Saddam Hussein's politics.

[ReD_ReBeL]

Can someone give me an intelligent answer to what exactly Saddam Hussein's ideology was(if any)? Because i've heard him being called a fascist , but would Hugo Chavez really meet and get driven around Iraq to be shown the country by a fascist? also i've read places that Fidel Castro has had ties with Saddam and is there anyone here who supports him? i personally dont support him.

[Sentinel]

Saddam Hussein was leader of the "Arab Socialist Baath Party".
It was, at least to begin with a panarabic and nationalistic party. Arab socialism was most influent in the fifties and sixies. Similar movements also arose in Syria and Egypt at the time. The Arab Socialists wanted to nationalize the means of production and the oil industries of their respective countries. Che Guevara met and was friends with Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, another arab socialist.
Saddam was not the founder of the Baath party. I'm more under the impression that he
"hijacked" it for his own purposes. I'm no real expert in the history of Iraq though.. :blush:
But the subject is interesting. I think I'll do some reading on it when I find the time.

[Soheran]

Tariq Ali's Bush in Babylon reviews a good deal of the history. Hussein ruthlessly persecuted the Iraqi Left (with active CIA support), and was indeed partially responsible for annihilating the positive aspects that existed within the Ba'ath Party. He does not deserve all the blame for that, however; the trend had been there for a while.

His official ideology was Ba'athism, basically a left-nationalist tendency that has some features more tending towards Fascism, but that was rhetoric, providing him with a base upon which to build his power rather than a basis for actual policy.

Chávez does not have the best of records regarding his support for national leaders around the world; in Latin America the people whom he supports, with the possible exception of Lula, should be supported, but elsewhere that is not the case. Sometimes he is just as willing to put politics before principle as others in his position.

The Arab left-nationalists in general have an uneven record as far as putting rhetoric into action goes; they adopted a more or less "Third Way" course during the Cold War, and many of their most radical statements about the economy were intended to gain popular support and undermine the Arab Communists, instead of being sincere statements of their position.

[redstar2000]

In much of the "third world" in the last century, the forms of modern capitalism -- including some "weak" versions of state monopoly capitalism (called "socialism") -- were created upon the achievement of nominal independence.

But in many respects, the content of those forms remained fundamentally pre-capitalist.

Rather like "using" a passenger jet to haul livestock to market.

In Iraq, the Ba'ath "party" used rhetoric borrowed from European ideologies, including both fascism and Leninism. But in practice, Iraqi politics was and still is based on family and clan alliances, religious sectarianism, village and provincial loyalties, etc.

Iraq "had" a "parliament", a number of state-owned "corporations", a "civil service", a "public school system", etc. It "looked like" a modern country.

But it really wasn't...ever.

Given the over-riding need to expel the imperialists all over again, I think it will be a long time before Iraq will actually become a modern capitalist country.

Maybe by the end of this century...or the middle of the next. :(

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Soheran]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 08:10 AM
But in practice, Iraqi politics was and still is based on family and clan alliances, religious sectarianism, village and provincial loyalties, etc.
This assertion is questionable. Both Pan-Arab Nationalism and Communism (to a lesser degree) in Iraq had mass popular bases along class and ideological lines.

What we are seeing today is the political regression after the brutal suppression of all political movements not utterly controlled by Saddam Hussein. In such an environment, especially when the imperial power and its collaborators are similarly attempting to suppress popular action, power and politics will naturally revert to the tribal/sectarian level.