Socialism and Social Justice

While the Arab world was undergoing its Nahda, the ideal of justice was also being discussed in the West and a popular form of political organisation under discussion was socialism. Socialism (of a kind) was also a form of political organisation well known in Arab history and not necessarily anathema to Islam. A programme of socialism was advanced by a variety of major parties, once the Arab countries in the 20^th Century achieved a degree of independence, including the party of Nasser, the Syrian Nationalist Party and the Ba’th Party as well as a variety of Islamist parties.

Kawakibi was one of the earliest Nahda proponents of a social justice ideal and a socialist system as his solution to the problem of social injustice and economic tyranny (Istibdād).

The first words used to describe the mainly French and British ideas of socialism and socialist in Arabic were, respectively, Ishtirākiyya and Ishtirāki based on the Arabic word Ishtirāk (for sharing). In the early Arab Nahda period, Turkish and Arab thinkers both tended to simply transliterate from the European words and the Turks still use sosyalist to mean socialist.

Egyptian thinkers especially (including Syrian/Lebanese émigrés writing for the literary and cultural presses in Cairo such as Shibli Shumayyil (1860 - 1917)) began to debate the ideas of European socialism from the first decade of the 20^th Century. Shumayyil first advocated scientific rationalism, materialism and Darwinism. He then argued that the capitalist system imposed economic and social injustices based, as he saw it, in conflict and proposed state involvement in the economy and social development and state-operated social welfare programmes as good socialist remedies.

Naturally, as in Europe, the early discussion of socialism also concerned its relationship with various formal democratic values. Salama Musa (1887 – 1957) was apparently influenced by the ideas of British Fabian socialism. He saw what he called sosialiyya as producing economic liberation and equal job opportunities. In the meantime he saw training Egyptians in democratic values and socialism within the government system as important precursors to the wider acceptance of socialist values and the adoption of socialism.

When Egypt adopted a liberal democratic system, a Socialist Party of Workers was founded by Mahmud Husni al-‘Arabi in Alexandria in 1920 recognising the democratic process. He then formed a Communist Party there in 1922 (Communist parties also appeared in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq by the end of the decade).

Further more or less democratic socialist parties appeared in the Arab world in the decades beginning with the 1930s. Anton Sa’adeh formed the Syrian National Socialist Party in that decade, using ijtima’i for socialist; in Iraq, a major democratic socialist figure was Kamil al-Jadarji; and in Lebanon, Kamal Jumblatt established the Socialist Progressive Party now led by his son, Walid.

In the 1940s in Syria, Akram al-Hawrani formed the Arab Socialist Party that was later absorbed into the Arab Ba’th (Renaissance) Party, which was founded by Michel ‘Aflaq and Salah al-Bitar of Damascus, and thus it became the Arab Socialist Ba’th Party.

So the Arab Ba’th Socialist Party was founded in the 1940s and still exists in Syria as a governing party despite having been made illegal in neighbouring Iraq during the recent occupation administration. The ideology of the party requires that it control both economic and social policy and thus produce the redistribution of wealth and thereby social justice. Industries were thus nationalised and workers were given a degree of management control of enterprises. Limits were also placed on both land and industrial ownership while economic development was promoted.

The period 1954 to 1970 was the socialist reign of Gamal ‘Abdel Nasser in Egypt. In that period, Nasser attempted to bridge the class divide that had existed. Large enterprises (and many medium-size ones) were nationalised in this period in Egypt. This was accompanied by substantial agrarian reform, industrialisation programmes and the National Charter produced in 1962.

Today, thinkers in the Arab world tend to fall into socialist and anti-socialist camps. “Arab socialism” has always tended to adopt and blend ideas from Arab nationalism and socialism. The relationship between socialism and democracy has tended to be antagonistic and socialism has lost its appeal in this contest since the 1970s. There has also been an emerging consensus among secular Arab progressive thinkers developing that democracy and respect for human rights are in fact necessary for the revolution, for socialism and for the national unity and liberation to which they aspire. The debate has occurred in the context of a globalisation driven in part by the forces of capitalism and with the participation of female socialist thinkers and activists such as Nawal as-Sa’dawi.