The Non-Historical Left and the Sudanese State

After the outbreak of the Sudanese war, discussions about the state and army have intensified. A current trend advocates for their dismantling, either individually or together, accusing them of absolute corruption. Some have even mocked the state and its army for their faltering in the face of invaders’ strikes, with no concern for the fact that the collapse of its system has come with a colonial package of rape, displacement, looting, humiliation, and the impoverishment of millions of Sudanese.

 If the conversation turns to proving that the collapse of the state or army (despite their undeniable flaws) would lead to a worse reality, the advocates for their destruction flee to ask: Where is the army itself? Where is the state? The army has collapsed. The state has collapsed..!! Thus, the issue is obscured, and the discussion shifts to another question.

The first question concerns whether the army and state are necessary institutions or unnecessary ones to be discarded.

One cannot escape this question by shifting to another issue under the dust of “Where is the army? Where is the state? The army has collapsed, and the state has collapsed,” as this is a separate question.

If we agree that the army and the state are existential necessities, vital to our existence as Sudan or the absence of it, then we can move on to discuss their weaknesses, flaws, and how to overcome them, increasing their effectiveness and humanity.

On the other hand, if the stance is that the army and state are:

Obstacles that must be burnt and discarded,

Or if one stands neutral while they wobble in the face of a savage external invasion,

And mocks both them and those who believe in their importance…

Then the discussion about their reform becomes pointless and meaningless.

Therefore, we must separate:

The question of the necessity of the army/state,

From the question of their weaknesses and flaws. It is worth noting that all segments of Sudanese society suffer from flaws no less serious than those of the army and state – from the individual, to the family, to the village, to the city, to private sector companies, to civil society organizations, to the nonsense of social media and the psychopathic tendencies in WhatsApp, and so on.

 However, the advocates for dismantling the state and army, or leaving them to collapse under the invaders’ hooves, often, when entering into a theoretical hole, escape to another issue, a related but separate question, which is sophistry: “Where is the army? Where is the state? The army has collapsed, and the state has collapsed.”

Advocates for dismantling the state, which cannot stand without an army in today’s world, especially in Sudan’s regional geography, usually base their position on a non-historical awareness of the global left’s critique of the state and the need to transcend it.

In the literature of the Western left and others, the call to “transcend” the state comes after it has completed its historical tasks in:

Politics,

Rights,

Economics,

Development.

 And it is transcended by assimilating all of its remarkable positive achievements and developing them, while discarding its historical flaws. This is the dialectical transcendence (historically moving forward), which has nothing to do with regressive transcendence (backward).

Here, the historical understanding of societies becomes crucial. All phenomena are historical, as Marx, Hegel, and other philosophers pointed out. This means that the state is a (historical) phenomenon that has not always existed but was born in a specific historical period, playing a significant and complex role in pushing human life forward and represented a positive leap compared to what preceded it.

However, this same state has also caused much pain.

 The dialectic understands that the bright side and the dark side coexist in the same phenomenon… And being oblivious to the bright side is just as foolish as being oblivious to the dark side.

The philosophical mind understands both sides and their relative weights as history moves forward.

 There is also another dialectical side missing from the minds of those advocating for the state’s dismantling, which argues that the state is an “instrument in the hands of the ruling class to oppress and exploit others.” This is true, but it’s not the whole story. Anyone who understands dialectics knows that this same state was:

First a historical necessity that advanced society.

Though an instrument of class oppression, it also protects the weak from the strong. The law prevents the strong from raping women or beating the poor. Despite its flaws and class-based roots, the rule of law also protects the vulnerable.

The state protects the poor by providing education, basic healthcare, minimum wage laws, labor rights, maternity leave, banning slavery, providing pensions, and building infrastructure that allows the private sector to create job opportunities for the vulnerable.

The state also enacts laws that protect capitalist investors, allowing them to establish companies that create job opportunities for both youth and adults. Without legal protection, investors won’t come, either locally or internationally.

 The absence of some of the state’s accomplishments in Sudan does not mean its dismantling or indifference in the face of invaders destroying it. Rather, it means strengthening the state to complete its historical tasks.

After that, we can discuss how to transcend it toward more advanced social organizational techniques, instead of the rushed destruction of the state, which would return us to pre-state barbarity and open the door for Sudan’s lands and resources to benefit foreign powers, who are pleased by Sudan’s theoretical and political follies, as well as the servitude of the comprador class.

 A reality-based observer – not someone with preconceived notions – will not find it hard to admit that the Sudanese state before the war had reached one of its worst phases under Bashir’s rule. This is true.

But it is also true that in the presence of that state, life proceeded in all areas of Sudan that were not caught up in identity wars. Young people in Khartoum went to universities, loitered in cafes, and walked along the Nile Street – as they should. Yes, the regime would sometimes bully them by arresting or whipping them, but this oppression cannot be compared to the current situation for youth in Sudan, both inside and outside the country.

During Bashir’s time, opposition newspapers were published and sold, and human rights activists traveled through Bashir’s airport to attend human rights workshops and conferences. The regime would harass them with occasional imprisonment, but they would eventually return to their homes, journalists to their newspapers, professors to their universities, and lawyers to their offices, while people visited relatives, sent their children to school, and took their mothers and grandparents to the hospital.

 Sudanese migrants criticized the regime with harsh tongues, then returned to Sudan for holidays, entering through Bashir’s airport, spending time with family and friends, and then flying back to their places of exile, continuing their well-deserved criticism of the regime from all corners of the earth. Pre-empting sophistic propaganda, this statement is not oblivious to what happened in the war zones or for the poorest classes.

In the history of things, take, for example, the most advanced regions of knowledge:

The European Union has not transcended the state; it has built a super-state called the European Union.

The United States unified fifty states or so and created a super-state.

China, with its billion-plus population.

Russia, the largest country on Earth.

Now compare that to places of state collapse, like Somalia, Haiti, and Libya. And recall countries with weak states, or what is known as the “soft state” phenomenon, like most African countries.

We must not forget that the fastest and greatest developmental experiment in history was, and continues to be, led by the highly efficient Chinese state, under the leadership of Mao’s successors and Deng Xiaoping, the Marxist fox who entered history as one of the most important reformers in human history.

The connection between a society’s ability to defend itself and achieve a level of economic well-being with the existence of a strong state capable of organizing society and enforcing laws is clear enough that it doesn’t require a lesson in modern history.

One of the paradoxes of American (and Western) politics – which is not a paradox for those who understand the basics of political philosophy – is that the left, historically critical of the state, is now calling for strengthening the state and increasing its role in organizing economic life. Meanwhile, the far right, known as libertarians, calls for reducing the role of the state to the absolute minimum.

 The superficial view might suggest that:

The libertarian right is more radical in the positive sense of radicalism.

But the left, having done its theoretical homework, knows that the contraction of the state in the current balance of power shifts the decision-making center from a government that cannot completely ignore the people’s demands to companies that are, in fact, totalitarian, non-elected, quasi-fascist institutions with no trace of democracy. This contraction is a backward step in civilization, not a radical advancement. And note that the current Argentine president, Javier Milei, the capitalist anarchist most hostile to the state, comes from one of the most regressive and foolish factions of the right.

Furthermore, the structural adjustment programs that the World Bank and the IMF have been promoting focus on weakening the state’s economic role in favor of the market and the private sector. We have not seen an anarchist or radical leftist celebrate the state’s reduction by the IMF and the World Bank, as context and the historical stage are what determine the correct stance on the