>>484932I think he might have been part of the Baathists (not sure how that's spelled) which is usually considered Arab socialism.
When the neocons did the Iraq war around 2003, he kinda was trying to spend oil revenue on social programs and economic development. That is standard socialist doctrine for resource rich countries, but also not that different from bourgeois national liberation. It kinda looks like that might have triggered the neocon war because the imperial system wanted to keep Iraq as an undeveloped resource extraction unit. Not sure, there's other potential explanations that also make sense.
There is a peculiar footnote of history. I think Saddam also hired a famous American engineer to design and build absolutely giant cannons that could potentially reach Israel. He was buying lots of massive machined metal cylinder segments, which kinda raised some eyebrows. The engineer guy was mainly interested in building mass-drivers for catapulting bulk material into low earth orbit, and this was the only available big-ass-cannon-gig. The CIA or some other 3-letter agency had him assassinated, probably.
I think the Soviets may also have supported Saddam at some point, which is kinda weird, so maybe they thought he was socialist.
TLDR
maybe not sure