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A TALE OF TWO COMMUNISTS: THE REVOLUTIONARY PROJECTS OF THE LEBANESE COMMUNISTS
HUSAYN MURUWWA AND MAHDI ‘AMIL1
By Miriam Younes
Miriam Younes is a PhD Fellow in the Department of Society and Globalization at Roskilde University and Research Coordinator at Lebanon Support.
This article deals with two communists and their intellectual and social development in light of their political commitment in “revolutionary times.” It follows the changing and sometimes synchronous notions of enthusiasm, commitment, hope, despair, and ambivalence marking revolutions and revolutionary ideas. The article engages the lives of Husayn Muruwwa (1910-87) and Hasan Hamdan, better known by his pen name Mahdi ‘Amil (1936-87). It looks at how these two intellectuals witnessed and sought to realize a revolutionary project. The revolutionary project, which conceptual-ized a new political vision and ideas of change, was one of the core themes in their life worlds. It expresses itself in the two men’s activism, commitment, and intellectual production.
Muruwwa and ‘Amil represent two of “the most prominent intellec-tuals”2 of the Lebanese communist tradition. They were active members in the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) from the 1950s and 1960s, respectively, until their deaths. Both men are symbols of a broader leftist “intellectual workshop”3 of ideological discussions, debates, and trajectories that took
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place in Lebanon and unfolded transregionally. As part of a wave of anti-communist assaults by different militias during the 1975-1991 civil war, unknown gunmen assassinated the two men in Beirut in February (Muruwwa) and May (‘Amil) of 1987. Although the two assassinations were never for-mally solved, many communists accuse the Shi‘i militia and party Harakat Amal of the two murders.4 They did not die in battle. Muruwwa was at home and ‘Amil walking in the street. Their symbolically loaded deaths, together with their long history of communist commitment, led to their iconization among leftist/communist and activist circles in the Arab world until today.5 Vijay Prashad recently evoked both men as examples of a “continuing battle between religious fundamentalism and communist doctrine.”6
This article traces the early experiences of the two intellectuals, their revolutionary ideas, and their witnessing of uprisings and revolutions in different settings. It engages both men’s involvement in the LCP from the 1950s-1960s onwards, thus exploring theirs and the party’s intellectual trajectory after the second party conference in 1968 until the end of the 1980s. Finally, the article places the emotional and the social at the center of a life-long intellectual “revolutionary” endeavor.
Researchers have addressed the LCP’s development after the 1968 party conference and its involvement in the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) during the Lebanese civil war.7 However, scholars have not explored the LCP’s intellectual production.8 Similarly, studies on Muruwwa and ‘Amil have not addressed their intellectual labor as inextricable from their revolutionary endeavors and political commitment.9
This revolutionary project was never a single static phenomenon. It was a constantly shifting process driven by personal choices and experiences. An overall commitment to the idea of change within a communist-Marxist outlook framed this project. In their early writings the two intellectuals reflected on experiences of colonialism and imperialism, gradually adopting the theory and vision of a socialist revolution. In later stages, Muruwwa and ‘Amil reflected on this theory and practice in the specificities of the Lebanese condition. As the Lebanese political climate radicalized at the end of the 1960s, leading ultimately to armed conflict from 1975 onwards, the two men’s projects shifted. They started to espouse a more pragmatic agenda that included the triumph of the left-wing national coalition; the defeat of the right-wing “bourgeois and imperialist” coalition; the establishment of
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a Lebanese secular, democratic state; and the liberation of Palestine. The embrace of armed struggle was one way to realize these objectives. As we will see, the two communist ideologues buttressed their pragmatism with revolutionary rhetoric.
Life History and Revolution: Muruwwa and ‘Amil
Both Muruwwa and ‘Amil studied and lived abroad before they chose to be based in Lebanon in the 1950s (Muruwwa) and 1960s (‘Amil). Their travels and experiences would come to shape their ideological imaginations as well as their lifestyles. As Muruwwa recalled: “While in Najaf, Marx entered my life.” It was in this Iraqi shrine city that the young, aspiring Shi‘i religious scholar met another prophet altogether.10
Writing was a daily practice for Muruwwa from his teen years until his death. After he returned to Lebanon in the 1950s, Muruwwa became a leading LCP intellectual. He wrote a lengthy two-part volume that offered an ambitious Marxist interpretation of Islamic history.11 He was also a prolific commentator on global and local political events12 in daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals and journals.13 When asked how to survive the Israeli invasion of West Beirut in June 1982, Muruwwa replied, “I cannot endure life without writing.”14
Muruwwa was born in 1910 in Haddatha, a village in the Jabal ‘Amil region of southern Lebanon. The predominantly Shi‘i inhabitants of Jabal ‘Amil were agriculturalists and politically marginalized under both Ottoman and French Mandate rule. Beginning in the 1930s, the people living in Jabal ‘Amil initiated a lengthy process of political and economic self-assertion.15 Intellectually, Jabal ‘Amil had been a center of production and learning of Shi‘i scholarship for centuries. The deep historical links between Jabal ‘Amil and Najaf, the center of Shi‘i scholarship, enhanced this status. Muruwwa, the son of a Shi‘i cleric, was exposed from a very early age to his father’s ambitions for his son to enter Jabal ‘Amil’s milieu. In autobiographical writings and interviews, Muruwwa recalled a demanding childhood, tinged with poverty and broader social exclusion.16
Beginning in 1924, Muruwwa studied at the Shi‘i seminary ( awza) of Najaf. He recalls this period as a fulfillment of the life-long dreams of his father, his family, his society, and himself. But it was not long before Marx
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entered his life and Muruwwa grew to doubt the established structures of values and religion. He started to read modern literature and poetry and began publishing critical pieces in the emerging Shi‘i modernist journals al-‘Irfan and al-Hatif. He became part of a circle of like-minded students who called themselves the Najafi-‘Amili Youth (al-Shabiba al-‘Amiliyya al-Najafiyya). The group called for the awza’s reform in public and in print.17 But reforms confined to the religious institution would not satisfy Muruwwa, who abandoned the religious school in 1938.
Two years later, Muruwwa moved to Baghdad, where he worked as a schoolteacher and continued writing in the Iraqi daily press. Through his integration into the journalistic, cultural, and political circles of Baghdad, Muruwwa became further acquainted with Marxist readings and the Iraqi Communist Party’s leadership. In his early days in Baghdad, however, he was closer to nationalist ideas.18 Muruwwa experienced the “stormy atmos-phere among Iraqi intellectuals”19 and in the political realm in general. The pseudo-independent Hashemite kingdom and its British allies faced serious opposition from Iraqi intellectuals and leftist/ nationalist political activists. The opposition, in turn, confronted harsh oppression, frequent imprisonment, and executions. In 1948, a series of protests against a trade agreement with the British led to the so-called wathba (awakening), which consisted of large-scale protests and demonstrations spearheaded by the Communist Party throughout the country. The violent suppression of the uprising left many protesters dead or arrested.20 Muruwwa recalls the wathba as the spark of his turn to communism. He wrote articles on the protest movement in the Iraqi newspaper al-Ra’y al-‘Amm on a daily basis. Although he declared his affinity for communist ideas in those writings he never became an official member of the Iraqi Communist Party.21 After the wathba he continued to publish critical articles about Iraqi politics, leading to his expulsion from Iraq and return to Lebanon in 1949.
In Beirut, Muruwwa started writing for the Lebanese daily newspaper al-Hayat. At the same time, he began publishing in the LCP’s monthly journal al-Tariq, which led to his acquaintance with two of the leading Lebanese communists of the time, Niqula Shawi and Faraj Allah al-Hilw. In 1951, the three men launched a cultural newspaper called al-Thaqafa al-Wataniyya. Muruwwa and his friend and comrade Muhammad Dakrub were the editors of this new weekly. Muruwwa joined the LCP in 1954.22 In the 1950s and
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1960s the party sent him to Moscow twice to conduct research.23 During his one-year stay in Moscow in 1966, Muruwwa wrote his magnum opus, Materialist Trends in Arabo-Islamic Philosophy (al-Naza‘at al-Madiyya fi al-Falsafa al-‘Arabiyya al-Islamiyya), a Marxist reading of Islamic history.24 Beirut and Moscow were both personal and intellectual homes. The two cities represented Muruwa’s integration into the intellectual context of the Soviet Union and the Lebanese Communist Party.
‘Amil had a strict philosophical-sociological approach. His theoretical contributions to Lebanese political and social realities in a colonial context were mixed with a call for socialist revolution. ‘Amil did not publish many personal or autobiographical accounts. His contributions to intellectual leftist journals and newspapers like al-Tariq and al-Nida’ do not contain many personal sentiments or narrations which reflect his everyday life. Instead, it is his theoretical work that reveals the different influences and experiences that shaped him. Moreover, his friends and colleagues wrote extensively on his life and personality. In these works, the picture of a strict, highly committed communist theorist and philosopher is juxtaposed with the depiction of a charismatic, emotional, and humorous character.25
‘Amil was born Hasan Hamdan in Beirut in 1936. He grew up between the capital and his family’s home village of Haruf in the south of Lebanon. He had his first experiences with political activism as a young student in Lebanon. Arab nationalism was his primary influence. After finishing high school in 1955, he studied philosophy, history, and literature in Lyon. During his stay in France in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he got acquainted with Marxist and leftist ideas through the leftist students’ network at Lyon University and their engagement with the Algerian liberation struggle.26 These experiences of a marginalized south in a regionally and internationally contested Lebanese state in the 1950s,27 as well as an intellectually and culturally vibrant France, influenced his early writings. This is evident in his doctoral thesis, entitled Praxis et Projet: Essai sur la constitution de l’Histoire, which he finished in Algeria in 1967. French philosophy also highly influenced ‘Amil’s work, which echoes Louis Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, the French geographer Yves Lacoste, and the Marxist anthropologist Pierre-Philippe Rey.28
‘Amil’s doctoral thesis was an early attempt to trace a theory of French colonialism’s structural conditions. His integration into leftist circles in France led to his further awareness not only of Marxism but also of colonialism and
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third-worldist perspectives.29 Reading Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth in 1961 in Lyon shaped his ideas about colonialism and the Algerian liberation war. He started to become active in FLN networks in France by smuggling money collected from Algerian workers in France to Algerian revolutionaries.30 In 1963, as a direct result of this involvement, ‘Amil and his family migrated to Constantine in Algeria, where he taught philosophy at a local college. The anti-colonial struggle and the third-worldism circulating in the newly liberated state further influenced him. He started publishing in Algerian journals devoted to third-worldism and revolutionary struggle like Révolution Africaine, where he wrote on Frantz Fanon and colonialism more broadly.31 After the military coup in 1965, a general feeling of defeat over the course of the Algerian revolution overwhelmed him. The Six-Day War of 1967 convinced him to return to Lebanon and join the national and regional political struggle at home.32
On his return in 1967, he worked as a teacher, became active in the Communist Party, and began publishing in Arabic. After the second LCP conference in 1968, ‘Amil became an official member of the party and started publishing in its monthly journal al-Tariq under his pen name.33 From the mid-1970s, he taught Marxist philosophy at the Lebanese University’s soci-ology department. He was active in the student movement in Beirut in the late 1960s and contributed to the debate on Lebanese educational reform.34 He was also a leading intellectual figure of the second conference of the LCP in 1968.35 As a member of the party, he also frequently visited Lebanese villages to deliver lectures about Marxism and communism.
Witnessing and Writing Revolutions:
Iraq, France, Algeria, and Beirut
Muruwwa and ‘Amil both experienced national uprisings, liberation struggles, and political upheavals when living and studying abroad. They both wrote extensively on the topic of revolution(s), drawing on their own experiences. Muruwwa approached the topic more in his daily columns, addressing the revolutionary events in countries like Algeria, Yemen, and Iraq, and relating them to the Lebanese state of affairs. ‘Amil incorporated the notion of a revolution in a broader Marxist philosophical-sociological framework as part of a necessary theoretical and practical task in political and social
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transformation. When ‘Amil came to Beirut, the two men became close friends and colleagues, exchanging ideas and writings on a regular basis.36
The late 1950s were a revolutionary period in the Arab world. It witnessed the 14 July Revolution in Iraq which overthrew the Hashemite monarchy and established the Republic of Iraq in 1958. It was also the period of an ongoing Algerian revolution against French colonial power (1954-1962). Muruwwa commented on these events and supported the revo-lutionary struggles in his daily newspaper columns. From the mid-1960s, Muruwwa started to address the Lebanese condition more thoroughly and frequently. At the same time, he was confronted with the notion of defeat in many “liberated” countries.
Muruwwa’s position on the revolutionary events in Algeria and Iraq reflects his childhood in Jabal ‘Amil and his student experiences in the
awza of Najaf. In this context, the religious school of Najaf served not only as a center “for traditional training in law and jurisprudence, but also a hub of ideas about the changing political and intellectual world.”37 This environment formed Muruwwa’s perceptions of colonialism, independ-ence, national and social struggle, and reform/revolution.38 Muruwwa described what he witnessed in Algeria and Iraq in the late 1950s as an ongoing and eventually successful struggle against the imperialist powers, colonization, and anti-democratic/anti-freedom politics. He stressed the peaceful and democratic character of the Algerian liberation movement in its struggle against French imperialism with the help of the US and Egypt as these imperialist powers continued their “broad attacks” and their war against “independence, freedom, and national hegemony.”39 The Algerian struggle was not over when the country attained independence. The struggle to guarantee stabilization, independence, and economic, democratic and social change continued.
Muruwwa’s position on the 14 July 1958 revolution in Iraq resulted from his own experience of the Iraqi people’s struggle and his proximity to the Iraqi Communist Party and the leftist milieu in Baghdad. Muruwwa depicted the Iraqi revolution as
the result of the struggle of the Iraqi people that has lasted for more than forty years. This struggle is the effort of the collected national powers, in their different political and intellectual convictions, ten-
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dencies and beliefs, pursuing a double goal, that is, the demand for national dependence and the demand for democratic freedom.40
Muruwwa was confident of the realization of this double goal: “The revolu-tion whose base is the people and whose root is the blood of the people is not dead and will not die.”41
From the 1950s, Muruwwa endorsed socialist realism, convinced of the value of literature for the socialist revolution. He became a leading figure in applying this theory to Arabic literature by engaging the writings of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, the Lebanese critic and writer Ra’if Khuri, and the Lebanese writer ‘Umar Fakhuri. He was first acquainted with socialist realism at the Second Congress of Soviet Writers in Moscow in 1954, which he attended as the LCP representative.42 From that time on he regularly attended conferences that dealt with committed literature and socialist realism. After attending the Second Conference for Asian and African Writers in Cairo in 1962, Muruwwa reflected on the conference’s spirit in al-Tariq. The conference aimed to share “thoughts and feelings that ignited [these] strong liberation revolutions that penetrated deeply among very wide distances of our earthly planet.”43 Likewise, the conference tackled the revolutions’ setback in the face of the “reinforcement of the greed of the imperialists.”44 In these settings, Muruwwa reflected, the writer finds himself in a role of political and social commitment, addressing issues of structure and development and economic, social, and cultural underdevelopment.
From the mid-1960s, having returned to Lebanon, Muruwwa started to address Lebanese conditions more frequently. There, he saw a new kind of imperialism that was “nothing but an extension of the old imperialism (colonialism), or maybe it is even the same [. . .] because the general economic laws that rule in the frame of global imperialism, did not change.”45 This new imperialism still had to be understood through the “different areas of our cultural activities” in order to be overcome, because “all these areas are directed toward a sometimes hidden, sometimes apparent ‘ideology.’”46 In a report on culture and ideological struggle at LCP’s third conference in 1972, Muruwwa depicted the Lebanese crisis as a class struggle. This struggle was an “active space because of the special conditions and location of Lebanon in the region, whereas the nature of the relation of the Lebanese state connects the people of this system, economically, politically, and culturally, to global
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imperialism.”47 In this crisis the “revolutionary intellectual” had to dedicate his work to this class struggle. For Muruwwa, most of the intellectuals in contemporary Lebanon represented a bourgeois nihilist culture48 with only a few fulfilling their role as revolutionaries.
Muruwwa’s concern with the role of the intellectual mirrors broader developments within the Lebanese left and the LCP. From the late 1960s, an emerging students’ and workers’ movement and an invigorated leftist movement, as well as the PLO presence in Lebanon, led to a radicalization and polarization of Lebanese politics.49 Nationally, state- driven adminis-trative and economic reforms under the two presidencies of Fuad Chehab (1958-1964) and Charles Helou (1964-1970) also informed these transitions. A rising leftist and ostensibly secular-progressive political scene, as well as PLO operations in Lebanon, met with opposition from right-leaning actors and parties. On a regional level, the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War in 1967 war was formative. Transnationally, third-worldist liberation theories and European student strikes and movements were similarly influential. Within these changing conditions, the LCP asserted itself as a vanguard of Lebanese leftism and an advocate of radical change. Moreover, the party underwent a profound process of renewal, which was articulated at the second party conference in 1968. This renewal consisted of the assertion that Lebanon was a capitalist country in need of a democratic foundation “to prepare the ground for the transition to socialism.”50 The LCP was to lead this process in cooperation with other progressive and secular actors and parties. The congress further reassessed the LCP’s position on the Palestinian ques-tion. It rejected the 1947 partition plan and acknowledged the Palestinian resistance movement.51 Those pushing for these new positions mainly came from a rising youth reform movement that was reacting to the polarization of Lebanese politics. Muruwwa and ‘Amil were pioneers in laying out the intellectual and theoretical underpinnings of the new party’s principles.
Like Muruwwa, ‘Amil initiated his theoretical intervention by reflecting on failed liberation movements. He asked, “Is a socialist revolution possible in an ‘underdeveloped’ (mutakhallif) country? And what are the conditions of its possibility?”52 In his early writings, ‘Amil’s main concerns were the relationship between theory (postulated by an intellectual) and practice (actual revolutionary practice and its realization). This relationship was “organic,” requiring the interaction of both. ‘Amil detailed this approach in his two-
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volume opus Muqaddimat Nazariyya, in which he stated: “A revolutionary movement in its political struggle of the workers’ class necessarily requires the existence of a revolutionary theory […]. And the ideological practice of the revolutionary proletarians facilitates the production of theoretical knowledge.”53 He continued to develop this theory of dialectical interaction and the intellectual’s role in postulating a theory of change.
‘Amil also dealt with the role of the political party in this process. He followed, to some extent, Antonio Gramsci’s ideas about the party as educator, coordinator, and guide.54 The party, ‘Amil reflected, was at the intersection of theory and practice. On the one hand, it produced theory; its existence required it. On the other hand, the party puts theory into practice, which is the condition for theory’s further elaboration. Thus the party was the necessary “umbrella organization” to realize revolution. It can only be a communist party if it is seeking a socialist revolution: “The only party that finds in its class formation the revolutionary power to challenge the state apparatus . . . is the communist party, the party of the working class, because the working class is the most fundamentally revolutionary social class.”55 In this formula, the intellectual is in the service of the communist party. He must interact not simply with the party but also with its base, the workers. Every member can be an intellectual who can elaborate theory and put it into practice.56
‘Amil’s theory embraced practice in his reflections on the reasons for tahkalluf (underdevelopment) in many Arab, African, and Asian countries.57 Drawing mostly on the experience of Algeria, ‘Amil formulated the center-piece of his theory: the concept of colonial production (mafhum al-namat al-kuluniyali) and the idea of distinct realities (al-waqi‘a al-mutamayyaza). In light of failed liberation movements, ‘Amil concluded that structural dif-ferences between different states influenced the course and success of the revolution. A revolutionary theory must engage these distinct realities.58 For example, a successful struggle must address the economic relation-ship between colonizer and the colonized. Economic conditions for ‘Amil were a structural condition in which “the existence of imperialist capitalist structure . . . is limited because of its ‘underdeveloped’ structure, and at the same time the existence of ‘underdeveloped’ structures is limited due to the imperialist capitalist structure.”59 This relationship between underdevelop-ment, imperialism, and social structure thus led to fundamental differences
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between capitalist and colonized countries that required a different theory to realize a socialist revolution.
Revolution Put into Practice:
Experiences of the Lebanese Civil War
Toward the end of the 1960s, the two intellectuals contended with Lebanese conditions and the emerging political challenges in the country. They digested these conditions in their involvement in the LCP. From the 1960s, the two intellectuals began fiercely defending their projects on different battle lines. Their involvement in Lebanese politics from the 1960s, with the eventual outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in April 1975, represented their realization of a revolutionary process. This process included different phases of fighting and different “liminal moments”60 that challenged their notions of theory and practice.
The Lebanese civil war started as battles between a coalition con-sisting of different ostensibly leftist and secular-nationalist Lebanese and Palestinian parties (the LNM), under the leadership of Kamal Jumblatt, and an opposing coalition consisting of rather right leaning parties such as the Phalange Party and its Lebanese Front allies. Jumblatt was an ambiguous political figure and founder of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP).61 These two coalitions had already been in confrontation prior to the outbreak of armed conflict. The issues dividing them included the PLO presence in Lebanon and the Palestinian armed struggle, the nature of the Lebanese state, social inequality, and preferential treatment or marginalization of communities on sectarian lines.62
The outbreak of the civil war presented to ‘Amil and Muruwwa the inevitable armed defense of their project. The LNM carried out this armed defense while its ideological underpinnings were “filtered through the Lebanese intellectual field.”63 The revolution’s goal was twofold. On the one hand, it sought to join the Palestinian resistance against Israel in southern Lebanon. On the other hand, it aimed to overthrow the capitalist right-wing bourgeoisie in Lebanon and establish a democratic/socialist secular state. For our two communists, and for most other leftists in 1975, the Lebanese civil war represented “a social, political, and regional struggle” fought in the name of an alleged secularism in general and Marxism in particular.64
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It was not, for them, a civil war. Instead, it was a righteous battle against the reactionary capitalist, imperialist, and Zionist powers led by the national, secular and leftist powers. It was not confined to Lebanon, but represented a pan-Arab liberation movement especially in regard to Palestinian liberation. 65
In 1979-80, ‘Amil published two theoretical books on national political practice.66 In both books, he reads sectarianism as a structural component of the Lebanese capitalist and colonial mode of production rather than a historically evolved reality. “Sectarianism [. . .] is a sign of the incapacity of the colonial bourgeois state to be a bourgeois state.”67 In this context, ‘Amil defines the Lebanese revolution as a gradual socialist one that entailed national reform and a regional pan-Arab liberation movement. The first step entailed the overthrow of the Lebanese sectarian, bourgeois, and capitalist state. The second step included the formation of a democratic state that would lead to the rule of the workers represented by the LCP. This period would end with the establishment of a socialist political system.68 Thus, the Lebanese civil war was an opportunity to formulate a new theory of revolu-tion. It was also a way to engage revolution personally and in practice. ‘Amil understood himself as an engaged wartime revolutionary. He traveled to Lebanese villages to promote his ideas, gave speeches to young LCP fighters, and was involved in water and food distribution in times of siege.69 ‘Amil’s conceptualization of national revolution on the eve of the civil war echoed the LCP’s integration into the LNM. Members of the LNM coalition had different ideological positions and political visions. But they agreed at least seemingly on “the transitional program…for a non-confessional secular, democratic Lebanon”70 while supporting Palestinian liberation.71
The LNM was successful in the armed struggle during the first year and a half of the civil war. The tides changed in June 1976 when Hafiz al-Asad’s Syrian forces invaded Lebanon to help the Phalange defeat the LNM. Eight months later, in March 1977, Jumblatt was assassinated. Both events were profound defeats for the leftist movement.72 In March 1977, Muruwwa tried to overcome the desperation that followed the Syrian invasion. He mourned Jumblatt’s death but confirmed that the cause had not died with him: “‘The organism does not grow except if its seeds die’…these are Kamal Jumblatt’s words in his life, and maybe he was aware that he would say this one day to his assassinator, [. . .] so that they can be sure that ‘the seed’ just died and that the ‘organism’ did not grow yet. . . . The cause will not die, and
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Jumblatt will not die.”73 Drawing on events in the People’s Republic of Yemen and translating them to the Lebanese reality, Muruwwa acknowledged the revolution’s challenges. He insisted that revolutionary theory and practice “with all its necessary weapons” would nevertheless invigorate a common energy among the people.74
After the arrival of the Syrian army and its military defeat, the LCP focused on armed resistance against Israel, attacking the “Zionist enemy” from south Lebanon. This conflict led to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. The sudden military attack combined ground forces with heavy, constant air strikes and naval bombardment. Ultimately, the Israeli army besieged West Beirut for two months, leading to the PLO’s withdrawal to Tunisia. The Israeli invasion was one of the biggest challenges confronted by the leftist coalition. By 1982, the LNM had disintegrated and the coalition was operating under the so-called Lebanese National Opposition Front. For the Lebanese people, the Israeli siege of West Beirut was an exceptional time of perpetual crisis and all-encompassing collapse. Most LCP intellectuals, including Muruwwa and ‘Amil, stayed in West Beirut to fight the Israeli invasion. They chose to remain and document the siege. They were active in distributing basic commodities to the city’s besieged. The liminal experi-ence of the 1982 invasion, the devastating withdrawal of the PLO, and the Sabra and Shatila massacre in September 1982 are apparent in Muruwwa’s daily series, titled “The Fighting Country,” in al-Nida’. The columns reflect the spirit of an intellectual fighting with the pen. Muruwwa sought to enter the battlefield alongside the fighters “to defend the nation, and whose blood seethes like yours in the course of the battle—melded in the defense of the nation.”75 His role on the field was to witness and document, to guard the possibility of the country’s future.76 Beirut emerges in these writings as a symbol of resistance, a site of pride rather than daily bombing, danger, and destruction. It was, for Muruwwa, a city that the world should watch and admire.77 Muruwwa recounted the daily experiences of siege, illustrating the shelter as a space of resistance and survival: “So we agreed that we live and don’t die, and to live with people and not alone. And we lived together with the people nineteen hours in a part of the building and we agreed together to call it shelter because it was the place of minimal danger.”78
Muruwwa’s series in al-Nida’ provide a counternarrative to that of crisis, defeat, bombing, and danger. He wrote instead of continuity, living,
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being together, and resisting. Happiness and beauty were also tangible. As Muruwwa puts it: “Living was beautiful and tender to me—at least it was an easy entrance to a diverse human world that entails diverse expressions of different and intensive feelings. Because in such a situation of exception all covers and all fetters are removed from feelings.”79
The 1982 invasion was a time of profound military and moral defeat, however, particularly with the PLO’s departure and the brutal massacres of Sabra and Shatila. This moment initiated the collapse of the revolutionary project. In the following years, the civil war’s violence intensified. Factions fragmented and alliances constantly changed. A growing sectarianism—tangible from the very beginning—dominated the war’s logic. ‘Amil and Muruwwa’s revolutionary project, with its clear vision of the enemy and goal of change, became increasingly vulnerable, ultimately collapsing in the wake of chaos and disappointment.80 In the midst of the choas, ‘Amil called for a new approach that he hoped would overcome the crisis. He attacked the new leftists who questioned the communist project and its pre- and early war revolutionary spirit. These new leftists called for an immediate end to violence and armed battles.81 ‘Amil deconstructed this new leftist line as propagating “nihilist thought” in his posthumously published book of his collected writings from 1980 onwards, Naqd al-Fikr al-Yawmi. He continued defending the Lebanese revolution. ‘Amil’s famous lecture of 1987, titled “Culture and the Revolution” and published shortly before his death, was a vehement plea for the continuation of the struggle. In a tragic attempt to keep the spirit of revolution alive, ‘Amil preached: “And the revolution in Lebanon is still active in the process of a civil war triggered by the reac-tionaries to save their confessional system and force fascism. This national democratic revolution turned against the reactionaries and its system, in order to crack, dislocate, and intimidate a collapsing world facing another one preparing to be born.”82
‘Amil and Muruwwa’s revolutionary projects were intellectual endeavors to live theory and practice in turbulent “revolutionary” times. Their attempts were courageous and ambitious. Yet, throughout, their work betrays a gap between aspiration and reality. The theoretical aspirations of a socialist revolution could not stand up to the political realities of the pre-civil war realities in Lebanon. Likewise, the projects of Lebanese revolution and Arab liberation lost their credibility in the face of the civil war’s violence,
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sectarianism, and fragmentation. Moreover, the impossibility of identifying who had won and who had lost was devastating. Both men faced decisive moments in which they had to choose between clinging to their revolu-tionary project and adjusting it to prevailing conditions. In this dilemma, Muruwwa and ‘Amil chose to side with the LCP’s political line and to defend the party’s different strategic moves. Retrospectively, their choices read as a tragic attempt to uphold a utopian vision in the face of devastation. Today they seem to us desperately and increasingly disconnected from the political conditions of possibility. The vision of an intellectual workshop that could integrate different actors was the only way that ‘Amil and Muruwwa could imagine a liberated future. Still, in the growing dilemma of holding up theory to practice ‘Amil and Muruwwa increasingly discarded other intellectual approaches.
The End of the Tale?
The tale of Muruwwa’s and ‘Amil’s lives and revolutions ends suddenly. The end did not happen as a result of personal choice but through murder. Their assassinations took place within a period of three months in 1987 at the height of the civil war’s violence. They were killed at a moment that marked the defeat of their project. Still, “the wheel turns, and sometimes repeats itself,” as Prashad writes in his recent Letter from Beirut.83 Prashad refers to the Tunisian leftist Shukri Bil‘id’s assassination in Tunisia in 2013 and the latter’s poem on Muruwwa. ‘Amil and Muruwwa are icons for many revolutionary movements today. They represent a paradigmatic model of leftist intellectuals, dedicating their life to an ideological political and social project of revolution, attempting to theorize, defend, and pursue it in the course of their lives. We can see this living model in turbulent times of upheaval and revolution in various settings until today. This resonance evidences the deep stakes of these revolutionary lives.
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ENDNOTES
1 The title draws on Charles Dickens’ 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities, in which the author describes the ambivalent notions related to revolutionary change. He refers to the cities of Paris and London during the French Revolution. I want to thank Sarah Jurkiewicz for proofreading and adding useful comments and Alaa Najjar for helping me in the delicate task of translating Muruwwa’s and ‘Amil’s writings into English. I also want to thank the families of Mahdi ‘Amil and Husayn Muruwwa for the many interviews and informal talks I was able to conduct with them in the last three years about the lives and works of the two intellectuals.
2 Samer rangie, “Theori ing from the Periphery: The Intellectual Project of Mahdi ‘Amil,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44 (2012), 465.
3 l a a al fi i a al a i a, a term coined by Mahdi ‘Amil in a call for ongoing discussions about different topics among intellectuals. This term is still widely used today when referring to this period and its richness in intellectual discussions and negotiations. See Karim Muruwwa, “Mahdi ‘Amil mufakkiran wa-munadilan,” al-Tariq 5/6 (1988), 10.
4 See Rula Jurdi Abisaab and Malek Abisaab, The Shi’ites of Lebanon: Modernism, Communism, and Hizbullah’s Islamists (Syracuse, N : Syracuse University Press, 2014), 72.
5 In December 2014, the Tunisian intellectual Tahar Labib organized a public debate in the Tunisian city of Sidi Bou id entitled “al-Thaqafa wa-l-Thawra,” drawing on Mahdi ‘Amil’s eponymous talk and text from 1987. The debate dealt with the application of ‘Amil’s theory to today’s Tunisian revolutionary reality. Similarly, the leftist politician Shukri Bil‘id, who was assassinated in February 2013, had shortly before his death written a poem about Husayn Muruwwa in memory of the latter’s revolutionary spirit. See Muhammad Salah ‘Umri, “Shukri Bil‘id yarthi Husayn Muruwwa,” Bidayat 5 (2013), www.bidayatmag.com/node/381.
6 Vijay Prashad, “Letter from Beirut: The Arab Gramsci,” Frontline, 21 March 2014, http://www.frontline.in/world-affairs/the-arab-gramsci/article5739956.ece.
7 See Tareq . Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 81-131.
8 An exception is rangie’s article on Mahdi ‘Amil, “Theori ing from the Periphery.”9 Abisaab and Abisaab, The Shi’ites, 65-66, 69-75; Peter Gran, “Islamic Marxism in
Comparative History: The Case of Lebanon: Reflection on the Recent Book of Husayn Muruwah,” in The Islamic Impulse, ed. Barbara reyer-Stowasser (London: Croom Helm, 1989), 106-120; Miriam ounes, “Die Verwirrungen der glinge Najafs: Reformkon epte in der und über die hawza im frühen 20 Jahrhundert,“ Asiatische Studien 66, no. 3 (2012), 711-748; oav Di-Capua, “Homeward Bound: Husayn Muruwwah’s Integrative uest for Authentity,” Journal of Arabic Literature 44 (2013), 21-52; Frangie, “Theorizing.”
10 Husayn Muruwwa, “Min al-Najaf dakhala hayati Marks,” in u a n u u a fi a i ati i al ni ali a fi an a u a a atan, ed. al-Majlis al-Thaqafi li-Lubnan al-Janub, (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1997), 89-113.
11 On Muruwwa’s intellectual path, see Di-Capua, “Homeward Bound.“ 12 In the subsequent years of 1959 and 1960 Muruwwa published 344 articles in the newspaper
al-Nida’. 13 For example, al fan al atif al a a al a al a afa al atani a al i a
and al-Tariq. 14 Husayn Muruwwa, “Husayn Muruwwa ‘an ayyam al-harb wa-l-hisar: Lam ‘ustati‘ al-hayat
dun ‘an aktub,” al-Nida’, 7 November 1982. Muruwwa and his comrades in the LCP had
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decided to stay in Beirut during the invasion and reported the events on a near daily basis in al-Nida’.
15 On this process see Tamara Chalabi, The Shi‘is of Jabal ‘Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and Nation-State, 1918-1943 (New ork: Palgrave, 2006); Abisaab and Abisaab, The Shi’ites, 34-38.
16 ‘Abbas Baydun, “Hiwar ma‘a Husayn Muruwwa: Wulidtu rajulan wa-amutu tiflan,” al afi , 18-22 and 24 September 1985, 18; Muhammad Abi Samra, “Husayn Muruwwa yatadhakkar: Wulidtu tiflan wa-amutu rajulan,” al-Masira 1 (1981), 19.
17 For more on the shabiba and Muruwwa’s early writings, see Younes, “Die Verwirrungen.” 18 Baydun, “Hiwar,” 56. 19 Ibid., 57. 20 See Orit Bashkin, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2009), 114-116; Samira Haj, The Making of Iraq, 1900-1963: Capital, Power, and Ideology (Albany, N : State University of New ork Press, 1997), 102-105.
21 See Abi Samra, “Husayn Muruwwa,” 28. 22 See Baydun, “Hiwar,” 61-63. 23 On the first trip to Moscow, see Di-Capua, “Homeward Bound,” 38-39. See also Muruwwa’s
own reflections in al-Akhbar, 6 March 1955 and 13 March 1955.24 See Di-Capua, “Homeward Bound,” 48-5125 See Muhammad Dakrub, “Rajul yutqin fann tahrik al-fikr wa-taftih al-‘uyun,” al-Tariq
5/6 (1988), 12-18; Muruwwa, “Mahdi ‘Amil mufakkiran wa-munadilan.” This humorous and emotional character of ‘Amil can also be seen in the poems he wrote under the pen name Halal ibn aitun.
26 Interview with Mahdi ‘Amil’s wife Evelyn Hamdan, Beirut, 16 January 2016.27 The tense situation in the mid-1950s escalated into a short civil war in 1958 and a subse-
quent US intervention in Beirut. See awwa Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto Press, 2007), 133-137.
28 Interview with Mahdi ‘Amil’s son Rida Hamdan, Beirut, 14 January 2014; See also ‘Isam al-Khafaji, “Musahama fi al-bahth ‘an hayawiyyatina: Hawla namat al-intaj al-kuluniyyali,” al-Tariq 5/6 (1988), 138; Frangie, “Theorizing,” 470.
29 This can be seen as a common experience of many Arab intellectuals who lived and studied in France. For details on this exchange and the activities of the Francois Maspero publishing house and bookstore in this regard, see Fadi Bardawil, When All This Revolution Melts into Air: The Disenchantment of Levantine Marxist Intellectuals (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2010), 132, 152.
30 Interview with Waddah Sharara, Beirut, 23 September 2014; interview with Evelyn Hamdan, Beirut, 16 January 2016.
31 .‘I., “Sutur wa-‘anawin: Min masirat Mahdi ‘Amil,” al-Tariq 5/6 (1988), 30; “Milaff min al-Arshif, Hasan Hamdan ‘Mahdi ‘Amil,’” Jadaliyya, 2 October 2012.
32 Interview with Evelyn Hamdan, Beirut, 16 January 2016. 33 . ‘I., “Sutur,” 30; Dakrub, “Rajul,” 12-14. 34 See, for example, Mahdi ‘Amil, “Ni am al-ta‘lim fi Lubnan,” al-Tariq 10 (1970), 26-47;
Mahdi ‘Amil, “al- ahirat al-jadida fi a mat al-jami‘a al-lubnaniyya,” al-Tariq 12 (1971), 37-59.
35 See his writings on the second conference: Mahdi ‘Amil, “al-Mu’tamar al-thani aw al-in‘itaf al-tarikhi fi harakat al-taharrur al-watani lil-shu‘ub al-‘arabiyya,” in al a a i a fi al
u a a a al i a i a Ba t fi a a al a al a li a fi u nan (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1990), 58-84.
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36 Interview with their former comrade and today’s chief editor of al-Tariq, Ilyas Shakir, Beirut, 19 July 2013. See also the writings of each on the other, e.g. Husayn Muruwwa, “Ma‘a kitab Mahdi ‘Amil: ‘ i ‘ilmiyyat al-fikr al-khalduni,’” al-Tariq 3 (1985), 167-178.
37 Ibid., 40. 38 Ibid., 28, 43, 52-54. See Muruwwa’s writings in al-‘Irfan and al-Hatif during this time.
An overview of these writings can be found in Younes, “Die Verwirrungen.”39 Husayn Muruwwa, “Amrika…wa thawrat al-Jaza’ir,” al-Nida’, 1 May 1959. See also
Husayn Muruwwa, “Diblumasiyyat al-thawra al-ja a’iriyya,” al-Nida’, 8 May 1959. 40 Husayn Muruwwa, “al-Istiqlal wa-l-dimuqratiyya,” al-Nida’, 11 August 1959.41 Husayn Muruwwa, “Thawra wa-sha‘b,” al-Nida’, 5 December 1959. 42 See more on Muruwwa and socialist realism in Di-Capua, “Homeward Bound,” 37-47. 43 Husayn Muruwwa, “al-Mu’tamar al-thani li-l-kuttab Asiya wa-Ifriqiya: Huwa al-wajh
al-fikri li-wahdat kifah al-qaratayn,” al-Tariq 3 (1962), 62. 44 Ibid., 64.45 Husayn Muruwwa, “al- awa‘id al-fikriyya li-l-isti‘mar fi Lubnan,” al-Tariq 3 (1966), 32.46 Ibid., 24. 47 Husayn Muruwwa, “Taqrir ‘an al-thaqafa wa-l-nidal al-idiyuluji wa-l-‘amal bayn al-mutha-
qqafin,” al-Nida’, 12 January 1972.48 The nihilist culture (mafhum al-‘adamiyya) relates to the non-revolutionary position of
many Arab intellectuals, especially after the defeat of 1967. See Muruwwa, “Taqrir.”49 See Agnès Favier, Logiques de l’engagement et modes de contestation au Liban: genèse
et éclatement d’une génération de militants intellectuels (1958-1975) (PhD diss., Aix-Marseille Universit , 2004).
50 Cited in Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement, 84.51 Ibid., 83-99.52 Mahdi ‘Amil, “al-Isti‘mar wa-l-takhalluf: al-qism al-thani: ni am al-intaj al-kuluniyali,”
al-Tariq 6 (1969), 90. 53 Mahdi ‘Amil, u a i at na a i a li i a a at al fi al i ti a i fi a a at al ta a u
al atani al i al a al fi al tana u (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1980), 106. 54 John H. Holst, “The Revolutionary Party in ramsci’s Pre-Prison Educational and Political
Theory and Practice,” in Gramsci and Educational Thought, ed. Peter Mayo (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), 42.
55 ‘Amil, Muqaddimat, 86. 56 aisal Daraj, “al-Hi b wa-l-na ariyya fi fikr Mahdi ‘Amil,” al-Tariq 5/6 (1988), 87. 57 ‘Amil, “al-Isti‘mar,” 87. 58 ‘Amil, Muqaddimat, 175. 59 ‘Amil, “al-Isti‘mar,” 97. 60 The term “liminal moments” is taken from an article by Bjørn Thomassen as a category
that should be adopted when studying revolutionary processes from an anthropological approach. It indicates peaks and nadirs in the process, the “in-between periods” and “the sometimes dramatic tying together of thought and experience.” Bj rn Thomassen, “Notes Towards an Anthropology of Political Revolutions,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54, no. 3 (2012), 684, 688.
61 or more on the figure of Jumblatt, see arid al-Kha en, “Kamal Jumblatt, the Uncrowned Druze Prince of the Left,” Middle Eastern Studies 24, no. 2 (1988), 178-205.
62 See Traboulsi, A History, 156-183.63 Frangie, “Theorizing,” 469.64 Ibid. 65 Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement, 101-102
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66 Mahdi ‘Amil, al a a i a fi al u a a a al i a i a Ba t fi a a al a al a li a fi u nan (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1979) and a al ila na al fi al ta ifi al a i a al fila tini a fi i i ulu i at al u u a i a al lu nani a (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1980).
67 ‘Amil, Madkhal, cited in Frangie, “Theorizing,” 481, footnote 40. 68 Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement, 101-102; Mahdi ‘Amil, “al-Saha al-
lubnaniyya aw al-haql al-marka i li-l-sira‘ bayna al-khattayn al-siyasiyyayn al-naqdayn fi harakat al-taharrur al-watani li-l-shu‘ub al-‘arabiyya,” in al a a i a fi al u a a a al-siyasiyya, 85-110.
69 See .‘I., “Sutur,” 31. ‘Amil’s practical actions in wartime were emphasi ed to me in most of my interviews and personal talks I had with people about him. One of the former LCP fighters recalled the experience of listening to him at one of their gatherings: “He was our guru, our intellectual guru, he used to come and speak to us about revolution and fighting and Marx. We were listening, silently, in order to grasp every word. He convinced us that it is worth fighting for this revolution.”
70 Inam Raad, “For More Than a Year Eighty Percent of Lebanon Was Run by the Lebanese National Movement,” MERIP Reports 73 (1978), 14-15.
71 Michael Salkind and Nadeem Abdel-Samad, “Lebanese Communist Party: Interview with Nadeem Abdel-Samad,” MERIP Reports 61 (1977), 15-16. See also al-Kha en, “Kamal Jumblatt,” 181-182.
72 See Traboulsi, A History, 198-204. 73 Husayn Muruwwa, “Kamal Junblat: Hadha al-faris ja arahu fi al-watan al-jamahir,”
al-Nida’, 23 March 1977. See also Husayn Muruwwa, “Kamal Junblat fi siyaq al-ta‘amul al-sira‘i bayna al-mujarrad wa-l-waqa‘i,” al-Tariq 3 (1977), 22.
74 Husayn Muruwwa, “al- ikr al-thawri fi huqul al-tatbiq al-thawri,” al-Nida’, 3 June 1979. 75 Husayn Muruwwa, “Ayuha al-muqatilun, hadha sha‘ir muqatil,” al-Nida’, 12 June 1982. 76 Husayn Muruwwa, “Ha-kadha atfaluna yarsamuna al-harb...,” al-Nida’, 10 August 1982. 77 See Husayn Muruwwa, “Hadhihi Bayrut...ayyuha al-‘alam ,” al-Nida’, 15 August 1982. 78 Husayn Muruwwa, “19 sa‘a fi al-malja’ ,” al-Nida’, 8 August 1982. 79 Ibid. 80 See Frangie, “Theorizing,” 470, 473. 81 or example, Musa Wahba, Elias Khoury, Adunis, and Hasan Dawud. See Sune Haugbolle,
“Being Secular in Lebanon, 1975-2013” (paper presented at the Ninth Nordic Conference on Middle Eastern Studies, Lund, Sweden, 19 September 2013).
82 Mahdi ‘Amil, “al-Thaqafa wa al-thawra,” al-Tariq 4 (1987), 106. 83 Prashad, “Letter from Beirut.”
