For decades the dominant view in academia and outside academia has been blaming corruption for the ills and problems in the MENA region. Up until the 1970s, cultural factors had blamed been for the failures of the region to develop. Cultural factors were also used to explain China's underdevelopment from a capitalist perspective.
It's been convenient for the centres of powers in the West and the international institutions to dessiminate such a view so that the structural roots and the form of capitalism (rentier economies) as well as imperialist domination is masked and not questioned.
I am glad to see that an opinion on bloomberg, a hardly Marxist website, that is sceptical of that dominant view. One thus has to think of the class structure in the MENA region, the lack of the political will to pursue a development path based on productivity and acquire the technology to be able to compete globally in a world where technological know-how and markets are monopolised by a handful countries and a few multinationals.
Further reading:
It's been convenient for the centres of powers in the West and the international institutions to dessiminate such a view so that the structural roots and the form of capitalism (rentier economies) as well as imperialist domination is masked and not questioned.
I am glad to see that an opinion on bloomberg, a hardly Marxist website, that is sceptical of that dominant view. One thus has to think of the class structure in the MENA region, the lack of the political will to pursue a development path based on productivity and acquire the technology to be able to compete globally in a world where technological know-how and markets are monopolised by a handful countries and a few multinationals.
Further reading:
- Issam Al-Khatib on the failure of state capitalism in Tormented Births (2004)
- Robert Brenner on the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe
- Currently, I am reading China Transformed by R. Bin Wong, a book where Wong is tracing the path(s) China has taken towards industrialisation and modernisation.