The current debate is shaped by a global context marked by the ‘return’ of industrial policy in response to climate change. A new consensus on climate action has led to the adoption of industrial policy packages, largely based on subsidies and incentives, aimed at stimulating the technological development and production required for decarbonisation.
Morocco’s ruling classes seek to establish themselves within this global context, adjusting economic policies in the hope of benefiting from the worldwide turn toward green industrial strategies.
At the same time, this global context is one of the main obstacles to advancing any green industrial strategy. The structure of the world economy, dominated by Western powers and China, leaves countries in the Global South, including Morocco, with little room to pursue green industrialisation. What is often presented as an ‘opportunity’ for green industrial policy may prove illusory without a genuine break from global markets. It requires industrial policy that is sovereign, just, and genuinely green.
This vision demands concrete and actionable recommendations, as well as practical tools for engaging with ongoing social struggles and forms of popular resistance. It must link people’s immediate needs to a longer-term project of economic transformation and a just ecological transition.
1- Remarks on industrial policies in Morocco & their evolution
- Claims of a ‘return to industrial policy’ must be understood as relative rather than absolute. Industrial policies have always existed in the Global North, whereas they were systematically dismantled in much of the Global South following the neoliberal counteroffensive that began in the late 1970s. As Ernest Mandel observed as early as 1960:
When the bourgeoisie is weak, it always seeks salvation protection by the state, that is, in the hope that, through the agency of the public authorities it may succeed in benefiting from a redistribution of the national income which will reduce its risks and increase its profits. Only when the bourgeoisie is strong and full of confidence in its strength and in its power to overcome obstacles by its economic superiority alone does it freely denounce all state-interventionism and seek to cut down to the bone the state’s financial resources.[1]
This paragraph succinctly summarises the broad trajectory of capitalist development from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, marked by the rise of Britain, the United States, Germany and Japan through the twentieth century and into the early twenty-first. It encompasses the Great Depression of 1929 and the 1930s, the post–Second World War period and the Marshall Plan, attempts at autonomous development in the Global South, the neoliberal offensive beginning in the late 1970s, and finally the sequence of structural crises from 2008 to the COVID-19 crisis of 2020.
- After three decades of neoliberal free-market orthodoxy and sustained attacks on state intervention, the 2008–2009 crisis reopened space for renewed discussion about the role of the state. This debate intensified further with the acceleration of the climate crisis and the growing call for a transition toward a green economy. Once again, it became evident that capital is unwilling to take risks by investing in new and uncertain sectors, nor is it prepared to abandon existing investments tied to fossil fuels. This has renewed the demand for state intervention to assume responsibilities that private capital is unwilling to take, as Amir Lebdioui notes, ‘the role of the state is predominantly to “escort” private capital towards green investments’.[2]
The same logic applies to the bourgeoisie’s need to be protected by its own state in the face of global market competition and geopolitical rivalries. This dynamic has become particularly visible in the confrontation between the United States and China. Seeking to rebuild its industrial base and frustrated by the extensive state support underpinning Chinese industry, the United States has turned to trade warfare as a means of protecting domestic industry and encouraging reindustrialisation.
- In Morocco, the state played a central role in establishing basic industrial and infrastructure foundations in the period following political ‘independence’, largely on behalf of a domestic private sector that was reluctant to undertake long-term investments and instead favoured real estate speculation and activities offering quick and secure profits. In this context, Michel Rousset observed that during the three decades following independence, the Moroccan state effectively ‘assumed the role of industrialist, merchant, and farmer’.[3]
Once the domestic bourgeoisie had consolidated its position, it accepted the state’s withdrawal from production sectors through structural adjustment programmes and, together with foreign capital, seized a portion of the industrial infrastructure that had been built through public finance. With the introduction of new sectoral strategies from 2005 onward, this bourgeoisie has continued to benefit from infrastructure investments financed by public funds, including roads, railways, ports, airports, dams and irrigation systems. These infrastructures are largely designed to serve the needs of large corporations.
This trajectory confirms Ernest Mandel’s argument that ‘the state and state intervention in these [underdeveloped] countries are far from being hostile to capitalism, and they constitute real centres for the emergence of the bourgeoisie and the formation of capitalist enterprises, if not bourgeois families themselves’.[4]
The state (through the public sector) in Morocco played a role in generating a local bourgeoisie, but always in full compliance with its share of the international division of labour. The developments of the 1980s, however, opened up an opportunity for that nascent bourgeoisie (or rather, its larger segment) to seize that public loot
- After two decades of structural adjustment, near-complete integration into the global economy, and trade liberalisation, significant segments of the Moroccan bourgeoisie, with the exception of large capital that directly benefited from liberalisation, proved unable to meet the demands of competition, withstand globalisation, or halt deindustrialisation. In response, the state reasserted its role through so-called ‘new industrial policies’, aimed at supporting the domestic private sector and attempting to revive industrialisation by attracting foreign capital through the promotion of ‘global value chain industries’ such as the automotive, aerospace and electronics sectors. As shown earlier, these efforts largely failed, a fact acknowledged in official documents themselves. The image of a ‘modern Morocco’, widely promoted in the media and admired by tourists, amounts primarily to a façade built on massive infrastructure. This image rests heavily on easy access to international financial markets. Once this access reaches its limits, however, the debt bubble is likely to burst, sweeping away both the image and those presumed economic achievements.
- Despite Morocco’s very limited contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, the state adopted the discourse of green transition and low-carbon economy because the country is vulnerable to climate change, notably recurrent droughts and floods, and their impact on economic performance and energy insecurity. Initially, the state introduced a sustainable energy strategy in 2009, before subsequently incorporating the ‘green’ agenda into its sectoral strategies. This shift was driven primarily by environmental standards adopted by the European Union, with the objective of preserving Morocco’s export position in the European market. Given the private sector’s inability to implement these strategies, the state once again stepped in to assume this role.
- All official documents acknowledge the predominance of public investment. Yet state policy consistently seeks to deploy this public investment as a lever to stimulate the local private sector and attract foreign investors. As a result, public investment is concentrated on the development of massive infrastructure projects, financed through external debt, while deliberately avoiding investment in production sectors in order not to compete with the private sector.
- This policy orientation is largely shaped by international financial institutions and the European Union. As a result, despite the state’s frequent invocation of ‘economic sovereignty’ in its official discourse, decision-making power remains concentrated in the hands of major international donors. What the state effectively does, alongside large domestic capital, is to ride the waves of change in the global economy and attempt to benefit from tensions between its major poles, particularly between the West and China. This context explains the recurring emphasis on ‘seizing opportunities’ and ‘diversifying strategic partners’ in official narratives.
- One of the major obstacles to industrialisation is Morocco’s structural dependence on the major capitalist centres. These centres have no interest in supporting an industrialisation process that would allow the country to break free from the shackles of the international division of labour, which assigns Morocco the role of a supplier of raw materials and cheap, skilled labour, or, at best, a subcontracting platform for industrial activities such as automobile assembly.
- A second obstacle is political and social in nature. Years of economic and trade liberalisation have destroyed significant segments of Morocco’s production fabric, notably the textile industry, once the country’s largest employer. They have also contributed to the near disappearance of small-scale, food-producing agriculture, while promoting large-scale agribusiness and export-oriented agri-food industries. These liberalisation policies have empowered a segment of capitalists who prefer to act as intermediaries between multinational firms and the domestic market. This group of importers[5] (see Akesbi, The Moroccan Economy under a Glass Ceiling) and distributors favours earning commissions from marketing imported goods rather than engaging in local manufacturing. Alongside them stands a powerful bloc of large capital owned by the royal family, notably through the Al Mada holding group, as well as public enterprises such as the OCP Group, which are effectively managed by the ruling monarchy as private property.
- This configuration has generated frustration among liberal intellectuals and political parties representing segments of the capitalist class, as they found themselves excluded from major opportunities for accumulation, which are monopolised by the monarchy and the large capital aligned with it. In Morocco, the monarchy is not merely a governing institution but the country’s largest capitalist investor. Through its holding company Al Mada, it controls key sectors of the economy, including roughly two-thirds of the banking sector via Attijariwafa Bank, and maintains a strong presence in financial markets across several African countries. In the mining sector, Managem, a subsidiary of Al Mada, holds a dominant position in the production and marketing of cobalt. In the energy sector, the royal group controls Nareva. In addition, the OCP Group, while formally a public enterprise, is effectively managed by the monarchy as private property. These royal enterprises enter into partnerships with foreign capital, securing their share of investment while benefiting from politically backed economic monopolies.
- According to liberal economic intellectuals, the monarchy constitutes a major obstacle to Morocco’s economic development and industrialisation. However, this line of opposition largely reproduces the long-standing demands of the traditional bourgeois opposition, notably the Socialist Union of Popular Forces, which shamefully capitulated to Hassan II in the late 1990s. These demands revolve around the idea that political reform is a prerequisite for any meaningful economic reform capable of producing a market economy governed by the rule of law and fair competition. Such claims overlap with criticisms advanced by international financial institutions, which argue that large economic monopolies are shielded from competition, thereby excluding other segments of capital.
- This opposition, led by liberal intellectuals and economists, ultimately runs up against the inability of the bourgeoisie whose aspirations they articulate to confront the monarchy and the segments of large capital it represents. As Akesbi has noted, this ‘bourgeoisie’ is more likely to adapt to the existing order and to find ‘institutional arrangements that allow it to continue thriving within the current system’. In doing so, it embraces a slogan imposed by Hassan II in the 1960s, aptly reformulated by Akesbi as: ‘maximum privileges and minimum risks… yes, we agree not to engage in politics, but we will engage in money and business!’[6]
The bourgeoisie is therefore never an ally of democracy. Democracy implies popular control over the conditions of social reproduction in all its dimensions, a principle fundamentally at odds with the constant capitalist drive for accumulation, which pushes toward the extreme exploitation of labour and the depletion of nature. In an autocratic state such as Morocco, the political monarch functions merely as the crowned head of social monarchs, namely capitalists with their private property. Here, what Marx described as the ‘dull compulsion of economic relations’ exerted by capitalists combines with the overt coercion of the state and its apparatuses to discipline society. The so-called ‘invisible hand of the market’ thus consistently requires the ‘iron heel’ of the bourgeois state for capitalist accumulation to proceed smoothly.[7]
- This points to the structural incapacity of the Moroccan capitalist class to lead a genuine process of industrialisation. On the one hand, it is unable or unwilling to invest in sectors from which it is excluded by its assigned position within the international division of labour, and therefore avoids any direct competition with foreign capital. On the other hand, it is driven by a twofold fear: first, of confronting the political system and the monarchy; and second, of the working class and its allies. This combination pushes the bourgeoisie into the embrace of the monarchy, relying on the state apparatus to protect its interests through the direct repression of working-class struggles, the enactment of laws that intensify exploitation in both the private sector (through labour codes promoting flexibility) and the public sector (by rolling back gains in public employment), and the restriction of resistance through legal instruments such as Article 288 of the Penal Code and strike legislation. At the same time, this bourgeoisie seeks concessions from the monarchy, through its unions and certain political parties, in order to increase its profits and secure its share of the wealth produced.
- All official literature on green policies and industrialisation opens with the formula ‘Under the High Patronage of His Majesty the King’, as if the political will of the head of state were sufficient to achieve the stated objectives. Yet industrialisation, and even more so green industrialisation, cannot be reduced to the voluntarism of rulers. It is shaped by factors largely independent of political will: the size of the economic surplus, the inherited industrial base, external indebtedness, structural dependency, the weight of foreign capital, the size of the domestic market, and the level of technological development, among others. Even the strongest royal will cannot alter these conditions, precisely because the monarchy and the segments of large capital governing in its name benefit from the existing configuration. Transforming it would require a different class force altogether, one that would have to be actively built.
In fact, industrialisation appears to rank low among the priorities of the Moroccan monarchy. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the monarchy itself constitutes one of the main obstacles to the country’s economic development. As Akesbi has argued, ‘the political system lies at the heart of the country’s stalled development… a political system that objectively hinders economic development’.[8] The monarchy’s primary concern lies in consolidating its position as a strategic ally of Western powers, notably the United States and the European Union, as well as the genocidal, settler-colonial entity of Israel. In this context, it seeks strategic rents rather than the development of a robust industrial infrastructure for the country.
- With regard to the new industrial policies that are the focus of this study, their capacity for implementation appears to collide, first and foremost, with the classic constraint of development: dependence on imperial centres. As Leon Trotsky once observed, ‘the civilised block the path of those who seek to become civilised’. Ilias Alami has articulated this constraint particularly effectively by drawing on the very language of international financial institutions: He argues: ‘Over the past four decades, the ability of [developing countries] to autonomously deploy industrial policies has been severely restricted, in a process described by Ha-Joon Chang as “kicking away the ladder” of catch-up development’.[9]
This argument is developed in Alami, Chodor, and Taggart’s paper Industrial Policy and Imperial Realignment, where they show that the practical implementation of industrial policies
remain enormously shaped by global financial and monetary hierarchies, integration into global supply chains, and geopolitical positioning … The policy tools and instruments primarily mobilised by advanced and less-developed economies also differ significantly, reflecting unequal capacities for industrial policy experimentation. These differences are reflective of structural imbalances of state agency within the global economy: advanced economies operate with few restrictions, geostrategically significant emerging economies enjoy selective flexibility, while low-income countries face continued marginalisation.[10]
This description closely corresponds to Morocco’s situation, particularly given its limited access to key instruments required for effective industrial policy implementation, notably financing and technology, as discussed earlier.
- The same situation applies to green industrial policies and stated ambitions for a green and low-carbon economy. As has long been the case, the Moroccan state, and by extension, domestic capital, continues to rely on foreign financing (climate finance) and on the inflow of foreign investment to establish industrial infrastructure and facilitate technology transfer. Yet these aspirations face clear limits. Global developments increasingly render them illusory, especially in the context of the rise of the far right and climate-denying neo-fascist currents, symbolised by Donald Trump and his slogan ‘Drill, baby, drill!’, which dismisses global warming as a hoax and led to the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement.
- Without political and social change, it is impossible to break the vicious cycle in which the Moroccan economy has been trapped since the end of colonial rule and the attainment of political independence in 1956. Liberal economists critical of the regime often point to the political weight of the monarchy as a major obstacle to development, including industrialisation. In a particularly radical expression of this view, Prince Hicham, a sidelined member of the royal family and cousin of the king, has stated that even if he were forced to live under a republican system, he would not favour it, while expressing his preference for a monarchy that restructures itself on new foundations, foremost among them the separation of the monarchy from the economy.[11]
However, the question of social and political transformation is no longer posed by economic or bourgeois elites, who remain satisfied with the crumbs they are thrown from foreign capital and from large domestic capital under royal leadership. This task instead falls to other social forces, the ’wretched of the earth’, to borrow Fanon’s expression: the working class and its allies among small producers in both the city and the countryside. The working class will not merely raise the question of industrialisation, but also the question of the social system within which such industrialisation should take place. This may appear far-fetched in a context marked by the crisis of the labour movement, the fragmentation of the left, and the disintegration of the trade union movement. Yet all major historical projects have appeared similarly unattainable in moments of profound crisis. As Hauge and Jason Hickel remind us, Nelson Mandela had a similar position about the anti-apartheid movement, which was similarly deemed unrealistic: ‘It always seems impossible until it is done’.[12]
- Challenging neoliberalism and reaffirming the role of the state are not sufficient. The crisis runs far deeper, rooted in the capitalist mode of production itself. Simply greenwashing capitalism will not halt the destructive dynamics of capitalist accumulation. More than three decades after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, fossil fuels still overwhelmingly dominate the global energy mix, accounting for 64% in 2025.[13]
Most recommendations issued by international institutions continue to focus on ‘global economic recovery’, as promoted by the World Bank and the IMF, or on ‘catching up’, as framed by UNCTAD, narratives that are subsequently translated into Arabic-speaking local policy discourse. Yet the model of capitalist accumulation lies at the heart of global warming and the broader environmental crisis. A genuine green transition cannot be imagined within the confines of this same accumulation regime.
As Hauge and Hickel argue, investment decisions are ultimately governed by capital, which flows toward what is most profitable rather than what is most socially necessary. This logic explains the massive investments directed toward fossil fuels, SUVs, and fast fashion, all of which generate high profits, alongside the persistent underinvestment in renewable energy, public transport systems, and building insulation.[14]
- By contrast, the labour movement, including trade unions and the left, has developed concepts such as ecosocialism[15]andjust degrowth, aimed at reducing environmental pressures without sacrificing the poor.[16] These perspectives call for a radical reduction in global final energy consumption, which implies less production and less transport at the global level, while simultaneously increasing energy use in the poorest countries to meet basic social needs. This approach requires democratic ecological planning that empowers people to collectively redefine key social choices related to production. As citizens and consumers, they would decide what should be produced, how it should be produced, which services should be provided, and what socially acceptable limits should apply to the use of material resources such as water, energy, transport and land.
- Such a perspective presupposes a break with the existing model of production and consumption, rather than its reform or superficial greenwashing. This rupture lies at the core of proposals advanced by Moroccan civil society, notably in the White Paper published by the Moroccan Alliance for Climate and Sustainable Development, which states that achieving the 1.5°C target will require ‘rapid’ and ‘unprecedented’ structural transformations in national economies and in human patterns of production and consumption.[17] Similar positions are also articulated in the literature of ATTAC Morocco.
2. Recommendations for People-and Nature-centred Development: Sovereign, ecological, and just industrial policies
There is a growing tendency to favour ‘concrete’ recommendations, based on the assumption that grand narratives are no longer capable of mobilising people or persuading policy-makers. This tendency is also evident within segments of Moroccan civil society. The Moroccan Alliance for Climate and Sustainable Development, for example, defines its mission as formulating proposals that are ‘accessible to political decision-makers at the central and local levels’[18]. In contrast, ATTAC Morocco follows an opposing path, emphasising grassroots education oriented toward collective action in order to build a different Morocco, as part of a global movement committed to the idea that another world is possible.
This focus on policy-oriented, concrete recommendations overlooks the fact that neoliberal ideology is itself a ‘grand narrative’, one that was imposed through deliberate political decisions by major economic powers and their financial institutions, and later adopted by economic elites in the Global South because it serves their interests. In response to claims about the ‘end of ideologies’, Fawwaz Traboulsi writes that neoliberalism is:
a fully developed ideology that offers a comprehensive worldview, presenting itself as a natural and deterministic doctrine with no alternative, in Margaret Thatcher’s famous formulation. It is, in fact, a dogma imbued with a quasi-magical quality, promising the operation of an ‘invisible hand’ that governs the market.[19]
The emphasis on concrete recommendations that do not challenge the dominant narrative also ignores the historical reality that major achievements in the Global South were accomplished within the framework of such grand narratives, most notably developmental states, as well as socialism.
Moreover, the insistence on limiting engagement to policy recommendations directed at decision-makers is itself a product of the neoliberal offensive. This offensive dismantled traditional counter-hegemonic intellectual spaces and replaced them with paid experts and consultancy firms. Issa G. Shivji describes this process as follows:
The 1990s and 2000s were marked by an intellectually insipid neoliberal interregnum in the radical debates and discourse at the University and elsewhere. As the University was starved of resources, the faculty left in droves for greener pastures, others took up consultancies on policy research driven by donor funds and still others took off the gown and went to town to start or join donor-funded NGOs and think tanks. Basic research was undermined as theoretical debates were devalued … Revolutionary standpoints and class perspectives gave way to eclectic activism as radicals jumped on agendas set by donor agencies.[20]
Our rejection of this perspective does not imply reliance on general slogans alone. On the contrary, it requires us to put forward concrete proposals that make those slogans tangible in the political consciousness of those we consider best positioned to impose a just green transition: the working people. Our approach does not seek to persuade so-called ‘stakeholders’, namely capitalists, shareholders, and the politicians who represent their interests. These actors are firmly convinced that there is no alternative to capitalism, and their material interests outweigh any rational argument. Competition among global capitalists and their respective states serves as their primary compass and carries more weight than any form of advocacy.
Moreover, the room for manoeuvre available to ‘politicians and parliamentarians’ in Morocco is virtually nonexistent. Power is entirely concentrated in the hands of a single actor: the monarchy. Parliament’s role is limited to functioning as a registration chamber for decisions taken by the monarchy and its international allies. This reality has been constitutionally entrenched since 2011. All economic decision-making is centralised in the hands of the king, who holds exclusive authority to define which companies and institutions are deemed ‘strategic’ and to appoint their directors. The Council of Ministers, chaired by the king, is empowered to determine the ‘strategic orientations of state policies’, while the Government Council is confined to managerial and procedural matters. Royal speeches carry binding legislative force, a power not granted to the government programme presented to parliament upon its formation.[21]
This does not mean, however, that parliamentary platforms should be abandoned altogether. Where left-wing representatives are present in the House of Representatives, notably from the Unified Socialist Party and the Federation of the Democratic Left, or in the House of Councillors, through workers’ representatives, these spaces can still be used to advocate for policy recommendations on the issue and to facilitate engagement with those located at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
We address those positioned at the bottom of the social hierarchy, including workers, peoples, peasants, small-scale food producers and workless people, especially women, among others, as well as the movements that emerge from below and articulate their interests. This does not deny the capacity of such movements, if they become organised and strengthened, to exert pressure on ‘stakeholders’ and politicians, as occurred during the second half of the twentieth century.
Accordingly, the purpose of these proposals is to unite the broadest possible popular forces in collective struggle around concrete demands that objectively conflict with the rules of the capitalist system. Within this approach, the defence of ecological trade unionism grounded in an anti-productivist class perspective plays a central role. This form of trade unionism draws on workers’ concrete concerns for their health and safety in the workplace, as well as their position as whistleblowers capable of alerting society to environmental harm or the dangers posed by certain forms of production. Workers are uniquely well placed to fulfill this role.
This study deliberately refrains from providing a definition of green industrial policies at this stage. Its initial aim is to survey and analyse the existing literature on these policies, and for this reason the definition is deferred to the conclusion. We draw here on the definition proposed by economist Ndongo Samba Sylla, which overlaps in certain respects with that of UNCTAD:
The primary development objective should not be to increase aggregate GDP as such (i.e., just any form of production). The objective should be to increase the specific forms of production that are necessary to improve human well-being, meet ecological objectives, and achieve national development. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an industrial policy to determine what new industries need to be started, what existing industries need to grow, and what industries are unnecessary and should be scaled down so that capacity can be diverted elsewhere.[22]
Karl Marx long ago emphasised that land and human beings are the only two sources of wealth. Over centuries, capitalism has reduced both to mere factors of production: human resources, or human capital, and natural resources, or natural capital. In doing so, it has subjected them to relentless exploitation and depletion. Historically, the only force that constrained these excesses was human resistance. Today, the limits imposed by nature and the planet itself have become an additional constraint.
Capitalism is currently responding to these crises by intensifying the repression of people through the growing rise of the far right, while simultaneously attempting to adapt to the environmental crisis it has created. This adaptation relies on the same market mechanisms and on the commodification of so-called solutions to ecological degradation. These developments are unfolding in a global context marked by escalating military conflicts, arms races, and militarisation on a global scale.
Within this context, debates around green industrial policies have re-emerged, alongside renewed efforts to address long-standing structural problems, particularly in the countries of the Global South. The central question is how industrialisation can enable these countries to move beyond economic underdevelopment, dependency, social deterioration and environmental destruction toward a model that guarantees dignified living conditions for people while preserving ‘Mother Earth’.
The concept of ‘politics’ lies at the heart of this debate. Decades of neoliberalism policies and practices have marginalised politics, displacing politicians, political parties and social organisations from a field now dominated by experts, think tanks and international financial institutions. Yet any process of industrialisation, and even more so green industrialisation, necessarily requires the restoration of politics. This entails a shift from an economy that serves the interests of the few to one that serves people and safeguards the environment for future generations.
Industrial policy refers to any form of state intervention in economic processes with the aim of directing them toward structural transformation of the economy. This may include, for example, a shift from an economy dependent on agriculture and primary commodities to one based on manufacturing and services. More recently, the concept of ‘green industrial policy’ has emerged to denote the incorporation of environmental considerations into industrial policy frameworks.
In this context, ‘industrial policy’ explicitly refers to state intervention in the economy. The molecular processes of capital are therefore not the primary focus of analysis. When individual capitalists engage in investments, they do not do so with prior consideration for ‘structural transformation’, ‘national development’, or ‘sustainable development’. Their concern is the expected return on investment, namely minimising risk while maximising rapid and secure profit.
Structural transformation, national development and sustainable development thus occur at a different level, beyond the molecular processes of capital accumulation. They unfold at the level of politics and the state, which intervenes to regulate, control and direct economic processes within an overarching plan whose objectives extend beyond the agency and calculations of individual capitalists. This has been the historical pattern in successful industrialisation experiences.
The prevailing emphasis on the role of the private sector in the development of our countries, as entrenched by neoliberal ideology over several decades, runs counter to this historical experience, including that of the advanced economies themselves. In these cases, the state and its policies, such as protectionism, played a decisive role in expanding productive capacity and achieving structural transformation.
The state should not, of course, be fetishised, idolised, or treated as possessing an inherent ability to bring about structural transformation. Such transformation requires political and social mobilisation, anchored in the working people: the working class, small-scale food producers and workless people, especially women and oppressed minorities. Experiences from Latin America provide a broad perspective on forms of popular intervention of this kind.
This leads us to defend an approach to industrial policy that is sovereign, just, and green.
Sovereign: Economic choices must be both nationally sovereign and socially grounded. All economic decisions should emerge from popular will and aim to break with old and new patterns of dependency. Neither international financial institutions nor the European Union should determine what we produce; this is a decision that must be made collectively.
Just: Industrial policies must guarantee dignified living conditions for all segments of the working people. They must also take into account the social costs that may result from decisions to phase out certain industries and invest in others. Justice, in this sense, entails incorporating the interests of local communities into the formulation of industrial policies.
Green: Environmental considerations must go beyond decarbonisation and emissions reduction. They require a break with all forms of planetary destruction, including those that do not necessarily generate greenhouse gas emissions, such as extractive mining practices.
We begin our recommendations with state industrial policy. Despite official claims of adopting ‘green growth’ programmes, the state continues to follow the same established path: an industrial policy oriented toward the needs of global markets rather than domestic markets and the needs of the population. The ‘green investment’ strategy adopted by the OCP Group, for example, conceals one of the most extensive extractive operations in the country. Its primary objective remains the expansion of global market share through the export of phosphate products or the supply of fertilisers to export-oriented capitalist agriculture.
State industrial policy, including policies labeled as green, continues to operate according to the same longstanding logic: incentivising the private sector and mobilising public finance to support private capital accumulation. There is an urgent need to restore the centrality of public industrial programmes as the foundation of a green transition. Such programmes must not shift the costs of transition onto local communities or workers, must be subject to democratic oversight, including workers’ and popular control, and must be financed through mechanisms that do not deepen the country’s dependency on imperial centres. These mechanisms include the cancellation of external debt, compensation for historical debt, both colonial and climate-related, for which imperial core countries bear responsibility, and the implementation of progressive taxation on wealth.
Second, industrial policy must genuinely respect the environment and be based on the development of environmentally friendly technologies. This requires a clear break with the export-led growth strategy, which prioritises adaptation to the European Union’s environmental regulations, such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, in order to preserve the position of Moroccan exporters in European markets, rather than reflecting a substantive commitment to environmental protection.
Third, industrial policy should aim to provide the country with an industrial structure capable of reducing dependency on major capitalist centres. Since the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, there have been repeated calls to replace export-led growth strategies with growth driven by domestic demand. UNCTAD’s 2013 report[23] offers a substantial and well-founded argument in this regard. This is not a call for nationalist isolationism. Cooperation among peoples remains a central objective. However, it also implies rejecting a model in which the populations of the southern Mediterranean bear the financial, environmental and social costs of sustaining the northern shore, a pattern that has characterised relations over previous centuries.
Fourth, the resolution of the major structural issues that shape any industrial policy, including climate change, debt, and the rules of global trade, lies at the global rather than the national level. The intermediary framework linking these scales is the Maghreb region, as discussed in Recommendation Ten. Finally, ecological socialism cannot be conceived within the confines of a single country. The national framework constitutes only a starting point for struggle, while the internationalist perspective provides both direction and purpose. In contrast to capitalism, which merely adopts a green veneer while preserving the same social and economic structures and political arrangements responsible for planetary crisis, ecological socialism is not socialism with a green label. Rather, it is a proposal for a profound transformation of our relationships, both among human societies and between humans and nature. It represents a different way of practising politics, one capable of building a new world that is dignified and livable for humans and for all other living beings.[24]
Fifth, national energy policy must prioritise supplying the domestic market with clean energy. This is urgent given that Morocco continues to rely on imported fossil fuels to meet its energy and electricity needs, while major renewable energy projects are primarily oriented toward European markets. Over the past years, the energy sector has been liberalised, allowing private importers to dominate gas and oil imports and opening the sector to private companies for the production and distribution of electricity from renewable sources. Public monopoly and nationalisation of the energy sector would make it possible to implement a green energy policy that contributes to industrialisation and reduces energy dependency.
Sixth, this concerns urban policy, city planning and transportation. A large share of Moroccan capital is invested in the massive expansion of cities, driven by the imperative of securing profits for major real estate groups. This has resulted in urban sprawl and the expansion of peripheral areas, leading to a dramatic increase in private car use. In Morocco, there are approximately 4.5 million vehicles, of which 68% are privately owned.[25] This trend has occurred in parallel with the state’s privatisation of urban transport. A green industrialisation strategy cannot succeed without a substantial expansion of public transport powered by clean energy, alongside the introduction of heavy taxation on private vehicles and high interest rates on loans for their purchase. There is no shortage of proposals in this regard. The 2021 report of the Economic, Social, and Environmental Council includes several recommendations related to public mass transport:
Promoting sustainable alternatives to private cars and internal combustion engines, including urban buses and high-quality bus services, minibuses, intercity buses, and tramway systems that are light, compact, and rapid, alongside the expansion of multimodal and interconnected transport options, as well as the development of bus terminals and shared-transport stations.[26]
However, the weight of vested interests, particularly those of automobile companies and banks that finance vehicle purchases, constitutes a major obstacle to the implementation of such measures.
Seventh, genuine food sovereignty must be pursued, rather than the version promoted in official state documents, which merely rebrands the same export-oriented capitalist model as ‘food sovereignty’. Export-oriented capitalist agriculture is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country and, at the same time, the primary driver of water and soil depletion. A decisive break with this model, and the reorientation of agriculture toward meeting the needs of the domestic market, would constitute a major contribution to the greening of the economy. Such a shift would allow efforts to green the industrial sector to be integrated with parallel transformations in agriculture, particularly in the agri-food industry.
The agrarian question lies at the core of any process of industrialisation. Industrial expansion requires a substantial and coordinated increase in the production of food and agricultural raw materials. Food output must sustain growing urban populations, while agricultural inputs are essential to industrial activity. This type of agriculture depends on adequate equipment, such as tractors, harvesters and threshers, as well as fertilisers, etc. Any industrialisation strategy should therefore prioritise these sectors, rather than opening the economy to automobile companies seeking cheap labour and infrastructure to assemble vehicles for export, along with the associated profits, to their countries of origin.
Eighth, there must be a decisive break with fiscal and financial policies that prioritise large borrowers, alongside the rejection of any external borrowing tied to debt conditionalities. This requires transforming the banking and financial sector into a public sector under the supervision of institutions subject to popular and citizen oversight. This stands in contrast to the current situation, in which the central bank is independent and not even subject to parliamentary oversight. This critique extends to both loan-based financing and what is commonly referred to as ‘official development assistance’, as both are structured around conditionalities imposed on countries of the Global South in order to access international financial markets.
As an alternative, we propose compensation for colonial and ecological debt, which would enable the recovery of wealth historically plundered by former colonial powers and which continues to be appropriated via new forms of domination. These proposals require a balance of power that exceeds current conditions, which in turn necessitates the formulation of demands around which people can be mobilised. Some of these are outlined by Éric Toussaint in his book The World Bank: A critical history, under the heading ‘recourse to legitimate borrowing and state financing through socially just taxation’, where he argues that:
- Public debt is not inherently problematic if it is designed in a manner fundamentally different from the current system. Public borrowing is entirely legitimate when it serves legitimate purposes and when those contributing to lending do so under fair and lawful conditions. Public debt can be used to finance ambitious ecological transition programmes, rather than to impose socially harmful, extractive and production-driven policies that intensify competition among nations.
- A popular government would not hesitate to require companies, whether national, foreign, or multinational, as well as wealthy households, to contribute to public lending without profit, that is, without interest and without compensation for inflation.
- Households from the popular classes that possess savings should be encouraged to entrust them to public authorities to finance legitimate projects. This voluntary financing would be remunerated at a positive real interest rate, for example 4%. This means that if annual inflation reaches 3%, public authorities would pay a nominal interest rate of 7% to ensure a real return of 4%.
- Additional measures include borrowing at zero interest from the central bank; imposing taxes on large fortunes and very high incomes; applying tax penalties to companies responsible for large-scale tax evasion; drastically reducing military expenditure; ending subsidies granted to banks and large corporations; and increasing taxes on foreign companies, particularly in the extractive sectors.[27]
This must be accompanied by a tax policy that places responsibility for the compounded crisis – economic, social, and environmental – on those who have caused it. Such a policy should be based on progressive taxation, alongside a radical reduction, or even the abolition, of value-added tax on a range of essential services, beginning with water and electricity, and a substantial increase in taxes on the income and assets of the rich.
Ninth, employment policy must be stable and account for those likely to be adversely affected by the green transition. A significant segment of the working-class fears job losses if the state phases out environmentally destructive and polluting activities. The private capitalist sector is unlikely to address this concern. A public employment policy aligned with a socially and ecologically oriented industrialisation strategy is therefore essential. Cooperation with trade unions could broaden their engagement with environmental issues, a dimension currently lacking in Morocco, while strengthening efforts to defend the creation of decent, socially useful, and better-paid jobs with improved working conditions. This should be accompanied by a substantial reduction in working hours, employment guarantees, and increases in income.
Tenth, these proposals and recommendations must incorporate a Maghreb-wide viewpoint for the green transition. The fragmentation of Maghrebi markets encourages continued dependency on both traditional capitalist centres, such as the European Union and the United States, and emerging ones, notably China. At the same time, this fragmentation prevents countries in the region from benefiting from the complementarity of their natural resources and economic capacities.
Small markets are incapable of securing a green transition on the basis of their own capacities alone. The monarchy and large Moroccan capital respond to this constraint by seeking access to the markets of Europe and the United States. This strategy, however, collides with the objectives of industrialising Morocco due to long-standing structural barriers, most notably dependency and the dominance of these centres over the mechanisms of industrialisation and green industrialisation, particularly in terms of technology and finance. This makes the Maghrebi horizon for the green transition a strategically urgent objective.
This assessment is echoed by Lebdioui, who argues:
In smaller economies where the domestic market demand is often not large enough to reach economies of scale, green economic transition requires access to another country’s larger market demand, but also multilateral coordination towards regional developmentalism.[28]
Rather than competing to attract foreign investment in a destructive ‘race to the bottom’, countries in the region could pursue cooperation with other countries of the Global South as a strategy for breaking dependency. In North Africa, for example, regional integration could build on complementary strengths. Algeria, Libya and Egypt possess substantial energy resources, while Morocco and Tunisia have phosphate reserves and significant agricultural capacity. Algeria’s oil revenues could be redirected toward regional investment to finance productive projects in Tunisia and Morocco, instead of relying on foreign loans. In return, Morocco and Tunisia could supply Algeria with food and renewable technologies, reducing Algeria’s dependence on costly imports from Europe or Russia. Morocco, as a producer of solar energy, could import solar panels from Tunisia, which has manufacturing capacity in this sector.
Such cooperation would not only contribute to building productive capacities and strengthening food sovereignty, but would also challenge the region’s dependence on foreign capital. Breaking the cycle of dependency requires reorienting economies away from serving the needs of advanced economies and toward more equitable forms of trade and shared technological development across the Global South.
Finally, democracy must come first and last. These recommendations, and the broader anti-capitalist perspective that underpins them, cannot be implemented by economic elites who benefit from the existing order. That order is sustained by an authoritarian political system that likewise derives advantage from this state of affairs. Experiences of electoral breakthroughs in Latin America offer instructive lessons in this regard. Governments backed by popular movements, particularly workers’ and peasant movements, have been able to implement social and economic programmes, despite their limitations. Yet they have not decisively broken with the centres that condemn many societies to poverty, worklessness, social misery, and environmental destruction.
These recommendations therefore require social carriers, foremost among them the labour movement and the social struggles that have spread across Morocco and the wider region for more than three decades. The aim of this article is to offer these struggles analytical tools and perspectives for collective action toward a just environmental, economic, and social transition.
We conclude with the words of the Lebanese comrade Kamil Qaysar Daghir: ‘We must dare to dream’.[29]
Ali Amouzai
- This article is adapted from the study entitled “Green Industrialisation in Morocco”. It was originally published under the title “Concluding Remarks and Recommendations“.
[1] Mandel, E. (1969). Marxist Economic Theory. Vol. 2. (Trans. Brian Pearce). New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 498–499.
[2] Lebdioui. Survival of the Greenest, p. 35.
[3] Rousset, M. (1970) L’Administration Marocaine. Paris: Institut International d’Administration Publique.
[4] Mandel. Marxist Economic Theory. Vol. 2, p. 499.
[5] For purely analytical purposes, the focus here has been placed on ‘large suppliers’. This should not be understood to mean that these actors alone govern Morocco. For a more comprehensive analysis of the composition of the ruling class in Morocco, see the work of Abdelkader Berrada and Mohamed Saïd Saadi.
Berrada, A. and Saadi, M.S. (1992). ‘Le grand capital privé marocain’. In Santucci, .J-C. (ed.) Le Maroc actuel: Une modernisation au miroir de la tradition? Aix-en-Provence: CNRS Éditions. Digitised by Almounadil-a.
https://www.almounadila.info/archives/523
[6] Akesbi. The Moroccan Economy under a Glass Ceiling.
[7] Richa, S. (1 September 2025). ‘Sixty Years After the Publication of Idriss Basri’s The Man of Authority: What has changed?’. Almounadila.
https://www.almounadila.info/archives/26031
[8] Akesbi. The Moroccan Economy under a Glass Ceiling.
[9] Alami, Chodor and Taggart, ‘Industrial Policy and Imperial Realignment’.
[10] Alami, Chodor, and Taggart. ‘Industrial Policy and Imperial Realignment’.
[11] El Alaoui, M.H. (2014). Diary of an Exiled Prince: Tomorrow Morocco. Paris: Grasset.
[12] Nelson Mandela, quoted in Hauge, J. and Hickel, J. (2025), ‘A Progressive Framework for Green Industrial Policy’. Review of International Political Economy 32(4): 880–897. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563467.2025.2506655#d1e213.
[13] ‘Fossil Fuels Would Still Dominate the Global Energy Mix in 2050, According to McKinsey’. 1 November 2025.
https://prix-carburant.eu/article/fossil-fuels-dominent-energie-mondiale-2050-mckinsey
[14] Hauge and Hickel, J. ‘A progressive framework for green industrial policy’.
[15] Fourth International. (2025) Manifesto for an Ecosocialist Revolution: Breaking with capitalist growth. 18th World Congress.
https://fourth.international/fr/congres-mondiaux/874/699
[16] Mamert, R. (23 August 2023) ‘A Degrowth That Would Not Sacrifice the Poor? Rediscovering André Gorz’. LVSL (Le Vent Se Lève).
https://lvsl.fr/une-decroissance-qui-ne-nuirait-pas-aux-pauvres/?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Newsletter_Derniers_Articles&utm_medium=email
[17] AMCDD. White Paper.
[18] AMCDD. White Paper.
[19] Traboulsi, F. (2021) ‘What is Neoliberalism?’. Bidayat Magazine, no. 20. https://bidayatmag.com/node/1283.
[20] Shivji, I.G. (2017) ‘The Concept of “Working People”’. Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy 6(1): 1–13. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2277976017721318.
[21] Amouzai, A. (27 February 2022). ‘The Moroccan February 20 Movement: Roots of failure and lessons for the future’.Almounadila. https://www.almounadila.info/archives/10717
[22] Sylla, N.S. (1 May 2024). ‘Proposals for Unilateral Decolonization and Economic Sovereignty: A blueprint’. Transnational Institute. https://www.tni.org/en/article/proposals-for-unilateral-decolonization-and-economic-sovereignty
[23] UNCTAD. Trade and Development Report 2013.
[24] ‘Ecosocialism or Extinction: defending life, building free territories and Ecosocialism from and for the Peoples. (26 November 2025). Adopted at the Second Ecosocialist Meeting, Belém, Brazil. https://www.almounadila.info/archives/26512
[25] Economic, Social and Environmental Council. (2021). Sustainable Mobility: Toward sustainable and accessible transport systems. https://www.cese.ma/media/2023/03/synthe%CC%80se-mobilite%CC%81-eng-1.pdf
[26] Economic, Social and Environmental Council. Sustainable Mobility.
[27] Toussaint. The World Bank: A critical history, pp. 25–26.
[28] Lebdioui. Survival of the Greenest, p. 60.
[29] Kamil Qaysar Dagher (28 January 2010), We Must Dream: Texts on the Politics of This World, Dar Al-Tanweer for Printing and Publishing, Beirut, Lebanon, first edition.
