The fall of the Soviet Union was a decisive event for the Left and the Arab left is no exception. Much of the political discourse of Arab nationalism, socialism, and marxism, with its focus on social and economic justice, "popular" democracy, and revolutionary parties, has given way to a "neo-liberal" discourse of globalization, pluralism, human rights, and civil society. Forces identified as leftist have been in power and "lost" in the last 25 years: the left has lost most of whatever representativeness it once had, and the people the left claims to represent have changed as well. As many leftists have come to realize, they cannot reconstruct their identity irrespective of the present reality, an important aspect of which is the strength of the Islamist movement. In attempting to deal with this new political reality, the Arab left is seeing a growing political and intellectual split among their ranks.
On the one hand, many leftists in some countries are opting for the state. Intellectually, this trend of the left continues to look to the nahda [Arab renaissance] heritage with its concern for modernization and state-building. Politically, although in many countries the state continues to become increasing isolated and authoritarian, these leftists view the state as the last bastion of rationality and, thus, join it in the effort to eradicate the Islamist threat. On the other hand, some leftists, seduced by the popular impact of the Islamists, are trying to woo the Islamists. As the proceedings of The Second Nationalist-Islamist Conference--held by the Center for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut (October 1997)--attest, certain Arab nationalists/socialists who form part of a new trend think they can nationalize (Arabize) and rationalize the Islamists. There are many trends in Islam and these leftists find that if they are willing to shelf the question of secularism they will able to find plenty of meeting points with at least some of the Islamists.
However, a number of Arab intellectuals on the left, wary of allying themselves too closely with either the state or the Islamists, are attempting to use the loss of the Soviet model as an opportunity to reconstruct a new non-Soviet vision of the Arab left. Most of these intellectuals are critically appropriating much of what is considered liberal discourse (pluralism, human rights, civil [END PAGE 17] society), but they are also returning to the works of Marx and other socialist thinkers. In the process, many are (re)discovering the works of Antonio Gramsci.
There are a number of reasons for the recent turn to Gramsci's political theory and, in particular, his version of civil society. First, Gramsci is a Marxist, but an alternative kind of Marxist who adapts the ideas of Marx to his own situation: the Italian context. Second, Gramsci worked out his concept of civil society within context of the backwardness of the south ("The Southern Question"), which many find more relevant than the British context where more "liberal" notions of civil society were conceived. Third, Gramsci's notion of the organic intellectual provides one possible vision to bridge the gap between leftist intellectuals and the people they claim to represent. Fourth, Gramsci's concept of civil society, unlike the predominant (Tocqueville-inspired, Putnam- revised) conception of civil society (found in the writings produced under the direction of Augustus Richard Norton in English and Saad Eddin Ibrahim in Arabic), sees a potentially negative, as well as potentially positive, role for this sphere of social activity. Many of the recent views emerging from the works of Arab political scientists are confirming the more ambiguous relationship between civil society and democratization (with social and economic equality) in the Arab region. At the same time the return to Gramsci in a post-Soviet Union context is not devoid of critique: for many leftist thinkers Gramsci still poses a "Leninist problematic" with his idea of the "New Prince" in the form of a "Revolutionary Party."
My paper examines recent trends in Arab leftist thought, focusing in particular on a number of studies of Gramsci's work, beginning with the proceedings of the Conference on Gramsci Wa qadaya al-mujtama` al-madani (Nicosia, 1991) and continuing with more recent writings in Arabic.
[NOTE: For the purpose of this abstract I use the appellation of "left" or "leftist" to designate both the Marxist and Arab Socialist/Nationalist trends in Arab political thought. However, the differences between these two are very important and will be outlined at greater length in the full version of the paper. Marxism spread in the eastern Arab region in the beginning of this century before appearing in the North Africa with the present generation. Arab Socialism began in Syria with the movement of the Arab nationalists which created the Bathist parties now in power in Syria and Iraq, and the Nassirist movement in Egypt. The latter initially entered as a third side between Islam and state-nationalism, creating a conflict sometimes between Islam and Nationalism and other times between Arab nationalism and state-nationalism at others. In North Africa, however, and more recently in the eastern Arab region, Islam and nationalism have become intertwined.]