A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa.

• Author: Mami, Fouad

A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa

Edited by Joel Beinin, Bassam Haddad and Sherene Seikaly

Stanford University Press, 2021, 344 pages, $28.00, ISBN: 9781503614475

A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa 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 of the book presuppose that only a methodology rooted in a critical political economy can explain the fortunes of people in the MENA region in their respective polities.

The concept of class is usually swept under the carpet, but not in this volume. Given the domineering neoliberal order, marshaling the courage to discuss class is an added value. Nevertheless, the editors trust that "...causes are simultaneously effects; all events are situated in a relational matrix." (p. 1). The flattening of causes by equating them with effects and presupposing both as free-roaming enunciations serves the stultifying of historical change.

Developmentalism has been responsible for the reintegration of precapitalistic modes of production into global capitalism. Applying units of measurements such as GDP not only hides how measurements come littered with ideological biases but that the sophistry of numbers can somehow magically replace analysis. Furthermore, developmentalism sells the illusion that the 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. In Chapter 1, Kristen Alff illustrates how diverse land tenure practices under the Ottomans, 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 should not be construed as capitalistically driven. But according to Alff, the imperialists simply pressed through various Oriental regimes such as the corvee system to enforce capitalism. The only violence that capitalism introduces in the Middle East, Alff finds, is the commodification of labor (p. 42).

In Chapter 2, Max Ajil, Bassam Haddad, and Zeinab Abul-Magd 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. Again, large-scale debts meant to fund...