Ksikes: What motivated you to write this book, Ainsi pensait Aziz Belal[1]? Was it related to your involvement in the special commission for the new development model, the lack of recognition of pioneers within Moroccan universities, or the need to re-establish a Moroccan economic thought that remembers its founders?
El Aoufi: Each year, I asked my economics students (at the master's and doctoral levels) if they knew Aziz Belal and his work, and consistently, the answer was no. In the doctoral theses defended today, Moroccan references are almost entirely absent. There is a significant lack of awareness among the younger generations about the writings of Moroccan economists, especially those of the pioneers. I wanted to draw attention to what I consider an unjustifiable "oversight" in terms of scientific research. Thus, I decided to write a brief digest for students to introduce them to the foundational work of Aziz Belal. This is also, in a sense, an acknowledgment of the "intellectual debt" I owe to him, as he was my mentor and professor from my undergraduate studies through to my doctorate, supervising my research, notably on Moroccanization and the Development of the Bourgeoisie (2023). You are correct—there is a crucial need to re-establish a Moroccan economic thought that does not forget its founders. Beyond recognizing founders, it is about not losing the thread of Morocco's economic history. I am struck by the trends in academic research that seem to be "blind dives," with an ahistorical approach that fails to account for "path dependence." Regarding the work of the commission on the "new development model," it is true that the "specter" of Aziz Belal (in the Derridean sense), or "the spirit of Belal," never left me throughout these efforts.
Ksikes: How does revisiting Aziz Belal's work extend or deviate from your previous research and writings?
El Aoufi: It's more that my work attempts to align directly with his thought and analytical approach. Yes, we need to reread Aziz Belal and revisit all his work afresh. A return, even if critical, to Aziz Belal's economic thought is justified by the recurrence of the issues he explored from Investment in Morocco (1968) and which he continued to analyze in Development and Non-Economic Factors (1980). The processes at play today in Morocco relate to constraints, dilemmas, and uncertainties in collective decision-making that are found, implicitly or explicitly, in his work. Issues related to the volume of investment, its origin, direction, the matching between investment, savings, and growth rates, anticipating the inductive and multiplicative effects of investment, and criteria for defining propagation and lead sectors—all these issues seem to arise in fundamentally similar terms. Investment concludes with a chapter surprisingly in tune with the "New Development Model" (2021): beyond the economic sequences that open "the path to self-sustained growth" - which are necessary but not sufficient - it highlights a series of other conditions, equally critical, located "at the junction of the economic, sociological, and political."
Ksikes: Do you think that through the development lens that Aziz Belal presented, there would be a way today to establish a post-colonial economic thought?
El Aoufi: We owe to Paul Ricoeur (1983) a fundamental reflection on the categories of time, narrative, and memory. Some have spoken, regarding the colonial legacy, of a "memory hole," a forgetfulness in the inventory. Stemming from Edward Said's foundational work Orientalism (1978), so-called postcolonial studies attempt to explore a new transdisciplinary field of research, critically revisiting the standard narrative of colonialism and offering a new reading in the textuality of what some call "the Odyssey of Modernity," which would be exclusively a Western enterprise. Against this canonical narrative, Postcolonial Studies offer a critical review of the literature on the limitations of development in peripheral countries and propose an alternative narrative of the colonial fact, where history is credited with a performative principle. The perspective outlined in Investment in Morocco explicitly follows this program, aiming to reformulate post-colonial economic thought within a framework of national appropriation of what Michel Foucault calls discursive formation.
Ksikes: Can revisiting the legacy of an economist-thinker help us establish a modernity rooted in our realities?
El Aoufi: I respond to two interrelated issues suggested by your question. The first concerns what could be called the hypothesis of economic modernity in Morocco. Some recent works (Germouni, 2015) argue that the Protectorate played a major role in the modernization of Morocco and that the "colonial legacy" is rather positive. What if the Protectorate had not happened? This counterfactual question could challenge the "axiom of indispensability" of the Protectorate, to borrow a phrase from R. Fogel (1964). Of course, this counterfactual involves an extremely complex task, not only concerning the countless stylized facts related to the contextually and historically dated actions of the French Protectorate in Morocco but also regarding the causalities to be considered for producing an alternative narrative on the colonial fact.
Aziz Belal dedicates several sections in Investment in Morocco to the "limits of colonial economic growth." The "economic and monetary satellitism" resulted in a dual structure: on one hand, a "privileged investment" sector, modern and predominantly capitalist (material infrastructure, export activities, distribution, real estate, administration), and on the other, a traditional and archaic "underinvestment" sector (agriculture, craftsmanship, but also basic industries and cultural investment).
According to the author, colonial Morocco was characterized by an insufficiency in the direct and indirect "multiplier effects" of investments in infrastructure, which is mainly explained by the transfer of most of these effects to the metropolis. "Under conditions of political-economic dependency," he writes, "the direct and indirect multiplier effects of investment play only a very weak role, if at all." Savings were "constantly projected abroad," thus transferring the "acceleration" mechanism of investment to foreign countries. This conclusion highlights one of the essential characteristics of colonial economies: unlike the causalities identified by standard theory, investments in infrastructure can prove ineffective when they are captured by the metropolitan economy.
The second issue concerns the relationship between modernity, capitalism, and development. From the standpoint of standard theory, development implies the transition from a "traditional economy" to a "modern economy," meaning the shift from a non-capitalist economy to a fully capitalist one. Theoretically, this was the historical "mission" of colonization. The dual relationship of trade and wages, which defines capitalism, thus induces an irreversible process of dissolving pre-capitalist exchange relationships and traditional forms of production. Historically, this was not the case everywhere in countries subjected to capitalist colonization. Several works (notably by Samir Amin) have shown that the principle of uneven development (1973), inherent to capitalist accumulation on a global scale (1970), involves a dual process of dissolution and conservation of traditional relations, with traditional forms of production continuing to exist under the domination of purely capitalist forms. This dialectic of dissolution-conservation of traditional relations is an explicit conjecture in Marx’s Capital. Historical facts today confirm such a theoretical conjecture. However, some, influenced by the effects of globalization, continue to think that the process of underdevelopment can be reduced to the modern-traditional duality, and that full development necessarily involves the expansion of the capitalist sphere and the total, irreversible breakdown of the traditional sphere. It is evident that, despite the neoliberal expansion that accompanies it, globalization has not succeeded in pushing the traditional sector into its final retreat. On the contrary, a portion of the value created globally continues to be generated by the so-called traditional sector, which remains exploited and dominated by the so-called modern sector within the framework of new global value chains.
Because the traditional sector is no longer what it once was, having undergone enrichment in the sense of Luc Boltanski (2017), meaning a transformation in terms of renovation (Belal, 1968). Thus, many artisanal activities, particularly those related to tourism, have seen their products enriched, updated for the market. However, while the renovation or enrichment of the traditional sector is a condition for its survival, it also becomes a factor in the commodification of social relations and non-market values that distinguish it, making it, therefore, a sector in the service of global capital accumulation.
In the end, we are faced with the alternative: subjugation of the "traditional" to the "modern," thereby maintaining and reproducing the dualism inherited from the Protectorate, versus the endogenous development of so-called traditional modes and the preservation of the non-market sphere (cooperative and community-based).
Ksikes: Economics is one of the disciplines that has significantly imported traveling concepts propagated by experts and international organizations. What are your thoughts on this?
El Aoufi: The discipline of economics, in its orthodox version—which still dominates—has followed a trajectory from classical political economy to neoclassical theory, with institutionalist inflections that tend to align with certain heterodox currents. The neoliberal turn observed from the 1980s found its mainstream translation in economic policy through the "Washington Consensus" (monetary and fiscal discipline, trade liberalization, state withdrawal, privatization, deregulation, etc…).
Originally, "colonial sociology" (Khatibi, 1967) was established based on relationships of "knowledge and recognition" that served to establish the Protectorate in Morocco and to pacify rural populations.
The 1960-1964 Five-Year Plan stands out as an instructive exception, based on a "comprehensive approach" that mobilized researchers and experts, particularly Moroccans (A. Belal, P. Pascon, G. Lazarev, among others). Similarly, we have the report entitled 50 Years of Human Development and Perspectives 2025 (2006) and the report on The New Development Model (2021).
From the 1980s, international reports multiplied and covered most public policy areas (economic policy, finance, social policies, employment, education, health, poverty, informal sector, etc...). The Structural Adjustment Program (1983-1993) set, once and for all for Morocco, a "golden rule of public finances" (budget deficit below 3%) and a "sustainable investment rule" (public debt below 60% of GDP). From the second half of the 1990s, the supremacy of international reports was reinforced by "sectoral programs" developed by international consulting firms (Plan Emergence, Green Morocco, Halieutis, Plan Azur, etc…).
In his work How to Do Things with Words (1970), philosopher John Austin distinguishes two types of statements: constative and performative. The first involves no injunction, no order to act (e.g., the budget deficit is 5%). The second, by its very utterance, pushes for action, translates advice into reality, and executes a recommendation. The statement, the "saying," becomes a "real act." The performative statement implies a condition of success—it must work, "saying" must become "doing," that is, have an effect. Therefore, it must come from an entity endowed with real legitimacy or authority.
The university is not such an entity, even though constative statements inherent in scientific research can lead to performative conclusions. The national administration produces performative-type reports, but their actual impact tends to become marginal. Today, it is international consulting firms that produce performative statements on behalf of the administration. According to Austin, such statements can take several forms: implicit ("you can do," "I recommend you do") or explicit ("I order you to do," "I command you to do"), and they can be both constative and performative. International reports are not explicitly performative but rather implicit and simultaneously constative and performative. It is this ambiguity, or perhaps imposture, that poses a problem.
Ksikes: Who do you hope will read this book, Ainsi pensait Aziz Belal (Thus Thought Aziz Belal), and what kind of impact would you like it to have?
El Aoufi: Primarily students, then public decision-makers in the economic field, and, I dare hope, the "general public" interested in development issues. I specified in the book’s subtitle that it is an "introduction" to the works of A. Belal, which itself is an "introduction to development economics." His works, even in their apparent outdatedness, remain relevant.
In the current context, it is crucial to reread both L'investissement au Maroc (Investment in Morocco) and Développement et facteurs non-économiques (Development and Non-Economic Factors). They contain both theoretical and empirical elements for a "desirable economic development strategy," which, in my view, is extended by some of the analyses and conclusions in The New Development Model (2021). This is what I referred to as "Belal beyond Belal" in my book. I can mention a few key points:
1. It is internal dynamics, the diversification and sophistication of the national productive system, the convergence of public policies and national private strategies that facilitate active integration into the international regime and improve conditions for attracting foreign direct investment—not the other way around.
2. Development is not only about physical and material investment; institutional, political, social, and cultural dimensions also matter.
3. The multiplier effect of physical infrastructure is complemented by an inclusive effect when these include what R. Hansen (1965) calls "social infrastructure," whose purpose is to enhance human capacities and increase human capital potential. It is this "junction between the economic and the social," between the material and the immaterial, the physical and the institutional, that, according to the author, should guide the choice of infrastructure investments.
4. The inclusive effect of "physical infrastructure" implies the need to adjust the trajectory of investments by integrating "human infrastructure" as a crucial component of the "desirable national development strategy."
Chapter 4 of L'investissement au Maroc (1968), titled "Transformation of Structures and Maximization of the Multiplier Effects of Investment," unfolds as a holistic program: transformation of the external and internal relations of the economy and society, creation of a new type of economic and social organization, capable of ensuring both the diffusion of progress and the necessary harmonization of centralization and decentralization, of discipline and free initiative, and last but not least, reconciliation of the imperatives of economic efficiency and social justice.
Ksikes: What other projects are you currently working on?
El Aoufi: I am involved in three collective projects: a Moroccan E-Handbook of Development Economics and an Economic History of Present and Contemporary Morocco, co-directed with historian Tayeb Biad (both under the framework of the Development Economics Laboratory), as well as a study on Research in Economic Sciences in Morocco: State of Knowledge (under the framework of the Hassan II Academy of Sciences and Techniques). I am also working on a study, in Arabic, on the principles of political economy, in what might be called Economic Fiqh.
Noureddine El AoufI is a professor of economic sciences, chair of Development Economics (School of Law, Economics, and Social Sciences at Mohammed V University of Rabat), resident member of the Hassan II Academy of Sciences and Techniques, and director of the Development Economics Laboratory (LED) and the journals Critique économique and Nahda (in Arabic).
Bibliography:
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