The shadow of 1917 looms over us throughout the century. ---- Forty
years ago, the Iranian Revolution overthrew the monarchy of Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, paving the way for the establishment of the
Islamic Republic. While the 1979 revolution united a number of social
groups in a rebellion against despotism and foreign domination, it did
not take long for the conflicts underlying this unity to emerge. Caught
in the grips of the Iran Hostage Crisis and the Iraq-Iran war, the
"Spring of Freedom" was soon followed by the scorching summer of
Islamist counter-revolution.
Unfortunately, there is nothing unique about a mass popular uprising
bringing an authoritarian state to power. However, the religious
character of the Iranian Revolution has made it difficult to understand
what it has in common with other stories of revolution and
counter-revolution. Seeing beyond the four decades of war in the region,
which was the direct and indirect result of US attempts to encircle the
Soviet Union and gain access to Middle Eastern oil, and the original
emancipation of the 1979 uprising, which followed a revolutionary
scenario involving mass strikes and councils largely similar to the
Russian and German revolutions at the turn of the century It is not easy
to remember the promise.
Indeed, the strength of the Iranian labor movement can be traced
directly back to the global 1917. Towards the end of the nineteenth
century, as world capitalism began to transition to a wonderful new
energy source-from coal to the more dense and transportable
oil-thousands of Iranian workers migrated to Baku, Azerbaijan, then part
of the Russian Empire, to work in the rich oil fields. started. Here
they were exposed to radical and heterodox activists of the Russian
Social Democratic Labor Party, which would soon split into Bolshevik and
Menshevik factions. A citywide general strike in Baku in 1904 laid the
groundwork for the first Russian Revolution in 1905. The repercussions
of this wave of revolution soon spread to Tehran, and the unrest forced
the Shah to approve a constitution that transferred power to the newly
formed parliament. The unrest in Iran only dissipated with the invasion
of Russian forces in 1911.
The Russian Revolution in 1917 and the civil war that followed affected
all of Eurasia, from Eastern and Central Europe to China. With the
overthrow of the Tsar, the revolution eliminated the main supporter of
the Qajars, the ruling dynasty of Iran. In 1920, amid the civil war in
Russia, the Soviets supported the short-lived Iranian Soviet Socialist
Republic, established in the Caspian Sea province of Gilan on the border
with Azerbaijan. This was largely an attempt to shore up the Russian
counter-revolutionaries' southern flanks, where they were trying to
regroup their forces. General Denikin, the leader of the reactionary
White Army, took refuge in Anzali, the port city of Gilan, with the help
of the British. The Soviet Caspian fleet eventually chased the White and
British forces and supported Mirza Kuchak Khan, a revolutionary
nationalist who led a peasant-based guerrilla army called the Jangal, or
"jungle" movement, in attacks against the British and Whites. The
Soviets established a link between the Jangal movement and the new
Communist Party of Iran, which emerged from a group in Baku. But Kuchak
Khan failed to make even minimal redistributive gestures such as land
reform, and tensions within his own party allowed the communists to
briefly seize power. However, the situation quickly changed and in 1921,
Reza Khan seized power in a military coup, declaring himself Shah and
starting the Pahlavi dynasty. Anxious to protect their borders, the
Soviets agreed to withdraw and abandoned the nascent communist movement;
this was a glimpse into the kind of opportunist realpolitik that would
become their defining characteristic.
Shoras and Dual Power
The Iranian working class thus had a longer and richer revolutionary
tradition than most of its contemporaries in the Middle East, thanks to
direct contact with the beating heart of the international communist
movement. In the official narrative of the 1979 revolution, at least in
the United States, the Iranian working class is at best in the
background of a dramatic play between personalities: the departure of
the hated Shah; the triumphant return from exile of the righteous cleric
Ayatollah Khomeini, like Lenin's arrival at the Finland Station, where
he was welcomed by hopeful crowds as a hero of the revolution. However,
behind each of these events was the coordinated working class struggle
of one of the most developed centers of workers' resistance in the
Middle East. Following the profound weakening of the economy as OPEC's
oil boom era sugar began to run out, a wave of strikes developed
throughout 1978 and into the decisive events of 1979. The pumping of
petrodollars into the economy led to inflation, a global trend in the
late 1970s, as workers saw their wages eroded by rising rents and other
cost increases. The Shah sought to scapegoat the bazaari, the
traditional class of merchants and artisans, and blamed profiteering,
corruption and waste for inflation. Bazaari had long been an obstacle to
capitalist modernizers, but they were a powerful layer that controlled
the economy through local credit systems and neighborhood trade. They
were physically located in bazaars, near mosques, and therefore had deep
familial and neighborhood ties with the clergy. The Shah's attempt to
break the influence of this stratum as part of his modernization
campaign led to widespread discontent.
So in 1978 workers joined a movement that had already mobilized many
other layers of Iranian society. Universities had been closed since the
beginning of the previous year, when anti-regime demonstrations gave way
to an old story of massacres by regime forces. The workers may have
arrived late, but their intervention was decisive. The wave of mass
strikes culminated in a general strike in November 1978, shutting down
even the oil refineries that were the cornerstone of Iran's economy.
After the refineries were stopped, the Shah was also stopped; first he
offered constitutional privileges, elections and other long-awaited
bourgeois favors, and then he left the stage altogether. His
replacement, former opposition leader Shapour Bakhtiar, was immediately
rejected by the majority of his own party, the National Front, and
instead embraced the radical cleric Khomeini. Khomeini quickly formed an
interim government, declared Bakhtiar illegitimate, and called for a
peaceful transition. But the masses were not ready to listen to these
calls for caution, even if they came from someone they had chosen as
their leader.
The fate of revolutions ultimately depends on the attitude of the army.
The Shah's control over regular Iranian Army units was shaky and
discontent was widespread. On February 9, 1979, after a group of
pro-Khomeini technicians mutinied at the main air base outside Tehran,
elite pro-Shah troops called "Immortals" attacked the base. The cracks
within the state became visible, a moment of opportunity had arrived.
The news spread throughout the city. Barricades were set up. Far-left
guerrilla groups flocked to the city to confront the shock troops.
Police stations and military barracks were invaded. A weapons factory
was raided and more than fifty thousand weapons were expropriated and
distributed to the rebels. Prisons were blown up. Government buildings
were occupied. On February 11, television and radio stations declared
the victory of the revolution.
At the center of the mobilization were working-class committees - shoras
- which evolved from the strike committees of November the previous
year. In the context of the uprising, these committees developed. Shoras
arose from the real needs of workers after the collapse of the Shah's
regime. Especially many owners and managers of state companies close to
the regime fled. Workers took over the factories and ran them through
their councils. This feast of workers' self-organization was
short-lived, however, as Khomeini and the forces within the Islamic
Republican Party (IRP) that formed around him immediately began to
undermine the power of the shoras as an independent base of
working-class action. Yet for many, this brief glimpse was enough. A new
horizon had opened for the liberation of workers. As one metalworker
quoted in an article on the subject put it: "After the revolution, the
workers realized that the country belonged to them." Workers' demands
were diverse, both specific and general, but in most cases they seemed
to fall short of calls for an end to capitalism.
The character and composition of the Shoras differed in each workplace,
and it was only after the difficult task of restarting production that
they truly became a force to be reckoned with. The dual power situation
was complex and a delicate balance existed between the provisional
government and the various forces mobilized both for and against it.
Alongside the shoras, committees (armed security groups) patrolled
neighborhoods to keep regime thugs at bay, and other councils, shora-ye
mahallat, emerged in poor neighborhoods to serve as associations of the
unemployed. Although workers' committees restarted production, the
Iranian economy was operating well below its previous level and the need
was greatest in the poorest regions.
This was a power the class was unwilling to relinquish, and rather than
a frontal assault, Khomeini pursued the Islamization of the councils,
which over time had the effect of reintroducing one-man rule and a
formal division of labor. The Shoras would no longer have a say in
production-related matters and would instead be confined to the realm of
wages.
However, this spring of the Iranian labor movement has opened up new
possibilities with which the contending factions of the Iranian left
will have to negotiate. According to one narrative, the left's strategic
mistakes lay in the failure of the communists who were instrumental in
the early development of the councils to formulate any common program
with the IRP around Khomeini. The main communist party, Tudeh, once on
the verge of seizing power in the 1950s, inherited from Stalin his
vision of national liberation as the precursor to eventual social
revolution and embraced the view that the clergy was a "progressive
bourgeoisie" that could pave the way for eventual socialism in Iran
through modernization. The Iranian New Left, a blend of Marxist-Leninist
and Third Worldist theory and new strains of radical Islam, shared with
the Stalinists a developmentalist vision with a primary emphasis on
anti-imperial struggle, a terrain easily usurped by the clergy and their
bazaari allies.
Although Tudeh members found themselves in the shoras, as a party they
advocated instead for the establishment of a national trade union
council, like the CGT in France. But newer left groups were less
hesitant about the participation of the shoras in the revolution. Among
these new left groups, Fedaiyan was the largest Marxist-Leninist
organization and played a central role in the peak stages of the
uprising in the cities. They were instrumental in establishing rural
shoras, such as the Turkmen Sahara Peasant Council, which was
established when wage workers at a large agricultural enterprise in
northeastern Iran took over the business after the owners left in early
1979. The new government attacked the peasant council and the Fedaiyan
were drawn into the conflict on the side of the peasants, forcing some
within the organization to break away from the government.
From the first days of the revolution, the mosque was the center of
neighborhood organization that was largely suppressed everywhere else.
This situation gave an advantage to those who controlled the mosque
network, namely the committees. The committees gradually became the
bases of the Khomeinist movement. The committees' revolutionary
tribunals dispensed swift justice, but as long as they executed members
of the old regime and its secret police, no one complained. But they
soon began arresting Marxists and other "counter-revolutionaries,"
forcing a minority within the Fadayan to leave the group and join
smaller left-wing groups such as the radical Islamic Mujahideen, which
opposed Khomeini's new government. But it was too little, too late - the
decisive moment of opportunity for the councils had passed.
Anti-Imperialism
All groups were united in opposition to the Shah's regime and especially
to US power over Iran. The Shah was established following the Allied
invasion of Iran during World War II and later restored to power in a
1953 coup in a brazen display of the CIA's new state-building powers.
This coup was carried out not only to undermine the nationalist
government of Mohammed Mossadegh, who nationalized the Anglo-Persian Oil
Company, but also to prevent the possibility of the Stalinist Tudeh
party seizing power.
The Shah combined the worst excesses of hated monarchical power with
crony capitalism, accepted US and British control of the Iranian oil
industry, and embarked on a process of modernization with a decidedly
American character. This meant that when the revolution occurred, it
would increasingly turn to these issues of Westernization and
geopolitical power, a backdrop from which the demands of the working
class in the councils receded. This was the basis for the alliance of
the Tudeh and Fedaiyan majority with the IRP, whose revolutionary
originality was proven by its anti-US stance. It is worth noting this
narrative today, as a new, crude anti-imperialism seeks to neatly divide
the world's nations into camps, claiming the working masses for its
crude, mechanical view of socialism.
In this context, Khomeini's March 7 statement that women should wear
Islamic dress when entering government buildings became intertwined with
questions about the Iranian economy's relationship with the West.
Coincidentally, the next day, March 8, was International Women's Day,
and many women took to the streets to demonstrate against this decision.
Women took part in all levels of the revolutionary movements of the
period, in guerrilla groups, councils and strike committees, and much of
the revolutionary organizing, especially around daily needs, took place
through women's networks. Khomeini's command to women was not a call for
them to remain passive, but a call to their strength as revolutionaries,
and described the headscarf as part of a rebellion against the Shah's
society and everything it stood for. The Tudeh and Fedayan parties were
hesitant to challenge what they considered to be a popular narrative.
They had good reason. In a referendum held in April 1979, the public
voted overwhelmingly to establish an "Islamic Republic," but the term
itself was vague and meant different things to different people. Not
everyone thought of this as clerical rule and the imposition of a strict
interpretation of Islamic Law. For some, this meant a liberal democratic
government with Islam as the guiding cultural principle. For others it
meant a radical merging of Islam and socialism.
These different visions of the role of Islam must be understood in the
context of the background of the revolution and, in particular, its
origins in the Shah's "White Revolution," a series of reforms aimed at
modernizing Iranian society and breaking the power of the clergy and
large landowners. These included plans for rapid industrialization and
land reform, as well as literacy programs, women's concessions, and a
profit-sharing scheme for workers. The Shah's plan to modernize the
country was quite successful in some respects, and by the early 1970s
Iran was in a position that would have been unimaginable two decades
earlier. The oil boom swelled the state's coffers and enabled it to
easily finance its own projects. But development never comes without
contradictions. Land reforms had caused millions of now-homeless workers
to flock to cities, especially Tehran, and swell slums.
Land reforms had radical and undesirable effects on Iranian society. The
main aim of land reform was to extend capitalist relations to the
countryside by creating title deeds to land over which peasants often
had only customary rights. But the agricultural revolution requires not
only a change in the ownership structure. New, higher-efficiency
techniques must be introduced to displace millions. Some entered the
manufacturing and industrial sector, but many more, when they could find
any work, worked in the ever-expanding construction industry, building
skyscrapers and apartments for the wealthy, or as manual laborers in the
service sector. By 1971, millions of new residents had arrived in
Tehran. Disconnected from traditional networks, many of these new
workers connected with each other through the mosque.
While some segments of society opposed the Shah's reforms-particularly
the clergy and some of the landlords who had the most to lose-Khomeini
positioned himself at the forefront of resistance. A highly respected
cleric, Khomeini rose to a prominent position among the clergy as marja'
(position of authority, but literally "model to be emulated"). Khomeini
first appeared on the scene as an opposition figure during this period.
He used his sermons to attack the regime. He has been particularly vocal
about the presence of US soldiers and advisors who have recently gained
diplomatic immunity, and indeed his example has been emulated. Following
Khomeini's arrest in June 1963, mass riots broke out in the religious
capital Qom, lasting for days. The government crackdown was harsh and
hundreds of people died.
Many of the Iranian New Left forces emerged in the period following
these events. Inspired by the anti-imperialist guerrilla movements in
Cuba, Vietnam and Algeria, this generation saw armed struggle as the
main tool for revolution. Here, along with the Fedaiyan, the
left-Islamist Mujahideen-e Khalq, whose ideology was a synthesis of
Marxist Third Worldism and a radical interpretation of Islam, was
particularly important. The main ideologue of the Mujahideen was Ali
Shariati, the theorist responsible for translating the works of Frantz
Fanon into Persian.
Given the requirements of clandestine activity, the guerrillas were
unable to establish a social base in workplaces, even though some of
their members worked in factories. Instead, their urban base consisted
largely of student circles and the middle class. Under the conditions of
extreme repression that existed in Iran in the late 1960s and early
seventies, they viewed working class self-action as largely impossible
and instead focused almost exclusively on guerrilla actions against the
state. In the words of Amir Parviz Pouyan, one of the important
theorists of the guerrilla movement, they faced "the absolute power of
the state and the absolute weakness of the working class." The
guerrillas eventually became trapped in a tit-for-tat war with the state.
Students were an important part of the revolution. In the sixties and
seventies, Iranian students increasingly went abroad for higher
education, encouraged by the Shah's regime to obtain technical education
considered essential for economic development. This formed the basis for
a strong and militant student movement both within the country and
abroad. The sixties and seventies were, of course, a time of intense
conflict and unrest on campuses in the West, and radical Iranian
students began to organize rapidly. The Confederation of Iranian
Students Abroad became the main base of opposition to the regime, its
newsletter disseminating information about strikes and guerrilla
activities. The Confederation was also involved in militant student
movements in international students' host countries and supported
demonstrations against the Vietnam War and other imperialist
aggressions. By the 1970s, the Confederation was so dominated by
communist organizations that many of the key Islamist members broke away
and formed the Muslim Students Union. Both associations served as
sources of information for their counterparts in their respective countries.
The only thing they could agree on was the intolerable power of the
United States. Whatever happened, the Khomeinists' actions forced them
to this ground. On November 4, 1979, the US Embassy in Tehran was seized
by "Faith Line Students". The hostage crisis attracted the attention of
the whole country and the world and lasted for 444 days. The seizure of
the embassy and President Carter's botched attempt to rescue the
hostages allowed the Islamic right to seize the initiative, positioning
itself as the victorious vanguard of the anti-imperialist struggle and
at the same time pushing the liberals aside. In the face of the crisis,
the interim government resigned and a new constitution was approved,
filled with Third Worldist and anti-imperialist language but also based
on the concept of velayat-i faqih (custody of the jurist) and
establishing the "leader principle" in Iran. According to this
constitution, Khomeini, as the "supreme leader of the revolution", was
given the authority to veto any decision contrary to Islam. However, a
presidential election was also held and the overwhelming majority voted
for Abolhassan Bani-Sadr. Although Bani-Sadr had long been one of
Khomeini's favorite advisors, he represented the technocratic "liberal
Islamist" wing of the revolution and was a threat to the IRP's
consolidation of power.
Counter-Revolution
In April 1980, the government of the Islamic Republic, with the
authority it received from its new constitution, initiated the Cultural
Revolution and began the process of Islamization of universities,
workplaces and cultural institutions. The Cultural Revolution aimed to
anchor the state's power over society in schools and the media. Schools
and universities were closed for three years, during which time leftist
cadres were completely purged and strict religious rules were imposed.
In the labor arena, there was a war between the Khomeinist right
organized around the IRP and Beni-Sadr. By using the councils against
Beni-Sadr's state-appointed rulers, Khomeinists effectively brushed
aside workers' demands from the previous year and undermined the
independent shoras. Revolutionary guards attacked the last few remaining
independent councils.
However, before this conflict could progress on its own course and the
hostage crisis could be resolved, Iraq invaded Iran on September 22,
1980, hoping to benefit from the chaos. The mobilization drew millions
to the regime's side and allowed it to wage war against Iraq and its
supporters in the United States, using the language of anti-imperialism.
Martial law and the austerity of the war economy created fertile ground
for counter-revolution. All strikes and demonstrations were considered
imperialist sabotage by the new regime, and the Khomeinist right was
allowed to maintain order in the streets with gangs of thugs.
The IRP used this opportunity to launch a new campaign against Beni-Sadr
and his liberal supporters. With Khomeini's approval, the IRP-dominated
Iranian parliament voted to remove Beni-Sadr. Making a last move to save
himself, Beni-Sadr formed an alliance with the Mujahideen, whose
conflict with the new regime turned into open armed conflict. The
Mujahideen launched a terror campaign against the regime, killing dozens
of IRP officials and ministers. With the Iraqi army at the forefront,
the regime had all the cover it needed to destroy the last remnants of
the left, closing down newspapers, disbanding associations, and
arresting and executing anyone who resisted.
It may be tempting to place the blame entirely on Khomeini and the IRP,
as these parties certainly had the upper hand over their counterparts.
However, the conditions in which the Iranian left had to operate were
extremely difficult. While workers' councils were making great strides
in democratizing workplaces, the capitalist division of labor itself was
an incredible obstacle to the emancipatory thrust of the proletarian
movement. There were deep conflicts between the established working
class and the newcomers in terms of skills and education among workers.
Most production in Iran continued to be organized in workshops too small
for councils. Although councils were spread throughout society, there
was no vision of organizing them as an alternative to the state. State
power itself has never been questioned, only the people who occupy it.
The councils were seen not only by the official left, but also by many
of the workers who populated the councils, as pressure groups through
which they could mobilize against the state. Even the most radical
demands issued by the councils fell short of a clear call for the
abolition of capitalism. This was a power that many gave up too easily,
as councils rushed into the void to perform basic social functions.
Blinded by decades of Stalinism, most of the current left had neither a
vision of self-organization nor an idea of what the economy could be
beyond the nationalization of industry. The places where such a vision
took root were often outside the heart of the revolution.
Still, the Iranian Revolution may have the honor of being the period in
which workers' councils emerged for the last time in their classical
form. More precisely, it shares this honor with Poland, where around the
same time the Solidarnosc movement also emerged, despite the development
of councils during a period of political and economic instability. But
this late flourishing of workers' councils took place during a period of
decline in the labor movement, when deindustrialization and a series of
neoliberal projects were spreading across the planet, destroying much of
the resistance. However, in the last decade, protests and rebellions
have revived in Iran and the Middle East, ushering in a new era of class
conflict on a global scale. In each of these cases, the United States,
Russia and other world powers stood, as always, with their weapons at
the ready, ready to intervene at any time if their interests required
it. In such a situation, a revival of class struggle in Iran and its
neighbors is the only hope of avoiding another four decades of war.
Source: The Iranian Revolution At The Twilight Of The Worker's Council
Translation: heimatloskultu / Konzept
https://www.yeryuzupostasi.org/2024/03/22/isci-konseyinin-alacakaranliginda-iran-devrimi-arya-zahedi/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
years ago, the Iranian Revolution overthrew the monarchy of Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, paving the way for the establishment of the
Islamic Republic. While the 1979 revolution united a number of social
groups in a rebellion against despotism and foreign domination, it did
not take long for the conflicts underlying this unity to emerge. Caught
in the grips of the Iran Hostage Crisis and the Iraq-Iran war, the
"Spring of Freedom" was soon followed by the scorching summer of
Islamist counter-revolution.
Unfortunately, there is nothing unique about a mass popular uprising
bringing an authoritarian state to power. However, the religious
character of the Iranian Revolution has made it difficult to understand
what it has in common with other stories of revolution and
counter-revolution. Seeing beyond the four decades of war in the region,
which was the direct and indirect result of US attempts to encircle the
Soviet Union and gain access to Middle Eastern oil, and the original
emancipation of the 1979 uprising, which followed a revolutionary
scenario involving mass strikes and councils largely similar to the
Russian and German revolutions at the turn of the century It is not easy
to remember the promise.
Indeed, the strength of the Iranian labor movement can be traced
directly back to the global 1917. Towards the end of the nineteenth
century, as world capitalism began to transition to a wonderful new
energy source-from coal to the more dense and transportable
oil-thousands of Iranian workers migrated to Baku, Azerbaijan, then part
of the Russian Empire, to work in the rich oil fields. started. Here
they were exposed to radical and heterodox activists of the Russian
Social Democratic Labor Party, which would soon split into Bolshevik and
Menshevik factions. A citywide general strike in Baku in 1904 laid the
groundwork for the first Russian Revolution in 1905. The repercussions
of this wave of revolution soon spread to Tehran, and the unrest forced
the Shah to approve a constitution that transferred power to the newly
formed parliament. The unrest in Iran only dissipated with the invasion
of Russian forces in 1911.
The Russian Revolution in 1917 and the civil war that followed affected
all of Eurasia, from Eastern and Central Europe to China. With the
overthrow of the Tsar, the revolution eliminated the main supporter of
the Qajars, the ruling dynasty of Iran. In 1920, amid the civil war in
Russia, the Soviets supported the short-lived Iranian Soviet Socialist
Republic, established in the Caspian Sea province of Gilan on the border
with Azerbaijan. This was largely an attempt to shore up the Russian
counter-revolutionaries' southern flanks, where they were trying to
regroup their forces. General Denikin, the leader of the reactionary
White Army, took refuge in Anzali, the port city of Gilan, with the help
of the British. The Soviet Caspian fleet eventually chased the White and
British forces and supported Mirza Kuchak Khan, a revolutionary
nationalist who led a peasant-based guerrilla army called the Jangal, or
"jungle" movement, in attacks against the British and Whites. The
Soviets established a link between the Jangal movement and the new
Communist Party of Iran, which emerged from a group in Baku. But Kuchak
Khan failed to make even minimal redistributive gestures such as land
reform, and tensions within his own party allowed the communists to
briefly seize power. However, the situation quickly changed and in 1921,
Reza Khan seized power in a military coup, declaring himself Shah and
starting the Pahlavi dynasty. Anxious to protect their borders, the
Soviets agreed to withdraw and abandoned the nascent communist movement;
this was a glimpse into the kind of opportunist realpolitik that would
become their defining characteristic.
Shoras and Dual Power
The Iranian working class thus had a longer and richer revolutionary
tradition than most of its contemporaries in the Middle East, thanks to
direct contact with the beating heart of the international communist
movement. In the official narrative of the 1979 revolution, at least in
the United States, the Iranian working class is at best in the
background of a dramatic play between personalities: the departure of
the hated Shah; the triumphant return from exile of the righteous cleric
Ayatollah Khomeini, like Lenin's arrival at the Finland Station, where
he was welcomed by hopeful crowds as a hero of the revolution. However,
behind each of these events was the coordinated working class struggle
of one of the most developed centers of workers' resistance in the
Middle East. Following the profound weakening of the economy as OPEC's
oil boom era sugar began to run out, a wave of strikes developed
throughout 1978 and into the decisive events of 1979. The pumping of
petrodollars into the economy led to inflation, a global trend in the
late 1970s, as workers saw their wages eroded by rising rents and other
cost increases. The Shah sought to scapegoat the bazaari, the
traditional class of merchants and artisans, and blamed profiteering,
corruption and waste for inflation. Bazaari had long been an obstacle to
capitalist modernizers, but they were a powerful layer that controlled
the economy through local credit systems and neighborhood trade. They
were physically located in bazaars, near mosques, and therefore had deep
familial and neighborhood ties with the clergy. The Shah's attempt to
break the influence of this stratum as part of his modernization
campaign led to widespread discontent.
So in 1978 workers joined a movement that had already mobilized many
other layers of Iranian society. Universities had been closed since the
beginning of the previous year, when anti-regime demonstrations gave way
to an old story of massacres by regime forces. The workers may have
arrived late, but their intervention was decisive. The wave of mass
strikes culminated in a general strike in November 1978, shutting down
even the oil refineries that were the cornerstone of Iran's economy.
After the refineries were stopped, the Shah was also stopped; first he
offered constitutional privileges, elections and other long-awaited
bourgeois favors, and then he left the stage altogether. His
replacement, former opposition leader Shapour Bakhtiar, was immediately
rejected by the majority of his own party, the National Front, and
instead embraced the radical cleric Khomeini. Khomeini quickly formed an
interim government, declared Bakhtiar illegitimate, and called for a
peaceful transition. But the masses were not ready to listen to these
calls for caution, even if they came from someone they had chosen as
their leader.
The fate of revolutions ultimately depends on the attitude of the army.
The Shah's control over regular Iranian Army units was shaky and
discontent was widespread. On February 9, 1979, after a group of
pro-Khomeini technicians mutinied at the main air base outside Tehran,
elite pro-Shah troops called "Immortals" attacked the base. The cracks
within the state became visible, a moment of opportunity had arrived.
The news spread throughout the city. Barricades were set up. Far-left
guerrilla groups flocked to the city to confront the shock troops.
Police stations and military barracks were invaded. A weapons factory
was raided and more than fifty thousand weapons were expropriated and
distributed to the rebels. Prisons were blown up. Government buildings
were occupied. On February 11, television and radio stations declared
the victory of the revolution.
At the center of the mobilization were working-class committees - shoras
- which evolved from the strike committees of November the previous
year. In the context of the uprising, these committees developed. Shoras
arose from the real needs of workers after the collapse of the Shah's
regime. Especially many owners and managers of state companies close to
the regime fled. Workers took over the factories and ran them through
their councils. This feast of workers' self-organization was
short-lived, however, as Khomeini and the forces within the Islamic
Republican Party (IRP) that formed around him immediately began to
undermine the power of the shoras as an independent base of
working-class action. Yet for many, this brief glimpse was enough. A new
horizon had opened for the liberation of workers. As one metalworker
quoted in an article on the subject put it: "After the revolution, the
workers realized that the country belonged to them." Workers' demands
were diverse, both specific and general, but in most cases they seemed
to fall short of calls for an end to capitalism.
The character and composition of the Shoras differed in each workplace,
and it was only after the difficult task of restarting production that
they truly became a force to be reckoned with. The dual power situation
was complex and a delicate balance existed between the provisional
government and the various forces mobilized both for and against it.
Alongside the shoras, committees (armed security groups) patrolled
neighborhoods to keep regime thugs at bay, and other councils, shora-ye
mahallat, emerged in poor neighborhoods to serve as associations of the
unemployed. Although workers' committees restarted production, the
Iranian economy was operating well below its previous level and the need
was greatest in the poorest regions.
This was a power the class was unwilling to relinquish, and rather than
a frontal assault, Khomeini pursued the Islamization of the councils,
which over time had the effect of reintroducing one-man rule and a
formal division of labor. The Shoras would no longer have a say in
production-related matters and would instead be confined to the realm of
wages.
However, this spring of the Iranian labor movement has opened up new
possibilities with which the contending factions of the Iranian left
will have to negotiate. According to one narrative, the left's strategic
mistakes lay in the failure of the communists who were instrumental in
the early development of the councils to formulate any common program
with the IRP around Khomeini. The main communist party, Tudeh, once on
the verge of seizing power in the 1950s, inherited from Stalin his
vision of national liberation as the precursor to eventual social
revolution and embraced the view that the clergy was a "progressive
bourgeoisie" that could pave the way for eventual socialism in Iran
through modernization. The Iranian New Left, a blend of Marxist-Leninist
and Third Worldist theory and new strains of radical Islam, shared with
the Stalinists a developmentalist vision with a primary emphasis on
anti-imperial struggle, a terrain easily usurped by the clergy and their
bazaari allies.
Although Tudeh members found themselves in the shoras, as a party they
advocated instead for the establishment of a national trade union
council, like the CGT in France. But newer left groups were less
hesitant about the participation of the shoras in the revolution. Among
these new left groups, Fedaiyan was the largest Marxist-Leninist
organization and played a central role in the peak stages of the
uprising in the cities. They were instrumental in establishing rural
shoras, such as the Turkmen Sahara Peasant Council, which was
established when wage workers at a large agricultural enterprise in
northeastern Iran took over the business after the owners left in early
1979. The new government attacked the peasant council and the Fedaiyan
were drawn into the conflict on the side of the peasants, forcing some
within the organization to break away from the government.
From the first days of the revolution, the mosque was the center of
neighborhood organization that was largely suppressed everywhere else.
This situation gave an advantage to those who controlled the mosque
network, namely the committees. The committees gradually became the
bases of the Khomeinist movement. The committees' revolutionary
tribunals dispensed swift justice, but as long as they executed members
of the old regime and its secret police, no one complained. But they
soon began arresting Marxists and other "counter-revolutionaries,"
forcing a minority within the Fadayan to leave the group and join
smaller left-wing groups such as the radical Islamic Mujahideen, which
opposed Khomeini's new government. But it was too little, too late - the
decisive moment of opportunity for the councils had passed.
Anti-Imperialism
All groups were united in opposition to the Shah's regime and especially
to US power over Iran. The Shah was established following the Allied
invasion of Iran during World War II and later restored to power in a
1953 coup in a brazen display of the CIA's new state-building powers.
This coup was carried out not only to undermine the nationalist
government of Mohammed Mossadegh, who nationalized the Anglo-Persian Oil
Company, but also to prevent the possibility of the Stalinist Tudeh
party seizing power.
The Shah combined the worst excesses of hated monarchical power with
crony capitalism, accepted US and British control of the Iranian oil
industry, and embarked on a process of modernization with a decidedly
American character. This meant that when the revolution occurred, it
would increasingly turn to these issues of Westernization and
geopolitical power, a backdrop from which the demands of the working
class in the councils receded. This was the basis for the alliance of
the Tudeh and Fedaiyan majority with the IRP, whose revolutionary
originality was proven by its anti-US stance. It is worth noting this
narrative today, as a new, crude anti-imperialism seeks to neatly divide
the world's nations into camps, claiming the working masses for its
crude, mechanical view of socialism.
In this context, Khomeini's March 7 statement that women should wear
Islamic dress when entering government buildings became intertwined with
questions about the Iranian economy's relationship with the West.
Coincidentally, the next day, March 8, was International Women's Day,
and many women took to the streets to demonstrate against this decision.
Women took part in all levels of the revolutionary movements of the
period, in guerrilla groups, councils and strike committees, and much of
the revolutionary organizing, especially around daily needs, took place
through women's networks. Khomeini's command to women was not a call for
them to remain passive, but a call to their strength as revolutionaries,
and described the headscarf as part of a rebellion against the Shah's
society and everything it stood for. The Tudeh and Fedayan parties were
hesitant to challenge what they considered to be a popular narrative.
They had good reason. In a referendum held in April 1979, the public
voted overwhelmingly to establish an "Islamic Republic," but the term
itself was vague and meant different things to different people. Not
everyone thought of this as clerical rule and the imposition of a strict
interpretation of Islamic Law. For some, this meant a liberal democratic
government with Islam as the guiding cultural principle. For others it
meant a radical merging of Islam and socialism.
These different visions of the role of Islam must be understood in the
context of the background of the revolution and, in particular, its
origins in the Shah's "White Revolution," a series of reforms aimed at
modernizing Iranian society and breaking the power of the clergy and
large landowners. These included plans for rapid industrialization and
land reform, as well as literacy programs, women's concessions, and a
profit-sharing scheme for workers. The Shah's plan to modernize the
country was quite successful in some respects, and by the early 1970s
Iran was in a position that would have been unimaginable two decades
earlier. The oil boom swelled the state's coffers and enabled it to
easily finance its own projects. But development never comes without
contradictions. Land reforms had caused millions of now-homeless workers
to flock to cities, especially Tehran, and swell slums.
Land reforms had radical and undesirable effects on Iranian society. The
main aim of land reform was to extend capitalist relations to the
countryside by creating title deeds to land over which peasants often
had only customary rights. But the agricultural revolution requires not
only a change in the ownership structure. New, higher-efficiency
techniques must be introduced to displace millions. Some entered the
manufacturing and industrial sector, but many more, when they could find
any work, worked in the ever-expanding construction industry, building
skyscrapers and apartments for the wealthy, or as manual laborers in the
service sector. By 1971, millions of new residents had arrived in
Tehran. Disconnected from traditional networks, many of these new
workers connected with each other through the mosque.
While some segments of society opposed the Shah's reforms-particularly
the clergy and some of the landlords who had the most to lose-Khomeini
positioned himself at the forefront of resistance. A highly respected
cleric, Khomeini rose to a prominent position among the clergy as marja'
(position of authority, but literally "model to be emulated"). Khomeini
first appeared on the scene as an opposition figure during this period.
He used his sermons to attack the regime. He has been particularly vocal
about the presence of US soldiers and advisors who have recently gained
diplomatic immunity, and indeed his example has been emulated. Following
Khomeini's arrest in June 1963, mass riots broke out in the religious
capital Qom, lasting for days. The government crackdown was harsh and
hundreds of people died.
Many of the Iranian New Left forces emerged in the period following
these events. Inspired by the anti-imperialist guerrilla movements in
Cuba, Vietnam and Algeria, this generation saw armed struggle as the
main tool for revolution. Here, along with the Fedaiyan, the
left-Islamist Mujahideen-e Khalq, whose ideology was a synthesis of
Marxist Third Worldism and a radical interpretation of Islam, was
particularly important. The main ideologue of the Mujahideen was Ali
Shariati, the theorist responsible for translating the works of Frantz
Fanon into Persian.
Given the requirements of clandestine activity, the guerrillas were
unable to establish a social base in workplaces, even though some of
their members worked in factories. Instead, their urban base consisted
largely of student circles and the middle class. Under the conditions of
extreme repression that existed in Iran in the late 1960s and early
seventies, they viewed working class self-action as largely impossible
and instead focused almost exclusively on guerrilla actions against the
state. In the words of Amir Parviz Pouyan, one of the important
theorists of the guerrilla movement, they faced "the absolute power of
the state and the absolute weakness of the working class." The
guerrillas eventually became trapped in a tit-for-tat war with the state.
Students were an important part of the revolution. In the sixties and
seventies, Iranian students increasingly went abroad for higher
education, encouraged by the Shah's regime to obtain technical education
considered essential for economic development. This formed the basis for
a strong and militant student movement both within the country and
abroad. The sixties and seventies were, of course, a time of intense
conflict and unrest on campuses in the West, and radical Iranian
students began to organize rapidly. The Confederation of Iranian
Students Abroad became the main base of opposition to the regime, its
newsletter disseminating information about strikes and guerrilla
activities. The Confederation was also involved in militant student
movements in international students' host countries and supported
demonstrations against the Vietnam War and other imperialist
aggressions. By the 1970s, the Confederation was so dominated by
communist organizations that many of the key Islamist members broke away
and formed the Muslim Students Union. Both associations served as
sources of information for their counterparts in their respective countries.
The only thing they could agree on was the intolerable power of the
United States. Whatever happened, the Khomeinists' actions forced them
to this ground. On November 4, 1979, the US Embassy in Tehran was seized
by "Faith Line Students". The hostage crisis attracted the attention of
the whole country and the world and lasted for 444 days. The seizure of
the embassy and President Carter's botched attempt to rescue the
hostages allowed the Islamic right to seize the initiative, positioning
itself as the victorious vanguard of the anti-imperialist struggle and
at the same time pushing the liberals aside. In the face of the crisis,
the interim government resigned and a new constitution was approved,
filled with Third Worldist and anti-imperialist language but also based
on the concept of velayat-i faqih (custody of the jurist) and
establishing the "leader principle" in Iran. According to this
constitution, Khomeini, as the "supreme leader of the revolution", was
given the authority to veto any decision contrary to Islam. However, a
presidential election was also held and the overwhelming majority voted
for Abolhassan Bani-Sadr. Although Bani-Sadr had long been one of
Khomeini's favorite advisors, he represented the technocratic "liberal
Islamist" wing of the revolution and was a threat to the IRP's
consolidation of power.
Counter-Revolution
In April 1980, the government of the Islamic Republic, with the
authority it received from its new constitution, initiated the Cultural
Revolution and began the process of Islamization of universities,
workplaces and cultural institutions. The Cultural Revolution aimed to
anchor the state's power over society in schools and the media. Schools
and universities were closed for three years, during which time leftist
cadres were completely purged and strict religious rules were imposed.
In the labor arena, there was a war between the Khomeinist right
organized around the IRP and Beni-Sadr. By using the councils against
Beni-Sadr's state-appointed rulers, Khomeinists effectively brushed
aside workers' demands from the previous year and undermined the
independent shoras. Revolutionary guards attacked the last few remaining
independent councils.
However, before this conflict could progress on its own course and the
hostage crisis could be resolved, Iraq invaded Iran on September 22,
1980, hoping to benefit from the chaos. The mobilization drew millions
to the regime's side and allowed it to wage war against Iraq and its
supporters in the United States, using the language of anti-imperialism.
Martial law and the austerity of the war economy created fertile ground
for counter-revolution. All strikes and demonstrations were considered
imperialist sabotage by the new regime, and the Khomeinist right was
allowed to maintain order in the streets with gangs of thugs.
The IRP used this opportunity to launch a new campaign against Beni-Sadr
and his liberal supporters. With Khomeini's approval, the IRP-dominated
Iranian parliament voted to remove Beni-Sadr. Making a last move to save
himself, Beni-Sadr formed an alliance with the Mujahideen, whose
conflict with the new regime turned into open armed conflict. The
Mujahideen launched a terror campaign against the regime, killing dozens
of IRP officials and ministers. With the Iraqi army at the forefront,
the regime had all the cover it needed to destroy the last remnants of
the left, closing down newspapers, disbanding associations, and
arresting and executing anyone who resisted.
It may be tempting to place the blame entirely on Khomeini and the IRP,
as these parties certainly had the upper hand over their counterparts.
However, the conditions in which the Iranian left had to operate were
extremely difficult. While workers' councils were making great strides
in democratizing workplaces, the capitalist division of labor itself was
an incredible obstacle to the emancipatory thrust of the proletarian
movement. There were deep conflicts between the established working
class and the newcomers in terms of skills and education among workers.
Most production in Iran continued to be organized in workshops too small
for councils. Although councils were spread throughout society, there
was no vision of organizing them as an alternative to the state. State
power itself has never been questioned, only the people who occupy it.
The councils were seen not only by the official left, but also by many
of the workers who populated the councils, as pressure groups through
which they could mobilize against the state. Even the most radical
demands issued by the councils fell short of a clear call for the
abolition of capitalism. This was a power that many gave up too easily,
as councils rushed into the void to perform basic social functions.
Blinded by decades of Stalinism, most of the current left had neither a
vision of self-organization nor an idea of what the economy could be
beyond the nationalization of industry. The places where such a vision
took root were often outside the heart of the revolution.
Still, the Iranian Revolution may have the honor of being the period in
which workers' councils emerged for the last time in their classical
form. More precisely, it shares this honor with Poland, where around the
same time the Solidarnosc movement also emerged, despite the development
of councils during a period of political and economic instability. But
this late flourishing of workers' councils took place during a period of
decline in the labor movement, when deindustrialization and a series of
neoliberal projects were spreading across the planet, destroying much of
the resistance. However, in the last decade, protests and rebellions
have revived in Iran and the Middle East, ushering in a new era of class
conflict on a global scale. In each of these cases, the United States,
Russia and other world powers stood, as always, with their weapons at
the ready, ready to intervene at any time if their interests required
it. In such a situation, a revival of class struggle in Iran and its
neighbors is the only hope of avoiding another four decades of war.
Source: The Iranian Revolution At The Twilight Of The Worker's Council
Translation: heimatloskultu / Konzept
https://www.yeryuzupostasi.org/2024/03/22/isci-konseyinin-alacakaranliginda-iran-devrimi-arya-zahedi/
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