Facts about Ba'athism!

[stonerboi]

I have read on many posts that a significant number of forum members confuse Ba'athism as progressive and anti-imperialist.

Half of my family is Arab and having lived in Morocco for four years. I also have some distant relations who were involved in a Moroccan Ba'athist group.

Ba'athism originated in the 1930s and was founded by two Syrian teachers, Michel Aflaq and Al Bitar, in Paris during their studies there. Upon their return to Syria the two founders, who were also close friends, formed the Arab Ba'ath Movement (ABM) in 1940.

Michel Aflaq was a Christian (Greek Orthodox) as well as Arab and so this probably caused early Ba'athism to veer towards secularism and a hostility towards the Islamic clergery.

Out of the two, Al Bitar was the organiser of the ABM and was responsible for the activism of the ABM against the colonial French and Afalq was the intellectual and the ABM's ideologue and chief writer.

The ideology of Ba'thism was a believe in the following:

*The unification of all Arab states into one nation from Morocco to Iraq. A common Arab entity in which all Arabs would owe alleigence to their RACE not their local tribe, ruler or religion. Hence Ba'athism was open to Christian Arabs like Aflaq.

*Michel Aflaq himself admitted that the above concepts was not original and that his idea came form two very different nations. The first was to rebuild a unified Arab nation out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, yet unlike the Ottoman Empire the Ba'athist nation would not be controlled by religion (Islam). The second influence came from Nazi Germany. Hitler like Aflaq believed nations should have borders that reflect racial groups and not historical bounderies or geographic borders. If a race is spread across many countires then those countries should unite according to race (Hitler=Austira/Germany/Czechoslovakia) and (Aflaq=all Arab states into one Ba'athist state).

*Ba'athism believes in a one-party state and NO opposistion. They consider the Ba'ath party as not just a political group, but a movement with a mystical destiny to elevate the Arabs to the top of humanity.
"The Ba'ath Party is not a conventional political organization, but is composed of cells of valiant revolutionaries. . . . They are experts in secret organization. They are organizers of demonstrations, strikes, and armed revolutions. . . . They are the knights of the struggle." That was from Tariq Aziz back in 1986.

*On Economics they have been at best pragmatists. Unlike Marxists, Ba'athists do not consider economics to be important in social organisation and do not share Karl Marx's analysis of capitalism (stages of fuedualism to communism, modes of production, power of labour, law of value). Ba'athists nationalisation of oil fields is more a nationalist gesture and the desire of Ba'athism to empower Arab capitalists against Western capitalism. This has NOTHING to do with workers emancipation and the needs of the people, but is a power game to create Arab self-sufficiency for Arab businessmen. Also Iraq in the late 1980s sold off and privatised many idustries and many workers/underground trade union activists were killed in resisting the sell offs. In the July 2000 Ba'ath Party conference in Syria, President Assad annouced that Syria will support free-market economics and sell off it's state owned industries and welcome foriegn investment.

*Ba'athism is VERY anti-communist. Tariq Aziz once said that "Iraq has no need of a communist party" and Aflaq said that "communism is a Western (ie: European) concept that must not infect the higher Arab civilisation and stop us Arabs from our historic goals". In other words Ba'athists see communism as an obstacle to the Ba'athist aim of Arab unity and racial purity. The US and the CIA have both used the Ba'ath for suppressing communist movements and the CIA helped the Ba'ath gov. in Iraq to hunt down and kill Iraqi communists.

*Ba'athism believes that violence can evolve the individual to a higher state of being. This is borrowed from Nieztche and a belief in the 'superhuman'. Thus communism in Ba'athist opinion is for the weak and does not harness human potential. Ba'athism has a theory of 'absolutes' borrowed from Kant and Hegel.

So Ba'athism was useful to the US in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 in stopping anti-US Iran in removing Western control form the Middle East. The US and most EU countires armed Saddam's Ba'ath gov. to the teeth and the US and UK did NOT do anything to Iraq after the gas attacks on the Kurds. Infact UK sent MORE aid to Saddam after the attacks as a gesture of support to the Ba'athist state.

The only reason the US dumped Saddam and later got rid of him was that he invaded another US puppet state (Kuwait) and he became such an embaressement to the US and it's imperialist policy that they decided that he was despensible and let him fall from power (like the Iranian Shah in 1979 and Nicaragua's Somoza in 1977). Saddam was no anti-imperialist, he was a puppet of Western imperialism and he later became an imperialist HIMSELF! The Iraq war of 2003 was a fight between two evil capitalist/imperialist states and I supported neither of them, they are both evil.

The Iraqi people must rise up against the US and the remains of the Ba'ath (who now are co-operating with the US occupation authorities) and establish socialism as the only way to heal the racism, fundamentalism and poverty of the Arab masses and free them from oppresion.

Ba'athism is NOT about anti-imperialism, socialism, democracy (not in a capitalist sense here by the way) and human emancipation.

Ba'athism IS about genocide, collabaration with the US, anti-communism (to the extent that would make Pinochet proud) the suppression of minortites, racism, fascism and nostagla for Nazi Germany.

NO COMMUNIST/SOCIALIST SHOULD SUPPORT BA'ATHISM!

SUPPORT THE REAL VICTIMS OF BA'ATHISM AND US IMPERIALISM, THE IRAQI PEOPLE!

[Morpheus]

It think it's important to note that Baathism has undergone some signifigant changes over it's history. In terms of modern Baathism this is all basically correct, but it did not start out that way. There's a big difference between Baathism before it got into power and Baathism after it got into power. Originally it was a movement aiming at democracy, throwing the westerners out, and a united Arab state/pan-Arab nationalism. Many Baathists also advocated state socialism. The Iraqi branch of the Baathist party declared itself in favor of state socialism prior to the '58 revolution. Of course, once they got in power the realities of holding power caused them to change their stances repeatedly. The issue of state socialism was debated repeatedly within both the Iraqi and Syrian governments, in the end the anti-socialists eventually won out. However, Iraq did industrialize through a series of five-year plans. Syria allied with the USSR, so did Iraq for a while. Both states eventually evolved into one-party states, though there have been time periods where they allowed an opposition to legally exist (it just wasn't allowed to win the elections). Baathism in power has many similarities to classical fascist states, IMO.

[Severian]

Thanks, stonerboi, good post.

It should also be noted that the Ba'athists in Syria and Iraq have been at each other's throats for decades - including Syrian support to the 1991 attack on Iraq. Not over any principled disagreement, but over the conflicting interests of the two states and capitalist classes.

[stonerboi]

Morpheus, you call the more radical apects of Ba'athism 'socialist'.

Socialism in only genuine and real socialism if it is by the people and for the people. Socialism is the transformation of a capitalist system to a system of common ownership and the aboltion of private property and class oppression. Socialism can only come about by the creation of a revolutionary workers party with MASS support and to led the working class and oppressed peoples into socialist revolution.

The Ba'ath Party (both Syrian and Iraqi) came to power as small organisations with little popular support and used military coups, NOT revolution to seize power. Upon taking power the Ba'ath do not allow for real opposition and suppressed all genuine workers movements and struggles to better peoples lives. Forget about the farce 'opposition parties' that exist in Syria because they are fake and are made up of government agents who use these groups to give the illusion of democracy. These 'parties' all support the Syrian Ba'ath government and have NO chance of removing the Ba'ath from power.

Ba'athists are clever in that they tried to widen their appeal by using the 'socialist' tag. Hitler did the same, but we all know that Hitler was NO socialist. You cannot be racist, dictatorial and nationalistic and imperialist and at the same time a socialist. Hitler's socialism was false as is Ba'athist socialism.

Morpheus, you also think that the Ba'ath were only corrupt under Saddam and Assad. My criticisms of the Ba'ath are mainly with it's founder Michel Aflaq! It was Aflaq who from the beggining merged fascism and Arab nationalism into the Ba'ath. The Ba'ath were NEVER socialist, but populists and like fascism and nazism, the Ba'ath used socialist slogans and a few peicemeal reforms to give their evil regimes a 'progressive' image.

Remember, what 'socialist' reforms the Ba'ath did were oil nationalisation. Yet it was not done for the workers! It was done to enrich the Ba'ath elite and to fufill Ba'athist fantasies of using oil to make the Arabs a military superpower and imperialists in their own right. Workers under the Ba'ath are killed for speaking out.

Even if there is some 'progressive' elements of Ba'athism (which there are not in reality), why have to endure a harsh dictatorship and racist and militarist oppression to get these 'progressive' elements? Why not go for the real macoy and go SOCIALIST?

Socialism and revolutionary communism is what the Arabs (and the rest of the world) need right now! Lets forget about failures like Ba'athism!

[Severian]

Yes, there's nothing necessarily socialist about nationalisationing an industry. It can also be a bourgeois-nationalist measure - often is - or come from other motives. (E.g. apartheid South Africa's state-owned media and arms industry.)

The only thing that some might say was once progressive about the Ba'ath is that it was nationalist, in countries oppressed by imperialism. But I think this is a misunderstanding. Even in these countries, bourgeois nationalism is not a progressive force. It cannot be counted on even to stand up against imperialism.

That's not to say that all anti-imperialist movements must have a communist program from the beginning, or something. But it is necessary to ook at the class character of those movements, their leaders, their ideas.

And as Stonerboi's pointed out, Ba'athism, from the beginning, is a capitalist ideology and movement, reflecting the interests of the capitalist class.

[Star]

*Ba'athism believes in a one-party state and NO opposistion. The consider the Ba'ath party as not just a political group, but a movement with a mystical destiny to elevate the Arabs to the top of humanity.

Frankly you have not a idea of what you're talking about. The fact is that Baathists in Iraq and Syria have ruled in cooperation with the communists.


The US and the CIA have both used the Ba'ath for suppressing communist movements and the CIA helped the Ba'ath gov. in Iraq to hunt down and kill Iraqi communists.

Communists were persecuted because of their affiliation to the discredited Kassim regime. This depiction of the Baathists as staunch anti-communists fails to correspond with the facts. To say that Baa'thists were anti-communist because of their rivalry with communists in domestic politics would be like saying communists like the KPD were anti-socialist because of their hostility to the Social Democrats.


the US and UK did NOT do anything to Iraq after the gas attacks on the Kurds.

Actually Iraq was fiercely denounced by both for supposedly having been responsible for the gas attacks. There is no conclusive proof that Iraq was responsible because Iran also used chemical weapons.


Saddam was no anti-imperialist, he was a puppet of Western imperialism and he later became an imperialist HIMSELF!

It is laughable how the Baathists are slandered as having been aligned with imperialism when in fact the Kurdish insurrection against Iraq was supported by the CIA. You exaggerate the degree of influence Washington had on Iraq. In fact there were no diplomatic relations between Washington and Iraq in 1980 when war with Iran started.


Ba'athism IS about genocide, collabaration with the US, anti-communism (to the extent that would make Pinochet proud) the suppression of minortites, racism, fascism and nostagla for Nazi Germany.

Yet more nonsense. Syria and Iraq were ruled in a coalition with communists and were firm allies of the USSR and the socialist bloc. Iraq in the 1970s had provided generous autonomy to the Kurds. Although I'm not a Baathist and find that parts of their ideology are flawed, they are certainly not the capitalist Nazis that you depict them as. Baathism in Iraq was successful in establishing intercultural and interreligious working class solidarity.

[Guerrilla22]

The Baathist Party is essentielly a fascist party, true, yet for some reason people on this board tend to support anyone who is opposed to the US government, even if at one time they (Iraq) were allies of the US. For some reason people on here have also tried to deem Hezbollah, Iran and even al-Qaeda as somehow being "progressive anti-imperilaist" also.

[TC]

Nicely titled: facts about ba'athism; despite not providing any!

I think this thread is quite unimpressive and unhelpful and reads like very bad disinformation propaganda, as it makes claims that are not in line with the way the ba'athists describe their own ideological position, without citing any sources. For one the notion that Ba'athism is a racialist ideology is something that you're asserting without any supporting evidence whatsoever, especially considering that arabs, both conventionally defined and defined by the ba'ath parties, are a linguistic/national group that includes people of multiple socially recognized races. There is simply no such thing as an arab racial group because there are many different arab ethnicities; the ba'athists would never for instance limit the catagory of "arab" to only people who look like they're from the arabic peninsula.

Simply you claiming that Ba'athism is a racialist rather than nationalist ideological position doesn't make it so. The imperialist tactic is to demonize their enemies to extremes so that its politically impossible to express any sympathy for them or even compare them positively to the imperialist aggressors; as communists its important not to feed this impulse, not out of support for the imperialist's enemies but out of a political obligation to political debate based on verifiable facts not sloganeering 'truthiness.'

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 02:32 pm
Nicely titled: facts about ba'athism; despite not providing any!
And...the Clown jumps up in chorus with the now-banned NazBol, Star. Why am I not surprised?


I think this thread is quite unimpressive and unhelpful and reads like very bad disinformation propaganda, as it makes claims that are not in line with the way the ba'athists describe their own ideological position, without citing any sources.

It quotes Aflaq and Aziz. Of course, there may be some Ba'athists who say other things to try to coopt leftist support. Somehow I think Stonerboi is more familiar with the core Ba'athist texts than you are.

In any case, you don't cite any sources yourself.


For one the notion that Ba'athism is a racialist ideology is something that you're asserting without any supporting evidence whatsoever, especially considering that arabs, both conventionally defined and defined by the ba'ath parties, are a linguistic/national group that includes people of multiple socially recognized races.

It's not racialist because Arabs aren't a race? Neither is anyone else, say Germans. And that's hardly the only point here, or even the key one.

When Ba'athists call themselves socialist, it has nothing do with class struggle or siding with working people. Rather, they mean socialism to mean the unity of all classes of the "Arab nation". The similarity with fascist and especially National Socialist ideology is obvious.

So, what do you think about these "socially recognized races", anyway? Do they have some validity or significance?

[TC]

Severian, as a result of your persistent, obsessive attempts to slander me and assassinate my character over a long period of time, and those attempts having failed; i will not be responding to any direct questions from you especially provocative ones intended to accuse me by implication of holding positions which i clearly do not; i am not interested in humoring your petty personal jihad.

I'm applying my own no platform for trolls position to Severian.

[Dimentio]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 04:36 pm
Severian, as a result of your persistent, obsessive attempts to slander me and assassinate my character over a long period of time, and those attempts having failed; i will not be responding to any direct questions from you especially provocative ones intended to accuse me by implication of holding positions which i clearly do not; i am not interested in humoring your petty personal jihad.

I'm applying my own no platform for trolls position to Severian.
Hahaha... you sound like Skip Sievert.

[chimx]

Perhaps stonerboi would elaborate on what he means by racial purity. Arab states are made up of multiple ethnicities, religions, etc. The only unifying factor is that they speak Arabic.

But at the same time, pan-Arabism has certainly been a popular trend in the Middle East this past century. Is the "racial purity" you are describing dealing more with an attempt to create a unified Arab culture and ignore the ethnic distinctions within the Arab world?

[Dimentio]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 06:44 pm
Perhaps stonerboi would elaborate on what he means by racial purity. Arab states are made up of multiple ethnicities, religions, etc. The only unifying factor is that they speak Arabic.

But at the same time, pan-Arabism has certainly been a popular trend in the Middle East this past century. Is the "racial purity" you are describing dealing more with an attempt to create a unified Arab culture and ignore the ethnic distinctions within the Arab world?
Given the forms of Arab nationalism, yes.

To try to unify all countries speaking Arabic in an Arab nationalist state is like trying to create an English nation-state of all English-speaking nations on the globe. ^^

[chimx]

yeah, i never really understood pan-Arab sentiment. It strikes me that it gained ground following the creation of Israel, when the west began lumping all Arabs into the same category, making it more of a defensive reaction to western perspective in the middle east.

[Dimentio]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 06:53 pm
yeah, i never really understood pan-Arab sentiment. It strikes me that it gained ground following the creation of Israel, when the west began lumping all Arabs into the same category, making it more of a defensive reaction to western perspective in the middle east.
It was a betty-bourgeoisie movement. And most Arabs did not understand it either. It was not corresponding to what they perceived as their identity.

[Comrade_Scott]

I have a question why would you support a state that is run by a party molded off of the fascist party?? I would have thought regardless of what they are doing we do not support them...

[Guerrilla22]

The Pan-Arab nationalist movement came about as a result of Arabs being dominated by outsiders for centuries and continuing to be pushed around by the west, even after they had supposedly gained independence. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, untill some strated attacking other ethnic groups, like when Qadaffi decided to expel Jews from Libya and started conflicts in neighboring countries, in order to have Arabs gain control of their governments.

[Dimentio]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 10:51 pm
I have a question why would you support a state that is run by a party molded off of the fascist party?? I would have thought regardless of what they are doing we do not support them...
Probably because they are third world...

I'm not supporting them either.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 12:44 pm
Perhaps stonerboi would elaborate on what he means by racial purity. Arab states are made up of multiple ethnicities, religions, etc. The only unifying factor is that they speak Arabic.

But at the same time, pan-Arabism has certainly been a popular trend in the Middle East this past century. Is the "racial purity" you are describing dealing more with an attempt to create a unified Arab culture and ignore the ethnic distinctions within the Arab world?
This is a thread from 2003 that Star revived. Stonerboi might not be back around.

I don't know that Pan-Arabism necessarily has all the baggage that Ba'athists attached to it; Nasserism for example is somewhat different though also repressive bourgeois nationalist.

"Arabs" are defined by a common language (with variations) as you say; they are a nation in that sense. So the attempt to unite Arabs in one state can be viewed as an attempt to construct a modern unified, independent nation-state as the class bourgeois revolutions did - e.g. France. Where the borders correspond to a national market defined by a common language and culture.

Pan-Arabism seems to have fallen into a slump in the past couple decades. The existing borders and regimes have solidified with time. I think the main problem the Pan-Arabists ran into is - it's too late in history for a classic bourgeois revolution. Another is they didn't want to let go of non-Arab peoples like the Kurds, or the Kabyles in Algeria.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Yes Ba'athism was very anti-communist, and persecuted communists in a major way. Iraq, in fact, was seen as an ally to the US because it "opposed both radical islam and communism".

However, it was progressive in the sense that it wasn't a fundamentalist regime that oppressed woman in the same manner as say Iran and other regimes in the region.

[LebaneseCommunistParty]

Baáthism is the original Arab Socialism. It has changed over the years. Baáthists did not believe in a master race or any shit like that just a unified arab state.

My grandpa and i had a huge tlak about this the other day. I found out Michel Aflaq used to teach my grandpa physics in high school in syria.

[Honggweilo]

However Ba'athism as an ideology can vary to a long range, equilivant to how many different currents call themselfes communist.

I think there is a fundamental difference between early Nasserism, Jamahiriya (Lybia), Syrian/Iraqi Ba'aathism, ect. The first two arent inherently anti-communist. And arent there also Ba'athists in the PLO?

[OneBrickOneVoice]

nevermind

[Severian]

Originally posted by Fight-For-Revolutionary-War!@January 09, 2007 09:07 pm
Yes Ba'athism was very anti-communist, and persecuted communists in a major way. Iraq, in fact, was seen as an ally to the US because it "opposed both radical islam and communism".

However, it was progressive in the sense that it wasn't a fundamentalist regime that oppressed woman in the same manner as say Iran and other regimes in the region.
What? Being not fundamentalist, or not anything, doesn't make anyone progressive.

The question is, what are they and what do they do? You gotta have some positive progressive content. Which they didn't and don't.

Ba'athists don't even have any anti-fundamentalist content anymore anyway. During the last part of Hussein's rule, he adopted chunks of the fundamentalists' program in order to co-opt them. Symbolized by the Koranic text he stuck on the Iraqi flag.

And of course Ba'athists in the Iraqi resistance today are fighting alongside the worst kind of fundamentalist. Not only that, they're "growing their beards out", becoming more and more indistinguishable from the fundamentalists....

LCP is just making shit up, as far as I can tell.

[Joseph Ball]

I think its quite clear that the Baathists are reactionaries but so what? Iraq has been reduced to rubble by the invasion and occupation. The only way the Iraqi people are going to get back on their feet is by kicking the occupiers out. Of course the liberation and its aftermath will be a painful process but there is absolutely no alternative. The imperialists can only bring further degradation and immiseration to the Iraqi people.

In order to achieve this end we have to support anyone who is working towards it. If the Baathists are working towards it, we support them. We shouldn't care if we end up on the same side as Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad and the devil. The most important thing is defeating western imperialism, a system which can only spread destruction, chaos and poverty. Once we've defeated this enemy we can take on the other reactionaries. Maybe people need to read some Lenin, Stalin and Mao to gain a systematic view of how the anti-imperialist struggle should be fought.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Like Morpheus said above, there's more than one form of Ba'athism historically (I'd actually say three over his two: intellectual, Syrian, and Iraqi).


*The unification of all Arab states into one nation from Morocco to Iraq. A common Arab entity in which all Arabs would owe allegiance to their RACE not their local tribe, ruler or religion. Hence Ba'athism was open to Christian Arabs like Aflaq.

"From Morocco to Iraq"? I don&#39;t see any RACIAL connections between Moroccans and Iraqis, in spite of Aflaq&#39;s Nazi inspiration. <_<

Anyhow, the idea of pan-nationalism per se ("common Arab entity") is a helluva lot better than the "local tribe, ruler, or religion" by LEAPS AND MILES.

Someone here lamented recently about the artificial divisions of most of Latin America, given the common Hispanic tongue. A united Hispanic state should AT LEAST encompass all of Spanish-speaking South America plus the southern half of Central America (thus INITIALLY excluding Mexico and Cuba due to geographic problems).

In fact, even after THE revolution, I think that the intercontinental workers&#39; state would be better served with pan-national regions (including an integrated Hispanic-American region, a pan-Turkestan region extending to the lands of the Uyghurs, and a pan-"Arab" region extending to Iran and Egypt) than with national ones (look at Balkanization and the complex territorial divisions of the former Soviet Union, thanks to the national tragedies known as "Autonomous Republics," "Autonomous Regions," and "Autonomous Areas").



On the economic front, yes the "socialist" label is a mysnomer; Iraq and Syria, even now, are NOT ready. However, in countries like Saudi Arabia, where outright socialism is also economically impossible (until certain conditions are created), Ba&#39;athism is LEAPS AND MILES ahead of the ruling bed of Saudi royals and Wahhabi nutcases.



On the philosophical front, their mysticism is somewhat scary, though - but not scarier than Robespierre&#39;s "Supreme Being" cult.

[Spike]

The Baath party program aims to construct a unified Arab socialist society free from imperialist exploitation and social inequality. Along with the Communists, Baathists were participants in Iraq in the Front of National Unity which prepared and carried out with the army an anti-imperialist revolution in 1958 which toppled the West&#39;s puppet monarchy.

When the Baath party came to power in Iraq in February 1963, its extremist right-wing elements unleashed terror against communists and other progressives. After it was forced out of power in November of 1963, the party subjected itself to firm criticism of its errors and a new leadership took control.

In July 1968, the Baathists returned to power. They pursued an anti-imperialist foreign policy and implemented vital socioeconomic reforms. In 1970-71, new laws concerning labor, education, agrarian reform, and pensions were implemented. Legislation in 1970 reduced the maximum size of holdings to between 10 and 150 hectares of irrigated land and to between 250 and 500 hectares of nonirrigated land. By the late 1970s, 2 million hectares were distributed to the landless peasants. Between 1976 and 1986, the number of primary-school students increased 30 percent; female students increased 45 percent, from 35 to 44 percent of the total. The number of primary-school teachers increased 40 percent over this period. The constitution of Iraq declared men and women equal under the law. In the parliamentry elections held in June 1980, 33 of the 250 seats of the National Assembly were held by women.

A major step for strengthening the national independence of Iraq was achieved by the nationalization of the Iraq Petroleum Company and other foreign oil in 1972-75. In March 1970, the Declaration on the Peaceful Democratic Resolution of the Kurdish Problem was issued, in accordance with Kurdish autonomy in March 1974. In 1973, the National Progressive Patriotic Front was established with the Communists. In 1974, the party adopted a program of social and economic reforms, confirmed its progressive anti-imperialist stance, and sought to develop friendly relations with the USSR and other socialist countries.


Ba&#39;athism is VERY anti-communist.
That is highly misleading. Similar to social democratic parties, the Ba&#39;athists are not monolithic. To say that Ba&#39;athists are anti-communist is as misleading as saying socialists are anti-communist. In Germany, the Social Democrats pursued a right opportunist position betraying proletarian internationalism and took a chauvinist position on the imperialist war. A split in the party resulted in the formation of the Independent Social Democratic Party which opposed the imperialist war. By contrast, the majority of the Italian Socialist Party opposed the imperialist war and joined the Comintern in 1919.

There is a right-wing chauvinist section of the Baath Party and left-wing elements that can qualify as fellow travellers. The Ba&#39;athists in power during February-November 1963 in Iraq differ from the Ba&#39;athists in power after 1968 that were more friendly with communists. Justifiably, the Ba&#39;athists have been suspicious of the Communists because in the Middle East, they have appeared to be more loyal to the USSR than to the Arab national liberation struggle.

The second influence came from Nazi Germany. Hitler like Aflaq believed nations should have borders that reflect racial groups and not historical bounderies or geographic borders.
Such nonsense like this leads one to suspect whether you really are an Arab. Even an Arab would know that there is not an Arab race. Rather, Arabs in today&#39;s sense are a broad linguistic and cultural group with diverse racial origins ranging from Negroid in Sudan to pre-dominantly Europeoid in parts of Syria/Lebanon. The Arabs originated in what is today Saudi Arabia and spread their culture and religion to the peoples inhabiting parts of the world from Morocco to Iraq. According to the Ba&#39;ath program, an Arab person is the one who speaks Arabic and lives on the Arab territory, or aspires to do so, and believes in his affiliation to the Arab Nation.

*Ba&#39;athism believes in a one-party state and NO opposistion.
This is discredited by the existence of multiple political parties in Syria and in Iraq before 2003.


So Ba&#39;athism was useful to the US in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 in stopping anti-US Iran in removing Western control form the Middle East. The US and most EU countires armed Saddam&#39;s Ba&#39;ath gov to the teeth
You exaggerate Iraq&#39;s relationship with the West. In fact Iraq imported much of its military from the USSR and other socialist countries. Not until late 1984 did Iraq restore diplomatic relations with the U.S. At most, Iraq was a non-aligned state which had amiable relations with both the West and socialist countries.


The Iraq war of 2003 was a fight between two evil capitalist/imperialist states and I supported neither of them, they are both evil.
To characterize Iraq prior to 2003 an imperialist state is laughable and demonstrates your lack of comprehension of Marx&#39;s theories. A state is imperialist when it dominates the economy and resources of other countries. Iraq by virtue of being of a developing country has never even had the chance to become imperialist. Prior to 1958, Iraq was a semi-colony of the West and since that period it had practiced self-determination and attempted to construct a socialist Iraq free from exploitation and inequality. Iraq never exercised influence beyond her borders but was in fact subject to influence of external, stronger powers.

The Iraqi people must rise up against the US and the remains of the Ba&#39;ath (who now are co-operating with the US occupation authorities) and establish socialism as the only way to heal the racism, fundamentalism and poverty of the Arab masses and free them from oppresion.
The claim that the Ba&#39;ath are cooperating with the U.S. occupation is rather bizarre. As a matter of fact they are a major element in the resistance. The U.S. has pursued a "de-Baathification" campaign through which its members are not allowed to take part in the political process.


Ba&#39;athism IS about genocide, collabaration with the US, anti-communism (to the extent that would make Pinochet proud) the suppression of minortites, racism, fascism and nostagla for Nazi Germany.
That Ba&#39;athists have provided autonomy to the Kurds and base their program on all Arabic speaking peoples whether they be Lebanese or Sudanese refutes this slanderous propaganda.

[Eleftherios]

Baathism?&#33; :o For some reason I thought we were discussing Bahaism for about most of the first page, until I finally made the necessary connections (Saddam Hussein, Arab nationalism, etc.).

Anyway, I am not as ignorant as you may think. I know a little about Baathism. I&#39;d describe Baathaism as an Arab nationalist, secularist, revolutionary, socialist (although not in the way most people here think of socialism), and anti-imperialist ideology. It is not monolithic, as someone earlier stated.

I don&#39;t think Baathaism is a generally progressive ideology, although some elements of Baathaism such as pan-Arabism could be progressive and other elements such as nationalization of industry, anti-imperialism, and secularism are progressive.

[Noah]

I don&#39;t really have time to read the whole of this thread but in regards to the original reader he is very correct. As an Iraqi who&#39;s parents and relatives have either been killed or mentally/+physically scarred for being involved in pro-democratic movements (pre-dominantly the communist party movement, my aunty was a well known feminist-communist) I can confidently say Ba&#39;athists are not all that good at all. No communist/socialist should support them because they fucked us over in every sense.