Ali Kadri: The Destruction of the Arab Nation (Part Three)
The final entry in a three-part review of Ali Kadri’s The Unmaking of Arab Socialism (Anthem Press, 2016) by the writer Amer Mohsen, published on the Al-Akhbar website on 11 April 2017.
According to Kadri, the “commercial” class that has ruled our country by proxy over the past decades is a globalised, transnational class. This does not mean that they occupy an equal position to their counterparts in the Western centre but rather that they are materially connected to the same capital: imitating some of them in lifestyle and culture, studying at the same universities, and holding dual citizenship.
One time, I recall a classmate at university returning from summer vacation and saying in astonishment: “What a small world!” On another occasion, I was walking down İstiklal Street in Istanbul when I saw our university colleague walking in the opposite direction. I also ran into another classmate in New York, and while dining at a restaurant in London, I discovered that our classmate was sitting at the table across from me. What are the odds of such coincidences?
Of course, these are not coincidences at all. It’s simply the outcome of belonging to a small class that frequents the same cities and streets—so it’s only natural that you keep bumping into one another. For this “class”, the choice between its ties to the outside world and its connection to the local society—when such a choice arises—is an easy and already settled one.
Not long ago, the American University of Beirut struck a “deal” with the U.S. Government, agreeing to pay a $700,000 fine and issue a formal apology. Why? Because, it seems, the university violated U.S. laws and “unintentionally” provided support to Hezbollah. (Apparently, during training workshops for Lebanese journalists, the university hosted media professionals from Al-Manar TV [a station owned by Hezbollah] among many other participants, and U.S. investigators considered this to be “material support to a terrorist organization.”)
The university pledged not to “repeat the mistake” in the future and followed that with a laughable statement declaring it would abide by “both U.S. and Lebanese laws”. Of course, these are distinct and separate legal systems, so the university is effectively stating that it will act as an American institution, that it will discriminate against its own people on ideological and political grounds, and that it will play its part in the broader war against the resistance movement that liberated its own country.
(What if, tomorrow, the U.S. Government decides that a new segment of the Lebanese population is the enemy? Will the university discriminate against them too? And what if U.S. law mandates that the university share its data with the American government and intelligence agencies—will the university spy on us and hand over our information to our enemies?)
An incident like this would have been unthinkable thirty years ago without provoking fierce protests within the university itself and the resignation of many professors. But today, it passes with ease and indifference. What’s dangerous here is not merely the fact that these institutions side with the U.S. Government against their own country nor that they do so without fear of backlash, accountability, or even questioning the legitimacy of their presence. What’s truly alarming is that they act with confidence—as if the future, too, is already decided in their favour, as if their patrons will rule the world and define the very norms of social life. They do not imagine a day in the future when they might be held accountable for this stance or even meet the contemptuous gaze of their own children.
Within Kadri’s framework, if you want to know your identity within society, what matters is not how you define yourself or the ideological label you carry. What matters is your position and role in the mode of production: Where does your income come from? Who do you work for? Who evaluates you and grants you a professional identity? This line of inquiry serves as a kind of test of our self-perception, and it helps explain many phenomena in our society.
Look at the community of intellectuals, experts, and media figures around us: you’ll find the Levantine working as an employee for Qatar or Saudi Arabia, in U.S. and Western state media, or in internationally funded NGOs. Despite these seemingly different affiliations, they all form a unified front when it comes to politics, culture, and even personal relationships. They man the same trench on most fundamental issues, and they move seamlessly between these roles as if they are indistinguishable.
On the surface, this alignment defies logic and reason—these people subscribe to frames of reference that are deeply contradictory. Some of them serve despotic dynasties that oppress women, treat workers like chattel-slaves, and use sectarian incitement as a media strategy. Others supposedly represent liberal democratic governments. NGO employees, in name at least, work to promote democratic and Western values. Yet, as Kadri argues, your position in relation to global capital and imperialism speaks more truthfully about you than your ideological and moral claims.
Iraq and the long war
Kadri’s book can be divided into two constituent elements—though they are interrelated and often overlap in the book’s chapters. There is the theoretical and quantitative component—which is generally the stronger and more coherent part of the work—and then there is the interpretive and historiographic component involving case studies that focus on Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. When the book engages these histories in greater detail, certain problems begin to emerge: issues and gaps in its narrative. Iraq is one example.
Kadri discusses the period leading up to the 1991 Iraq War and notes how American propaganda, when it targeted the country for destruction, turned the demonisation of Iraq and Saddam Hussein into a kind of sport in Western media—across both the right and the left.
Even the positions of some Western leftists, like Noam Chomsky—who opposed the war but simultaneously condemned Saddam Hussein and his abuses—are judged to be hypocritical, contributing to the media obfuscation that helped justify the invasion. There was no connection, Kadri argues, between Hussein’s atrocities and the American invasion of Iraq—neither the causes of the war nor its objectives were in any way related to the suffering of the Iraqi people, and nor would the war alleviate that suffering. These are two entirely separate issues. Therefore, there was no compelling reason [for leftists like Chomsky] to engage in obligatory “condemnation” or disavowal of Hussein while discussing the looming war and the prospective destruction of the country.
All of this is valid. However, when Kadri goes on to assess the Iraqi regime in the late 1980s as the “most radical” in the region, it’s an entirely different matter. Kadri argues that Iraq, due to its security situation and its oil wealth, had a kind of “immunity” from neoliberal tendencies—an immunity that compelled the U.S. to invade and destroy the regime— and that it would not have voluntarily entered a cycle of privatisation and economic liberalisation. But this is simply not true. Saddam Hussein attempted to subject the economy and the public sector to “structural reforms” at least twice: once in 1984 and again during 1987–88. Each time, he was forced to retreat from liberalisation efforts due to their negative consequences (Several researchers have written about this, including Kiren Chaudhry and Isam al-Khafaji). If not for the 1991 war and the subsequent sanctions, Saddam Hussein would likely have continued along the same path. There are several speeches and testimonies by the former Iraqi president in which he clearly outlines his economic views. In one speech, for instance, he explicitly states that he was never convinced by socialism or state management of the economy and that he had “saved” Iraq from the radical wing of his own party, which had intended to turn the country into a Soviet-style state (most likely referring to the wing led by Ali Salih al-Sa’di).
The 1980s as a whole are not meaningfully discussed in the book, and Kadri’s explanation of the Iran-Iraq War is brief and unconvincing. It appears as though the author attributes the war entirely to an internal Iraqi decision, driven by the Ba’ath regime’s fear that sectarianism would spill over into Iraq from the neighbouring theocracy. But the question is: Would the Iraqi regime have launched a war against a much larger neighbour had it not been for Gulf support and American encouragement—regardless of the regime’s own desires? Can one really dismiss or downplay the Western role in a war where Iraq was bombing Iran with French-made aircraft, paid for by the Gulf states, and guided by American coordinates? By the end of the Iran War, Iraq was burdened with tens of billions of dollars in debt, Gulf capital had begun to appear in Baghdad in the purchase of property, and the country was in a state of hostility with its fellow Ba’athist neighbour. None of these characteristics are typical of an independent or radical state.
What’s strange is that Saddam Hussein’s regime—through its domestic policies and international alignments—actually fits the very theoretical model Kadri himself proposes: of state elites that retreat and seek reconciliation with imperialism (even if they try, like Turkey, to make strategic manoeuvres in pursuit of limited “independence”). In fact, most of Iraq’s industrial projects in the 1980s consisted of expensive, technologically advanced factories that employed few workers—such as petrochemical plants and the gas network—and most of them were supplied by French and European companies. In any case, the essential point remains—as Kadri himself notes—that Iraq, on the eve of the 1958 Revolution, had some of the worst poverty and illiteracy rates in the world and by 1978 had raced ahead to the forefront of developing nations.
The reason is simple: the country’s wealth remained within its borders. It was recycled and reinvested, to the point that Iraq developed significant human and material capacities.
All of that was later destroyed by the U.S. military and the sanctions. Large segments of the Iraqi population were displaced—including much of the middle class—and the United States laid the foundations for a system that guarantees nothing but dependency and the continuation of sectarian strife.
Conclusion
When Kadri refers to the Arab “socialist” experience, he is not talking about socialism in the Marxist sense but rather a traditional “market” economy that functions like any other capitalist system, using the same tools. However, in this system, the basic economic choices and investment directions are in the hands of the state, rather than the private sector. Full “socialism”, or true human freedom, is freedom from wage labour, from capital, from a life of material insecurity. This will only come through radical changes to the structure of society and social relations—a prospect we are not pursuing today, especially in impoverished and oppressed countries of the Global South. (Samir Amin has an analysis on the impossibility of creating a “communist” project, for example, or one isolated from market-based economic foundations, in today’s world.)
The issue is not that the historical “failure” of certain theories necessitates their replacement by new ones. Neoliberalism, Kadri argues, is not a “new thing” that suddenly appeared in the 1970s and swept across the world. Its ideas have existed in detail since the heyday of the Austrian School, but no one adopted them or considered them valid (given the historical record of liberal economics at the time). The Western bloc was in decline, and the elites of the South had enough independence to adopt their own policies. Importantly, they were able to rely on Soviet support until the early 1970s. During that period, socialism and state management were considered the “correct” and viable theory, and few debated the issue. When the balance of power shifted again, and the Western alliance regained its strength, neoliberalism became both an expansion tool and a “reality” at the same time.
Of course, this can be reversed, though Kadri is not optimistic. For example, he points out that many members of the working class in Egypt, who would be the natural allies of the national project, have fallen into the arms of Wahhabi-inspired and funded Salafism. When the situation finally collapses in Egypt, these groups will provide the United States with a pretext for endless new wars under the guise of “fighting terrorism” and fighting “Islamists”. Kadri also refers to sectarian conflict, which prevents the formation of a common consciousness among the people of the region (he insists that today’s sectarianism is an entirely modern condition, unrelated to history or any precedents from the past, except for the names of sects and religious figures).
All of this is true, but Kadri overlooks the fact that, from the heart of crisis, poverty, and fragmentation, armed forces have also emerged, consisting largely of the rural and urban poor and forming a strategic line from Yemen to Lebanon to Iraq. Moreover, Kadri relies on reductive generalisations, wherein all Islamist factions, for example, are conflated—even if their individual positions toward imperialism differ or if imperialism’s stance toward them varies. For him, salvation can only come through an internationalist, socialist workers’ movement. This generalised conclusion is problematic. In fact, one could propose an opposing hypothesis that the resistance movement in our current context could only have emerged along denominational lines, drawing on the local traditions of the oppressed, and the differences between these movements are not epiphenomenal—but this is another discussion.
While Kadri’s book is extremely important for understanding a key part of our history and present, the future remains unknown to anyone. The one exception is a conclusion drawn by Kadri—with which we are in agreement—that the only language for the coming phase, and the unavoidable fate regardless of the outcome, is war.