THE FRENCH Revolution abolished Europe's old feudal and monarchic regimes. Its fundamental social reforms stimulated rapid economic development. These upheavals created the impetus for deep structural changes. Nationalist ideology was at that point revolutionary, insofar as it expressed the peoples' aspirations to get rid of the feudal regimes that had dominated Europe for thirteen centuries. This is also the reason that modern national ideology succeeded in penetrating different parts of the world-it replaced the religious ideologies that retreated with the breakdown of the feudal regimes. Religion could provide no alternative to the economic and political development that the French Revolution was offering to the peoples of the world.

America had started the process of dismantling the old feudal empires by establishing a modern republican regime thirteen years before the French Revolution. The United States was also the first republic founded on a Constitution guaranteeing freedom and equality as a natural right of human beings. The French Revolution, however, made a major contribution to dismantling the old economic relations, and not only in Europe, but also in North Africa and Western Asia. Napoleon's defeat of the established ruling class of Egypt in 1798 made possible one of the new century's most important developments in the Ottoman Empire. Beginning in 1805, Muhammad Ali Pasha consolidated the quasi-independent Egyptian state. His rule opened an era of struggles for full independence, against first the Ottomans and then the British. It culminated more than a century later, in the 1952 Free Officers' revolution that brought Gamal Abd al-Nassar to power. 

Nationalist ideology did not develop naturally or easily in the Arab world. Rather, Western colonizers imported it, through example and by inculcating their values. Throughout the nineteenth century, the new secular ideology encountered stiff resistance from Muslim religious leaders-and the feudal society of the time was mostly religious. Thus the fiery Islamic anti-colonialism of thinkers like Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839-1897) greatly influenced the masses, who associated the secular nationalist ideology with the colonizers' ways of thought. The reason was that the "national ideology" was associated with the Colonial forces that by then, failed in fulfilling the original goals of the bourgeois revolution: economic and political independence.

Western colonial states, in fact, supported nationalists in the periphery only within strict limits. They directed their political and economic backing to nationalists fighting against the old feudal empires-Russian, Austrian, and Ottoman. Their aim was merely to dismantle the old empires and re-colonize their territories on a new, modern, capitalist basis. 

The experience of Muhammad Ali and his descendants in Egypt foreshadows the weaknesses of the national movements. In the turmoil that followed Napoleon's withdrawal in 1801, an Albanian military leader, Muhammad Ali, seized power. Nominally governing Egypt for the Istanbul-based Ottoman Empire, he sought for some forty years to rule in his own right; one of his armies seized the Ottoman territory of Syria and held it for nearly a decade. Muhammad Ali played the part of an enlightened leader by dismantling feudal systems and irrigating new land to improve Egypt's balance of trade with the European powers. He imposed his reforms from above, however: Egypt had no local bourgeoisie or capitalist enterprise to vie with the feudalists. Seeking to provide Egypt with all the amenities of a modern European state, Muhammad Ali's grandson, Ismail, borrowed heavily from colonial powers like England and France. When in 1882 Egypt seemed likely to default, England took over the running of the country in order to ensure repayment. The British stayed until 1956.

Arab national ideology, leaning towards Capitalism, could not rely on the bourgeois class because such a class was almost absent. On the other hand, the religious ideology viewed Capitalism as a kind of colonialism and did not ally itself with the big landowners who loyal to the West. This is why the two currents, the national and the religious one, directed their efforts to get support of the middle classes. These, however, were excluded from any political influence and without any independent influence in the economy. 

The bourgeoisie goes over to its imperialist stage

This historical transformation led to a change in the bourgeois national ideology. The legacy of the French Revolution-liberty, equality, and fraternity among peoples-gave way as the industrial states encouraged racism and hatred and denigrated the cultures, languages, and civilizations of other peoples. These reactionary tendencies helped each state recruit its citizens for military campaigns against the other industrial countries over control of resources, including colonies. This period ended in two destructive world wars in the twentieth century. The sole reason for both was the drive of the ruling bourgeois class in the colonizing states to guarantee their profits and well-being.

The fullest expression of this reactionary ideology was a racist attitude towards colonized peoples, whether the Africans, the Indians, or the Arabs. Most Europeans considered them backward and degenerate, unable to handle the progress offered by modern society and incapable of managing their own affairs.

This reactionary nationalist ideology of the colonial states collided directly with the progressive nationalist ideology strongly upheld by the colonized peoples. The colonial powers were not prepared to grant these oppressed peoples even what they offered (within strict limits) to their own working class: a developed and independent economy based on a modern and relatively democratic society. A colonial power would often build an infrastructure-railways, roads, electrical grid, telecommunications system, and some industries-in a colony. It did so, however, only for its own sake, in a drive for tighter control and more efficient exploitation of human and natural resources. The Russian Revolution and its influence on the national liberation movements

The Russian Revolution of 1917 opened a new era for the colonized peoples. This was the first revolution led by a working class. It was the voice of resentment against World War I and its disastrous effects on the peoples of the belligerent powers.

Soon after the victory of socialism in Russia, however, the capitalist countries plunged the world into a severe economic crisis. In 1929 the New York Stock Exchange crashed; short-sighted responses led to world depression, a sharp rise in unemployment, and an upsurge of nationalist feeling in the industrial countries. The middle classes became apprehensive; in Germany and Italy, this sense of instability threw them into the camp of the fascists.

The capitalist countries reacted to the economic crisis by trying to insulate themselves with protectionist economic policies. This reaction simply brought a system of high tariffs and the militarization of national economies; it failed to save the world from economic chaos. Only a second world war, destroying Europe and Japan, would put capitalism back on track.

As Europe prepared for World War II, some of its colonies were going through a national awakening, and the first national liberation movements appeared. The most massive and sustained of these were the movement in India led by Gandhi and the movements in Egypt and Syria against British and French colonialism. In Palestine, the Arabs waged their first Intifada, against Zionist colonization under the British Mandate, from 1936 to 1939. Like the uprisings in Nicaragua against American colonialism and in China against Japanese colonialism-and like the significant movements mentioned above -- they were unsuccessful during this period.

World War II ended the first stage in the life of the national liberation movements. The colonies tried desperately to win independence by supporting other colonial powers against their own. Thus the reactionary Arab leadership, including the Palestinian group dominated by Haj Amin al-Husseini, supported Nazi Germany against Britain-an appalling stand that shows the narrowness of its outlook. This lack of principle did not help the Palestinian national cause.

The aftermath of World War II-notably the great victory achieved by the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany, despite its military and industrial might- brought a turning point in the international situation. The Soviet Union extended concrete support to the peoples' struggles for liberation from capitalist colonialism. Humanity entered a new bipolar epoch as the world divided into two systems: the socialist, led by the Soviet Union, and the capitalist, led by the USA. As colonized peoples gained independence in the 1960s, many of them formed a third camp, the Non-Aligned Movement.

This historical transformation had a strong impact in the colonies. One of its major consequences was the replacement of bourgeois nationalist ideologies by revolutionary socialist programs of various trends. The Chinese Revolution of the late 1940s made an enormous contribution to the growth of the national liberation movements in the world. It relied on the peasantry, and it offered a pattern for building a socialist society in a former economic colony. The Chinese example was followed by many of the national liberation movements as a way to extricate their countries from economic and social underdevelopment.

The post-World War II era witnessed a wave of other successful struggles for national independence-in India, a former cornerstone of the British Empire; then in Vietnam, in Cuba, and in most of the remaining Asian and African colonies. All the new countries enjoyed the support of the Soviet Union. All sent students to the universities of the Socialist Block- rather as, in the nineteenth century, the well-to-do had sent their children to be educated at French universities.

In sharp contrast to the capitalist states, the Soviet Union had no interest in colonizing the countries that were benefiting from its support. The Soviet Union was not looking for profits in those countries; it competed with the colonial capitalist system by strengthening the underdeveloped countries in their struggle to end colonialist dependency and join the socialist camp. This competition between the two systems caused continuing tension, sometimes leading to the verge of full conflagration, in what became known as the Cold War era.

The Arab national awakening of the Cold War era (the 1952 Officers' Revolution in Egypt, the Algerian Revolution of 1954-62, and the Ba'th Revolutions of the 1960s in Syria and Iraq) was part of the expansion of the socialist revolution around the world. Egypt's bourgeois Wafd party, which was founded in 1919 and dominated Egyptian politics until 1952, had adopted the ideas of the West. Now a new Arab leadership, which aimed at social and economic reforms, based its program on three elements: nationalism, Islam, and socialism.

Michel Aflaq, who co-founded the Syrian Ba'th Party, endorsed the idea of a united, socialist Arab nation based on the Soviet example. The Arab nationalist parties did not adopt Marxism as their world outlook; rather, they considered the Soviet Union a strategic ally in their fight against American imperialism. Such alliances protected Third World countries -- especially those that adhered to the Non-Aligned Movement-against the expansion of the capitalist market.

This positive atmosphere, and the successive victories that oppressed peoples won against the Western imperialist states, opened the way for revival of the Palestinian national movement, which had disappeared between the defeat of 1948 and the mid-1960s. Strongly influenced by parties within it (two of which, the PFLP and the DFLP, advocated a Marxist program), this movement had a revolutionary spirit at this stage. Reactionary national tendencies reappear after the collapse of the Soviet Union

The collapse of the Soviet Union ended the second historical stage in the life of the national liberation movements. Underdeveloped countries that had enjoyed Soviet support fell prey to colonialist exploitation. Masses of peoples and nations-notably in Africa-regressed to economic and social stagnation, sinking into poverty. Most of what these countries had achieved with the help of the Soviet Union was systematically destroyed.

The disappearance of the revolutionary socialist engine led to new growth of nationalist tendencies; now, however, these took the reactionary form. As people under weak or authoritarian secular governments lost their hopes for a better life, they blamed secularism as a foreign import. Religious commitments thus entered nationalist ideologies through revulsion against anything that seemed foreign. This situation brought back the atmosphere that existed before World War II.

Nationalist feelings became instrumental in dismembering what was left of the Socialist Block, while the principle of self-determination became a wedge that broke apart both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

The 1999 war in the Balkans was an outstanding example of the reactionary possibilities inherent in nationalism. Taking advantage of the demand by the Albanian Muslims in Kosovo for independence from the Yugoslav Federation, the United States and Germany managed to complete the dismantling of Yugoslavia. They have since bound the new, "independent" states to the colonial interests of the West. But the dismantling of Yugoslavia, which had begun early in the 1990s, had broader effects. Russians share the Orthodox Christian religion and Slavic ethnic identity of the Serbs. The break-up of Yugoslavia thus played a central role in arousing nationalistic feelings among Russians.

The turbulent situation in Russia was conducive to the growth of such feelings-and it quickly overflowed Russia's borders. The West had dictated policies that led to economic crisis; it had also gained dominance over many of the countries, such as the Ukraine and the Baltic States, that had been part of Russia's economic periphery. But the economic crisis spread from Russia into other European industrialized centers. Nationalism intensified as capitalism's inner contradictions exacerbated unemployment and the social diseases that follow it. Foreign workers in Western countries (for example, the Kurds and Turks in Germany, the Africans and Arabs in France, and the Indians and Pakistanis in Britain) increasingly suffered local citizens' hatred and racist attitudes. In other countries, ethnic and religious feelings became more powerful than nationalism. These feelings soon led to massacres in Africa, Asia, and Europe.
 

The revival of progressive nationalism depends on a new revolutionary engine

Although national oppression in the Middle East became more acute, the national liberation movements, such as those of the Palestinians and the Kurds, reached a political dead end. In an attempt to solve their national problem under the present historical conditions and existing balance of power, the thin layer of national bourgeoisies joined the capitalist camp. They thus left their peoples vulnerable to the initiatives of the imperialist powers.

In confronting this new situation, the Palestinian Left-and the Arab Left in general-committed a systematic error. They relied on international legitimacy (for example, from the United Nations) and on Europe, specifically France and Russia, to counterbalance American hegemony in the area. This alternative is useless: international legitimacy lost all meaning after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Europe remains loyal to U.S. interests, as was evident in the Balkan war. It is Europe that finances the Palestinian Authority and vigorously supports the Oslo accords.

The Palestinian and Arab Left adopted their mistaken path because they lacked a dialectical view of the national question. Forgetting the ABC of revolutionary theory and praxis that binds the fate of oppressed peoples with the fate of the working class throughout the world and especially in the industrial centers, they isolated the Palestinian national question from its socialist revolutionary roots. Meanwhile, as the new American order imposes global hegemony, the ongoing crises it provokes shake the economic and social stability of millions of workers around the world-including those of the rich industrialized countries themselves.

The only alternative to the present capitalist system is a socialist one; any attempt to separate a national program from the socialist program leads to collaboration with the imperialists. National leaders who (like those in Kurdistan, or Palestine) seek a solution within the framework of the present capitalist system cannot succeed, because the Capitalist agenda does not include an agenda for poor and undeveloped countries. 

 

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