The Unity of the Arab East

THE UNITY OF THE ARAB EAST

By M K and JA

The real development of the Arab East during these last years, and particularly during the most recent phase, brings evidential proof that the unification of the Arab nation, its liberation from direct or indirect foreign domination, and the raising of its economic and social level, do not form mutually distinct stages, but are intertwined in one and the same process of development. It cannot be a question of first completing liberation before then going on to unity. Every bourgeois national movement puts first the question of the unification of the nation's parts into a state, in order to be able to develop itself. We do not in this article propose to take up the state of the peoples who were living in the Near East before the VIth and VIIth centuries, any more than the spread of the Arab nation in the Middle Ages, beginning from the Hejaz northward toward what is now the Turkish frontier, then eastward in Iraq, and finally over all North Africa. At that period the existence of an Arab nation - and not Arab nations — from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic and from Aden to the Turkish frontier and the Euphrates, became a historical reality, which has not been able to be destroyed in spite of its division into separate states in modern times. When we witness nowadays the unheard-of enthusiasm of the masses in all the Arab countries for Nasser, it is not a question of "love" for a mystical personage. It is a question of a personality who expresses the Arab people's determination to unify. Ask a Europeanized inhabitants of Lebanon of a semibarbarian of the Hejaz to what people he belongs ; he will not answer Lebanese or Hejazi, but will proudly proclaim that he is an Arab. Arab national consciousness is deeply anchored in the masses. The national question cannot be treated according to a pedantic schema. History shows that peoples have dissolved, that others have split up ; great migrations have destroyed some peoples and created others; the artificially created state frontiers of today give less than ever a true picture of national limits. In the US A there was formed, and there is still being formed today, a new nation which results from the mixture of all the nationalities of the earth. There are peoples whose constituent parts are not homogeneous; there are differences in economy, mentality,

In his explanation of the concept "nation," Stalin stated that four points characterize a nation: language, territory, economy, and the psychic formation that is translated by community of culture. The schematic and pedantic use of this definition allows both the Kremlin "specialists" and the leaders of the Communist Parties in the Arab countries to speak of Arab peoples and not of the Arab people. They. have not grasped that a people is the result of a certain historical development, of historical factors, which bring the human masses to a national common denominator. THE ARAB NATIONAL MOYEMENT At the time of the decline of the Arab empire, its people tell under the horribly oppressive and rough domination of the Turks. The former Arab empire was divided up according to administrative needs into provinces and sanjaks. It was often a case of regions and even countries being dominated by feudal suzerains, who were subjected to the central power of Constantinople and paid taxes to it. It was only the partition of the world among the Western powers at the end of the First World War that parceled up the Arab East into states by the tracing of artificial frontiers : separate states saw the light of day under the names of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan, Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the various little English-controlled principalities along the Persian Gulf on the Arabian peninsula. These designations as countries have no relation with what nation their inhabitants belong to; it is a case of exclusively geographical names: Lebanon is the name of a mountain; the name of Syria has remained in memory of the Assyrian people, who disappeared millenia ago; Transjordan means the other side of the Jordan; etc. In this field it was the French who pushed furthest. They created within the frame of present Syria two midget states — the Allaouites and the Jebel Druze — in order to be able thus to insert a wedge in the Arab national movement. They did not succeed, however, seeing that it was absurd to speak of an Allaouite or a Druze people, just as it is absurd to speak of a Coptic, Maronite, or Ismaëlian people. These are religious minorities that formed within the Arab people. Among these minorities; furthermore, there is no separatist movement, as many an interested person in the world would like to have it believed Already well before the First World War — properly speaking with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt - Western imperialism began to install itself in the Arab East. Indeed, beginning with the last decades of the last century, the English were already dominant in Egypt, even if it was formally attached to the Turkish Empire and became a British colony only after the First World War. The national movement therefore had to fight not only against the Turks, but also against the growing political, economic, and fi-

44 nancial influence of the English in Egypt. At times these battles took the form of sanguinary combats. The most serious uprising was that of the Egyptian peasants in 1881 under the leadership of the intelligentzia and the army officer Ahmed Arabi, an uprising that the British army crushed in blood. In Turkey there was born the bourgeois-democratic movement generally known under the name of "the Young Turks" ; the young Arab intelligentzia took an active part in this movement. But after having overthrown the sanguinary Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid, the "democratic" masters of the power turned with all the more violence against their former Arab collaborators. After the vietory of the "Young Turk" bourgeois revolution, not only did the Arabs not win their freedom, but national oppression was to become still more intense. During the First World War the Arab leaders placed their hopes in "liberation" by the Western democratic imperialisms, and some of them made contacts with England and France. Many of them were arrested and hanged by the Turkish commander in Syria, Jamal Pasha. At the same period, England was negotiating with Hussein, Emir of Mecca, future king and founder of the Hashemite dynasty. At no moment did this man dream of national liberation. On the contrary. He allied himself with the English in order to avenge himself for the minimum reforms of the "Young Turks." For him, the Young Turks were "revolutionaries" ; that the Arab leaders had been hunted down by them interested him very little. He was hoping to create, with the alliance of the English, a sufficiently strong reactionary power against the national-revolutionary aims of the movement; besides, the English paid well. In 1916 began the so-called "Great Arab Revolt," and with it the alliance of the Hashemite dynasty with British imperialism that still exists. Domination over an independent Arab kingdom, promised to Hussein, was never attained. British imperialism was engaged in an imposture. Indeed, at the same moment it was signing the famous Sykes-Picot Agreement, which settled the division of spoils between British and French imperialisms. And there was much more. The security of their zone of domination against the impetuous Arab national movement was not sufficiently guaranteed by the Hashemite feudalists and conservatives. That is why the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Balfour, in November 1917 transmitted to the future President of the State of Israel, Dr Weizman, the "Balfour Declaration," which has become famous. This promised the Zionist organization a "Jewish National Home" in Palestine; i e, the creation of a useful tool of imperialism against Arab independence.

When, by the publication of the archives after the October Revolution, the secret Sykes-Picot Treaty was divulged, that was the end of the Arab national movement's friendship with England and France. The

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL hatred became terrible. But meanwhile there had occurred the partition of the Arab East. After Hussein's son Feysal had been chased out of Syria by the French, he was, thanks to British imperialism, crowned king in Iraq, as was his brother Abdullah in Transjordan, almost exclusively inhabited by BeWith the dislocation of the Arab world into states, a new situation arose for the national movement. First, it found itself faced, no longer by one great adversary, but partly by the English and partly by the French. To that was added the fact that the two imperialist powers set up in their respective zones of domination little state entities which in their turn produced a further dividing up of the movement; then the big Arab leudal landowners, compradores, and reactionary politicians, who were interested in the maintenance of foreign domination, also began to cling to the maintenance of particularism, since this permitted them to enjoy their privileges and guaranteed their social, economic, and political positions. This new state of affairs, however much a handicap it might be for the development of the atomized national movement, could not, however, stop it. At by imperialism created a proletariat which began to set its mark on the national movement. Whereas in its beginnings the movement had been represented by a circle of "enlightened" rich men, it became more and more a movement of the masses. The hindering factor of the Church and of the strongly religious state of mind withdrew more and more into the background. . The founder of the Egyptian Wafd party, Sa'id Zaglul, who played an important revolutionary part at the beginning of the '20s, launched the slogan : "Addin l'Ăllah, w'al-utan l'djamie [Religion for God, and the Fatherland for everybody]." A series of scholars began to demand the separation of church and state. The audacity of expressing such an aspiration in an Islamic state in itself signified a genuine revolution. During and after the Second World War legal left organizations appeared for the first time. Trade-union associations were set up everywhere. New cultural forces and progressive publications developed. The idea spread that a low material level is the result of national oppression. In 1916 there burst out in Egypt a wave of demonstrations and strikes which had as their goal the departure of the English. In Cairo and Alexandria workers and students formed joint committees which led this movement. Side-by-side with slogans of an anti-imperialist nature others also appeared against the big landowners and native capitalists. The Arab leaders sought for means to master this more and more impetuous movement. The kings and presidents got together and consulted. English "spe-

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL cialists in the struggle against communism" played an important role in this matter. Nevertheless, even jame bloody reprisals could not put a stop to the drive. Only the outbreak of the Israelo-Arab war in 1948 had tragic results also from this point of view. The leading strata could exploit the state of war and the strong wave of chauvinism resulting therefrom in order to bring the masses back, temporarily, to silence. The Soviet Union, which had been one of the main instigators of the partition of Palestine and the creation of the State of Israel, thereby brought help to the reactionary leaders. This repression, however, could not solve the problems of imperialist domination and the low level of the social and economic situation. But, given the fact that the masses were not yet sufficiently organized, had not yet arisen again from their defeat, and as a result of the lack of a revolutionary Marxist leadership and the execrable behavior of the leaderships of the traditional workers' parties, a new force appeared: young officers revolted by the inhuman social and political conditions; what journalists now term "Nasserism." When in 1952 the young Egyptian officers' caste drove out the king and forever destroyed the power of the feudalists by an agrarian reform, not only was the rotted structure of the Arab social edifice brought to totter, but it was also the beginning of the liquidation of foreign domination, the beginning of a still more vigorous national consciousness, and of the concrete basis for the unification of the Arab East. Such is, as we have already mentioned, the real basis for the indescribable enthusiasm of the masses in all the Arab countries for Nasser. The Nasser regime has nothing to do with socialism. The Nasser regime, a regime of the national bourgeoisie struggling for independence and the development of its economy, is empirical in its actions and represses the independent movement of the working class. Though it is true that the conquests of the Nasser regime — by agrarian reform, industrialization, raising of the cultural level, laicization of the schools, universities, and tribunals, construction of housing for the poor, etc. — are much too slight to be able to solve the basic problems of Egyptian society, they nonetheless represent a revolutionary factor. The definitive triumph over backwardness by the complete use of the potential resources of the economy can be the doing only of a socialist Arab East. The stories going round to the effect that Egypt and Syria might be satellites of the Soviet Union, exactly

"people's democracies," are plain silly. Whereas in the US S R and in the "people's democracies" capitalist domination and the capitalist mode of production have been abolished, here the national bourgeoisie reigns, with the goal, precisely by industrialization, of developing and strengthening capitalIn the relations between Egypt-&-Syria and the U S S R, there is an aspect that did not previously

45 exist. Up till now, the bourgeoisie of colonial and backward countries that "independent" sought the aid of the strongest capitalist countries as to strengthen their economic position by a share in the profits, whereas the Arab national bourgeoisie is seeking this aid from the US S R. The U S S R is today in a position to give economic aid to backward countries, to contribute to the development of their industries, and it nowise asks in return a social revolution, not even legality for the Communist Party and the independent workers' movement. While it puts itself at the service of the national bourgeoisie, it calmly watches the oppression and incarceration of Communists and other left elements by that same bourgeoisie. For the Kremlin bureaucracy, the criterion in its relations with each country is the question of the country's momentary attitude toward American imperialism. For the national bourgeoisie, from the viewpoints both of the struggle against imperialism and of the fight against the threat coming from the toiling masses, this aid is more advantageous than that of the Western powers. THE ECONOMIC FACTORS OF THE TENDENCY TO UNIFICATION The imperialist politicians and publicists, their allies in the Arab countries, and the Zionists, all like to present the idea of the unity of Arab countries and the unity already achieved between Egypt and Syria as a desire for conquest by the Egyptian regime. Every rising bourgeoisie takes the road to national unification. When a reactionary like Bismarck unified the German states, this unity as such — despite the simultaneous beginning of the growth of German imperialism — was a progressive fact from the economic and social viewpoint. This is even a thousand times more true for the Arab East, at a time when the process of unity is being carried out in the roughest of fights against imperialism. Unity is an indispensable precondition to any attempt to overcome backwardness — not only political backwardness, but also economic backwardness. The Nasser regime's agrarian reform was only a very limited one, since only some 10% of the landless or poor peasants obtained any land through it. But this reform, even were it much more extensive - and a socialist regime ought to go much further in this field - could not of itself solve the agrarian problem. Only combined with a far-reaching industrialization could it reach this goal. But every industrialization requires a vast market, hence the need of unity. The objection might here be raised: hence Nasser wants to conquer markets for his country, therefore he has imperialist "aims." That argument is very naïve, if not consciously hostile. Here there is not one country which is conquering another, but countries populated by the same nation which are unifying. What is more, industry was being developed in Syria prior to the unification at a previously un-

known rhythm, yet, as we shall show later, the Syrian bourgeoisie was precisely one of the most active promoters of the Syro-Egyptian fusion. Anyone with a normal mind cannot imagine that a bourgeoisie in full expansion begs the bourgeoisie of another country to take its situation in hand. During the last 40 to 50 years the Egyptian fellahin have become impoverished to an incredible degree. One of the important causes of this is the rapid growth of the population - some 1.5 million annually — without its being possible to increase arable area sufficiently, while industrialization is not important enough to be able to absorb this "population surplus." On the contrary, there are in Syria and Iraq enormous areas of arable land desperately calling for labor; and even public works begun in Syria, with irrigation networks, cannot be carried out for lack of hands. Iraq and Syria, unlike Egypt, are "underpopulated," or, more exactly, countries lacking labor forces comparable to their existing posThe natural wealth of the Arab East is still not wholly known. But even if only what is already known is taken as a basis, not only does the disproportionate. distribution of population among the Arab countries appear absurd, but one realizes what economic resources remain unused. It is in the field of oil that the evil is worst. The masters of Saudi Arabia and the little principalities where there are fantastic oil resources, are swimming in the gold they collect in the form of "royalties" from the American and British oil monopolies. These fortunes are squandered and not devoted to any productive sector, and only a very small part of them is expended for public needs. It is not true that the Arab countries are rich only in oil. In fact, the search for mineral wealth has been quite limited. Great wealth is nonetheless known to exist. In the north of Iraq there is lignite, and recently copper and iron ores and sulphur were discovered there; in the south there is gypsum and sand suitable for glass-making. In Syria: natural bitumen, salt cristals, sulphur, manganese, asbestos, and chrome. In Lebanon : lignite, iron ore, sand particularly precious for the production of glass, already used therefor by the ancient Phonicians. In Jordan: high-quality phosphates in considerable quantities, chemical products of different kinds in quantities beyond estimate in the Dead Sea, whose extraction by distillation is economical, manganese ore in the Patra region, iron and copper ore, perhaps also oil. In Saudi Arabia: besides oil, gold. In Yemen: beside soil of good quality for agriculture, there is iron, copper, gold, and silver. In Egypt: rich mines of iron very close to the surface; in the east, manganese ore ; to the west of the Nile, chrome, nickel, tungsten; and in the Sinai desert, zinc, lead and a little gold, great quantities of sodium, salts, sulphates, asbestos, coal, and oil.

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL All this wealth is scarcely scratched. When one realizes this economic potential, besides the rich sources of oil already being utilized, the excellent cotton of Egypt and also in these last years of Syria as well, the citrus plantations of Palestine, and the immense agricultural possibilities in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen -then the aspiration for unity becomes something selfevident. For the exploitation of these riches and of Its economic potential, each of these countries taken alone is limited and dependent on foreign capital. It is the unity of all these countries and their independence from the economic interests of international finance capital that will allow the full utilization of this economic potential. Unity and independence are not only a basic need of the broad masses and of the revolutionary socialist movement, but a first objective in the bourgeois-democratic tasks. Another important factor is the mass of intellectuals. The number of university students has been growing ever since the end of the world war, and, atter their education, many of them find no employment; some of them make their way to the most backward countries of the Arab East so as to find there some means of existence, and thus carry the idea of unity even into these countries. In Beirut alone there are three universities, of a relatively high level, while the whole artificial state structure has a population of less than a million and a half. If there be added thereto the highly developed production of intellectuals in Egypt, an idea can be formed of the pressure brought to bear by this element in the direction of greater state unity, independence from foreign intellectual forces, and development of the economic base. Incidentally, there must be mentioned in this context the great mass of professionally qualified forces in the western part of Jordan, whose basis for existence in more developed Palestine was taken away from them, and who now find themselves in a more backward Jordan, semi-patriarchal, semi-feudal, which has moreover no basis for existence from the economic viewpoint. THE UNIFICATION OF EGYPT AND SYRIA In the public speech in which he officially announced the achievement of Syro-Egyptian unity, Nasser said that, while pan-Arab unity was, it was true, the main goal, he was nevertheless surprised by the rapid achievement of this even partial unification. If we consider the present situation, we cannot but accept these words. Our exposition has shown the urgent need for unity for the progressive development of the Arab East, of capitalist growth, of industrialization. Such is Nasser's goal. But the road toward that goal is studded with ambushes for Nasser, including from the viewpoint of the movement of the masses. It is true that the organized workers' movement is harshly hunted down and repressed in Egypt; yet any observer whatever can

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL note that the process of development desired precisely by Nasser and his men has aroused - and that throughout the Arab East — a mass movement hitherto unknown, which threatens to go over his head. Nasser needs the masses for his bourgeois-democratic tasks, but a mass movement is a base for ¿ socialist revolution ; that is why at the same time he represses in blood any manifestation of the independent workers' movement. For this reason also he could not accept with so much rapidity and lightheartedness unity with Syria, where the independent workers' movement is strongly organized. And so it can be admitted that the initiative for unification at that moment was not of his doing, and that he was ready to accept it only under certain very specific conditions. In order to understand the immediate origins of the fusion that has taken place and also Nasser's conditions, let us look at the other side, the political situation in Syria. The three main parties in Syria - apart from the Communist Party — were "Hiseb as-ch'ab" (People's Party), "Hiseb al-watani" (National Party), and "Hiseb el-ba'ath el ichtirraki" (Party of the Arab Socialist Renaissance). The first two came from the "National Bloc," which existed before and during the war, and which was the leadership of the national movement in Syria. Some of its chiefs in the mid-'20s led the famous Syrian uprising against French domination, and some were already militants in the Arab national movement under Turkish domination. During and after the fall of the dictator Chichakli, the oppositions. became more clearly crystalized than in the preceding period. It is true that there were capitalist and even feudal elements in both parties; but the People's Party proved to be the typical representative of the feudalists and the compradore bourgeoisie, campaigned for union with reactionary Iraq, and tried to sabotage and repress any progressive movement. Syria's development, however, finally reduced it to silence, and during the Syro-Egyptian unification this party did not dare raise its head. The National Party, whose leader, Sabri el-Assali, was premier during the last years, proved to be, as opposed to the People's Party, the representative of Syria's national bourgeoisie, in favor of collaboration with Egypt and economic relations with the US S R, of developing Syrian industry, and of being politically more independent from the West. The third party, known under the short form of its name, El-Ba'ath, resulted from the 1953 fusion of the Arab Party of Renaissance (especially intellectuals under the leadership of Michel Aflak and El Bittar) with the Arab Socialist Party under the leadership of Akram Haurani, who had won a reputation by his 2 ton defense of the poor fellahin against the big landlords. The party's programme is of a quite petty-bourgeois confusion, which does not prevent its two

47 essential points from being typical of a left wing of the national bourgeoisie while revolutionary by their content: 1) State unity of all the countries of the East; 2) Agrarian reform. The other points are : a raising of the masses' living level; an understanding between workers and entrepreneurs in industry; neutrality between the two power blocs ; "Arab and not Marxist socialism." This party had won a very considerable influence both among the masses and in the state apparatus and the army, and was, concertedly with the National Party, the main force that brought about the fusion with Egypt. Io a certain degree, although under very ditterent conditions, the National Party and El-Ba'ath found themselves in a situation analogous to that of Nasser. Like him, they needed the masses in the struggle against internal reaction and against imperialism. But, also like him, as representatives of the national bourgeoisie, they are conscious of the danger of the movement of the masses. While in Egypt the masses have no right to organize, in Syria this right was the most developed in all the Arab East, and the workers there were organized in an independent way. Against imperialism the leading strata had to accept the aid of the US S R, and the influence of the Syrian C P grew. What they feared for their domination was not so much the US S R, or the C P whose programme does not even reach the degree of progressiveness of that of the Ba'ath, but that the ardent upsweep of the masses might go over their heads. Under the conditions in Syria, they could not hold out alone against the potential threat of the mass movement, and they were hence the eager instigators of the fusion with Egypt, while Nasser accepted it willingly provided, however, that all Syrian political parties were dissolved. Nasser stated that he was acting in this way to prevent the reaction from growing; in reality he is afraid of the existence of parties in the face of this spontaneous upsurge of the masses. This analysis must not minimize the essential factor in the fusion: reenforcement against the aggressive imperialism of the United States and against native reaction. What matters here is to grasp exactly the class reasons for the form of unification. The Syrian national bourgeoisie felt too weak to be able to confront various dangers. It is interesting that it has not yet dared to take the most elementary step among the bourgeois-democratic tasks: an agrarian reform. Only now, with the aid of its Egyptian sister, the plan of such a reform is being worked up. THE IRAQ-JORDAN FEDERATION The bourgeois press sees in this union a countermeasure, inspired by the Western powers, against the Syro-Egyptian union. Western journalism likes to consider events in backward countries only from

48 the viewpoint of the interests and policy of the great powers. It is indiscutable that the great powers exercise strong pressure on the internal and external policy of all countries, particularly small countries and all the more so if they are economically and socially backward. But it is wrong to consider the internal policy of the two countries of the Hashemite crown only from the viewpoint of the imperial interests of the United States and England. The formation of the Iraq-Jordan Federation is the result of an immediate historical and economic necessity. Of course the pressure of the Syro-Egyptian Union constituted on the spot the essential factor for the formation of the IraqJordan Federation which has as its task that of serving as an antidote to the anti-imperialist front. But even without this conjunctural situation, objective and subjective pressures would in the final analysis have forced unity. The review International Affairs, published in Moscow, which always expresses the Kremlin's momentary point of view, says quite correctly in its March 1958 issue that in the last analysis this federation is also an expression of the drive for unity arising from below. Elsewhere it states the problem as follows :

The attitude of the Iraq-Jordan Federation toward the colonialist Bagdad Pact and the Eisenhower Doctrine will be without any doubt one of principal criteria of its nature. It does not declare that the decisive criteria it states raise the question of the social nature of the power in the two countries and that the most important criterion of the later development of this federation is the question of the maintenance or modification of their social nature. The anti-imperialist attitude of Egypt-Syria rests on the fact that in Egypt the influence of feudal vestiges and of the compradores has already been entirely extirpated and that in Syria it is well on the road to being. The Iraq-Jordan power, however, represents the big landlords and the compradore bourgeoisie. The Communist Parties of the Arab East still have not caught up with International Affairs on the question of the Iraq-Jordan Federation. Until the beginning of the Egypto-Syrian fusion, they were against complete unity. When, however, this fusion became a reality, they fell over into the other extreme of recognizing it uncritically. In the Iraq-Jordan Federation, on the contrary, they see exclusively an imperialist intrigue and call on the Iraqi and Jordanians to break up the unity that has just been established.

interesting to note that Nasser, in the speech he made just after the birth of the Iraq-Jordan Federation, in which he vehemently attacked its leaders, did not utter the slightest word to demand the Federation's dissolution. He unvarnishedly told the masses of these two countries that the unity is positive, but that they must drive out the agents of imperialism. This takes its place on the same plane as

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the statement of the Syrian ex-President, Kouatli, at the time of his discussion with the King of Jordan, Abdullah, since assassinated: Union of Syria with Jordan? Yes, but on condition that the constitution be republican ! In other words: Unity of the Arab East with the expulsion of the Hashemite kings and their acolytes, who represent the feudalists and the compradores. Even the creation of the Arab League after the world war, which the English sought to exploit as an imperialist tool, and which was a very loose bond among the Arab states, pledging them to very little, was a concession to the tendency to and the politico-eco-. nomic need of unity. It is necessary to see not only the negative side. Just as in the Syro-Egyptian union there must not be seen an event constituting only a wondertul progress - considering that it is a question of a regime of the national bourgeoisie which is oppressing the independent movement of the masses just so there must not be seen in the Iraq-Jordan Federation nothing but the intrigues of internal reaction and of imperialism. This federation is also a result of the aspiration of the masses for unity, has its economic importance, and contains socially and economically a potentiality for the overthrow of native reaction. CONCLUSIONS In order to leave no misunderstanding floating around, we want to affirm clearly at the end of our exposition that we do not see, in the unity of the Arab East, an ideal, or any Ersatz of the socialist revolution. In the same way, the theory of the march toward socialism by stages is alien to us, seeing that the national bourgeoisie, though it is progressive up to a certain point and can act against imperialism, is nevertheless incapable of fully accomplishing even the democratic tasks. That is why the theses of the Fifth World Congress of the Fourth International state :

The Fourth International struggles for the creation of mass workers' parties, independent from the political formations of the bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeoisie, and Stalinism. The task of the workers' party in the colonies is not the creation of the bourgeois power, but of the workers' and peasants' government which, on the road to the building of socialism, accomplishes the democratic tasks; that means that it carries out agrarian reform, industrialization, and national unification, while simultaneously nationalizing principal means of production and basing itself politically on councils of the toiling classes. The present situation, however, is such that, as a result of the opportunist policy of the leaders of the traditional workers' parties and the Kremlin, throughout the world the mass workers' parties on whom these tasks are incumbent exist only in embryonic form. These embryonic organizations, in order to

"leading bourgeois circles" are talking, not of 1 June 1958

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL grow, must operate within reality, i e, act within the ramework of the progressive movement that actually exists, without giving up their own political and organizational independence. Such is the meaning of the following terms in the above-mentioned theses :

The Fourth International [..] unconditionally supports all struggles of peoples against imperialism, independently of their leadership at any given moment. Such is also the meaning of our position on the question of the unity of the Arab East, and possibly of the unity of the Arab East and the Maghreb, which, however, depends on later developments. Once more : this unity is not an independent goal (in itself) for revolutionary socialists, but an integral part of the world combat for socialism. That is why we support, in the Arab East, any anti-imperialist action, even by the bourgeois leadership, and every , economic measure that contributes to raising the social level of the masses. At the same time we stigmatize its. • policy of repressing the independent movement of the masses, and we work for the creation of mass workers' organizations and for the formation of the revolutionary Marxist party. Let us contrast with that the position of international Stalinism. Léon Feix, one of the leaders of French C P, wrote in its theoretical organ, Cahiers du Communisme :

Certain nationalist leaders call for the fusion of the three countries (Tunisia-Algeria-Morocco) within an Arab or Moslem Maghreb, linked with all the Arab or Moslem countries from

Morocco to Pakistan. This is an old idea of the

Arab League, taken up again and put forward by leading bourgeois circles from Cairo to Karachi. [...] It is a long time since Lenin and

Stalin showed the inevitably reactionary character of nationalist currents based on race or religion [..]. This way of presenting things is absolutely false and slanderous. At whom was Lenin aiming? Who were these "pan-Islamists"? During the civil war in the Soviet Union after the October Revolution, Enver Pasha, the sanguinary master of Turkey, at that period one of the worst oppressors of the. Arabs, engaged in enormous antiBolshevik propaganda among the Moslems of the Caucasus and inside the Soviet Union. To draw on the masses, he played on their religious state of mind, and spread "pan-Islamism." This propaganda, based on religious feelings, was qualified by Lenin as reactionary, and that was justified a thousand times over. But against whom is the "communist" Léon Feix polemicizing?

any "pan-Islamism," but of the unity of the Arab nation. Nor are they speaking, as Feix pretends, jointly with Karachi, which is not at all Arab, but jointly with Damascus, Baghdad, Amman, etc., i e, in the name of the Arab nation. This aspiration to national unity and independence is of a highly progressive, and not "reactionary," nature. There is more. During the controversy between the Pan-Indian Congress and the Moslem League before the partition of India, the Arab national movement took a clear position in favor of the Congress and accused the League of being pro-imperialist. Can there be a better proof of the inconsistency of this Léon Feix ? The Stalinists are committing a crime against the struggle of the colonial and backward peoples by distorting and slandering the national movements in this way. To top all, these "communists" talk about "the historical common interests of France and Algeria." Here we have a phraseology exactly like that of the imperialists. Let us now take a look at the leader of the Syrian Communist Party, Khaled Bagdache. He, like his eminent teacher Stalin, recognizes only an evolution by rigorously respected stages. He was against full state unity for the Arab East. First, he says, each country must be liberated separately. This " nist" has not the slightest notion of the dialectical interaction of various factors. He was unwilling to understand that the unification and the liberation of the Arab East are two mutually inseparable facThe same "communists" of the Arab East who, so short a time ago, were against the Syro-Egyptian Union, uncritically deify it today — while these people say to the Iraqi and Jordanians that they must destroy the Iraq-Jordan Federation, instead of demanding the unification of the Federation and the Republic and the expulsion of the Hashemites and their politicians. In their recent enthusiasm for Nasser's efforts at unification, the Stalinists forget both independent proletarian action and all the left elements who are rotting away in Nasser's dungeons; they have already forgotten that Nasser has illegalized the Syrian C P, the biggest in the entire Near East. WE TROTSKYISTS SUPPORT "NASSERISM" TO THE EXTENT THAT IT IS PROGRESSIVE. BUT WE FIGHT AGAINST THE REPRESSION OF THE INDEPENDENT WORKERS' MOVEMENT, FOR THE CREATION OF A MARXIST WORKERS' PARTY, AND FOR THE FORMA TION OF A WORKERS' AND PEASANTS' GOVERN. MENT OF THE ARAB EAST.

Four Declarations of the International Secretariat