The Center for Arab Unity Studies published the second edition of the book The Unmaking of Arab Socialism by Ali Kadri.
Like the other regions of the Third World, most of which were under colonial rule, the Arab region and its national liberation movements have been affected by the wave of socialist ideas and movements that have pervaded the world since the victory of the Bolshevik revolution in the Soviet Union, which set out to provide an alternative to capitalism and its social contradictions that spread exploitation, deprivation, poverty and plunder within its communities and between the center and the ends of the capitalist system. The Arab socialist experience realized several achievements, whether on the level of economic development and the development of productive sectors (industry and agriculture), or on the level of social development and improvement of the standard of living and education, average income and fair redistribution of national wealth. But this experience has also encountered many setbacks, and it has been disintegrating since the 1970 s.
In this book, Ali Kadri studies the experience Arab socialist movement, the circumstances of its emergence and the reasons for its disintegration, by analyzing the class structure of Arab societies and the most salient events and developments which contributed in replacing the socialist experience into neoliberalism, and destroyed the achievements of the socialist movement – specifically the productive economic structure, strengthened the role of unproductive consumer-trade economies and re-dominated the “compradorian” class that subjected these countries to an economic plunder in favor of the global capitalist system, and caused a massive decline in the rate of growth and socialist achievements, low employment opportunities, and the spread of poverty, as well as a decline in class awareness and the rise of identity conflicts.
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