Ba'athism  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Ba'athism (meaning "renaissance" or "resurrection") 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 (according to the Iraqi-led Ba'ath Party), Zaki al-Arsuzi (according to the Syrian-led Ba'ath Party) and Salah al-Din al-Bitar.

A Ba'athist 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 Ba'ath party theoretically uses an unspecified amount of time to develop an enlightened Arabic society. Ba'athism is based on principles of Arab nationalism, pan-Arabism, Arab socialism, as well as social progress. It is a secular ideology. A Ba'athist state supports socialist economics to a varying degree, and supports public ownership over the heights of the economy but opposes the confiscation of private property. Socialism in Ba'athist ideology does not mean state socialism or economic equality, but modernisation; Ba'athists believe that socialism is the only way to develop an Arab society which is truly free and united.

The two Ba'athist states which have existed (Iraq and Syria) forbade criticism of their ideology through authoritarian governance. These governments have been labelled as neo-Ba'athist, because the form of Ba'athism developed in Iraq and Syria was very different from the Ba'athism of Aflaq and al-Bitar; for example, none of the ruling Ba'ath parties actually pursued or pursue a policy of unifying the Arab world.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Ba'athism" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools