London’s Marx Memorial Library was packed on the evening of Wednesday August 21 for the launch of ‘Reading in Al-Mushtarak: Islam, the Commons, and Systems for Democratic Socialism’, published by Iskra Books. This important work was written by the late Ibrahim Allawi, the long-serving General Secretary of the Communist Party of Iraq (Central Command). It was originally published in Arabic in 1983 and has now been published in English for the first time, having been edited and translated by two of his long-time comrades, Ali Al-Assam and Majed Allawi.
The event was chaired by David Peat, an Editor for Iskra Books, who oversaw its publication and who is also the Secretary of Friends of Socialist China (Britain), with four speakers, all of whom were longtime comrades of Allawi, namely Ali Al-Assam, Majed Allawi, Farouk Mustafa Rasool and Hani Lazim, as well as Keith Bennett, Co-editor of Friends of Socialist China (FOSC), who contributed a Foreword to the book and supported the project throughout. Majed Allawi and Farouk Mustafa Rasool had travelled especially from Iraq to participate in the launch, along with other family members and comrades of Allawi, who had come from Iraq, Europe and the United States.
Ali Al-Assam, who is also a committee member of FOSC (Britain), after describing the huge growth of the communist movement in Iraq, said that “a significant setback occurred in 1959 when the party’s leadership, under Soviet influence, decided against seizing power despite its widespread popular support and control over Iraq’s military. This decision followed the sending, ‘for re-education’, of party leaders Salam Adil and Jamal Haidari to Moscow. The Soviet Union, particularly under Khrushchev, feared that a communist takeover in Iraq would destabilise its relations with the West during the Cold War.”
China, he noted, took a contrasting stance: “In contrast to the Soviet Union’s cautious stance, as Ibrahim covered well in his 1990 book, ‘Berlin Baghdad the Barter’, China took a more supportive approach towards the 14 July Revolution. He cites a 1958 article from the Chinese newspaper Renmin Ribao, which stated, ‘China cannot stand idle in the face of American aggression in the Arab region. We want peace, but we do not fear war. If the imperialist aggressors lose their balance and insist on a test of strength, then everyone who rejects slavery must prepare the necessary measures.’ According to the Chinese press at the time, thousands of Chinese officers and soldiers volunteered to fight in Iraq after the US landed its forces in Beirut in July 1958. China’s strong stance and support for Iraq’s sovereignty made it popular among the Iraqi people and communists, in stark contrast to the Soviet Union’s reluctance. Ibrahim, in his book, says that this sympathy towards the Communist Party of China could have been another factor that led Khrushchev to be wary of a communist victory in Iraq.”
Having explained how Ibrahim Allawi’s later work prefigured China’s development of a socialist market economy, independently reaching similar conclusions, Ali concluded:
“I had the privilege of visiting China twice this year with my colleagues from Friends of Socialist China. Visiting party schools and engaging with Chinese comrades provided deep insights into the creative application of scientific Marxism by the Communist Party of China since the early days of Mao Zedong’s leadership. Much of this history is documented in the ‘Concise History of the Communist Party of China’. China’s communist history has much in common with Iraqi communist history. Both parties started in regions with great histories and ancient civilisations, both have diversity of nationalities and religions, and the founders of the two parties sought to use Marxism not only as a scientific tool for change but also to unite the people. Yet the outcome was tragically different for Iraq.
“Let’s not forget that nearly one-fifth of humanity is participating in a bold and successful experiment in socialism. This is a great achievement for humanity and a source for much optimism in the future.”
In his speech, Majed Allawi, spoke about the proletarian origins of the Iraqi Communist Party, stressing. in particular, the role of its secretary Yusuf Salman Yusuf (Fahd), who was a worker in an ice factory.
“This deep class foundation gave the Iraqi Communist Party relative independence in its national decisions. This stance caused some kind of discomfort for the international communist centre, the Comintern. This was clear in the Soviet efforts to impose the recognition of Israel.
“The planning to eliminate the leadership of Comrade Fahd, who was sentenced to death with his comrades in 1948 – later reduced to life imprisonment after a global wave of protests – culminated in a retrial in 1949 while they were in prison, resulting in their execution. Dr. Ibrahim Allawi was convinced that the lack of a global campaign against this sentence contributed to their execution.
“Fahd’s execution represented a tremendous loss to the communist movement, as his leadership was exceptional in integrating class and national struggles and in deepening theoretical and cultural awareness. This quality was largely absent from the leadership that followed Fahd due to the circumstances of persecution, incarceration, and exile, despite their remarkable achievements in resolving internal conflicts that arose in the few years following Fahd’s execution.”
Farouk Mustafa Rasool, who was one of Ibrahim Allawi’s closest comrades and collaborators from the late 1950s to his death, and who today, as the Founder of the Faruk Investment Group and of Asiacell (in which capacity he first introduced technology from China’s Huawei to Iraq more than two decades ago and still maintains strong ties with China’s technology industry), is one of Iraq’s leading businessmen, said that he regarded himself, and still regards himself, as a modest student of Ibrahim Allawi. It was an honour to have worked with him. He was a brave man who made many sacrifices, including of his family life, for the cause in which he believed.
Hani Lazim stressed Allawi’s self-discipline and his democratic style of work, where he was prepared to listen to everyone’s opinion. He also taught his comrades the importance of self-reliance and that a revolutionary movement could not depend on others.
Following the meeting, a reception was held at Palestine House, where Professor Kamal Majid, another long-term comrade of Allawi, shared his insights into his character, philosophy and work.
Below is the main gist of Keith Bennett’s speech to the meeting. The full text may be found here. The speeches of Ali Al-Assam and Majed Allawi are also available here and here. The meeting may be viewed on YouTube and details of the book, including a free PDF, are on the Iskra Books website. A brief report of the meeting was published by the Morning Star.
First published in Arabic a little over 40 years ago, this book will be of more than academic interest. Although it will undoubtedly be of great interest to academics interested in the study of Marxism, Iraq, Islam, and the Arab and Muslim worlds, as well.
But in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote:
“The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality; 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.”
These are the two key tests that Ibrahim Allawi’s text meets. While addressing immediate political issues of his day, not least the question of Palestine, still of course the issue of the day, it attempts to sum up the historical experience of building socialism whilst looking to the future. So, while grounded in Iraqi realities, from ancient times to time of writing, it concerns itself with some of the most pressing issues facing humanity as a whole.
That’s why I wrote in my Foreword to the book:
“Ibrahim Allawi is one of many great Global South Marxists whose work has simply not been known in the Global North in particular, but whose vision and insights, born from the triumphs, vicissitudes, and tragedies of revolutionary praxis, need to be known, debated and studied by those who aspire to a better world.”
The famous words on Marx’s tombstone say that hitherto philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point is to change it. And this is also key to the importance of Allawi’s work. If the most advanced revolutionary theory largely emanates from the Global South, which has been the case since fairly early in the last century, it is not least because this has been the locus of the most advanced revolutionary practice, from the winning of independence against imperialism to attempts at building socialism.
As Lenin wrote in 1923, with his customary, indeed legendary, prescience:
“In the last analysis, the outcome of the struggle will be determined by the fact that Russia, India, China, etc., account for the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe. And during the past few years it is this majority that has been drawn into the struggle for emancipation with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this respect there cannot be the slightest doubt what the final outcome of the world struggle will be. In this sense, the complete victory of socialism is fully and absolutely assured.”
The communist movement in Iraq was truly a mass, popular movement. At the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, with the exception of Indonesia, it was the largest communist movement outside the socialist camp, most likely the largest proportionate to population. Many held the reasonable expectation that it could take power.
However, that movement divided, in part but by no means in whole, due to the divisions in the international communist movement, and its promise remained unfulfilled, despite, in the case of Allawi and his comrades, a heroic attempt to replicate the success of other great revolutions by taking the road of armed struggle.
But it should also be kept in mind that many of the key breakthroughs in the theory and practice of the revolution have come from analysing, summing up and learning from the bitter experience of defeat. As so often, Mao Zedong expressed it well in poetry:
Bitter sacrifice strengthens bold resolve
Which dares to make sun and moon shine in new skies
This is the spirit with which Allawi undertook the research and writing of Al Mushtarak. He did not give way to despondency, join a fashionable trend of reneging, or forget his original aspiration. Rather, in the phrase most often associated with Amilcar Cabral, the Marxist leader of the liberation struggle in Guinea-Bissau, he ‘returned to the source’—by embarking on a deep process of study and reflection.
In returning to the source, Allawi drank from two wells—going deeply into Islamic philosophy, history and culture as well as critically assessing the historical experience of actually existing socialism on the basis of the original theories and precepts of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. The conclusions he came to are presented in this book.
Whilst some early Marxists, for example Karl Kautsky, in his ‘Foundations of Christianity’, written before he joined the fashionable trend of reneging, had explored the relationship between socialism and religion, and specifically the communistic ethos of early Christianity, Allawi’s profound explorations of Islamic philosophy on a similar basis, may be considered truly pathbreaking, even if prefigured to some degree by other communist leaders from the Islamic world, such as Indonesia’s Tan Malaka.
Apt comparisons can also be drawn with James Connolly’s ‘Labour in Irish History’, and its contention that the ancient Brehon law represented an early socialist form, such that, “the basis of society in Ireland… rested upon communal or tribal ownership of land… the social order which prevailed in England – feudalism – was unknown, and… it gradually came to be understood that the war against the foreign oppressor was also a war against private property in land.”
Or as John MacLean put it in, ‘All Hail, the Scottish Workers Republic’:
“The communism of the clans must be re-established on a modern basis… Scotland must therefore work itself into a communism embracing the whole country as a unit. The country must have but one clan, as it were – a united people working in co-operation and co-operatively, using the wealth that is created. We can safely say, then: back to communism and forward to communism.”
But for me, the most immediate and pertinent comparison is a contemporary one, namely the remarkable way that Allawi’s ideas presented in this book prefigure Xi Jinping’s thesis of the ‘two integrations’, which explores the highly complementary nature and mutually reinforcing synergy of traditional Chinese culture and civilisation on the one hand and Marxism on the other.
As the Chinese leader explained in June 2023:
‘Given the profound foundations of our venerable 5,000-year-old civilisation, the only path for pioneering and developing Chinese socialism is to integrate the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and the best of its traditional culture (‘two integrations’). This systematic conclusion has been derived from our extensive explorations of Chinese socialism. We have always emphasised integrating the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and have now officially brought forward the integration of the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s fine traditional culture. As I once stated, without the 5,000-year-old Chinese civilisation, where would the Chinese characteristics come from?’
Like any writing, Allawi’s is a product of its time. And, as Xi Jinping notes, we are currently witnessing changes unseen in a century.
It can, therefore, more than ever, be unwise or even invidious to attempt to project views of subsequent developments onto those who are no longer with us. However, just as Allawi’s study of Marxist theory and the historical experience of Soviet socialism provide important clues to the ultimate failure of the first sustained socialist experiment, so his explorations of the socialist thread in Islamic philosophy provide a comparative framework which can help us to understand why it was China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos that survived the tsunami that swept away socialism in other countries. Whatever the challenges faced by these five countries, and whatever their shortcomings, they all experienced a deep and profound – not superficial as was the case in much of Eastern Europe – social revolution, a revolution made by the masses of the people, and not imposed by bureaucratic diktat; and each has gone on to translate Marxism into the respective national language, enriching and developing it through the process of fusion with historical and cultural traditions and national sentiments.
Likewise, at time of writing, Allawi could not have been expected to foresee the phenomenal economic rise of China. But what if he could look today at Xi Jinping’s concept of ‘whole process people’s democracy’, where ‘the running of the country by the people is the essence and heart of socialist democracy. The very purpose of developing socialist democracy is to give full expression to the will of the people, protect their rights and interests, spark their creativity, and provide a system of institutions to ensure that it is they who run the country’; along with, for example, China’s revival of cooperative forms of ownership? It does not seem unreasonable to postulate that he would have seen, and identified with, comrades grappling with the same challenges that he, too, had fearlessly taken up.
That is surely what makes this publication so relevant and timely.
