Yeah I do of course think there's a material aspect to it which is why I'm not dismissing it as non-dialectical, but I'm more saying that the origins of Zionism go back way pre-capitalism and much of the current sentiment is still based on the entirely disconnected purely cultural/ideologicals teachings and ideas, it's just been enabled in its modern form by the capitalist system and western imperialist runoff.
So while I 100% agree modern capitalism has shaped it into its current form, I'm more just saying that it's not a conflict which is simply satiated by material means - while I think the conflict itself is dialectical, I don't think there's a material solution to it. Of course that's not dismissive of the fact that it has material effects or was brought into existence in its current form materially, it's more just an observation about the conflict itself and relative actors and motivations.

these motherfuckers don't want us 2 read marx though

well, u can tell em i dont give a michel foucault

while I think the conflict itself is dialectical, I don't think there's a material solution to it.

This is a point I would actually tend agree with, the superstructure does originate from certain material origins, but the superstructure doesn't necessarily completely disappear when material conditions which gave rise to it are no more. One doesn't have to look any further than the royal families in the UK and the Netherlands for that lol

this idea (not in relation to zionism specifically just about dialectical issues w/o material solutions) was one of the founding contradictions which lead to baathism btw lol

Can u elaborate on that sounds interesting

y’all saying monarcho socialism valid?

inb4 North Korea

Monarcho socialism sounds like a retired Ethiopian communist revolutionarys wet dream

Society if haile selassie was like since actually the rastafaris are right and i am the reincarnation of jesus ima bless the ppl with communism

i could write a lot on this tbh because its a super in depth topic, ill try to keep it short though
basically the founders of baathism were all orthodox MLs who had access to french & german academic theory due to colonialism in Syria. they grew super disillusioned w/ political communism due to their observation of leftist parties in europe during the era of ME colonialism, particularly in France. This didn't necessarily make them anti-communist or anything, but they observed that the actual goals they felt they needed to achieve within their countries because of the run-off effects of western colonialism were not answerable by the platform presented by western leftists, which was frustrating to them, as they obviously wanted to abide by a view of class conflict and solidarity, but at the same time they felt issues present in their society were not answerable solely by material means
Aflaq had mainly studied dialectical materialism in his academic career prior, but eventually gave up on thinking a purely materialist movement could solve the issues present in the ME - at best he thought it could satiate only half of the struggle present there, something he felt was a contradiction in theory, that material history history could cause superstructural issues of which were then not actually solvable through solely material means after the fact. At first some of them turned to party politics thinking mimicking a western socialist model would work (namely al-Aruszi), but they felt this only caused another contradiction in actually furthering superstructural issues rather than creating what should have been solidarity - this was also largely in part due to the Islamic & Arab (since theyre not necessarily one and the same obv lol) in-fighting at the time; for example, it was actually Turkey's attempt to annex Syria that caused a massive push for baathism to be established; so the idea of regional solidarity across parties or ideologies was quickly soured.
In the end, baathism was basically born out of attempts to solve the contradiction that superstructural issues were not inherently solved by satiating conflict originating in the base, but at times created just as much revolving conflict (examples being the Sunni-Shi'a conflict, which was esp pertinent as they wanted to create a means of solidarity to end sectarian fighting which was only worsened by colonialism, in a similar manner to the zionism discussion we had above). This actually split though in two directions, baathism was kind of an attempt at trying to solve this contradiction by building off of ML stuff (obv wasnt called that at the time but it was based on theory which we'd classify as that), whereas Nasserism was the other split of which more or less disregarding all ML stuff altogether over this contradiction and simply attempted to employ some socialist policy in an otherwise ideologically driven anti-imperialist government

I mean I can't say I agree with dropping materialist class politics because communist parties in the west weren't anti-imperialist enough. But it's interesting that most splits in leftist history came from disputes on imperialism and that this kind of was the same

Nah, I think I was maybe unclear there. Baathism didnt drop materialist class politics - it's actually at the core of it. It's just that they acknowledge due to how the base has affected the superstructure not everything is answerable solely through material means. Nasserism on the other hand was reactionary due to this realization and dropped class politics in favor of anti-imperialist nationalism

So in what way was baathism then really different from marxism?

As far as I understand it, baathists don't advocate for social ownership of the mop, ofc there are many definitions of marxism, but that's not socialist in the marxist sense

well i'd say it depends. there's the theory side and the political/praxis side.
on the ideological side, a lot of it is more textual than anything, hence why baathist countries historically were friendly toward actual socialist ones. I mean, Baathists do consider themselves an offshoot of socialism/marxism, they don't think they're an entirely distinct ideology or anything. Even the original founders just thought they were building off of existing theory, they didn't think they were founding a completely new ideology.
One of the main differences is just that they just think due to how the base and superstructure can create issues not solvable through material means, this actually means there are influential forces in history besides historical materialism. Of course, in reality, this is purely non-falsifiable theory and doesn't matter too much; it's all just conjecture from their side based on chronological experiences. There are a few other things like they have different views of what is/isn't reactionary, what the goals of socialism are in theory, etc., but at the end of the day it's all just built off of a foundation of socialist theory.

From a political pov, that's where there's more differences. If anything the main difference is they don't believe in working towards communism or global socialism because they believe it will only exacerbate the superstructural issues due to other forces existing besides class conflict - they are very heavy on national identity and self-reliance in a way not too different from Juche, but I'd say by comparison it's a bit murky; they're not necessarily isolationist, and they still do believe in cross-national and class solidarity. They just kind of disagree on what to do with that solidarity. Also they def do advocate for social ownership, idk where you read they don't. I think the only confusion is they place a lot of importance on state & authority. Admittedly though modern implementations of baathism havent been the best vs their textual equivalent lol

@krishna_bound

"In spite of the fact that the social and economic question is of a very great importance in our life we feel that it is secondary to a question of more importance and depth and we cannot insure a solution to the economic question unless it is considered a branch and necessary consequence of the nationalist problem." - Michel Aflaq

While I can sympathize with the disillusionment that could come with seeing communist parties not take a principled anti-colonial stance with regards to your country, I couldn't disagree more with that theoretical conclusion. Kinda sounds like an alternative timeline where instead of splitting to form a principled anti-imperialist communist party Lenin became a Russian nationalist instead

As far as I understand, Baathism rejects materialism and puts the importance of the nation over that of intetnational solidarity among workers, I think that's a pretty clear break from anything close to Marxism.

A lot of it wasn't just from disillusionment due to the lack of principled stance though, it was also due to the fact that they didn't think global communism or socialist solidarity would actually do anything inherently to fix half of their struggles. Which I think is understandable - I mean, being middle-eastern (esp. Syrian or Iraqi) is being at the core of an absurd amount of political struggles at once.
Not only do you have colonialism and annexation from europe, you have imperialism from people who claim to be your brothers (Turkey), you have the immaterial shia-sunni sectarian conflict, you have zionism, you have like 600 ethnic conflicts (look at alawites in Syria for example), or the druze in that area or yazidi in other areas, non-zionist jewish oppression, the situation with the kurds, etc.
When you're living in a situation where much of the oppression your people face has historically been due to ethnoreligious ideological means enabled by capitalism but not solvable by economics, it's obviously going to affect how you view what good socialism can actually do for you or your people.
At the same time, they never thought socialism/marxism/etc. was bad or anything, they really wanted to find a way to morph it into something which could fix the contradictions they observed - they never intended to really think of it as something entirely invalid or bad.

I mean I understand that there were real conflicts too and not just an unprincipled stance, that unprincipled stance is probably just what made them convinced of global communism being able to resist imperialism.

I get that out of practicality for national survival, you might not want to go all out in class war (that was basically the NEP in the USSR), but to then also drop the centrality of class politics and subordinate class politics to nationalism.. that's more than just practical politricks and just a complete abandonment of Marxism And I don't think Baathists would disagree.

I don't think it's fair to say they reject materialism, they just don't think it's the only valid political source. Their stance on nations vs workers is complicated, and stems again from a different view of marxist theory, pulling more from Engels' writing (if youve ever read the tribal conflict/proto-communist stuff from him you know what i mean) than much of marx's more clear foundational writing.
They do reject internationalism but it's not because they don't believe in solidarity, it's just because they have a different view on what the goals of said solidarity actually are. I agree it's very revisionist and going to come off that way esp. to an orthodox ML/MLM and it's not purely Marxist, but it's still an offshoot of socialist theory, it's not an entirely different entity altogether.