academic paper that proposes a new approach to arab left histories

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NEW APPROACHES TO ARAB LEFT HISTORIES
By Sune Haugbolle and Manfred Sing
Sune Haugbolle is Associate Professor of Global Studies
at Roskilde University, Denmark.
Manfred Sing is Senior Research Fellow at the Leibniz Institute of European History
in Mainz, Germany.
his special section in the Arab Studies Journal presents articles drawn
from two seminars held at the German Orient-Institut in Beirut (OIB) and
the American University of Beirut (AUB), in 2012 and 2013, respectively.1
he seminars resulted from research collaboration between two projects at
Roskilde University in Denmark and the OIB on the history of socialist and
communist movements and ideas in the Levant.2
he location of the seminars
in Lebanon and the focus of the research groups partly explain why, out of
the ives articles herein, four deal with Lebanese case studies and one focuses
on Egypt. Another reason is simply circumstance. Other presentations at
the seminars—dealing with Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen—did not
make it into this special section for various reasons. As a result, we admit
to perpetuating a tendency to overexpose Lebanon and Egypt in research
on the Arab let. Having said that, these two countries have indeed been
central locations for the intellectual and cultural production of Arab com-
SPECIAL
SECTION

2. 91
munists and socialists. It is also true that many of the variegated experi-
ences of marginalization, mobilization, and culturalization that Lebanese
and Egyptian letists have gone through and processed are common to the
neglected historiography of Arab let movements and intellectual traditions
across the region. Our hope, therefore, is that although we do not cover
important countries in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, the the-
matic focus of the articles included will be a useful entry point for inquiries
in other locales. Key topics in this respect include the relationship between
intellectuals and mass movements, the place of Marxism in Arab critique,
the intersection and tensions between Marxism, liberalism, and feminism
as they manifested in the region, the struggles for internal democracy in
socialist and communist parties, and the production of ideology in mass
media and popular culture.
Studying Arab let histories challenges two forms of provincialism.
On the one hand, despite Marxism representing a global phenomenon par
excellence, studies on Marxism and communism oten focus on the Soviet
Union and Europe while non-European movements are rarely dealt with in
the same way. Speciically, studies that are devoted to the global history of
socialism and communism make little reference to the experiences in Arab
countries.3
his oversight, we believe, is related to a tendency to explain
the Middle East with reference to its religious or cultural characteristics at
the expense of social issues and transnational entanglements. When his-
torian Joel Beinin started to write about the workers’ movement in Egypt,
he had to argue against the prejudice that there were hardly any strikes in
the region in the nineteenth century.4
Another factor is that, since the end
of the Cold War, much scholarly focus has moved from Arab nationalism
and socialism to political Islam. his shit has created a dominant narrative
about ideological conjunctures in which Arab letism merely forms another
“radical,” yet defeated—if not extinct—precursor to Islamism. In the same
vein, under the inluence of “post-ideological” treatment of ideologies, some
scholars have turned to stressing parallels or crossings between Marxism
and Islamism. One example of this trend is found in works that analyze the
discussion of Marxist ideas by Islamists like Sayyid Qutb or the production
of letist-Islamist syntheses by the likes of Ali Shariati, Munir Shaiq, and
Hasan Hanai.5
Although such approaches produce some insights, they tend
to reduce the study of Arab letism to “ideology” and “inluences.” Such a
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3. 92
one-dimensional view of the let underestimates the obstinacy, lexibility,
and inner diversity of ideological camps. It also does little justice to the
ierce struggles not just over meaning, but also over power between various
strands of the let. hese struggles are still being fought today.
De-provincializing let histories, therefore, must start by accepting
that the adaptation of Marxist ideas in the Middle East has a long history,
reaching back to the late Ottoman era, and that such adaptations were part
of a global process with various local repercussions. Yet a comprehensive
picture of the adaptation of Marxist thought, and of Arab socialist and
communist movements is still missing, despite some book titles claiming
the opposite.6
In particular, scholars still need to throw more light on the
complex alliances and struggles over meaning, strategy, and policy that
took place between communist, socialist, Ba‘thist, Nasserist, and other neo-
Marxist groups and governments in the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, as
Sandra Halpern has argued, Middle Eastern history cannot be understood
without taking into consideration the permanent repression of the demo-
cratic let by regimes, their Western allies, and Islamists.7
We would add to
this point that the history of the Middle East without the histories of the
Arab let does not present us with even half the picture.
Inrecentyears,historianshaveilledsomegapsbypublishingimportant
monographs on late Ottoman-era socialists and anarchists, Iraqi socialists
and communists before 1958, communism in Iraq and Egypt ater World
War II, the Dhufar revolution in 1960s and 1970s Oman, and the post-1967
Palestinian revolutionary movements.8
None of these works identify a single
Arab let, and for good reason. Communist and socialist movements have
both collaborated and competed with one another, at times forming “non-
capitalist” alliances or further splintering into opposing factions. Arab
communists were somewhat hesitant to support the nationalist struggles
in Algeria and Palestine because of the positions of the French and Soviet
Communist Parties, respectively. For the Soviet Union, foreign relations
with Arab states were oten paramount even when the regimes, like those
of Egypt, Sudan, and Iraq, persecuted communists. he People’s Republic
of China reduced its support for Palestinian guerrillas ater it gained a seat
on the United Nations Security Council and proceeded to deepen its rela-
tions with the Arab regimes.
In the period from the 1950s to the 1970s—the heady days of (nomi-
nally) socialist regimes and revolutionary movements—researchers wrote

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conidently about “Arab socialism” and “the Arab let.” hey took the exist-
ence of the let for granted. he let was present as a major political force
and cultural movement that Western policy makers generally viewed as a
potential source of communist threat. his perception in turn inspired a
signiicant amount of scholarship as part of the Cold War politics of knowl-
edge production. In contrast, this perceived threat diminished from the late
1970s onward, as political Islam replaced the let as a leading opposition
force. Consequently, there has been a dearth of critical work on the Arab let
since the 1980s. By the early 1990s, ater the collapse of the Soviet Union, it
was easy to portray Marxism as dead, and Arab Marxists as the equivalent
of Ma‘lula’s Aramaic-speaking inhabitants: curious preservationists of an
otherwise extinct language.
hat is hardly the case anymore. In tandem with the global economic
crises of the 2000s, new movements have appeared—some with social demo-
cratic tendencies, others inspired by anti-globalization and revolutionary
movements since the late 1990s. hese new movements do not betray signs
of a uniied project, neither in the region nor in the rest of the world. Quite
the contrary, as recent disagreements over the war in Syria have shown, self-
styled letists are bitterly divided. It still makes sense to talk about the let
as the political segment that resists the existing order, rather than seeking
to maintain it. But whether letists view the existing order in question as
imperialism, authoritarianism, capitalism, or patriarchy matters a great
deal for which political strategies they adopt. heir understandings of what
the struggle entails and where power is located also determine which ideo-
logical responses they produce to the series of political and humanitarian
crises alicting the region. Less abstractly, it matters whether letists ally
themselves with Arab regimes and self-styled anti-imperialist (but oten
authoritarian) states such as Russia.
Despite all this fragmentation and confusion, the notion of a position
that is let of center, and of an identity as “lety” is still manifestly present
in Arab political discourse and practice. his living letist tradition builds
on intellectual, social, and political histories stretching back to the debate
between Islamic reformers and so-called materialists in the Nahda period.9
In the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries, historical materialism
as a way to fundamentally rethink the relation between man, nature, and
society laid the groundwork for socialist visions of development and inde-
pendence. Within the larger spectrum of socialism, Arab Marxism was from
Sune Haugbolle and Manfred Sing

5. 94
the beginning mainly an intellectual tradition of writers and publishers
who became enthralled with the Bolshevik Revolution. In the early 1920s
they established communist parties in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Iraq,
and Palestine. he Marxist-Leninist dogma that Joseph Stalin’s Comintern
imposed let a deep imprint on Arab communist parties. It efectively meant
that Arab communists struggled to develop the Marxist system of thought
into a lexible methodology, which might help them understand the realities
and difering conditions of their own countries.
IntheLevant,StalinisminluencedtheSyrianandLebaneseCommunist
Parties under the life-long leadership of Khalid Bakdash. In reaction to
Bakdash’s position, a group of Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian intel-
lectuals inspired by the British New Let of the late 1950s wrote critically
against the party, against Moscow, and against the Arab socialism of Gamal
Abdel Nasser and the Ba‘th Party. hese critics included important thinkers
like Yasin Haiz, George Tarabishi, and Husayn Muruwwa, who clustered
around the group Arab Socialism in the early 1960s. he anti-Moscow
impulse combined with a revolutionary fervor to support the Palestinian
resistance later developed into what Tareq Ismael, writing in 1976, called
a “New Arab Let.”10
Importantly, the New Arab Let was not just an intellectual current
but a political one leading to the formation of groups like the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the Communist Party-Political Bureau in
Syria, and the Organization for Communist Action in Lebanon. he political
ailiation of many writers with these groups, and their political and mili-
tary struggles in the Lebanese civil war, in the Palestinian resistance, and
in the confrontation with the Syrian regime of Haiz al-Asad have strongly
inluenced the post-1967 Arab Marxist tradition, at least in the Levant.
his embattled recent history has certainly lent credence to the image of
the intellectual as a rebel. For the New Arab Let, Marxism was for a time
practiced with gun in hand. At the same time, however, those images of a
militant history contrast starkly with the demobilization of letist groups
in Lebanon and across the region ater 1990. In that way, memories and
realities clash and produce diferent understandings of either emasculated
“lifestyle letists” conined to cultural work, or powerful rebels bent on
overturning the social order.

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Since the end of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-91) coincided with the
fall of the Soviet Union, the global crisis of Marxism efectively dovetailed
with the defeat of the Lebanese National Movement. his conjuncture
led to intense soul-searching in letist milieus in Lebanon and elsewhere.
Consequently, much recent research on the let examines relexivity and
memory work. he articles by Samer Frangie and Miriam Younes in this
special section analyze the work of Marxist thinkers who negotiated the
transformations of global and regional Marxism. While some maintained
a dogmatic Marxism (mostly represented by currents around the oicial
Arab communist parties), many drited toward liberalism. Faleh A. Jabar
has termed this new landscape “post-Marxism,” meaning social theory that
draws on the broad family of Marxist thought but goes beyond Marxist
dogmas.11
Post-Marxism also involves feminist critiques from within
communist movements, as exempliied in Hanan Hammad’s article in this
special section. Some post-Marxists dismiss the claim that Marxism is an
infallible scientiic theory, and some have moved on to theoretical pluralism.
hus, some post-Marxists maintain class analysis, while others only apply
select elements of the Marxian heritage. In an Arab context, moving on to
theoretical pluralism ater the end of the Cold War meant critiquing the lack
of internal democracy in Arab communism and its accommodation with
liberalism. his accommodation also had the practical implication that by
the mid-1990s a signiicant proportion of Arab Marxists had let the party
and become free-loating intellectuals.12
he soul-searching letists of post-Marxism largely belong to the
generation of thinkers and activists born in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
Alternatively, the letists who were active in the Arab uprisings of 2011 and
protested against ruling parties in Tunisia, Egypt, or Syria have come of
age with a diferent outlook. hey are obviously condemned to follow what
Stuart Hall called a “Marxism without guarantees,” a less teleological, and
perhaps less ideological letism that characterizes the twenty-irst century.13
They are more connected with contemporary forms and grammars of
mobilization through the Internet, but also more ideologically focused
than the previous generations, whose struggles were irmly rooted in the
great questions of national liberation, modernization, and the structural
improvement of living conditions of the popular classes. Undeniably, there
has been a neoliberal, conservative, and Islamist backlash since the 1980s.
Sune Haugbolle and Manfred Sing

7. 96
On the level of social mobilization, Arab letists lost momentum to Islamist
groups. his shit was mirrored on the theoretical level by the primacy that
Arab Marxists put, from the 1980s onward, on the notion of asala, cultural
rootedness, as opposed to international class identity.14
heir experience
of double or triple defeat—by Islamists, regimes, and the global decline of
Communism, which also produced damaging internal struggles— simply
“came with the genes” for those who grew up in the 1990s.15
here was never
any doubt, therefore, that Arab letists who wished to make a diference in
the post-millennial political landscape had to struggle against both internal
and external enemies. hey had to ight what Jodi Dean, referring to Walter
Benjamin, called the global “let melancholia” that prevailed ater 1989.16
Dean argues that the exhaustion of global Marxism was emotional,
physical, and generational, but also a passing phenomenon. he new mobi-
lizations and revolutions of the 2010s, combined with the efects of the 2008
global economic crisis, blew a hole in the sluggish post-Marxism of the
1990s. hey engendered a revival of communist organization and Marxist
theory. Let melancholia, for Dean, was the result of single-issue politics
and identity politics, which abandoned the vision of total social transfor-
mation. he strength of the “new new let” of the 2010s is that it embraces
multiplicity (perhaps even aspects of liberalism), but ties them together in
a socialist vision for change that maintains the salience of redistribution
globally and nationally in the face of neoliberal policies. Having said that, the
catastrophic trajectories of the Arab uprisings have again fostered doubt and
confusion, and a return to the sense of crisis. In this landscape, illing some
of the many historiograhical gaps can help us gain a clearer understanding
of why the let is in crisis, and, quite simply, of what the let is.

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ENDNOTES
1 “Intellectual History of the Arab Left,” held at AUB on 6 July 2012, and “The Arab Left:
Mapping the ield” held at OIB 30 September-1 October 2011.
2 These are the “Secular Ideology in the Middle East” program at Roskilde University,
Denmark, and the “Transformation of Marxist Actors in the Middle East” project at the
Orient-Institut in Beirut.
3 See for example David Priestland, he Red Flag: A History of Communism (New York: Grove
Press, 2009); and Archie Brown, he Rise and Fall of Communism (London: Ecco, 2009).
4 Joel Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), 2f.
5 Ellis Goldberg, “Communism and Islam,” updated by Michaelle Browers, in The Oxford
Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, ed. John L. Esposito (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009), 475-80.
6 See the critique by Alexander Flores, “Tareq Y. Ismael: he Communist Movement in the
Arab World,” in Critique 1 (2011), 173.
7 Sandra Halpern, “he Post-Cold War Political Topography of the Middle East: Prospects
for Democracy,” hird World Quarterly 7 (2005), 1135-56.
8 Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, he Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism,
1860-1914 (Berkeley: California University Press, 2010); Orit Bashkin, he Other Iraq:
Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008); Paul
homas Chamberlin, he Global Ofensive: he United States, the Palestine Liberation
Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2015); and Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires
in Oman, 1965-1976 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
9 Maxime Rodinson, Marxisme et monde musulman (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972), 337-48;
and Bassam Tibi, Die arabische Linke (Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt,
1969), 7-17.
10 Tareq Ismael, he Arab Let (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1976).
11 Faleh A. Jabar, ed., Post-Marxism and the Middle East (London: Saqi Books, 1997).
12 Manfred Sing, “Arab Post-Marxists Ater Disillusionment: Between Liberal Newspeak and
Revolution Reloaded,” in Arab Liberal hought Ater 1967, ed. Meir Hatina and Christoph
Schumann (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
13 Stuart Hall, ”The Problem of Ideology: Marxism Without uarantees,” in Marx: A Hundred
Years On, ed. Betty Matthews (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1983), 57-85.
14 Michaelle Browers, Political Ideology in the Arab World (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009).
15 Sune Haugbolle, “Bassem Chit and Revolutionary Socialism in Lebanon,” Middle East
Topics and Arguments 6 (2016).
16 Jonathan Dean, “Radicalism Restored? Communism and the End of Let Melancholia,”
Contemporary Political heory 14 (2015), 234–55.
Sune Haugbolle and Manfred Sing