The A. B. C. of the Al-Baath Party.
Dr. Munif Al-Razzaz
Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid
The continuity of the Arab Socialist Baath Party, which for a third of a century has made it an integral part of the Arab people’s steadfastness in the face of Zionism, colonialism, reactionary forces, and separatism, must not be a source of exaggerated complacency or a reason not to abandon the mentality of backwardness and boldness in the face of the problems of the nation and the problems of the Arab revolutionary movement.
The Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party feels that it is required to redouble its intellectual and practical stability as the march of the Arab revolution progresses, so that it will remain in the heart, mind, and spirit of the Arab masses as a constant and renewed vanguard that fights the battle of destiny with the strength of its intellectual originality, which can avoid the pitfalls of the empirical mentality at every crisis and in the face of every turn.
However, if the authenticity of the Party is a source of self-confidence, it is embodied in the Party’s ability to renew while remaining as it is in essence; it is also supposed to push every Party and every patriot to practice a process of criticism of the Ba’ath Party that constantly places it at the level of its national and historical mission.
For its part, the Party took serious steps in self-criticism: at its Eighth National Congress, it approved a clear and objective critique of the Party’s rule in 1963, and at its Ninth National Congress, it approved a critique of the experience of governing in Syria. But at the same time that efforts focus on uncovering the Party’s weaknesses, another process must be carried out: namely, clarifying the Party’s truth in the face of violent and unjustified campaigns to which our Party has been subjected, as no other party has been.
Although these campaigns are ostensibly directed against the Party’s negative, simplistic, or passive image, in fact they are mostly directed against that correct, consistent, and continuous thing in the Baath Party, and by this we mean its essence as a historical movement for the unity, freedom, and socialism of the Arab nation. The purpose of these campaigns is to sow barriers between Arab youth and the Baath Party, to make Arab youth aware of the laws that drive Arab reality, and to help them grasp the path to the future.
Therefore, instead of talking about the role of the Baath Party in the battle for Arab destiny on the land of Palestine, in light of its commitment to the nationalist principle in the armed popular struggle, and instead of talking about the struggle of the Baath Party in Lebanon against the regime, which is constituted by the apparent alliance that it embodies between regionalism and class, more than any other Arab system, the system is the opposite of the call of the Arab Socialist Baath Party, which is based on linking the unitary struggle and the socialist struggle.
Instead, I spoke at this meeting to revisit the principles and prepare to discuss the Party’s political issues at the end of the talk.
1 – The Ba’ath is an ideological movement:
The Ba’ath is an ideological movement. A Movement of Faith
Doctrine is the result of the scientific study of the history of the forces active in it, so that these forces struggle with the laws that govern it. Therefore, it is the conclusion drawn from the world’s historical experience, the sum of history’s meaning.
In this way, the doctrine becomes a practical tool for analyzing the historical meaning of existing reality and serves as a beacon for future foresight.
Just as the laws of science inevitably develop, leading to discoveries, so the laws of history inevitably evolve, influenced by history’s development. They can be fundamentally modified since the subject of science is nature. The laws of nature are constant, and our discovery of these laws is the most advanced in them. The material of history is human society, and human society is developed and unstable; hence it is not only our discovery of its laws that can be developed, but also its laws themselves, and hence the owner of the creed is obliged to develop his doctrine, i.e., his laws, with the development of history.
Baathism is ideological but not a rigid, dogmatic doctrine, and Baath is based on the fact that the world in general and history in particular are in constant movement, resulting from the struggle of forces, not just a continuous struggle.
Each historical stage reacts to another stage and to situations in which the needs of the developed society have exceeded those of the previous stage; each continuous historical stage emanates from its guts and, at the same time, counters it with revolution. However, the nascent historical stage, in its development, transcends the conditions it generated; it rejects the previous stage to become a new situation with subjective characteristics. These characteristics are rooted in the preceding stage and branch into the future stage.
Through the peoples’ response to the challenge of colonialism, the Ba’ath discovered the meaning of the struggle between colonialism on the one hand and the forces resisting colonialism on the other, it discovered the meaning of the national conflict, the meaning of the first and fundamental contradiction that drives society in the “Third World”, it realized the value of the national engine, the driving force of every historical movement, which it realized not only as an anti-colonial force, not only as a negative reaction, but also in its positive face as a constructive civilizational force that unleashes the revolutionary energies inherent in the backward and colonized peoples It opens the horizons for building a world free of slavery and exploitation of all kinds, whether it is the enslavement and exploitation of a people for a people, a class for a class, or an individual for a masses.
The national power was born of resistance to colonialism, which sought to eliminate it as its opposite, and, in its growth, became the driving force behind every progressive construction. Through the fundamental contradiction, the Ba’ath discovered all the other contradictions that are subordinate to it: the contradiction of partial national interests with the larger national interest, the contradiction of sub-relations such as sectarianism, racism and tribalism with the unitary national relationship, the contradiction of repression and dictatorship with the freedom of the masses, the contradiction of individual ownership with the ownership of society.
The Ba’ath discovered the class struggles through the national struggle, and realized that the position of the proprietary classes of the means of production, land and capital, is not only a position of property contrary to the interest and aims of the working classes, but also a position of nationalism, of the national liberation movement, of colonialism, of fragmentation, of freedom, of revolution, contrary to the goal of the movement of the national masses.
He realized that the interests of these material classes inevitably stifled the national motivation of the propertied classes (feudal and capitalist), and that their attitudes towards national issues influenced those interests.
I realized that it is only through the masses that the masses whose interests are contradictory to the interests of colonialism and against backwardness, and that the battle waged by the masses against colonialism inevitably leads them to fight the battle against all the forces that favor colonialism and whose interests are linked to its interests, and that the class struggle is another aspect of the national struggle.
2 – The Ba’ath is a militant movement:
If the Ba’ath were only a creed, it would be only an intellectual school, but besides that, it is a struggle in terms of a doctrine; it is a science, and in terms of a struggle, it is an active movement and force. Its struggle stems from its awareness of history and its role as an active force in it, not a spectator of its events; it is ideological in the sense that it is not blind; it is guided by man’s past experiences so that he realizes the goals of his struggle. He understands and uses the means of his struggle.
Just as faith illuminates the path of struggle, the practice of struggle deepens, clarifies, and develops the meaning of the doctrine; the purpose of the struggle is to be the driving force to achieve the future imperatives of history, and its means in the struggle are to create the mass force capable of achieving this end.
The creation of the conscious struggle in itself is the creation of a progressive nation whose emergence is inevitable by history, and the masses after the struggle are not the masses themselves before the struggle.
The Ba’ath realizes that the imperatives of history do not come automatically; history’s inevitability results from forces pushing forward against forces that pull backward, and the Ba’ath’s duty is to create the driving forces, to shorten history, to achieve it. For the Ba’ath to be a force, it must first be an organization, i.e., a party, and the duty of the first Party is to organize the people, mobilize them around the correct historical doctrine, mobilize their forces, and mobilize them revolutionarily to participate effectively in the revolution. The Party is not a distinct group from the masses of the people, nor is it a substitute for it; it is neither above it nor its guardian; it is the vanguard, originating from the ranks of the people themselves, characterized by its historical awareness of its organization, its originality, its revolutionary field, its field of work, the masses of the people, and the measure of its success in its mission, the extent to which the masses of the people rally around it, believing in what its militants believe with it in the fields of struggle.
The power of the masses and their ability to drive revolutionary change are a formidable force. They have left the masses dependent, surrendered to the necessities of daily life despite all the repression, deprivation, and exploitation under which they groan, as merely belonging to the toiling masses is not an affiliation with the revolution. The masses may explode in spontaneous revolutions without prior awareness. Without organizing such spontaneous revolutions, their fruits will not be extinguished before they mature. The duty of the vanguard is, first, to move the spirit of the revolution so that the latent force becomes an effective force; second, to organize this force to be fruitful; and third, to put it on the right historical path.
The relationship between the masses and their vanguard is reciprocal: just as the masses without their vanguard are a latent force or a wasted active force, so the vanguard without the masses is a theoretical revolution, a revolution on paper.
Fighting party organization is a fight against the people’s organization, and the slogan of non-party is a slogan against the effectiveness of the productive revolutionary masses, for non-partisanship is a dictatorial slogan.
3 – Baath is a revolutionary movement:
The Baath movement rejects the conditions that gave birth to it and is open to creating new progressive conditions; it is a revolution, not a reformist movement that accepts the foundations of existing conditions while rejecting their details. The revolution rejects a situation and openness; instead, it departs from the forces that pull backward and seeks the forces of the future.
The revolution does not put forward one aspect of the corrupt conditions to change it, it is aware of the natural cohesion that exists between the various aspects of the corrupt conditions, so its rejection of it is a comprehensive rejection and its goal for which it is struggling is a comprehensive goal, hence the Baath Revolution is a comprehensive revolution that aims to reject colonialism in its forms such as fragmentation, corrupt systems of government, and subordinate economic relations, and aims to reject the internal factors of backwardness and the backward social relations associated with it, such as sectarianism, tribalism, feudalism, and disparate tendencies such as regionalism and racism.
The revolution aims to build a unified Arab society in which progressive social relations prevail, in which class exploitation disappears, and in which the energies of the masses are opened; and, through the revolution in the existing society, through the revolution of the masses to reject a corrupt reality that not only changes the goal of the revolution, but the masses themselves change, turn against themselves, get rid of the residues of society that revolt against it, and become capable of building a new society.
Through its revolution in the setting of its history, it achieves a revolution in itself, fusing with the movement of history to create the new Arab man. The depth of any revolution is measured by the extent to which it is aware of the meaning of its role in scientific history, the breadth of its mass base, the strength of its organization, the depth of its rejection of the data of the corrupt reality, and the depth of its reception of the values of the revolutionary society linked to the interest of the masses.
4 – Baath is a mass movement:
A revolution is only a revolution with its masses, when the crushed masses are both its instrument and its end; for every revolution whose tool the masses do not have is an incomplete revolution, a super-revolution, and every revolution whose goal is not the masses is a distorted revolution, a false revolution.
In the corrupt society to which the Baath was born, the crushed toiling masses were deprived and exploited, suffocated of energies. The goal of the Baath is to liberate these masses from the bondage of slavery, exploitation, deprivation, and repression, and to release their energies. The means of the Baath in that is to rely on mobilizing the factors of the revolution among the masses to be aware of their situation, to reject it and revolt against it, and to adopt a situation in which they hold their fate and the fate of their society in their hands. Every battle fought by the masses is a step toward awakening their energies, and the best way to move revolutionary energies is to carry the masses with the burden of the revolution; therefore, no group or class should take the place of the masses in the revolution.
Shortening the path of revolution by jumping over the masses undermines the meaning of the real revolution, as colonialism, feudalism, sectarianism, tribalism, and super-dictatorship are different colors of the continuation of suppression, crushing, and keeping the masses crushed and crushed, and the deprived masses may accept being deprived and deceived by many means, especially when society is stagnant and devoid of emergency challengers.
The masses that have not been exposed to the wind of the revolution carry in themselves all the factors of backwardness, even though they are victims of backwardness, and the liberation of the masses from their repression is the first function of the revolution, and especially of the revolutionary vanguard. Therefore, the availability of the revolutionary vanguard is the engine of the spirit of the revolution among the masses, its organizer and its leader. It is the vanguard that is aware of the meaning of repression, the meaning of deprivation, the meaning of backwardness, and it is the one that is aware of the contradiction of the prevailing social conditions and relations with the historical stage. It rejects this contradiction, so its historical message begins to revolutionize and compose it. The vanguard, to be true to its message, must emanate from these audiences themselves.
5 – The Baath is a nationalist movement:
In all countries that have been colonized, directly or indirectly, the first and most basic rejection is directed against colonialism, as the colonial challenge is the main factor that has moved the stagnant society for hundreds of years and created a reaction to the challenge.
Hence, the main contradiction in such countries was between colonialism and the forces fighting against it; that is, the struggle was essentially a national one. The Baath was a movement that fought against colonialism and, as a result, was nationalist.
In long periods of backwardness, identity is lost. In the struggle against clear colonialism, activists must clarify their identity, and oppressed people ask themselves: Who are we? Who are we?
The circumstances of the historical conflict themselves answered this question: We are Arabs, and the Baath said that there is one Arab nation, and he believed in the unity of the nation; the unity of language, history, and land was the basis on which the Arab nation was built.
The unity of colonial interests, despite the differences of the partial colonial states, imposed on the Arab nation the consciousness of its unity, as the unity of the enemy was the reason for the realization of the unity of the self and the unity of the battle: the battle of the same destiny.
The battle against the common enemy stripped the issue of national unity of its theoretical status and placed it at the level of the revolutionary struggle.
Therefore, the Ba’ath took the first practical step by making its organization national, transcending the boundaries of fragmented ideas imposed by colonialism and sustained by local interests. The Ba’ath took its second practical step when it made the battle of every country against colonialism the battle of the entire Arab people.
The Ba’ath realized that colonialism is not only a military occupation that ends with evacuation and independence; it became aware that colonialism could be political influence or unequal treaties. It may be an alliance with similar regimes. Still, above all, it is economic exploitation and the linking of the country’s interests to those of foreign capital, its privileges and monopolies, and colonialism, which does not depend on its forces alone to carry out its purposes, as it has allies such as sectarianism, feudalism, tribalism, and racism. and capitalism associated with it.
The Ba’ath nationalist movement, therefore, is no longer just a struggle for evacuation and independence, but a revolutionary movement to get rid of colonialism and all that it represents, whether exposed or covered, and to get rid of all the conditions and relations that facilitate the survival of the interests of colonialism.
6 – The Ba’ath is a socialist movement:
Through the suffering of the national struggle, the nationalist movement had to become a socialist and socialist movement simultaneously; the national movement emanated from two factors:
The first is the realization that colonialism itself is not just a military occupation or foreign influence, but is above all a link of the countries under colonial influence to the interests of exploited global capitalism. Resisting colonialism, then, means resisting the system on which colonialism itself is based.
Second: Recognizing the close interdependence between colonial interests and the interests of the local classes owning land and capital, and recognizing the inevitability of these classes deviating from following the correct revolutionary line in the fight against colonialism, its influence and interests, since resistance to colonialism means the resistance of its counterparts from the exploiters.
From this negative reaction and through the national struggle, the nationalist movement became a socialist movement, and the class struggle was born. Still, this movement, in overcoming the negative reaction and in its march towards creative construction, became aware of two basic facts:
The first is that there is no place for exploitation in a free progressive nation, and that socialism is the goal because it is the only system that releases the energies of the masses, frees them from slavery and exploitation, and develops the productive capacity of the backward homeland.
Second, that the wealth of the nation belongs to the nation and that the means of production must be in the hands of the producers, for socialism is therefore an inevitable fate, because the revolutionary spirit created by the national struggle in the masses leads the toiling masses, who have been liberated from their deposits, to reject exploitation in all its forms, and socialism alone is the antithesis of exploitation.
Socialism is not just an economic system that will be realized in the future; it is, before that, an awareness of the active forces in society and an awareness of the place of these forces in the national battle, so the belief in socialism is not a belief in the future, but a belief today at the heart of the battle, a belief that the toiling masses are the source of the driving force in the national movement, whether in its negative role, i.e., resistance to colonialism, or in its positive role, i.e., nation-building.
The liberation of the nation and the liberation of the masses is one battle, not two battles, and the toiling masses in this battle are the goal and means of liberation together, all those who are sincerely and consciously in favor of the liberation of the masses, i.e., with socialism.
7 – The Ba’ath is a humanitarian movement:
The Ba’ath Party is an Arab, not a global, nationalist, or internationalist movement. Still, it is a progressive movement that rejects colonialism and backwardness intellectually and militarily; neither colonialism nor backwardness is limited to the Arabs, and the destruction of colonialism in the Arab world, the destruction of colonialism everywhere, and the end of colonialism’s role in the world.
Ending the role of colonialism is a huge act of civilization that overturns all the facts of the existing colonial civilization and upends the social and economic relations in both colonial and non-colonial countries, as the victory over backwardness in the land of the Arab world is a contribution to the victory over backwardness everywhere and a push for progressive forces around the world.
Therefore, the Ba’ath is aware of the meaning of the natural alliance between it and all the forces of revolution, progress and socialism throughout the world, and is aware of its mission in the Third World in particular and in the whole world in general. The Ba’ath Party aspires to achieve peace, but a peace grounded in abolishing the objective causes of war and aggression, not a formal peace based on superficial agreements.
8- Al-Baath looks forward to achieving peace:
The Ba’ath, which is the positive development of the negative reaction to colonialism, has one main goal. The main goal of the Ba’ath is to mobilize the progressive forces of history in the Arab world in a revolutionary movement that achieves, through the struggle against colonialism, fragmentation, and backwardness, the creation of a single Arab nation that includes one Arab state in an advanced socialist society in which the masses use all their energies and enjoy their freedoms.
Hence the slogan of the Baath: unity of socialist freedom, and its belief in the interdependence of these goals was national, so that unity would not exist with the survival of slavery and exploitation, and that the freedom of the masses would not be achieved in the light of fragmentation, feudalism and capitalism, and that socialism would not be established in a backward country where the masses would be repressed and fragmented. A united, free, socialist Arab society is ultimately the Baath’s goal.
The Arab society
