Thinking of Action in Iran

Milad S.
Khiaban #18
July 8, 2009

(Note from translator Reza Fiyouzat:This translation of an analytical article from the newspaper Khiaban, #18, came in the mail. The article presents a perspective that needs serious consideration by socialist forces. Whether we agree totally, mostly or partially, the perspective is well worth reflecting on. Thanks to the sender! August 1, 2009)

The purpose of this note is to point out some of the obstacles to the expansion of the Iranian communists' activities.

1. For taking further and well-thought steps, we have to discard a number of erroneous notions. The first misconception is to perceive contemporary Iran as a 'post-revolutionary' society. Iran is not in a post-revolutionary situation, in which another revolution is necessary. The current movement is a new sequence of the revolutionary process that started in 1978. The internal conflicts of the ruling factions, the machinery of oppression and the forms that people's struggle take, their slogans and demands, all these are parts of a historical period that started by the Iranian Revolution in 1978-79. We should perceive the present popular movement in such a broader context, and discard any prevalent sort of sociological analysis, even those that in appearance seem class-based. We will explain this.

This means that the movement that started on June 15 [2009] is a continuation of the people's struggle in answering questions, which they themselves had posed in the society through the overthrow of Shah's regime: How can we establish freedom, independence and a people's republic in Iran? How can we run the society based on people's sovereignty, and without relying on any of the pre-capitalistic institutions, without the royal court and its allies? The first answer, the Islamic Republic, has failed that test. It was not the Iranian revolution that failed the test; such a statement is meaningless, those political alternatives pertaining to the first sequence however failed. The revolution itself is still young.

This is not to say that the course of the events, forms of the struggle and the behavior of the forces in this sequence are a repetition of what happened between 1977 and 1980. Quite the contrary, this movement is different in form and content, and its enemy is not the classic dictatorship of the Shah, but an Islamic regime, which emerged from the same revolutionary process and claims to have inherited the demand for republicanism, freedom and the independence of the Iranian people (this is a reference to the emblematic tripartite central slogan during winter 1978-79_ trans. note).

In the historical events of June 15, this claim was unambiguously taken back from the ruling regime. When Mousavi and the Participation Front [jebhey-e mosharekat] end up in opposition to the main symbol of the Islamic Republic, i.e., velayat-e faqih [rule of religious jurists], and in effect stand alongside the people (not just in words, but in its social objectivity), this is indicative of the fact that the Islamic Republic separated its path from that of the revolution, which amounts to the political suicide of the regime. From this point on, the 1979 revolution will anew seek its own identity and fate, is no longer an Islamic revolution as this regime called it; what it is will be determined by this very movement in its references to that revolutionary memory. The easiest example is the 'Allah-o Akbar' slogan. The slogan was used first time during the uprising in 1978-1979. Today, it is employed against the regime that once had transformed that symbol of protest to an ideological alibi for establishing political Islam. By employing the same phrase, people indicate the radical level of their demand that goes beyond the phrase. People are employing the religious Arabic wording 'Allah-o Akbar' as a metaphor for something else in Persian: Death to the dictator. Here the content goes beyond the phrase. If we don't see this difference, we will misunderstand people's slogans and, worst of all, we will move away from the people and leave the initiative to others. Therefore, in the first instance, any radical political force in Iran must synchronize its behavior, position and outlook with the calendar and sequences of the Iranian Revolution.

This means: Don't interpret! Don't make up slogans that seem revolutionary! Be the thought for an action. (The word employed in the title of the article in Persian is "eqdam" which means the initial, commencing phase of an action, the intentional component of an undertaking. The title of the text reads "fekr e eqdam", thought of/for an action, which is deliberately ambiguous; it both means a thought or idea discernable through action and the deliberations before an action.)

An idea that pertains to such an action is the articulation of the very people's demands. Its point of departure is the people's, all the people's pain and suffering, their capabilities as well as shortcomings. The Iranian people, when they take the initiative to wrest back the political cause from their rulers, are not Muslims, nor idolaters, nor liberals and royalists, nor demanding the overthrow of anything, nor a sect wishing to establish a socialist republic based on premeditated plans. No people have ever been like that. If a people have overthrown any system, it has been because that system blocked the collective movement of the people; if a people in some places transformed their councils/soviets into a new form of republic, this was because in the course of their struggles, they achieved all-encompassing and universal goals, for which that form (the councils, soviets, etc.) was found to be optimal; if they rose to do away with private property in a factory, some neighborhood, this city, a given country, this was because in their daily battles they realized that this form of property was an obstacle to the realization of a humane life. We must think of communism as an equivalent to these conditioned propositions, which means we must free our ideals from burdensome clichés. Anyone who wants to stage the last scene of another revolution as the first act of a revolution here is not thinking of any concrete measures for action. He is, at best, a plagiarist.

2. In the writings of leftist activists in Iran, we see two burdensome concepts, which have caused the scattered, oppressed and wounded figure of the left to turn even more scattered. One is the seemingly unproblematic concept of the 'middle class'. Interesting that this concept is seen precisely in such analyses that most certainly contain class in their titles, and in which quotations from Marx or Lenin abound. However, Marx has never used anything called middle class, with the particular meaning envisioned by these writers, in his historical analyses. On the contrary, this is a contemporary sociological concept. 'Middle class' is a deeply vague and ideological concept. Middle of what, and how did this middle become a class? In the present misery, hospital workers and staff, our school teachers, the factory workers and the youth who have been deprived of employment and who live in dormitories are not middle class. In the midst of the summer solstice in the third world, what middle class?

These are labor force, the very thing you have been looking for, and right in front of your eyes, in the streets of self-representation and in the alleys of common interests. They have, at least momentarily, felt their capacity to impose their presence in the public arenas of our cities and from now on nothing will remain the same as before, including the meaning of democracy. The ashes of petty-bourgeois academism is incapable of understanding the simple fact that people who, reliant on solidarity, claim a common objective for all are no longer the same as a formless mass.

Besides this, this movement has as yet not benefited fully from the independent presence of the organized poor. The current presence of a section of the rulers alongside the movement has also caused some confusion. The most wrongheaded policy in the current situation is to busy ourselves with polemics with this segment of the rulers to prove that they cannot be our fellow travelers. From the point of view of the people, such arguments, no matter how filled with revolutionary phrases, resemble the arguments of the two factions of the rulers. Such is not communist activity. Expansion of people's movement means helping to build popular organizations amongst those people whose voice is not counted, not recognized by the state. Joining of the poor alongside the presence of the labor forces will show any petty-bourgeois ideological illusion to be what they are: moralistic speech. It is at such a [historical] moment, but not earlier, that those few journalists who advocate neo-liberalism will be forgotten.

Do you see how the difference between people and their enemies is cognizable? It suffices that people organize themselves around all-encompassing demands and recognize their own representation in a common cause. Slogans such as "Give me back my vote!" has, neither immediately nor necessarily, anything to do with acceptance of the elections game or parliamentarianism. We see that many people who had boycotted the elections participated in the rallies. It does not even relate immediately to Ahmadinejad and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, but goes farther and deeper than these things. This lack of immediate relation must be taken as our point of departure. The important point is the collective uprising to claim our crushed rights; this readiness to rise up for the right to have a vote must be understood the way it actually is, beyond ideological imageries about elections, and must be expanded to include other rights of the people.

3. The second reason for lack of cohesion, I think, relates to a mistake by the communists about who the addressee is. One component of such a mistake concerns the concept of 'enemy'. In short, it is simplistic to think that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and, vice versa, to consider those who are not friends of the people as the enemy. Enemy and friend are asymmetrical terms. We don't determine the enemy by their beliefs and speech, but the criterion is their objective behavior in concrete conditions. The enemies are those who take up arms against the expansion of the people's movement and are destroying their organizations. 'Enemy' is a concept, whose use is akin to that of a weapon, which must be pointed in a particular direction and at a certain target. Friends who are fond of Marx should believe that this is exactly what Marx says. Running hurriedly into the arena, and without any popular backing calling the people whose flags are not our desired colors 'the enemy', is akin to firing an empty gun in the darkness.

Let us reach some conclusions from these three points:

A. If the communists are on the side of revolution, and are capable of discerning the historical demands of the Iranian Revolution and able to understand the logic of its development, then they must welcome the disintegration of the governmental coalition called Islamic Republic and the joining with their ranks of segments of a republican system that claimed to have answers to the demands of the Iranian Revolution. They must not forget that this split among the different factions of rulers was caused by the very movement of the people, and not by the infighting of the two factions, as declared in sociological analyses. NO! Any infighting within the ruling system occurs against the background of a revolutionary society, and always has three sides.

If we look at the behavior of the people from this angle, we can easily see how the people in effect are constantly pushing forward this segment of rulers [that has joined them] with all its resources, and at least for the short-term. Once, a while ago, it was possible for Khatami to avoid such a position, but for Mousavi any retreat is tantamount to political suicide or even a threat to his life.

Intellectual friends, militant comrades! Abandon exposing every inconsistency in their statements; in doing such things, you are actually looking at the whole thing from the top, and staring wide-eyed only at the surface appearance of their infighting, and by necessity you will be limited to playing the role of the permanent pen-wielding critic of the policies of those upstairs, without giving any space or chance to communism as a positive idea to be constructed. From the point of view of the people's movement and its inventiveness, the separation of a segment of the rulers and its alignment alongside the people's demands is a non-negligible victory. Without having any illusions about this segment or its historical background, this victory should be protected. Otherwise, and by proposing ideas about the class nature of this segment and by repeating hasty misreadings of the separating line between 'proletariat' and 'bourgeois', you would be underestimating the present force of the people's movement. Instead of this petty-bourgeois incredulity, turn to organizing the labor forces, turn to expanding the struggle among the poor and the workers, disseminate awareness among the people based on tangible given demands, get to work alongside them for formulating tangible and relevant demands, and thereby recognize yourself as part of a common cause.

B. The relationship between the people and the communist activists and intellectuals is not one of a passive 'addressee' and an active 'agent'. A lot of friends in the Iranian left seem unable to inspire confidence. They are trapped in intellectual labyrinths, in which workers or poor people can not recognize themselves, and at times they produce road maps such as would befit those by parties boasting millions of members. For communists, the dialectic of addressing is a complex one. If an intellectual or an activist has more time to read and think, this does not make them a popular movement's engineer or an expert on budgeting and planning for the people's movement. This type of engineer-like thinking among the left has its own reasons. But, what is important here is that, the people, when in a struggle or when voicing slogans in a demonstration, are both 'addressees' and 'agents'.

Every time we address the people, it is because we want to make their own voices to be heard, and their own right to address all to become possible. This important fact must be present in the very first words that we utter publicly. This means that if we voice a slogan, it must express a demand that is achievable even though it appears for now impossible and is based on a responsible examination of reality and real capacities of social forces; meaning, our slogans are consistently a minimal expression that can embrace a maximum of imaginable objectives, not a blind maximalism that bears no relation to the real conditions. This means that our slogans are part of the collective understanding and our enthusiasm a co-conspirator in the plans that the people, before us, have forged against the dominant grammar of power. "Do not fear, do not fear; We are all together here!" This slogan engages in no exaggerations, nor does it encourage any singular voice, and is not vague, either. It is effective and encouraging, and paves the way. This togetherness of all for a common claim beyond the governmental powers and the media discourse is a thousand times more radical and revolutionary than using worn out clichés.

This inventiveness of the people is the source of force for the communists. Please do not say that you would separate out and arrange two camps facing each other, and that "co-presence of all" is a bourgeois slogan. That is not the case. In its best form, capitalism can only guarantee the wellbeing of a minority among the millions of people deprived of their rights. 'All' is both the 'addressee' and the 'addresser', a historical moment that extends beyond the limits of capitalism; class struggle signifies that a group, as a social class, stands on the way of this progression. To misread Marx, Lenin and others is worse than not reading them at all.

That which is encouraging for our young forces, is their objectively better possibility of success, compared to the period of 1978-1981. The weakness and the scatteredness of the leftist militants from the 1978 revolution, at this moment can be a positive point for the creation of new communist forces that have learned from the past, and stand alongside the people to solve crucial problems of the movement, using their ideas and without concepts estranged from our lived experience.

I will end this note with a reminder: one of the best articles about the conditions of realization of historical demands from the 1978 revolution was written by the reformist thinker Sa'eed Hajjarian, published a few days before the [June 12] elections. Hajjarian's thesis, in a reference to Rosa Luxembourg's slogan, 'Socialism or Barbarity', was that in today's Iran, the choice is between barbarity and civility. We must read this thesis correctly, meaning with the opposite intention of the writer. You have the best chance of success, since the Iranian Revolution, at each new sequence, each time clearer than before, shows that socialism, or better to say communism, is the only possible civility for the future of a free Iran. If we do not act thoughtfully and intelligently, tomorrow we will end up looking blindly for the spent shells after shooting those bullet-less guns; something that some leftist-leaning friends have been busy doing for too many the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

What the Obama victory shows

Barry Sheppard
Direct Action
Issue 7, December 2008


As has been widely noted, the election of an African-American as president of the United States is an historic event. This is true irrespective of the politics and perspectives of Barack Obama. That a black family will occupy the White House, which was built by black slaves, is a powerful symbol.

The four-hundred-year history of African-Americans in the United States spans the time of slavery, the Civil War and Radical Reconstruction, the reaction beginning in the 1870s that instituted the Jim Crow segregation system through terror, and the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s that overthrew Jim Crow, up to the present.

There is no question that without the victory of the civil rights movement, which liberated the South from legal apartheid, and its effect throughout the North, no black person could have been elected to the US presidency. It was this victory that changed over time the way black Americans are viewed by whites, to the extent that tens of millions of whites felt able to vote a black person into the country’s highest public office.

On election night, when it was clear that Obama had won, there were celebrations among African-Americans everywhere. TV shots showed many in tears of joy. The following day, my next-door neighbour, who is black and somewhat conservative, greeted me with the Black Power fist salute, and said: “I never thought I would see this in my lifetime!”

It is always difficult to see underlying trends through the distorting lens of capitalist elections, especially in the US with its system of two openly capitalist parties holding nearly identical views. But I think certain things are discernable. The first is what I have already alluded to, the diminution of racist attitudes among many whites. Polls showed this was more pronounced among young whites. While Asians, Latinos and especially African-Americans (by 95%) voted for Obama, without making important inroads among whites he would have lost. The second is renewed confidence among black Americans that they can change things. Whether this manifests itself in new struggles in the months and years ahead remains to be seen.

It should be noted that while racism among whites has diminished, racism remains powerful, and racial oppression remains institutionalised throughout the country. Obama won 53% of the vote, smaller than would be expected given the low level of support to outgoing President George Bush’s discredited administration and the extent of Democratic Party victories in the congressional elections. Whites are increasingly polarised on race.

By institutionalised racial oppression, I mean the facts of housing and job discrimination, and the resulting disparities between blacks and whites in education, unemployment, life expectancy, average income and so forth. It is these sorts of issues a new black liberation movement would have to take up, issues which relate to the whole working class.

The third thing I think we should note in the election is the impact of the deepening economic downturn. It was this that swung many white workers, who never thought they would vote for a black person, to vote for Obama against Republican candidate John McCain. They hope that a Democrat will do better on the economy than Bush has. This factor, which only began to be reflected in polls at the end of the campaign, tipped the scales in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and the Southern states of Virginia and North Carolina, as well as others. High hopes have been raised among black, Latino, Asian and white workers that an Obama administration will do something to help them as the economy spirals downward.

The economic crisis and the Wall Street bank bailouts have enraged working people. It is a kind of primitive radicalisation, a new sense that something is very wrong with the system. But this is causing a sharp polarisation among whites, too. McCain tapped into this with his own denunciations of “Wall Street” and “the government” coupled with thinly disguised, but loud and shrill, appeals to racism.

That racism remains deep among many millions of whites has been reflected in expressions of deep anger that Obama was elected, some documented on mainstream TV. This is especially true in the South, but has manifested across the country. There have been “hundreds” of incidents of cross burnings, racial epithets scrawled on cars and homes, Black figures hung from nooses, and other incidents according the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, since the election.

Some of these included the admission by four North Carolina State University students that they spray-painted “let’s shoot that nigger in the head.” In a rural general store in Maine, a sign read “Osama Obama Shotgun Pool,” where people could make bets as to the day Obama would be killed (“Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count”). Second graders on a school bus in Idaho chanted “assassinate Obama”.

Most incidents have occurred in the South, including one church marquee that denounced Obama as a “Muslim” who will install a “wicked” government. The South was governed by a wing of the Democratic Party, up until the mid-1960s, known as the “Dixiecrats”. They enforced the Jim Crow system and were part of Franklin Roosevelt’s coalition in the 1930s and ‘40s, supporting his “social-democratic” economic policies in return for his support of Jim Crow.

But when the national Democratic Party came out for civil rights legislation under the impact of the black movement in the mid-1960s, the Dixiecrats became Republicans. Many whites deeply resented that the federal government had “imposed” on them the dissolution of apartheid. Beginning with Richard Nixon in 1968, the Republicans launched their “Southern strategy” to appeal to white racists there, which helped them win national as well as state and local elections. The “Southern strategy” took some blows in this election, with Virginia and North Carolina defecting to Obama.

With the new confidence among blacks and other non-whites, in the context of the “primitive radicalisation” of tens of millions of workers including whites, I believe we are entering a new period. How long this gestation period lasts before we see new explosive struggles remains to be seen. It took from the stock market crash of 1929 until the first battles in 1934 before there was an upsurge of workers’ struggles in the 1930s.

We have seen one positive step forward in the context of a defeat registered in the election. Proposition 8, an amendment to the state constitution in California that took away the right to marry for gay men and lesbians that the California State Supreme Court had affirmed earlier in the year, passed by 52% in a referendum. But gays, lesbians and their supporters didn’t take this lying down. There were immediate militant demonstrations across the state, organised by amateurs through the internet. On November 15, there were some 300 demonstrations in cities in every state, often targeting the Mormon church which poured tens of millions into the effort to pass Proposition 8.

The effect of these mass actions was to cause a split in the Prop 8 forces between the openly anti-gay groups and the covert ones, who began to bleat that they were not anti-gay rights in general but only on this issue. (The “moderate” ads for Prop 8 appealed to fears that gays and lesbians seek to “convert” children to homosexuality.) Does this militant outpouring reflect a new mood of confidence that the powers that be can be opposed in a meaningful way? I hope so.

Obama's Historic Victory

Howard Zinn
November, 06 2008
Howard Zinn's ZSpace Page
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19384

Howard Zinn (born August 24, 1922) is an American historian, political scientist, social critic, socialist, activist and playwright, best known as author of the bestseller A People's History of the United States.

Zinn has been active in the Civil Rights and the anti-war movements in the United States.

The author of some 20 books, Zinn is currently Professor Emeritus in the Political Science Department at Boston University.

Those of us on the Left who have criticized Obama, as I have, for his failure to take bold positions on the war and on the economy, must join the exultation of those Americans, black and white, who shouted and wept Tuesday night as they were informed that Barack Obama had won the presidential election. It is truly a historic moment, that a black man will lead our country. The enthusiasm of the young, black and white, the hopes of their elders, cannot simply be ignored.

There was a similar moment a century and a half ago, in the year 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Lincoln had been criticized harshly by the abolitionists, the anti-slavery movement, for his failure to take a clear, bold stand against slavery, for acting as a shrewd politician rather than a moral force. But when he was elected, the abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, who had been an angry critic of Lincoln's cautiousness, recognized the possibility in his election.

Phillips wrote that for the first time in the nation's history "the slave has chosen a President of the United States." Lincoln, he said, was not an abolitionist, but he in some way "consents to represent an antislavery position." Like a pawn on the chessboard, Lincoln had the potential, if the American people acted vigorously, to be moved across the board, converted into a queen, and, as Phillips said, "sweep the board."

Obama, like Lincoln, tends to look first at his political fortunes instead of making his decisions on moral grounds. But, as the first African American in the White House, elected by an enthusiastic citizenry which expects a decisive move towards peace and social justice, he presents a possibility for important change.

Obama becomes president in a situation which cries out for such change. The nation has been engaged in two futile and immoral wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the American people have turned decisively against those wars. The economy is shaken by tremendous blows, and is in danger of collapsing, as families lose their homes and working people, including those in the middle class, lose their jobs, So the population is ready for change, indeed, desperate for change, and "change" was the word most used by Obama in his campaign.

What kind of change is needed? First, to announce the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and to renounce the Bush doctrine of preventive war as well as the Carter doctrine of military action to control Mideast oil. He needs to radically change the direction of U.S. foreign policy, declare that the U.S. is a peace loving country which will not intervene militarily in other parts of the world, and start dismantling the military bases we have in over a hundred countries. Also he must begin meeting with Medvedev, the Russian leader, to reach agreement on the dismantling of the nuclear arsenals, in keeping with the Nuclear Anti-Proliferation Treaty.

This turn-around from militarism will free hundreds of billions of dollars. A tax program which will sharply increase taxes on the richest 1% of the nation, and will tax their wealth as well as their income, will yield more hundreds of billions of dollars.

With all that saved money, the government will be able to give free health care to everyone, put millions of people to work (which the so-called free market has not been able to do. In short, emulate the New Deal program, in which millions were given jobs by the government. This is just an outline of a program which could transform the United States and make it a good neighbor to the world.

(written for L'Humanite in Paris)