The Theory of Uneven and Combined Development in the Middle East

Leon Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development is vital for our understanding of the state in the Middle East. The theory, in particular a suggestive recent reworking of it by Justin Rosenberg, resolves the dichotomy of ideal types of states – the liberal, European contractual model need no longer be simply contrasted with the despotic Middle Eastern state. Rather, both emerge as forms of class rule under different conditions of the capitalist mode of production.

The argument is based on the assumption that modes of production exist and are important in Middle Eastern state formation. For the moment, I neglect those thinkers who do not accept this assumption so that I can outline the contribution of uneven and combined development to the theories of those who do. In the following essay I engage with the work of Nazih Ayubi and Simon Bromley. I outline their differences, and the different ways in which the theory of uneven and combined development can add to their work. Then I suggest how the theory of uneven and combined development might help analyse the state in the Middle East and the impact of external intervention on its transformation. I begin, however, with the foundational concept of the mode of production.

2. Modes of Production

A mode of production is a ‘way of producing’ composed of production relations; ‘relations of effective power over persons and productive forces’ (Cohen 1978: 63). Productive forces are the means by which human beings sustain their lives in their given environment. Production relations are patterned and change over time, Marx argues, as a result of the internal struggles that they generate. We can therefore speak of different modes of production, the development of such and the determination, in a broad sense discussed below, of political forms by these modes. Marx’s logic works as follows;

‘ The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of the direct producers determines the relationship between ruler and ruled… It is always the relationship of the owners of the means of production to the direct producers– a relation always corresponding to a definite stage of development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity – which reveals the innermost secret of the entire social structure.’
(Marx cited in Callinicos: 87)

We face some puzzles when we account for actual historical development in this scheme. Those that concern the discussion of the Middle East most are;

i.) the ruler-ruled relation appears also to determine the ‘economic form’ of exploitation
ii.) The sequence of modes of production and the ‘correspondence’ of production relations both to productive technique and to political forms.

These two points are the main puzzles because, like the rest of what was once called ‘the Third World’, the Middle East seems very different to the English experience from which Marx abstracted. Middle Eastern societies remain apparently divided by cleavages not related to the modes of production. Those revolutions that have taken place have produced neither proletarian nor bourgeois democracies. The Middle Eastern state takes little notice, it seems, of any productive class and keeps a very large stake in surplus extraction itself. Much of the social and political development of Middle Eastern countries seems driven by external intervention and regional war rather than class struggles inherent in any mode of production. How have the theorists of modes of production in the Middle East tried to solve these puzzles?

3. Modes of Production and theories of the Middle Eastern State; Ayubi and Bromley

One attempt to reconcile the mode of production with the non-linearity of actual development is Nazih Ayubi’s concept of ‘articulation.’ Ayubi follows Laclau and Mouffe in defining articulation as ‘any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice’ (Laclau and Mouffe cited in Ayubi 1995:28). This definition seems tautological. Ayubi himself gives a more tangible account for the Middle East when he writes

‘modes of production in the Middle East are often not singular and uni-dimensional but rather are articulated (i.e. two or modes can often coexist and interlink)’(1995:28)

What are these interlinked modes, how do they co-exist and what effect does this articulation have? Ayubi argues, as do almost all modes of production theorists, that the pre-colonial Middle East was dominated by a tributary mode of production. Ayubi describes this mode as ‘control based’ (1995:24). That is to say, the central authority extracted surplus from the direct producers through a hierarchy of coercion. State functionaries holding non-inheritable positions, such as tax farmers, seized a physical surplus from the direct producers. The functionaries then had to give up this surplus to the centre, having taken a share of their own. The tributary mode differs from both feudalism and capitalism. In the feudal mode relatively independent non-producers coercively extract surplus from the direct producers (Brenner 1977:37). This mode differs from the tributary mode in the independence of the appropriators. In the capitalist mode appropriators are independent and physical coercion is not usually used to extract surplus from the direct producers. Ayubi contends that in the Middle East, where neither capitalism nor the state have native feudal antecedents, the tributary and capitalist modes are articulated.

The articulation of capitalist and tributary modes, according to Ayubi, is the structural cause of narrow and repressive nature of the Arab state. He uses the concept of articulation to rework the conventional analysis of Middle Eastern states as ‘rentier states’;

‘[the Arab] ruling caste is fairly autonomous from the production process and the social classes, but often excessively dependent on the outside world.’(Ayubi 1995:25).

The relationship between the Arab state and the core of the capitalist world economy is thus a ‘circulationist’ one. The ruling caste participates in the world economy only in the form of exchange.

The concept of ‘articulation’ is at first sight very close to that of uneven and combined development. It accounts for the persistence of apparently archaic forms alongside capitalist development in the Middle East. Yet rather than integrate the logic of mixed modes of production into the analysis of political forms, Ayubi removes the state from the effects of different but coexisting modes of production by arguing that the ‘fierce’ Arab polity is a result of the absence or weakness of classes in an articulated structure. A more integrated account of Middle Eastern state formation with the logic of different modes of production is to be found in the work of the political economist Simon Bromley.

Bromley begins with the same central concept of surplus appropriation proposed by Marx in my extended quotation above. For Bromley the ‘inner secret’ of Middle East politics is indeed uneven and combined development. Further – it is not only the impact of Western capitalism that was unevenly developed in the Middle East but the social formation that capitalism encountered. Bromley differentiates ‘three Islams’; that of the Ottoman Sunni urban domains where religious authority buttressed tributary extraction and merchant circulation of surplus; the pastoral nomadic lands where the Ottoman state was weak; and the more variegated Safavid Empire, which he does not fully discuss (Bromley 1994:43). This pre-existing social structure combined with the impact of capitalist penetration ‘set in train a process of uneven development’ that resulted in the distinctive characteristics of Middle East state formation. Bromley’s argument, to an even greater extent than Ayubi’s, is thus based on the concept of the uneven development of modes of production.

This uneven development of capitalism, according to Bromley, produces two problems for all late-developing societies. These are

‘first, that of consolidating state power rapidly and in difficult circumstances; and second, that of sponsoring socio-economic development in adverse international conditions.’(1994:2)

The agency that faces these problems and seeks to solve them is the state – which must transform itself in order to fend off or compete with external capitalist powers. In doing so, however, the pre-modern state encounters a quandary；

　‘the emergence of a sovereign public sphere in conjunction with the privatization of command over surplus labour provide the basis for the liberal-capitalist form of state and economy.’(1994: 44)

The state can ensure the capital accumulation to reproduce itself only at the cost of decoupling coercive force and surplus accumulation. This is because of the late arrival of these states in the capitalist mode – the unevenness of development. Here a slightly difference notion of uneven and combined development can improve Bromley’s argument. Trotsky’s theory of capitalist development as not just uneven but combined, with attendant consequences on the class formations of the late developing countries, is the basis for this improvement.

3. Combined and Uneven Development; Trotsky and Rosenberg

Trotsky’s theory of the law of uneven and combined development integrates analytically the impact of different modes of production. It does so by specifying the logic of the relevant modes and their impact on the class politics of the countries subject not just to uneven (in the sense of late) but combined development (Davidson 2006:10). Trotsky begins from the now familiar premise that ‘backward countries’ are both forced to ‘under the whip of external necessity’ to adopt the social forms of the more advanced – indeed permits them to take up the most advanced of these and outrun their erstwhile superiors. The resulting society is thus governed by ‘the law of combined development – by which we mean a drawing together of the different stages of the journey… an amalgam of archaic with contemporary forms’ (Trotsky 1997:27). Non-capitalist classes that seek to preserve their productive power must adopt capitalist forms of organization. By doing so, their very integration into the logic of global capitalism can extend pre-capitalist political and economic forms. Trotsky explains by reference to Russia

‘[T]he very process of assimilation acquires a self-contradictory character. Thus the introduction of certain elements of Western technique and training, above all military and industrial, under Peter I, led to a strengthening of serfdom as the fundamental form of labour organisation. European armament and European loans – both indubitable products of a higher culture – led to a strengthening of czarism, which delayed in turn the development of the country’
(1997: 27).

In contrast to Ayubi’s conception of articulation as a mélange of different modalities of power and Bromley’s treatment of uneven development, Trotsky treats the contradictory outcomes as the result of the ‘laws’ of development themselves. Thus we find that non-capitalist classes, facing external pressure on the state over which they require continued control, transform their societies; ‘the solution of the problems of one class by another is one of those combined methods natural to backward countries’ (1997:30).

Trotsky’s theory has very important implications for the contractual state/ liberal state opposition with which we began. These implications are contained in his theory of permanent revolution. Under uneven and combined development, the state does not have to seek a contract with the productive bourgeoisie. Rather the bourgeoisie is nurtured (in the face of foreign competition) and protected (against the working class) by the state. Thus Trotsky argues that:


‘[u]nder pressure from richer Europe the Russian state swallowed up a far greater relative part of the people’s wealth than in the West, and weakened the foundations of the possessing classes. Being at the same time in need of support from the latter it forced and regimented their growth.’
(1997:28)

The confrontation between bourgeoisie and state depicted in the contractual Western model was impossible in the backward countries because of their combined development. The only class with the agency and interest to carry out a thoroughgoing democratic revolution was, Trotsky argued, the proletariat (1997:35). Again the combined and uneven nature of (Russian) development determined the clash. The Russian proletariat united the revolutionary fervour of the recently industrialized and oppressed with the power of mass concentrated workplaces characteristic of advanced capitalism (Trotsky 1997:32). Yet the workers could not be expected to stop at a merely national democratic revolution – rather the revolution would be permanent in two senses. The democratic revolution would pass over into the socialist revolution, and the revolution of the backward countries to the advanced.

Trotsky’s theory has recently been re-examined as a work of International Relations by Justin Rosenberg. Whereas Trotsky was concerned mainly with the impact of uneven and combined capitalist development, Rosenberg develops the theme of uneven and combined development as the most general law of historical development. According to Rosenberg political fragmentation, and hence international relations, results from the unevenness of all development – inter-societal relations result from the mutual combination of these differing developmental levels. Thus diplomacy itself is a result of uneven and combined development;

‘[T]he conditions of reproduction which define the concrete existence
of any given society are not limited to the internal structures of social relations which formed the starting point of classical social theory. They always include, by virtue of the bare fact of inter-societal existence, those external conditions which are the object of diplomatic management.’(Rosenberg 2006:320)

Rosenberg’s reworking of Trotsky thus takes the law of combined and uneven development as an overarching law. The particular distinction of the capitalist mode of production is to unite three levels of development. These are ‘empirical eventuation, societal trajectory and the ‘species-level’ increase of human capacities’ (2007: 6). That is, the overall course of human development, the development of particular societies and the conjuncture of actual events are united in the same process by the self-expanding logic of capitalism.

Rosenberg combines Trotsky and IR theory at a high level of abstraction, although applied to the case of Russian development. For a novel empirical implication of his case, we have to look to an earlier version of the argument;

‘Decolonization replaced a world of unsustainable European empires with a states system full of potential mini-czarisms, any of which might explode and drag other similar states down its new path of combined development,’
(Rosenberg 1996:12)

Uneven and combined development makes states volatile. It forces non and pre-capitalist ruling classes, which do indeed rule by personal and despotic methods, to abide by the logic of a subordinate position in the global capitalist system. They either challenge this position, or find themselves so weakened by it that another class attempts to overthrow them. In either case the result is political instability and the ‘catch-up’ policies of import substitution pursued in the sixties and seventies. Those polices and the prior phase of capitalist development produce a proletariat largely without the reformist traditions of Western European socialism. This proletariat is further subject not only to capitalist exploitation but to the international backwardness and repressive government that results from the uneven and combined development of their country. Even further; the proletariat is still connected to a large and usually poor peasantry. These are the conditions Trotsky’s permanent revolution.

Rosenberg’s contribution is in adding the element of ruling class strategy. The leading capitalist states are compelled to intervene in continual crises lest the revolution does indeed become permanent. Rosenberg thus reinterprets post World War II US policy as ‘the geopolitical management of uneven and combined development and its consequences on a world scale’ (1996: 12). This reformulation suggests a new way of looking at external intervention in the near revolutionary crises of the Middle East.


5. Uneven and Combined Development and Revolution in the Middle East

The theory of uneven and combined development adds something to analysis of revolutionary crises in the Middle East. To recapitulate the argument; the ‘fierce’ prevalent in the Middle East derives from the non-linear development of modes of production. Yet rather than being an ‘articulation’ of modes (Ayubi) or the simply uneven penetration of the capitalist mode (Bromley) the despotic state of the Middle East is a result of the uneven and combined development of the capitalist mode of production.
This uneven and combined development makes the states of the Middle East (and the Third World in general) sites of potential permanent revolution. The strategic object of the advanced capitalist states is therefore to manage the effects this uneven and combined development.

This argument suggests some lines of enquiry for the Middle East that combined external intervention with uneven and combined internal development. There is a continuum of the experience of revolutionary upheaval in the Middle East. This continuum seems almost coterminous with the strength of alliance between pre-capitalist classes and external imperialism in the context of uneven and combined development. We begin first with those countries that have had revolutions. Thus Iran, a country whose ruler was closely allied to the US but cut himself off from his traditional support base, experience perhaps the purest example of Trotsky’s permanent revolution based on the urban working class. Then we have countries such as Egypt, Syria and Iraq where mass working class organizations did exist and participated in mass upheavals against landlord governments supported by external powers. Yet those imperial powers, Britain and France, were no longer strong enough to guarantee the position of the landlord nor was the proletariat sufficiently organized to lead the revolution. Tony Cliff described this situation as ‘deflected permanent revolution’ (Cliff 1990:22).

Countries where revolutionary crises have been frustrated include Jordan and, one might argue, Lebanon. In the case of Jordan one could hypothesize that in 1970 a ruling class based on pastoral nomadic groups ( the Bedouin organized in the Jordanian army) was sustained by external intervention by Israel and hence at one remove, the US. In Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States again an originally pastoral nomadic ruling class is integrated directly into the capitalist mode of production as the guarantor of the most important source of energy in that mode of production.


References

Ayubi, Nazih. 1995 Overstating The Arab State :Politics and Society in The Middle East St. Martin’s Press, New York

Bromley, Simon 1994 Rethinking Middle East Politics University of Texas Press, Austin

Callinicos, Alex 1983 The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx Bookmarks, London

Cohen, G A 1978 Karl Marx’s Theory of History; A Defence Oxford University Press, Oxford

Cliff, Tony 1990 The Deflected Permanent Revolution Bookmarks, London

Rosenberg, Justin 2007 ‘International Relations - The Higher Bullshit; a Reply to the Globalization Debate’ Review of International Studies Forthcoming

Rosenberg, Justin 2006 ‘Why is there no International Historical Sociology?’ European Journal of International Relations Vol.12 No.3


Rosenberg, Justin 1996 ‘Isaac Deutscher and The Lost History of International Relations’ New Left Review I/125 Verso, London

Trotsky, Leon 1997 History of the Russian Revolution Bookmarks, London