Lineages of Revolt. Adam Hanieh
system as a whole, while simultaneously deepening the interdependency of states as a necessary prerequisite for this extraction to take place.62 Imperialism thus consolidates the combined and uneven nature that characterizes the world market in contemporary capitalism—one in which varying temporalities of development are harnessed within the totality of the world market.63
In contrast to many conventional approaches to the Middle East—which tend to treat imperialism as synonymous with colonialism and date its end to the close of World War II—this book highlights imperialism as an essential and ongoing theme in the shaping of the region’s political economy. As later chapters will discuss in some detail, the Middle East differs from other areas of the globe in that its vast supplies of hydrocarbons confer upon it an immensely significant geopolitical weight. For this reason, the major imperialist states—headed by the United States throughout the contemporary postwar period—have placed the highest priority on exercising power over the region and preventing any challengers from gaining a foothold.
There are two foremost aspects to imperialism emphasized throughout this book. The first of these is the dialectic of rivalry and unity of interests that characterizes the relationship between the major imperialist powers. On the one hand, the internationalization of capital has generated heightened levels of competition between the large corporations that dominate the global economy, and this is refracted through increased interstate competition. Consequently, inter-imperialist rivalry remains a salient feature of the world market. On the other hand, the very nature of internationalization demands greater coordination and cooperation between states in order to maintain the required conditions for accumulation as a whole. This is all the more relevant in contexts such as the Middle East, which has been in a constant battle to free itself from imperialist control—a path that, if successful, would have enormous ramifications for the entire capitalist system. For this reason, the importance of controlling the Middle East not only stems from inter-imperialist rivalry—an attempt to command a “potential chokehold on other leading powers”64—but is also driven by a common existential interest on behalf of all imperialist powers in preventing the peoples of the region from determining their own future. These dual tendencies of cooperation and rivalry are vital to understanding the ways that imperialism continues to interact and shape the political economy of the Middle East.
Second, imperialism is too often viewed—even by many theorists on the Left—as solely a question of military or political domination. While this book explores these aspects of imperialism in some detail, it emphasizes the fact that imperialism is primarily a question of exploitation—one that necessitates, and is principally bound up in, forms of economic domination. Much of the analysis of this book is concerned with tracing the projection of economic power in the Middle East by imperialist states—the attempt to integrate the forms of accumulation in the region into global production chains and subordinate local classes to the exigencies of capital in the core countries of the world market. This tendency is linked to the dialectic of rivalry and cooperation noted above, but more generally it has had vital implications for class and state in the Middle East. It means—as later chapters will show—that capitalist class formation in the Middle East has become increasingly tied to the ebbs and flows of accumulation at the global scale. One of the effects of imperialism, in other words, has been to generate a domestic capitalist class internal to the Middle East that is to a great extent aligned with the interests of global (imperialist) capital. This observation further confirms the point made earlier—it makes little sense to speak of a “patriotic bourgeoisie” in the Middle East that is somehow counterposed or in confrontation with international capital and in which hopes for a national project for liberation can be invested.
Neoliberalism
The main period that this book focuses on is the neoliberal phase of capitalism, which had its origins in the global crisis of the 1970s, was consolidated during the mid-1980s, and continues through to the current day.65 Drawing from a range of sources including classical liberalism and Austrian and monetarist economics, neoliberalism’s policy prescriptions are now familiar across the globe: privatization, cutbacks to social spending, the reduction of barriers to capital flows, and the imposition of market imperatives throughout all spheres of human activity. The Middle East was no exception to the worldwide embrace of these policies by governments and ruling elites—and a major aim of this book is to consider the profound consequences that they continue to hold for class and state in the region.
As later chapters will outline, however, neoliberalism needs to be seen as much more than the familiar litany of economic policies with which it is typically associated. Its essence lies, as David Harvey points out, in an attempt to reconstitute and strengthen class power in the favor of capital.66 Its policies emerged out of the systemic needs of capitalist social reality. Specifically, the turn to neoliberalism reflected the accumulation needs of capital in an era of internationalization, i.e., capital with accumulation spaces increasingly spread across a global level. Its logic came to penetrate all national social formations and was specifically concerned with the ways in which these formations were integrated into global circuits of accumulation. By speeding up the rate at which capital moves across and through national spaces, and widening the spheres of human activities subject to the imperatives of accumulation, neoliberalism aimed to ensure the conditions for capitalist reproduction at a global scale.
The widespread adoption of neoliberal policies was facilitated by the restructuring of the world market that took place during the 1980s and 1990s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the integration of China into the global economy, capitalist social relations spread throughout the world, compelling all states to comply with norms set at the international scale.67 In regions such as the Middle East, this process was closely related to the economic crises of the 1980s and the pressure countries faced to earn foreign exchange revenues in order to service their debt obligations. A range of international institutions drove the technical implementation of neoliberal policies—notably the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank—while governments from the United States and Europe pursued bilateral trade and financial agreements with the region.
This book traces the neoliberal transformation of the Middle East over the last two decades. Its focus goes beyond the policies themselves to examine the ways in which neoliberalism has underpinned the modalities of class and state formation. Specifically, the penetration of neoliberalism has been a pivotal force in shaping the production and development of working classes as well as the nature of capitalist class formation around the new internationally connected circuits of accumulation. It has also lent a particular dynamic to the nature of the state apparatus, closely connected to the spread of authoritarian regimes. As always, these processes must be tackled across national, regional, and international scales.
A final core feature of neoliberal ideology—echoed in conventional academic accounts of Middle East development—is the claim to an apparent neutrality and “objectivity” of analysis. A key intention of this book is to unpack these claims and to demonstrate that they not only are false but actually conceal a discursive attempt to defend, maintain, and extend the uneven and exploitative nature of capitalism in the Middle East. Assertions of an ideologically detached or impartial methodology (even, as is often the case, when such assertions are only made implicitly) deny the inherently partisan nature of all attempts to comprehend social reality. In contrast, this book is unequivocally framed as a challenge to the status quo. This partisanship is not a weakness of the analysis but rather a potential source of strength. If it is true that capitalism is the root source of the region’s problems, then confronting this critically and openly provides the best route to capturing the reality of the contemporary Middle East, precisely because it opens up the right kinds of questions and ways of thinking about the problems posed. If it is not true, and the region’s difficulties stem from the antimonies of authoritarianism and the free market, then the analysis will fall. The point is to be explicit about this fact—recognizing that a certain political perspective and standpoint on reality is inevitably embedded in any set of methodological assumptions. There is no claim here to neutrality: the book openly takes sides.
The Structure of the Book
With these initial methodological and theoretical perspectives established, it is now possible to summarize the basic structure of this book. The first point to note is the contested and controversial