Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Land and the rentier economy

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 h...

This is a good picture of Britain's political-economic situation There is a historical background prior to 2016 and the crisis that led to Brexit. "There was now a clear division between those leaders who represented the interests of big business and the City of London wanting ‘free trade’ and a big role in the EU and rank and file Conservatives who    represented small businesses and the narrow nationalist and racist elements in small provincial towns. They wanted no truck with ‘Europe’ and harkened back to ‘good old days’ of a white imperial Britain ploughing its own furrow – something, of course, that had disappeared even before the UK joined the EU. This division was heightened by the bulk of the ‘popular’ press, whose moguls were either Australian-Americans like Rupert Murdoch, or aristocratic empire believers like the Rothermeres or the Barclay brothers." The analysis also includes the impacts of "no-deal Brexit" on business and labour. A crucial ar...

Credit, rentier capital and crisis