Editorial: The change of rulers in Syria (2025)

Editorial from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the brutal 50-year tyranny of the Assad dynasty collapsed last month, people danced in the streets in many parts of Syria as they contemplated an unprecedented new beginning. Joyous crowds looted the Presidential palace, while the titular head of the Ba’ath party dictatorship skulked off to Moscow.

The fall of the secular Arab nationalist dictatorship alters the balance of power between the various states in the region, with Turkey and the United States the winners and Iran and Russia the losers. The winners took quick advantage of the initial power vacuum. Turkey sent its proxies to attack the Kurdish nationalists who control a large part of Syria including the oilfields. Indeed, Turkey must have given the victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamists the green light to march on Aleppo and then down to Damascus.

The United States benefits from a weakened Iran, the main threat to its current domination of the wider region and the oilfields and the trade routes out of it.

Israel, too, wasted no time in exploiting this tense, multiplayer Game of Thrones scenario, by bombing Syria’s navy to the bottom of the sea, as well as a host of other targets, and pressing forward in the Golan Heights. Their reasoning is obvious. One or other group is eventually going to take power in Syria. If it’s a group that hates Israel, they can hate Israel without missiles and a navy. In a world where relations between states is based on ‘might is right’, Israel wants another weak neighbour like Lebanon.

What was surprising was the rapidity with which the dictatorship collapsed. Its conscript army was reluctant to fight and the general population, suffering from increased economic hardship due to Western sanctions (the cruel way the West employs to undermine a dictatorship it doesn’t support) was ready to welcome a change of regime

HTS seems keen to solicit international recognition, which means making some concessions to capitalist liberal democracy, but it has been designated a terrorist organisation by the West, and there’s a $10m price on the head of its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, aka Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Indeed this former al-Qaeda and ISIS fighter has publicly praised the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and faced home-turf protests that his Sharia-law regime in the province of Idlib was as bad as Assad’s. But he has also faced protests by Islamic hardliners who think he’s not fundamentalist enough.

The political direction of travel is not obvious at the time of writing, and any spark could set off civil war. For the sake of the people of Syria, newly released from a tyranny that looked eternal, we can only hope not. As for the long-term future, it would seem almost churlish to point out that, if the country doesn’t go into meltdown, they’ll get the wage-slavery and the limited political ‘rights’ that workers have in many other capitalist countries, while a new privileged Syrian ruling class exploiting them emerges. That, unfortunately, is the best-case scenario, in the absence of an imminent global socialist revolution. The worst-case scenario doesn’t bear thinking about.

Our enemies’ friends (2002)

From the July 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the demonstrators on the pro-Palestinian march of 18 May entered Trafalgar Square they were confronted by a lone socialist, bawling “Banish gods from the heavens, and rulers from the Earth!” over the assorted chants of Islamists and leftists. The same socialist had been told, in no uncertain terms, to go to Hell, by the Islamists, as he had tried to promote socialism as the solution to the Middle East question at the Hyde Park mustering point for the beginning of the march.

The various flavours of leftists on the march resolutely declined to confront the band of Islamists, despite the latter’s open insistence of their inimical opposition to them. Desperately holding to the principle of my enemy’s enemy is my ally the leftists held their noses and kept quiet. This in the face of the most reactionary ideas being pronounced by the Islamists: the separate nations of the Earth exist by the will of Allah, and they refuse to support the workers’ cause because they work for Allah. “Peace, Go to Hell” they shouted (and most things should go to Hell, it seemed, so far as they were concerned), and not one of the leftists who had been at the previous “peace” marches against the Afghan war, raised a word against their bellicose cry.

This is, perhaps, unsurprising, because this was in fact a pro-war march. The SWP, through their so-called Socialist Alliance front organisation, were promoting the slogan “Victory to the Intifada”. Some people on the march were chanting “No peace without justice” making clear their view that the Palestinian cause was “just”. Indeed, both slogans have little to do with a sensible materialist analysis of the situation, instead taking up a moralistic line on the “rights” of the Palestinians.

Impossible victory

This is so on two counts, on the military and class factors involved. The Palestinians have no chance whatsoever of militarily overcoming Israel. Modern war is waged by economic might, and Israel with its GDP of around $110 billion (in 2000), whereas the Palestinian territories have a GDP of $4.2 billion (in 2000): the former has the capacity to routinely outgun the latter – this leaving aside the greater Israeli population of available for fighting, some 1.5 million. Further, Israel has a much better developed transportation and communications system, vital ingredients of modern war (CIA World Fact Book http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/). There being no special conditions for fighting (as the Vietnamese jungles), nor any economic leverage for the Palestinians to apply, the sheer weight of power is on the Israeli side.

It becomes clear from this that the Intifada could only succeed with outside military intervention. Unsurprisingly, this is already happening. It is widely acknowledged that the Palestinian guerrilla organisations Hamas and Mujahadeen are financed and controlled by Syria and Iran. Perhaps less reported, is the Palestinian Authority’s dependence on European aid: for example, according to the British Consulate in Jerusalem’s website, the UK gave £1.12 million in aid for a “Modernisation and Unification of Legislation Project”, and £1.13 million “Assistance to the Palestinian Legislative Council” (http://www.britishconsulate.org/dfid/govern.htm). That is, the UK paid for the basic administrative infrastructure for a Palestinian political entity. This is out of a total of $121 million in aid received by the PA (2000, CIA WorldFact Book). By contrast, according to the same US source, the Israeli state receives $1.1 billion in aid from the US.

The basis for this struggle is, as has been noted many times in this journal, the struggle for control of the oil resources of the Middle East. Historically, the US relied on the “Twin Pillar” policy of using Israel and Iran as regional clients to secure their interest in the oil regions. With Iran going over to religious nationalists, Israel became the focus of continued US interest in the region, and the main target for their rivals to try to damage their capacity to control the region.

These different interests are entering into the situation to pursue their own antagonistic interests. It is interesting to note, for example, that the earlier stage of the conflict involved the Israeli army targeting the physical infrastructure of the Palestinian authority, the infrastructure paid for by the UK and EU. Given these competing interests, the various world powers intervening in the Israel/Palestine conflict will only seek for resolutions compatible with their own interests and against those of their foes. As such, it is clear that the slogan of “Victory to the Intifada” has zero content even within the usual risible terms of leftist “anti-imperialism’”. The only possible resolution within capitalism is an imperialist resolution benefiting one or other of the “imperialist” powers struggling for influence in the area.

Asked by another socialist at the demo why they were calling for “Victory to the Intifada”, the leftists replied that the Palestinians are oppressed. It would be interesting to ask them whether the workers of Syria or Iran are oppressed, and, since they clearly are, why the leftists are pursuing a policy of giving support to the foreign policies of those oppressive regimes: policies, the success of which could only strengthen their grip at home. The leftists would doubtless reply that they support the struggles of Arab workers, but that the Palestinians are oppressed as a people, and their right to self-determination must be fought for. This illustrates the romantic/moralistic approach of the leftists – the oppression of Palestinian workers is made qualitatively worse by the denial of national rights, that is, the denial to the Palestinian capitalists of a free hand in exploiting their workers and conning them into believing that they share a common interest in defending a patch of land.

Who owns, rules

Nationalism, is the political form of property consciousness. It asserts that a group of people cannot exist as such unless defined by their ownership of a particular quarter of the world – the relations between “peoples” are actually the relations between patches of land, rather than the people upon them. It was the predominate form of ideology for the rising capitalist class in the 19th century, a way of understanding the world in terms of conflicting properties, and is now a tool for conning the working class into believing that there is some communal interest between themselves and their capitalist masters in where the boundaries of their state are drawn.

This illustrates the second aspect the material situation that belies the leftist sloganeering, its class content. It is essentially a problem of property. Were the Palestinians to win, they would still be oppressed as workers, and the land would belong to a new set of owners. They would still be subject to poverty, to the tyranny of their rulers and to the chaos of capitalist existence. In fact, they could only lose out, as the sacrifice in life, freedom and material goods necessary to win such a war were made. The same would go for the Israeli working class as well. Modern war is inherently antithetical to the interests of the working class, involving, as it does, disruption to the complex and integrated system of production we depend on for our existence, and necessitating the imposition of the tyrannous political structures needed to govern a society in a period of total war.

Given, then, that the leftist position is one based on abstract ideals and morals, rather than a materialist analysis of the situation, it becomes clear how they can tolerate marching alongside the religious without opposing them. Their march was an expression of who they wanted to see win, regardless of real world material factors, and was an expression of their adherence to the ideal of national self-determination. As such, their position is essentially an idealist one, a desire to see the world conform with an idea, simply by professing it.

The socialist case against religion is a simple one. We understand that, as ideas are the result of the historical movement of society, and the premises of religion thus concur with specific forms of society, religion is a social matter and not, as protestant sectarians would have it, a matter of individual conscience. Religion as we know it today is a part of a social process of acquiring and understanding knowledge left over from a bygone age, one in which the imagination of humanity outstripped its capacity to understand and control the world. Knowledge is inextricably linked with the process of acquiring it, with the practise of thinking. Since we, as workers, live in a world that has acquired the capacity to control its own material environment, we must reject those guides to behaviour and analysis based upon premises of human powerlessness, and the practises of thinking that go along with them.

This is why the comrade present at the Palestinian march became the lone voice in confrontation with the reactionary confusionists of religion; arguing against ideas that can only lead the workers away from the practical issues at hand, and essentially hide the property character of the question. If the workers of the world are to be able to obtain and apply the control of the world of which they are capable, they need to throw aside such slogans as “Palestine for the Palestinians” and instead affirm the need for a struggle against the system of minority rule which underpins all the world’s wars, and proclaim “The world for the workers!”

Pik Smeet

Islamist brothers (2013)

Pamphlet Review from the October 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Siding with the Oppressor: The Pro-Islamist Left. By John Miller. One Law for All, 2013. £4.

This is a well-documented pamphlet describing the hobnobbing of the Labourite politicians George Galloway and Ken Livingstone and of the SWP (via its front organisation ‘Unite Against Fascism’, Stop the War Coalition and, till 2007, Respect) with Islamic fundamentalists connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a shameful story.

Galloway and Livingstone were in search of votes while the SWP was pursuing the tactic of a ‘people’s front’ against Western intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, and (via Israel) Palestine, and now Syria. This last must be causing problems today as previous praise for the Assad and Iranian regimes will no longer be welcomed by the Sunni Muslim fundamentalists they courted, now that Hezbollah are fighting the Sunni jihadists.

Galloway, Livingstone and the SWP bear a heavy responsibility for having encouraged immigrant ‘communalist politics’ in Britain, so also encouraging the opposing ‘White communalists’ of the BNP and EDL. In doing so, they have dragged the name of socialism through the mud and, as the pamphlet points out, betrayed not only secularist principles (One Law for All campaigns against the application of Sharia and Jewish religious law in Britain) but also those Muslims and ex-Muslims resisting the reactionary views of the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian Ayatollahs. From a socialist point of view, it’s a negation of class politics and a confirmation of their anti-working class stance and activity.

Adam Buick

Familiar murmurings from Turkey (1996)

From the February 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

As had been widely forecast, the radical Islamic Welfare Party, or Refah, won the Christmas Eve general election in Turkey with 21 percent of votes cast. And, as many had anticipated, no sooner had the election result been announced that the outgoing True Path Party and the nationalist Motherland Party met for talks to discuss the possibility of forming a coalition to oust the islamists. The True Path Party and the Motherland Party had between them secured 38 percent of the vote.

Tansu Ciller’s True Path Party had believed they would romp home in the election, capitalising on their surge of popularity following the previous week’s endorsement by the European parliament of a customs union between Ankara and the EU.

Ciller apparently forgot that much of her opposition is in the growing rural communities, strongly islamic traditionalists, and in Ankara and Istanbul (combined population of 14 million) where islamists won the mayorships in 1994. Evidently it is here, among the lower echelons of the working class that her austerity programme, aimed at curbing Turkey’s 83 percent inflation rate and $4 billion budget deficit and targeted chiefly at the 11 million unemployed, is most strongly felt.

While the West would have welcomed a pro-European Ciller government of free marketeers, hell bent on privatisation, it was Necmettin Erbakan’s (Rafah’s leader) promises that carried the day.

Refah, for instance, believes in creating interest-free banking, ending Turkey’s dependence on IMF loans, an Islamic common market and an Islamic currency, a renegotiation of the customs union deal and the removal of allied war planes from Turkish soil.
Like every other party in Turkey, though, Refah does not believe an end to the capitalist mode of production will be a step forward. Indeed, Refah gets support from Turkey’s capital-owning fraternity, including technocrats like Erol Yarar who fronts a pro-islamic business association that represents some 6,000 companies, all oddly enough, in business to make a profit.

Erbakan’s promises of creating a "just order" for the poor and alienated, therefore, might as well have been whispered to the wind, for with victory came the frightening away of foreign investment, upon which the Turkish economy is highly dependent. The cause? Political instability, or rather the threat of it.

Political instability is indeed a possibility in Turkey, and something perhaps that was anticipated by Tansu Ciller before she left office. Why else would she expel 50 officers from her army—all linked to pro-islamist organisations—a week before the election? The fear of a military coup broughtabout by unrest, as in 1960, 1971 and 1980?

This is the scenario that many Turks now fear should no workable coalition be formed within the stipulated 45 days following the election. Some of the ingredients are already there: secular/religious tensions; little political consensus; an economy worsening by the day; human rights abuses, inclusive of disappearances from police custody and the imprisonment of political dissenters and the unpopular and ongoing “scorched earth" war against the Kurds.

In the weeks ahead Refah will have to convince the populace that the economy is in safe hands. This means responding to questions regarding Turkey’s relationship with the West—important trade, investment and defence partners—and with Iraq—once Turkey’s biggest trading partner and with whom economic ties have been severed since the Gulf Far.

In the meantime, while the West watches from the sidelines, wondering if there are still profits to be made from an Islamic Turkey, and Turkey's sundry nationalists, free-marketeers and religious confusionists argue amongst themselves as to which coalition can best run capitalism, it is the masses, the Turkish working class which have the most to lose whatever the outcome. It is they who will continue to exist as wage slaves in a class society, imbibing and perpetuating the nationalistic and religious rantings that keep them oppressed. It is they who will face hunger, mass arrests and arbitrary executions should the system fall apart.