‘Saudi’ Arabia IS a bureaucrat-capitalist semi-colony!
Introduction
An issue that has appeared whenever I talk about ‘Saudi’ Arabia is my characterization of ‘Saudi’ Arabia as a semi-colonial bureaucrat-capitalist state. Various comrades, from both inside the Peninsula and from outside, have disagreed with me, instead declaring ‘Saudi’ Arabia a fully independent capitalist-imperialist power.
Similar problems also arise when I talk about Turkey and Iran, though for both of those countries there are active Communist movements (in Turkey they lead a People’s War!) which have explained the semi-colonial and bureaucrat-capitalist nature of those two countries far better than I could ever!
However, in ‘Saudi’ Arabia, the Communist Movement is almost non-existent, having been mostly stamped out or having capitulated in the late 80s and early 90s, so this cannot be explained by them. Therefore, this article has set out to demarcate the semi-colonial and bureaucrat-capitalist nature of ‘Saudi’ Arabia.
A surface level analysis may lead someone to believe that ‘Saudi’ Arabia is not semi-colonial. After all, hearing that ‘Saudi’ Arabia, with it’s glitzy towers, historic and current wars of aggression against various progressive revolutions such as in Yemen, and ability to break from the US Imperialist camp and enter into alliances with China and Russia when suitable for them, is semi-colonial, is quite the shock.
However, after removing the gold foil, the semi-colonial and bureaucrat capitalist core is revealed. ‘Saudi’ Arabia, a state set up by the British Imperialists, is dominated in it’s economic life by American and Chinese finance capital.
I. What is Bureaucrat Capitalism? What is Semi-Colonialism?
Bureaucratic Capitalism
According to the Communist Party of Peru in their magazine “Democratic Revolution”, in 1988, this is a definition of bureaucratic capitalism, based on the great teaching of Chairman Gonzalo.
“Regarding bureaucratic capitalism, Chairman Gonzalo put forward for us that understanding it is key, substantial to understand Peruvian society. Taking Chairman Mao’s theses, he teaches us that it has five characteristics:
- that bureaucratic capitalism is the capitalism that imperialism develops in the backward countries, comprising capital from the big landlords, the big bankers and the magnates of the big bourgeoisie;
- it exercises exploitation over the proletariat, the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie and restricts the middle bourgeoisie;
- it goes through a process by which bureaucratic capitalism combines with state power and becomes state monopoly capitalism, comprador and feudal, from which it follows that at the first moment it unfolds as non-state monopolist big capital, and at a second, when it is combined with state power, it unfolds as state monopoly capitalism;
I have decided not to include the fourth and fifth characteristics, because they are simply about the necessity of the overthrow of bureaucrat capitalism in order to achieve revolution, which, while true, is not necessary in the process of discovering if a country is bureaucrat capitalist or not.
On Bureaucratic Capitalism in ‘Saudi’ Arabia
A comprador bourgeoise, made up of the Princes of Al Saud, the leaders of various major tribal confederation in ‘Saudi’ Arabia, owners of major businesses, whose interests are aligned with imperialism, does exist, which is divided into factions. The old faction of the comprador bourgeoise, the one that emerged after the coup against King Saud, around King Faisal and his allies, and the Islamic Ulema, were obedient servants of US Imperialism, who could only act against it when they were forced to at threat of revolt from their population (the Arab Oil Embargo was forced, through the struggle of the proletariat of the Peninsula).
However, a new faction of this group has recently came to power, the faction represented by Muhammad bin Salman, who gained prominence with the invasion of Yemen, the mass executions of 2016 of both progressive national bourgeoise figures like the Shia Ayatollah Nimr al Nimr and reactionaries like the members of AQ (both of which were supported by the other faction), 2017–2019 purge of the other faction in government, the 2018–2019 suppression of the progressive feminist movement in the Arabian Peninsula, the 2019-present purge of the Ulema, and the 2022 mass executions of both progressives and reactionaries.
This faction would form closer connections with the faction of the US bourgeoise represented by Trump, and Israel (who they are still courting, supressing all pro-Palestine protests in ‘Saudi’ Arabia, even removing removing maps of Palestine from Saudi textbooks, confiscating Keffiyehs at Makkah, and even prohibiting minor gestures like not allowing Al-Hilal FC to post an image denouncing it or allow players to wear Palestinian Keffiyehs), but after this faction’s defeat, they would pivot to courting China, Russia, and eventually, after a brief period of increased tension during the Trump Presidency, eventually Iran, instead of the traditional closer connections to the mainstream neoliberal faction of the US Bourgeoise.
This group does exercise exploitation over the proletariat (especially the migrant proletariat, whose exploitation is well known worldwide due to it’s brutality and inhumanity, but also the native Arab proletariat, with most Arab Slums existing in ‘Saudi’, like Kilo 6 in Jeddah, and especially the Shia segment of the Arab Proletariat, concentrated in Qatif and Al-Ahsa, who face crushing poverty and discrimination which has caused them to have risen up before, with one of the most brutal suppressions of these uprisings being the suppression of Awamiya Uprising, which included the besiegement and flattening of the city, and in Najran, where the Ismaili Shia population faces conditions comparable to Apartheid), sections of the petty-bourgeoise, especially the lowest section of it, and the Shia petty-bourgeoise. There is no peasantry in the Arabian Peninsula anymore, so the exploitation of the peasantry is impossible.
‘Saudi’ Arabia has the clearest example of the third point, with Aramco itself being the most developed example of the third, being literally state power combining into state monopoly capitalism, which both unfolds as non-state monopolist big capital, and is combined with state power, unfolding as state monopoly capitalism.
Semi-Colonialism
What is a semi-colonialism? According to massline.org, an online dictionary of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist terms:
This is a good started for a definition of semi-colonialism, but we must go further into detail in order to truly understand semi-colonialism.
Let us look to Lenin’s definition of Imperialism, which is:
(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life
(2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy
(3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance
(4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves
(5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
Bureaucratic Capitalism emerges from semi-colonialism, as it is the economic system held by most semi-colonial countries.
Does “Saudi” Arabia fit under these two categories?
- Has the concentrations of production and capital developed to a stage where monopolies play a decisive role in economic life? Sort of, while monopolies do play a decisive role in Khaleeji economic life, one must look at the owners of those monopolies.Saudi Aramco, the largest monopoly in Saudi economic life, is both officially in some cases and practically in most controlled by the US and increasingly China, and internally, both groupings within Aramco launch struggle against each other within ‘Saudi’ economic life.
2. Has bank capital merged with industrial capital in ‘Saudi’ Arabia? Sort of, but still, the majority of finance capital is largely American and Chinese, and is exported to ‘Saudi’ instead of ‘Saudi’ exporting to others.
3. Is the export of capital the main export of ‘Saudi’ Arabia? No. The primary export of Saudi Arabia is a commodity, oil. While capital is exported by Saudi, it is not primary, and if one were to take the export of any capital as proof of imperialism, Mobutu’s Zaire would have been imperialist.
4. Has ‘Saudi’ Arabia been a major part in the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations sharing the world amongst itself? Yes, OPEC, the GCC and the Arab Leauge, but the role of Saudi in those blocs is not as an independent actor but as an agent for the US’, but increasingly now after MBS’ realignment China and Russia’s, interests.
I will ignore the fifth question because someone who believes in Saudi imperialism could respond that even so Saudi is not one of the biggest capitalist powers, which is fair.
On Semi-Colonialism in ‘Saudi’ Arabia
Now, semi-colonialism is the aspect of ‘Saudi’ Arabia that gets the most disagreements from people I discuss ‘Saudi’ Arabia, with many people claiming that it is a lesser imperialist power like Britain and Germany. This is untrue.
Are the interests of the ruling class of ‘Saudi’ Arabia, the owners and shareholders of Aramco, the King and the Princes, and the Bureaucrats, tied to Imperialism?
Yes!
On the economic front, Aramco, one of (if not the) largest corporations on Earth, was originally founded as a ‘joint’ project between the Saudi state and several American companies those being Standard Oil of California (later Chevron, 30%), Texaco (30%, who actually discovered oil in ‘Saudi’ Arabia’s east), Standard Oil of New Jersey (later Exxon, 30%), and Socony Vacuum (later Mobil, 10%). The Saudi state would forgo nationalization in favour of a 50/50 profit split with Aramco, the ‘Golden Gimmick’.
While the ‘Saudi’ government, after the working class of the Arabian Peninsula first in the 50s and then in 70s after the West’s brazen support of Israel in the Ramadan War, would be forced to acquire increasing “participation interest” in Aramco to try to present itself as independent of the West, first 23% in 1973, then 60% the following year, then 100% by 1976, and finally fully nationalizing Aramco, transforming it into Saudi Aramco in 1988, this was all for show.
The reason that ‘Saudi’ Arabia was allowed to do this, and not overthrown like Mossadegh’s national bourgeoise government in Iran, was that there was no danger of ‘Saudi’ breaking with the US imperialists in any major way.
The ‘Saudi’ state’s independence was secured on an American naval ship, the security of the state from internal revolutionaries (the Arabian Peninsula Peoples’ Union, the People’s Democratic Party of the Arabian Peninsula and the Arab Socialist Action Party — Arabian Peninsula) or even from more radical Wahhabis such as Juhayman al Outabi and the re-organized Ikhwan.
The most the ‘Saudis’ could do was the oil embargo, something that they only did because they were faced with mass protests by the oil workers, which they abandoned after the Americans promised to give them some weapons to kill their own people, and the people of Dhofar, which the rat King Faisal did because he did not want bases of liberation that could help the people of ‘Saudi’ Arabia remove the Saudi rot from Arabia, and was still a servant of US Imperialism.
Even so, Aramco was still tied up in US imperialism, signing agreements with the US puppet regimes in South Korea and the Philippines, and with revisionist China, which at this time was still under the American thumb, and had not yet been able to construct there own imperialist bloc to strengthen the position of their own bourgeoise and re-divide the world.
During the early 2000s, when China and Russia had not been able to establish themselves as imperialist powers separate from the hegemonic US bloc, in fact being largely within the US bloc and the US controlled world market, co-operating in complete friendship at the time as members of that Bloc, the Saudi state would form an agreement with the Russian LUKOIL and Chinese Sinopec to do gas exploration in the Rub al Khail.
As China and Russia were able to establish themselves as a rising oppositional imperialist bloc to US Imperialism’s hegemony, the representative of the pro-Chinese bloc, and also in a semi-related way as this relates to the ideological basis of the shift from US-allignment to Saudi-allignment, the inventor of ‘Saudi’ national identity as opposed to a general Arab identity, was Muhammad bin Salman, the current crown prince, and de-facto ruler, of ‘Saudi’ Arabia.
Just because there is no peasantry does not mean that a country is not a semi-colony.
Conclusion
It has been proven that, while ‘Saudi’ Arabia is not semi-feudal, it is still semi-colonial and bureaucrat capitalist, even if they are able to undertake expansionist policies, and re-align themselves closer to other imperialist blocs if they see them as the rising bloc.
