Arab Socialism

Arab socialism (Arabic: الاشتراكية العربية‎, Al-Ishtirākīya Al-‘Arabīya) is a political ideology based on an amalgamation of Pan-Arabism and socialism. Arab socialism is distinct from the much broader tradition of socialist thought in the Arab world, which predates Arab socialism by as much as fifty years. The first book on socialism in Arabic, Al-Ishtirākiyya (The Socialism), was published in 1913 by the Coptic Egyptian journalist and reformer Salama Musa (1887–1958), and republished from 1962 onwards. The term "Arab socialism" was coined by Michel Aflaq, the principal founder of ba'athism and the Ba'ath Party, in order to distinguish his version of socialist ideology from the internationalist Marxist socialism in Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia, and the social democracy in Western Europe.

Arab socialism represents a political trend in the Arab world. The intellectual and political influence of Arab socialism peaked during the 1950s and 60s, when it constituted the ideological basis of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, of the Arab Nationalist Movement and, to a lesser extent, of the Nasserist movement.