Joel
Beini et al.’s volume is premised on the idea that ‘Rentier State Theory’ (RST)
can no longer serve as an explanatory principle in analyzing state dynamics in
the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The editors presuppose that only a
methodology rooted in critical political economy can explain the fortunes of
MENA peoples in their respective polities.
Class
used to be swept under the carpet, but not anymore in this volume. A
Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa prides its
credentials on reversing the trend put in place by RST. Given the neoliberal
domineering order, marshaling the courage to discuss class is certainly an
added value. Nevertheless, what is troublesome is the rejection of causality in
this volume. The editors follow Louis Althusser’s structuralist approach where “…causes
are simultaneous effects; all events are situated in a relational matrix; all
social hierarchies are subject to contestations. (p. 1) The flattening of
causes by equating them with effects and presupposing both as free-roaming enunciations
explain the revival of classless for tracing classes’ role in deciding the
destinies for emancipation and more towards stultifying the dynamics of social
change.
The
editors claim that developmentalism is a colonial and postcolonial paradigm par
excellence. Developmentalism has been responsible for the reintegration of precapitalistic
modes of production into global capitalism. The contributors show that indeed,
postcolonial regimes share with their respective colonial antecedents more than
the former are willing to admit. Applying units of measurements such as GPDs
not only hides how measurements remain littered with ideological biases but
that the sophistry of numbers can replace analysis. The oversight paves the way
for what the editors seize as “the triumphalist account of the European
Miracle” (p. 10) which is nothing but an ideological imposition of the imperial
modes of production. Developmentalism sells the illusion that peoples of the
MENA region may one day become the replica of Europe.
The book
is divided into two uneven parts: Part I: “Categories of Analysis” has four
chapters. Kristen Alff in Chapter One illustrates how diverse practices of land
tenure under the Ottomans, and contrary to Orientalist allegations, have never
been a hindrance to capital accumulation. Mercantile activities have been
predominant in the region but the wide-ranging practices of Middle East elites have
not been capitalistically-driven. The imperialists who came by the end of the
nineteenth century and all through World War II coerced Egyptians and peoples
of the Levant into capitalism (p. 26). But according to Alff, the imperialists
simply pressed through various Oriental regimes such as the corvée system
that was already there to enforce capitalism. The only violence that capitalism
introduces in the Middle East, Alff finds, is the commodification of labor (p.
42).
Max
Ajil, Bassam Haddad and Zeinab Abul-Magd in Chapter Two trace the fortunes of
developmentalism in Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria. The 1967 defeat before Israel
brought a coup de grace for Egypt and Syria’s developmental projects.
But the coup de grace implies that subterranean forces, varying between
class antagonism and cold war politics (stretching to the developmental policy
of careless borrowings of Muhammad Ali’s successors, a century before) had been
at work. Again, it is large-scale debts that were meant to fund development that
decided the fate of Arab Socialism in Egypt and Syria. (p. 61) While Egypt
succumbed immediately to the infitah policy, Syria resisted but not
without a considerable cost to the material well-being of its population. Tunisia’s
nationalist movement was only pitted against European settlers’ supremacy. The
moment that supremacy was reversed, President Lahbib Bourguiba was happy with just
replacing, not undoing, the colonial system (p. 51). The contributors explain
the persistent infightings in Syria today on the ground that “…the war simply is
too lucrative to dissolve.” (p. 67).
Chapter
Three by Timothy Mitchell dispels roaming myths regarding the role of oil both
in the MENA region and the world at large. Oil supply—readers find—is governed
by conglomerates whose concern is not ensuring the supply of hydrocarbons but
rather the control of production and circulation for the sake of cashing in
monumental profits. Once ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron become the
principal players in the market, their efforts are geared toward the
orchestration of scarcity: maintaining the illusory combination of risk and
rarity whereby “…earnings stretch far into the future” (p. 73). No less
consequential is Mitchell’s observation that, unlike coal which helped to
create mass democracies, oil accelerates regressions towards inegalitarian
polities. Labor has not challenged oil conglomerates, only nation-states have. The
unfortunate side of this equation is that these states become resistant to
coups (p. 77). Perhaps it is better to underline how MENA states have become resistant
to democratic change since by exempting populations from taxation, governments
could elide the maxim of no taxation without representation. Again, RST is
found to be reductive because states benefiting from oil revenues have
integrated the newly generated wealth into other business ventures and created
independent assets, spelling rapid growth.
Shana
Marshall in Chapter Four finds that the endurance of say, Egyptian, Syrian or
Algerian militaries in power despite popular contestations can be explained through
the latter’s congruent connections with the global military-industrial complex.
Such regional militaries are not simple to state functionaries but form a
powerful class whose interests explain the need for a powerful metropolitan
class for growth through expanding arms sales. In recycling oil money in Western
economies, the MENA militaries become indispensable, even, invincible for the
world order as it is, making a radical change exceptionally challenging. Suffice
it to know that “[m]ajor arms exporters and their host governments were often
at the forefront of efforts to pressure the international financial
institutions to rescind demands for sharp reductions in defense spending.” (p.
91)
Part II:
Country/Regional Studies: comprises seven chapters of which I am zooming only
on two as they best illustrate the editors’ stance vis-à-vis class. Adam Hanieh’s fifth chapter rejects Hossein Mahdavy’s RST whereby
Gulf governments have been classically approached. Hanieh posits that state and
class are phenomenologically interlinked. Therefore, reliance on oil may have initially
served, even fueled, consumptive habits but in the long run, it has facilitated
the diversification of Gulf economies, creating a wealth-generating class, not
crooked elites. This position contradicts standard accounts of the Gulf. Meanwhile,
Hanieh never undermines these economies’ heavy reliance on non-citizens as this
labor regime can be fatal.
Chapter
Eight by Muriam Haleh Davis follows Jacques Marseille’s presupposition that
starting from 1930 onward France was overburdened by her colonies, and that the
idea of metropolitan France enriching itself from the colonies is but a myth. Davis
posits that no rupture exists when moving from colonial to postcolonial modes
of production (p. 164). What can be considered as a rupture is between pre-colonial
and colonial modes of production in which the appropriation of tribal lands not
only explains the proletarianization of large sways of the Algerian population
but the foundation of a system that systematically worked against the
historical owners of the land.
Indeed, the
importance of class is not news. Nevertheless, the book stays fixated on one class:
a single-player; the one that is holding power at this point. Nowhere do
readers see the strife that usually accompanies competing classes, a situation
that leaves the same readers wondering if editors consider lesser classes unworthy
of attention or whether attempts to alter the present configuration of classes
in the region are simply naïve and wasteful. Such a stance explains a static
account of class; an account divorced from regimes of land tenure, oil
production and circulation, arms dealerships, state control, and the challenges
facing labor. The integration of class in understanding the tapestry making the
MENA political economy is not there yet. Various contributors, including the
last one, zoom in on the role that the lesser classes or the subaltern may play
in reshaping the political economy, but overall, the contributors treat the
subaltern as an immobile category: only the imperialists, the capitalists are
rendered as agents of history.
Regarding
the rising fortunes of capital in the Gulf, it remains a mystery how the
emergence of the capitalistic class which the contributors claim to be
independent of rent has neither flattened the state’s capacity for coercion nor
forced it toward democratization. Such a state of affairs leaves interested
audiences wondering how could such feudal monarchies maintain their grip on
power if indeed there exists a solid capitalistic class, as Hanieh advances. Indeed,
the crash of the real-estate sector in 2009 offers a reflective insight into how
privately owned businesses could be after all a bubble as they cannot survive
without state patronage because they are concentrated in non-productive sectors.
The thesis of the state playing the role of “a midwife of capitalistic class
formation …” (p.121) cannot stand up to scrutiny. Similarly, Chapter Eight makes
it look that Algeria’s independence was a charity from the capitalists. This is
no different from squeezing facts to meet a theory. All these untenable
conclusions result from confusing causes with effects.
While
the book traces a progressivist line from Orientalism and modernization
theories, the overall approach is non-emancipatory as it is geared toward
justifying the triumphant status quo, the one that emerged after the 2011
popular uprisings. With this conservative outlook, it becomes unsurprising to
find the three contributors of Chapter Two concluding that these uprisings
subscribe to classical bourgeois revolutions (p. 66). They do, but only when flattening
cause and effect, that is, when refusing to register that the uprisings
initially started as incendiary but the revolutionary momentum was crushed in
consequence of the counterrevolution coercive policies, the least of which has
been physical violence. Thus, the book’s approach is geared towards confusing, not
explaining what indeed took place. This underlines the extent to which a triumphant
regime of political economy pretends to provide a critique by simply promoting capital’s
counterrevolutionary moment.
Fouad Mami
Université d’Adrar
(Algeria)
ORCID iD https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1590-8524
