After Hafiz al-Asad's seizure of power, Makhous established the Democratic Socialist Arab Ba'ath Party.

[2] His father was a religious shaykh who also worked as a landless cultivator, although he eventually came to own 100 dunams of agricultural land.

He served as the arbiter of local disputes and founded a large charitable organization in the Syrian coastal region called "al-Jam'iyyah al-Khayriyyah".

It grew to set up a presence in some seventy villages and established one of the first co-ed secondary school in the area.

[3] From a young age, Makhūs worked with his father's association, frequently traveling throughout Latakia's hinterland where he became intimately aware of the peasantry's hardships.