The Road Out of Marxism: Entangled Thought in 1970s Lebanon

This chapter explores the historical development of Arab Marxism in Lebanon during the 1970s. While intellectual historians have traditionally associated the decline of Marxism with the end of world Communism in the late 1980s, the chapter relates it to social transformations a decade earlier. Through a close reading of two Arab thinkers, I argue that it was the internal critique that transformed the Marxist tradition in Lebanon before, during, and after the civil war era (1975–1990). The first thinker is Yasin al-Hafiz, a Marxist turned liberal, who began his transformation before the war. The second is Mounir Shafiq, a Marxist-Maoist turned Islamist whose critique was inspired by his experience during the war. I stress the contextual development of social thought and the porous boundaries between ideological and theoretical traditions. Such an “entangled” approach to intellectual history, I argue, can help us appreciate how social thought is not just (individual) thinking about the social at a particular moment, but equally (collective) thought resulting from social experience over time. Such a conception of social theory may help us understand the nature of Arab intellectual tradition and its boundaries and overlaps with “Western” or “global” social theory.