Economic Liberalisation as an Irreversible Trend during the Bashar Regime: The Socioeconomic Fuel of the Syrian Crisis

Abstract

This chapter examines Bashar’s lurch to the market-driven economic order starting in the year 2000. Neoliberal reforms were wide-ranging and included lifting of price controls and tariffs, amending investment reform law, unifying the exchange rate, removing subsidies, and opening up trade and capital accounts. The Bashar regime aimed not only to transform the economy from a state-controlled to a market-oriented one, but also to serve the class-based interests of the state bourgeoisie. The natural next step for that class was to break free from the fetters of state control and to transform itself from a state capitalist class, which controls the means of production through its control of the state, into a private capitalist class that owns the means of production. While on fieldwork, the standard cliché that I heard from state officials in response to my critique that market liberalisation has not paid off was that the move toward the free market was irreversible. The grip of neoliberal ideology on the imagination of ruling class and its cronies acted like a sedating drug: while working people became poorer, the authorities hallucinated that conditions were rosy. Nevertheless, this irreversible move would eventually prove disastrous.