Nasserism, Baathism: Enemies of the Working Class.

Nasserism, Baathism: Enemies of the Working Class.

Two articles from The Newsletter.

Nasserism, Baathism: variants of bourgeois nationalism in Middle East 

The ranks of Arab chauvinism have-been swelled by the support of Pabloite revisionists who have claimed Syria and Egypt to be workers’s tates. 

Simultaneously from the Stalinists come salutary gestures towards the Egyptian bourgeois ruler Nasser, proclaiming him to be the champion of ‘socialism and anti-imperialism’. These are choice lies and betrayals. 

At the junction of Turkey, Iraq and Persia lie mountain ranges within which the Kurds live in daily fear of liquidation from the Iraqi Baathist regime. Extending from this point are the desert plains of the Middle East, situated at the junction of Africa, Asia and Europe. 

Arteries of oil and petroleum traverse the desert area. In contrast to this we see the shriveled-up tracts of poverty stricken land, plagued by the shackles of military dictatorship. 

Different philosophies

The Egyptian spokesman of Arab nationalism, Nasser, stands in opposition to the trend of Baathism, prevalent in Syria and Iraq. 

Different economic levels of capitalist development have produced different political and state forms of rule with correspondingly dissimilar philosophies of Arab nationalism. 

The joint exploitation by British and French colonialism has created a desert of economic backwardness, with Nasser’s Egyptian bourgeois state standing out like an oasis of relative economic maturity. 

Amidst the mud-thatched hovels of Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran, backward autocratic regimes live graciously on royalties from oil. 

Alongside each other there are emerging bourgeois states, and the established bourgeois state of Egypt. 

Workers’ movement

Behind all this there is a powerfully expanding workers and peasants’ movement. 

Egyptian bourgeois social life, built upon definite internal economic foundations, has always been under pressure from external political developments. During the rule of British colonialism, dominant Egyptian economic groups, as they arose, strove to utilise the monarchical state to consolidate their interests in the form of privileges of rank.

The landowning aristocracy adapted itself to the demands of the capitalist world market. A new bourgeoisie, imitating the richest foreigner in Egypt, launched into financial ventures. Their interests and the interest of the British capitalist class were interlaced.

 The historical form assumed by this new bourgeois aristocracy was the Misr group, constituted by the 25 subsidiary companies of the Misr Bank, founded in 1920 by Jalaat Harb

. From its inception, the bank was the limited corporation of Egyptian mercantile capitalism. Big landowners and high officials such as Ali Yehlia and Farghaly profited by their collaboration with the British bourgeoisie. 

Family rule 

They were the founders and sole shareholders with a voice. Hence a few ruling families controlled the life-line of the Egyptian economy, and its machinery, the Misr Bank, regulated contact with the leading lights of the bourgeois world—Salvago, Benacho, Chorenci, Huri, etc. 

This world was altered by the emergence of a stunted middle class. 

The overthrow of King Farouk in 1952, and the subsequent rise of Nasser, marked a new quality of development—the rise of a factory bourgeoisie and the elimination of a few plutocrats who retarded the overall growth of Egyptian capitalism.

The Stalinists regard this elimination as a form of ‘socialist measure’, and call it ‘immensely progressive’. 

The Nasser state, in assuming a military form, could ably safeguard the interests of the ruling class against a rapidly emerging proletariat. 

The state restricts land ownership to a 100 feddans, has encouraged capitalism to stabilise agricultural product-base for its cotton production. 

Officials of the Nasser regime sit on the Boards of Directors of all firms, and run their affairs. 

Nasser is the personification of this class, and the conscious expression of its yearnings. Having driven the old men of the Misr Bank into state created industries, Nasser has realised the displacement of the old, its fusion with the new and the creation of the state sector of capitalism. His bureaucracy rests on this base. 

The octopus of Egyptian capitalism, having sharpened its appetite, turned towards the Suez Canal and claimed the waters for itself in 1956. This process of absorption culminated in the nationalization of the Misr Bank in 1960, and the November 1960 law to take over French, British and Levantine business interests. 

The graph of economic expansion is paralleled by a rising curve of workers’ militancy and the savage repression of this movement. 

Egyptian capital now reached out for the arteries of the Syrian economy. Under the pretext of an impending Israeli invasion, Syria and Egypt united, and on February 1, 1958, the United Arab Republic came into being. 

Turned on workers 

We recall that during the 1956 British invasion of Suez, the _Bahrein. workers. had demonstrated against the visit of Selwyn Lloyd. The Syrian workers had damaged oil pipelines as a gesture of protest. 

After taking an anti-imperialist stand over Suez, the Egyptian ‘bourgeoisie turned upon the workers. 

A member of the Syrian government party, El Helou, was kidnapped and brought into Egypt by Nasser’s secret police. His body was mutilated and thrown in the gutters of Cairo. The Stalinist leader Bakdash left the country, now that the Egyptian law banning the Communist Party applied to Syria. The Stalinists’ policy of a united front with the petty bourgeoisie had left the flanks of the working class wide open, and brought tragic consequences to the workers’ movement.

Islamic doctrine became the ideology imposed on the workers’ movement, and a process of political brainwashing was begun. Nasser brought the Moslem ‘Crescent and Star’ down to earth, a step closer to the bourgeoisie, with the tag of ‘Arab Unity’ and  ‘Arab Socialism’. 

The Draft Charter of the United Arab Republic stated: 

‘The revolutionary rights obtained by the working class as part of the July 1961 laws . . made machinery a property of workmen. . . . The workman became a master of the machine and not a cog in the production set-up.’ 

The state was stated to be above the class struggle rather than its product.

In October 1959 Nasser delegated full powers to an Egyptian Marshal, Amer, as the governor of Syria. A ‘national union’ was formed, a body tying the two states together and acting as an agent of Egyptian economic penetration. 

In 1960, all Syrian newspapers and publishing houses were placed under its control. 

Syrian secession 

This attempt to transplant Egyptian capital onto Syrian soil stifled the local middle bourgeoisie. The direct result was the political uprising of September 1961, in which Kuwatli was overthrown and replaced by Kuzbari. This secession of Syria from the United Arab Republic paved the way for the emergence of Baathism once again as a political force.  

Baath ‘Socialist’ Party enemy of Arab working class 

The Baath Socialist Party was formed in Syria in the early forties by Michel Aflak and Salah Bitar. During the thirties, these chauvinist leaders had sympathised with the Hitler movement in Germany. The ideological head of Baathism, Aflak, explains his philosophy thus: 

‘I quickly found Marxism inadequate, based on materialism without human and spiritual values, without national consciousness. Nations are only large families and the Arab family needs more than Marx, Thus we evolved the Baathist doctrine of socialism, mingled with nationalism and the human spirit.’ 

Union and break 

By 1947, after the French left Syria, the Baath had 1,000 carefully selected members. At the Third Party Congress in 1956, the Baath decided on the union of Syria with Egypt. 

When it became obvious that the big capitalists of ‘Egypt were exploiting the weakness of the Syrian bourgeoisie, the final break with Nasser came in 1961. Since then, the Baathists have quelled two Nasserite insurrections in Iraq and five in Syria. Of Nasser one Baathist said: ‘We loved him and cherished him, the bastard. Nasser is a lost prophet. He tried to annihilate us, the devil.’ 

Nasser complains: 

‘I have read every book by or about Baath and I could understand nothing.’ 

‘Arabisation’ 

The Baathists want to assimilate national minorities like the Kurds, forcibly to ‘Arabise’ them, monopolise governmental power and sweep away all opposition. Within the petty-bourgeois Baathist movement stand two visible trends.

One group wants to carry out an outright war against the working-class vanguard and a pogrom against the Kurds, and the other (pro-Nasser) group wants to utilise socialist concepts in order that a working class victory ‘must be arrived at peacefully and within the framework of national unity, and by means of dissolving class distinctions’. 

Concessions 

Following the formation of the United Arab Republic, the monarchs and semi-feudal sultans of Jordan and Iraq united into the Hashemite Federation. The Iraqi bourgeois democratic revolution of Kassem in July 1958 dissolved this relationship and overthrew Nuri-es-Said. Kassem deprived the feudal landlords of some of their privileges and gave concessions to the workers employed in oil companies by increasing their wages and recognising their right to organise. 

The Stalinist leaders of the Iraqi Communist Party, overwhelmed by these seemingly progressive measures of the bourgeoisie, called for a united front with the Kassem regime against imperialism. 

In the second year of his rule, with the increasing militancy of rural workers and peasants, Kassem turned upon the Communists and jailed hundreds, condemning to death 28 Party leaders.

Kassem’s so-called progressive section of the national bourgeoisie, in fact represented the inveterate enemies of the workers’ movement - the local bourgeoisie and the agents of the foreign oil and petroleum companies.

 

Baath to fore 

The Kassem regime, sterile in political content, weak and unable to take over foreign interests and carry to its conclusion the bourgeois revolution, found itself rapidly losing popular support. The Baath Party came to the fore. 

The frustrated Baathist middle-class intelligentsia turned towards the backward section of the working class, the lumpenproletariat. Alongside ruined offshoots of the bourgeoisie were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, disgruntled students, brothel-keepers - the whole indefinite mass organised into a National Guard in Baghdad. 

Numbering 200,000, this green-armband army marched into workers’ quarters, each section led by Baathist Party members. 

3 month killing

 

In February 1963, the National Guard ran amok, shooting down suspected Communists, raping women and murdering workers indiscriminately, all in the name of revenge on the Communists. 

For three months this macabre act unfolded in the streets of Baghdad. The blood of 10,000 painted the sandy pavements, and the prisons were filled to bursting with screaming detainees. 

The Stalinists pleaded with the Kassem regime for arms, but the government refused to move. 

Kassem was murdered, and the Baathists won the day. General Aref, the butcher of Baghdad, was proclaimed President in February 1963. 

This was followed by a Baathist coup in Syria the following month. 

The workers and peasants, however, are not dormant. In 1964, 11,000 workers were on strike at the Iragi Petroleum Company. In 1965, the Bahrein workers shook the Bahrein government by a national stoppage. 

What of the Iraqi Communist Party? Two months ago, the Central Committee called for armed insurrection and guerrilla warfare. 

Stalinist excuse 

When Stalinism fails to build the workers’ party, it turns to the excuse of the ‘existence of different historical situations’ and the ‘need for guerrilla warfare’, The experiences and blunders of the South African Communist Party run on similar lines. 

The failures of the Algerian Communist Party brought the petty-bourgeois to the helm of the struggle against French imperialism. The present struggle within the Algerian bureaucracy is a product of the joint crisis of Stalinism and imperialism. 

Aref continues the Baathist war against the Kurdish people, who are led by Mustapha Barzani. 

When, in 1922, Britain imposed a monarchy in Iraq, the Kurds began a life-and-death struggle resulting in the occupation of the town of Suleimaniya in 1924. 

Kurdish revolt 

The ensuing decades saw a number of Kurdish uprisings, the most notable being the Barzani revolt of 1943-45. 

In the period of 1964, in the Erbil Province, 37 villages were given to Arab settlers and the Kurdish inhabitants driven out. Within the context of ‘Arab Socialist Unity’, the Baath regime intends to ‘Arabise’ the Kurds. 

The war begun in 1963 by Aref reached a climax on April 3, 1965. Having doubled the salary of his officers and supplied gas masks and toxic gas to his regiments, Aref shifted 40,000 troops into the hills of Kurdistan. 

The Iragi forces descended upon the town of Suleimaniya and opened fire in the streets and cafes. 

In the melee, scores of people were killed. The raging storm of repression continues, and British Hawker jets are now being used to smoke out Kurdish fighters from their mountain holes. While blood flows in the Kurdish village streets, profit flows into the coffers of the Iragi bourgeoisie and British imperialism. 

‘Solution’ 

The bourgeois-national leaders of the Kurds, aided by the Iraqi Communist Party, demand ‘a reasonable solution, keeping the integrity of Iraqi structure intact’. Contrary to this, Lenin stated (‘The Rights of Nations to Self-Determination’): 

‘Therefore, it is against the practicality of the bourgeoisie that the proletarians advance their principles on the national question; they always give the bourgeoisie only conditional support... The bourgeoisie always places its national demands in the forefront. It advances them categorically. For the proletariat, however, these demands are subordinate to the interests of the class struggle.’ 

The future of the Kurdish peasants and workers lies in their unity with the Iraqi workers. The ruling classes in the Middle East are only divided on the issue of how best to oppress its workers and peasants. 

The Trotskyist Fourth International extends a hand of solidarity to the proletarians and peasants of the Middle East. The reconstruction of this International with parties in every country able to lead the workers and reject the petty-bourgeois and Stalinist leaderships, is the key to the struggle against imperialism.