Arab Marxism and National Liberation

Rethinking Marxism

The article reviews the recently published volume, Arab Marxism and National Liberation: Selected Writings of Mahdi Amel, edited by Hicham Safieddine, translated by Angela Giordano. The focus of the review is to argue that Amel’s Marxian analysis is reducible neither to the project of National Liberation, nor to theories of uneven development, but has to be considered in relation to the influences of 20th century French epistemology and structuralism. Amel’s work opens up major conceptual problems that are crucial to contemporary Marxism such as: the relation between idealism and materialism, and structuralism and dialectics. Most importantly, Amel did not simply prioritize anti-colonialism over anti-capitalism, rather he aimed to provide a systematic theory for the analysis of colonization from within the mechanisms of capitalist domination.

Rethinking Marxism , 2022

argument. Academically rigorous and highly readable, Hannan's book is also challenging and politically relevant. Ethics under Capital never skirts around the central issue of the profound failures of liberalism but is rather a powerful contribution to and development of the anticapitalist tradition. Much to Hannan's credit, it also never loses sight of the possibility for navigating a course out of the moral wilderness that liberal capitalism creates.

Critical Historical Studies

The article discusses Lebanese Marxist philosopher Mahdi Amel's formulation of the concept of "colonial mode of production" as a differential mode from capitalism that is linked to it through "structural causality." Amel theorized the colonial mode of production as a singular mode that was seen to be specific to some social formations like Lebanon, Algeria, and Egypt. The article draws out the Althusserian in

2020

The Arab Revolutions that began in 2011 reignited interest in the question of theory and practice, imbuing it with a burning political urgency. In Revolution and Disenchantment Fadi A. Bardawil redescribes for our present how an earlier generation of revolutionaries, the 1960s Arab New Left, addressed this question. Bardawil excavates the long-lost archive of the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon and its main theorist, Waddah Charara, who articulated answers in their political practice to fundamental issues confronting revolutionaries worldwide: intellectuals as vectors of revolutionary theory; political organizations as mediators of theory and praxis; and nonemancipatory attachments as impediments to revolutionary practice. Drawing on historical and ethnographic methods and moving beyond familiar reception narratives of Marxist thought in the postcolony, Bardawil engages in "fieldwork in theory" that analyzes how theory seduces intellectuals, cultivates sensibilities, and authorizes political practice. Throughout, Bardawil underscores the resonances and tensions between Arab intellectual traditions and Western critical theory and postcolonial theory, deftly placing intellectuals from those traditions into a much-needed conversation.

2012

The paper will draw the contours of the intellectual project of Mahdi Amil (1936–87), a prominent Lebanese Marxist. It will start by relocating Amil's work in the general problématique of the adaptation and adoption of theories in the periphery, looking at the process of translation he deploys in his construction of an " Arab Marxism. " After presenting his project, the paper will focus on its diachronic dimension, by presenting two developments that threatened Amil's overarching project, namely, the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s and the rise of a new register of critique in the 1980s, epitomized by the work of Edward Said. The paper will conclude with a discussion of the contemporary relevance of Amil's work to the historiography of modern Arab political thought.

Arab Studies Journal, 2021

Review of Fadi A. Bardawil, "Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation" (Duke University Press, 2020). Arab Studies Journal 29, no. 1, 118–123. https://www.arabstudiesjournal.org/291-spring-2021.html

The seminars resulted from research collaboration between two projects at Roskilde University in Denmark and the OIB on the history of socialist and communist movements and ideas in the Levant. The location of the seminars in Lebanon and the focus of the research groups partly explain why, out of the fives articles herein, four deal with Lebanese case studies and one focuses on Egypt. Another reason is simply circumstance. Other presentations at the seminars-dealing with Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen-did not make it into this special section for various reasons. As a result, we admit to perpetuating a tendency to overexpose Lebanon and Egypt in research on the Arab left. Having said that, these two countries have indeed been central locations for the intellectual and cultural production of Arab com-

2020

The struggle for political participation, social justice and legal equality was a key element of radical socialist and communist movements that emerged in Arab countries before and after World War I. These movements mobilized the masses, organized the workers, formed political parties and called for political demonstrations or, in some instances, for armed revolution. The spread of radical ideas among workers, the middle class, and intellectuals mirrored the growing integration of Arab societies into a globalized economy from the nineteenth century onwards. Ideologically, the main domestic opponents of Marxist/Communist movements in many Arab countries were Arab nationalist and Islamist movements both of whom connected citizenship rights to national and/or religious identity and strove to establish a homogeneous nation. In contrast, the radical left recruited followers from all sectors of Arab societies, especially from religious and ethnical minorities as well as members of foreign nationalities. Women participated also in communist/Marxist movements, but sources reveal the male-dominated cultures inside these movements and the little attention they gave to the struggle for women’s rights. In spite of the political differences, communists throughout history formed part-time alliances with nationalist, Islamists and authoritarian states, often with detrimental results. Moreover, the rigid structures of communist parties did not favour internal democracy. After 1990, the communist movement lost influence and many former supporters moved onwards to liberal or Islamist ideas, as part of an often bitter learning process. The remaining as well as newly emerging leftist groups are experimenting with new forms of organisation, mobilisation, action, and ideological mixture. A higher sensibility for questions of citizenship rights is characteristic for the post-Communist left. In the recent civil uprisings of 2010/11 and 2019/2020 in many Arab countries, many leftist movements are present, but they represent mainly one contested ideological current among others. Related topics: 1. Socialist and Communist Movements before and after World War I 2. Women Participation and Women Rights in Marxist/Communist Movements 3. Communist/Marxist Movements and Religion 4. Leftism in the Recent Uprisings in the Arab World For further information, see: https://nahoststudien.philhist.unibas.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/nahoststudien/CfA_MUBIT_2020_Arab_Marxism_Final.pdf

Arab Existentialism: An Invisible Chapter in the Intellectual History of Decolonization

IN MAY 1944, WHEN THE EGYPTIAN philosopher
Abd al-Rahman Badawi defended hisdissertationonexistentialtime,TahaHusayn,thedoyenofmodernArabletters, declared it the birth of modern Arab philosophy. The defense was a national event, andthewidelydistributedEgyptiandailyal-Ahramimmediatelysharedthenewswith itsreaders.1 Sixyearslater,Badawiannouncedthathehaddevisedanewphilosophy for“ourgeneration.”Hecalleditexistentialism(wujudiya),andthoughitsharedthe name of the European movement, it was not simply a carbon copy of it, but rather a series of formulations and adaptations that collectively sought to create a new postcolonial Arab subject: confident, politically involved, independent, self-sufficient, and above all liberated. Whether in its Heideggerian or its Sartrean form, we normally think of existentialism solely as a chapter in European intellectual history. Yetinthecontextofdecolonization,ArabintellectualsprocessedtheideasofMartin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre into an entirely new intellectual tradition that was European in origin and Middle Eastern by design. What began as an esoteric experimentonaphilosopher’sdeskgrewintoadecentralizedyetinfluentialintellectual movementwithmeaningfulglobalconnections.Bytheearly1960s,Arabculturewas dominatedbythelanguage,assumptions,andpoliticsofexistentialism.Yetthisstory has thus far remained an invisible chapter in the intellectual history of decolonization.