ABSTRACT
The centuries-old cropsharing mode of production rapidly evolved in the course of a decade into a far more capitalist agriculture, whose impact on land tenure arrangements, rural class structure, and agricultural performance was dramatic, and for the most part, decidedly negative. Iran's tribal sector meanwhile continued to shrink in viability throughout the late shah's reign, the victim of conscious state policies and demographic and political trends generally. The state forged by Muhammad Reza Pahlavi between 1953 and 1978 clearly adhered to the method of repression, seeking to impose a second compression of social forces upon Iranian society as his father had done between 1925 and 1941. The extent to which the capitalist mode of production had become preponderant by 1977 is seen by the total of 76.8 percent in the agricultural and urban capitalist sectors, versus 23.2 percent in the older pastoral nomadic and petty-commodity modes.
