Hisham Bustani - Dissonances of the Arab Left

A certain disdain for ‘theorization’ has seeped into the minds of the new generation of activists, in the wake of an era in which political organizations were machines producing political theories designed to justify their incompetence in changing reality. Many of the young activists are thus solely focused on ‘working on the ground’, without ‘wasting time on theorizing’, forgetting that theory provides any political movement with its rationale and prevents its subversion by opponents.

The position of the Left should be the fierce defence of social liberties and freedom of belief and expression. However, for many reasons (including the Left’s alliance with Islamists prior to the Syrian uprising), the Arab Left seems to be shy about its social propositions, when or if it actually believes in them. (Here, I would exempt the Left in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.) It seems shy about defending freedom of expression and belief, particularly when it comes to atheism or criticism of the Abrahamic religions. Freedom seems here to take on only a narrowly political meaning. The mainstream Left avoids talking about the reproduction of power relations within the family, and it offers no explicit and detailed historical critique of religion. There is no left talk of the role of religious belief systems in banishing critical thinking, or maintaining the patriarchal structures of society... Above all, the Arab Left is plagued with homophobic prejudice. It does not recognize homosexuals’ rights to their sexual preferences. It sometimes even regards homosexuality as the outcome of an imperialist/Jewish conspiracy, despite the support of many queer organizations for Arab causes in Palestine and Iraq (before and after the occupation), as well as their active participation in and advocacy for these causes.

To talk of the secular democratic leftist project in the Arab world is to talk of crisis – a crisis that is manifest in two ways. First, there is the fundamental question of whether such a project even exists in a coherent and comprehensive form, rather than as a mere collection of statements and propositions that contradict one another, and the foundations they allegedly rest upon. The evidence for such incoherence is clear in the way that political parties and the individuals who claim to adhere to the project present it with expediency, selectivity and dema­goguery. In contradiction with the values they claim to embrace, these ‘leftists’ often refrain from engaging in the major struggles that produce and form their alleged project

Second, there is a lack of penetration of the project’s propositions into the depths of the social formations and classes that have the most to gain from achieving its goals. There is no social subject that adopts the values of the project. Most who claim adherence to it are from the middle classes and are attracted to its partial ‘openness’ and social liberty, which do not, for them, result from an existential and epistemological crisis (class alienation), or from a consciousness of real economic and social marginalization and repression (class consciousness). For this reason, leftist discourse takes on no more than a social-liberal form, whilst the oppressed classes become attracted to social and religious conservatism, and become its main audience.

The secular, democratic and leftist project encompasses a wide range of political currents and proposals. This article will restrict itself to discussing the ‘leftist’ current, which includes a diverse spectrum of communists, nationalists and progressives. The Arab uprisings have unveiled the grand structural crises that plague the Arab Left and revealed its in­consistencies, ruptures and fear of the movement of history; along with its dependency on Arab regimes and the military interventions of the very international powers it claims to oppose. The reality of these popular uprisings and the fact that no political parties, leftist or otherwise, have played any significant role in instigating them, or shaping their later paths, provide us with a way to understand these crises.

Scarcity of theory

The Arab Left emerged in the context of anti-colonial struggles. Its discourse was formed in the era of Third World national liberation movements in the wake of World War II and the ascendance of the Soviet Union as a second world power on a par with the United States. Its discourse has hardly evolved since that era, for many reasons. First, there is the incompletion to this day of national liberation projects, arising from the objective impossibility of achieving their goals within the borders set up by colonialists for the purpose of holding the territories they mark at bay: dependent, socially distorted and devoid of emancipatory potential. Second, there is the lack of significant intellectuals – with the exception of Mahdi Amel, Samir Amin and a few others – who are capable of delving into the social and economic structures and formations in order to demarcate those segments of society that have the most interest in progressive change. Third, there is the authoritarian and Stalinist structures of most Arab leftist parties, which disable critical thinking and theoretical argumentation. Party education, at best, has been limited to echoing the opinions of the political bureau and chairman of the party, while indoctrinating party members to view their decisions in the same way that the adherents of religious currents view the scriptural interpretations of their leaders.

Political discourse needs an intellectual ground; otherwise, in the long run, political practice becomes chaotic and unproductive. We can see this clearly in the course of the Arab uprisings. In the absence of intellectual grounds upon which peoples’ movements can unfold, and in the absence of organizations capable of actualizing such grounds, popular uprisings soon reach a crisis. They become unable to ‘bring down the system’ because no new or alternative system exists. A certain disdain for ‘theorization’ has seeped into the minds of the new generation of activists, in the wake of an era in which political organizations were machines producing political theories designed to justify their incompetence in changing reality. Many of the young activists are thus solely focused on ‘working on the ground’, without ‘wasting time on theorizing’, forgetting that theory provides any political movement with its rationale and prevents its subversion by opponents... read more:
http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/dissonances-of-the-arab-left


Bustani told Morison he's happy that people have taken to the streets in protest, but he's not optimistic that it will result in real change. "There's no ideology, no thinkers," he said. "The 'Arab Spring' as CNN calls it, will soon see autumn."