Asset Monetization and the Intensification of the Social Metabolism Rift: Examining Evidence from the Crisis of Labor and Nature Relations in Iran's Political Economy of the 2010s

Authors

Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

10.22059/jisr.2025.391910.1598

Abstract

Asset Monetization signifies a qualitative shift toward a more intricate phase of capitalist development within Iran’s political economy. The mid-2010s were the era during which this process emerged, during which the repercussions of uneven development—particularly the crisis of production relations—became most apparent. The issue of industrial stagnation and the accumulated problems of uneven development were attributed to the suspension of public assets in the formulation of the policy. This narrative was shaped by a coalition of political and executive actors, as well as academic circles that had become more integrated into think tanks and advisory committees. As a result, the policy was promptly integrated into development plans and transformed into an operational and legally enforceable framework.
Several years into its persistent implementation by the government, the implications of this policy warrant critical examination, particularly in terms of the material exchanges between labor and nature—both historical and artificial—within Iran’s political economy. The purpose of this study is to investigate this matter through a case study methodology, which involves the utilization of documentary research with a particular emphasis on the officially published resolutions of the Supreme Council for Asset Monetization.
The findings of this study suggest that the Asset Monetization policy has exacerbated metabolic rifts through three primary mechanisms: 1. the intensification of metabolic fractures within the system of value production, 2. the widening of the urban-rural metabolic divide, and 3. the exacerbation of regional deprivation within the national division of labor between central and peripheral areas.
The policy’s role in exacerbating the broader social metabolic fissure is underscored by these mechanisms, which raise fundamental concerns about its long-term socio-economic and environmental consequences.
Thus, the policy of asset monetization should not be understood merely as a technical program or neutral intervention, but as a moment in the historical unfolding of capital’s logic of domination over the relations between labor and nature—a logic that, through the financialization of public assets, the upward transfer of value, and the formal separation of nature from society, places material and ecological reproduction at risk of structural disruption.

Keywords

References

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