Withered socialism or whether socialism? The radical Arab states as populist‐corporatist regimes

Abstract

A familiar concept of socialism suggests defining it as 'an ideology, and a structure of institutional practices derived from it, which treats the State as the key agency of direct economic planning and management, and which therefore attempts to allocate resources according to priorities established by the State, rather than through the alternative mechanisms provided by the market' .l I suggest, for the sake of accurate analysis, that the 'ideology' and the 'structure' should be disentangled, because socialism as an ideology never contemplated the state as the producer. Moralist socialism emphasised equity; Marxist socialism emphasised the 'withering away of the state', as harmony between forces and relations of production was to be restored. It would follow from the above-mentioned definition of socialism that people are attracted first to the ideology, then 'a structure of institutional practices derived from it' is subsequently adopted which places the state at the central point. It should follow, by contrast, that if the ideology is accepted subsequent to the exercise of practices that place the state at the centre, any talk about socialism must be rather inaccurate (that is, because the 'structure of institutional practices' is supposed to be derived from the 'ideology', not the other way round). Furthermore, to identify socialism as a system that 'treats the State as the key agency of direct economic planning and management' would lead us astray in the Middle East. Although I do not intend to dwell on this point at any great length, careful empirical study indicates that the economic role of the state has grown remarkably since the 1950s in all Arab states (and in Iran), with the only exception of Lebanon (where the state might well have withered away altogether!). More specifically the direct role of the state in economic planning and management is not confined to the so-called radical (or socialist) regimes: countries like 'conservative' Saudi Arabia and 'Islamic' Iran possess planning mechanisms and public sectors that are easily comparable in size and role with those of the 'socialist' states.2 I now present some facts to illustrate these two points.