The historical factors hindering the development of Iran has always been the concern of Iranian researchers. One of the most frequently applied frameworks in analysis of these historical factors is the Neo-Marxist and dependency approach. This paper attempts to evaluate the functionality of these approaches with regard to Iranian development. Neo-Marxist approach to development is in fact an attempt to rely on the classic Marxism in order to analyze the development process of Capitalism and its after effects to the developing or under-developed economies. The advantage of the dependency theory over other Neo-Marxist theories is the fact that it does not relate all factors to the world economy or countries’ position in the Capitalist system. Instead, it tries to take into account social, political and ideological constructs of each country in its analysis. In the evaluation of the dependency-approach oriented researches in Iran, the fatalistic and deterministic aspects of these analyses was criticized as they fail to fully draw the relationship between Iran and the world. Consequently, they have not been able to present a truthful picture of the social and political forces at work in Iran.      

Keywords: Neo-Marxist approaches, Dependency theory, Capitalist system, The historical factors hindering the development of Iran

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