Split in Iranian and Iraqi left

To find out facts on the split, please see Special TV International English Programme on the Political Differences in the Worker-communist Party of Iran and the recent Split of a right-wing bloc

http://www.wpiran.org/mnspecial.wmv

Special TV International English Programme on the Political Differences in the Worker-communist Party of Iran and the recent Split of a right-wing bloc

http://www.wpiran.org/mnspecial.wmv

In addition and a factual point, the Majority of the politburo remained with the party and supported Hamid Taghvaie. The section that left the party were mainly concentrated in the Kurdistan Committee of the party who supported Koroush Modaresi.

From "WPI briefing"

Our Party will go forth stronger

Radio International interview with Hamid Taghvaee on the recent split

In the past two years, there have been discussions on important issues, namely the strategy for gaining political power within the Worker-communist Party of Iran (WPI). Following these discussions, 24 members of the Central Committee have resigned from the WPI and established another party. We will be speaking with Hamid Taghvaee, the WPI Leader, on this.

Siavash Daneshvar: Hamid Taghvaee, the WPI has issued a press release announcing that the WPI’s Congress is to be held during 18-19 September 2004. We have also been informed that following discussions over the past two years in the WPI, 24 members of the Central Committee have resigned and established another party. Please explain.

Hamid Taghvaee: Unfortunately, these 24 individuals preferred not to participate in the Congress and have instead left the Party. As you said, these resignations follow discussions within the Party leadership in the politburo and in the plenums of the central committee that began after the passing away of Mansoor Hekmat. Recently, these discussions have become heated and have effectively obstructed Party activities after the 4th Congress. The Party had become weakened and reached a dead-end both in the politburo and executive committee. There was no other alternative than to inform the party cadres and involve them in the discussions. The central committee itself was unable to resolve the situation because of the deadlock between the two opposing views. These discussions were published within the Party and are also available to the public in Persian.

After the distribution of these discussions within the cadres of the Party, these comrades decided to leave rather than participate in the Congress, which is naturally and logically the highest authority of the Party and the organ that has elected the Central Committee. It is the Congress that is the ultimate source for reaching political and organisational decisions based on these discussions and is the only authority that can get the Party out of this deadlock in order to show the way and galvanize the party. These comrades preferred not to do this. In my opinion, the main reason for this is that their political position was rejected by a majority of cadres and they realised that their perspective cannot gain the upper hand in the Congress and therefore they separated. The Congress however will go ahead. Our Party will go to this Congress to bring this period to an end and emerge stronger and with lucid and transparent policies for the work that lays ahead.

Siavash Daneshvar: What was the basis of these differences? If you were to take a snap shot of these differences and give a clear image of the differences, what would you say the two perspectives were?

Hamid Taghvaee: In brief, the basis of these differences was over political power. It is natural that our Party, which is now a social party with a large base and widespread influence, can contemplate the overthrow of the Islamic regime of Iran and have on its agenda the leading of the revolution and gaining political power. Based on this, the 4th Congress passed a number of strong and sharp resolutions on the prospect of the revolution and the task of organising and leading the revolution which is taking shape. It also passed a resolution on the organising of the working class in Iran and the relationship between the working class and political power. However, though these comrades voted for these resolutions, they had very clear theses and ideas contrary to those resolutions. After the 4th Congress, their continued discussions showed that they were clearly opposed to the resolutions and would not defend them.

Given this situation, the discussions within the leadership were published within the Party. The content of the debate was whether the WPI could gain power by organising a revolution today in Iran and by leading it. Our position is that when power is gained, we will immediately proclaim a Socialist Republic, which has been our policy and Mansoor Hekmat’s right from the beginning. Theirs is that there is no impending revolution, the Islamic regime will collapse instead and that when this happens, even if the Party gains political power, we must still not proclaim a Socialist Republic because the movement against the Islamic regime is not socialist. Therefore, they advocate gaining political power primarily via a coalition and compromise with other parties in order to reach power. It is only later in their perspective that socialism will arrive. These two perspectives are opposing views. These two views have had extremely heated debates between them over the past two years, yet still the decisions and the practice of the Party has always been based on the radical perspective, our Party’ perspective. In fact, the 4th Congress was a step forward in this direction and resolved resolutions with regards to the revolution and political power; those who resigned from the Party always had issue with this even though they had voted for the resolutions of that Congress, which stated that revolution is the basis of our work and that we have no other alternative route to gaining political power other than organising and leading a revolution. They nonetheless questioned this strategy and stressed the gaining of power without a revolution. So instead of revolution and overthrow, they focused on gaining political power via negotiations, diplomacy, a Constituent Assembly and so on. We stood up to these Right-wing views and did not allow them to become dominant and influence the activities of our Party; this in itself caused problems. It made it difficult for them and they felt they could not work in this framework. Over the past three months, as I stated before, the Party’s leadership was paralysed and couldn’t work. That is when we decided that the debates had to become overt. A Congress was called for in order to bring these discussions to a resolution. Those who resigned, however, refused to accept the Congress. In my opinion, they refused because they received a profound response from the majority against their views and so they left the Party.

Siavash Daneshvar: What’s the problem with their views and the solutions they provide - that a party can also take power via negotiation and diplomacy. Hasn’t the WPI thought of the fact that it may have to join a coalition government that it doesn’t like? What’s your problem with their theses?

Hamid Taghvaee: Of course, this is possible. It’s not a no go area for us. The Party can, according to its assessment and depending on the balance of power, participate in a coalition government. However, this is profoundly different from making that the basis of your Party line and strategy. Their way is not Mansoor Hekmat’s way. Not only because it is principally wrong but also because in practice it will leads you to nowhere. It is impossible for a radical, maximalist, revolutionary Party like ours to get to power in any way but revolution. A Party like ours has to be with the revolution, organise the revolution, and have power on the streets so to speak for it to be able to participate in a parliament or cabinet; only then can such participation be contemplated and possible. Many radical revolutionary parties have done this many times in history. But this is possible only when revolution is in your strategy, when you have gathered force in the streets. Otherwise, they won’t let us in parliament. They won’t let us enter the top echelons. Bourgeois parties have the army, money, and bureaucracy behind them, and are hopeful for gaining power via these means. For example, the monarchist opposition in Iran has capitalised on the USA and Europe bringing them into power. Like Khomeini who came to power with the support of the west. All bourgeois parties work in the same way. But for a radical communist party, its source and reliance, its foundation of power is on the working class and the deprived population. It has no other foundation Therefore, any theory that doesn’t see this source of power, not only won’t reach power in an unprincipled manner, it will not gain power full stop. It will become a party that will be taken advantage of. In Iran, we had the Tudeh Party and Ranjbaran Party* as examples of this from the 1979 revolution. We had socialists like Babak Zahraee** or those who were consultants to Bani Sadr at the beginning of the Islamic regime, consultants to the Liberals, or on the other side became the consultants to the Islamic Republic’s Party. The Tudeh Party defended the Islamic regime’s Party and said they were a mass party and so on. We saw what happened to them. They were taken advantage of. The Islamic Republic established its power and then slaughtered them all.

Therefore, the debate is not on whether it is an unprincipled way of achieving political power but that it is not the way to achieve power. Instead it is only a way of advancing the current government and the anti-revolutionary government. I’m not even worried about tomorrow. If our Party takes this position, in my opinion, the Party will lose its social base on a mass scale today. The radical workers who are with us, the revolutionary women who are with us, those who want to get rid of the misogynist Islamic government, the masses of people who consider themselves secular, and not only don’t want religion in the state but want to eradicate it from the face of society, they are gathered around our Party because of its radical perspectives. If our Party changes its policy to theirs, and advocates that there is to be no revolution in this period, and that if there is anything it will be the collapse of the regime, and that it is not even then our turn, and instead advocatea a scenario which includes a declaration and a constituent assembly and a referendum to gain power - these are the discussions that have been unfortunately raised by these individuals - then the Party itself will disintegrate. It will lose its vast social base. And the people of Iran will once again get stuck in another revolution without a leader, without a voice, and misery similar to what happened in the revolution of 1979 will befall them. We cannot allow this to become the dominant policy and even be represented in our Party. These were discussions that had been closed before. During Mansoor Hekmat’s time, no one advocated that socialism would frighten people and make them disperse. They are arguing that now is not the time for socialism. Or if one mentions socialism, those who are for women’s liberation or modernity or anti-religion, will take flight. These are strange theses. Mansoor Hekmat has said that if you scratch any person’s skin, you will find a socialist underneath. Now with these theses, the people of Iran will run away from socialism and can’t accept it? All these views and policies would have uprooted the WPI. Our party is a radical revolutionary Party that represents the majority of people, the majority of freedom loving and equality seeking people in Iran and these types of theses are like shooting ourselves in the foot. We couldn’t allow this to take place. Nonetheless we didn’t tell these individuals to leave the Party; this was never our position. We said that if you are a minority, accept it, and stay in our Party. But unfortunately they couldn’t accept that and left.

Siavash Daneshvar: What has been the response of the Party’s cadres and members vis-à-vis these discussions?

Hamid Taghvaee: After the publication of these discussions in the Party, this Right-wing faced a deep and harsh critique by the majority of the cadres who gained access to the oral and written discussions. We published all the discussions on a site in the Party. It was extremely clear-cut. These theses and opinions were so contradictory and in opposition to our tradition and policies and particularly the line that Mansoor Hekmat represented that it was clear for all that these have no place, they are not our positions, and it was clear what destructive results they could have for our Party and the revolution in Iran. In my opinion one of the reasons that these comrades left was because they were unable to respond to the critique they faced. They effectively avoided the debate by labelling it an inquisition; they didn’t respond and left the Party instead. It is obviously this reality that left them with no choice but to reject the Congress and declare that they won’t attend because they knew if they attended, the Congress would criticize their views and policies and that they would become a minority in the Party and that even their status in the Central Committee would be under question and that they could not be elected to the next Central Committee. These calculations and considerations obliged them to leave.

Siavash Daneshvar: As a result of these differences, has the WPI been weakened; what is the plan of the Congress; what response does it want to give to this matter?

Hamid Taghvaee: In the history of our Party, this has happened before. If one only considers the numbers, yes our Party has been weakened compared to if there was not such a view and discussion, and the Party was working as before. But if you consider the fact that this viewpoint had to be critiqued in this Party and brushed aside, our Party has been strengthened. We did not want even one person to leave - this is the decision that they unfortunately made - but this perspective had to leave the Party. This perspective had to be isolated and criticised. As I said earlier, it goes directly back to our social status, presence, and influence; this perspective would have uprooted our status, presence and influence. It had to be done. If you look at it in this way, we came out victorious and were once more able to defend the essence and pillars of our policies and aims that WPI has always followed. In this theoretical struggle, we were able to come out clearer, more open, and the Party became a pressure point against these Right-wing views. As a result, the Party has been rejuvenated, and this is at a good starting point. At the next Congress, I am certain that it will be a high point in the history of the Party and the worker-communist movement and the history of the Left. Society will very soon realise who is really representing Mansoor Hekmat’s line, and who has separated from what. It is very clear. It will be evident that this is not merely a separation from the Party but from radical, maximalist and revolutionary politics, and the strategy that Mansoor Hekmat represented. Society will appreciate this and I am sure our Party will go forth stronger, more influential and become more widespread.

This is not the first time; in other times we have had resignations. You see our Party is a social party, which means that we effect developments in society and are also affected by developments in society. The opinions that were raised in our Party are not new ones. They are present in society and these perspectives are represented by other movements, the Right movement, by the so called ‘Reformist’ 2nd Khordad movement, which represents perspectives similar to these arguments albeit in a Left package. We have seen these before. There was a period when we separated from the Communist Party of Iran after having a face off with nationalism of that period and again during the rise of the ‘Reformist’ movement in Iran, with the same theses, some left our Party. Now in different times when the Party has reached such a social and objective position in which it can gain power and political power is accessible and that they see that the revolution that we have been talking about did not happen with the speed they were expecting and is taking longer, this leaves the door open for the Right and for its theorisation; we see how under the name of party and political power, there is a call to abandon the revolution, socialism and communism. As I said before, this Right-wing will face a dead-end and make the Party a means to be taken advantage of by the ruling classes, to be used and discarded. I want to point out that this is a part of our struggle with the class that we are fighting against; this is not a struggle outside the walls of the Party alone, it has also always been part of the battle within the Party, in the form of theses, programmes, and occasionally silence, and on other occasions with obstructions. We have always faced these situations.

The comrades who left are all radical comrades who could have remained but they decided not to and like all separations, a thousand other factors also played a part, but I want to reiterate that their perspective is Right-wing, bourgeois and contrary to our position. Again, this does not in any way mean that the activists that followed that policy are purposely and with full knowledge following the Right. I hope that the legitimacy of our position becomes clear and that those who have left return.

Siavash Daneshvar: What plans do you have for the Congress?

Hamid Taghvaee: The Congress is extraordinary because of these extraordinary discussions. It will be held on the 18 and 19 of September and for the first time, because it is extraordinary, all members can participate and have a direct vote. Like our other congresses, it will be open to the public. It will, in my opinion, be a strong and exciting Congress, because we will once more go back to our intellectual fundamentals, the radicalism and humanitarianism that our policies have always represented and the immediacy of the revolution that we want to organise and the immediacy of the free, equal and socialist society that we want to create, and the possibility of them all. We will again discuss, reiterate and once more reinforce our programme with our radical revolutionary strategy. We will come out of this Congress more transparent, clearer, more powerful and more radical.

Siavash Daneshvar: As the Leader of the WPI, what is your message to members and supporters in Iran?

Hamid Taghvaee: My message to all the activists and supporters of the Party in Iran is that we have successfully overcome another round of political and intellectual struggle with the Right-wing perspective. Though we didn’t want anyone to resign, or leave, at the end this was beyond our control. Unfortunately some comrades decided to leave, not continue this discussion and refused to take part in the Congress to resolve this discussion. But despite all this, our Party has come out of this successfully, stronger, more radical and more determined. During the debates, the Party was in practice following the correct and radical line. This has been strengthened; become more united, and removed the addendums that those who resigned put forth and so on. I am certain it will free up a lot of energy so that our Party can take a hug leap forward. In this move, all the activists in Iran are partners and must become partners. We want everyone to follow these discussions carefully. And with the Party, alongside the Party, continue to carry the banner of revolution and socialism and go forward.

Translators: Maryam Namazie and Fariborz Pooya

* Ranjbaran was a pro-Albanian, Pro-Khomeini party

** Babak Zahraee was the leader of a pro-Khomeini Trotskyist group

* Communiqué of the Worker-communist Party of Iran

On the split of a section of the Central Committee

On 24 August 2004 some members of the Central Committee of the Worker-communist Party of Iran (WPI) announced their split from the Party. They decided to leave the WPI soon after their views, which were debated within the leadership for two years, were made public to the cadres and met with a resounding critique from the majority. Rather than participate in a Congress and submit to a majority vote, they decided last minute not to take part in the Congress, which was put forward by Hamid Taghvaee, the WPI Leader, as the highest organ able to bring the political differences to a resolution. These comrades refused to participate in the Congress and respect the majority vote. They left whilst giving a completely false picture of the internal discussions that have been ongoing in the leadership for the past two years.

Even a quick glance at the documents pertaining to the internal discussions within the Party leadership (which is now available to the public on www.rowzane.com in Persian) reveals the Right-wing basis of their split. These Right-wing discussions and stance - consistently put forward by Koorosh Modaresi - have been on issues surrounding the programme, strategy, tactic, and method of work and have been effectively contrary to the WPI’s programme, its resolutions passed at previous congresses, and the fundamentals of worker-communism as well as the discussions regarding the Party’s role in society and political power. The stance of those who have split from the WPI is in effect a regression to the well-known bourgeois communisms and Right-wing traditions which will not immediately and in the midst of a revolution against the Islamic Republic of Iran place the establishment of a Socialist Republic or the immediate implementation of socialism on its agenda.

Those who split demonstrate the bitter truth of the past decades about how communists inevitably become an appendage of mainstream bourgeois parties, pawns in the power game and eventually victims and or marginalised when they wash their hands off their radicalism and revolutionary aims in order to gain political power. The history of the Left in Iran and the world has given us many such examples. If the Party of those who have split wishes to continue with the stance represented by Koorosh Modaresi, it will not have any other fate.

Koorosh Modaresi’s theses were first put forward in the 16th Plenum of the Central Committee and were met with the categorical opposition of the majority of the Central Committee, including many of those who have now left the Party with him. From then until the 4th Congress, heated discussions took place in the Politburo and the Central Committee in order to prevent these right-wing views from becoming the official views of the Party. The 4th Congress was a victory for the worker-communism of Mansoor Hekmat. In fact, all those who have recently left the Party voted in favour of the political resolutions of the 4th Congress - though some now say it was out of expedience. After the Congress, this viewpoint, however, gradually saw itself in a tight spot and started to stand against the implementation of the Congress resolution and its subsequent practical and complementary resolution that was approved in the 20th Plenum (namely the resolution about giving a social character to Left leading activists). Instead they turned to filing complaints and hindering the practical implementation of the approved policies, which in turn paralysed the work of the Politburo and the Executive Committee. When the internal discussions were made available to the cadres, the majority expressed their opposition to these views. The perspective of their not being elected in the next Congress to the leadership of the Party made these comrades split and form another Party.

The new Party that they have built carries contradictions right from the start. On the one hand, they swear upon the WPI programme ‘A Better World’ and Mansoor Hekmat, and on the other hand refrain from it in practice and in the real world based on Koorosh Modaresi’s thesis. They have even made this point clear in their communiqué of formation. In it they say that their Party’s “aim is seizing political power as the precondition to organising the social revolution of the working class”. Yet the Communist Manifesto 160 years ago made it clear that the first step in a workers’ revolution is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the seizing of political power by the working class (and of course its political party). Our friends have only made a small change in the Communist Manifesto: seizing of political power is the precondition to organising the social revolution of the working class! In other words, the social revolution will occur after seizing political power! The question is: who, how and in what process will political power be seized in their scenario? The postponement of the socialist revolution to after seizure of political power, which has been introduced and defended by Koorosh Modaresi in internal discussions, is based on the outdated bourgeois Left thesis which asserts that “socialism will disperse people” and that a socialist revolution “at the present is impossible”. Although they claim that this method of seizing political power is their strong point, in fact it is utopic and impossible. Even if you wash your hands off communism, freedom and equality and become communists of the Tudeh Party kind, even if you replace revolution with diplomacy and introduce theses such as civil disobedience, a Constituent Assembly, a coalition government with the remnants of the disintegrated Islamic Republic of Iran and referendum (i.e. all the theses Koorosh Modaresi presented at the 16th Plenum and defended until the split), you will not have a better fate than that of the Tudeh Party. Washing your hands off radicalism, basing your strategy for power on anything but the revolution is not a short cut to power but is rather a fast track to becoming isolated from the revolutionary workers and people.

We hope that the communists who are now unfortunately in the ranks of the split party realise how they have been classically deceived in the same way as a lot of radical communists have been during the past decades. The split Party with its platform and present combination of members can be a politically non-homogenous group full of contradictions. Differences and tensions can escalate at a crucial political moment or even before that. In anyway, if this group follows the stance represented by Koorosh Modaresi, which is obvious in their formation communiqué, it will place itself on the Right-wing of the political pole in society.

It goes without saying that the Worker-communist Party has no desire to see the split group move further to the Right. As long as these comrades commit themselves to the programme “A Better World”, they have our recognition and respect. As long as they fight against the Islamic Republic of Iran, they have our respect. However, there is one difference between these comrades and any other party: they have called themselves the Worker-communist Party-Hekmatist and want to carry out their policies under the name of worker-communism and Hekmatism. We are duty-bound, therefore, to not allow even the slightest Right-wing deviation under the name of Hekmat or worker-communism. We will not let the Right-wing and bourgeois communism that Mansoor Hekmat discarded to enter via a back door. We will resolutely defend Mansoor Hekmat!

Finally, the split is the definite defeat of the Right-wing viewpoint within the Party. This exit strengthens our forces ten-fold. Even now we have gained unity and strength of will amongst the cadres around the Party policies. In fact, the Worker-communist Party, on the verge of a great revolution in Iran, has become ready to play its role. Another achievement from confronting the Right-wing within the Party has been to move the Party to becoming one which has a greater degree of openness based on the conscious will of its communist cadres. The recent discussions showed that the more the Party is open, accessible, and based on the communist cadres, the more it can defend itself. The discussions led to a more unified and coherent leadership and showed how such a leadership is the key for advancement. Up till the split, the leadership tried not to let these policies, of which even one could undermine the Party’s base amongst workers, women and the youth, to dominate Party policy. Now the Party will work on this social base. This Party has come closer to the Party that can make it possible for communism to achieve victory in Iran. The 5th Congress will announce the ever-greater presence of this Party in society.

Translator: Maryam Kousha

* Our Main Differences

The Defeat of the Right in and their split from the Worker-communist Party of Iran

Azar Majedi and Ali Javadi

After the passing away of Mansoor Hekmat, the late leader of the worker-communist party and movement, sharp political differences began to arise within the leadership of the Worker-communist Party of Iran (WPI) developing into a Right-wing bloc, primarily consisting of the ranks of the WPI’s Kurdistan Committee around the policies and views of Koorosh Modaresi. When these internal debates were made available to the cadres, this bloc decided to leave the Party. Instead of remaining within the ranks of the Worker-communist Party and continuing their struggle in the framework of a communist and radical programme and policies, they decided to leave and separate their path from that of worker-communism.

This bloc has now formed another party called WPI-Hekmatist. By using Mansoor Hekmat’s name, it aims to conceal its Right-wing views and methods within a Left and communist wrapping and to convert Mansoor Hekmat’s credibility into capital for itself - a socialist-bourgeois group. However, the political theses of this group - as revealed over the past two years as well as their actions - do not have any similarity with the views and tradition of Mansoor Hekmat. In the real world, political parties must be judged not in the way they describe themselves but as they truly are. Using Mansoor Hekmat’s name is a tremendous injustice to him. We will not allow the Right to sacrifice his credibility for its own self-interests.

Unfortunately, many of those who succumbed to this separation did not have much affinity with the dominant policies of the Right-wing bloc. But the adverse methods of this group were able to affect a number especially when internal documents and debates were not yet available to the cadres and members of the Party. This bloc constantly withstood all attempts to make the debates, which would clearly reveal their right-wing views and its critique by the Left, available to the cadres and members. This thereby gave rise to conditions in which this bloc could take advantage of informal and behind the scene circles to advance its position. But the political truth could not remain hidden once the debates were made available to the cadres.

The split was the result of a period of heated internal debate at the highest levels of the Party and the result of the clear response it received from the majority of the cadres. The Right-wing policies and views that were formulated and asserted by Koorosh Modaresi never became the WPI’s official policy. The Left-wing in the Party never allowed these polices to take root. In the final analysis, the Worker-communist Party, Mansoor Hekmat’s party, stood firmly and resolutely against these right-wing policies and theses, which represent class collusion and a moving away from socialism.

How must one look at these developments? The Worker-communist Party is a social and influential Party and internal developments must be examined and evaluated within the social and political developments in society. The absence of Mansoor Hekmat - under conditions in which Iranian society is facing important and decisive political developments - allowed this Right-wing trend to raise its head in the Party. Its views and tactics are fundamentally those that are expressed and publicised by Right-wing political trends and groups in society. The crux of these political views and differences are as follows:

1. This bloc refrains from the immediate establishment of socialism (‘socialism later’): Socialism is not its urgent and immediate task. It has announced that even after the Worker-communist Party gains political power, it will not implement its socialist programme and socialism. It believes that implementing socialism will disperse the ranks that have gathered under the banner of worker-communism. This is a classic Right-wing thesis in the ranks of the Left. This is clearly contrary to the WPI’s programme and Mansoor Hekmat’s communism. The struggle over the necessity of immediately implementing socialism and ‘socialism immediately’ was one of the main areas of struggle within the Party in this period.

2. This bloc diminishes the role and position of a social revolution in the current developments: The WPI is a Party that ‘struggles for the complete victory of the social revolution of the working class and the introduction of workers' communist programme in its entirety’ (A Better World). A social revolution is the most possible and humane way to bring about a Socialist Republic, a system that guarantees freedom, equality and prosperity. The class colluding policies of this bloc are fundamentally based on diminishing the role and position of a social revolution. Ignoring the great revolution that is underway and abstaining from organising and leading it is one of the main pillars of this bloc’s political strategy - the revolution that can only become a victorious workers’ revolution with our all-out efforts. From this bloc’s point of view, revolution is an ‘uncivilised, violent, and undemocratic’ phenomenon. This explanation of revolution falls within the framework of right-wing views in the society. Consequently, reliance on means other than a social revolution to obtain political power and overthrow the political and economic system of the ruling class have become another pillar of this bloc. These efforts have no other meaning than class collusion and their turning their back on the workers’ revolution.

3. This bloc creates stages in the revolutionary process: In social developments, the WPI and Mansoor Hekmat’s communism is committed to organising and leading the social revolution of the working class and a socialist revolution. This bloc’s theses, like all the non-communist groups, are reliant on creating states in the revolution - that is a democratic revolution and then a socialist revolution. The theory of revolutionary stages has no other meaning other than to delay the task of organising and guiding the social revolution of the working class. It effectively delays the overthrow of the capitalist system and the end of an upside down world of poverty and misery, exploitation and suppression, discrimination and inequality. The policies of this bloc effectively make communists negligent regarding the revolutionary developments and puts off the task of a workers’ revolution to some undetermined future. The defeat of these theses during the social developments in history is completely clear for all communists of the Marxist tradition.

4. This bloc advocates a coalition government versus a workers’ state: The strategic policies of this bloc in the current developments are based on the establishment of a coalition government inclusive of Right and Left groups of society and even including segments of the 2nd Khordad forces or the Reformists within the Islamic regime (such as Hajarian). These wholly Right-wing policies are completely opposed to the fundamental principles and political positions of the WPI and the communist tradition of Mansoor Hekmat. The WPI has had a crucial role in defeating the 2nd Khordad or so-called Reformist project. Participating in a ‘Hajarian’ style government under any condition is a reactionary policy. The WPI strives to overthrow the entirety of the Islamic regime of Iran and immediately establish a Socialist Republic based on people’s councils. The strategy of this bloc, however, is based upon the right-wing and non-communist thesis of ‘coalition government plus a constituent assembly plus a referendum’; these have no place in our movement. These theses already have their Right-wing owners in the opposition of the Islamic regime of Iran.

5. This bloc advocates for a ‘party of multiple views’, which is contrary to a united worker-communist party. The WPI is a modern, humane party reliant upon principled and clear communist standards and norms. After Mansoor Hekmat’s passing away, this trend raised the thesis of changing the WPI from a party that is ‘uni-pillar for the workers’ revolution’ with ‘united view and action’ (Our Differences) to a ‘party of multiple views’. This thesis is an attempt to create an environment within the Party that will allow the expression of the Right trend in it. The thesis of ‘multiple views’ is contrary to the existence of a united party.

Once again the WPI has come out strong in this historical test. The Right-wing in the Party has been defeated and left our ranks. Despite a numerical loss, the Party has come out of this stronger and more resolute. The losses will soon be made up. Iranian society is on the brink of an immense social development. The society will quickly lean to the Left and to worker-communism. The present period is the period of our unprecedented growth and expansion. The WPI is the hope of innumerable people for freedom, equality and prosperity.

We pledge to keep Mansoor Hekmat’s banner higher than ever. We call on all to join the ranks of the WPI. This is the Party of all those who struggle for freedom and equality.

Translator: Maryam Namazie

* Fifth Congress of the Worker-communist Party of Iran

The Fifth Congress of the Worker-communist Party of Iran (WPI) will be held during 18-19 September 2004. This is an extraordinary Congress around discussions and differences in the Party’s leadership about several political issues surrounding revolution and the strategy for gaining political power and in order to bring these discussions to their conclusion. These documents will be available for the public as soon as possible. All WPI members are invited to actively participate in this Congress, in which members will have a direct vote.

The Fifth congress is open to the public.

...the so called "Hekmatist" are the minority. It was the wide spread majority of the members of the WPI, who sharply said no to the trial of Koorosh Modaresi to establish right wing views inside the party. K. Mosaresi wants to get to power in Iran somehow, and than later wants to let socialism rain over the people. That´s rubbish and the opposite of Marx and Mansoor Hekmat.

In a brief speech at the congress I argued, for example, that agitation for a Constituent Assembly is not necessarily at all incompatible with revolutionary socialism.

I also urged attention to the whole Marxist tradition. Although a couple of portraits of Marx were displayed at the congress alongside the portraits of Mansoor Hekmat, no speech made any substantive allusion to any Marxist writer other than Mansoor Hekmat - whose name was invoked, or whose words were cited, in almost every speech.

The cry "Long live Mansoor Hekmat" was guaranteed to bring the congress to its feet, clapping, whistling, and stamping, and "Long live Hamid Taghvaee", if less frequent, got almost as fulsome a response.

This adulation of leaders, going well beyond the respect and confidence any party leadership must gain in order to function, sits ill with the WPI's aggressive "Westernism", its avowed determination to fight everywhere for the highest norms of civilisation, freedom, and equality yet achieved, and to allow no derogation in the name of "respect for local culture".

Maybe it is in part generated by the fact that the WPI's main activity is, in effect, to project its leaders as media personalities inside Iran.

The congress saw no real controversy, though it seemed to me that its floor contained experience which could have animated a rich discussion had the congress been less comprehensively run from the platform.

Take as an example Abbas Mohammadi, a Canadian bus driver who acted as one of my interpreters for the proceedings (in Farsi).

He first entered politics as a student in England in the 1970s. He returned to Iran illegally during the 1979 revolution, got a job in a phone factory, was involved in a workers' council which had effective control there for some months, and then in a battle against the Khomeinyites taking over the council and making it an "Islamic workers' council".

When Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq in 1980, the organisation Abbas then belonged to, a Maoist group called the Organisation of Iranian Communists, sent him to join the army and "defend Iran". ("Bullshit", he now thinks).

He became a unit commander at the front. After a while, as Khomeiny's repression of the left increased, the Maoist group decided to turn its arms against Khomeiny.

Abbas did that, but the military venture was short-lived, and many of his comrades were killed. He escaped and got a construction job in Teheran, where he lived quietly while doing some low-profile practical work for the left (helping released prisoners, for example).

After some arrests, he concluded that the Islamic police would soon be on to him, and escaped over the border to Pakistan and then to Canada. He is now president of his union branch and of his local Labour Council.

Some of the leaders of the WPI were involved in guerrilla warfare in the early 1980s where their organisation controlled areas of Iranian Kurdistan.

The Iranian left has qualities that the left of more placid countries lacks. And there is something behind the WPI's talk of immediate revolution: the Islamic Republic is visibly rotting and unpopular, and in Iran today, of all countries, an uprising will be immunised in advance against the sort of "reactionary revolution" which so shaped the 20th century with Stalinism and Islamism.

Do those facts take us all the way to the WPI's idea that the most probable variant, and the one they should orient to, is the direct overthrow of the Islamic Republic by an immediate socialist revolution, bringing the WPI to power? Even if all the WPI's claims for their mass influence inside Iran prove valid, this perspective begs some questions.

The working class can be powerful only when it is organised. On the WPI's own account, the Iranian working class is not organised. The Islamic regime can still prevent that.

It is not possible for an unorganised working class to rise directly to power simply way of supporting a political party apparatus created (of necessity) abroad.

The working class can organised - and learn, and regroup - very fast in conditions of freedom and ferment. When mass revolt shatters the Islamic regime, the Iranian bourgeois will at first have other possible regimes to install. But very likely it will not be able to prevent conditions of freedom and ferment which will undermine those alternative regimes too.

To present the perspective of socialist revolution in a single leap is not only to advocate a healthy urgency about our agitation for socialism; it is also to envisage a revolution which skips over the necessary processes of working-class self-organisation and self-regroupment, replacing them by a scenario of the working class simply rallying to the WPI's leadership prepared abroad.

Moreover, "socialist republic" as "the only slogan" (as Asqar Karimi put it) will be useless in open agitation in a situation where the left-wing mood among Iranian workers is as strong as the WPI says. In those conditions, as for example in Portugal in 1974-5, the Iranian workers will see quite ordinary bourgeois parties suddenly proclaiming themselves "socialist" and "revolutionary".

As Lenin wrote of Russia at the start of the 1917 revolution there, "the situation [will] call, in the first place, for the pouring of vinegar and bile into the sweet water of revolutionary-democratic phraseology".

Despite Asqar Karimi, the WPI does not quite propose "socialist republic" as the "only slogan". It proposes "people's councils" - but only as the basis for the WPI to take power, and implicitly as "WPI people's councils".

The WPI calls itself "maximalist". The allusion to the faction of the same name in the Italian Socialist Party around World War 1 is presumably not deliberate, but it is worth remembering that the faction's leaders, sincere revolutionaries, were useless in the great struggles of 1919-20 because they could respond to the factory occupations only by preaching revolution in general - without any idea of how to develop the occupation struggle, or to pick up on the revolutionary potential of the initially un-revolutionary factory councils.

The WPI is a product of the reconfiguration of the Iranian left after 1979. Theoretically its ideas draw on the "left communism" of the 1920s.

It says that "worker-communism" represents Marx's doctrine, but for most of the 20th century - until Mansoor Hekmat - it was marginalised by "bourgeois communism". Bourgeois communism arose because the Bolsheviks, despite leading a real workers' revolution in 1917, did not know how to transform the Russian economy in the 1920s so as to abolish wage-labour, and so regressed to state-capitalist tyranny. The WPI rejects all variants of Stalinism and "Third-Worldist" socialism as "bourgeois communism".

The WPI does not reject trade unionism, but trade unions seem to play no part in its scenario for Iran; the WPIraq, at first after April 2003, tended to dismiss trade unionism in Iraq as an unnecessary detour from a scenario of the WPIraq winning mass support and political power; and even now the WPIraq seems to conceive of trade unionism only in terms of building WPIraq-led trade unions. (Trade unions led by more conservative forces, like the Communist Party of Iraq, it does not recognise as real trade unions at all).

The WPI does not reject democratic demands - in fact, much of its political bite comes from its radical-democratic agitation against political Islam - but its response in the congress to me referring to the Bolsheviks' agitation for a Constituent Assembly was: "Hamid Taghvaee has raised the banner of freedom, equality, and socialism - don't allow it to be replaced by a Constituent Assembly".

The WPI supports the right of the Palestinians to an independent state alongside Israel, and the right of the Kurds to decide their political future through a referendum, but recoils from the generalisation, "the right of nations to self-determination". It not only rejects nationalism, but puts all variants of nationalism in the same pillory as political Islam or Ba'thism.

Maybe the WPI has more to learn from Marxist writers besides Mansoor Hekmat than it allows for. But maybe also we have something to learn from the WPI, in its stark dissonance from what have become the conventional wisdoms of the Western left.

This is the speech made to the WPI congress on 19 September by Martin Thomas of the AWL.

We thank you for inviting us to this congress, and we declare our solidarity with you in your struggle against the Islamic Republic.

We worked with the Worker-communist Party of Iran in England to establish a pole for international working-class solidarity against both Bush and the Taliban during the Afghan war. We have worked with the Worker-communist Party of Iraq in England and in Australia on several fronts.

In the movement against the Iraq war in 2003 we had a common banner: "No to war, no to Saddam, for freedom and a socialist republic".

We have worked together to organise support from the British labour movement to the new Iraqi labour movement. We have also worked together in demonstrations for justice for the Palestinians, to demand an independent Palestinian state while opposing Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the Arab chauvinists.

We are Trotskyists. We belong to the tradition of Trotskyism which worked to build a working-class Third Camp against both Stalinism and US capitalism during the Cold War. Today we seek to build a working-class Third Camp against both US power and those forces which oppose US power from a reactionary standpoint, like political Islam, or like Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic in their day.

The first step in all socialist politics is for the working class to be organised, aware, and willing to assert itself as an independent force, against all sections of the ruling class. If the working class is not yet ready to do that, the task of Marxists is to help make it ready, and to argue against the working class tying itself to one faction or another of the ruling class.

We are therefore against any working-class party participating in or supporting a bourgeois coalition of provisional government. If the working class is not yet strong enough to take power, then we must work to help it organise more strongly, not advise it to support the lesser evil among possible bourgeois governments.

We do not believe Trotsky, or Lenin, or Marx, was right about everything, and we know that they cannot give us answers to the questions of today, after they are dead.

But we do learn from Trotsky, Lenin, Luxemburg, Gramsci, Shachtman, Draper, Cannon and others. One thing we learn from Lenin especially is that the working class can win socialism only through taking up the fight for political democracy in the widest and most radical way.

In many situation, this includes fighting for a Constituent Assembly. In Russia in 1917, the Bolsheviks fought for a Constituent Assembly, not as a means to a coalition government, and not as a substitute for workers' councils, but as a forum for political battle.

We hope your party will find a way to go forward from your debates, and to restore your relations with the Worker-communist Party of Iraq. We hope to continue discussing, debating, and working with you.

It would appear that the Minority, WCP Iran and Majority, WCP Iraq have adopted a Popular Front positition, in that they support the concept of Socialists participating in a Capitalist government. They also appear to have adopted the "two stage" theory of revolution, first the democratic stage, and sometime in the future, who knows when, Socialism. The choice for those of us from the Trotskyist tradition is obvious: support for the Majority in the Iranian section, and for the Minority (hopefully not for long) in the Iraqi section.