Arab and west asian socialism. It is a very rich history and shows how in fact during the Cold War socialism was the norm in most of the world, not the exception (until the CIA changed this). Ill enumerate a few of them with a short summary of the history of those movements.

• Nasserism: A movement founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt from 1954 to 1970. Based on 3 core tenets: Utopian socialism (not based on class struggle), antiimperialism and panarabism (the wish to unify the entire arab speaking world, from Morocco to Iraq, into 1 nation state). Nasser led a popular revolution in 1954 against the UK puppet monarchy of Egypt, proclaiming an arab socialist republic that was allied with the USSR. He was famously bribed by the CIA to become proamerican but, after taking the money, sided with the USSR anyway and used the money to build a big minaret in Cairo as a big fuck you to the US. He tried to establish the United Arab Republic, an arab socialist union state of Egypt and Syria but failed as it collapsed in 1961. Unfortunately, after he died in 1970 he was suceeded by the traitor Anwar Sadat, who reversed all his socialist policies and became a puppet of the US and Israel. Due to this and other factors nasserism failed to spread as an ideology and was pretty much dead by 1980.

• Baathism: With a lot of similiarities to nasserism but way more successful. Founded by Michel Aflaq, a syrian communist who became disillusioned with communism over the USSR’s support of Israel in the 1950s and decided communism had to be adapted to the material conditions of the arab world, it is based on 3 tenets: Scientific socialism (based on marxism), antiimperialism and panarabism. Some consider it to be communism with arab charachteristics. Baathists managed to seize power in both Syria (in 1963) and Iraq (in 1968) and successfully establish socialist republics. Unfortunately the movement split in 1966 into a proiraqi and prosyrian faction, preventing the establishment of a socialist union state of Syria and Iraq and creating many problems for the movement. Nevertheless, both countries were firmly aligned with the USSR and the socialist bloc (despite many myths claiming Saddam Hussein to be a CIA puppet, there is no evidence of this). In Syria, president Hafez Al Assad and his son Bashar followed a course similar to China, using private companies and free markets but controlled by the government and the workers unions. Socialism in Syria exists to this day, despite the attempt by the US to destroy it. In Iraq presidents Ahmed Hassan al Bakr and Saddam Hussein followed a soviet like course, nationalizing all companies, collectivizing agriculture into peasant cooperatives and establishing 5 year economic plans with the help of the USSR. Unfortunately, all that progress was destroyed by the US aggression against Iraq using brutal sanctions and 2 invasions (1991 and 2003). Baathism has declined a lot in recent years, both because of the decline of leftism in general after the collapse of the USSR and also because of the imperialist aggression against Syria and Iraq.

• Libya: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi seized power in a popular revolution in 1969. He was initially a nasserist and planned to unite Libya, Egypt, Syria and Iraq into one state. However, as nasserism collapsed with the coming to power of Anwar Sadat, Gaddaffi developed his own ideology, described in his Green Book. Based on antiimperialism, socialism and direct democracy with no political parties, he called it Jamahiriya, and envisioned it as the right system for all third world countries, especially african ones. His economy was similar to titoism, using a socialist market economy dominated by cooperatives and state owned companies along with a vast social safety net. No political parties were allowed, people elected representatives in a soviet style who would rule the country. His policies were extremely successful, making Libya the richest country in all of Africa. He planned to unite all Africa in an antiimperialist bloc against western neocolonialism, including creating an all african currency. This was too much for the US, who in 2011 invaded Libya, carpet bombed the country, tortured Gaddaffi to death and transformed the country into ISISstan.

• South Yemen: The Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) was the only ML state in Arabia, led by the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) from 1967 to 1990. It followed soviet style economic policies, nothing remarkable about it, it was quite successful and many southern yemenis long for it to this day. The mistake of its leadership was believing the false promises of the capitalist leaders of North Yemen that communists would be allowed to operate freely in a United Yemen. After unification in 1990, communists slowly began to be persecuted and privatization imposed. The YSP tried to take up arms and restore South Yemen in 1994, but failed miserably and had to go into exile as the communists began to be persecuted en masse.

• Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto: He was the socialist president of Pakistan from 1971 to 1977. He took over a devastated US puppet state ruled by a military junta that had just come out of the 3rd Indo Pakistani War and the Bangladeshi Genocide. He restored civilian rule and began following islamic socialism (socialism based on the teachings of Islam) and antiimperialism. He nationalized major industries, ended feudalism, collectivized agriculture, massively improved labor laws and started the pakistan nuclear program to achieve independence from the US. His foreign policy was also remarkable, since before that Pakistan had been an anticommunist US puppet state. He distanced Pakistan from the west and established good relations with China, the USSR, the socialist bloc, newly independent Bangladesh and even its archenemy India. Unfortunately, this wouldnt last long. In 1977 he was ousted and assassinated by the CIA in a military coup. All his reforms were reversed and Pakistan became once again a right wing islamist US puppet state ruled by a military junta.

Anyway these are some examples that come to mind. Let me know if you have any questions about them! O7

The Peoples’ Revolutionary Government of Granada was short lived but extremely based.

I feel Scandinavian socialists and communists are massively overlooked by many. Liberals love praising the “Nordic Model” but never acknowledge that it only came to be thanks to massive unions and socialist movements, and the extremely extensive welfare and work reforms had to be put in place to keep them placated. While ultimately unsuccessful in achieving socialism, I think we can learn a lot from Scandinavian socialists.

Socialist Mongolia, Laos.

Here in Brasil we haved kinda of an great march made by Luis Carlos Prestes and his column, it was really impressive.

They were more utopian than not, but the Phalanstères are pretty interesting, I think

I’m partial to the Chicano movement led by Cesar Chavez.

Though speaking as a Latino person, I have my own criticisms of Cesar Chavez.

Quite a number of places that you wouldn’t think if you only had a western education have had very strong socialist movements at some point in their history. Ireland, cold war Italy, Germany in 1919, Greece with the civil war in 1950’s, the Naxalite’s in India, France and Japan in the 1960’s, the FARC insurgency in Colombia, Allende in Chile, a number of African nations like Angola, Mozambique Zimbabwe, Egypt under Nasser and Ba’athism in general, Scandinavia as an earlier poster mentioned, Indonesia before Suharto’s crackdown. I could probably name more if I knew more.

The Nepal movement. Honestly do not know a ton about it just some interviews and articles. I would love to know more if any comrades have any book or article suggestions!

republic of tarnobrzeg is valid enough i guess. one of the few based moments in polish history, unfortunately wiped out as quickly as it happened.