Theoretical analysis of land exploitation systems with an emphasis on pastures

Production methods in any communities make the foundation and structure of social organizations of that the community. This issue is so important that thinkers such as Marx and advocates of Marxist theories consider the economic factors, namely the production forces and production relations, as the historical evolution motivator of human societies. In Iran, particularly under the influence of Marxism theories, social formations at different historical periods have been investigated and categorized. These categories include feudalism, Asian mode of production, peasants’ mode of production, the capitalist mode of production and a mixture of production methods. Some researchers believe that Iran has a feudalism system and its political economy should be investigated in the light of feudalism and public laws relating to the feudalism development as well as contradictions that bring about the emersion of capitalism from feudalism. Another group of researchers who are mainly influenced by Marxist theories, with an emphasis on Marx's views about the Asian mode of production, evaluate Iran’s history in the form of this model. These researchers believe in Vitfogel theory about Asian mode of production, as it stated in "Oriental despotism" book, based on which Asian societies have passed a special evolution path, and hence, are different from European feudalism. According to this view, all Asian societies are the same regardless of cultural, climatic and geographical diversity. However, some researchers have had enough knowledge about structural differences between feudalism West and pre-capitalist Iran. They state that the main differences between western feudalism and production modes in Iran are the existence of large cities, monetary economics, habitation of Iranian kings and Arbab in cities, lack of hereditary aristocracy and lack of rural-urban conflict, lack of Manorial System and Serfdom system, and presence of concentrated irrigation systems under government management and control of social structures by government. Some researchers, emphasizing the specific formulations of Iran society, have considered a KhanKhani or Molook-u-Tavayefi system for Iran. Exploitation systems of the pastures that were mostly landowning systems are mainly related to the period of land reform and Pahlavi quasi-modern government and these systems have changed drastically. These changes are observable in pasture management field and nomadic people social structure.