This article reconsiders the drafting of Iran's 1979 constitution through the lens of its economic principles. Scholarship typically focuses on the power structures in the constitution including the doctrine of Velāyat-e Faqih, but rarely explains why the constitution's economic principles moved leftward between the June 1979 draft written primarily by Mehdi Bazargan and the Provisional Government and the final text approved by referendum that December. I argue that this shift is best understood in light of the revolution's broader radical economic rhetoric and the influence of Abolhassan Bani-Sadr's theory of eqtesād-e towḥidi (“monotheistic economy”). Rejecting both capitalism and Marxism, Bani-Sadr framed the economy as a means to material welfare and spiritual flourishing, and as a tool to prevent the concentration of wealth and power. Drawing on contemporaneous Persian-language newspapers, Foreign Broadcast Information Service reports, and the Assembly of Experts for the Constitution (AoE) minutes, analysed through the Cambridge School approach to intellectual history, I trace how Bani-Sadr's arguments, especially those published in Enqelāb-e Eslāmi, entered the constitution enabling the incorporation of extensive welfare guarantees. The final 1979 economic articles therefore reflect Bani-Sadr's imprint more than the comparatively conservative Islamic capitalism associated with Bazargan.
Kelly Skinner (Thu,) studied this question.