Shibl Shumayyil On Socialism

With the news dominated by the violence and sectarian conflict in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss the positive legacy of modern Arab thought, especially the writings of Arabic-language figures on the topic of socialism. Additionally, I wish to show how Arab Christians contributed to the development of socialist thought in the Arab-speaking world.

Arab Christians played a crucial role in the development of progressive and socialist thought in the Middle East, which highlights why the decline of Christian communities in Iraq and other countries due to bumbling Western intervention and Islamist reaction is such a disaster for all people of the region regardless of religious or ethnic background.

Shibl Shumayyil: (1860-1917)

Shibl Shumayyil (1860-1917) was a Syrian Christian and perhaps the primary pioneer of socialist thought in Arabic-speaking countries. Trained as a medical doctor at the Syrian Protestant College (now the American University of Beirut), Shumayyil also studied medicine in Paris before finally settling in Egypt. Shumayyil was one of the first professed socialists in the Arab world. His work "True Socialism" was originally a chapter in a book by Shumayyil and was likely written in 1913.

"True Socialism" is written in question-answer format and consists of a defense and explanation of Shumayyil's thoughts on socialism. Shumayyil begins his discourse by defending socialism against the charge that it rewards the lazy at the expense of the industrious. To the contrary, Shumayyil notes, socialism is properly described as a system of  justly rewarding labor. The first aim of socialism is to provide work. Shumayyil expands on this by writing:

“I mean that the social system must be organized in such a way that all people in the society work and become useful, as well as being beneficiaries, each one according to his effort, until the society becomes free from the unemployed, and from those others who are deceived and who distort and corrupt.”

Shumayyil goes on to describe socialism as a cooperative enterprise and contrasts the cooperative nature of socialism with the individualism of other social systems. Under a system where individuals lack solidarity and seek to undercut each other for the “favor of the ruler or the boss,” the common people are afflicted with “severe pressure [that] destroys the mind and closes the door to knowledge; consequently ignorance prevails.” Shumayyil also goes on to criticize the existence of tremendous inequality, writing:

“[T]he extreme inequality among people in such systems makes them lose all human contact with one another in all aspects of their daily life. Consequently, individual conditions worsen and the social structures tremble. One sees fancy palaces and miserable huts side by side; clean sections are adjacent to dirty ones; some people wear fancy clothes while others are in rags; some are healthy and enjoy all kinds of comfort while others are sick and cannot find their necessary food.”   

Socialism thus aims to rectify the injustices of past systems by recognizing the right to work, the right to just reward based on effort, and the right of the worker to live in comfort and health. Shumayyil’s description of the stresses and problems faced by individual workers struggling alone against their peers in a kind of dog-eat-dog struggle for work still has a great deal of relevance for workers today despite the fact that it was written one hundred years ago.

Additionally, Shumayyil’s advocacy of full employment, just pay, and the support of a civilized and comfortable life for the worker and his family echo many of the demands of labor unions, social democrats and socialists today. Clearly, Shibl Shumayyil's work on the nature of socialism is still relevant today and deserves to be remembered and studied.

SOURCES

Hanna, Sami Ayad. Arab Socialism: A Documentary Survey (Leiden, Netherlands:  E.J. Brill, 1969).

Libertarianism and Utopianism

Michael Lind has caused a bit of a stir recently with his June 4, 2013 article arguing that libertarians cannot provide an example of a libertarian country, something that even Marxist-Leninists could do, as discredited as their ideology is. Mr. Lind answered libertarian critics of his article with another piece defending his position.

In a similar vein, Lord Keynes over at Social Democracy for the 21st Century discusses Medieval Iceland, perhaps the most commonly cited example of real-world libertarianism. Lord Keynes has also recently written some compelling blog pieces on Murray Rothbard's legal theories here, here, and here.

Now, to add some spice to the mix, here is a link to Kevin Carson's December 28, 2012 article critiquing social democracy from a left-libertarian perspective.

I will withhold significant comment, although I will say that I am sympathetic toward both social democracy and some strands of left-libertarian thought. My ideal would probably be something like guild socialism, but I would settle for social democracy if the former is not practicable.

Breaking Eggs To Make An Omelette

Helena Smith's report in The Guardian on the rise of shisha, the "cocaine of the poor," in Greece places a spotlight on the horrid realities of austerity. According to Smith's article, shisha is a variant of crystal meth, an extremely dangerous drug that often makes users violent. Drug use, along with prostitution, HIV infection, suicide and general crime have all massively increased in Greece as the social fabric of the country is torn to pieces by brutal fiscal austerity policies.

While Greece is probably the most extreme example of the devastation wrought by governments trying to cut their way out of recession, other nations have also faced similar public health problems brought on by the failure of neoliberal economics. For example, middle-aged American men, particularly those with poor economic prospects, have seen their suicide rates increase as they become alienated from the social fabric. Recently, the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that for the period 1999-2010, the U.S. saw a 28.4 percent increase in suicide for all Americans aged 35-64 and as psychologist Bruce Levine points out, the cause for the increase was likely economic hardship.

All of this is eerily similar to the stories that came out of Russia and the other post-communist societies in the 1990s. As David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu argue in the The New York Times, those countries that adopted the "shock therapy" approach of economists such as Jeffrey D. Sachs and Lawrence H. Summers saw the health of their people decline as poverty exploded following the abrupt dismantling of the central planning system. Stuckler and Basu also refer to other historical case studies of failed austerity. For example, during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Thailand and Indonesia adopted harsh austerity policies that caused mass hunger and death from infectious disease.

Giorgio La Pira, the Sicilian-born mayor of Florence, Italy from 1951 to 1964, once commented on the need to rescue the poor from the scourge of unemployment and poverty in these terms:

"If I am a man of the State, my rejection of unemployment and of neediness must imply this: my economic policies must strive towards blue-collar employment and the eradication of poverty: this is clear! No specious objection emerging from any so-called 'laws of economics' can detract me from striving towards this objective."

La Pira's contempt for what passed as "economic science" among liberals (the forefathers of today's austerity-obsessed neoliberals) was evidence of his great love for ordinary people. In his contempt for the "Very Serious People" of his day, who then, as now, were the hired court scribblers of the money interests, La Pira placed human beings and the values of Christ ahead of ideology.

Responding to claims that he was practicing a form of Marxism, La Pira famously responded that it was the Gospel of Jesus Christ that he was following and not the doctrines of Karl Marx. Indeed, if we wish to talk about Marxism and the subjugation of politics and humanity to purely economic ends, then we must turn to the champions of austerity, for they are the ones who are breaking human eggs to make their economic omelette.

The Church vs. Austerity

Yves Smith reports on the Catholic Church's growing public opposition to Eurozone austerity programs. Pope Francis and other religious leaders are increasingly pushing for more jobs and warning about the dire social consequences of unemployment and economic misery. A must read.

Monarchy, Meritocracy and the Mezzogiorno

Brian Palmer over at Slate recently pondered the issue of the persistence of monarchy in Europe. The occasion for Mr. Palmer's inquiry was the recent ascension of King Willem-Alexander to the Dutch throne. While Mr. Palmer does a good job giving a balanced treatment of the issue of monarchy in modern times, he does not specifically mention perhaps the best reason for keeping a monarch on the throne: a monarch is a standing contradiction to the principle of meritocracy.

Now, for many people this might be a prominent reason to oppose monarchy. What do monarchs do to deserve their thrones? Aren't they just there by dint of a lucky birth? Precisely! As David Lindsay has pointed out many times:

"Monarchy embodies the principle of sheer good fortune, of Divine Providence conferring responsibilities upon the more fortunate towards the less fortunate."

This is in direct contrast to the principle of meritocracy which has become so prominent lately. Supporters of meritocracy typically believe that brains and effort will produce a kind of natural elite comprised of the best people in a given society. Many on the Left support meritocracy as a way to eliminate unfair privileges and allow people from the bottom of society to rise to the top. The typical left-wing meritocrat seems to assume that our new whiz kid rulers will also have a social conscience and not lord it over those unfortunates who could not climb the ladder of success.

Unfortunately, recent history has shown the new elites to be even more arrogant than their toff predecessors. As the late Michael Young wrote of the new meritocratic elite:

"They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody's son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism. The newcomers can actually believe they have morality on their side."  

Perhaps even worse is the impact the ideology of meritocracy has had on those left behind in the race of life. Again, Mr. Young said it best when he wrote:

"It is hard indeed in a society that makes so much of merit to be judged as having none. No underclass has ever been left as morally naked as that." 

Unsurprisingly, the United States, a country born out of rebellion against a monarchy, is perhaps, of all of the major industrialized countries, the most enamoured with meritocracy. Americans are more likely to view the poor as deserving their lot in life because of laziness or some other personality defect, while Europeans are more likely to view the poor as unlucky.

That being said, it is certainly true that the institution of monarchy is not perfect. In his Slate article, Brian Palmer mentions the defeat of the House of Savoy in the Italian constitutional referendum of 1946. The Savoyards not only ruined their reputation by allowing the rise of Mussolini (despite the fact that Il Duce and many other Fascists actually hated the monarchy), but, truth be told, the House of Savoy always lacked legitimacy among many Italians. While most Southern Italians voted in favor of monarchy in 1946, the 19th century witnessed a violent clash between the Piedmontese House of Savoy and pro-Bourbon loyalists in the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. One my family's favorite stories involves an ancestor who was hung for being a Bourbon loyalist insurgent.

Now, I don't personally harbor any loyalties towards the old House of Bourbon. The Norman Hauteville family is probably the most fondly remembered in Sicily and Southern Italy and my own family likes to claim descent from Norman adventurers, as dubious as it might be. I also concede that a monarchy would not be appropriate for the United States given its historical development and republican traditions. Yet I believe that the principle that the fortunate owe a duty towards those who are less fortunate is a solid one and should be stressed as much as possible in American political discourse, even if we do not have a monarch to embody that principle.

The One-Nation Tory: An Endangered Species?

John Harris discusses the decline of One-Nation Conservatism under the onslaught of Thatcherism in this April 14, 2013 article. A must read.

Sweet Home Chicago

DePaul University theatre professor Rachel Shteir has certainly kicked a hornet's nest with her extremely critical essay on the City of Chicago in the New York Times Book Review. In her article, Shteir blasts the Windy City for everything from bad weather to political corruption. However, Shteir's primary target appears to be Chicagoans and their boosterism and overweening pride which prevents them from confronting their city's problems. Shteir's piece has produced a huge backlash from Chicago natives, with even Mayor Rahm Emanuel weighing in.

As a native of Chicago, I must say that I am not surprised by Shteir's article. Originally hailing from the New York/New Jersey area, Shteir's views are typical of New Yorkers, especially those New Yorkers who, like Shteir, end up living and working elsewhere, much to their chagrin. So it is not surprising that Shteir's piece depicts Chicagoans as if they were all like the characters from Bill Swerski's Superfans, people who are completely detached from reality because of their blind worship of the City of the Big Shoulders.

But really, is Chicago-style boosterism such a bad thing? Is it wrong that so many people wish to keep their neighborhoods as their were in the days of their childhood? Are all American cities supposed to become like New York, a place completely dominated by and dependent on the parasitical financial sector? Shteir's comment that Chicago was in danger of becoming the next Detroit is telling as it reveals the attitude of some American intellectuals toward the old centers of American manufacturing in the Midwest. Similar mean-spirited comments are often made about such places as Cleveland, Ohio and Gary, Indiana, formerly great industrial centers now devastated by the rootless cynicism that Shteir champions.