctable victory of the Arab people—this people we must engage in the true combat.
3. Struggles of the People
The riches of our Nation’s past remain unexploited, but the proletarian masses are effervescent. They are the ones who constitute the real arm of national revolutionary ideology and national organization. By adhering to the line of popular strife, our Party has given the Arab revolutionary movement the opportunity to realize, early on, that the Palestinian cause could never be won by traditional methods. Armed combat is the only means for the popular masses to confront triumphantly the forces launched against our homeland with the intention of exploiting us, dividing us, pillaging our resources and usurping our lands. The dialectical links between the ideology of revolution and its executors has, from the beginning, been a matter of great preoccupation for the revolutionary advance guard. This is no doubt due to the fact that the very genuineness of the ideology has helped us to understand that our era is that of the popular masses, the rebellious masses of Africa, of Asia and Latin America. It has also shown us that unity can only be achieved by the masses and that the enemies of unity are all the social levels expressing class-interests contrary to those of the proletarian masses.
The role of the popular masses has never been properly evaluated. Attempts to mobilize and organize them, to give them arms and knowledge, have remained inadequate. These same masses, who unified struggles, from the Gulf to the Ocean during the fifties, became the victims and the prisoners of socialistic straightjackets from the early sixties. This expulsion of the masses from political life had disastrous results on the movement. Reversals and defeats were countless, for counter-revolutionary forces were enabled to rage freely for many years.
The return to the masses is a process, which can help to increase ideological impact and bring to fruition the Arab revolutionary organization. This return must take place methodically and in full awareness. It springs from an elementary truth, plain common sense: — the popular masses ensure the Arab Nation’s superiority over its enemies. By knowing how to make use of this arm and by continually increasing its efficacy, we shall bring about a decisive turning point in the phase of history through which the Nation is passing.
Sociologists, statisticians, and researchers as a whole, of imperialist and Zionist allegiance, are studying and forecasting the socio-political evolution of the Arab homeland during the next ten years. On the basis of these studies, our enemies will elaborate projects and define the strategy most suitable to the alliance they already form with the reactionary elements in the Arab homeland and which will be developed particularly in the years to come.
The enemy has been able to turn to his advantage the salient events of the previous phase. He has known how to make the most of the Arab revolutionary movement’s weaknesses and deficiencies, and succeeded as ever in the past, in finding allies to combat the Arab revolutionary movement from within. Should he also be allowed to make the most of the events of the phase to come?
We are now better able to understand our responsibilities and to define our historic tasks. We must return to the mainsprings of our strength; we must implacably suppress defeatist tendencies and weaknesses: we must build the Arab Revolution on stable historic bases. The National Congresses of the Baath adopted this appropriate path when they called militants to prepare for battle, to transform every sector of the Arab nation into so many citadels of resistance to the enemy, in so many assault-posts. For the Party Congresses, this was the fundamental principle of all strategy and for every phase. Any attempt to deviate the Arabs from this path is a denial of the correct and healthy revolutionary line lay down.