On 5/17/07, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie:
>Regarding comparison of Iran and Venezuela, Hugo Chavez doesn't agree
>with you, nor would researchers who do comparative work on political
>economy (it's hard to find any other pair of countries whose assets
>are more similar to each other than Iran and Venezuela).
Hugo Chavez doesn't agree with me on what?
That Iran and Venezuela have much in common and two nations must
support each other. Venezuela, unlike Iran, has not been compelled by
external circumstances such as economic sanctions to develop its
domestic industry and agriculture so far, so Venezuela has a harder
task of having to voluntarily do so (which few oil exporters do). How
to do so is a question that leftists might be interested in if they
wanted to be of use to the Bolivarian Revolution. Venezuela doesn't
need uncritical cheer-leaders -- it could use research.
>See Greg
>Wilpert's 2005 report on Venezuela's land reform below -- many of the
>problems identified in it have not been effectively addressed. What
>Venezuela can learn from Iran includes infrastructure investment and
>support programs (ranging from education, research, credit, insurance,
>distribution of seeds, guaranteed prices, etc. -- see
><ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/meeting/010/ag355e.pdf>), without which
>land reforms are not as effective as they can be. I'm sure Chavez and
>his comrades are open to learning from other countries' experiences.
I guess that your evasion of my points on the "White Revolution" land
reform are to be expected.
The Shah's White Revolution did not bring egalitarian rural
development that the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9 has, and you would
have known that if you had read my previous posts: shorty before the
revolution, near the end of the Shah's regime, GINI indexes for both
urban and rural areas, as shown in "Figure 5: The Gini Index of
Inequality of Household Expenditures, 1971-04" on p. 27, rose to
all-time highs (Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, "Revolution and Redistribution
in Iran: Poverty and Inequality 25 Years Later," August 2006, pp. 26
and 34
<http://www.filebox.vt.edu/users/salehi/Iran_poverty_trend.pdf>),
which the revolution corrected and has held down.
<http://web.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=51187349&piPK=51189435&theSitePK=312943&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=312984&theSitePK=312943&entityID=000090341_20041207102532&searchMenuPK=312984&theSitePK=312943>
Primary Health Care and the Rural Poor in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Amir Mehryar
2004
Abstract: Rural households in Iran have traditionally been the most
disadvantaged segment of Iranian society, not only in terms of income
and political power but also in accessing basic public services,
including health. A major achievement of public policy in Iran over
the past 20 years has been the improvement of rural health and the
near elimination of health disparities between higher-income urban
populations and the rural poor. For example, in 1974 the infant
mortality rate was 120 and 62 per thousand live births for rural and
urban areas, respectively. By 2000, however, both the level and the
differential of infant mortality had declined considerably, to 30 for
rural areas and 28 for urban ones.
--
Yoshie
