The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was one of the great democratic
events of the twentieth century. In terms of numbers alone, it was one of the
largest revolutions in contemporary history, with about 10% of the population
taking place.
It put to an end over 2500 years of monarchical rule, and promised the
establishment of a revolutionary democratic republic. But the subsequent
theocratic counterrevolution with its brutal repression, continues to mystify
many, including Iranians themselves. Much of this mystification is deliberate;
both the theocratic regime and the scions of American imperialist foreign
policy derive their legitimacy from the obfuscation of the revolution’s
origins, and the true nature of the regime in Tehran. Those overly focused on
the regime’s theocratic characteristic miss what it aims to conceal; the
brutally exploitative rule of the Iranian bourgeoisie. However, those on the
left who completely dismiss the theocratic element in favor of total class
reductionism are also missing the big picture. The Iranian bourgeoisie did not
“choose” theocracy on a whim; the establishment of the Islamist regime was the
result of Iran’s 20th century political and economic development. What
follows is an explanation of how the Iranian bourgeoisie arrived at this point,
as well as its contemporary internal divisions, and what these mean for the
future of the revolutionary left in the country.
The Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906 was one of the first
great revolutions of the twentieth century. At the time, the Iranian
bourgeoisie was weak, concentrated in the urban centers of the country, and
heavily dependent on the British Empire, which controlled Iran’s oil wealth,
and benefitted from unequal economic treaties. The majority of the country
remained under a moribund feudal rule, mired in corruption and poverty,
supporting a decadent aristocracy. During this period the first political
parties and societies were formed by the embryonic nationalist bourgeoisie,
which, taking inspiration from Europe, aimed to establish a constitutional and
democratic state, and liberation from foreign control over the economy. After
12,000 revolutionaries camped out in the gardens of the British Embassy,
Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar agreed to allow the election of a parliament. This parliament, elected
by universal male suffrage, declared itself a constituent assembly, and
promulgated a constitution. But the death of the Shah the following year led to
an attempted counter-revolution by the nobility with British and Russian
backing, culminating in the shelling of the parliament in 1908 by the Russian
army. In 1909, the revolutionaries re-took Tehran and re-established the
constitution.
This first democratic period was undermined by chronic
instability, and the weakness of the national bourgeoisie. Iran remained under
the foot of British imperialism and the collaborationist bourgeoisie. Mirza
Kuchik Khan, a veteran of the 1906 revolution, launched a new uprising in 1914
centered in Gilan Province, which aimed at a complete overthrow of the
monarchy, and the establishment of a secular and democratic republic. Backed by
the Soviets, he established in 1920 the Persian Socialist Soviet Republic. But
Khan’s refusal to enact more radical reforms led to a split between his faction
and the Persian Communist Party. Despite this, the revolutionaries were
prepared to march on Tehran and solidify their rule.
Before we move on to the rule of Reza Pahlavi, it’s important
to note here the defining weakness of these early revolutionary movements. They
were not mass revolutionary movements. As already noted, Iran was still a
predominately feudal society. The bourgeois democratic revolution remained
impossible to complete in a society with such a small and fractured
bourgeoisie. And the proletariat, the class needed for the socialist
revolution, was even more barely existent. Furthermore, Iran was a highly
decentralized state, with a stratified peasantry. Any unity on that front would
have been difficult to achieve as well.
The British, frightened by the prospect of a socialist Iran,
convinced the leader of the Persian Cossack Brigade, Reza Pahlavi, to launch a
coup d’état, force the parliament to make him Prime Minister, and crush the
rebellion. Unable to overcome its internal divisions, the Republic’s forces
were crushed.
Originally, Pahlavi had planned to establish a republic of his own, inspired by
the Turkish Republic of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. A coalition between the
Socialist Party and the Revival Party won the 1923 elections, with the
Socialist Party supporting Pahlavi’s republican program. However, the clergy and
the British convinced him to drop his plans for a republic and to crown himself
Shah instead.
The reality was that Reza Pahlavi was a political hack; the new face for the
continued rule of the comprador bourgeoisie. He had no real guiding program and
ideology aside from whatever best served his backers. The Socialist Party which
had initially supported him, moved into opposition and found itself smashed by
his newly-established police state. While not a fascist himself, he did take
some inspiration from Mussolini’s regime; aping his militarism, personality
cult, and single-party rule. Most of his rule rested on a vague program of
modernization, nationalism, and anti-clericalism. What Pahlavi did manage to
accomplish was the modernization and centralization of the Iranian state, and
with this, the emergence of the Iranian working class. But this centralization
also fueled emergent ethnic conflict, and state repression of national
minorities such as Kurds, Azeris, and Arabs intensified under the guise of
Iranian nationalism. His aggressive anti-clericalism also served to alienate
the conservative and devoutly religious peasantry, which, suffering under the
yolk of landlords and feudal remnants, found itself susceptible to nascent
religious fundamentalism. Furthermore, while the national bourgeoisie began to
increase in numbers and strength, the comprador bourgeoisie remained in
control.
During the 1930s, Pahlavi increasingly allied his regime with
Nazi Germany, and a German political and economic presence was cultivated in
the country. With the outbreak of World War II, Pahlavi remained neutral, but
continued friendly relations with Nazi Germany. The UK and the Soviet Union
looked upon this relationship with concern; at risk were Iran’s oil fields and
allied supply lines. Under the pretext of expelling German nationals from Iran,
the UK and Soviet Union invaded Iran and deposed Reza Shah. They placed on the
throne his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and ostensibly restored constitutional
democracy. The 1940s and early 1950s were marked by an increasing struggle
between the national and comprador bourgeoisie, and the rise of the communist
Tudeh Party. The conflict between the national and comprador bourgeoisie played
itself out in the electoral arena between the pro-British Prime Minister and the
independent nationalist Mohammad Mosaddegh. Around Mosaddegh convened a
coalition that would eventually become known as the National Front, the
political party of the national bourgeoisie; its inception was marked by the
unifying of the bourgeois democratic forces against ballot rigging and
electoral fraud committed by the comprador bourgeoisie.
The Tudeh, meanwhile, began to establish deep roots among urban
workers, and while it struggled to gain parliamentary representation, it was
able to effectively mobilize the working class. The Tudeh was a strong early
advocate of women’s rights, pushing for universal suffrage, increased social
rights, and paid maternity leave. Additionally, its armed wing, the Tudeh Party
Military Organization, which included military officers, struck fear into the
ruling classes, and after it attempted to assassinate Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in
1949, it was banned, and a widespread crackdown was launched against its
members. Despite its ban, the Tudeh
continued to be a powerful force within Iranian society of the era. However,
the Tudeh found itself unable to put forward a cohesive and effective program. Its
one consistent goal was for the establishment of a republic, but it vacillated
between a liberal popular front strategy, including making overtures to
religious fundamentalists, and a more militant revolutionary strategy.
In 1952, the national bourgeoisie was catapulted to power when
the National Front won a landslide victory in elections. The National Front
appointed Mosaddegh as Prime Minister, and it appeared as if a new era of
democracy and prosperity were to be ushered in. Like his contemporaries Nehru
in India, and Nasser in Egypt, Mosaddegh was a staunch nationalist, who favored
a strong social democratic economy, secularism, and anti-imperialism. His
defining policy, and the one that ultimately drove him into direct
confrontation with the forces of imperialism was his nationalization of Iran’s
oil industry. Unlike these other rising nationalists throughout the third
world, Mosaddegh was never able to secure the support of a solid base. The
comprador bourgeoisie resented him, as did much of the royal and military
establishment. Though Mosaddegh was able to convince the parliament to grant
him emergency powers to carry out land reform, curbing the power of the
monarchy, and bringing the military under the control of the elected
government, he was both unwilling and unable to go all the way and smash the comprador
bourgeoisie and the monarchy. What was needed was the
culmination of the national democratic revolution that had begun in 1906. And one
of the key players in making this happen was the Tudeh. The Tudeh, however,
never took a firm stance in support or against Mosaddegh; sometimes denouncing
him as an agent of imperialism, and at other times providing him with crucial
support. Though their armed wing had suppressed an attempted military coup
against Mosaddegh, he forcefully suppressed a TPMO demonstration demanding he
finally oust the Shah and declare a democratic republic. In response, the Tudeh
dissolved the TPMO; the next day Mosaddegh was overthrown in the British and
CIA-backed coup.
With the return to power of the Shah, the national democratic bourgeoisie and
the Tudeh were thoroughly repressed, and Iran became a vassal of the United
States, a pawn of Cold War American imperialism.
What damned Mosaddegh and the Tudeh was the inability of both
to take the decisive steps necessary to secure the completion of the democratic
revolution. The Tudeh alone was not strong enough to take power and establish socialism
in Iran, but at the same time that was not even part of its program. It adhered
to the “Stalinist” conception of two-stage revolution, and was therefore unable
to create a program that could bridge its demands for democratic reform to the
ultimate goal of socialist revolution. Additionally, it denounced Mosaddegh
when it should have thrown its full support behind him until the democratic revolution
had been fully consolidated. Mosaddegh, on the other hand, as already stated,
was too much in thrall of parliamentary procedure and the formalities of
liberal democracy. He had the mass support of the Iranian people, and significant
factions of the military; to complete the revolution, he should have used his
emergency powers to suspend the 1906 constitution, dissolve parliament, oust
the monarchy, and establish a republic. Mosaddegh, the committed democrat,
needed to become a dictator, at least temporarily, in order to defend
democracy. This he did not do. What defined this era of Iranian politics was a
lack of decisiveness on the part of the revolutionary and democratic forces; the
forces of reaction were able to seize upon this infighting and take the
decisive step their enemies were unwilling to.
The Shah’s dictatorship that followed the overthrow of
Mosaddegh was surely one of the most corrupt, incompetent, and brutally repressive
of the twentieth century. Totally dependent on the United States and the CIA,
the Shah looked down upon the Iranian people with nothing but contempt. Though
he tried to present himself as a modernist and a nationalist, the people were
not fooled. When confronted about this contradiction in 1961, he said “When
Iranians learn to behave like Swedes, I will behave like the King of Sweden.” In 1976, Amnesty
International said of the Shah’s Iran that it “highest rate of death penalties
in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which
is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights
than Iran.”
His “White Revolution”, a massive plan of modernization was a disaster; seeking
to create a new base among the peasantry by breaking the power of the old feudal
landlords, he enacted sweeping land reform. Instead of winning him support,
this land reform created a mass of impoverished peasants and landless vagabond
workers, unable to secure a livelihood for themselves. These peasants, devoutly
religious and conservative, continued to resent the attacks upon the religious
establishment and were increasingly becoming radicalized; they loathed the rule
of the corrupt and decadent comprador bourgeoisie. Lacking class consciousness,
and the ability to understand their desperate situation, these peasants continued
to be drawn to the flame of religious fundamentalism, thirsty for justice
against the secular establishment they perceived as being responsible for their
miseries.
Opposition to the Shah’s rule was diverse, ranging from the old
National Front to the liberal Islamist Freedom Party to the underground Tudeh.
But three new forces emerged in the 1960s that would be decisive players in the
coming revolution. The first were the Organization of Iranian People’s Fedai,
which launched a guerrilla war against the Shah’s regime. Led by the Marxist
revolutionary Bijan Jazani, the Fedai opposed the moribund policies of the
Tudeh, rebuking it for failing to ally with Mosaddegh, and toadying whatever
the current Moscow line was. The Fedai believed that the Iranian people had to
be stirred out of their traditional attitude of passivity, and to this end it
conducted armed attacks upon military and police targets, with the goal of rousing
the people to their feet. It was also against the Tudeh’s passive policy of
survival and reformism, openly calling for a socialist revolution and the
establishment of a workers’ democracy. The second force was the
People’s Mujahedin of Iran, led by Massoud Rajavi. Inspired by the “red Shiism”
of philosopher Ali Shariati (think an Islamic variety of liberation theology),
they preached Islamic socialism and democratic revolution. The Mujahedin allied
themselves with the Fedai, fighting alongside them in the guerrilla and
propaganda war against the regime. However, the Mujahedin soon split between
its Islamic socialist wing and its Marxist wing, which later became the Maoist
party Peykar (League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class).
The third force was that of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Contrary to apologist
accounts which present Khomeini as a democrat turned tyrant, he never hid his
theocratic ambitions. For Khomeini, the Shah’s sins were his westernization and
secularism. One of the key points of the White Revolution was that it allowed
non-Muslims to hold public office. Khomeini denounced it as an “attack on Islam”,
and openly denounced the Shah. After his arrest, riots broke out in support of
him. From exile in Paris, Khomeini continued to agitate against the Shah, but
in order to broaden his base, he made overtures to leftists and liberals.
The Iranian Revolution smashed the comprador bourgeoisie.
During and after the overthrow of the Shah, revolutionary workers’ councils
were established. It appeared as if Iran
were heading towards a situation of dual power, and socialist revolution. But
there was to be no Iranian October. Khomeini, upon his return from France,
proved himself to be a master political manipulator; his anti-imperialist and
anti-capitalist overtures won support from much of the left, including the Tudeh
and elements of the Fedai. The Mujahedin, Peykar, and the Kurdish communist
parties opposed his establishment of the Islamic Republic, but the lack of
leftist unity doomed them to defeat. Initially, Khomeini respected the norms of
liberal democracy; free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections were
held in 1980. His Islamic Republican Party won a majority, but faced a
significant parliamentary opposition. Additionally, the president, Abolhassan
Banisadr, was a veteran human rights activist and democrat, and was opposed to
Khomeini’s moves towards a more religiously conservative system. The battle
lines were drawn in preparation for an ultimate confrontation.
With the comprador modernist bourgeoisie smashed, and the
revolutionary situation in flux, the national bourgeoisie found itself unable
to directly rule on its own. If the left were not smashed, eventually it would
regroup and finish the revolution. It is for this reason that the bourgeoisie
threw in its lot with Khomeini. Any move towards a genuine democratic system
would have resulted in a victory for the forces of the revolutionary left. In
classic Bonapartist fashion, Khomeini declared himself above class interest,
claiming to represent divine rule. Khomeini was a master politician and
propagandist. The IRP made strong overtures to the workers’ movement, declaring
in propaganda posters that “Islam is the only supporter of the worker”, and organizing massive
May Day rallies. That other classic repository of reaction, the lumpenproletariat, also mobilized itself
in support of Khomeini; eager for wealth and power they formed the nucleus of
his Revolutionary Guard. The conservative peasantry finally got its revenge,
too. If the revolution was an urban affair, the counter-revolution was a rural
one. These desperate peasants, uneducated, illiterate, lacking class
consciousness, saw in Khomeini their savior who would deliver divine justice on
earth. At the height of the “revolutionary” religious fervor, Khomeini’s
supporters claimed to see his image in the moon. When Khomeini staged his coup
in 1981, ousting Banisadr, and banning all parties except for the IRP, the left
was mowed down by this coalition of reaction.
But the bourgeoisie, through its mullah interlocutors, didn’t
stop there. The invasion of Iran by Iraq served as both a rallying point and a
distraction. In order to hold on to power, the regime refused Saddam Hussein’s
initial peace offer, dragging the war out for almost the rest of the 1980s. One
of the most insidious crimes committed against the Iranian people was the
massive use by the regime of child soldiers, drawn from poor and working class
families, and tossed out onto the front lines. Kids as young as twelve, wearing
the “keys to paradise”, were sent into combat or used as minesweepers. It is
estimated that up to 100,000 child soldiers participated in the war, and their
deaths accounted for about 3% of the overall casualties. What can this be called
other than a form of class genocide? The ruling class will sink to any barbaric
low to secure its rule, including sacrificing the most vulnerable members of
society.
The degradation of women is one of the most notorious aspects
of the counter-revolution. Iranian women had played a key role in the
revolution, and the left had strongly supported women’s liberation. The ruling
class, to re-establish its control over the means of reproduction, stripped
women of their social rights, and threw them back into the home. Recently,
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei denounced gender equality as a western and Zionist
plot to undermine Islam, but let slip the true motivations behind the
repression of women; to ensure their continued role as housewives and mothers. In the eyes of the
capitalists, women are nothing more than machines for producing new workers.
The restrictions on travel, employment, and education levied upon Iranian women
come from the same place that any restrictions and repression against women
come from; to ensure their continued reproductive exploitation. The imperialist
“human rights activists” miss this point; then again, imperialism only supports
women when they can be of use to its objectives.
Islamism was also used as the pretext to continue the repression
of ethnic minorities; in particular the Kurds and the Arabs. Iranian Kurdistan
has long been one of the centers of revolutionary socialism in Iran, and was
one of the main sites of armed resistance to the Islamic Republic in the years
after the revolution. To this day, a leftist insurgency continues there. In the
case of the Arabs of Khuzestan, their repression is more economic; Khuzestan
Province is one of Iran’s biggest oil-producing regions. Yet it remains
impoverished, underdeveloped, and tribal. Paranoid about separatism, the regime
keeps the Arab workers oppressed under the triple yolk of nationalist
chauvinism, theocracy, and capitalism.
Despite the regime’s anti-capitalist and “revolutionary”
rhetoric, Iran remains a capitalist state. The Islamic Republican Party was
polarized throughout the 1980s between the “left-wing” faction of Prime
Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and the pro-capitalist free market faction of
then-President Khamenei. With the end of the war, the bourgeoisie was finally
able to cement its control by 1) the mass execution of Iranian leftists in
1988, and 2) the dissolution of the IRP, and the expulsion of the Mousavi
faction from the government. With the election of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as
President in 1989, neoliberal and free market “reforms” were introduced. These policies continued
under his successor, Mohammad Khatami. That the west sees Rafsanjani and
Khatami as “reformers” it is because of their economic policies that favored the
market and some level of foreign investment. What separates the Islamic
Republic from previous regimes, though, is that it represents the national
bourgeoisie; Iranian capitalism is a capitalism that benefits Iranian
capitalists, not imperialist capitalists. The opposition of the United States
to the Islamic Republic, and the years it spent decrying and sanctioning Iran
over its alleged nuclear weapons program is a front for the real desire of the
forces of capitalist imperialism; the regaining of supremacy over Iran’s
resources and economy that it lost in 1979.
The presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked a turning point in
the Islamic Republic, because it brought to power that section of the national
bourgeoisie that had come of age in the early years of the Islamic Republic,
and owed its success to the regime, but was also resentful of the regime. Ahmadinejad
was in frequent confrontation with the clerical leadership, and sought to
increase the powers of the elected government, especially the presidency, at
the expense of the clergy. His vice president, Esfandir Rahim Mashaei even
publicly stated that the era of Islamism in Iran was over. This section of the
national bourgeoisie that supported Ahmadinejad also promoted Iranian
nationalism over Islamism, countering the propaganda spread by the clergy that
Iran’s cultural heritage is one of Satanic decadence. But why then did the
establishment support Ahmadinejad to the point that it rigged the 2009
elections against Mousavi? After two decades in the political wilderness,
Mousavi re-emerged, and turned against the Islamic Republic he had helped to
create. His 2009 platform was a call for sweeping political and economic
reform; the restoration of full political democracy, the dissolution of the “morality
police”, the removal of discriminatory laws against women, social democratic
economic policies including strengthening the welfare state, and a thorough
revision of the constitution. Of course we should not see his newfound love of
democracy and social equality as indicative of any kind of true ideological
conversion, but rather as an expression of opportunism. But it was more than
reformist enough to scare the conservative bourgeoisie. The mass protests that
followed, which culminated in calls for an end to the Islamic Republic were the
closest Iran has come to a revolutionary scenario since 1979. That the
Ahmadinejad camp allied with its clerical rivals should not be seen as a sign
that they are somehow Islamists, but rather as an expression of the class
dynamics at play in contemporary Iran. The alliance was a temporary one to
stave off the formation of a more left-leaning government.
The election of Hassan Rouhani in 2013 marked the return of
power to the Islamic capitalist camp. With the conclusion of the nuclear deal,
and the opening of foreign investment in Iran, attacks on the Iranian working
class and leftist opposition have intensified. Minimum wage increases are no
longer being chained to inflation as mandated by Iranian law, and leftist labor organizers
are facing increased repression, including two of Iran’s most prominent labor
activists Jafar Azimzadeh and Shapour Ehsani-Rad. Teacher’s union leader Esmail
Abadi was also sentenced to six-years in prison, and several of the union’s members
have fled into exile. Under Rouhani, executions
of political prisoners continue to increase as well. Aside from American
neocons, who still froth at the mouth demanding regime change, the rest of the
western capitalist class has gone silent over Iran now that they’re free to do
business again. This only serves to show that the “concern” expressed over
human rights by imperialist states are nothing more than crocodile tears.
Finally, then, what is the future of Iran and the Iranian left?
For the former, there are two scenarios. The first is that having secured its
rule, the Iranian bourgeoisie finally consents to a democratic transition,
similar to what happened in Spain after the death of Franco. The second is
another revolution. What is inevitable is that the Islamic Republic’s days are
numbered. It has fulfilled its purpose; soon the Iranian bourgeoisie can rule
openly, without the need to hide beneath turbans. The Iranian left sadly
remains fractured. Until the mid-2000s, the Worker-communist Party of Iran
dominated the underground left, but after the death of its founder Mansoor
Hekmat in 2002, it fractured, and the resulting organizations spend almost as
much time attacking one another as they do the regime. What is desperately
needed is a united front of all of the leftist organizations and labor unions.
Such a united front would need a flexible program, able to respond to the
immediate conditions of Iranian society. In all cases, it would need to be able
to mobilize the masses, and be prepared to seize power when the opportunity
presents itself. Unlike the liberals and reformists, the left needs to unite
the struggle for socialism with the struggle against theocracy and the struggle
for democracy. The demands for political freedom, women’s liberation, minority
rights, and economic justice are inseparable. Additionally, the Iranian left
needs solidarity from the global communist movement. Fearful of aligning with
imperialism, many leftists shy away from criticism of the Islamic Republic, or
engage in bizarre apologetics. One bizarre article by Andre Vltchek even
declares Iran an “Islamic socialist” state! Iran is a country with a
rich revolutionary tradition; we must have confidence that our Iranian comrades
will be victorious in the end.
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[13] Greene, Doug Enaa. "Devotion
and Resistance: Bizhan Jazani and the Iranian Fedaii | Links International
Journal of Socialist Renewal." Links. Links International Journal
of Socialist Renewal's Vision, 30 Apr. 2015. Web. 13 July 2017.
[14] Saber, Mostafa. "The Working
Class in Iran: Some Background - Class Struggles from 1979-1989 - Mostafa
Saber." Libcom.org. N.p., 1990. Web. 13 July 2017.
[17] Dearden, Lizzie. "Iran's
Supreme Leader Claims Gender Equality Is 'Zionist Plot' Aiming to Corrupt Role
of Women in Society." The Independent. Independent Digital News and
Media, 21 Mar. 2017. Web. 13 July 2017.
[20] Ramezani, Alireza. "Raise in
Minimum Wage Not Enough for Iranian Workers." Al-Monitor. N.p., 18
Mar. 2014. Web. 14 July 2017.
[21] "Six-Year Prison Sentence
Against Teachers Union Leader Upheld After Pressure by Revolutionary
Guards." Center for Human Rights in Iran. N.p., 18 Oct. 2016. Web.
14 July 2017.
[22] Vltchek, Andre. "Iran Is
Standing!" Www.counterpunch.org. Counterpunch, 30 Mar. 2016. Web.
14 July 2017.
