Iraq - LW government, did it ever have a LW government?

[oscar111]

thanks, you history buffs!

[GoddessOfGuinness]

1. Not to my limited knowledge...

How about it, experts?

[oscar111]

2. kik

kik

[Anarcho-Socialist]

3. Not really. During the Ba'athist era it comes the closest

Their economic policies were Left-wing (planned economy) on the economic spectrum but Right-wing (authoritarian) on the civil rights spectrum. This was especially so during the 1980s. After the First Gulf War, Iraq no longer had the money to sustain its welfare apparatus as it previously had, and so what money it had tended to be concentrated in the hands of government officials and family members.

The history of Iraq, after independence from Britain in the 1930s it had a socially-conservative constitutional monarchy. The monarchy was overthrown by a conservative Presidency in the 1950s until the socialist-nationalist Ba'athists took power in 1968. However the Ba'ath Party does not seem Left-wing in terms of modern western interpretation.

[tjwmason]

4. Do you mean left-wing?

Hard to say.

Mostly because outside of the western world the terms left and right are utterly meaningless, even more so than within. The Ba'ath Party was founded as saecular and socialist. Brigadier Abdul Qassim overthrew the monarchy in 1958, and established links with the Soviet Union. Both in their ways left-wing - but I can't say that I'd be keen with either of them as a form of government.