On 12/11/06, Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Alexandre Leroi-Ponant, "Iran's New Power Balance,"
> <http://mondediplo.com/2006/12/04iran>.
in which we read:
> Ahmadinejad undertook a far-reaching reorganisation of power in the
> state apparatus. The entire political and institutional hierarchy
> has been transformed and several thousand posts have changed hands:
> even university rectors and deans were pensioned off if they were
> considered close to the reformists. Ahmadinejad, knowing that he
> was shunned by the non-ideological fringes of the government,
> attacked the technocracy. This autumn he dissolved the national
> planning organisation that allocated the budgets for the
> ministries, and transferred this role to the prefectures. These
> come under the authority of the interior ministry, a conservative
> stronghold.
This sounds a lot like going in the same direction as Dubya so far. Of
course, Dubya doesn't have anything like the same power as
Ahmadinejad. He's more accountable to republican institutions and
facing an opposition of sorts (the Dems). So he hasn't gone down this
road as far as Ahmadinejad.
Now Ahmadinejad was opposing the "reformists," who are basically
neoliberals. But the difference isn't that large: after all, Dubya's
neoliberalism is not as pure as Clinton's, since it was a larger
admixture of crony capitalism. (Perhaps cronyism has replaced
neoliberalism as its main theme.)
I don't know anything about Ahmadinejad's commitment to crony
capitalism. But there doesn't seem to be any part of the Iranian
state to counteract that tendency.
This sounds like cronyism:
> Ahmadinejad handed out huge sums of money, in US dollar contracts,
> to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pasdaran (see "The
> Pasdaran's private empires"), which had supported him. Money for
> the construction of a gas pipeline was granted to Khatam-ol-Anbiya,
> a Pasdaran company. The Pasdaran has become an economic giant,
> authorised to import goods for sale on the domestic market without
> paying duties. It has also become a major player in the oil sector.
and the results of cronyism are somewhat different than in the US:
> State largesse, which extends to a segment of its clientele,
> combined with a policy that is a licence to print money, has
> contributed to the inflation that has raised the price of
> necessities and further eroded the spending power of the poor. This
> has disillusioned a large segment of the poor as well as the urban
> lower-middle classes with limited resources who were depending on
> Ahmadinejad to improve their living conditions.
--
Jim Devine / "Because things are the way they are, things will not
stay the way they are." -- Bertolt Brecht
