A Capitalist Economy without Robust Capitalist Production

Abstract

In answering the motivating question of this roundtable—How, if at all, has capitalism as an analytical category figured in your work?—I separate my approach from two opposed but equally extreme camps of left-leaning scholars working on postrevolutionary Iran. The first camp underestimates the actuality of capitalism in Iran. It takes as its frame of reference neoliberal capitalism in the context of the Global North and contrasts it to an Iranian political economy lacking both the hallmarks of political liberalism and a robust economy to extrapolate that postrevolutionary Iran is not truly capitalist, without explaining why classic capitalistic class relations are continuously reproduced there. By contrast, the second camp overestimates the reality of capitalism in Iran, claiming that all aspects of collective social and political life are, in fact, now essentially capitalistic. This perspective rejects the relative autonomy of the state, culture, and other aspects of social life and the necessity for historical explanation of social and political complexities. Instead, it considers postrevolutionary Iran a purely capitalistic formation and explains its economy and politics through the logic of capital alone, without acknowledging the real weaknesses of capitalist production found there.