Speech at the meeting to launch the publicatipn by Iskra Books of English edition of Readings in al-Mushtarak by Ibrahim Allawi. Marx Memorial Library, 21 August 2024.

Comrades and Friends

Let me start by adding my special welcome to those who have made the long journey from Iraq to be with us this evening.

Farouk, Majed and Mustafa, I have heard so much about all of you from Ali, Kamal and Hani, so it’s great to finally meet you in person.

I want to thank all those who worked so hard to bring these historical, theoretical and critical reflections of Ibrahim Allawi to the English-speaking world – especially to my good friend and comrade David and all the comrades of Iskra Books, who believed in the project and have made it a reality. Working hard in their spare time to meet and beat all the deadlines.

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, 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. “

Allawi’s work is a product of the Iraqi revolution. I must have first become aware of the Communist Party of Iraq (Central Command), the party which Allawi led for decades, in the early 1970s, when I was a young teenager, from an anthology of texts by national liberation and revolutionary movements in the tricontinent of Africa, Asia and Latin America. If my memory serves me correctly, it was a two-volume collection entitled ‘Towards Revolution’ and was edited by John Gerassi. But I am only now starting to learn about its rich history in some detail. And I have learned so much more from the wonderful speakers this evening.

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 Mushtarek. 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.