“Policies do not run things; people organised along class lines do. During the post-independence years, development in Arab socialist states was led by an alliance of the military and the working class. The army was the dominant partner in this relationship and played a progressive role by placating populist aspirations for a more egalitarian distribution. The army, the state bureaucracy and the leadership of the working class formed a state bourgeois class and exercised collective ownership of the state, characterised as what Hussein and Abdel-Malek* termed a proxy bourgeoisie. Under Arab socialism, the predominant relationships remained capitalist, and the exploitative control of the labour process necessary for value creation persisted. However, by creating the financial space for the expansion of state-led industrial investment, investing in social infrastructure and undertaking vast land reform and redistribution measures, the Arab socialist model dramatically outperformed the current neo-liberal model in economic and social dynamism. Beginning with the neoliberal model, however, the military reallied itself with the merchant class and global financial capital. In the new ethos, ‘generals aspired to be merchants’, which weakened the national security front considerably. The old state bourgeois class transformed itself into a full-fledged comprador class. In this new ruling class alliance, the nationalist army no longer held sway. The Arab ruling class became a subordinate partner of imperialism. Social conditions in Arab states have since worsened, contributing to massive uprisings at a time when socialist ideology as an alternative is no longer readily comprehendible. As a result, social formations collapsed and states crumbled, and Islamists of various sorts rose to authority, enrobing neoliberal usurpation in divine fiat.”
*Abdel- Malek 1967; Hussein 1971.
—Ali Kadri, 2016
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