The disastrous defeat of June 1967 played a decisive role in forcing many intellectuals, Arabs in general and Egyptians in particular, to reexamine established concepts and to question their validity.  The process did not take a sudden, dramatic turn but evolved gradually, in my case, for instance, over several years.  It was helped along by the performance of the government propaganda machine in the days following the disaster.  The pitiful attempts by the defeated regime to pass such a cataclysmic event off as no more than a setback, the loss of one battle in a long-term war, rang hollow in the ears of the Egyptian people.  Their wounds  ran too deep to be assuaged by the lying slogans launched by the regime just hours after news of the disaster broke.  Among the more memorable was the use of the word “setback” to describe the complete destruction of the Egyptian army, while others, such as eliminating the results of the aggression and direct American-British aggression were equally unconvincing.

    For Egyptian intellectuals, the blow was even  more devastating, as many of them realized that what had happened was, essentially, the defeat of a regime, and that what was being called a military setback was in fact an acute expression of that defeat.  After boasting for years that its foundations were firmly set in steel, the regime had revealed its feet of clay on the morning of June 5, 1967, and the myth of its invincibility lay shattered on the sands of Sinai.

Traumatized by this shattering blow to their  national pride, indeed, to their very being, an entire generation became dispersed.  Some packed up and left for distant lands. Tens of thousands of educated young Egyptians emigrated to Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia, leaving behind them the motherland covered with the ashes of the conflagration. Others remained, their to serve their cause and compensate them for another kind of soldiering that had been crushed by defeat. Minds numb with shock, their values severely shaken.  Still others found relief in throwing their lot in with extremist elements, which would make of them soldiers

But there were a few who, realizing that the defeat was more political than military, stayed and tried to understand why the regime had collapsed and, with it, the banners it had raised for fifteen years.  I was one of those who believed that to describe what happened on the morning of June 5, 1967, as a military setback resulting from an American-Israeli conspiracy was to betray the conscience of the nation and to display the most supreme contempt for the intelligence of the people.  After all, war is   a continuation of politics by other means, and a military defeat is first and foremost a political defeat.

Ironically, that definition of war came to us from Marx and our Marxist mentors.  It was Marx who first described war as an extension of politics and a solution to political problems, he who said it could only be characterized in political terms.  Five years after the 1967 debacle, the concept had become well established in my mind.  Extensive travels, to more than two hundred cities in over twenty countries, helped me understand the reasons for the regime's collapse in June, 1967.  A first hand look at the experience of regimes modelled along the lines of Nasser's regime, such as those of Libya and  Algeria, was instrumental in making me realize that the defeat of the Nasserite regime had been a natural, logical and inevitable result of the absence of light. Darkness can only breed darkness, and without bright and revealing light, no society can avoid slipping into an abyss like the one into which Egypt fell in 1967.  The nature of the fall may vary, it could be military, economic or socio-political, but the final outcome is the same: defeat, collapse, loss of pride and a long shadow over the future.  By absence of light is meant absence of democracy and the public freedoms that go with it.  Democracy is the bright light that shines on the regime in power, its machinery, mechanisms and institutions.  It is what protects society from the repetition of mistakes, from the ascendancy of negative aspects and from the dangers of building on brittle foundations.   Only democracy can prevent the total collapse of a structure because of an error committed in the dark and only revealed by the final collapse.

Around 1970-71, this conviction had begun to take hold of me.  At the time, I was attending gatherings in Marxist circles on an almost daily basis.  When I ventured to suggest at one of these gatherings that the real reason for the disaster was the complete absence of democracy in the country, the reaction of those present was extremely hostile and they dismissed my analysis out of hand.  I remember  this was at a meeting which took place one  morning in the summer of 1970, in the office of M.K.¹⁴⁴, on the sixth floor of the Al-Ahram building in Cairo.  This particular floor housed the offices of many Egyptian Marxists who had been arrested in 1954 and 1959 and  who had remained in prison until 1964.  Following their release, which came about as a result of growing Soviet influence in Egypt, they were given leading positions in the mass media. 

Among those present that day were F.M. and  I.S.A., each of whom had headed an important communist organization in the fifties and both of whom later became ministers.  There was also M.S.A., considered by the Egyptian Marxists to be their main theoretician today.  Several journalists from Al-Taliaa, all communists, were there, as were a number of communist university professors, like M.A.¹⁴⁵, H.A.¹⁴⁶, S.A.A.¹⁴⁷, etc.  In the course of the discussion, I referred to the 'setback' as being  the defeat of a political regime.  Although my analysis had not yet matured and even though I addressed the issue from a Marxist angle, backing my statement with direct quotes from Marx on war being an extension of politics, M.S.A. took it upon himself to interrupt me and to deliver a sermon, approved by all those present, on the proper interpretation of the 1967 defeat as being due to two factors:

One:    The unholy alliance between the imperialist powers and Israel, both of whom had every interest in destroying  the progressive socialist regime established by Nasser in Egypt, which had become a beacon of light for the Middle East, the Arab world and the African continent.

Two:    The mistakes committed by Nasser's regime, which hindered completing socialist construction in Egypt. If Nasser had built socialism on a scientific (i.e. Marxist) basis rather   than adopting selected socialist concepts, had he turned Egypt into an authentic socialist state (i.e. like those  of Eastern Europe), things would have been different and there would have been no setback. ¹⁴⁸

This categorical reply, designed to deter any tendency to read the military defeat of 1967 as a political defeat for the regime, only served to strengthen my growing belief that the military defeat was just one facet of the political defeat.  The other facet was the economic defeat, which drained the treasury for almost five years following the war and turned the Egyptians into the paupers of the region.

My conviction that it was the darkness of Nasser's political regime which had plunged Egypt into military and economic defeat was further sustained over the next few years as we saw the same pattern being repeated, the same mistakes being committed, in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Algeria, where the absence of democracy was leading them in the direction of defeat.

The absence of democracy in socialist societies, where there is no respect for such public freedoms as freedom of thought, of opinion, of expression, of opposition and of criticism, is rooted in Marxist thought.  Marx, Engels and, later, Lenin, convinced their followers that the non-Marxist concept of democracy was fake and deceptive and that the freedom which the bourgeoisie claimed was guaranteed by their democracy was no more than the freedom of the exploiting minority to pursue their exploitation of the exploited majority.  The disdain for what they pejoratively refer to as `bourgeois parliamentarism' is deeply ingrained in all Marxists.  This disdain was colorfully expressed by Lenin, who called parliamentary democracy a 'pigsty'¹⁴⁹.  It was also Lenin who said:

"To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament - such is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics."¹⁵⁰

In the same vein, Lenin described representative institutions as `talking shops'<sup>151</sup> and social democrats as `lap dogs'¹⁵².  He said: "Parliament itself is given up to talk for the special purpose of fooling the 'common people'.  This is so true that even in the Russian Republic,¹⁵³ a bourgeois-democratic republic, all these sins of parliamentarism were immediately revealed, even before it managed to set up a real parliament.  The heroes of rotten philistinism, such as the Skobelevs and Tseretelis, the Chernovs and Avksentyevs, have even succeeded in polluting the Soviets after the fashion of most disgusting bourgeois parliamentarism and to convert them into mere talking shops."¹⁵⁴

A careful reading of Marx, Engels and Lenin will show that they affirm the impossibility of combining between the state and freedom and democracy, since democracy in non-communist societies stands for the state regime and the state stands for exploitation and oppression. ¹⁵⁵  In an introduction to a series of articles published just  one and a half    years before his death and eleven years after the death of Marx, Engels says that the communist party can never use the term social/democrat, because it is a party whose ultimate political objective is to transcend the state altogether and, consequently, democracy as well. ¹⁵⁶ In 1917, Lenin developed this theme as follows:

   In the usual arguments about the state, the mistake is constantly made against which Engels uttered  his warning and which we have in passing indicated above, namely, it is constantly forgotten that the abolition of the state means also the abolition of democracy; that the withering away of the state means the withering away of democracy.

At first sight, this assertion seems exceedingly strange and incomprehensible; indeed, someone may even begin to fear that we are expecting the advent  of an order of society in which the principle of the subordination of the minority to the majority will   not be observed - for democracy means the recognition of just this principle.

No, democracy is NOT identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority.  Democracy is a state which recognizes the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one section of the population against another."¹⁵⁷

Lenin was also the one to call the democracy of capitalist society "democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich..."¹⁵⁸, noting that Marx had "grasped the essence of capitalist democracy when, in analyzing the experience of the  (Paris) Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!"¹⁵⁹

In "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism"¹⁶⁰, Lenin wrote: "Imperialism is the era of financial capital and the monopolies which everywhere tend towards domination not freedom." CHECK... He devotes an entire book, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", written in October/November 1918, to developing the theme of Western democracy being a game used by the dominant class to consolidate its exploitation and privileges.  To this end, he invokes Rosa Luxemburg's description of German Social-Democracy as "a stinking corpse".¹⁶¹ In a chapter entitled "Bourgeois and Proletarian Democracy", Lenin says:

"If we are not to mock at common sense and history, it is obvious that we cannot speak of 'pure democracy' so long as different classes exist; we can only speak of class democracy. (Be it said in parenthesis that 'pure democracy' is not only an ignorant phrase, revealing a lack of understanding both of the class struggle and of the nature of the state, but also a thrice-empty phrase, since in communist society democracy will wither away in the process of changing and becoming a habit, but will never be 'pure' democracy.)

“Pure democracy” is the mendacious phrase of a liberal who wants to fool the workers.  History knows of bourgeois democracy which takes the place of feudalism, and of proletarian democracy which takes the place of bourgeois democracy."¹⁶²

In the same chapter, Lenin launches his most violent diatribe yet against Western democracy, parliaments and the idea of parliamentary representation:  "The learned Mr. Kautsky has 'forgotten' - accidentally forgotten, probably... a 'trifle', namely, that the ruling party in a bourgeois democracy extends the protection of the minority only to another bourgeois party, while on all serious, profound and fundamental issues the proletariat gets martial law or pogroms, instead of the 'protection of the minority'.  The more highly developed a democracy is, the more imminent are pogroms or civil war in connection with any profound political divergence which is dangerous to the bourgeoisie."¹⁶³

Tens of similar passages can be found in the works of Trotsky and Mao Tse-tung.  According to the former, the problems between the proletariat and others `can only be resolved by blood and steel.'  It was also Trotsky who boasted that the Bolsheviks had never paid heed to Hegel's `babble about the sanctity of human life'.  In fact, it was Marxism's inbuilt propensity for violence that led Kautsky to attack it, thereby incurring Lenin’s wrath.  Mao Tse-tung is even more blunt:  "Our state is that of the people's democratic dictatorship, led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants."  Defining the functions of that dictatorship, he says its first task is on the internal front, where it must suppress the reactionary classes, exploiters, all those standing against the socialist revolution and all those working to   subvert socialist construction, "in order to resolve the contradictions between us and our enemies inside the country.  Among the functions of the proletariat, for example, is to arrest and sentence anti-revolutionary elements and to deprive landowners and bourgeois bureaucrats of their right to vote and of freedom of speech."

In an article published on February 27, 1957, under the title "The Proper Treatment of the Contradictions Between the Rights of the People", Mao reiterates the views he expressed on June 23, 1950, in the closing address he delivered at the Second Consultative Political Congress of the Chinese People, in which he said: "The people's democratic dictatorship follows two paths: against the enemies, it follows the path of dictatorship,    i.e., for a necessary period of time, the enemies are not allowed to participate in political  activity..."¹⁶⁴ Elsewhere, Mao explains the essence of what he calls democratic dictatorship ¹⁶⁵, noting that it is based on:

- subordination of the minority to the majority;

- subordination of the majority to the Party;

- subordination of the Party to the Central Committee.166

The Marxist doctrine requires Marxists to reject parliamentary democracy and to build their proletarian democracy on the elimination of all other classes and, by extension, of their political organizations, i.e., their parties.  Thus a Marxist who comes to power cannot allow freedom of political opposition nor freedom to form parties, because all parties other than the communist party represent classes at war with the proletariat.  As Lenin put it bluntly: "once the proletariat seizes power, it must impose a series of restrictions on   the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters and the capitalists."¹⁶⁷  To drive the point home, he   points out that "It is clear (that) when there is suppression, when there is violence (on the part of the proletariat), there is no freedom and no democracy....¹⁶⁸  Democracy for the vast majority of the people (the proletariat) and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people - this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism."¹⁶⁹

Under communist rule, therefore, indeed, under any of the regimes which revolve, to varying degrees, in the communist orbit, parliamentary democracy is regarded with deep suspicion.  Political opponents are class enemies that the regime should crush, not engage in dialogue with, and who should not be given   a forum from which to speak out against the interests of the proletariat.  In this logic, all who stand with them are `comrades', all who do not are `enemies', towards whom the only possible language is repression.  As they see it, freedom of thought cannot be absolute. On the one hand, nothing is absolute from the philosophical point of view and, on the other, thought is subordinate to economic and class interests and any thought that does not express the interests of the working class is a deviation to be suppressed.  Thus freedom of expression is viewed from one single political prism: that of the party, which sets itself up as the sole representative of the proletarian majority.  The twin concepts of freedom of thought and freedom of expression, inherited from a long evolutionary process in human thought and culture, have no  place in a society ruled by communists. 

The same narrow perspective is applied to the press and literature in communist societies.  The press must be in the hands of the representatives of the proletariat, not in the hands of its enemies; it must defend only the interests of the workers and make war on their enemies; no party or trend other than the communist party can have access to the press...As to `human literature', it is a meaningless expression, for literature is one of the components of the superstructure and a reflection of the economic basis of society.  In a society ruled by communists, literature should be concerned solely with the problems and interests of the working class.  From all these concepts the ideal society is formed: the Soviet Union, with its conception of freedom of the press, of opinion and of political opposition.¹⁷⁰

It is true that the seventies and eighties saw the West European communists, particularly the Italian, French and Spanish communist parties, rejecting the traditional Marxist view of democracy and proclaiming their belief in Western parliamentary democracy and political pluralism as embodied in the multi-party system.  But it is also true that they did so only because they knew that unless they affirmed their respect for democratic values, their own societies, where these values were firmly entrenched, would continue to reject them.  For the peoples of the Western democracies firmly believe in the importance of public scrutiny - or the light of democracy - in revealing errors and preventing negative trends in good time.  But whatever the motivation of the Eurocommunists, their doctrine, officially described by the Soviets in 1972 as `provocative' (in the review, "The Contemporary Nation"), met with implacable opposition from orthodox Marxists.

In short, the lessons drawn from the Nasserite experience in Egypt and similar experiences in other, as well as the record of societies ruled by countries communist parties or pro-communist regimes, prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the nature of Marxism, as a philosophical and political school of thought, as well as in its practical application to date,    is in total contradiction  with the notion of democracy as it has evolved in Western societies and as it is reflected today in Britain, the United States, France, etc.  By its very nature, Marxism inevitably leads to the suppression of freedom of thought, of opinion, of political opposition and of the press, and cannot admit of  any mechanism that would put political life under the light of democracy and reveal it to the public eye, so that defects do not remain hidden until they erupt in the form of a disaster such as a military, political, economic or social setback.

Anyone who has read Soviet `samizdat' (Russian for `underground') literature cannot fail to be struck by the negative aspects of Marxist theory and practice.  The list of Soviet dissidents who have written of the brutal repression to which they were subjected, the years they spent in labour camps and psychiatric hospitals, the persecution of their families and friends is an impressive one.  Among the names that spring to mind: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Roy Medvedev, Mikhail Bulgakov, Anatoly Marchenko, Mikhail Sholokhov, Yuli M. Daniel (alias Nikolai Argak), Andrei Sinyavsky (alias Abraham Tertz), Aleksandr Ginsburg, Larya Gurz, Yury Galanskov, Pavel Leptvinov, Valentin Moroz...¹⁷¹

The long hours spent reading the works of dissident Soviet authors, particularly Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Anatoly Marchenko, helped confirm my belief that the aberrations they describe are all due to what I termed, in a lecture delivered on April 29, 1979, at the University of Asuncion, the darkness resulting from the absence of any mechanisms of  illumination in societies subscribing to the Marxist concept of democracy. This concept is closely related to another, that of revolutionary, or  socialist, legitimacy.  The notion of constitutional legitimacy born of mankind's long struggle to  obtain civil liberties and protect human rights by devising a system of checks and balances whereby the political authority is accountable to the people and the powers of the ruler are strictly defined by constitutional and legislative texts, is totally  rejected by Marxism, both in theory and in practice.  For Marxists, who see everything from the perspective of class struggle, legitimacy means anything that serves that struggle.  Indeed, the only constraint on the actions of the proletariat when it is performing its historic mission to propel society forward from capitalism to socialism - while abolishing all other classes in the process - is that these actions must serve the interests of the proletariat.  This elastic proposition lends itself easily to abuse: the political authority can justify any excess in the name of the interests of the proletariat.  Hence the dismal human rights record of all communist regimes, where purges and brutal repression of any opposition, in flagrant violation of the basic principles of legitimacy as established by centuries of human struggle, are justified as necessary to protect the interests of the working class.  

The years 1917 to 1921 witnessed the worst such violations in the Soviet Union, when the entire judicial system was subsumed under the banner of `revolutionary legitimacy' to serve one man's vision of political expediency.  During that black period, Stalin liquidated his opponents, murdered millions of his countrymen and held the infamous Moscow trials.

The same banner was raised by Gamal Abdel Nasser to justify eliminating all his opponents from 1954 onwards.  Under that banner, thousands of Moslems were massacred in Syria.  Such leaders as Castro, Ben Bella, Boumedienne, Gaddafi, successive rulers in Aden, Agostinho Neto, Miriam Mengistou, Abdel Kerim Kassem and Abdel Fattah Ismail applied what they called revolutionary legitimacy in their respective countries to `protect the revolution and the interests of the people'.

    However, it is not by reading the mass of theoretical works written on the subject that one can judge between the relative merits of the two notions of legitimacy.  For oppression, like freedom, can be theoretically justified, and honeyed words on the need to repress injustice, tyranny and exploitation can act like a heady brew, particularly on headstrong young people with a natural enthusiasm for fiery slogans.  The real test lies in practical application, and there is no disputing the horrible crimes committed by communist regimes in the area of human rights.  Under the banner of revolutionary legitimacy, they have trampled underfoot all public freedoms and silenced all dissent.  The picture is very different under a constitutional democracy, which is not, as Lenin called it, a charade, but a system designed to prevent abuses of power and to protect public freedoms.  Democracy is the torch that illuminates the workings of the state and lays them bare for all to see.  No one can claim that democracy has created the ideal paradise, only that its revealing light prevents the tyranny and injustice that occur in the darkness of dictatorial rule, whatever its nature: Marxist, Fascist, Nazi, military or theocratic.

The tragedy of the Cultural Revolution launched by Mao Tse-tung in the mid-sixties¹⁷² is a glaring example of where the concepts of revolutionary legitimacy, proletarian democracy, committed communist literature, etc., can lead.  But the price  of the lesson was exorbitant in terms of human suffering and it was a lesson humanity could have done without.  Sadly, many people in the third world seem to have learned nothing from the Chinese experience.

    For some strange reason, none of those who have been seduced by the Marxist concept of democracy ever ask themselves why no communist ruler has ever left power except for one of two reasons: death or a coup d'etat.  Nor do they question why each communist ruler begins his reign by denouncing that of his predecessor.  Not one of them wonders how Tsarist Russia, with all its social inequities, produced such towering figures as Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoi, Chekov, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninov  and scores of others, whereas the dictatorship of the proletariat has produced no creative works other than those of the dissidents who turned against the regime.

This perception of constitutional democracy is dictated by the moral code of Marxism.  Morality is determined in Marxist eyes by reference to the proletarian revolution: whatever serves the cause of the revolution is moral, anything else is not.  With this in mind, how can we see the behaviour of communists in Western democracies, who have suddenly become apostles of pluralism and constitutional democracy, as anything but inconsistent?  While traditional Marxists admit that their ultimate aim in participating in political life in non-proletarian states (i.e., Western democracies) is to promote the proletarian revolution by  smashing the machinery of state - political institutions, parliamentary, or bourgeois, democracy, etc. , they are the first to  loudly condemn any violation of democracy and the staunchest supporters of the freedoms it guarantees, such as freedom of opinion and of expression.

It is hard to reconcile this attitude with what Engels himself said in his address to the First International London Conference on September 11, 1871, to whit: "Political freedoms, such as the right of assembly and freedom to publish and print are our weapon.  Can we, then, remain with our hands tied and boycott politics if they try to seize this weapon from us?  It is said that any political activity means recognizing the existing system.  But as long as   that system places in our hands the weapons with which to fight, then using those weapons does not mean recognizing the existing system."¹⁷³

In other words, the communists have no qualms about using the channels and privileges available to them under a system of bourgeois parliamentary democracy to achieve their ultimate aim of destroying that system.  For they are aware that under a democracy they cannot come to power as Lenin and his cohorts did in the anarchy that prevailed in Russia in October 1917 or through a military takeover.  Their use of democratic channels to preach communist ideas, fan the flames of class struggle and spread rumours against their opponents is a blatant example of the immoral opportunism of communists, which they consider entirely moral from their neo-Machiavellan point of view.

Western democracies seem oblivious to this threat to their very existence.  Surely the essential condition for participation in democratic life should be a profound belief in democracy and a desire to protect and maintain it?  Anyone who does not satisfy that condition should be barred from exercising the right to participate in political activities in Western democracies.  It is absurd  for people who have learned from long historical experience that parliamentary democracy is all that stands between them and tyranny and despotism to allow those who call for its destruction to operate under its umbrella.  Especially when the traditional Marxists, like those in the third world, declare their Leninist aim of replacing bourgeois democracy by proletarian democracy.

We are not alone in finding the behaviour of Marxists in Western democracies inconsistent and immoral.  The accusation of immorality has been levelled against them by many European intellectuals sympathetic to Marxism, like Howard Lasky, who described the behaviour of communists outside the Soviet Union as "deceptive, ruthless, iniquitous, willing to resort to lies and treachery to achieve their end and unscrupulously falsifying facts to suit their purpose."  Nor is the immoral behaviour of the communists limited to the period before they seize power.  The slogans they raise when they participate in political life under a democracy are soon forgotten when they come to power.  In fact, the allies who stand by them in their struggle to attain power are usually their first victims.  A notorious example is how the Mencheviks, who had stood by the Bolsheviks in their struggle, were liquidated by Lenin soon after he came to power. The opportunistic communist attitude with regard to parliamentary democracy is best expressed by Lenin himself in "`Left-Wing' Communism, an Infantile Disorder", published in Russia in June 1920.  Among the most explicit Marxist texts upholding the legitimacy of anything that serves the proletarian revolution is chapter eight of the said book, in which he bitterly denounces the German `Left' communists who dared criticize the Bolsheviks for compromising with bourgeois parties, noting that: "....the German Lefts must know that the whole history of Bolshevism, both before and after the October Revolution, is full of instances of manoeuvring, temporizing and compromising with other parties, bourgeois parties included."  Developing this theme further, he asks:  "To carry on a war  for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult,  protracted and complicated than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to refuse beforehand to manoeuvre, to utilize the conflict of interests (even though temporary) among one's enemies, to refuse to temporize and compromise with possible (even though temporary, unstable, vacillating and conditional) allies - is not this ridiculous in the extreme?"¹⁷⁴

During a spell abroad in the first half of the seventies, I devoted myself to the study of hundreds of volumes written during the early years of the great Islamic civilization, particularly the works of eminent Islamic jurists compiled in a volume entitled Bab Al Jihad.  I often found myself comparing the immorality of the communists with the chivalry displayed by the early Moslems in all their wars, starting with the Battle of Badr.  The history of Islam is rich in examples of noble stands.  One example that springs to mind is that of Imam Ali Ibn Abi Taleb, who could have had the whole world at his feet if he had gone against the dictates of his conscience.  When he was offered the caliphate after the assassination of Omar on condition that he pledge not to be as strict as Omar, he refused - thereby sacrificing a position that would have brought virtually the whole world at the time under his rule.  His words to his opponents at the Battle of Al Gamal are just the opposite of the communist creed that the end - the accession to power, the furthering of the proletarian revolution, etc.- justifies the means.  Another case in point is Saladdin, who met every underhanded plot hatched against him by the Crusaders with chivalry and gallantry.  In recent times, this noble tradition was upheld by the late King Feisal of Saudi Arabia who, despite the vicious attacks launched against him by the Nasser regime, was the first to rush to Nasser's support at the Khartoum Conference of 1967, following the regime's defeat.¹⁷⁵

The very narrow Marxist concept of democracy as being proletarian democracy and none other not only shapes the attitude of the communists to other parties and trends, but also their attitude to fellow communist party members.  Right after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia and established the dictatorship of the proletariat, the question of whether or not to allow freedom of opinion within the party was decisively settled.  Actually, the question had been raised as early as 1903, when a bitter debate broke out over whether the communist organization should be a tight organization, in the sense of high centralization and iron discipline, or a loose one, encompassing various communist tendencies.  The concept of a tight organization, championed by Lenin, won the day.  Lenin came under strong attack for his stand from several leaders of the communist movement both inside Russia, like Trotsky, and outside, like Rosa Luxembourg in Germany.  In "Our Political Duties", Trotsky went as far as to compare Lenin to Robespierre.  Under the pressure of so many attacks, Lenin published "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back" in 1904, in which he violently attacked the advocates of an open communist society and their description of democracy as being the rule of the people by the people.  He declared that the idea of organization, so essential to the communist movement, could not be fulfilled without the total submission of the minority to the majority inside the party and that anyway he could conceive of no opposition within the party save from `opportunistic, non- revolutionary elements'.  He reiterated the same views later, when he boasted in "`Left-Wing' Communism, an Infantile Disorder", published in 1920, that "the application of the dictatorship of the proletariat would have been impossible without an iron party."

After Lenin's death, the debate flared up again between Stalin and his bitter enemy, Trotsky.  The former adhered strictly to the Lenin line and advocated the idea of a tightly-controlled party in "The Foundations of Leninism" in 1924 and "Problems of Leninism" in 1926.   Trotsky, for his part, continued to defend the idea of an open party - especially when it became apparent that Lenin was closer to power than he was - that would cooperate with the Mencheviks and all the other parties whose support had helped the Bolsheviks come to power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.  Trotsky's views on the matter are forcefully expressed in "The New Method", which he wrote in 1923.  But, in the event, it was Stalin's theory  which ultimately prevailed, and Trotsky's call for an open party has never been applied in any state ruled by the dictatorship of the proletariat as embodied in a communist party.  The formula of a narrow party applied by Lenin and Stalin was also applied by Mao in China, where the communist party was quick to eliminate any trend that did not stricly adhere to the path he laid out.   Under various banners, the most famous being the Cultural Revolution, the most brutal methods were used to correct any deviation from this path.

Thus the absence of the light of democracy is an inbuilt feature of communist rule that affects not only its enemies but also those of its followers who do not see eye to eye with the ruler.  An area  which provides ample evidence of this is the  literature of Soviet dissidents and their trials and tribulations in defense of human rights. While a full analysis of the issue would go beyond the scope of this essay, the story of one of them can serve as a representative case history for all of  them.

The life of the Nobel laureate, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, from the day he was born in 1918 until he was deported from the Soviet Union in 1974, epitomizes the brutal oppression visited by the Soviet Union on its citizens.  In this model communist society, which serves as a shining example of the successful implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat to all the others, fundamental freedoms are conspicuously absent and human rights violations the order of the day.

Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 at Kislovodsk.  Six years later, his father was killed in an accident, and his mother moved with him to Rostov-on-the-Don, where she worked as a typist.  Life was hard in the early days of Stalin's rule, especially for a young widow and her orphaned son.  Young Alexander was an outstanding student from primary school and up to Rostov university, where his genius in mathematics and physics won him a scholarship for graduate studies. Throughout those years, Solzhenitsyn remained true to his love for culture in general and literature in particular, and took a correspondence course in literature at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History.  He obtained his diploma from the Institute in 1941, one year following his appointment as teacher of mathematics at a secondary school in Rostov.

During those years, he tried to publish his novels and short stories in the literary review, Znamya, but they were all rejected by the editor.  When Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union began, Solzhenitsyn joined the Red Army as an artillery officer on October 18, 1941, and fought at the battles of  Kursk and Konigsberg (later Kaliningrad). ¹⁷⁶ His heroism earned him several promotions, and by 1945 he was a captain with two decorations for bravery in defense of his country: the Order of the Patriotic War, Class II, and the Order of the Red Star.

In July 1945, he was suddenly arrested by the secret police, the NKVD, and charged with making derogatory remarks about Stalin in private correspondence with a friend and in his personal diary.  He was detained without trial in the Lubyanka prison in Moscow pending further investigation of his case by the secret police, then sentenced by a special tribunal of the NKVD to eight years hard labour as a traitor to Leninist socialism and to the socialist society.  Solzhenitsyn served his sentence in a number of Soviet prisons, but instead of releasing him when his term was up in 1953,  the secret police arbitrarily decided to exile him to Kok Tern in the Dzhambul region of Kazakhstan, where he remained until 1956.  During his exile, it was discovered that he had cancer and he was sent to a hospital in Tashkent to undergo treatment.

For more than eleven years of imprisonment and exile, Solzhenitsyn underwent horrible sufferings which he movingly describes in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich".  The novel is considered a literary masterpiece in its description of the sufferings of hundreds of thousands of detainees in the Soviet Union, although I, personally, share the opinion of the Daily Telegraph's literary critic who considers "My Testimony" by Anatoly Marchenko to be the best account of life in Russian prisons and labour camps since Dostoevsky's "House of the Dead". Solzhenitsyn uses the same setting for his  play, "The Tender Foot and the Tramp".  His outstanding novel, "Cancer Ward", recounts his experience with exile and his brush with death from cancer.  During his years of imprisonment and  exile, his family knew nothing about him.   Thinking him dead, his wife remarried but went back to him after his release (1956) and his rehabilitation (1957).

In 1956, his case was reviewed by the Military Section of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, which issued the following ruling under No. 4N/083/56:  "On February 6, 1956, the Court examined the appeal raised by the Military Prosecutor against the decision passed by the Fifth Tribunal of the NKVD on June 7, 1945, and predicated on paragraphs 10 and 11 of article 58 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, sentencing to eight years imprisonment in correctional labour camps Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, born in 1918 in the city of Kislovodsk, holder of the highest scientific awards and commander of an artillery unit before his detention who fought in the war against the Fascist German armies and was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, Class II, and the Order of the Red Star.  Having heard the report of comrade Konev and the statement of Colonel Terkov, Assistant Military Prosecutor, the Court rules as follows:  the charges against Solzhenitsyn which    are that between 1940 and 1945 he committed acts  of anti-Soviet propaganda among his friends  and took steps aimed at forming an anti-Soviet organization are declared null and void for absence of proof of the alleged crimes...."

Throughout these years, all Solzhenitsyn’s attempts to publish his works were met with adamant refusal.  However, in November 1962, Khrushchev himself authorized publication of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", Solzhenitsyn's harrowing novel about life in a Siberian labour camp under Stalin, in the context of Khrushchev's destalinisation policy. After Khrushchev’s downfall in 1964, Solzhenitsyn again became persona non grata and was the target of violent attacks by official Soviet writers. But by then,   which is around the time the literary dissident's movement was born,  he had acquired many supporters and admirers.  The attacks continued for almost ten years, during which the author was accused of being a traitor to socialism and an agent of American imperialist powers.  He was persecuted in his private life and transferred from one place to another.  The attacks reached a crescendo when he was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature and continued unabated until he left the Soviet Union in 1974.

Those who have followed the case closely affirm that Solzhenitsyn would have been assassinated or locked up in a psychiatric institution like so many others had it not been for the support of the free world and of the European communist parties, particularly those of Italy, France and Spain, and had his case not become a cause celebre  at the centre of world public opinion.

Although the case of Solzhenitsyn provoked a great political furor and much international publicity, the history of communist societies is rife with similar, albeit less sensational, cases. The moral to be  drawn from the story of Alexander Solzhenitsyn is that in communist societies, where the rule of law  is replaced by `revolutionary legitimacy', there is no room for divergent views, which are invariably branded as anti-revolutionary and imperialist.  In fact, conformity or otherwise to `revolutionary legitimacy' is determined at the sole discretion of whoever happens to be in power at any given time.  The vicissitudes of Solzhenitsyn's fortunes prove just how flexible the concept of revolutionary democracy is:

1-      At a first phase, he was a legendary hero who had fought valiantly for the socialist fatherland and had been decorated twice for bravery.