Dissident Communism: Trajectories of the Independent Left in Postcolonial Syria

Robin Jones
History of Consciousness
UC Santa Cruz

My research focuses on movements and parties of the independent left-wing opposition in Syria during the 1970s and 1980s. I examine their specific political and theoretical interventions in the context of the Cold War and the rise of the global New Left, the trajectories of activists and intellectuals from these movements amid authoritarian repression and neoliberal ascendancy, and the continued resonance of aspects of their political projects in relation to the Arab uprisings and the ensuing Syrian war. Through archival work and oral history, the project attempts to excavate a tradition of left-wing dissident theorization and political organization in Syria—one which challenged some of the limitations of statist Arab nationalism and official Communism as postcolonial projects in the Middle East, without collapsing into the individualist mode of human rights discourse that would later become globally hegemonic and codified in international institutions. Though the “dissident communism” of the independent left in Syria was ultimately defeated as a project for revolutionary transformation, including through the widespread incarceration of party members, my work explores the ways in which activists and intellectuals from this political tradition continued to lead meaningful political lives, exerting a notable influence on the 2011 Syrian revolution.

Image credit: Communist Labour Party of Syria Periodical Collection (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam).