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The Midas Touch: Black Gold, Economics and Politics in Iran Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Nikki R. Keddie
Nikki R. Keddie*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

The legendary King Midas was the first Near Eastern ruler to cherish the belief that untold mineral wealth would enable him to realize all his dreams and ambitions. But just because all he touched turned into gold, he soon discovered he could no longer eat. The moral of this legend may be coming home to various regimes in oil-rich countries, which are encountering problems of agricultural decline, overrapid rural-urban migration, inflation, increased income distribution gaps, and so forth. Nowhere have the expected achievements to result from oil income been more touted than in Iran, where the “White Revolution” (later the “Shah-People Revolution”) and the “Great Civilization” proclaimed from the throne since the early 1960s were not only to provide social and economic well-being for all, but also to put Iran among the world's top industrial powers before the end of the century (whether it was seriously going to be among the five top world powers varied from statement to statement, but this was said at one time).

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1977 , pp. 243 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1977

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References

Notes

1. A more extensive paper on which this article is largely based, “Oil, Economic Policy, and Social Change in Iran,” was written in the spring of 1977 for a conference in the fall of 1977, before oppositional movements became important in Iran. Other critical studies written before recent demonstrations are Halliday, Fred Iran, Dictatorship and Development (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1979)Google Scholar; Graham, Robert Iran: The Illusion of Power (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and Looney, R. The Economic Development of Iran (New York: Praeger, 1973).Google Scholar

2. The 1902-1953 period is treated in more detail in Keddie, “Oil…”; in Keddie, N. “The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914, and its Political Impact: An Overview,” Iranian Studies, V (Spring-Summer 1972), pp. 58-78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sampson, Anthony The Seven sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World They Shaped (New York: Bantam paperback, 1976).Google Scholar The Mosaddeq period, for which US official documents should now be available, and British documents in a few years, deserves thorough scholarly study. The best discussion now available is in Cottam, Richard W. Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964)Google Scholar, which is out of print and should be reissued in paperback.

3. This point is made in several works. The most interesting is Baldwin, G. B. Planning and Development in Iran (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1973).Google Scholar

4. Ibid., p. 196.

5. Although the analysis below of the government's rural and urban economic policies is my own, it takes many facts and some ideas from numerous other works, published and unpublished, as well as from observation and interviews in Iran. I would like to thank collectively if anonymously, as they would prefer, all who gave me important information and insights orally. Among important published general works on the economy are Looney, Economic Development, I.L.O. Employment and Income Policies for Iran (Geneva, 1973)Google Scholar; and David Housego, “Quiet Thee Now and Rest,” The Economist (August 28, 1976). The recent books by R. Graham and F. Halliday, cited in note 1, also make useful points about the economy. On agriculture see the works cited in note 7. A thus-far unpublished study on farm machinery and mechanization by Vahid Nowshirvani is also useful.

6. Some of these points have been made in various unpublished reports on Iran made by the World Bank and the I.L.O., which have limited distribution—e.g., Jiri Skolka and Michael Garzuel, “I.L.O. Working Paper” (September, 1976).

7. On agrarian trends see Lambton, A. K. S. The Persian Land Reform 1962-1966 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Keddie, Nikki R. “Capitalism, Stratification, and Social Control in Iranian Agriculture, before and after Land Reform,” in Antoun, R. and Harik, I. eds., Rural Policy and Social Change in the Middle East (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1972)Google Scholar; and Vielle, Paul La féodalité et l'Etat en Iran (Paris: Anthropos, 1975).Google Scholar Eric Hooglund has a dissertation, unfortunately unavailable through University Microfilms, on land reform that merits publication, and has written good papers and articles on agrarian subjects. Published and unpublished studies done in Persian, especially by members of the Institute of Social Studies and Research of the University of Tehran, are also important. See also the published studies in Persian by Safinezhad, Javad Boneh (Institute of Social Studies and Research, University of Tehran, 1972)Google Scholar; and Ajami, Esmail sheshdāngi (Shirazi: Pahlavi University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

8. Both the 400 to 1 figure and the quotation are in Katouzian, M. A. “Oil versus Agriculture: A Case of Dual Resource Depletion in Iran,” The Journal of Peasant Studies, V (3) (April 1978), pp. 347-369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The conclusions summarized in the quotation are from the almost completed Oxford Ph.D. dissertation of Fatemeh Etemad-Moghadam, who made field studies of small farmers, farm corporations, and agribusinesses. If she is correctlycited as showing that even labor productivity, which should mean productivity per manhour regardless of machinery used, is higher on peasant farms than in farm corporations this would be a striking and unique result. It may be that what is referred to is productivity given a certain set of tools or machines, however, and even this is important. (Katouzian's article I read only after writing the central economic draft of this article in 1977, but his analysis and conclusions are nearly all congruent with mine, and he gives more details and evidence regarding the agricultural sphere.) On agriculture see also Weinbaum, Marvin G. “Agricultural Policy and Development Politics in Iran,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Autumn, 1977), pp. 434-450.Google Scholar

9. On economic changes among a major tribe see, in the forthcoming book on social change in modern Iran, edited by Michael Bonine and Nikki Keddie, the article by Lois Beck, “Economic Transformation among Qashqa'i Nomads, 1972-1978.” The economic effects of the government's tribal and agrarian policies are discussed in Brun, T. and Dumont, R. “Imperial Pretensions and Agricultural Dependence,” MERIP Reports, No. 71 (October 1978), pp. 15-20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. M. H. Pesaran and F. Gahvary, “Growth and Income Distribution in Iran,” in press. Pesaran has done in Iran a series of outstanding studies on income distribution, as has F. Mehran; most of the latter are distributed in mimeo by the I.L.O. On income distribution see also Looney, op. cit., and his Income Distribution Policies and Economic Growth in Semiindustrialized Countries York: Praeger, 1975)Google Scholar, and I.L.O., Employment and Income….

11. On Shariati see especially the article by Mangol Bayat Philipp, “Shi'ism in Contemporary Iranian Politics: The Case of Ali Shariati,” Middle East Studies, forthcoming. Shariati, and criticisms of him by the traditional ulama, is also discissed in the Michael Fischer's unpublished “The Qum Report.”

12. Ruhollāh Khomeini, Sayyid Hokumat-e Eslāmi, n.p. (presumably Najaf), 1971.Google Scholar This book appears to be difficult to obtain now.

13. Sayyid Ruhollāh Khomeini, Nehzat-e Eslami 3: Tazādde Eslām bā Shahanshahan va rezhim-e shahanshahi, n.d., n.p. (A speech given on June 22, 1971 in Najaf directed against the Shah's big celebration stressing the 2500th anniversary of the first Persian monarchy.) On family law see his Tauzih al-Masā'il, Najaf, Chapkhāneh Ādāb, n.d.Google Scholar

14. The chief recent statement by Khomeini available in English is the “Transcript of the French Radio and Television's Interview with Ayatullah Khumayni,” given on September 21, 1978, partially printed in Le Monde, October 17, 1978, and completed by the Muslim Students’ Association of the U.S. and Canada (Solon, Ohio, 1978). In it he says religious leaders should not administer the state. In his works Khomeini often answers implied criticism by insisting the Shah does worse; thus in Hokumat-e Eslami he says the Shah's punishments are much more violent than Koranic ones, which he favors, while here regarding women he attacks the Shah and says nothing on his own program, but only that women have fought along with men recently for their freedom and independence and against the Shah.