page_title: Ba'athism
section_title: Arab nation
hierarchical_section_title: Ba'athism / Concepts / Arab nation
caption_attribution_description: English: Michel Aflaq (1901-1989), the founder and secretary-general of the Baath Party in Syria, from 1943-1966.
context_page_description: Baathism is an Arab nationalist ideology that promotes the development and creation of a unified Arab state through the leadership of a vanguard party over a progressive revolutionary government. The ideology is officially based on the theories of the Syrian intellectuals Michel Aflaq, Zaki al-Arsuzi, and Salah al-Din al-Bitar.
  A Baathist society seeks enlightenment, renaissance of Arab culture, values and society. It supports the creation of one-party states and rejects political pluralism in an unspecified length of time – the Baath party theoretically uses an unspecified amount of time to develop an enlightened Arabic society. Baathism is based on principles of Arab nationalism, pan-Arabism, and Arab socialism, as well as social progress. It is a secular ideology. A Baathist state supports socialist economics to a varying degree and supports public ownership over the commanding heights of the economy, but opposes confiscatory policies with regard to private property. In Baathist ideology, socialism does not mean state-socialism or economic equality; rather, it has a strong current of modernization to it.
context_section_description: Aflaq supported Sati' al-Husri's view that language was the principal defining unifying factor of the Arab nation because language led to the unity of thought, norms and ideals. History was also another unifying feature, as it was the "fertile ground in which our consciousness took shape". The centre of Aflaq's Baathist thought was the feature baʽth (literally meaning "renaissance").
  This renaissance could only be reached by uniting the Arab state and it would transform the Arab world politically, economically, intellectually and morally. This "future renaissance" would be a "rebirth", while the first Arab renaissance had been the seventh-century emergence of Islam, according to Aflaq. The new "renaissance" would bring another Arab message, which was summed up in the Baath party's slogan "One Nation, Bearing an Eternal Message".
  The Arab nation could only reach this "renaissance" through a revolutionary process towards the goals of "unity, liberty and socialism". In Aflaq's view, a nation could only "progress" or "decline". Arab states of his time could only progressively "decline" because of their illnesses – "feudalism, sectarianism, regionalism, intellectual reactionism". These problems, Aflaq believed, could only be resolved through a revolutionary process. A revolution could only succeed if the revolutionaries were pure and devoted nearly religiously to the task. Aflaq supported the Leninist view of the need of a vanguard party following a successful revolution, which was not an "inevitable outcome". In Baathist ideology, the vanguard was the Baath party.
  Aflaq believed that the youth were the key for a successful revolution. The youth were open to change and enlightenment because they still had not been indoctrinated with other views. According to Aflaq, a major problem was the disillusionment of the Arab youth. Disillusionment led to individualism and individualism was not a healthy sign in an underdeveloped country, in contrast to developed countries, where it was a healthy sign.
  The party's main task before the revolution was to spread enlightened ideas to the people and to challenge reactionary and conservative elements in society. According to Aflaq, a Baath party would ensure a policy of proselytization to keep the uneducated masses out of the party until the party leadership was enlightened with the thoughts of enlightenment. However, the party was also a political organisation and as Aflaq's notes politics was "a means [...] is the most serious of matters at this present stage". Baathism was similar to Leninist thought in that a vanguard party would rule for an unspecified length to construct a "new society".
  Aflaq supported the idea of a committed activist revolutionary party based on the Leninist model, which in practice was based on democratic centralism. The revolutionary party would seize political power and from there on transform society for the greater good. While the revolutionary party was numerically a minority, it was an all-powerful institution which had the right to initiate a policy even if the majority of the population were against it. As with the Leninist model, the Baath party knew what was right and what was wrong since the population as a whole did not know this yet as they were still influenced by the old value and moral system.
caption: Michel Aflaq, the founder of Baathist thought, who, after the Baath Party splintered, became the chief ideologist for the Iraqi-dominated Baath Party.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.4.7", "Image DateTime": "2017:05:31 15:52:12", "Image ExifOffset": "146", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "294", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6762", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1125"}