Fariborz Raisdana

Fariborz Raisdana (. 19 January 1945 – 16 March 2020) was an Iranian economist, socialist, activist, professor, and a member of the Iranian Writers' Association (Persian: کانون نویسندگان ایران). He was the author of numerous articles and books, including Applied Development Economics; Money and Inflation; Political Economy of Development, and Globalization.

Early life Raisdana was born in Tehran on 19 January 1945. His father, Haji Khan, was a Lab Doctor in Tehran and was originally from Ebrahimabad (Buin Zahra) and as such Fariborz would spend most of the summers during his early years in Ebrahimabad. He would later attend Molavi Elementary and Hakim Nezami High School in Tehran. Being the child of a "Khan" and his easy and happy upbringing in Tehran and even in his ancestral village of Ebrahimabad as opposed to the widespread poverty and hardship in Imperial Iran was the primary reason he became interested in topics of social injustice.

Raisdana died on 16 March 2020 because of COVID-19 complications in Tehran Pars hospital after spending six days in the hospital. He was buried in his birthplace, Ebrahimabad.

Political and economic views A left-wing economist opposed to neoliberalism, Raisdana was a consistent critic of both Western imperialism and the Islamic Republic.

Opposition to imperialism and war Raisdana regarded American imperialism as inherently aggressive and argued that its harm to Iranian society was not new, saying that "American imperialism has been tormenting this society ever since the 28 Mordad coup against Mosaddegh".

He considered the 2003 American invasion of Iraq a clear example of this aggression. Speaking of George W. Bush, he said that Bush "killed two million people (including 500,000 children) there, on the pretext that they were building an atomic bomb", and that Bush "entered Iraq on a lie, saying they have an atomic bomb ... the very same things they now say about Iran". He also held that opposition to imperialism must not come at the expense of democracy, criticizing part of the left for having "made their great historic blunder—that merely because these [regimes] are anti-imperialist, they sat and watched as democracy burned in the fire of fanaticism and power".