Left Nationalism and Working Class Communism
A Review of the Iranian Experience
By Mansoor Hekmat
It is astonishing how little is known in the West, even among
socialists, about the recent history and the present state of the
Iranian Left. Any Iranian communist, who has been part of the
immensely rich political experience of the last ten years, cannot help
feeling dismayed by the type of commentary on Iran and the Iranian
Left that surfaces once in a while in 'quality' Left journals. What we
usually get here is not only superficial analysis, but blatant
distortion of facts. This is distressing, not just because a distorted
account is given of a still on-going and unfolding history, but more
so because it betrays a degree of political apathy and theoretical
mediocrity on the part of Western socialists when it comes to the task
of analyzing issues of class struggle outside the boundaries of the
developed capitalist world.
It appears that a certain critique of Iranian communism is gaining
popularity in Marxist intellectual circles in the West. Certain themes
consistently recur as the main elements and tenets of this critique.
First, there is the statement, or 'observation', that communism in
Iran has experienced an utter defeat in recent years, in particular
after June 1981 and the massive wave of repression that swept the
country. The main task now is apparently to 'sum up' the ten year
experience, reflect on the 'mistakes' made by Iranian communists and
'prepare' for the next historical opening. Secondly, there is the
notion that the inability or dogmatic unwillingness of the Iranian
Left to united and to create a broad alliance of 'progressive' forces
in Iranian society in the face of the reactionary Islamic onslaught,
not only brought about the alleged decline of the Left itself, but was
partly responsible for the horrifying conditions that the Iranian
people as a whole have experienced under the Islamic Republic.
Thirdly, we are reminded of how little the ideology and practice of
the Iranian Left was influenced by 'democracy' both as a concept and a
vision and as a political objective, of how democracy was subordinated
to 'anti-imperialism' in the political consciousness and programmatic
and practical priorities of Left organisations, and how this defect
consciousness lent itself to manipulations by the Islamic regime.
There is nothing new in this emerging critique. It is in fact a
mere recapitulation of the positions of a particular section of the
Iranian Left itself. Positions which were presented, argued for, and
for the most part refuted, during the revolutionary years of 1978-81.
It is the voice of the naïve and ineffectual Iranian Left- liberalism
that is now being increasingly echoed in Marxist journals in the West,
posing as learned considerations and afterthoughts on contemporary
Iranian communism. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that such
historiography should sum up the Iranian experience as a failure and
ignore the remarkable process of evolution and transformation that
Iranian communism has undergone since the revolution of 1979.
A Marxist account of the history of contemporary Iranian communism
is yet to be written. The issues involved are extremely varied and
complex. Here I confine myself to a discussion of few specific
questions. First, the ideological and social traits of the radical
Left on the eve of the revolution. Second, the crisis of the radical
Left. And finally, the new ideological and organisational
configuration of the Iranian Left and in particular the development of
a revolutionary worker-communist trend.
The Iranian Radical Left: Socialism or Nationalism?
The post-war Iranian Left, from the Tudeh Party of 1940s to the
populists of the '70s must be studied against the background of two
historical processes; first, the development of the so-called
communist movement internationally, and second, the historical
evolution of the Iranian bourgeois-nationalist opposition. The Iranian
Left from 1941-1981 was a joint product of both histories, emphasizing
at every stage the common inner logic of the two processes, namely,
the takeover of socialism as a theory and a political tradition by
national reformism.
Perry Anderson, in his Considerations on Western Marxism, notes the
'structural divorce' of Marxian theory from 'political practice',
gradually effected during 1930s, as what gave Western Marxism, as a
tradition, its substantive traits. However, Anderson remains, for the
most part, essentially uncritical of the actual class content of the
theory and the class nature of the political practice which is to form
the material social context of communist theory -- an attitude which
accounts for his fascination with events of May-June 1968 in Paris and
his view of it as a historical turning point. There has in fact taken
place a much more deep-rooted and fundamental rupture in international
communism that precedes, analytically and historically, the one
pointed out by Anderson - one which has altered the whole social and
political character of communism in all its major strands. This
fundamental rupture, involves the total alienation of communist theory
and practice from the working class, not merely as a mass of exploited
people, but as the personification of an objective economic position
within the political economy of capitalism. For Marx and Engels
communism was the 'doctrine of the conditions for the emancipation of
the proletariat', a means through which workers could protest 'against
the old social organisation' not as individuals but 'in their general
capacity as human beings' . A century later, communism was almost
everything but that. It had been changed to an ideological and
organisational framework for a wide range of nationalistic, parochial
and individualistic expressions of discontent with partial aspects of
the 'old social organisation'.
It was the nationalisation of Marxism in the Soviet Union of the
late twenties and early thirties and the subsequent theorization of
nationalism and reformism as the content of Marxism that initiated
this historical break. However, the seclusion of the theorists of
Western Marxism notwithstanding, for the mainstream of communism and
its major offshoots the chief outcome of the Soviet experience under
Stalin was not a divorce between theory and practice, but a
reorientation of theory towards non-proletarian political practice,
and hence a metamorphosis and degeneration of the theory itself. The
social and class re-orientation of socialism as a theory and as a
political movement was further reinforced in the practice of those
traditions, Trotskyism, Maoism, Eurocommunism, the New Left, Latin
American and third world populism, etc. which took shape in formal
opposition to Soviet 'communism'. In Eastern Europe, 'socialism' was
employed as a doctrine for building state capitalist economies and
ensuring working class obedience. In the West, it served as an
ideological dressing for student democratic and anarchist militancy;
intellectual philosophical and aesthetic discourse; middle class
cultural and educational reform; Left wing parliamentarian politics;
Keynesian crisis management and class compromise. In the 'Third
World', where early industrial achievements of the Soviet Union and,
later, Maoist glorification of nationalism found their most widespread
appeal against a background of ruthless exploitation and oppression by
Western imperialism, 'socialism' was taken up as a useful framework
for nationalist anti-imperialist mobilisation by the more militant
sections of indigenous bourgeois and petty bourgeois class forces. The
history of communism and the history of working class struggle -- not
merely mass working class upsurges, but the 'constant, uninterrupted,
now hidden, now open' opposition of workers to capital which Marx saw
as the dynamism of capitalist society -- became two separate
histories.
If for the communist movement in the West this separation
represented a detour and a negation of the original unity of communism
and the class, for the Iranian socialism that emerged in 1940s and
evolved in the '60s and '70s it was an original state, a condition
consubstantial with its existence as a tradition within the Iranian
opposition. It received and employed socialism as a doctrine for
realising national sovereignty, economic development, bourgeois
democracy and social reform. As such, socialism came to represent the
radical and militant tendencies within the well established
nationalist, reformist and liberal traditions of the bourgeois
opposition, and was readily embraced by the growing urban
intelligentsia. Iranian socialism was born structurally separated from
working class practice and alienated from socialism of Marx and Lenin.
Formally, the history of Iranian communism dates back to the turn
of the century and the formation of social democratic circles in
Tehran and Azerbaijan, with links with Russian social democracy and in
particular with Baku Bolsheviks. In 1920, the Communist Party of Iran
(CPI) was formed. The party was active for around a decade, playing an
important part in dissemination of socialist thought and organisation
of the then tiny urban wage workers and poor peasants, and the
formation of a short-lived Soviet Republic in the Caspian province of
Gilan (June 1920 to October 1921). It suffered serious setbacks in the
late twenties and was eventually crushed by Reza Shah's dictatorship.
However, the real history of contemporary Iranian Left begins
later, with the revival and development of the opposition movement in
the volatile period 1941-1953. Two major organisations emerged in this
period, the pro-USSR Tudeh Party (formed in October 1941) and
Mossaddiq's National Front (formed in October 1949), a loose coalition
of diverse groups and politicians ranging from liberals and social
democrats to Pan- Iranists and Muslim conservatives. Between them, the
Tudeh Party and the National Front summed up the most enduring
political aspirations of the 20th century Iranian intelligentsia:
bourgeois democracy, national economic development and political
independence. It was the synthesis of the National Front and Tudeh
traditions, and not the legacy of the revolutionary CPI, that shaped
the ideological and social traits of the Radical Left during '60s and
'70s.
The National Front was a self-declared nationalist alliance, but
the Tudeh Party was taken to represent the socialist Left within the
opposition. It was formally a non-Marxist anti-fascist alliance
(following the popular frontist line taken by the seventh Comintern
Congress). It represented the convergence of two currents, one
indigenous and the other external and international, Iranian national
reformism and pro- Sovietism. Initially, the two tendencies appeared
not only compatible but mutually reinforcing. To the Iranian middle
class intelligentsia, the Soviet Union presented a model of national
reconstruction and reform, a bulwark of anti-fascism, an enemy of
poverty and national oppression, and a force capable of safeguarding
Iran against oppressive designs of British imperialism. However, with
the unfolding of Soviet foreign policy towards Iran the two tendencies
began to diverge, and the unswerving loyalty of the leadership of the
Party to the Soviet Union increasingly alienated the nationalist
element within the party. The first open and organised dissention
along nationalist lines occurred in 1948 when a number of the Party's
cadres and activists led by Khalil Maleki left it on account of the
Party's subordination of national interests to the priorities of
Soviet foreign policy and its hostilities towards nationalist forces
outside the Party. However, it was Tudeh Party's reluctance to
wholeheartedly support the nationalist government of Mossadiq and in
particular to rise to its defence against the American sponsored coup
of August 19, 1953, that marked the final break of Iranian nationalism
from the Tudeh party.
The radical Left originated in the void left by the abandonment of
the nationalist cause by the Tudeh Party and the demise of the
National Front in the early '60s. The radical Left of the '60s and
'70s was first and foremost a product of the nationalist critique of
the fiasco of the Tudeh Party and its 'betrayal' of 'the movement'. In
other words, the 'historical break' of the radical Left from the
'traditional organisations', amounted, in substance, to nothing but a
reassertion of the tradition itself, a reaffirmation of the primacy of
nationalism as the central theme of Iranian socialism. But this was
only achieved through a radicalisation of Iranian nationalism itself
and a corresponding shift in its social and class basis.
This quasi-socialist radical nationalism produced a variety of
trends and organisations, from the Maoists and the urban guerrillas of
the late sixties and early seventies to the 'political-organisational'
groups of 1978- 1981 known as the Third Line. Maoists, helped by the
excessive nationalism inherent in Maoism and the Chinese version of
communism, managed to incorporate the whole nationalist critique and
the whole history of bourgeois nationalism in Iran into their own
system of thought and their own history. They perfected and
consecrated this nationalism and made it the true essence of their
'socialism'. Their theory of Russian 'Social Imperialism' was a
theorization of the old National Front's mistrust of the USSR. Their
characterisation of the Iranian economy as 'semi-feudal, semi-colony',
though evidently a cheap mimicry of the Chinese, served to glorify the
so-called 'national bourgeoisie' as part of the 'revolutionary popular
alliance' and argue for the necessity of independent capitalist
development under a nationalist regime as a 'stage' on the road to
socialism. The Fedaii achieved more or less similar results via a
different theoretical route. They distanced themselves from the USSR,
though not as dramatically as the Maoists. The vehemence with which
the founders of the movement denounced the USSR varied, from
Ahmadzadeh and Pouyan, who questioned the very existence of socialist
relations of production in the Soviet Union and branded post-Stalin
CPSU as revisionist to Jazani who was less critical in his views.
However, there was unanimity in the condemnation of the Tudeh Party as
a traitor to the national cause and to the National Front government
of Mossadiq that symbolised it. Furthermore, the guerrillas and some
Maoist groups, borrowed the concept of 'dependant capitalism' from the
Latin American development debate and applied it in the same spirit as
the majority of Maoists had used the 'semi-feudal, semi-colonial'
characterisation, that is, to exclude Iranian capitalism from the
general laws of motion of capital and to pose 'independent', 'proper'
capitalism as a just and progressive cause. Here, the mythological
'national bourgeoisie' was hailed not as the antithesis of the feudal
landlord (the chief ally of imperialism for Maoists), but of the
'comprador' bourgeoisie, seen as the indigenous personification of
imperialist oppression and exploitation of the 'Iranian people'.
Nevertheless, the radicalised nationalism of the new trends
contained a number of significant theoretical reinterpretations and
practical reorientations.
First, there was a shift from the concept of 'nation' (mellat) to
the concept of 'people' (khalq). The latter referred to a more limited
entity, consisting of certain classes and layers in the 'Iranian
Nation'. This shift implied a more explicit recognition of social
divisions within the Iranian society. Nationalism now involved not
merely an anti-colonial struggle, but also a struggle against the
'anti-people', the indigenous classes or layers that represented and
reinforced imperialist domination. The anti-imperialist struggle of
the people was defined as the driving force in society and as the
essence of 'true', radical, nationalism.
Second, the Left's conception of democracy changed accordingly. The
traditional organisations had a clearly liberal interpretation of
democracy. They had advocated bourgeois-democratic individual and
civil rights and the establishment of a constitutional regime. The
radical Left on the other hand defined democracy as the rule of
popular anti-imperialist classes. The actual political form of this
popular regime, its constitution and citizens' rights under this
regime was regarded as secondary and was hardly ever elaborated. Anti-
imperialism dominated bourgeois democracy in the ideology of the
radical Left.
Third, the question of political power was inevitably brought to
the fore. The 'contradiction between people and imperialism' could
only be resolved by the overthrow of the monarchy, the 'puppet regime'
of imperialism. An uncompromising anti-monarchism and a fervent
advocacy of violent and revolutionary methods against the state was
what the radical Left's anti-imperialism in the final analysis boiled
down to. This was a clear departure from the practice of the
traditional parties and their essentially parliamentarist and legalist
approach.
Fourth, in the realm of economics, the radical Left advocated
active and direct state involvement and massive nationalisation of
'dependant' capitals, whereas traditional nationalism did not go
beyond the goal of creation and expansion of the home capitalist
market combined with a modest degree of income redistribution. In both
cases the prime objective was industrialisation and economic
self-reliance. But for the naïve and utopian radical Left
self-sufficiency was turned into an ideological principle, an index of
anti- imperialism or even of socialism.
Finally, the radical Left turned to the working class in its
political theory, and crowned it as the leading force in the national
struggle against imperialism and dependency. Nevertheless, it
continually emphasized, in various theoretical formulations, the
necessity for subordination of socialist and class demands to the
cause of popular revolution.
The impact of new polarisations in the international communist
movement on the development of the Iranian radical Left in this period
is very evident. The strongest influence came from the Chinese
experience and Maoism, although the influence of other nationalist and
popular movements, in Latin America, Vietnam, and even Algeria should
not be discounted. Mao's metaphysical simplifications of Marxism and
in particular his two 'philosophical' works, 'On Contradiction' and
'On Practice', shaped the whole mode of theoretical articulation of
the radical Left. They complemented the mechanical historical outlook
already inherited from Stalin's 'Short Course'. Maoism provided a
version of Marxism, a methodology, and a set of categories and
formulations that could readily be employed by radical nationalists of
an economically backward and politically oppressed country. On a more
practical level the Chinese break with the Soviet Union on the basis
of an apparently more radical interpretation of Marxism, helped the
radical Left to separate itself from the experience of the Tudeh
Party. Its inherent nationalism and its militant rhetoric appealed to
the new generation of activists frustrated by the failure of the
traditional parties and the oppressive political regime.
But here again ideological and theoretical shifts at the
international level provided a conceptual framework for a development
which was essentially indigenous. The political defeat of 1953 was a
serious setback. But it was the agrarian reforms of the '60s that
sealed the fate of the traditional nationalist and liberal opposition.
Politically, the reforms disarmed the conventional nationalist
opposition and marked the virtual end of the National Front as an
active political force. Furthermore, they helped to consolidate the
autocracy and give it a modern police-state character. Economically,
it dissolved all pre-capitalist forms of production and created a
massive army of urban wage labourers. It marked the triumph of
capitalism and integration of all sections of capital into a unified
home market, eliminating the last appearances of a division within the
economy between a 'national' and a 'dependant' bourgeoisie. An
accelerating process of accumulation began which totally absorbed the
bourgeoisie and its intellectual representatives. The bourgeoisie left
the cause of liberalism and reform to the dissatisfied petty
bourgeois, only to return to it later when the danger of a revolution
was seriously posed. The militant Left represented this shift in the
centre of gravity of national reformism from the bourgeois to the
petty bourgeois. The political content and the social objectives of
the struggle remained unchanged -- social reform, political
liberalisation and nationalist anti-imperialism. The radical left of
the '60s and '70s could best be described as militant national
reformism -- nationalism and reformism adapted to the vision and
political capacities of the petty bourgeoisie.
The Revolution and the Crisis of the Left
The revolution brought with it both a rapid expansion and a
deepening politico-ideological crisis for the radical Left. All main
trends entered the revolution in a state of ideological uncertainty
and political confusion. The guerrilla tradition was under attack even
by many of its prominent imprisoned cadres. Practical failure in Iran,
disillusionment with the failed Latin American examples, and to some
extent a recognition of the incompatibility of Marxism with the
original conceptions of guerrillaism, definitely contributed to the
emergence of this critical trend. However, the main force for a change
of outlook came from the mass political movement outside prison gates,
a movement which appeared to refute the fundamental premises of
guerrillas' elitist and conspiratorial politics. The Maoists were
already discredited as a theoretical trend and virtually
excommunicated by the main body of the Left for their blatantly
Rightist positions and for their adherence to an international bloc
that had hailed the likes of the Shah as symbols of 'Third World'
stance against 'superpowers'. Furthermore, their peasant-oriented
theories and anti-feudal rhetoric were clearly being discarded by the
evidently urban character of the revolution. The radical populists of
the Third Line, for their part, were struggling with the problems
arising from their break from the other two. They lacked a positive
theoretical profile. Their recourse to Stalin and his postulations to
achieve some theoretical stability proved insufficient in the face of
the vigorous intellectual and theoretical upsurge of the Left during
the revolution.
However, the revolution shook militant national reformism at its
foundations. Within less than three years, from the winter of 1979 to
the summer of 1981, the whole conceptual system of the Left had
collapsed, bringing down with it its organisational edifice. No aspect
of the Left's nationalist ideology and anti- imperialist political
theory escaped unscathed. The 'dependant capitalist' characterisation
of production relations, the notion of 'progressive national
bourgeoisie' and 'anti-imperialist petty bourgeoisie', the theory of
revolution in stages, with a democratic revolution first dissolving
the 'pre-capitalist' relations that allegedly dominated Iranian
agriculture, old cliché classifications of an alliance of popular
classes, etc. were all hastily abandoned and buried with no trace.
Even 'authorities' such as Stalin and Mao could not be saved. By 1981,
the beliefs and conceptions of 1978 seemed like superstitions of an
ancient and forgotten age.
Tactically, the radical Left faltered on two closely related and
central issues: first, the attitude towards the Islamic Republic and
its Liberal and Pan-Islamic factions and, second, the Iran-Iraq war.
The official Maoists and the Tudeh Party showed much more consistency
in their tactics than the radical Left. The Maoists soon found in the
liberals the very personification of their beloved 'national
bourgeoisie' and were eventually incorporated into the 'Coordinating
Office of the President' -- a guise for an unofficial alliance of
politicians and groups united around Banisadr to fend off the Islamic
Republic Party. The Tudeh Party embraced the Khomeini regime
essentially for its demagogic anti-American rhetoric and remained a
staunch follower of the 'Imam's Line'. It went to a great length to
appease the hegemonic Islamic faction, to the extent of condoning and
aiding the regime of terror, torture and mass executions after June
81. But for the organizations of radical Left, the Islamic Republic
posed a dilemma. The problem arose from the Left's characterization of
the pre-revolution Islamic opposition as a political movement of the
'traditional petty bourgeoisie', a layer which in the Left's
anti-imperialist frame of thought was part of the 'revolutionary
popular alliance'. This formulation was in itself thoroughly
mechanistic and non-Marxist. However, once the same characterisation
was extended to the bourgeois state after the revolution, it turned
into a theoretical and political catastrophe. The majority of radical
Left organizations, notably the Fedaii, Peykar and Razmandegan ,
hesitated and wavered, shifting from one formulation to another to
resolve the contradiction between their theoretical assessment of the
Islamic current and its anti-democratic, anti-communist and
reactionary practices. Events such as the occupation of the American
Embassy and the outbreak of the Iran- Iraq war added to the confusion.
The war revived the Left's nationalist sentiments. In general, all
those who harboured strong illusions in relation to the 'anti-
imperialist' character of the state, took nationalistic and defensive
positions. This position was primarily taken by organizations
sympathetic to the USSR. Those organizations that had adopted more
radical attitudes towards the regime generally condemned the war as a
reactionary inter- capitalist one. Peykar and a number of smaller
organizations close to it adopted the slogan of 'Turning the War into
a Civil War'. This position certainly showed Peykar's determination to
preserve its radicalism in the face of a general shift to the Right.
But it also had a dual advantage. Firstly, it would help short-cutting
the problem of the attitude towards the regime. A call for 'civil war'
was equal to a call for the overthrow of the Islamic regime, a slogan
that Peykar could not derive from its analysis of the state itself.
Radical tactics could now be adopted without a radicalisation of the
theory. Secondly, the position could be defended more easily by
drawing simplistic parallels with the First World War and the attitude
taken by Lenin and the Bolsheviks towards it. This position postponed
the culmination of the ideological crisis within this line, but did
not resolve it.
The organizational crisis took the shape of continuous splits and
regroupings within all major trends leading to an almost total
organizational disintegration. The first split within the Fedaii
tradition occurred over the question of urban guerrillaism. Soon after
the uprising a small section, associated with Ashraf Dehghani , split
on the ground of the organization's break with 'armed struggle' and
went on to be further divided into a number of smaller un-influential
groups. The second split concerned the question of the attitude
towards the regime and the organization's growing attraction towards
Tudeh Party. A substantial minority, later to be joined by the 'Left
Wing of the Majority', split in June 1980, after the editorial in the
central organ, Kar, No. 59, made the shift to the Right open and
explicit. The 'Majority' soon adopted, wholesale, the positions of the
Tudeh Party and entered a process of unity with it. The 'Majority'
suffered successive splits after 1981 and effectively disintegrated
into several small groups, some a handful of people, each claiming to
be the true heir of the Fedaii and fully submerged into their domestic
sectarian feud. Razmandegan, already plagued by inner theoretical and
political tensions, plunged into a deep crisis when its leadership
took an openly pro-war stand, in 1980, in the central organ,
Razmandegan, No. 35, against the generally radical tendency of its
rank and file. The pro-war leadership and cadres were purged six weeks
later but the organization could not avoid splits and disintegration.
Peykar's crisis came to a head with the publication of Peykar, No.
110, in July 1981. The editorial, dealing with the heightened tension
within the Islamic Republic between Banisadr and the IRP, took a
position favourable to the liberal faction. The article was hastily
withdrawn, but the organization was already in disarray. All efforts
to stage some kind of organizational restructuring or orderly
factional splits failed in the absence of any factions or circles with
some kind of theoretical consistency and organizational authority.
Other radical Left organizations met with more or less the same fate.
Vahdat-e Enqelabi (Revolutionary Unity), a broad unity of Maoist
inspired Third Line organizations to the Right of Peykar, crumbled
before it could really get stated, leaving behind a trail of
demoralized and confused activists.
The crisis and disintegration of the main radical Left
organizations was not, as it is usually claimed, a result of the
massive repression of June 1981 and after. Nor was it a product of the
Left's tactical mistakes or disunity or even its alleged neglect of
the political value of 'democracy' . It was, rather, rooted in the
transformation of the Iranian political economy during the last two
decades. If the radical Left despite its numerical strength and
political militancy appeared as a marginal force in Iranian politics
during the revolution, it was because it represented the 'socialism'
and the political practice of marginal classes. The crisis of petty
bourgeois socialism and militant national reformism that formed the
social essence of the radical Left was in fact long overdue.
Consolidation of the capitalism after the agrarian reforms, the
accelerating process of accumulation with the oil boom of the '70s and
the rise of a massive urban working class, had already turned any
non-proletarian socialism into an impotent utopia. Pahlavi autocracy,
intent on the suppression of any form of political intercourse, had
hindered the unfolding of the inner contradictions of the radical
Left. With the political crisis of 1977 and the revolution of 78-79,
politics eventually 'caught up' with economics. Dormant contradictions
were brought into the open and found their resolution in the crisis of
the radical Left and its disintegration in the face of the theoretical
radicalisation and social reorientation of Iranian communism. The
repression of June 1981 and after once again slowed this process and
prevented it from taking its full course. Nevertheless, by 1981 the
ideological complexion and the organizational configuration of the
Iranian radical Left had been entirely changed.
A New Polarization
The crisis of the radical Left, therefore, in no way indicated a
retrogressive development. On the contrary, it marked a significant
transformation and a major historical turning point. Out of the crisis
of the traditional radical Left there emerged a new polarization based
on trends with more stable theoretical and social characteristics:
1. A new pro-USSR pole has emerged. It endeavours to supplant the
Tudeh Party in relation to the Soviet Union, reach a reconciliation
with Iranian nationalism, and to gain some kind of political prestige
for the pro- USSR line after the scandalous policies of Tudeh and
Fedaii Majority in supporting the Islamic Republic. The most
outspoken, though not the most consistent, representative of this line
is Rah-e Kargar (Worker's Path), formed during the revolution as a
theoretical and political pressure group in relation to the Fedaii.
This trend further includes a breakaway identified with its leader Ali
Keshtgar; and also the 'Iranian People's Democratic Party', recently
split from the Tudeh Party. Both organizations broke to adopt more
nationalist positions. All organizations belonging to this trend
regard the Soviet Union as the' fatherland of socialism' and generally
endorse its foreign policy, with the exception of cases where it
concerns their own 'fatherland'. Here, they wish to remain
independent. This is their fundamental demarcation with the Tudeh
tradition and their only hope for accommodating Iranian nationalism.
So far, the tainted past of the Keshtgar group and the IPDP has
prevented any concrete move towards unity in this line. However, it is
an important pole in that it may become the core of another generation
of statist national reformism, this time perhaps of a more labourist
character. Recent developments in the Soviet Union will definitely
have decisive consequences for this trend.
2. An intellectual 'Iranian New Left' has emerged among Iranian
exiles who have, somewhat belatedly, rediscovered the debates and
polemics within Western Marxism and the New Left . Western Marxist
influence was vaguely represented during the revolution by Vahdat-e
Kommonisti (Communist Unity), but enjoyed only a marginal influence
among the main organisations of the radical Left. The CU originated in
the radicalisation of the youngest generation of National Front
activists. The organization was formed in 1970 and was essentially
active among Iranian students abroad. Prior to the revolution it was
in contact with, and supported, guerrilla organisations inside the
country, trying to reach unity with Fedaiis. They distanced themselves
from the Fedaii in 1976, objecting to the latter's 'more pronounced
Maoism and Stalinism'. During the revolution and after, CU maintained
a rather stable liberal Left position, arguing against the Left's
'sectarianism', Third Worldist outlook and its reluctance to unite
with Mojahedin and the Left wing of Iranian bourgeois liberalism
against the clergy. While emphasizing its commitment to socialism in
principle, in practice and in its few programmatic proclamations, the
CU never went beyond a struggle for immediate and limited political
rights. It did not concern itself particularly with working class
struggle and issues arising from it, did not pursue a policy of
organisational expansion and remained a theoretical and propagandist
group with some influence among Left intellectuals.
The Iranian 'New Left', while influenced by the CU, exhibits
essentially different characteristics. It is much more subjectivist in
theory, pessimist in outlook, and strongly adverse to practical
communist activity. It signals the break of the Iranian intellectual,
hitherto spontaneously leaning towards Marxism, with militant
communism. It has its roots in the failure of the traditional radical
Left in Iran and finds its main audience among the disillusioned and
frustrated former radical Left activists. This trend is politically
insignificant at the moment. But it does prepare the ideological
ground and create a hard core of cadres for a possible future Right
wing social- democracy.
3. A radical and militant communism has taken shape which may be
characterized by its ideological and political independence from
existing international poles of 'communism'', its reorientation
towards the classical Marxian and Leninist traditions and its strong
emphasis on political and organizational work among the working class.
Organizationally, this trend is represented by the Communist Party of
Iran. But it also includes a whole spectrum of militant workers'
circles and their informal networks. The formation of this new trend
is the most significant positive result of the evolution of the
Iranian radical Left during the last decade.
The Communist Party and the Prospect of Worker-Communism
The revolution initiated two important developments. First, a
growing critique of ideological and theoretical premises of the petty
bourgeois radical Left from a Marxist standpoint, and second, an
unprecedented upsurge of the working class movement. Together the two
elements created conditions most conductive for the emergence of a
revolutionary Marxist organizational trend distinct from the existing
radical Left.
The revolution of 1978-9 was the first major political upheaval
arising from the contradictions of Iranian capitalism. It provided the
first real historical opportunity for the working class to gain in the
political arena the same weight it had already acquired in social
production. The working class movement played a crucial role in the
overthrow of the monarchy. Workers' strikes, particularly in key
industries such as oil and manufacturing, formed the backbone of the
mass movement, paralysing successive military governments and
inspiring mass resistance. Working class protests continued after the
revolution and remained one of the central themes of political
confrontation in society.
Certain features of the Iranian working class movement must be
noted here. First, due to constant repression during the previous two
decades and also the continuous influx of poor peasants into the ranks
of workers, traditions of organized struggle were extremely weak
within the Iranian working class. In the absence of mass
organizations, the day-to-day struggle was led and organized by
networks of circles, composed of local practical leaders and
worker-agitators. Second, until the revolution, the class movement was
hardly affected by the developments within the radical Left. The
working class remained aloof from the intellectual and student-based
socialist tradition which had subordinated the class struggle to the
'people's cause' and had very little to offer in terms of policy or
practical guidelines for the workers' movement. Thirdly, by the same
token, Iranian workers were not under the influence of any revisionist
or reformist party capable of harnessing their spontaneous militancy.
They were, and still are, on the whole much more politics-oriented
than the working classes in the metropolitan capitalist countries,
more concerned with the question of the state and political power and
more prone to adopting militant forms of struggle.
In the course of the revolution a very favourable environment was
created for the dissemination of communist ideas and even for
communist organization in the working class. Many practical leaders of
the workers' movement became communists and even took up
organizational activity. However, on the whole they kept their
distance from the organizations of the radical Left. Many supported
them, as workers inevitably do in the absence of real workers'
parties, as the more radical section of the opposition. But they did
not join them on any mass scale. Despite the growth of a strong
communist tradition within the working class that encompassed a very
substantial number of practical leaders of the class, the radical Left
remained dominated by student politics and kept its essentially
intellectual character. This gulf exerted a constant pressure on
radical Left organizations and was a major contributing factor in
their eventual disintegration.
A parallel development could also be observed at the ideological
and organizational level. Principled and revolutionary Marxism grew
rapidly in the course of the revolution, questioning and criticising
the whole ideological foundation of Iranian petty bourgeois socialism.
This process affected all organizations of the radical Left and in
particular those of the Third Line. This radicalism could be
identified by a return to Marxist classics and the works of Lenin, an
emphasis on the primacy of class struggle, a re-orientation towards
work among the working class, and the advocacy of radical tactics. The
most vocal and consistent exponent of this break with the populist
Left was Ettehad-e Mobarezan-e Kommonist (Unity of Communist
Militants). The UCM, formed in December 1978 and initially called
Sahand started a vigorous theoretical campaign against the nationalist
and populist theories and conceptions of the radical Left. It called
the 'national bourgeoisie' a myth and the development of an
'independent', 'national' capitalism a reactionary utopia. It rejected
the concept of a democratic revolution with the task of solving the
agrarian question and developing forces of production, and saw the
task of the current revolution as creating political and social
conditions necessary for a socialist mobilization of the working class
and an uninterrupted march towards a socialist revolution. It rejected
the radical Left's critique of imperialism as nationalist and
anti-monopolist and endeavoured to present a critique based on the
concept of class exploitation. Basing itself on an analysis of the
specific characteristics of the bourgeois state in periods of
revolutionary crisis, UCM characterized the Islamic Republic and both
its inner factions as bourgeois and counter-revolutionary.
Furthermore, UCM regarded the formation of a Leninist Party as an
urgent task and saw its own theoretical polemics against populism as a
means for arriving at a solid programmatic foundation for such a
party. In March 1981, UCM published its programme, in which it
emphasized its commitment to a communist revolution and summed up its
appraisal of the urgent tasks of the communist movement. The programme,
on which the CPI programme was later based, also included extensive
immediate democratic and economic demands.
The ideas of UCM had a great impact on the radical Left and
especially on the activists of the Third Line. Many directly joined
UCM, but its real influence went much further. While UCM itself was
branded as 'leftist' and 'Trotskyist', its terminology and its
analyses were increasingly borrowed by the main Left organizations in
their search for some theoretical consistency and in the course of
their tactical turn to the Left. Strong pro-UCM factions and currents
emerged in almost all major Third Line organizations, namely,
Razmandegan, Peykar and Vahdat-e Enqelabi. All later joined UCM and,
through it, the Communist Party.
The breakthrough, however, came from an unexpected quarter. In
March 1981, the Second Congress of Komala, a communist organisation
with mass support in Kurdistan and already a main pillar of the
Kurdish armed resistance against the Islamic Republic, adopted
positions similar to those of the UCM and openly referred to it as a
vanguard of the anti-populist campaign. Komala had been formed in 1969
as an underground network of Maoist-inspired activists with a firm
commitment to political work among the masses. In 1974, SAVAK arrested
a large number of its leading members, but the organization was not
destroyed. With the outbreak of revolution and the release of its
leaders from prison, Komala soon put itself at the head of the mass
movement in Kurdistan. In August 1979, only six month after the fall
of the monarchy, the Islamic regime launched its military offensive
against the Kurdish people. Komala called for mass armed resistance
and set out to organize Pishmargeh (partisan) units. By the time of
its Second Congress, it had become the natural party of the Kurdish
working people and enjoyed massive support in both urban and rural
areas. It not only resisted the Islamic regime, but also challenged
the hegemony of the bourgeois-nationalist Kurdish Democratic Party of
Iran (KDPI) and its narrow-minded nationalism over the Kurdish
movement.
Prior to its Second Congress, Komala had stood aloof from the
ideological debates within the Iranian Left, concerning itself
primarily with organizing and leading the movement in Kurdistan.
Komala's Second Congress tilted the balance in favour of the
anti-populist trend and turned it into the strongest pole of
attraction for Marxist activists. Komala and UCM began a close
cooperation for the formation of the Communist Party. They drafted a
joined programme, called the Programme of the Communist Party, and
urged all organizations and groupings sympathetic to it to join in the
struggle for the formation of the CPI. In September 1983, the
Constituent Congress of the Communist Party, comprised of communist
cadres with diverse organizational backgrounds, was convened in
Kurdistan and the CPI was founded.
The formation of the CPI marked the final ideological and
organizational break of Iranian socialism from the nationalist and
populist tradition. The CPI reaffirmed class and class struggle as
concepts central to its ideology and practical work. This entails a
return to pre-Stalin Marxism orthodoxy. For CPI, as for Marx,
socialism is primarily identified by communal ownership of the means
of production and the abolition of wage labour, and not merely by the
development of forces of production or state planning. The Soviet
economy is characterized as state capitalist. Indeed, the CPI does not
recognize any 'socialist camps' and does not identify with any
so-called communist international poles or trends. In tactics, it
emphasizes independent class action and class mobilization. It sees
the working class mass movement as the main pillar of any struggle for
revolutionary change. It advocates a council-ist structure for the
working class mass organization and pursues the policy of
strengthening the workers' general assembly movement as the most
effective means for an immediate mass organization. Unlike the
populist tradition, CPI attaches great importance to the day-to-day
struggle for improvements in the living and working conditions of the
working class.
During the last five years the CPI has succeeded in establishing
itself as the mainstream organization in Iranian socialist Left.
However, its real political value lies in the part that it can,
potentially, play in the development of a genuine and strong
worker-communist tradition in Iran.
No amount of theoretical and political radicalisation can in itself
change the social character of present-day communism and bridge the
gulf that separates it from the working class. What is needed, if the
proletarian communism of the Communist Manifesto is to become a
reality, is a real social shift. Communism must be taken back from all
those who employed it throughout the twentieth century to reform
capitalism, and returned to the working class to be used against
capital, for real human emancipation. A worker-communist movement must
be shaped; one in which communism is once again an expression of class
protest and class activity. The Iranian revolution has created the
material necessary for this transition. The emergence of a vast layer
of socialist and radical worker-leaders, the ideological and political
bankruptcy of national reformism and petty bourgeois socialism, and
the emergence of a radical Marxist party that can potentially be taken
over by the working class and used as an effective instrument in the
class struggle, all are decisive developments in this direction. Much
still depends on the practice of the present generation of Iranian
revolutionary Marxists and their ability to remain on course in the
critical political turns that lay ahead. This is the test the CPI has
yet to face.
The above is an unpublished work written in English in 1987.
Mansoor Hekmat, who was a founding member of the CPI, left the CPI
along with other members of its leadership (the political bureau of
the CPI) in November 1991 to found the Worker-communist Party of Iran.