Seventh Congress of the Comintern Moscow, 1935
The full text of the speech by Ramzi, otherwise known as Khaled Bakdash, in the Communist International Congress of 1935 has never been published before in Arabic or English. Yet had it not been for its contemporary implications, this page in the history of the Arab communist movement would probably have never found its place here.
Yes, unlike pragmatists, we do not think that understanding the present, in this particular instance, the present crisis of the Arab left, is remotely possible without a historical context. However, the speech of Khaled Bakdash, the now-deceased General Secretary of the Communist Party of Syria for many decades, is not history just yet. In fact, the analysis and program presented in that speech remain much more pertinent to the Arab left today than most of the literature churned out by Arab Communist Parties from the late 1930’s, especially from 1948, till this date. In the way of contrast, it stands to indict the Arab left for its devolution.
Naturally, this is not a wholesale endorsement of every fleeting sentiment in Ramzi’s speech, be it the glorification of Stalin or the praise of the “great fraternal [Communist] party of France”; in reality, a colonial party which fought bitterly against the independent representation of North African communist parties in the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, just as much as French imperialism refused to recognize the independence of its North African colonies.
Still, from a larger historical and programmatic perspective, the speech of Khaled Bakdash represents a marked break from the line towed by Arab communist parties for over half a century now in a very important respect: ITS FAVORABLE DISPOSITION TOWARDS ARAB NATIONALISM AND ARAB UNITY, apparently, under the approving eye of the pillars of the Third International.
This favorable disposition towards blatantly radical Arab nationalism was evident on two levels: the level of form, and the level of content.
On the level of form, Khaled Bakdash spoke in the name of ALL the Arab delegates at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, the last Congress ever of the Comintern, and the first Congress ever of the Comintern with substantial Arab representation. He addressed that Congress to present a program for a popular anti-imperialist front in the Arab countries AS A WHOLE that had Arab unity at its core. He spoke of social classes in Arab countries, presented himself with terminology like: “we Arab communists”, and emphasized slogans like the “Arabization of the party”.
Interestingly enough, the questionnaires filled out by the Arab delegates at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern indicated that they ALL signed “Arab” for nationality. None claimed “Syrian”, “Iraqi”, “Palestinian”, “Jordanian”, “Egyptian”, or “Lebanese” as their nationality. One Armenian from Lebanon said Armenian, and one from Tunisia filled out: “Jew” (even though that is a religion, not a nationality, at least according to Lenin, the intellectual reference point of the Congress that particular Jew was attending!).
More interesting was the reaction of the Arab delegates to Ferdi, the pseudo-name of Turkish delegate to the Seventh Congress of the Comintern Sefik Husnu Degmer, who endowed himself with the prerogative of addressing the Congress on the situation in Arab countries to the south as part of his speech on the situation in Turkey. Maybe Ferdi could not, in 1935, get over the fact that the Arab countries were no longer then under the several centuries long Turkish occupation, just like the French Communist Party could not accept the independence of North Africa (as a result of which North African delegates remained non-voting members in the Seventh Congress of the Comintern). Yet Ferdi must have had a good jolt of reality when one Arab delegate after another rose up to respond to him. The response of the delegate of the Iraqi Communist Party to Ferdi was especially astute and incisive. The Palestinian delegate’s response to Ferdi took up the first part of his address to the Congress on the Palestinian situation. But the Free Arab Voice is keeping the texts of the speeches of the Iraqi and Palestinian delegates for part II of the Speeches of the Arab Delegates to the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935.
Going back to the content of Khaled Bakdash’s speech, keep in mind that it revolved around establishing a popular anti-imperialist front in the Arab countries as part of the international effort to defeat imperialism. Bakdash laid out six conditions for the success of such a front in the Arab countries, drawing from the writings of the Bulgarian Georgi Dmitrov on the popular front and the experience of the Chinese revolution:
In order to be able to mobilize the Arab masses in an anti-imperialist front, the communists must become the most active fighters for the Arab masses NATIONAL and economic interests. Ramzi called that the first condition for success.
In order to assure the leadership of the working class in the Arab national liberation movement, the Arab communists must work overtime to organize the working class in national trade unions. Ramzi called that the second condition for success.
In order to recruit the large mass of peasants in the countryside to the anti-imperialist front, the communists must be willing to SKIP the issue of agrarian reform where the peasants are not ready to accept it. Ramzi insisted that it is only in the supreme struggle against imperialism, under the leadership of radicals, that the peasants can garner enough confidence and strength to start thinking about the redistribution of feudal lands. He considered adopting that perspective on the peasant issue the third condition of success.
In order to recruit the large mass of the petit-bourgoisie in the cities to the anti-imperialist front, communists must help them organize themselves politically, which will strengthen, rather than weaken, the communists (unlike some communists who thought they would be creating rivals this way, according to Ramzi). It is very interesting that Ramzi advocated here cooperation with the revolutionary nationalists of the petit bourgoisie (as opposed to the reformist nationalists of the large bourgoisie) even when they claimed to be Nazi or fascist. Ramzi said this fascism or Nazism was merely disoriented anti-imperialism that would be corrected once the communists undertake their proper roles in the defense of national interests. He called this connection to the revolutionary nationalists the fourth condition of success.
Despite the oscillation and the betrayals of the reformist nationalists of the grand bourgoisie, one should not assume that all local bourgeois contradictions with imperialism have disappeared. Support the often popular anti-imperialist demands advanced by the bourgoisie, however small they are. In fact, keep supporting them as the reformists back out. This will expose to the masses the true grain of their national reformist leaders. Do not stand in the path of popular national demands just because they are being advocated by the opportunistic reformists, or else you will be crushed. That is fifth condition for success.
The communists must unite the anti-imperialist struggle in all the Arab countries. They must advocate Arab unity to overcome the artificial borders between Arab states. They must oppose the existing division. Moreover, they must coordinate the activities of Communist parties in the Arab countries, especially in the domain of the anti-imperialist struggle. That, Ramzi calls the sixth condition of success.
Then Ramzi goes on to lay out a platform which includes, amongst other things, opposing the Zionist immigration to Palestine, which was to be addressed more thoroughly in the speech of the Palestinian delegate.
Now had the Arab Communist parties followed this line that Ramzi laid out in his speech to the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, their whole future in the Arab World would have been different. Indeed, the whole future of the Arab World would have been different. But no, they had to go on afterwards to recognize “Israel” after 1948 and to downgrade the importance of Arab unity (in the best of cases), in the name of some pedantic class struggle that bears no relevance to the real class struggle that is bound to take place in the colonies and semi-colonies in the Arab World, i.e., the struggle against imperialism and its local supports, Zionism and the Arab compradors. Ramzi’s speech below does not only set the national question in its proper context, which is already problematic for most Marxists, it goes further to set the Arab nationalist question in its proper context.
Ramzi’s Arabist platform is not borne out of chauvinism, mind you. After all, he is not even Arab, but comes from a Kurdish origin. He wasn’t advocating supremacy or racial purity either. He was advocating liberation. As someone who sought to understand the laws of motion of the process of this liberation, he arrived, presumably with the rest of the Arab delegates if he was speaking for them, at this platform as a rational response to objective reality.
Nevertheless, Bakdash was only just beginning to feel his way through the political maze. He wasn’t even advocating one Arab liberation movement (which the revolutionary nationalists such as the Nasserites and the Baathists were to later call for and win over the masses for it on the Arab street). He wasn’t even calling for the unity of the Arab Communist movement, which he was representing at the Comintern. He only called for coordination between different Arab CP’s. He wasn’t even calling for armed struggle against imperialism, which would have been totally appropriate politically, and which would have been in line with the strategy of the Chinese revolution which he was touting as his example. Lagging behind many whom he called “reformist nationalists” in the Arab liberation movement, he wasn’t even giving enough attention to the analysis of the Zionist threat as part of his program to build a truly popular anti-imperialist front, although he did oppose Zionist immigration into Palestine, which is definitely a plus. On glorifying the personality cult of Stalin and the political line of the French CP, indeed, on his later attempts to forge an alliance with the colonial French government in the late thirties, we have irreconcilable disagreements with Bakdash. Yet, the most important redeeming quality of his speech below that he gave in 1935, a speech that stands in total contradiction to his whole political line afterwards, is that it was at least setting the problem of Arab liberation in its proper context:
If there are incomplete democratic tasks to be undertaken before there can be any hope for socialism, if under imperialism national liberation becomes the primary democratic task, and if in the particular circumstances of the Arab World the division imposed on the Arabs by imperialist powers sets national liberation back stages upon stages, then it stands to reason that a truly anti-imperialist platform in the Arab World must have Arab unity at its heart. That is the PROGRESSIVE rationale for Arab unity.
The same goes for eradicating ALL Zionist presence from Palestine, and such an anti-Zionist platform would be progressive even when it is NOT expressed in progressive jargon. What matters is that the Zionist presence in Palestine is an impediment to Arab liberation. That is precisely why Arab delegates rightfully opposed Zionist immigration to Palestine, and had they held on to this line, the whole world would have been different, for the better.
But no! The Arab Communists, including Ramzi, seemed to have abandoned this perspective later, merely to not oppose Stalin’s policies, specifically the recognition of “Israel”, and because the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR could not see the centrality of Arab unity in the democratic revolution in the Arab World. Towing Moscow’s line blindly became another minus for Communists in the eyes of the Arab masses.
Of course, the problem didn’t begin with Stalin’s support for the creation of “Israel” in 1948, but was part of the process of subordinating the Arab national struggle to the priorities of Euro-centric Soviet foreign policy interests beginning around 1937-38, and culminating with the partition of Palestine and creation of “Israel” in 1948.
In the 20s and early 30s Stalin was clearly behind the Arabization policy of the Arab CPs in Palestine as well as Syria/Lebanon. Also the Jewish Zionist “Communists” -- like W. Averbakh (Auerbach) who negotiated with Radek to get the Jewish “Palestine CP” admitted to the Comintern in 1923 and who then headed that Jewish “Palestine CP” for years – were denounced in the Soviet press as “apologists for British imperialism and Zionism” and “counterrevolutionaries” in 1936. That was a very strong endorsement for the Arabization drive from the top Soviet leadership at the time of the Arab uprising in Palestine. (Of course, the Soviets also reportedly sent weapons to the Palestinians; anyway Nazi intelligence said they did).
About 1938 Stalin began to give top priority to good Soviet relations with Britain, France, and the Zionist Jews, and Arab interests within the Communist movement suffered. The move by Arab CPs away from Arabism and strong anti-Zionism seems to have been pushed on them as World War II was approaching, i.e., about 1938.
The Soviet Union didn’t want to cause trouble for the British and French by encouraging Arab Nationalism in their colonies, and it was trying perhaps to win over the Zionists to use British and American Jews to push the UK and US into supporting the Soviets in any war with Germany. After the war, the USSR continued to back the Zionists until mid-1948 (again, probably trying to use the Jews to pressure the US and UK in favor of the USSR). Hence, it was logical for them, if they were supporting the Zionists, not to support Arab unity then either. Of course the lowest depth of Arab Communist degeneracy was when they supported the USSR in voting to partition Palestine and create “Israel”. But that was at the end of 10 years of “drift” in that direction. Later on, as relations between “Israel” and the USSR gradually turned sour and Soviet support turned in favour of the Arabs, neither the Soviets nor the Arab CP’s re-evaluated critically their earlier positions on the recognition of “Israel” or the downgrading of Arab unity.
Thus, soon after the recognition of “Israel”, Syrian workers attacked the offices of the Communist Party in Damascus. The Communist parties of Egypt and Palestine lost more than three-quarters of their supporters according to some estimates. Did they get the point? No! And the rest became modern history. Ramzi’s speech below comes as a grim reminder of what might have been for the Arab CP’s: a forfeited historical role. Then to the extent that the organisations and the individuals who embraced the New Left moved closer to “orthodox” CP positions on the recognition of “Israel” and Arab unity, they have also repeated the mistakes of the past and pre-empted their own existence in the Arab World.
Such “leftists” discredit the left by using leftist jargon to justify this or that form of coexistence with Zionist invaders in Palestine, or to oppose human bombs against them on “humanitarian basis”, then wonder why the masses are going in the opposite direction!! The most tragic element in this situation is that these “leftists” believe such positions testify to their “theoretical depth” and “internationalism”. To that we could only respond with this:
Leftists of the Arab World, Wake up!
Ibrahim Alloush & Muhammad Abu Nasr/ The Free Arab Voice