Items related to Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution

Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution - Hardcover

Moaddel, Mansoor

 
9780231078665: Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0231078668 ISBN 13: 9780231078665
Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1992

Synopsis

Thirteen years after the Shah of Iran was swept away in a tide of revolutionary fervor, the cruelty and brutality of the new regime remains shocking. In Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution, Mansoor Moaddel provides the theoretical underpinnings for a richer and clearer understanding of Iran's tumultuous recent history.
Analyzing the causes and processes of the revolution through the prisms of class, politics, and ideology, Moaddel argues that the currently dominant theories of revolution insufficiently address the requisite question of ideology: "Ideology is not simply another factor that adds an increment to the causes of revolution. Ideology is the constitutive feature of revolution."
Moaddel explains how revolutionary conditions in Iran were created by a combination of state economic policies favoring international capital - which enraged segments of the powerful bourgeoisie - and fluctuations in the world economy that financially weakened Iran. But the central element of the revolutionary crisis of the late 1970s was the development of Shi'i revolutionary discourse as the dominant ideology. As liberalism and communism declined, the potent discourse of revolutionary Islam - with its martyrdom, its religious rituals, its symbolic structures - formed a powerful conduit for popular mobilization.
Karl Marx likened the French Revolution to a gigantic broom which swept away all the "medieval rubbish." Drawing from his abundant theoretical, historical, and sociological knowledge, Moaddel illuminates the process by which the gigantic broom of the Iranian Revolution "swept all the medieval rubbish back in."

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Review

A distinctive and valuable contribution. . . . It is a comprehensive interpretation of the antecedents, underlying conditions, and development of the revolution that offers some sociological insights that will be fresh to readers.

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Publisher
Columbia University Press
Publication date
1992
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0231078668
ISBN 13 
9780231078665
Binding
Hardcover
Number of pages
346