How the Islamists crushed the workers

Iran’s Islamic Republic came out of a mass movement against the bloody dictatorship of the Shah, but produced a regime no less repressive than that of the Shah. The regime tightened during the eight-year war with Iraq, 1980-8, but was despotic even before that. Yet left-wing ideas had been common in the movement against the Shah. How did they get sidelined, and why did much of the left praise the Islamic Republic as “anti-imperialist”? This excerpt is abridged from Workers’ Liberty 3/5

By Paul Hampton

Part of the explanation for the left’s failure lies in its repression at the hands of the Khomeini’s government. For example when the Fadaiyan refused to return the weapons it seized during the insurrection on 9-11 February 1979 and organised a demonstration at Tehran University, Khomeini denounced them as “a group of bandits and unlawful elements” and “non-Muslims at war with Islam”. The left was harassed by Hezbollahi from the beginning — and by other forces of the new state such as the Pasdaran until it was finally driven underground.

But the central failure of the left in Iran and internationally, which conditioned all else, was its ideological errors. Almost the entire left was Stalinist, and the impoverished Stalinised pseudo-Marxism prevented any of its constituents from charting an independent working class path.

The left perceived the Shah largely as a puppet of the US, and Iran in general as simply dominated by imperialism.

The result was the “theory” of the two-stage revolution, whereby the Iranian working class was expected to play a subordinate role in a general “democratic” struggle to overthrow the Pahlavi dynasty. It meant that the leadership of such a “democratic revolution” was assigned to other social forces, providing they were sufficiently “anti-imperialist”.

This led the left towards political subordination to the mullahs. Almost the whole of the left failed to grasp the specific character of Khomeini’s movement and the type of state he explicitly envisaged creating after replacing the Shah. At its worst, the Tudeh party peddled the illusion of the potential “non-capitalist” path of development for the regime. But most believed that because the regime was “anti-imperialist” (i.e. anti-American) it was in some sense progressive.

The left did not grasp that, given the forces involved in the opposition movement, the state that would emerge after the overthrow of the Shah could be pro-national capital, independent of global capital, and simultaneously viciously anti-working class. The lauding of “militant Muslims” blurred the reactionary nature of Khomeini’s rule.

The absence of a class perspective led to the underestimation of the strike committees and later the factory shuras, built by workers to defend their interests. As Assef Bayat put it: “Almost all of the left was surprised by the sudden emergence of the shuras. Almost all the left-wing organisations, as well as the shuras themselves, were confused about what to do and about what kind of possible role the shuras could play politically.”

The left was also unable to grasp the important dynamic of the struggle for women’s liberation. From the International Women’s Day protests in March 1979 and in the two years that followed, women waged a persistent struggle against the regime. But the left did not understand that the fight against the veil and other restrictions on women were a vital part of the struggle for democracy and for women’s liberation.

Nor did the left fight the right to self-determination of the national minorities.

Bayat summed it up: “The most important limitation, however, was the absence of an effective political force committed to organising the working class for the strategic objective of socialist construction.”

The largest left organisation, the Fadaiyan, had around half a million supporters. It already had some credibility after its guerrilla campaign against the Shah.

Sharply

However, it did not sharply attack the new regime until it was attacked in August 1979. One measure of the Fadaiyan’s ideological confusion was its split in June 1980, when the majority joined the Tudeh party, i.e. the Communist party and representatives of the USSR in Iran.

The Tudeh party pledged its support for Khomeini’s government in February 1979 and remained its staunch ally. This went as far as actually helping the state smash the left. The Tudeh party told its supporters in August 1981: “Uncovering the policies of the counter-revolution in the workplace, in the family and in any place where the masses are present is one of most important duties.” It was clear what this meant when the Fadaiyan Majority and the Tudeh party received letters of thanks from the army commander responsible for suppressing the Kurdish revolt.

There were some small organisations that attempted a more serious analysis and intervention. The Organisation of Workers’ Path, ex-Fadaiyan and ex-Mujahedin supporters who opposed Maoism, argued that Khomeini’s rule was a “religious-Bonapartist” regime composed of the petty bourgeoisie, bazaar bourgeoisie and semi-proletarian population, under the leadership of the clergy. The Organisation of Communist Unity (OCU) was anti-Stalinist and took part in building the women’s movement.

There were also some Iranian Trotskyists. The founders became active in Britain in the 1960s. They formed an Iranian Commission within the “Mandelite” international network, the USFI. Trotskyists who had been in exile in the United States and Europe formed the Hezb-e Kargaran-e Socialist — HKS (Socialist Workers’ Party) in early 1979. It was publicly announced in Tehran on 22 January 1979.

The HKS faced repression from the outset. Its first public meeting on 2 March 1979 was suspended when Islamic students and Maoists attempted to break it up. However its leader Babak Zahraie held two televised debates in April and May 1979 with Khomeini’s spokesman Bani-Sadr, who later became president of the regime.

The HKS was active among oil workers in Khuzestan and in the women’s movement. After a series of strikes, workers in the oil and steel industries were rounded up in May 1979, including 16 HKS members. In August 1979, 14 HKS members were tried by the local “Imam’s Committee”, with 12 sentenced to death — later suspended.

Zahraie led a split from the HKS in the autumn of 1979, to form the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (HKE). The HKE effectively offered critical support to Khomeini’s regime, as did another Trotskyist group, formed in January 1981, the Workers’ Unity Party (HVK). But they suffered the same fate as the HKS, and were finally snuffed out by 1982.

The international left had the necessary materials to analyse the Iranian social formation, the nature of mullahs and the lessons of past defeats — but it largely failed to do so.

The group that deserves particular ignominy is the US Socialist Workers’ Party (US SWP). Once the pride of the Orthodox Trotskyist movement, it had become a Castroite, semi-Stalinist sect. The US SWP deserves particular dishonour because it had close relations with HKS and the other Trotskyist organisations — and was the intellectual author of the political line of critical support for Khomeini.

The US SWP defined Khomeini’s regime “an anti-imperialist government” (The Militant, 10 July 1981), exaggerating the “gains” of the revolution and downplaying or simply denying the counter-revolutionary nature of the regime towards the working class.

Even in late 1981 the US SWP claimed “these shuras continue to exist under the Khomeini regime” and that Iranian Trotskyists continued to operate openly in the factories and by publishing newspapers. They argued: “Efforts to stifle debate and roll back the gains won by Iran’s workers and farmers have not succeeded. Efforts to disband the workers’ committees, roll back land reforms, or eliminate political parties have failed.”

The British Socialist Worker (28 October 1978) compared Khomeini to Father Gapon to justify their tail ending.

“It is almost as though the masses have seized on a tradition that is embodied in their history — the tradition of religious opposition — the one thing they know is common to all, understood by all, and hammered this religion of theirs into a mighty weapon, that has nothing to do with godliness, or holiness and everything to do with mass power.” (Joanna Rollo, Iran: Beginning of a Revolution, SWP pamphlet)

Brian Grogan, a leader then of the IMG (forerunner of A*CR) boasted of chanting “Allah Akhbar” on a demonstration in Tehran, justifying it on the grounds that it meant the people were stronger than the Shah’s army.

“We have already explained what really lies behind this mass movement and had nonsensical it is to characterise it as a religious movement. Regardless of whatever force that may be at its head and despite whatever demands through which it may express itself, the mass movement has absolutely nothing to do with religion of any kind, let alone a reactionary one.” (Saber Nickbin, Iran: The Unfolding Revolution, IMG pamphlet)

An active, interventionist third camp approach was exactly what was missing in Iran in 1978-81.