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The Aridisolatic Society: A Model of Long-Term Social and Economic Development in Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Homa Katouzian
Homa Katouzian
Affiliation:
University of Kent at Canterbury
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Extract

The recent Iranian revolution has brought into light the question of the nature and significance of both the logic and the sociology of long-term social and economic development in that country. This subject is of considerable interest in its own right, but it is of even greater significance for a realistic understanding of the country's recent developments, its present situation, and its future prospects. For it was mainly the Jack of such an understanding and insight which led the vast majority of modern Iranian intellectuals and educated masses of all political and ideological persuasions to misconstrue the logic of the events since 1963, and fail to predict the form, content, and consequences of the recent revolution.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , May 1983 , pp. 259 - 281
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

Notes

1 See further, Katouzian, H., Ideology and Method in Economics (London: Macmillan, 1980; and New York: New York University Press, 1980);CrossRefGoogle Scholar“Towards the Progress of Economic Knowledge,” in Wiseman, J., ed., Beyond Positive Economics (London: Macmillan, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Bauerngesellschaften und industrialisierung—Eine Kritik des Modernismus und Pseudo-Modernismus in der Entwicklungstheorie,” in Blaschke, J., ed., Bruchstellen Industrialisierung und planung in der Dritten Welt (Frankfurt: Syndikat, 1981).Google Scholar

2 i. The term ‘politiconomic’ is used instead of ‘politico-economic’. For an explanatijōn see Katouzian; Ideology and Method in Economics, Appendix to chapter 6;Google Scholar and Katouzian, , The Political Economy of Modern Iran, London: Macmillan, and New York: New York University Press, 1981,CrossRefGoogle Scholar chapter I. ii. Recent publications on the controversy over “feudalism versus Oriental Despotism” (both in general, and as concerns the Iranian case) are already too many to cite. Abrahamian's, Ervard “Oriental Despotism: The Case of Qajar Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, (1974), pp. 3–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar is a studious piece of research but it confines its argument to the nineteenth century alone. Ashraf's, Ahmad “Historical Obstacles to the Development of Bourgeoisie in Iran” (in Cook, M. A., ed.. Studies in the Economic History of the Middle EastGoogle Scholar) takes for granted his basic view (propounded in many of his Persian publications) that Persia was a Hydraulic Society. Nomani's, Farhad extensive article, “The Origin and Development of Feudalism in Iran…,” Tahqiqat-e Eqtesadi, IX (1972), pp. 5–61Google Scholar fails to establish its case on numerous grounds, one example being its assumption that the mere fact that the surplus of agricultural output is requisitioned by some agent must be both necessary and sufficient evidence for the existence of a feudal system. Some of the Iranian writers who uphold the model of feudalism seem to have been greatly influenced by the works of some European (mainly, though not exclusively, Russian) historians of ancient Persia, such as Diakanov. According to a relatively recent account by Ernest Gellner, however, there is a growing tendency among Russian scholars to seek alternative models for the historical development of non- European societies. For example, he quotes from L. V. Danielova: Mankind faces many new problems which did not face the founders of Marxist theory and for which, naturally, one cannot seek solutions in their work.… The scale and vigour of current discussions is largely explained by the fact that for a long time, concrete research was limited by the five-term scheme (primitive society, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, communism) … this scheme… arises from, the historical experience of Europe … data drawn from the history of other continents makes clear the limitations of an approach to world history as an unilineal process … [emphasis added—H. K.] See Gellner, Ernest. “The Soviet and the Savage,” Times Literari Supplement, 10 18, 1974.Google ScholarMoore's, BarringtonSocial Origins of Dictatorship and Democract (Penguin Books, 1967)Google Scholar and Anderson's, PerryLineages of the Absolutist States (New Left Books, 1974),Google Scholar though both in their own ways useful and considerable, make an eventful mistake in describing ‘absolutism’ (especially in a comparison of Europe and Asia) in terms of degree rather than kind (this subject will be discussed further in the text below). Anderson's book also tends to put too much emphasis on the Islamic ideology as a cause of Middle Eastern (including Persian) despotism. which both leaves the preIslamic situation unexplained and (thus) tends to confuse causes with effects. The latter confusion is. in a different way, also apparent in Rodinson's, MaximeIslam and Capitalism (Allen Lane, 1974).Google Scholar Rodinson is right in saying that, by themselves, Islamic doctrines could not have created affective barriers against the rise of capitalism in Muslim countries (in this respect, a case of serious confusion is the incorrect identification of the concept of ribā. or ‘usury.’ with modern interest on credit; see. Katouzian, H.. “Ribā and Interest in an Islamic Political Economy,” Peuples Mediterraneen, 03 1981).Google Scholar But he does not explain the obstacles (and their social origins) to such developments, almost as if—regardless of the role of Islam—such obstacles did not in fact exist. The main reason for this important omission, and its implications, it the fact that Rodinson seems to regard ‘capitalism’ merely as a system in which financial capital is privatety owned and used in trade: the conditions for the long-term accumulation of such capital and (partly as a result) their conversion into fixed (physical) capitalist assets, at once encouraging and incorporating technical progress, and the consequent organisation of manufacturing production on the basis of wage-contracts and minute specialisation—they all seem to be excluded by Rodinson's use of the term (rather than the concept of) capitalism. The rejection by Hindess, B. and Hurst, P. in Pre-capitalist Modes of Production (Routledge. 1975)Google Scholar chapter 7, of the model (or models) of ‘The Asiatic Mode of Production’ because, they say. it is ‘conceptually incorrect,’ is methodologically strange, even though in their later Autocritique, Mode of Production and Social Formation) (Macmillan, 1977), they somewhat modify their previous position. But, in any case, the rejection of a model is no proof for the unique and universal applicability of another, namely the model of feudalism.Google Scholar

3 Consider. for example. Adam Smith's attack on the laws of primogeniture and entail (see The Wealth of Nations. Book III, especially Chapter 2).Google Scholar On the liberal and other European concepts of freedom see Berlin, Isaiah. The Two concepts. of Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1966).Google Scholar

4 Some authors have tended to confuse the institution of domestic slavery with a slave-based system of political economy. For example, in his History of the Medes (Persian translation. 1966) Diakanov speaks of a ‘semi-patrimonial, semi-slavery’ system, and refers to the use of domestic slaves as corvee labour, as part of the evidence for this classification. And, following his lead, an Iranian sociologist drops all distinction between functional slaves, domestic slaves, and serfs as well as workers who (in his own words) engaged in “the advance sale of their labour to landlords or feudals.… See, Ensāfpur, G., A History of the Economic Life of Peasants and Social Classes of Iran (1971), especially pp. 159 and 236 (in Persian). There is, in fact, no evidence of a stage of functional slavery in Iranian history, which must be explained by exactly the same reasons (given below in the text) why a feudal political economy never emerged in that region. But even if there had existed such a stage in Iranian history, then there must have been a cut-off period (that no one has ever identified) in which some powerful socioeconomic forces resulted in a fairly rapid tranformation of the slave economy into a feudal system.Google Scholar

5 With the major exception of the Safavīd period, although even in this case the religious leadership lacked homogeneity and was not an organised instrument of the state. See further Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran, Chapter 4, especially pp. 61–62 and 70.Google Scholar

6 The evidence for this—from histories, chronicles, memoirs. etc—can truly fill volumes. For a single but significant example. consider Baihaqī's report as a witness (in his great Tārkīh-i Mas'ūdī) that immediately after the honourable death in office of BūnaSr-i Mushgān. the highly respected Master Secretary (Sāhib-i Dīvān-i Risālat) with more than thirty years of state service behind him. the state registrars were sent into his house in order to register and account for his entire wealth and transfer it to the king-emperor's personal treasury. It is all the more remarkable that although Baihaqī himself had been both a subordinate and a great personal admirer of Būnasr, he describes this event purely as a matter of routine. There are many more examples in the same source, which dates back to the eleventh century A.D. As a matter of interest, the king-emperor in question was the grandson of a Trukish (military) slave who was the effective founder of the Ghaznavīd empire.Google Scholar

7 For example, Ashraf, “Historical Obstacles,” who puts a great deal of emphasis on the role of the Iranian guilds (asnāf).Google Scholar

8 See Macpherson's, C. B. “A Political Theory of Property,” in his Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (Oxford. 1973) on this simple, important, but long-neglected distinction in the social and legal conceptions of property between feudalism and capitalism. This distinction can be found in Book III of Smith's Wealth of Nations.Google Scholar

9 Here is a list of the most well-known histories, chronicles, memoirs, etc., which contain a great deal of both direct and indirect, explicit and implicit evidence for the nature of state power; the relationship between the state and the people; the state ownership and control of landed property; the insecurity of life, limb, possessions, and property at all levels of the society; the high degree of (both upward and downward) social mobility; the concept of sociopolitical justice as mere expediency, and moral justice as equality before lawlessness; the modes of the rise and fall of dynasties and great empires (of which more below in the text), etc., etc., at various stages of Iranian history: Baihaqī's Tārīkh-i Mas'ūdī 'Arūzī's Chār Maqāleh, lbn-i Balkhī's Fārsnāmēh, Kaikāvūs ibn Iskandar's Qāhāsnāmeh. Nizām al-Mulk's Sīyāsatnāmeh. NāSir Khusraw's Safarnāmeh, Juvainī's Tārīkh-ī Jahāngushā. Rashīd al-Dī's Jāmi' al-Tavārīkh. Hamdullah Mustawfī's Tārīkh-i Guzīdeh, Iskandar Munshī's 'Āam Ārāy-i 'Abbāsī, Astrābādī's Durreh-yi Nādirī, Lisān al-Mulk's Nāsikh al- Tavārīkh. 'Abbās Mīrza Mulk-Ārā's Khātirāt, 'Abdullah Mustawfī's Sharh-i Zindigānī-yi Man, Dawlat Ābādī's Hayāt-i Yahyā, Khājeh-Nūrī's Bāzīgarān-i 'ASr.i Talā'ī, Makkī's Tārīkh-i Bīst Sāleh-yi Irān. As for poetry and prose literature, there would be many of them even in a sample of the best and most relevant. Here is the list of a few: Firdawsī's Shāhnāmeh. Sa'dī's Gulistān. Būstān and QaSa'id. Mulavī Rūmī's Mathnavī; Sanā'ī's Hadīqa; 'Ubaid Zākāni's Kullyāt (collected works): Nizāmī's Khamseh (but perhaps especially Khusraw-Shīrīn and Iskandarnāmeh); Anvarī's Dīvān; Jāmī's Bahāristān. Nigāristān and Subhat-al ibrār, Sā'ib's Dīvān, Sabā's Nasīhatnāmeh and Qasā'id, Qā'im-Maqām's Munsha'āt. Qā'ānī's Dīvān. Bahār's Dīvān.

10 Wittfogel, K. A.. Oriental Despotism. A Comparative Study of Total Power (Yale University Press. 1957). Cf. Moore, Social Origins and Anderson. Lineages.Google Scholar

11 For the various aspects and elements of this system. see further Lambton, A. K. S.. Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London: Oxford University Press. 1953);Google Scholar see also this author's “Land Reform in Iran…” Journal of Peasant Studies (04,1978). pp. 347–69.Google Scholar and The Agrarian Question in Iran, ILO working paper, May 1981.Google Scholar

12 For example by some later Sassanid king-emperors on the Eupharates (for the control of water)—a practice which must have been inherited from the earlier semitic civilisations of Mesopotamia, whose ecology is in any case very different from most of the greater Iranian region. There is also evidence of such a dam (the Band-i Anīr) in the Fars province (apparently) constructed by the (eleventh century) Būyid king, Fanā Khuraw (entitled Azad al-Dawleh).Google Scholar

13 See further Katouzian. The Political Economy, chapter 4.Google Scholar

14 This does not mean that there was no economic growth in that period, or that the landlords and merchants did not benefit from it. It is their economic and political losses to the state which we have in mind, regardless of other developments.Google Scholar

15 See further, the references cited in note 11 above; Lambton, A. K. S., The Persian Land Reform (London: Oxford University Press, 1970);Google Scholar and Katouzian The Political Economy, chapters 11 and 15.Google Scholar

16 Lambton, A. K. S., “On the Position of the Marja 'al Taqtīd,” Studiia Islamica, 1964.Google Scholar

17 The reference is mainly to the leadership and higher echelons of the Second National Front (1961–1964) and the Tūdeh Party, as well as large numbers of politically aware but inactive educated urban people. It excludes the Freedom Movement (led by Mehdi Bazargan) and the Socialist League (led by Khalil Maleki) both of which supported the uprising and participated in it, although their interpretations of the situation and events were very different in method as well as substance. The rank-and-file of the National Front—especially the bāzār and university students—were also active in the movement.Google Scholar

18 See further the references cited in notes 11 and 15 above as well as Kazemi, Farhad, Poverty and Revolution in Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

19 See Katouzian, H., Pishdad, A., and Rassa, M., Nāmeh-yi Sar-gushādeh beh hameh-yi Nīrūhā-yi Mellī Mazhabī va Muteraqqī-yi Iran (Bremen, 11 1980).Google Scholar

20 See Katouzian, H. and Pishdad, A., Mellī Kīst va Nehzat-i Mellī Chīst (Bremen, 01 1981).Google Scholar