Arab socialism

Many will be surprised to find me uttering a good word for socialism. Yet there is one aspect of this amalgam that it is our misfortune - and the misfortune of the Middle East - to have lost.

I am referring to the movement known as Arab socialism, a political ideology that combined Pan-Arabism and socialism. The term "Arab socialism" was coined by the Syrian Christian Michel Aflaq, the principal founder of Ba'athism and the Arab Ba'ath Party, in order to distinguish his version of socialist ideology from the international socialist movement.

Socialism was a major component of Ba'athist thought, and it featured in the party's slogan of "Unity, liberty, socialism/” However by using the term Arab socialism Aflaq did not mean socialism as the term is normally employed in the West; his version equated socialism with Arab nationalism.

The socialism envisaged in the party's constitution of 1947 and in later writings up to the establishment of the United Arab Republic, is moderate and shows little formal impress of Marxism.

In 1950 Aflaq defined socialism as "not an aim in itself, but rather a necessary means to guarantee society the highest standard of production with the farthest limit of cooperation and solidarity among the citizens ... Arab society ... needs a social order with deeper foundations, wider horizons, and more forceful realization than moderate British socialism."

The cardinal difference between Arab socialism and communism was, according to Aflaq and Ba'athist thinkers in general, the central role allocated to nationalism.

In other words, the movement sought to give Arabs a sense of unity and pride without basing these things on religion.

If Arab socialism was a good thing, as I think it was, what happened to it? For one thing, it came to be identified with the leadership of Gamal Albdel Nasser in Egypt, and over time he let the country run down. Saddam Hussein's expropriation of it also tarnished the movement Then there was the opposition of the United States and the Western powers, who mistakenly saw the movement as in league with the Soviet Union.