Reading in Al-Mushtarak: A System for Democratic Socialism

by Ibrahim Allawi, Ali Al-Assam (translator), Majid Allawi (translator)

140 pages, Paperback

Published August 21, 2024

Reviews

[Elso As · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an important read - both the first half that provides a materialist analysis of the early Islamic period and the second half which focuses on modern socialist revolutions. I found the argument for a mushtarak system of governance compelling and the analysis provided for the failures of the Soviet Union v sharp. I love it when a book provides me with new vocabulary and words that I can place for phenomena or contradictions that I was conscious of but couldn’t articulate very well…..! Really clear and concise as well so bonus points for that

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allawi, head of one of Iraq's post-split communist parties (his the one that rejected the soviet appeasement policy towards Baathists), here offers some interesting reflections on both Marxist thought generally and also specifically on its relationship to Islam.

In the first half, he reflects on Islamic history, pointing to its different evolution to Europe which made its capitalism more loosely embedded, its bourgeoisie weaker and more fractious. He also seeks to highlight Islam's own past of people's resistance against oppression, and the cultural influence of fiercely independent peoples like the Bedouins. Unfortunately, I think this is the weakest part of the book, since Allawi isn't a historian, and offers only vague historical sketches which I found hard to follow.

The second part is stronger, and it's here where his lived experiences and observations are most illuminative. He ponders issues the soviet union faced, arguing the most important were (1) the entrenchment of a bureaucracy that centralised power away from local communes towards an increasingly unrepresentative state, and (2) the establishment of a modern military instead of a people's army, since the former was hard to politically controlled and was a force that could be used against the people.

He uses this to set up his idea for "al-mushtarak as an essential component of democratic socialism", which he sketches the key points of while emphasising that this leaves much vague because that is up to the people's communes to decide. The key points are:

- disbanding the army and fostering a system of armed populace that can "defend themselves autonomously";
- ensure a high level of political awareness in the populace, so democratic freedoms can be fostered without top-down repression which then only weakens the communes;
- Economically follow a logic similar to Lenin's NEP or modern China; recognising Iraq's economic position, leveraging nationalised industries in competition with the private sector to achieve advances in pay and living conditions while modernising;
- Give Kurds freedom and autonomy, allowing the Kurdish areas of Iraq self-governance, uniting them as a political-administrative unit made up of its own Mushtaraks;
- Pursue Arab unity—"the liberation of Palestine is not limited to the Palestinian people alone, but rather it passes through the overthrow of Arab puppet regimes and the establishment of democratic systems"

Like Iskra's other books, it's available as a free pdf on their website, but the paperback version is lovely.

[Matt Lucente · Rating 4 out of 5]

"... the call for Arab peoples’ solidarity against imperialism, Zionism, and retrogression finds its greatest representatives and strongest social support in the working class. For this call to bear fruit and be a source of strength for Arab peoples in their national struggle, it must be linked to a call for wide-ranging democracy. The Al-Mushtarak system is the framework that can achieve Arab peoples’ solidarity based on democracy and the popular will, and harness their energies to be effective and capable of countering imperialist projects and ending the Zionist and retrogressive presence. The forms of this solidarity will undoubtedly be decided through the national democratic struggle.
The Palestinian issue represents the major front in the Arab national liberation struggle against imperialism and Zionism, as the Zionist occupation of Palestine is an extension of Western colonial expansion at the expense of Arab peoples. British imperialism created the Zionist movement as a tool to impose its control over Arab lands, and the Zionist occupation of Palestine serves as a base to strike at the Arab national liberation movement and block any nationalist aspirations of Arab peoples against foreign imperialist control.
Al-Mushtarak calls for Arab solidarity in support of the Palestinian people in their battle to regain their occupied homeland and establish a democratic state, and to stop any attempts by reactionary regimes to slaughter the Palestinian people or threaten the Palestinian resistance into submission at the negotiating table or impose guardianship over the Palestinian people.
The struggle for the liberation of Palestine is not limited to the Palestinian people alone, but rather it passes through the overthrow of Arab puppet regimes and the establishment of democratic systems that open the way for the advancement of Arab peoples, unleash the potential of the masses, and liberate their occupied territories.” (pp. 98-99)

This text rules. Ibrahim Allawi is a member of the Iraqi Communist Party and was completely unknown to me before I heard about the publication of this text by Iskra Books, which from what I understand is the first translation of Allawi’s work into English. The PDF is available for free on Iskra’s website, and is well worth the time of anyone interested in learning more about the issue of the “withering away of the state” under socialism and the active steps which should be taken in a socialist society—based upon thorough scientific material analysis of former and currently-existing socialist projects—to combat the growth of bureaucracy and facilitate the emergence of a true stateless, classless society, i.e. communism. I will say, I wouldn’t recommend this without having first read (or at least studied up on) Lenin’s State and Revolution or Engels’s The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. A lot of the theoretical basis for this work comes from these texts and other similar texts concerned about the issue of the state, e.g. Critique of the Gotha Program or Anti-Duhring.

So what is this text about? Essentially, it is divided into three sections, all relating to the concept of Al-Mushtarak, which in Arabic can be roughly translated to “commune” or “the commons”.

The first section gives a broad historical overview of Al-Mushtarak throughout the early history of the Arab world, including before the emergence of Islam, during the changing social conditions brought about by Islam and the expansion of the various Caliphates, and how state structures and the role of the state changed due to the aforementioned changing conditions. This section was the most difficult for me to wrap my head around due to my relative lack of familiarity with the relevant histories; this, of course, would not be as much of an issue for a reader in Iraq, and this text is primarily concerned with socialism in a specifically Iraqi context, so that isn’t really a valid criticism of the text itself so much as it is a comment on my own reading. Some highlights of this section included Allawi’s framing of the role of the state in any society, echoing the theories of Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. He summarizes the Marxist theory of the state by saying:

”the state is a class-repressive machine that appears with the emergence of social classes in society and evolves with the development of classes. The deeper the exploitation and development of productive forces, the more privileges the owners of the means of production enjoy, and in turn, the greater the need to restrain the producers and maintain the conditions of production as it is. As much as the owning class enriches itself from the toil of workers, farmers, and slaves, it find itself increasingly compelled to resort to violence and to strengthen the state machine against resistance from producers” (p. 2)

Another interesting aspect of this section was Allawi’s analysis of the Medieval Islamic philosopher/poet Al-Ma’arri, who I had also never heard of. He seems like a really interesting figure—Allawi says of his broad political views: “Al-Ma’arri believed that the foundation of human freedom lies not only in the abolition of the state but also in the communal ownership of property and cooperation in productive work.” (p. 43). This was a really cool philosophical stance to see on the part of a thinker who was born in 973 CE, and I think it speaks to the enormous difference in historical context and development of social conditions between the Islamic and Western worlds.

Allawi comments more on this idea in the second section, “Al-Mushtarak and the Modern Socialist Movement”. He says:

"One of the consequences of capitalist development was a relative separation between capitalist ownership of means of production and the capitalist state. The state acted as a servant to the owners of factories, banks, and land, and did not play a direct role in the production process. This resulted in a relative distinction in European capitalist societies between the owners of means of production and the rulers. This does not mean that the state was not subject to the capitalist class, but rather that the relationship was more complex than its Islamic counterpart” (pp. 48-49)"

He continues to analyze what the modern state is and represents, and quotes the Communist Manifesto in saying that “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”. This can clearly be seen in my own American context, where the ruling class has shown itself time and time again to be COMPLETELY incapable of materially addressing the needs of the masses in ANY meaningful way, as this would interfere with the bottom lines and profits of the corporate donor class which subsidizes the entire American state and seeks only to uphold imperialist hegemony and exploitation of the global south. It supports itself with the largest military and police force on Earth, continually pumping capital into state-sponsored armed groups which serve to increase the profits of the military industrial complex while suppressing the potential for organized resistance on the grounds of, well, getting fucking murdered by a cop.

Importantly, in this section Allawi analyzes the material/historical conditions which resulted in the bureaucratization of the Soviet Union and its ultimate failure to transition from socialist development into communism. This is absolutely an essential part of the text, as he emphasizes the point that the Soviets did not have any prior historical data to work from and form a scientific theory for the state under socialism: we, on the other hand, do. His analysis is fairly thorough, but doesn’t cover the entire breadth of Soviet history and, while it does mention China, fails to seriously analyze the PRC’s unique historical context and path to socialist development; in fact, I can’t remember him mentioning the Cultural Revolution even once, a subject which I think is extremely relevant to the thesis of this text. This review is already getting overly long, so I won’t dive too deeply into his analysis of the USSR, but suffice it to say that he ultimately arrives at the conclusion that the “spontaneous withering away of the state” as posited by Lenin is not a useful framework for the modern-day socialist struggle, and we should be looking at historical precedent in order to form a scientific theory with which we can actively deteriorate state power and concretely move towards statelessness within a socialist society.

This point leads to the third section, “Al-Mushtarak as an Essential Component of Democratic Socialism”. This was by far the most compelling part of the text for me, as it synthesizes the previous two sections of analysis into a concrete, multi-point theory (in a specifically Iraqi context) by which the concept of Al-Mushtarak (again, “communes”) can be used as a tool to undermine centralized state power/bureaucracy in a socialist society, protect the democratic rights of the masses, and train them in self-management so that, once communism is achieved, the masses will be endowed with a widespread ability to defend themselves, provide for the needs of all people in society, manage production, and generally just maintain communist society.

”The Al-Mushtarak system assumes the establishment of political and administrative units in geographically or nationally linked areas that do not exceed the ability of the people to manage directly. Each of these political-administrative units constitutes a single Mushtarak that includes at least a relatively large city and its surrounding villages and countryside” (p. 85)

I found this to be incredibly interesting, and ultimately convinced me that the withering away of the state is perhaps an outdated idea that should be studied but not necessarily dogmatically upheld. Allawi’s material analysis and support for his argument for the Mushtarak system is expressed in several points, all rooted in the unique context of Iraq and its relationship to western imperialism:

1.) “Disbanding the army and replacing it with the armed people”: this is an idea which is also present in Marx, Engels, and Lenin, but was not achieved in the USSR due to a variety of factors including civil war, imperialist aggression and enclosure, the threat posed by the Nazis, and the fossilization of political power in the hands of the Red Army during the Cold War. Allawi says: “Without a doubt, this will be the primary undertaking of the new Iraqi revolution. To ensure stability for a democratic system that aspires to build socialism and progress towards a classless society, the disbanding of the government army, which was reconstructed under American occupation, is indispensable.” (p. 87). He then backs it up with multiple ways by which this can be realistically achieved, through education and arming of the masses, especially those already-existing members of the military who have been coerced into military service as a means to escape poverty, a phenomenon which is VERY common in a U.S. context as well.

2.) “Democratic freedoms”: I’ll just quote directly from this point: “Democratic freedoms for the popular masses constitute the complete basis of the Mushtarak system. This system, as a form of direct popular power, cannot exist without the popular masses enjoying wide political freedoms in party and professional organization, expression of opinion, publication, and their right to access information on political developments and knowledge of what is happening in the state and the world. Freedom of thought, publication, and the press constitute a fundamental cornerstone of any democratic system. A popular political system like the Mushtarak system cannot be imagined without the availability of wider democratic freedoms in order for the traditions of popular democratic governance to emerge and take root, and for the masses to learn the art of politics through their own experiences, through trial and error, criticism, and self-criticism, in order to resist attempts by bureaucracy to make the people ignorant and to spread the myth of the superiority of rulers over the governed.” (pp. 89-90)

3.) “The national economy in the Al-Mushtarak system”: This section covers how important management of Iraq’s oil wealth and the revitalization of Iraqi agriculture (which has remained in a devastated state since the U.S. occupation in 2003) will be in the Mushtarak system. I’m getting very long-winded here, so I want to keep this short, but the systems Allawi proposes are, as he states, linked to the provision of housing for every member of society, as well as advanced social conditions for Iraq’s rural and small-town populations, “all addressed within a comprehensive program of economic, population, and educational planning”.

4.) “The Kurdish Issue”: Allawi advances the idea that the Al-Mushtarak system can resolve the Kurdish issue in Iraq, ensuring Kurdish people the right to self-determination and enjoyment of democratic rights, owing to the fact that this system is based on self-governing administrative units based on geographically or ethnically cohesive areas.

5.) “Arab Solidarity”: This is where the text ends, and he really emphasizes the role of the broad Arab working class in combating Zionism and western imperialism. The quote I included at the beginning of this review is from this section, and sums it up perfectly, as it’s also the final few paragraphs of the book.

Overall, really good stuff. I wish there had been more analysis of other socialist experiments besides the USSR, but Allawi’s arguments were incredibly convincing, rigorous, and scientific.

[Carlos Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very valuable and fascinating exploration of how the (particularly early) history of Islamic rule in West Asia informs modern communist thinking in the region, and what Socialism with Islamic World Characteristics might look like.

The discussion on the state under socialism was useful but assessment of Soviet Union was a bit simplistic in my view.

Well worth reading.