Petrolic Despotism (1): Oil and the Political Economy

Abstract

The revolution of 1977-79 marked the end of two socio-historical cycles: the long cycle which began with the 1921 coup and led to the rise and fall of Reżā Shah’s pseudo-modernist despotism, the twelve years of interregnum and dual sovereignty (1941-53), the decade of dictatorship (1953-63), and the fifteen years of petrolic pseudo-modernist despotism; and, the short cycle which rose with the Shah’s bloody counter-revolution of 1963, reached its peak with the ‘oil-price revolution’ of 1973-4, and ended with one of the greatest revolutions in human history. The explosion was volcanic in its duration and impact precisely because it marked the end of both these cycles.