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The starting point for understanding the ideology of the Arab Baath (also Ba’ath or Ba’th; Arabic for “resurrection” or “renaissance”) Socialist Party, is its slogan, “Unity, Freedom, Socialism.” Generally known as the Baath, it emerged in the early 1940s in Syria, but sometimes is considered a successor to another Syrian organization, the League of National Action, which dates back to 1932. The party spread to other Arab countries, particularly in the Fertile Crescent region. Its ideology represents an articulation of Arab nationalist and anticolonial thinking then ubiquitous in the area, especially among young educated people of modest origin.

The precise date of the founding of the party is subject to some controversy, as two separate groups, largely made up of high school students, appeared almost simultaneously under the name Arab Baath Party. One of these soon disappeared, with its members joining the group led by two Syrian high school teachers, Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. The party added the word socialist to its name when it merged with the Arab Socialist Party of Akram Hourani, a prominent agitator for peasants’ rights in the Hama district of Syria (who broke away from that party in 1962). A national convention adopted a constitution for the Baath Party, which later changed its name to Socialist Baath Party, in 1947.

The Baath eventually gained influence in electoral politics in Syria during the mid-1950s and later became the ruling party of Syria following a Baathist coup in 1963. Baathists also took power in Iraq in 1963, only to be overthrown later in the same year. Another coup in 1968 ushered in a period of Baathist rule in Iraq that endured until the American invasion of 2003, when the party was banned. Baathists (or ex-Baathists) apparently have played a significant role in the anti-American insurgency in the country since then. The Baath had considerable support in Jordan during the 1950s, particularly among the Palestinian population, but declined as a result of the regime’s repressiveness and its own factionalism.

One Arab Nation

Placing the word unity first in its slogan served to stress the idea, widely shared with others, of the Arabs as a nation with an “eternal mission”—distinct but not superior to other nations—that must unite. Party terminology stresses the oneness of the Arab nation by having a pan-Arab National Command, while each country-level subdivision is known as a Regional Command. Dedication to this idea, together with threats from communists and “reactionaries,” led Baathists in 1958 to seek union with Egypt, whose leader, President Gamal Abdul Nasser, recently had gained heroic stature among Arab nationalists after his nationalization of the Suez Canal Company and subsequent survival of an invasion by Israel, Britain, and France. Baathists also hoped to provide the ideology and leadership for the new United Arab Republic (UAR), but soon were disillusioned by being left on the sidelines, leading many of them to support its breakup in 1961.

The Arabs’ relationship to Islam remained an important part of their national identity, sometimes even for Christian Arabs, during the ascendancy of secular Arab nationalism. But while a connection between Islam and the Arab “spirit” was recognized, the Baathist concept of unity stresses the equality of Arabs without distinction of religion. Consequently, it has sometimes had a strong appeal to minority religious sects. In Syria, this led to a strong influx of the small, previously disadvantaged Alawi sect into the party’s ranks and the emergence of a Baathist regime in which it is dominant. In Iraq, the Sunni Baathists who took power made considerable progress in bringing Shiites into the party. And yet the tendency of those in power to rely on cronies and blood relatives, especially when faced with threats, resulted ironically in regimes with a highly sectarian character. In Iraq, in particular, Iran’s Islamic Revolution (1979) inspired many Shiites and put the loyalty of others in question, thus undermining the idea of nonsectarianism. As Shiite revolts were brutally suppressed, this accentuated the equation of Baathism with the Sunni Arab in a way that belied the nonsectarian nature of the ideology.

Freedom

The word freedom in Baath Party usage carries multiple implications. It connotes freedom from the colonialism that dominated much of the Arab world when the party first emerged, as well as from continuing subordination to outside powers (that is, the freedom of the nation). Baathists have been committed to the slogan of nonalignment while cooperating pragmatically with particular big powers.

Freedom also seemed to refer originally to freedom for the individual. Baathists gave strong support for such democratic principles as the direct election of members to the Syrian parliament and female suffrage in the late 1940s. But Baathist regimes have come to power through military coups in both Syria and Iraq, and each regime has been highly authoritarian. Although the Syrian and Iraqi Baathist regimes established fronts in which some other parties were allowed to participate, those have had no real power. In effect, both Syria and Iraq have been single-party regimes, with the Baath organized along Leninist lines of “democratic centralism” (from cells at the bottom to a secretary general at the top). In reality, the power structure has been personalistic, with informal networks of cronies and relatives more important than any political party.

Socialism

Socialism always was subordinate to unity in the hierarchy of Baathist goals. Baathist socialist ideology, like other versions of Arab socialism, stresses the need to end exploitation and promote social justice. It advocates nationalization of big enterprises while leaving much of the economy in the hands of small owners. It calls for limits on ownership of agricultural land. The party’s constitution, adopted in 1947, declares “property and inheritance” to be “natural rights . . . protected within the limits of the national interest.” In practice, the Baathist regimes of Syria and Iraq brought formerly underprivileged people to power and established relatively statist economies, although both implemented some economic liberalization in the 1980s.

Although Baathist regimes generally received much backing from communist countries, the Baath Party was always anticommunist, due to the Baathists’ ideology and their unwillingness to tolerate other political groups in their countries. They sometimes collaborated with Western powers against communism, as in the case of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s 1963 help in bringing the Baath to power in Iraq and implementing an anticommunist pogrom. Like other proponents of socialism, both Baathist regimes pursued policies of land reform and nationalization but never attempted to abolish all private ownership.

From Baath To Baaths

Factionalism, based on both personal rivalries and ideological differences, has plagued the Baath. The period of SyrianEgyptian unity brought several splits, as Bitar and Hourani, but not Aflaq, endorsed secession from the UAR in 1961. With the Baath coming to power in Syria in 1963, factionalism remained rampant. A leftist military faction of the party (sometimes called the Neo-Baath and tending to come from the countryside), much influenced by Marxism and pursuing a particularly militant anti-Israel policy, carried out a coup against the existing Baathist regime in 1966. This was overthrown by a pragmatic, “corrective movement” under Hafiz al-Asad in 1970, during which Asad, also a Baathist, took power. The Baathist group that came to power in Iraq in 1968 became a rival to the Syrian regime, leading to the emergence of two rival National Commands and of rival Regional Commands in some countries, analogous to the competition between pro-Moscow and pro-Beijing communist parties. This rivalry seems basically to represent personal and geopolitical conflicts more than any disagreement over ideology or policy. Enmity between Baathist Syria and Baathist Iraq became so intense that the former supported Iraq’s enemy in the Iraq-Iran War (1980–1988) and then joined the anti-Iraqi coalition in 1991.

The Baath seems largely to belong to the past. By the early twenty-first century, both socialism and the goal of pan-Arab unification lost their former widespread appeal, as had secularism. The Syrian Baathist regime in 2009 was more a personality than a party dictatorship. Considering anti-Baathist attitudes of the now-empowered Shiite majority in Iraq, the restoration of the Baath there seems unthinkable. Only minor Baathist parties exist in other Arab countries, such as Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, Sudan, and Mauritania.

Bibliography:

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Baram, Amazia. Culture, History, and Ideology in the Formation of Ba’thist Iraq, 1968–1989. New York: St. Martin’s, 1991.
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