مظفر نامدار

Many of the research works on Iranian history and culture, while embracing the theory of Oriental Despotism, regard despotism as a feature of Iranian society and they believe that during the history of Iran, the shadow of tyranny has always been widespread in all social areas of the Iranian community. This discourse has considered decisive role for the government and the institution of politics in Iranian history and believes that despotism in Iran has prevented the formation of civil and guilds organizations. This article tries to criticize this discourse with a descriptive-analytical approach with the library method and the study of non-Iranian writings. According to research findings the structure of the market institutions, religious institutions, social strata and tribal status in Iranian society show the Iranian despotism theory is rooted in the meta-narratives or the great theory of Oriental Despotism and Asian Production. Then this theory does not correspond to the historical facts of Iran.

In his book Wisdom and Government, Mehdi Haeri Yazdi explains his political theory about relation of government and people. The theoretical theme of Haeri’s view of delegacy of collective proprietorships can be considered as theoretic effort to establish collective proprietorships, the republic sovereinty of government, government’s people-warranted authority, delegacy on behalf of people, foundation of government’s legitimacy based on people’s opinion, and government’s being coresponsible for its people as well as paying attention to the mutual role and status of religion and politics. This theory is titled “Delegacy of collective proprietorships”. Based on his studies in the natural and historical life of humanbeings, Mehdi Haeri Yazdi has tried to portray a different view of the mutual relationship between people and government. The goal of current study is to analyze Theory of collective proprietorships based on analytical framework of political theories. Therefore, the question it poses could be phrased as “Is the theory of collective proprietorships credible with regard to the fourfold criteria of possibility of production, production strategies, means of production, and the type of production?” Using library research techniques and descriptive-analytical approach, this study has analyzed Mehdi Haeri Yazdi’s views. To this end, it is presumed that a political theory is credible when side by side with answering the questions in this study, lends itself properly to evaluation of the fourfold criterion. The findings of this study demonstarte that despite Haeri Yazdi’s sincere efforts, his theory suffers from shortcomings that are pointed out in this study. Following a review of his theory, we have tried to analyze his theory with regard to political theories. Overall, viewing Haeri’s political theories, taking into consideration his answers to the four major questions that form a political theory, its received criticism—still with regard to the fourfold criteria—his theory is analyzed.