ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, LAND REFORM AND IMPORTS SUBSTITUTION: THE CASE OF IRAN (MARXISM, ECONOMETRICS, INTERNATIONAL TRADE, DEPENDENCE)
Abstract
The transition of pre-capitalist economies into capitalism and the strategy of development pursued by these economies has been the subject of interest for many years. Capitalist development and industrialization presupposes the transformation of the labor force into mobile and free wage laborers. It also required conditions that facilitate and enhance the social mobility of capital into various sectors and branches of the economy. The basic assumptions of the neo-classical models, e.g., the free mobility of factors of production, are therefore irrelevant for the analysis of the pre-capitalist economies that are marked by extreme immobility in labor and capital. This is a study of the development path that was undertaken by the Iranian policy-makers to transform the society from a pre-capitalist agricultural economy to an industrialized capitalist economy. We argued that the existence of definite institutional factors that had retarded the social mobility of labor and capital were the basic obstacles to the development of capitalism in Iran. Iran pursued a land reform and an import-substitution program (ISI) to achieve industrialization and capitalist development. Our investigation of the Iranian economy indicated the inability of ISI to mobilize the social capital and generate strong linkages among different sectors of the economy. Although the land reform program created a socially mobile labor force, this was not matched by a corresponding mobility in capital. The lack of capital mobility has maintained and preserved the pre-capitalist institutions of the Iranian economy to a large extent and has retarded its dynamic development.
Subject Area
Economics
Recommended Citation
YAGHMAIAN, BEHZAD, "ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, LAND REFORM AND IMPORTS SUBSTITUTION: THE CASE OF IRAN (MARXISM, ECONOMETRICS, INTERNATIONAL TRADE, DEPENDENCE)" (1985). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI8521425.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI8521425
