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Since the Russian Revolution, communist parties have undergone great change,
affecting the entire Left and its associated social movements. Communist Parties in
the Middle East: 100 Years of History aims to cover a century in the lives of these
parties, from the moment the communist ideology first reached the region in the early
twentieth century, right up to the upheaval caused by the dissolution of the USSR
and, more recently, the Arab Spring. The book has been designed to offer a unique,
updated and comprehensive study of communist parties in the Middle East.
The volume analyses the composition of the communist parties in the Middle
East, as well as their role as the vanguard in relation to the objectives of libera-
tion, emancipation, revolution and system change or reform, and their connection
to mass or popular movements. It also looks back at the level of autonomy
experienced by the region’s communist parties during the Cold War, and the ten-
sions that this generated within them, as well as the search for individual con-
structions of communism that considered cultural characteristics and the local
context of the struggle. Finally, the chapters trace the history of the parties,
including – for the first time in the literature – the post-Cold War period and
continuing to the current situation, in which communist parties occupy a residual
position in the political field, sharing space with other groups on the Left, new
programmes adapted to neoliberal advancement in the region, and the mobilizations
symbolized by the uprisings of 2010–11.
The first section of the book presents the evolution of the communist parties in
Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, Lebanon, Morocco, South Yemen,
Sudan, Syria and Turkey. The second section explores some cross-cutting issues
that have affected relations between the communist parties and other political
sectors: political Islam and the New Left, as well as the arguments around the
question of gender in the Arab world and in leftist circles.
Laura Feliu is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Faculty of Political

Science and Sociology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the

Faculty of Political Science and Sociology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Europa Regional Perspectives
Providing in-depth analysis with a global reach, this series from Europa examines
a wide range of contemporary political, economic, developmental and social
issues in regional perspective. Intended to complement the Europa Regional Sur-
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but may explore recent political, economic, international relations, social,
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Parliamentary Institutions in Regional and International Governance

Functions and Powers
Andrea Cofelice
Youth at the Margins

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A contemporary examination of terrorist and separatist movements
Edited by Benjamin Schreer and Andrew T. H. Tan

100 Years of History
Laura Feliu and Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Europa-Regional-Perspectives/book-series/ERP
Communist Parties in the
Middle East
100 Years of History
Edited by
Laura Feliu and Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Laura Feliu and Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs
The right of Laura Feliu and Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
orutilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
nowknown or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or
in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Europa Regional Editor, Middle East and North Africa: Christopher
Matthews
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-13445-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-13446-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman

by Taylor & Francis Books
Contents
List of tables vii

Acknowledgements viii
List of contributors ix
1 Communist parties in the Middle East and North Africa:

An overview 1
LAURA FELIU, FERRAN IZQUIERDO-BRICHS AND FRANCESC SERRA
PART I
Communist parties: case studies 43
2 Iran’s communist movement: Reform and revolution 45
YASSAMINE MATHER
3 The Communist Party of Turkey: An instrument of ‘Soviet

eastern policy’? 60
BÜLENT GÖKAY
4 The Iraqi Communist Party 74

JOHAN FRANZÉN
5 The Lebanese Communist Party: Continuity against all odds 90

ROSA VELASCO MUÑOZ
6 The Syrian Communist Party: Patrimonialism and fractures 109

ROSA VELASCO MUÑOZ
7 Class and nation: Arab and Jewish communists in Palestine 129

MUSA BUDEIRI
8 The communist movement in Egypt 152

BÁRBARA AZAOLA-PIAZZA
vi Contents
9 Communism and organizational symbiosis in South Yemen: The
People’s Democratic Union, the National Liberation Front and
the Yemeni Socialist Party 168
JOHN ISHIYAMA
10 The Sudan Communist Party: Bolshevize it, O God! 184

ABDULLAHI A. IBRAHIM
11 The communists in Algeria (1920–93) 199

PIERRE-JEAN LE FOLL-LUCIANI
12 The four faces of Morocco’s communists: PCF, MCP, PLS

and PPS 216
BERNABÉ LÓPEZ GARCÍA
PART II
Context, debates and cross-cutting issues 239
13 Islamists and communists: A history of Arab
convergenze parallele 241
LUZ GÓMEZ GARCÍA
14 The New Left in 1960s and 1970s Lebanon and 1917 as model
and foil 258
LAURE GUIRGUIS
15 From Marxism to anti-authoritarianism: Egypt’s New Left 268

LAURA GALIÁN
16 Women and left in the Middle East: the voice of the protagonists:
How feminist change occurs in Lebanon: an interview with Azza
Chararah Baydoun 282
NATALIA RIBAS-MATEOS
Index 299
Tables
12.1 PPS representation in legislative elections from 1977 to 2016 231

Acknowledgements
This publication has been compiled within the framework of the research pro-
jects led by Dr Laura Feliu-Martínez and Dr Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs: ‘Popu-
lar Revolts from the Mediterranean to Central Asia: Historical Genealogy,
Power Cleavages and Identity Factors’, funded by the Spanish Ministry of
Economy and Competitivity (HAR2012–34053); and ‘Transnational Dynamics
and Actors in the MENA Region: A Historical Genealogy of Elites and Social
Movements in between the Local and Global Level’, funded by the Spanish
Ministry of Economy and Competitivity, Agencia Estatal de Investigación and
European Regional Development Fund (HAR2016–77876-P).
Contributors
Laura Feliu is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Faculty of Poli-

tical Science and Sociology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She leads,
together with Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs, the research project ‘HAR2016–
77876-P Transnational Dynamics and Actors in the MENA Region’,
financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. She has
worked and published extensively on international human rights promotion,
on international relations of the Middle East and North Africa, and on
Spanish foreign policy. Her latest publications in English include: Political
Islam in a Time of Revolt (co-authored with Izquierdo-Brichs and Ether-
ington, 2017); ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) and Human
Rights Activism’, in The Routledge Handbook of Mediterranean Politics (ed.
Gillespie and Volpi, 2017); and ‘The Western Sahara Members of the Mor-
occan Parliament: Parliamentary Diplomacy and Identity Perceptions’ (with
Parejo Fernández) in Global, Regional and Local Dimensions of Western
Sahara’s Protracted Decolonization (ed. Ojeda, Veguilla and Fernández-
Molina, 2016).
Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs is Senior Lecturer on International Relations at the
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His research is focused on the
sociology of power and the Arab world. He has published numerous arti-
cles on these issues, and recently the following books: Political Islam in a
Time of Revolt (with Etherington and Feliu, 2017); Poder global. Una
mirada desde la sociología del poder (with Etherington, 2017); El islam
político en el Mediterráneo. Radiografía de una evolución (2013); and Political
Regimes in the Arab World (2013).
Bárbara Azaola-Piazza is Lecturer in Arab and Islamic Studies at the Uni-
versidad de Castilla-La Mancha. She is also a member of the Study Group
on Arab and Muslim Societies. Her research deals with the analysis of
Middle East and North Africa political systems with a focus on Egypt.
Her publications include Historia del Egipto contemporáneo (2008) and
‘The Foreign Policy of Post-Mubarak Egypt and the Strengthening of
Relations with Saudi Arabia: Balancing between Economic Vulnerability
and Regional and Regime Security’ (2018).
x List of contributors
Musa Budeiri was born in Jerusalem and taught politics at Birzeit University
in the Israeli-ruled West Bank. He has written on the history of the com-
munist and the labour movements in Palestine during the years of British
rule, and on the emergence of Palestinian nationalism in the aftermath of
the war of 1948. Most recently he has published ‘Emil Tuma’s mea culpa,
Palestinian Arab Communists and the Partition of Palestine 1948’ in the
Beirut-based Arabic journal Bidayat (2017/18).
Azza Chararah Baydoun is a former professor of social psychology at the
Lebanese (State) University, a founding member of the Lebanese Associa-
tion of Women Researchers (known as BAHITHAT) and was a member of
the National Commission of Lebanese Women (CEDAW committee)
through the years 2003–16. She is a researcher in women and gender studies.
She was awarded the certificate of scientific research excellence from the
Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Lebanon for the years 2001–11.
Most of her publications, lectures, interviews, etc. can be retrieved from her
blog at www.azzachararabaydoun.wordpress.com.
Among many other publications, author of the books: Muwatina la 'ountha
[A citizen not a female]. Beirut: Dar Al-Saqi; Cases of Femicide Before
Lebanese Courts (Arabic and English), Beirut: KAFA (enough) Violence and
Exploitation, 2011; Nisa' yuwajihna al-unuf: dirasa maydaniya [Women facing
violence: a field study]. Beirut: KAFA (enough) Violence and Exploitation.
Johan Franzén is a historian of the modern Middle East. He joined the Uni-
versity of East Anglia in 2009 after finishing a PhD in modern Middle
Eastern history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London, where he also completed an MA in Middle Eastern studies. Before
coming to England, he read Middle Eastern history and Arabic at Lund
University in his native Sweden. Franzén is the author of Red Star over
Iraq: Iraqi Communism before Saddam (2011), which in 2012 was shortlisted
for the Book Prize of the British Association of Middle Eastern Studies.
Laura Galián is a postdoctoral student at the Horizon 2020 project, RETOPEA:
Religious Toleration and Peace, funded by the European Commission at the
University of Granada. Laura holds a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies
from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her work has focused on the
decolonization theories and movements in the Middle East. She has been a
member of the research project Islam 2.0: Cultural and Religious Markers of
the Mediterranean Societies in Transformation funded by the Spanish Minis-
try of Economy and Competitivity and has also coordinated the project
Fighting against Islamophobia funded by the FAMI in the Moroccan
Association for the Integration of Immigrants in Malaga, Spain.
Bülent Gökay is Professor of International Relations at SPIRE, Keele Uni-
versity and the founding editor of the Journal of Global Faultlines. He is
the author of A Clash of Empires: Turkey between Russian Bolshevism and
British Imperialism (1997), Eastern Europe since 1970: Decline of Socialism
List of contributors xi
to Post-Communist Transition (2001), Soviet Eastern Policy and Turkey,
1920–1991 (2006), Muslims and Communist in Post-Transition States (with
Ben Fowkes, 2011) and Power Shift: The Disintegration of Euro-Atlanticism
and New Authoritarianism (with Vassilis Fouskas, 2018).
Luz Gómez García is Senior Lecturer of Arab Studies at the Universidad
Autónoma de Madrid. She was previously professor of Arabic translation
at the Universidad de Alicante. Her latest books are Entre la sharía y la
yihad. Una historia intelectual del islamismo (2018) and Diccionario de
islam e islamismo (2018).
Laure Guirguis is Thyssen Junior Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies,
Central European University, Budapest. A graduate in philosophy and in
Chinese, Guirguis achieved a PhD at the School for Advanced Studies in
Social Sciences, Paris. Her PhD on Sectarianism in Egypt has been pub-
lished in French (2012) and in English (2016). She is currently researching
radical left-wing trends in the Arab world in the 1960s and 1970s, addres-
sing the paradoxical legacy of the revolutionary left. Her latest publica-
tions include Copts and the Security State: Violence, Coercion, and
Sectarianism in Contemporary Egypt (2016) and ‘La référence au Vietnam
et l’émergence des gauches radicales au Liban (1956–1975)’ (2018).
Abdullahi A. Ibrahim is Emeritus Professor of African History and Islam at
the University of Missouri-Columbia. He has published extensively, in
both Arabic and English, on the culture and history of Sudan, including The
Mahdi-Ulema Conflict (1968); Assaulting with Words: Popular Discourse and
the Bridle of Shari’ah (1994); The Dusk of Marxism: Resistance and
Renaissance in the Praxis of the Sudanese Communist Party (in Arabic,
2007); and Manichaean Delirium: Decolonization of the Judiciary and Isla-
mic Renewal in Sudan, 1898–1985 (2008). He is currently writing a bio-
graphy of Abdel Khalig Mahgoub, the secretary of the Sudan Communist
Party (1927–71) tragically hanged by President Nimeiry in 1971.
John Ishiyama is Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at the
University of North Texas. He is also the former editor-in-chief for the
American Political Science Review (2012–16) and was the founding editor
of the Journal of Political Science Education. He is currently the principal
investigator and director of the National Science Foundation-Research
Experience for Undergraduates programme on civil conflict management
and peace science. His research interests include democratization and
political parties in post-communist Russian, European, Eurasian and
African (especially Ethiopian) politics, ethnic conflict and ethnic politics
and the scholarship of teaching and learning. He has published extensively
on these topics, producing eight books and over 130 journal articles.
Pierre-Jean Le Foll-Luciani is a historian and associate researcher at the
Université Rennes. His books include Le Camp des oliviers. Parcours d'un
xii List of contributors
communiste algérien (2012) and Les juifs algériens dans la lutte
anticoloniale. Trajectoires dissidentes (1934–1965) (2015).
Bernabé López García is Professor of History of the Arab and Islamic World
at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He is author, among other
works, of Marruecos político. Cuarenta años de procesos electorales (1960–
2000) (2000, translated into Arabic and updated in 2009) and Orientalismo
e ideología colonial en el arabismo español (1840–1917) (2011).
Yassamine Mather is Acting Editor of Critique. She is an Iranian socialist
who joined the Fedayeen Minority. She worked in Kurdistan, becoming
editor of the student monthly journal Jahan. At Glasgow University she
was deputy director of the Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory and
Movements. She is currently working at the University of Oxford.
Natalia Ribas-Mateos has been teaching for many years and conducting
diverse fieldworks in different places of the world since the early 1990s,
most particularly in Mediterranean Europe. In English she is the author of
the ‘The Mediterranean in the Age of Globalization’ and ‘Border Shifts:
New Mobilities in Europe and Beyond’, and more recently of various col-
lections of works related to age, gender and mobilities. She is currently a
researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain and is a
member of the Fatema Mernissi Chair, Rabat.
Francesc Serra is currently Associate Lecturer at the Universitat Autònoma
de Barcelona. Among his published work is the monography Rusia, la otra
potencia europea (Russia, the Other European Power, 2005) and as editor
the books Chechenia, rompamos el silencio (Chechnya, Let’s Break the
Silence, 2008) and Poder y regímenes en Asia Central (Power and Regimes
in Central Asia, 2018). He has been a visiting researcher at the universities
of Buenos Aires, Argentina (2006), Bogazici, Turkey (2009), Miami (2010)
and Saitama, Japan (2014).
Rosa Velasco Muñoz is a researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Her main area of interest and research is the study of Palestinian refugee
camps in Lebanon and the modern history of Lebanon which she for-
malized in published articles and her PhD (2015) on this subject. Cur-
rently, Rosa is collaborating in the research project Transnational
Dynamics and Actors in the MENA-Region: A Genealogy of Elites and
Social Movements between the Local and the Global’ sponsored by the
Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness.
1 Communist parties in the Middle East
and North Africa
An overview
Laura Feliu, Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs and
Francesc Serra
1 Introduction
Despite the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR),
the influence of the Russian Revolution around the world cannot be denied a
century later. The twentieth century was distinguished by the Marxist revo-
lutionary force of the revolution and by the occasionally conservative control
of the world Left from Moscow. Along with realpolitik and domination by
the Soviet nomenklatura, revolutionary solidarity and excitement influenced
the activity of communist parties as well as other leftist forces. The entire Left
had to position itself with respect to the USSR, whether taking their cues
from and being influenced by the dogmatic ideological line of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) or not.
The euphoria of the revolutionary moment and the force of the new Soviet
power were reflected, among other things, in the proliferation of communist
parties that adhered to the orthodoxy emanating from Moscow. The growth
in the number of communist parties paved the way for the creation of a new
Communist International, the Comintern, in 1919, which in turn provided the
impetus for the organization of new parties. In the Arab world and Middle
East, this influence arrived more slowly than in Europe,1 and it clashed with
other strong ideologies that viewed communism as a threat or as the compe-
tition, primarily nationalism and political Islam. However, the organizations,
their activists and their ideology all had a strong impact on twentieth-century
Middle Eastern societies, and if the modern history of the region is to be
understood, the role of communism must also be analysed.
Communist parties underwent significant changes and their evolution
affected the entire Left and social movements. The impact of the communist
parties and their development in the Middle East remains largely unexplored
and academic literature on the question continues to be lacking.2 Conse-
quently, we believe that the centennial of the revolution in Russia and the
bicentennial of the birth of Karl Marx provide a good opportunity for a
comprehensive, global look at the topic and, indeed, this volume fills the
vacuum. Communist Parties in the Middle East: 100 Years of History looks at
a century’s worth of experience, from the arrival of communist ideology in the
2 Feliu, Izquierdo-Brichs and Serra
region in the early twentieth century by minority activists and the creation of
the first parties and trade unions after the 1917 revolution to the convulsions
produced by the dissolution of the USSR and, more recently, the Arab
Spring. The result is a comprehensive, unique study of these parties in a vast
region that ranges from Morocco to Iran, based both on diverse theoretical
frameworks and on empirical studies and historical archives. The volume
provides a depiction of the processes undergone by communist parties in the
region through the identification of common characteristics and contexts,
completing the overall view of the expansion of communism in the world and
the vicissitudes of communist parties after the creation of the USSR, while
also evaluating the diversity of experiences and the influence of local settings.
What follows is, first, an analysis of the tensions faced by communist par-
ties in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region based on the
sociology of the power and their competition with ideologies like nationalism
and Islamism, and the constant questioning about whether to act as a van-
guard for social mobilization or be co-opted into a secondary position by the
regimes in power or by Soviet politics. The legacy left by the communists in
the region is also the product of these competitions and strains. Finally, the
chapter looks at the relationship between the USSR and the region, since this
is instrumental in understanding the history of these parties and the men and
women who were active in them.
2 The communist parties: political and ideological tensions

and debates in the MENA region
Our analytical point of departure, the sociology of power,3 argues that when
hierarchical organizations are established, social, economic and – obviously –
political relations between elites are competitive, always becoming relations of
and for power. The primary objective of the elites who control these hier-
archies is the ‘differential accumulation of power’,4 of more power than other
members of the elite, because if they lose this competition, they cease to
control the hierarchy. As a relative competition – the actors have no absolute
objectives, but compare themselves with the other actors – these power rela-
tions have no end; they are circular and feed off of themselves. In other
words, these actors constantly need to use their power to gain a greater power
differential with respect to their competitors.
The competition is one and only, for power, in which the actors face off,
using various resources, according to their abilities, in different accumulation
processes. Resources like state control, ideology, capital, coercion, informa-
tion and the population itself are used in the competition for the accumula-
tion of power. For this reason, an isolated analysis cannot be done for each of
these areas since the actors involved in the competition all play against each
other in a single game, using each of the power resources at their disposal.
This power, of course, is not an abstraction; consequently, the actors involved
in a power relation cannot be abstractions or institutions like the nation,
Communist parties in MENA 3
Islam, Christianity, the markets, corporations or the state, but must be indi-
viduals or social groups understood as a set of individuals. The circular rela-
tions established by the elites fighting over the differential accumulation of
power are basically conservative, since the main function of the actors is to
accumulate, and therefore conserve, power resources.
In contrast to circular power relations, processes of change are not brought
about by the competition for power, but by the people’s struggle for better living
conditions – aking into account material, cultural, identity, gender factors as
well as human rights and freedoms. When the people, as an actor, mobilize to
achieve specific objectives related to improving their welfare, a power relation
is established that can be called linear. These relations are linear because they
begin with raising awareness and creating networks for social mobilization
and end when the objective has been achieved or the mobilization defeated.
It is, thus, necessary to identify when a power relation is linear or circular. In
other words, it is necessary to identify when the actor is the population whose
objective is to improve living conditions and when the actors are elites whose
main goal is to accumulate power differential. In the former case – the linear
relationship – the people can establish alliances with other actors if their
objectives and interests coincide or are complementary, or the population itself
can be a revolutionary political actor. In the latter case – the circular relation-
ship – the people must be clear that the main objective of the actors does not
coincide with their own and that the priority behind the decisions taken by the
actors is the differential accumulation of power. In this case, the relationship
established by the elites with the majority of the population is one of subject to
object, actor to resource, and the population’s position is one of subjugation to
the interests of the elites. Thus, for example, the use of ideology to control
people is a key element in elite competition and will be reflected in a very harsh
competition to impose one ideology or another and to mobilize the people as a
resource for the benefit of accumulating power.
In this dynamic, social movements confront a permanent tension between
being an actor in a linear relationship that mobilizes and demands its rights or
being a resource mobilized by elites for their accumulation of power in a cir-
cular relationship. Likewise, the leaders of leftist parties and social movements
also experience the tension between being at the vanguard of social mobiliza-
tion (a linear relationship) or letting themselves be co-opted to become sec-
ondary elites and compete for the accumulation of more power than the other
elites (circular relationship). The various communist parties could not escape
these tensions, which were reflected both in domestic dynamics and in their
relationship with Moscow. For this reason, it is necessary to analyse when they
moved in one dimension or another, since their decisions and capacity to
mobilize and influence the system would depend on this.
Socialist ideas first entered the Middle East in the late nineteenth century,
for example with the Palestinian Jew Joseph Rosenthal, who moved to Egypt
and established contacts with trade unions led by Greeks. Some members of
minority groups like Jews and Armenians, many of whom were polyglots,
were more receptive to the influence of European ideas. The first communists
reached the MENA region through contact with revolutionary experiences in
Europe (Iranian and Turkish emigrants in revolutionary Russia, Turkish
emigrants and the Iraqi Husayn al-Rahal in Germany and the Spartacist
uprising), through emigrant contact with communist parties in the metropolis
(primarily Algerians and Moroccans in France), or through immigration and
colonization to Arab countries (as in Egypt, the French in Tunisia, Algeria
and Morocco, and Jewish colonists and immigrants in Palestine).
These early communists were influenced by the revolutionary drive and
excitement generated by the Russian Revolution. Like all movements, they
needed to reach an agreement about a proposal for social change, their own
conceptual ‘frame’, as it is referred to in current theory on social movements.5
They also had to expand their organization and activist base and to create
networks of alliances6 in addition to doing everything possible to raise
awareness and mobilize the people to fight to improve living conditions.
Nominally, Marxism-Leninism gave them the necessary analytical and
conceptual base as well as the organizational orientation to form parties
which, in general, had to be done underground. However, the reality facing
Middle Eastern societies was quite different from the European and Russian
situations, and they soon had to confront contradictions and problems that
did not adjust well to the Russian experience and orthodox Marxist analyses
that came from industrialized Europe.
The first objective of any social movement must be to raise awareness
among the people about the social changes required to improve their living
conditions. This awareness raising was linked to the dissemination of a frame
based on class struggle from a Marxist perspective that had the enormous
advantage of the excitement generated by the Russian Revolution, but at the
same time had to deal with very deeply rooted ideological and cultural hege-
monies. In many early twentieth-century societies in the Middle East and
North Africa, especially in the rural world, the main solidarity and identity
structures were still based more on clan and clientelistic ties and on Ibn
Khaldun’s asabiyyah (Ibn Jaldun, 1987 [1382]) than on class identity and
solidarity. Moreover, as the different chapters in this book discuss, throughout
the twentieth century, communism in the region had to deal with two com-
peting ideological systems that had enormous power: nationalism and reli-
gion. Both the ideological and identity structures reinforced systems of
authority control over the population that ran counter to the awareness
raising and emancipation sought by the communists.
The communists’ analytical and theoretical frame in the less industrialized
countries and colonies necessarily clashed with the reality of agrarian economies
transitioning to capitalism and a proletariat – theoretically the vanguard of the
revolution – that was very small. The social base of the communist parties was
largely some trade unions that were generally weak and very localized in the few
industrialized areas and also students, intellectuals and professionals.7 In many
of these countries, the working class was low in numbers and in some cases, like
Palestine and Egypt, closely tied to immigration. Additionally, it was very diffi-
cult for communist ideas to penetrate the peasantry and civil service. The sectors
closest to Marxism and the communist parties were middle-class intellectuals
and students. They were never a majority even in the universities, but their
influence over the intelligentsia also gave them influence over many of the poli-
ticians and parties on the Left, even if they were nationalist.
Therefore, in the 1920s and 1930s and later during the Second World War, first
colonial needs and, then, war requirements stimulated the expansion of the pro-
letariat slightly, particularly in connection with the extractive industries, ports
and railway services. This allowed for greater communist influence in these sec-
tors, especially through the trade unions. Other sectors attracted to the movement
were the marginalized minority groups in different countries. In their defence of
social equality, the communist parties found some natural allies in these dis-
criminated sectors (at least until these minorities developed their own forms of
identity advocacy, like the Shiite Movement of the Disinherited in Lebanon).
The colonial context and the later construction of new independent states
made national liberation the primary demand for the immense majority of
people, with nationalism being the most mobilizing ideology. With respect to
colonialism, the position of the communists largely focused on the struggle
against the colonial powers for the liberation of peoples. The fact that a new
power like the USSR took the side of colonized peoples also gave prestige to
the communist parties. The 1921 friendship treaties between the Soviet Rus-
sians (the USSR was constituted the following year) with Turkey, Iran and
Afghanistan were done in conditions of equality unknown in the region in
their interactions with the great powers and were in and of themselves a
rejection of the League of Nations’ mandate system (Ismael, 2005: 9). More-
over, the communists were organizationally better prepared to battle while
being repressed and thus had greater influence and prestige in the anti-colonial
struggle than their low membership would suggest. However, in the Maghreb,
where the communists were late in separating themselves from an ambiguous
French Communist Party (FCP), an initial unclear position regarding the
demand for independence weakened them. In Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia,
the difficulty in separating from the FCP took its toll on them. Both Bernabé
López García in his chapter on Morocco and Pierre-Jean Le Foll-Luciani
writing on Algeria offer examples of this tension. From the mid-1920s to the
mid-1930s, the dominant watchword was class conflict, which meant that the
communist parties in colonized countries had to fight not only the colonial
powers, but also against the nationalist bourgeoisies, which debilitated them.
One added factor of tension that sapped the strength of the communist par-
ties was Soviet support for the partition of Palestine and the creation of
Israel, which gave rise to major contradictions among Arab communists, in
addition to losing them support and provoking or intensifying conflict and
repression in the nationalist regimes that had already achieved independence.
With respect to nationalism, by associating with the anti-colonial fight, the
facet of the national struggle brought communists closer to the nationalist
movements and parties. However, their discourse was at times ambiguous and
it was difficult to reconcile nationalism with class internationalism. Moreover,
the communists were often extremely suspicious of alliances with nationalist
bourgeois parties and, as noted above, class solidarity clashed with the
traditional social structures that were still very much present.
The communist parties in the south were anti-colonialist and anti-capitalist,
but they were incapable of adopting a discourse and analysis from the south
about the specific needs of the south for intellectual reasons rooted in Marxist
orthodoxy and political reasons related to the control being exercised from
Moscow. Very early on, because of the pressure from nationalist forces and the
contradictions facing them, the communists were forced to pose the following
question: were the ideological premises of Marxist-Soviet orthodoxy adequate
to identify, understand and defend the interests of the people in the south?
Ramón Grosfoguel has highlighted the words of Aimé Césaire (Grosfoguel,
2008: 209). Despite coming from a region quite far away, this attack on the
abstract universalism of Eurocentric Marxist thinking presents problems quite
similar to those of the communists in the MENA region and especially for
the communists in the Maghreb:
In any case, it is constant that our struggle, the struggle of colonial peo-
ples against colonialism, the struggle of peoples of color against racism is
much more complex – of a completely different nature than the struggle
of the French worker against French capitalism and can in no way be
considered as a part, a fragment of that struggle …
I don’t bury myself in a narrow particularism. But I also don’t want to
get lost in an emaciated universalism. There are two ways to get lost: by
walled segregation in the individual or by dilution in the universal.
(Césaire, 18 April 2008 [24 October 1956])
From Iran, Ali Shariati, surely the greatest exponent of progressive Islamism,
said in reference to Western and Westernized intellectuals:
As writers and thinkers, we must turn towards those who have concerns
like ours; a history, a situation, a fate parallel to ours. Instead of Brecht,
we should be familiar with Kateb Yasin; instead of Jean-Paul Sartre,
Omar Mowlud … In knowing them, we recognize ourselves, while by
moving towards Western intellectuals, we move away from ourselves and
even more when understanding them … makes the Eastern intellectual
ultrasensitive – in fact sentimental and not sensitive – to the questions
posed in Europe, to the very progressive doctrines in vogue in the West
and not in the East, they put a distance between the Eastern intellectual
and people and their own realities, their specific responsibilities; and
finally, despite sincerely believing in serving and instructing, they become
factors of decadence and deceit.
(Shariati, 1982: 107–8)
Of course, in Paris during the early 1960s, Shariati had direct contact with
European intellectuals that is, in many ways, reflected in his work, to the point
that he has been spoken of as the Marxist theorist of Islamism, although his
reference points are clearly Islamic. In fact, he accompanied his criticism of
Marxism and his project to renew Islam with some proposals for social change
that were directly inspired by the Marxist debate (Shariati, 1980).
There is one recurrent theme in the history of the communist parties in the
Arab world and Middle East. The difficulty of dissociating themselves from the
false universalism denounced by Césaire and the influence and dogmas coming
from Europe left the field open to the bourgeoisies and the elites created by the
independence movements with their nationalist discourse and to political Islam
with its discourse calling for a retrograde interpretation of identity.
The intensification of the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle brought

with it the emergence of significant non-communist socialist nationalistic
groups such as Nasserism, Ba‘athism, and the Algerian Front de Libera-
tion National (FLN). In their conceptions of socialism, such groups
threatened to co-opt the Arab communists’ political programs, and the
latter’s potential popular constituency. Moreover, with their nationalism,
such groups stood in stark contrast to the internationalist, anti-nationalist
Arab communists – and, as such, had far more popular appeal among
the fervently nationalist Arab masses.
(Ismael, 2005: 21)
Above all, the contradiction was expressed at the moment of independence,

when a model of a progressive society was supposed to be implemented or
mechanisms of exploitation perpetuated, although they adopted different
forms. For many activists and intellectuals, Marxism continued to be a basic
tool for analysis and social transformation, and abandoning it for the sake of
nationalism led to failure. As Maxime Rodinson summarized quite well, it
was possible for nationalism to become a threat to welfare and social progress
if left exclusively in the hands of the bourgeois nationalist parties:
The march towards socialism … will be linked to the struggle for the reali-
zation, preservation and intensification of national independence … I know
that many contemporary struggles stem from nationalism. I willingly admit
that this is a necessary stage when the issue is to defend the legitimate rights
of an oppressed, humiliated or threatened nation. But today the world is
linked in more ways than ever before. All perpetuation of nationalist ideol-
ogy in its pure form, which accepts no alternative values to the good of the
nation to which one belongs, is liable to lead to immense danger.
(Rodinson, 2015 [1972]: 114, 13)
Of course, both Shariati and Rodinson were writing at a time when – although
the communist parties were weak – ‘Marxism was in the air in the Muslim
world’, something that contradicted the Orientalist view of the Middle East as
hijacked by religious fundamentalism (Achcar, 1972: x–xi).
Once independence had been achieved, nationalism turned into an ideology
aimed at all the social groups that could not accept other identities or soli-
darities. By negating class struggle, the relationship between nationalism in
power and the communists could only be one of confrontation or co-optation,
with the communists abandoning their class objectives. Often, the position of
the communist parties depended on instructions from Moscow, which pro-
duced clashes and more than one rupture in the party, a result of the inco-
herent turns that they had to make. Ideological overlaps with the USSR,
which stressed the anti-imperialist discourse during the Cold War, facilitated
close cooperation between the Arab socialist governments and Moscow. The
Kremlin’s later turn regarding its initial support for the state of Israel, more-
over, converted the Soviet power into the great international advocate for the
Palestinian cause, making it hugely popular in the region (Ali, 2009: 91–3).
Additionally, the nationalist political parties that emerged or came to
power in the 1950s, whether Nasserites, Ba‘athists or more moderate groups
like the Tunisian Neo-Destour Party, often included a discourse that was easy
to assimilate with European socialism, as it stressed anti-imperialism, social
progress, secularism, the promotion of the rights of women and the struggle
against traditionally privileged elites, especially if they had links to the pre-
vious regime and the colonial power. Rodinson highlights the influence of
communists on Arab nationalism in the analysis of imperialism and the need
for social revolution after the national revolution (Rodinson, 1972: 94).
The communist parties in the years after the independences often had to
face changes created by strongmen with ‘progressive’ and ‘unifying’ discourses
in situations almost comparable to Caesarism in the Gramscian sense of the
term (Gramsci, 1971: 219–23). The temptation to fall into co-optation and
trasformismo8 – also almost always forced by the threat of the most brutal
repression – was strong and often became a reality, with different results in
Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Algeria, Sudan and so forth. At times, whether because
of their own analyses or due to pressure from the USSR and the regimes, the
parties dissolved and joined the regime party. These approaches to the ‘pro-
gressive’ authoritarian regimes were much easier in situations of imperialist
threat as in Egypt in 1956, or proximity to power and agreement with policy
(such as nationalist economic reforms and some agrarian reforms) carried out
by the government as in Iraq, Yemen and Sudan. However, in each case there
were tensions and ruptures among the communists.9
The alliances with these regimes also corresponded to Soviet foreign policy
needs, and consequently could be imposed from Moscow. This made them
easier, even on a theoretical level, since the Soviets had formulated the theory
of ‘non-capitalist development’ to justify them. This theory argued that the
non-developed economies of the south could, under the influence and with the
assistance of the ‘socialist field’, skip the stage of capitalism on its way to a
socialist society. ‘Arab socialism’ was presented as an example of this path
(Ismael, 2005: 30 and Franzén in this book). As Alain Gresh noted with
regard to this period:
During the 1960s, in line with the conclusions reached at the 20th Con-
gress of the Soviet Communist Party, Arab Communists attached con-
siderable weight to alliances with Arab nationalists, whose leadership
they recognized. The Egyptian Communist party went as far as to dis-
solve itself, merging with Nasser’s Arab Socialist Union. Even apart from
this exceptional case, the Arab Communist parties agreed to play second
fiddle to the nationalists – as in Damascus restricting their activities and
only claiming a modest share of power. They contented themselves with
statist economic reforms (in particular, sweeping nationalization mea-
sures), limited agrarian reform, and close cooperation with the Soviet
Union and other socialist states.
(Gresh, 1989: 393)
‘Arab socialism’ was not a real social transformation project, but had another
basic function: to ensure the power of the elites who had managed to stabilize
themselves at the top of the hierarchy. The construction of the independencies
usually occurred in contexts in which the population was mobilized, and the new
elites had to respond to popular demands for legitimacy and consolidation in
power. Consequently, the progressive discourse and most egalitarian policies
were responding to demands from the street and not to future socialist projects.
These policies made it possible to reach out to communists and other leftist
sectors. However, when the people started to demobilize and the new regimes
settled into power, the elites inevitably disassociated themselves from popular
legitimacy and demands, redistributive policies weakened and alliances with
trade unions, social movements and leftist parties were no longer necessary. As a
result, the response could become more repressive.10 Then the communists had
to choose between co-optation, abandoning the fight or going underground.
In the Arab world, this process took on a special form. After the con-
solidation of the independence regimes, different dynamics occurred that
reinforced each other. Much like Western Europe, after the independences in
the 1950s and 1960s, when the people were mobilized and had bargaining
power, the new governments were forced to respond to their demands for
better living conditions, creating the base for what was called the welfare state
in Europe and in the Arab world entailed the construction of services that
had not hitherto existed for most of the population. This made it easier for
the sectors closest to the Left in the new regimes to come into power and
apply ‘Arab socialist’ policies, often based on the nationalization of resources.
State control over these would solidify the sovereignty of the independent
states and ensure that they remained under the control of the new political
elites. These regimes and policies were based on rentierism (Beblawi &
Luciani, 1987). However, the economies of the new independent states did not
cease to play their role in the capitalist world system, underscoring the
contradiction between theoretical ‘socialism’ and the reality of an economy
that was feeding global capitalism, as well as an elite linked to state control
and a bourgeoisie dependent on this elite.
Rentier policies, coupled with repression, constituted the response of the
elites in the new regimes to the demands of the population and the need to
consolidate power. Aurèlia Mañé and Carmen de la Cámara define oil-rentier
economies as economies ‘in territories where the management of the hydro-
carbon sector is carried out with the – political – objective of obtaining the
highest possible rent from the subsoil for the national citizens’ (Mañé & de la
Cámara, 2005). Public intervention by the government is based on the income
from external rent, meaning that budgetary policies primarily concern
expenditures and are aimed at legitimizing the regime. This dynamic leads to
the development of a non-productive economy based on rent, which sustains
the service and consumption sectors largely on the basis of imported products.
The consequence of all of this is the direct dependence of the economy and
the regime on oil prices or the ability to obtain external aid and foreign loans.
Analyses usually focus on the rents produced by the extraction of resources,
but rentier mechanisms can be extended to foreign debt and the assistance
received by some states.11 According to Gilbert Achcar, the fact that oil is the
main source of rent in the Arab region has produced several secondary sour-
ces of rent for non-oil-producing Arab states; the leading oil-producing states
are joined by a stratum of second-tier non-oil-producing rentier states
(Achcar, 2013b: 56). Debt and assistance allow the Arab regimes in non-oil-
producing states to maintain rentier ties with the population, as long as they
have debt capacity or can receive aid. Most of the Arab states, both those rich
and poor in oil, entered into this rentier dynamic to some extent. The regimes
that do not have oil took advantage of the strategic importance of their
proximity to the wells to obtain foreign rents, both from countries they want
as allies and from those who are willing to pay to avoid being threatened. For
this same reason, since oil generates threats and vulnerability, both foreign
and domestic, but at the same time makes it possible to increase budgets for
the army, police and Mukhabarat, the regimes militarize and become some of
the most important clients for the armament industry (Beblawi & Luciani,
1987: 18, 52, 59–60). Above all, their repressive capacity increases.
Thus, the state and rent joined together as resources of power in the hands
of the elites who could control them. These elites accumulated a power dis-
proportionate when compared to other time periods and to contemporary
elites. While foreign rent was copious, the distributive capacity generated was
sufficient to control the population and, at the same time, turn groups
competing for the accumulation of power into clients.
As the regimes became consolidated, the leftist forces and social move-
ments, including the communist parties, began to taper off. The 1970s and
1980s were a time of weakness and demobilization for the people and social
movements with links to the Left (the Six-Day War, Black September, Anwar
Sadat’s rise to power in Egypt, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Saddam Hussein in
Iraq, Chadli Bendjedid in Algeria, Habib Bourguiba’s change of course in
Tunisia, the Years of Lead in Morocco, etc.).
The elites believed themselves free from the need to respond to the demands
of the people and legitimize their policies and, consequently, redistributive and
welfare programmes weakened. In the Arab world, this gave rise to Infitah
policies, a sharp increase in corruption and nepotism and the direct appro-
priation of resources by the elites when the opportunity arose. This process
coincided with a crisis in oil prices, which debilitated the rentier mechanisms
and forced many governments to once again seek credit from international
institutions, which were now focusing on neoliberalism.
Pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and financial insti-
tutions deepened the dismantling of part of the public sector, the redis-
tributive policies and subsidies for welfare. The priority of the investment
ceased to be the creation of jobs and, subsequently, the legitimization of
power and deactivation of potential protests, and acquired the theoretical
function of generating profits and competing on the market, although the real
function was to enrich and accumulate power in the form of wealth for the
elites who could compete. Part of the state capitalism constructed by the
nationalist parties that was called for by ‘Arab socialism’ became crony
capitalism, and control of many public companies and resources, export and
import licences and investment was moved from the bureaucratic mechanisms
with links to the public sector and their elites to direct appropriation by these
same elites or their relations. This dynamic always occurred and occurs with a
limited part of the resources and wealth, since control of the rent (primarily
oil and gas) continued to belong to the state and, therefore, to the regime. The
conjunction of the two dynamics made it possible to unite the concentration
of power through control of the state and the accumulation of power through
economic mechanisms. The result, of course, was neopatrimonial dictator-
ships with an enormous concentration of power in the hands of the primary
elites (see Achcar, 2013a: 50–67).
Despite the pressure from international financial institutions, neoliberal
ideology and corruption, the rentier mechanisms could not be completely
dismantled, because when living conditions became unbearably strained, the
people still maintained some capacity for mobilization. Popular discontent
erupted in so-called bread protests (Egypt 1977, Morocco 1981, Tunisia 1983,
Algeria 1988, Jordan 1989), although these mobilizations and, subsequently,
the bargaining power of the social movements and people were smaller than
the battles for independence and their aftermath. During this period, the
communist parties and the Left in general – for reasons that will be explored
in the chapters in this book – found themselves in a state of extreme weak-
ness, with other groups associated with political Islam becoming the main
driving force and vanguard of the mobilizations.
The Muslim world is often presented as a region that is incapable of
reaching modernity as a consequence of the power of Islam and the tradition
at its heart. Particular stress has been placed on the incompatibility of Islam
with modernity, as if this were some original ‘defect’ that justifies con-
servatism and takes for granted the idea that Muslim-majority societies must
have authoritarian regimes. However, the falseness of this perspective has
been demonstrated both theoretically and historically.12 Islam has produced
ideological currents associated with the changes of modernity, and the
inability to build modern productive systems and economies has not been due
to the religion but to the colonial and post-colonial conditions in these and
other societies in the south within the world economic system. In truth, to
quote Adam Hanieh, ‘The authoritarian guise of the Middle East state is not
anomalous and antagonistic to capitalism, but is rather a particular form of
appearance of capitalism in the Middle East context’ (Hanieh, 2013: 24).
Even secular ideologies, from nationalism to the Left, have in some way come
closer to the ideological traditions linked to Islam, and for decades the power
of the religion posed no obstacle to some of these ideologies – most particu-
larly nationalism – gaining hegemonic strength in the region. Finally, on
more than one occasion, large transformational social mobilizations and
movements with no ties to the religion have arisen, the most recent being
the so-called Arab Spring. Some have triumphed, while others have failed in
the face of repression, despite having the significant popular support of a
people who do not cease to be aware of the need for change just because they
are believers.
As in other societies, the relationship between communism and other secu-
lar ideologies and religion in the MENA region must also be analysed in
terms of competition for influence over the people. In this respect, there are
two main dimensions: 1) from a Marxist perspective, ideology understood as
a system of beliefs that hamper awareness about living conditions; and 2) the
capacity for one or another social movement or political group to gain
strength using ideology to establish a mobilizing frame.
In the first case, as seen above, more than Islam, the communist parties had
to deal with nationalism, which had the ability to disseminate an identity-
based ideology at the same time that it demanded political changes: inde-
pendence and the construction of new states. The communists, as the different
chapters in this book will explore, operated around the weaker identity of
class and demanded much more radical political, economic and social changes,
which hindered their ability to reach large masses of people.
However, when the nationalisms entered a state of crisis in the 1970s after many
had presented themselves as defenders of secularism and the Left – although they
were quite distant from and often clashed with the Marxist Left – this crisis was
also felt as a crisis of the Left and other secular ideologies in the Arab and Islamic
world. As a result, both conservative Islam, with re-Islamization supported by the
oil countries, and political Islam had more room to exert their influence. Many
Islamist groups took the demands of political Islam and added a frame demand-
ing social responses to the economic crisis and the consequences of the policies
imposed by the IMF, and against corruption, which allowed them to lead the
social and political mobilization of the bread riots. The communist parties once
again found themselves in a position of weakness as they faced the difficulty of
spreading their message and expanding their networks while also dealing with
harsh repression and direct competition from the Islamists. This was felt deeply in
the few strongholds where the Left still had influence and the Islamists were
gaining a foothold, like the universities, where the confrontations were often
violent.
The organization of the communist parties followed the Leninist model, often
based on publications that activists could use to raise awareness, win over new
members and create networks (Lenin, 1961 [1902]: 114). The Leninist revolu-
tionary model, which was based on a very dedicated though limited number of
members, had the virtue of not requiring a large working class – something that
was non-existent in most Arab countries – as would have been the case for a
mass social movement or party. This model was also a necessity given the almost
permanent repression to which the communists were subjected.
When compared to other parties, the organization of the revolutionary
party strengthened the communists against the waves of repression (Ismael,
2005). Furthermore, the fight for social change also gave them influence
among small sectors of workers and intellectuals, allowing them to create
networks of alliances and solidarity with trade unions and other organiza-
tions. As Le Foll-Luciani discusses in his chapter, the communist parties
served as a meeting point that broke down some of the religious, identity,
class and gender cleavages that divide societies in the MENA region. People
from different communities were able to come together in communist party
cells, while women had much more scope for action than in the rest of society.
Some of them saw the party as a space of liberation, although the patriarchal
burden was still hard to throw off (Le Foll-Luciani, 2016; see also Chapter 16
containing an interview with Azza Chararah Baydoun). However, because of
their very organizational structure, the communist parties were small and not
deeply rooted; consequently their influence depended on their ability to create
and extend networks of alliances with other organizations and associations.
This organizational model favoured hierarchization and party discipline,13
in turn subject to directives from Moscow, which made it difficult to have a
frame and a strategy of their own when they might clash with Soviet interests.
This twofold dimension – a resource in the hands of the Soviet elites and
being at the vanguard of social mobilization – was a source of permanent
tension within the parties. As a resource, they were subject to both the
dynamics of power competition in the USSR and Moscow’s foreign policy,
and their leaders acted as secondary elites in the midst of global orthodox
communism. As parties of mobilization and resistance, they supported and
guided popular grievances. The problem arose when there was some contra-
diction between the two dimensions. On these occasions, dependence on
Moscow usually prevailed, even if this meant the resignation or expulsion of
leaders and members who did not agree to abide by Soviet orders. Each time
that the directives from the CPSU or Comintern (1919–43) were contrary to
the interests of the struggle in each country, popular support, networks and
influence were all extremely weakened and the parties had to start their work
of creating alliances and finding solidarities and trust all over again.
The activist and mobilizing impact of the communist parties in Arab socie-
ties was limited and in some cases residual, especially when compared first with
nationalism and then with political Islam. One demonstration of this is the fact
that in the 1920s, the fears of the British and French secret services magnified
the communist presence in the Middle East and North Africa. These fears
were reproduced by regional elites such that, as René Gallissot observes,
anti-communism arrived before communism itself (Gallissot, 1978: 22). This
does not mean that the communists and their activity, which was often heroic
due to the constant repression, did not have an impact in their societies; simply,
the influence was, above all, intellectual.
However, particularly starting in the 1980s, the growing weakness of the
MENA region parties (as in the rest of the world), combined with the dis-
solution of the USSR and the crisis of the Left, created five dynamics: 1) a
large number of the members ceased to be politically active; 2) some of the
parties evolved towards social democracy, more or less co-opted by the
regimes; 3) leaders and members focused their efforts on the associative world
and social movements, especially non-governmental organizations (NGOs), at
times as professionals; 4) others continued to follow the path laid in the 1960s
and 1970s towards the New Left; and finally 5) some leaders were co-opted
by the regimes. Morocco provides a prime example of the power of co-optation;
a long process that began with support for the monarchy regarding the
Sahara situation led, step by step, to acceptance of the regime and participa-
tion in governments. Only in a very few cases did a communist party with
links to orthodoxy continue to exist, and even then limited to a very marginal
space, as in the case of the Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash).
The NGOization of the political struggle, an option chosen by a number of
leftist activists beginning in the 1970s, but particularly in the late 1980s, is an
important process that merits examination. In this volume, the personal tra-
jectory of Azza Chararah Baydoun in Lebanon illustrates this channelling of
activism through associationism. Generally speaking, the creation of human
rights associations with connections to communist groups and parties and the
incorporation into existing associations took place in the midst of a lively
ideological debate. In the 1960s and 1970s, leftist activists expressed their
mistrust with respect to pioneering human rights organizations like Amnesty
International, which sent out communiqués about the situation in the region
and sent observation missions. The activity of these international NGOs,
which also criticized the human rights situation in the East, aroused suspicion
on a number of accounts. They were seen as instruments of the West to dis-
credit the socialism of the USSR and other Eastern countries; they were
allegedly depoliticized, treating quite ideologically diverse activists equally;
they ignored structural factors in human rights violations; and they focused
on political and civil rights to the detriment of cultural, social and economic
rights. At the same time, however, the human rights networks and work
provided an important resource for activists in repressive contexts. At this time,
the language of human rights, as presented in the various decalogues,
declarations and pacts primarily promoted by the United Nations, was
adopted as a ‘minimalist solution’ to policy concerns (Eckel & Moyn, 2013:
105–6). As in other parts of the world, these doubts dissipated as the 1980s
advanced in an international climate of ideological revision. In these human
rights associations – as in other groups working in defence of various causes –
the presence of sectors associated with socialism and/or the New Left differ-
entiated them, producing quite diverse NGOs and moving the political fight
and divisions to the associative sector. The Moroccan case is a good example.
In 1996, Marguerite Rollinde recorded the words of Abderrahmane Yous-
soufi, one year before he became prime minister of Morocco. As an important
figure in national and international human rights organizations, Youssoufi
explained why he believed that the Moroccan Association for Human Rights
(AMDH) was not accepted as a member of the International Federation for
Human Rights or the Arab Organization for Human Rights in 1989:
However, the radical tone of their words and their Marxist-Leninist, revo-
lutionary references distanced them [the members of the AMDH] from a
whole section of new activists who wish to work in the field of human rights
without necessarily attacking the regime and in the eyes of the NGOs, they
look like political activists instead of defenders of human rights.
(Youssoufi in Rollinde, 2002: 276)
Whether or not the Left in the Arab world today is heir to its communist
parties, it has adopted the defence of democracy and freedom and human
rights along with social justice as an essential element of its demands and
identity. There are several reasons for this evolution. For some theoreticians,
who began to question Stalinism in the 1950s and the USSR in the 1960s
(as in Europe), socialism is only possible with freedom. Others are pragma-
tists, associated with the failures of the alliances between some communist
parties and authoritarian nationalist regimes, which not only did not lead to
socialism, but became conservative dictatorships that filled their role in the
global capitalist system and very harshly repressed the communists. The
‘democratic way’ was asserted.
One of these groups, the Moroccan Voie Democratique (Democratic Way)
defined it thus:
The objective of the Democratic Way is the construction of socialism as a

society that puts an end to capitalism and to the exploitation of man by
man. The achievement of this supreme objective, in the present historical
stage, passes through the struggle for the national liberation of the imperi-
alist hegemony and the block of dominant classes at its service and for the
building of a democratic society … The Democratic Way is strongly present
on the various fronts of struggles: 1) The social struggle …; 2) The struggle
for human rights …; 3) The struggle for democracy by denouncing the
current facade democracy, by actively participating in the boycott of
elections, by demanding free and fair elections on the basis of a democratic
constitution drawn up by a constituent assembly.14
After the repression of the ‘bread riots’ of the 1970s and 1980s and the
Algerian Civil War of the 1990s, it seemed like the only way to confront the
dictatorial regimes in the MENA region was to defend democratic changes.
In this respect, the evolution of the communists was similar to that of the
majority currents of political Islam. Indeed, the Left and some Islamist
groups were able to establish alliances in the defence of democratization and
some rights and freedoms, joint actions that took form in various initiatives
beginning in the 1990s and culminating in the 2011 uprisings.
Jamil Hilal summarized the central values of the current Arab Left as follows:
1 Secularism: Many Leftist forces righteously insist on considering secular-

ism as a necessary component of the determinants of Leftist positions and
vision … However suggesting secularism as against the policy of Islamizing
the state and society makes it necessary for the Left to fully explain that
secularism is not meant to be against religion, but rather to prevent the state
from interfering in the religion of individuals and preventing religious lea-
derships from imposing their own interpretation of religious texts upon the
society and state … In this sense, secularism is a condition for democracy.
2 Autonomy: It can be said that the Left is in a weakened and dependent
situation. First, they were dependent on the Soviet Union and its satel-
lites both for support and ideology. After the downfall of the Soviet
Union, these movements became dependent in a way on the current Arab
regimes which has been detrimental to their work. Additionally, one of
the most important conditions for re-building the Left in our region is its
full autonomy from the present Arab regimes, even its condemnation of
their repressive nature and practices.
3 Vision of a Unitary Project: The leftist forces in the Arab world are
discussing a project for Arab unity. The project is based on several fac-
tors, the common linguistic, cultural, and historical elements of the Arab
world, its human capacities, and various natural resources. In addition,
there is a new connection in the Arab world which is bringing it together,
namely the age of globalization.
4 Focus on Intellectual Versus Social Identity: There are two trends
within the Left: One which focuses on the priority of the social identity in
its program, and the other which focuses on intellectual identity. The first
one maintains that the failing of the Left lies in its negligence of the
various social issues in actuality (not in the texts of its by-laws or social
and political platforms). On the other hand, the second trend argues that
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Seth Low,
The Trend of the Century
(Atlantic Monthly, August, 1898).
NINETEENTH CENTURY:
Dominant lines in the intellectual development of the Century.
"The future historian of thought will no doubt regard the

promulgation and the rapid triumph of evolutionist doctrines
as the most remarkable phenomenon in the intellectual
development of the nineteenth century."
Leslie Stephen,
Evolution and Religious Conceptions
(Review of the Nineteenth Century,
in New York Evening Post, January 12, 1901).
"In the briefest sketch of what the nineteenth century has

done in literature, it is absolutely imperative to mention the
publication of 'The Origin of Species' [Darwin, 1859] and
'Principles of Psychology' [Spencer, 1855], because, although
neither work is written with an attractive elegance, each is
the starting point of an intellectual and moral revolution so
vast that every branch of life is affected by it, and
literature itself—in its lightest forms—can no longer ignore
the germinal forces with which evolution has quickened all our
emotions."
Edmund Gosse,
A Century of English Literature
"To an earlier age knowledge was power, merely that and

nothing more; to us it is life and the 'summum bonum.'
Emancipation from the bonds of self, of one's own
prepossessions, importunately sought at the hands of that
rational power before which all must ultimately bow—this is
the characteristic that distinguishes all the great figures of
nineteenth century science from those of former periods."
Professor Charles S. Peirce,

The Century's Great Men in Science
"The mark of the century has been a continuous attempt at a

comprehensive understanding of nature, after the manner of
Newton, but not limited or governed solely by his dynamical
ideas. … The Newtonian laws of dynamics as applied to matter
still hold, and will always hold, but they may no longer be
fundamental or ultimate, they may be derivatives from a still
deeper scheme; and it is towards this deeper scheme that
physicists at present are groping. The realization of a need
for some such scheme constitutes the chief philosophic feature
of the latter part of the century."
Oliver J. Lodge.
The Scope and Tendencies of Physics
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:

The failures of the Century.
Its sinful mismanagement of the powers which Science has
given it.
"The Nineteenth Century … has been characterised by a

marvellous and altogether unprecedented progress in knowledge
of the universe and of its complex forces; and also in the
application of that knowledge to an infinite variety of
purposes, calculated, if properly utilized, to supply all the
wants of every human being, and to add greatly to the
comforts, the enjoyments, and the refinements of life. The
bounds of human knowledge have been so far extended that new
vistas have opened to us in directions where it had been
thought that we could never penetrate, and the more we learn
the more we seem capable of learning in the ever-widening
expanse of the universe. …
"But the more we realize the vast possibilities of human

welfare which science has given us, the more we must recognise
our total failure to make any adequate rational use of them.
With ample power to supply to the fullest extent necessaries,
comforts, and even luxuries for all, and at the same time
allow ample leisure for intellectual pleasures and æsthetic
enjoyments, we have yet so sinfully mismanaged our social
economy as to give unprecedented and injurious luxury to the
few, while millions are compelled to suffer a lifelong
deficiency of the barest necessaries for a healthy existence.
Instead of devoting the highest powers of our greatest men to
remedy these evils, we see the governments of the most
advanced nations arming their people to the teeth, and
expending much of their wealth and all the resources of their
science, in preparation for the destruction of life, of
property, and of happiness.
"With ample knowledge of the sources of health, we allow, and

even compel, the bulk of our population to live and work under
conditions which greatly shorten life; while every year we see
from 50,000 to 100,000 infants done to death by our criminal
neglect. In our mad race for wealth, we have made gold more
sacred than human life; we have made life so hard for the
many, that suicide and insanity and crime are alike
increasing. With all our labour-saving machinery and all our
command over the forces of nature, the struggle for existence
has become more fierce than ever before; and year by year an
ever-increasing proportion of our people sink into paupers'
graves.
"Even more degrading, and more terrible in its consequences,
is the unblushing selfishness of the greatest civilized
nations. While boasting of their military power, and loudly
proclaiming their Christianity, not one of them has raised a
finger to save a Christian people, the remnant of an ancient
civilization, from the most barbarous persecution, torture,
and wholesale massacre. A hundred thousand Armenians murdered
or starved to death while the representatives of the great
powers coldly looked on—and prided themselves on their
unanimity in all making the same useless protests—will surely
be referred to by the historian of the future, as the most
detestable combination of hypocrisy and inhumanity that the
world has yet produced, and as the crowning proof of the utter
rottenness of the boasted civilization of the Nineteenth
Century.
{341}
When the brightness of future ages shall have dimmed the
glamour of our material progress, the judgment of history will
surely be, that the ethical standard of our rulers was a
deplorably low one, and that we were unworthy to possess the
great and beneficent powers that science had placed in our
hands.
"But although this century has given us so many examples of

failure, it has also given us hope for the future. True
humanity, the determination that the crying social evils of
our time shall not continue; the certainty that they can be
abolished; an unwavering faith in human nature, have never
been so strong, so vigorous, so rapidly growing as they are
to-day."
A. R. Wallace,
The Wonderful Century,
chapter 21
(copyright, Dodd, Mead &; Company, New York,
quoted with permission).
Expansion of the European races during the Century.
Changes in the distribution of political power.
Dominance of the Anglo-American peoples.
Rise of the United States of America to the highest rank.
At a dinner given by the Manchester Statistical Society,

October 17, 1900, Sir Robert Giffen, the eminent statistician,
made a notable speech on the political ideas which the
statistics of the Nineteenth Century suggest. "The first of
these was the prodigious rate at which the civilized world—
the community of European nations and nations of European
origin—was growing. The population of Europe and of nations of
European origin like the United States might now be put at
something over 500,000,000. The United States themselves might
be put at nearly 80 millions; Russia in its recent census
showed a population which must already have grown to about 135
millions; Germany about 55 millions; the United Kingdom, with the
self-governing colonies of Canada and Australasia and the
white population of South Africa, 55 millions;
Austria-Hungary, 45 millions; France, 40 millions; Italy, 32
millions; Spain and Portugal, 25 millions; Scandinavian
countries, ten millions; Holland and Belgium, ten millions;
and other European countries, 20 millions. A century ago the
corresponding figure to this 500,000,000 would not have been
more than about 170,000,000. The economic development of the
people had been even more marvellous. The wealth of the people
all told, which would probably not have been reckoned at more
than £5,000,000,000 at the beginning of the century, must be
reckoned now by tens of thousands of millions.
"Again the development was for the most part not uniform among
the European populations. It was most marked in the
Anglo-American section. The increase here was from a
population of not more than about 20 millions, which was the
population of the United States and the United Kingdom
together 100 years ago, to a population of not less than 130
millions at the present time. Russia and Germany also showed
remarkable increases, but nothing like this. This astonishing
growth of population meant a great change in the relative
position of the European nations in the world—their relative
weight in international politics. Practically the non-European
races of the world had all the time been stationary, except in
India, where the 'pax Britannica' had permitted the native
population to expand. The result was that the forces of
civilization, as against those of the black and yellow races,
had become practically irresistible. The numbers were
relatively far greater than ever they were before, and the
economic force was indefinitely greater. A great change in the
distribution of political power among European nations
themselves was also indicated. The existence alone of the
United States implied an immense change. If we considered that
an empire like that of Britain had its strength rather
diminished than increased by the possession of territories
like India, then the United States having a larger European
population than that of the British Empire might be considered
the most powerful State in the world as far as population and
resources were concerned. No doubt Russia had a much larger
population, but the inferiority of the units was so great that
the preeminence of the United States was not in question.
Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom had all grown, while
France and Austria had by comparison remained stationary, so
that now the great world Powers were four only—the United
States, Britain, Russia, and Germany, with France a doubtful
fifth. The extent of the revolution that had taken place in a
century was evident, and obviously accounted for much that was
going on in international politics.
"If the forces now in existence continue to operate as they

had done in the past century for only a few more generations,
the close of the coming century must witness a further
transformation, whose beginnings would be apparent in the
lifetime of some amongst us. It was a reasonable probability
that unless some great internal change should take place in
the ideas and conduct of the European races themselves, the
population of 500 millions would in another century become one
of 1,500 to 2,000 millions. The black and yellow races still
remaining, as far as one could see, comparatively stationary,
this would make a greatly changed world. The yellow peril, for
instance, of which we heard so much, would have vanished,
because the yellow races themselves would be so much
outnumbered. What would be the 400 millions of China compared
with 1,500 to 2,000 millions of European race? Further
progress must also be made in the redistribution of power
among European nations. International politics would be more
and more limited to the affairs of what were already the four
great Powers—the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany,
and Russia. The most serious problem would of course be
whether the dilemma stated by Malthus and hitherto put aside
by the occupation of new lands, would at length become an
urgently practical question. It was impossible not to wonder
which of the two forces—the growth of population and the
increase of the needs of the growing population on the one
side, and the growth of invention and mechanical power in
supplying human wants on the other side—would gain as time
went on. Referring to the desire to secure new markets abroad,
Sir Robert Giffen said that the figures with which he had been
dealing pointed to quite another source of new markets. Surely
there could be no lack of new customers if the 500 millions of
the advanced races themselves were to be doubled in from 30 to
50 years and trebled or quadrupled in a century."
London Times, October 18, 1900.
{342}

The lengthened average of human life.
"What has been the chief characteristic of the nineteenth

century? No two critics agree, nor can they, because each
prefers a different quality. One singles out science, another,
invention, as the dominant trait. A third, who looks mainly at
the political aspect of life, says democracy. Others, again,
say pessimism, philanthropy, doubt, or toleration. So many
features, so much diversity, argue at least for
many-sidedness.
"There is one characteristic, however, which distinguishes the

nineteenth century from all previous centuries—a
characteristic which has become too common to attract the
attention it deserves, although it really measures all the
rest: this is longevity. During the past one hundred years the
length of life of the average man in the United States and in
the more civilized parts of Europe has increased from a little
over 30 to about 40 years. A multitude of causes, mostly
physical, have contributed to this result. Foremost among
these should be placed
(1) whatever may be included under the general term sanitation;
(2) improved methods in medicine; and
(3) the more regular habits of living which are the direct
outcome of industrial life on a large scale.
"These are some of the evident means by which life has been
lengthened. Inventions, which have made production cheap and
the transportation of all products both cheap and easy, have
had an influence too great to be computed. And no doubt much
has been due to a general improvement in methods of
government; although, in the main, there has been much less
progress in practical government than is commonly supposed. No
great railroad company or banking house or manufacturing
corporation could prosper if its officers and employees were
chosen and kept in office according to the system by which
political offices, almost everywhere, are filled. 'None hut
experts wanted,' is the sign written over the entrance to
every profession, trade, and occupation—except government.
"But, whatever governments have done or left undone, the fact

to be insisted on here is, that the average man to-day lives
almost ten years longer than his grandfather lived."
W. R. Thayer,
Longevity and Degeneration
(Forum, February, 1900).

The Musical Century.
"Music is the only one of the fine arts of which it can be

said that it reached its highest development in the nineteenth
century. It is the modern art par excellence; and while
everybody has been told that it is the youngest of the arts,
few realize how much is implied in that assertion."
Henry T. Finck,
The Musical Century
(New York Evening Post, January 12, 1901).

The Woman's Century.
"Victor Hugo predicted that the nineteenth century would be

known as Woman's Century. The comparison of the woman of 1800
and the woman of 1900 offers abundant proof of the correctness
of the prophecy."
Mrs. Carrie C. Catt,

Women in the Industries and Professions
"In 1900 a third of all the college students in the United

States are women. Sixty per cent. of the pupils in the
secondary schools, both public and private, are girls—i. e.,
more girls are preparing for college than boys. Women having
in general more leisure than men, there is reason to expect
that there will soon be more women than men in our colleges
and graduate schools. The time, too, has passed when girls
went to college to prepare themselves solely for teaching or
for other bread-winning occupations. In considerable numbers
they now seek intellectual resources and the enrichment of
their private lives. Thus far between 50 and 60 per cent. of
women college graduates have at some time taught. In the
country at large more than 70 per cent. of the teaching is
done by women, in the North Atlantic portion over 80 per cent.
Even in the secondary schools, public and private, more women
than men are teaching, though in all other countries the
advanced instruction of boys is exclusively in the hands of
men. Never before has a nation intrusted all the school
training of the vast majority of its future population, men as
well as women, to women alone."
Mrs. Alice F. Palmer,

The Higher Education of Women

The Age of Steel succeeding the Age of Iron.
"The age of iron, which passed away during the last century,
was succeeded by the age of Bessemer steel, which enjoyed a
reign of only thirty-six years, beginning, as it did, in 1864,
and is in turn now passing away to be succeeded by the age of
Siemens open-hearth steel. Already the product of open-hearth
is far beyond that of Bessemer in Britain, and such the writer
ventures to predict will soon be the case in the United
States."
Andrew Carnegie,
The Development of Steel Manufacture

As the "Age of Steam."
See (in volume 4)

STEAM ENGINE, STEAM LOCOMOTION, etc.; and
(in this volume)
SCIENCE, RECENT: MECHANICAL.

As the "Electric Age."
See (in volume 2)

ELECTRICAL, DISCOVERY; and
(in this volume)
SCIENCE, RECENT: ELECTRICAL.
----------THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: End--------
NIPPUR, Explorations of the ruins of.
See (in this volume)

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: BABYLONIA: AMERICAN
EXPLORATION.
NIUCHWANG:
"Niuchwang, while a comparatively small city of but 60,000
population, is of especial importance to the United States as
a treaty port. It is located at the extreme north of the Gulf
of Pechili, considerably farther north than Tientsin, and is
of especial importance to the United States because of the
demand for goods from this country in that section. … The
proposed Russian railway line, which is projected through
Manchuria and the province of Shingking to the port of Port
Arthur, passes near Niuchwang and is to be connected by a
short line. Another line, to be built by British capital, will
connect Niuchwang with Shanhaikwan, which is already in railway
connection with Peking, the capital of the Empire."
United States, Bureau of Statistics, Monthly Summary,
March, 1899, page 2196.
NIUCHWANG:
Russian occupation.

MANCHURIA: A. D. 1900.
NORFOLK ISLAND:
Change of government.
(in this volume)

AUSTRALIA (NEW SOUTH WALES): A. D. 1896.
{343}
NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1897-1899.

Local Dispensary Laws.
An Act applying the South Carolina "dispensary" system of

regulation for the liquor traffic (see, in this volume, SOUTH
CAROLINA: A. D. 1892-1899) to Fayetteville was passed by the
Legislature in 1897, and several smaller towns secured local
legislation to the same effect in 1899; but attempts to carry
a general dispensary law for the State were defeated.
NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1898.

Race war in Wilmington.
Wilmington, North Carolina, was the scene, in November, of

what can only be called a fierce revolution, whereby the city
government, dominated by the colored population, which
outnumbered the white, was violently overturned by the latter.
The race conflict was precipitated by an article in a Republican
newspaper, edited by a negro, which reflected on the honor of
some of the white women, and caused wild excitement among the
white men. The offending newspaper office was destroyed and
its editor fled. Resistance being offered, furious fighting
occurred, in which a considerable number of negroes was
killed, many were wounded, and hundreds were driven by terror
from the town. White Republican officials were also expelled
or took to flight, and their opponents secured control of city
affairs.
NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1900.

Constitutional amendment for the qualification of the suffrage.
By a constitutional amendment, adopted in August, 1900, the

following qualification of the suffrage was established:
"SECTION 4.
Every person presenting himself for registration shall be able
to read and write any section of the constitution in the
English language: and, before he shall be entitled to vote, he
shall have paid, on or before the 1st day of May of the year
in which he proposes to vote, his poll tax for the previous
year as prescribed by Article V, section 1, of the
constitution. But no male person who was, on January 1, 1867,
or at any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under the laws
of any State in the United States wherein he then resided, and
no lineal descendant of any such person, shall be denied the
right to register and vote at any election in this State by
reason of his failure to possess the educational qualification
herein prescribed, provided he shall have registered in
accordance with the terms of this section prior to December,
1908. The general assembly shall provide for the registration
of all persons entitled to vote without the educational
qualifications herein prescribed, and shall, on or before
November 1, 1908, provide for the making of a permanent record
of such registration, and all persons so registered shall
forever thereafter have the right to vote in all elections by
the people in this State, unless disqualified under section 2
of this article: Provided, Such person shall have paid his
poll tax as above required."
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES, Canadian:

Self-government granted.

CANADA: A. D. 1897 (OCTOBER).
NORWAY.

SWEDEN AND NORWAY.
NOVA SCOTIA.

CANADA.
NOVA ZEMBLA, Recent exploration of.

POLAR EXPLORATION, 1895, 1896, 1897, 1900.
NUFFAR,
NIFFER, Explorations at.

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: BABYLONIA: AMERICAN
EXPLORATION.
NUPÉ, British subjugation of.

AFRICA: A. D. 1897 (NIGERIA).
NUREMBERG: A. D. 1900.
Remarkable growth in five years.
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (DECEMBER).
NYASSALAND.

BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA PROTECTORATE.
O.
OIL RIVERS PROTECTORATE, The.

NIGERIA: A. D. 1882-1899.
OLD-AGE INSURANCE: In Germany.

GERMANY: A. D. 1897-1900.
OLD-AGE PENSIONS:
In New South Wales.

AUSTRALIA (NEW SOUTH WALES): A. D. 1900.
OLD-AGE PENSIONS:
In New Zealand.

NEW ZEALAND: A. D. 1899;
and AUSTRALIA: RECENT EXTENSIONS OF DEMOCRACY.
OLD-AGE PENSIONS:
The question in England.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1896; and 1899-1900.
OLNEY, Richard:
Correspondence with Lord Salisbury on the Venezuela boundary
question.

VENEZUELA: A. D. 1895 (JULY), and (NOVEMBER).
OLYMPIC GAMES, Revival of.

ATHENS: A. D. 1896.
OMAHA: A. D. 1898.
The Trans-Mississippi Exposition.
A highly successful Trans-Mississippi Exposition was opened on

the 1st of June and closed on the last day of October, having
been attended by 2,600,000 people. Buildings and grounds were
prepared with beautiful effect, at a cost of $2,500,000.
OMDURMAN:
Capital of the Khalifa.
Capture by the Anglo-Egyptian Army.

EGYPT: A. D. 1885-1896; and 1897-1898.
ONTARIO.

CANADA.
"OPEN DOOR,"
The commercial policy of the.
CHINA: A. D. 1899-1900 (SEPTEMBER-FEBRUARY).
OPIUM COMMISSION, Report of the.

INDIA: A. D. 1895 (APRIL).
ORANGE FREE STATE: A. D. 1895.

Proposed federal union with the Transvaal.

AFRICA: A. D. 1895 (ORANGE FREE STATE).
ORANGE FREE STATE: A. D. 1897.

Treaty with the South African Republic.

SOUTH AFRICA (ORANGE FREE STATE AND TRANSVAAL):
A. D. 1897 (APRIL).
ORANGE FREE STATE: A. D. 1899-1900.

Making common cause with the South African Republic.
War with Great Britain.

SOUTH AFRICA (ORANGE FREE STATE):
A. D. 1899 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER), and after.
ORANGE FREE STATE: A. D. 1900 (May.)

Proclamation of annexation to the British dominions.

SOUTH AFRICA (ORANGE FREE STATE): A. D. 1900 (MAY).
{344}
OSMAN DIGNA.

EGYPT: A. D. 1885-1896; 1897-1898; and 1899-1900.
OTIS, General:
Reports as Military Governor of the Philippines.

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1898 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).
OTTAWA: A. D. 1900.
Great fire.
The city of Ottawa, capital of the Dominion of Canada, and the

lumber manufacturing town of Hull, on the opposite side of the
Ottawa River, were both devastated, on the 26th of April, by
one of the most destructive fires of the century. It
originated in the upsetting of a lamp in a dwelling in Hull.
This was at half-past ten o'clock in the morning. A big gale
blowing from the northeast made quick work of the inflammable
houses in Hull, and by twelve o'clock the flames had
reached the river-bank and leaped across to the Ottawa side.
The fire then retraced its steps in Hull, and destroyed a
group of factories. It "blazed a crescent-shaped path five
miles long and a mile wide, destroying in its journey the
public buildings and the residential part of Hull, the
industrial area of the Chaudiere, and the suburbs of the
Ottawa laboring classes at Mechanicsburg, Rochesterville, and
Hintonburg. Fully 15,000 people were rendered homeless, and
$15,000,000 worth of property was annihilated."
Canadian Magazine, July, 1900.
OTTOMAN BANK:
Attack of Armenian revolutionists at Constantinople.
TURKEY: A. D. 1896 (AUGUST).
P.
PAARDEBERG, Battle of.

SOUTH AFRICA (THE FIELD OF WAR):
A. D. 1900 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY).
PACT OF HALEPA, The.

TURKEY: A. D. 1896.
PAGO PAGO: Acquisition by the United States.

SAMOAN ISLANDS.
PALESTINE: A. D. 1897-1901.
The Zionist movement for Jewish colonization.

JEWS: A. D. 1897-1901.
PALESTINE: A. D. 1898.
Visit of the German Emperor.

GERMANY: A. D. 1898 (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER).
PALESTINE: A. D. 1901.
Turkish restriction on Jewish visits.
JEWS: A. D. 1901.
PALMER, General John M.:

Candidacy for the American Presidency in 1896.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (JUNE-NOVEMBER).
PAMIR REGION, The:

Anglo-Russian agreement concerning.

AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1895.
PAMPANGAS, The.

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: THE NATIVE INHABITANTS.
PANA, Riotous coal-mining strike at.

INDUSTRIAL DISTURBANCES: A. D. 1898.
PANAMA CANAL, The: A. D. 1900.

PANAMA CANAL;
and (in this volume)
CANAL, INTEROCEANIC: A. D. 1900 (NOVEMBER).
PAN-AMERICAN EXPOSITION, The.

BUFFALO: A. D. 1901.

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100 Years of History Laura Feliu (Editor)

The Rise And Fall Of Communist Parties In France And

A History of the Middle East (1991; 5th ed. 2019) 5th

A History of the Modern Middle East Sixth Edition

Muslim Divorce in the Middle East Jessica Carlisle

international relations of middle east Louise Fawcett

The Illustrated Feminist 100 Years of Suffrage Strength

Smart Geography 100 Years of the Bulgarian Geographical

Chemical Regulation in the Middle East 1st Edition

Laura Feliu is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Faculty of Political

Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the

Parliamentary Institutions in Regional and International Governance

Youth at the Margins

Terrorism and Insurgency in Asia

Communist Parties in the Middle East

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

ISBN: 978-0-367-13445-7 (hbk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

List of tables vii

1 Communist parties in the Middle East and North Africa:

3 The Communist Party of Turkey: An instrument of ‘Soviet

4 The Iraqi Communist Party 74

5 The Lebanese Communist Party: Continuity against all odds 90

6 The Syrian Communist Party: Patrimonialism and fractures 109

7 Class and nation: Arab and Jewish communists in Palestine 129

8 The communist movement in Egypt 152

10 The Sudan Communist Party: Bolshevize it, O God! 184

11 The communists in Algeria (1920–93) 199

12 The four faces of Morocco’s communists: PCF, MCP, PLS

15 From Marxism to anti-authoritarianism: Egypt’s New Left 268

12.1 PPS representation in legislative elections from 1977 to 2016 231

Laura Feliu is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Faculty of Poli-

2 The communist parties: political and ideological tensions

The intensiﬁcation of the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle brought

Above all, the contradiction was expressed at the moment of independence,

The objective of the Democratic Way is the construction of socialism as a

1 Secularism: Many Leftist forces righteously insist on considering secular-

"The future historian of thought will no doubt regard the

"In the briefest sketch of what the nineteenth century has

"To an earlier age knowledge was power, merely that and

Professor Charles S. Peirce,

"The mark of the century has been a continuous attempt at a

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:

"The Nineteenth Century … has been characterised by a

"But the more we realize the vast possibilities of human

"With ample knowledge of the sources of health, we allow, and

"But although this century has given us so many examples of

At a dinner given by the Manchester Statistical Society,

"If the forces now in existence continue to operate as they

London Times, October 18, 1900.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:

"What has been the chief characteristic of the nineteenth

"There is one characteristic, however, which distinguishes the

"But, whatever governments have done or left undone, the fact

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:

"Music is the only one of the fine arts of which it can be

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:

"Victor Hugo predicted that the nineteenth century would be

Mrs. Carrie C. Catt,

"In 1900 a third of all the college students in the United

Mrs. Alice F. Palmer,

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: