A-Infos (en) Turkey, Yeryuzu Postasi: The Iranian Revolution in the Twilight of the Workers' Council - Arya Zahedi (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The shadow of 1917 looms over us throughout the century. ---- Forty 
years ago, the Iranian Revolution overthrew the monarchy of Shah 
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, paving the way for the establishment of the 
Islamic Republic. While the 1979 revolution united a number of social 
groups in a rebellion against despotism and foreign domination, it did 
not take long for the conflicts underlying this unity to emerge. Caught 
in the grips of the Iran Hostage Crisis and the Iraq-Iran war, the 
"Spring of Freedom" was soon followed by the scorching summer of 
Islamist counter-revolution.

Unfortunately, there is nothing unique about a mass popular uprising 
bringing an authoritarian state to power. However, the religious 
character of the Iranian Revolution has made it difficult to understand 
what it has in common with other stories of revolution and 
counter-revolution. Seeing beyond the four decades of war in the region, 
which was the direct and indirect result of US attempts to encircle the 
Soviet Union and gain access to Middle Eastern oil, and the original 
emancipation of the 1979 uprising, which followed a revolutionary 
scenario involving mass strikes and councils largely similar to the 
Russian and German revolutions at the turn of the century It is not easy 
to remember the promise.

Indeed, the strength of the Iranian labor movement can be traced 
directly back to the global 1917. Towards the end of the nineteenth 
century, as world capitalism began to transition to a wonderful new 
energy source-from coal to the more dense and transportable 
oil-thousands of Iranian workers migrated to Baku, Azerbaijan, then part 
of the Russian Empire, to work in the rich oil fields. started. Here 
they were exposed to radical and heterodox activists of the Russian 
Social Democratic Labor Party, which would soon split into Bolshevik and 
Menshevik factions. A citywide general strike in Baku in 1904 laid the 
groundwork for the first Russian Revolution in 1905. The repercussions 
of this wave of revolution soon spread to Tehran, and the unrest forced 
the Shah to approve a constitution that transferred power to the newly 
formed parliament. The unrest in Iran only dissipated with the invasion 
of Russian forces in 1911.

The Russian Revolution in 1917 and the civil war that followed affected 
all of Eurasia, from Eastern and Central Europe to China. With the 
overthrow of the Tsar, the revolution eliminated the main supporter of 
the Qajars, the ruling dynasty of Iran. In 1920, amid the civil war in 
Russia, the Soviets supported the short-lived Iranian Soviet Socialist 
Republic, established in the Caspian Sea province of Gilan on the border 
with Azerbaijan. This was largely an attempt to shore up the Russian 
counter-revolutionaries' southern flanks, where they were trying to 
regroup their forces. General Denikin, the leader of the reactionary 
White Army, took refuge in Anzali, the port city of Gilan, with the help 
of the British. The Soviet Caspian fleet eventually chased the White and 
British forces and supported Mirza Kuchak Khan, a revolutionary 
nationalist who led a peasant-based guerrilla army called the Jangal, or 
"jungle" movement, in attacks against the British and Whites. The 
Soviets established a link between the Jangal movement and the new 
Communist Party of Iran, which emerged from a group in Baku. But Kuchak 
Khan failed to make even minimal redistributive gestures such as land 
reform, and tensions within his own party allowed the communists to 
briefly seize power. However, the situation quickly changed and in 1921, 
Reza Khan seized power in a military coup, declaring himself Shah and 
starting the Pahlavi dynasty. Anxious to protect their borders, the 
Soviets agreed to withdraw and abandoned the nascent communist movement; 
this was a glimpse into the kind of opportunist realpolitik that would 
become their defining characteristic.

Shoras and Dual Power
The Iranian working class thus had a longer and richer revolutionary 
tradition than most of its contemporaries in the Middle East, thanks to 
direct contact with the beating heart of the international communist 
movement. In the official narrative of the 1979 revolution, at least in 
the United States, the Iranian working class is at best in the 
background of a dramatic play between personalities: the departure of 
the hated Shah; the triumphant return from exile of the righteous cleric 
Ayatollah Khomeini, like Lenin's arrival at the Finland Station, where 
he was welcomed by hopeful crowds as a hero of the revolution. However, 
behind each of these events was the coordinated working class struggle 
of one of the most developed centers of workers' resistance in the 
Middle East. Following the profound weakening of the economy as OPEC's 
oil boom era sugar began to run out, a wave of strikes developed 
throughout 1978 and into the decisive events of 1979. The pumping of 
petrodollars into the economy led to inflation, a global trend in the 
late 1970s, as workers saw their wages eroded by rising rents and other 
cost increases. The Shah sought to scapegoat the bazaari, the 
traditional class of merchants and artisans, and blamed profiteering, 
corruption and waste for inflation. Bazaari had long been an obstacle to 
capitalist modernizers, but they were a powerful layer that controlled 
the economy through local credit systems and neighborhood trade. They 
were physically located in bazaars, near mosques, and therefore had deep 
familial and neighborhood ties with the clergy. The Shah's attempt to 
break the influence of this stratum as part of his modernization 
campaign led to widespread discontent.

So in 1978 workers joined a movement that had already mobilized many 
other layers of Iranian society. Universities had been closed since the 
beginning of the previous year, when anti-regime demonstrations gave way 
to an old story of massacres by regime forces. The workers may have 
arrived late, but their intervention was decisive. The wave of mass 
strikes culminated in a general strike in November 1978, shutting down 
even the oil refineries that were the cornerstone of Iran's economy. 
After the refineries were stopped, the Shah was also stopped; first he 
offered constitutional privileges, elections and other long-awaited 
bourgeois favors, and then he left the stage altogether. His 
replacement, former opposition leader Shapour Bakhtiar, was immediately 
rejected by the majority of his own party, the National Front, and 
instead embraced the radical cleric Khomeini. Khomeini quickly formed an 
interim government, declared Bakhtiar illegitimate, and called for a 
peaceful transition. But the masses were not ready to listen to these 
calls for caution, even if they came from someone they had chosen as 
their leader.

The fate of revolutions ultimately depends on the attitude of the army. 
The Shah's control over regular Iranian Army units was shaky and 
discontent was widespread. On February 9, 1979, after a group of 
pro-Khomeini technicians mutinied at the main air base outside Tehran, 
elite pro-Shah troops called "Immortals" attacked the base. The cracks 
within the state became visible, a moment of opportunity had arrived. 
The news spread throughout the city. Barricades were set up. Far-left 
guerrilla groups flocked to the city to confront the shock troops. 
Police stations and military barracks were invaded. A weapons factory 
was raided and more than fifty thousand weapons were expropriated and 
distributed to the rebels. Prisons were blown up. Government buildings 
were occupied. On February 11, television and radio stations declared 
the victory of the revolution.

At the center of the mobilization were working-class committees - shoras 
- which evolved from the strike committees of November the previous 
year. In the context of the uprising, these committees developed. Shoras 
arose from the real needs of workers after the collapse of the Shah's 
regime. Especially many owners and managers of state companies close to 
the regime fled. Workers took over the factories and ran them through 
their councils. This feast of workers' self-organization was 
short-lived, however, as Khomeini and the forces within the Islamic 
Republican Party (IRP) that formed around him immediately began to 
undermine the power of the shoras as an independent base of 
working-class action. Yet for many, this brief glimpse was enough. A new 
horizon had opened for the liberation of workers. As one metalworker 
quoted in an article on the subject put it: "After the revolution, the 
workers realized that the country belonged to them." Workers' demands 
were diverse, both specific and general, but in most cases they seemed 
to fall short of calls for an end to capitalism.

The character and composition of the Shoras differed in each workplace, 
and it was only after the difficult task of restarting production that 
they truly became a force to be reckoned with. The dual power situation 
was complex and a delicate balance existed between the provisional 
government and the various forces mobilized both for and against it. 
Alongside the shoras, committees (armed security groups) patrolled 
neighborhoods to keep regime thugs at bay, and other councils, shora-ye 
mahallat, emerged in poor neighborhoods to serve as associations of the 
unemployed. Although workers' committees restarted production, the 
Iranian economy was operating well below its previous level and the need 
was greatest in the poorest regions.

This was a power the class was unwilling to relinquish, and rather than 
a frontal assault, Khomeini pursued the Islamization of the councils, 
which over time had the effect of reintroducing one-man rule and a 
formal division of labor. The Shoras would no longer have a say in 
production-related matters and would instead be confined to the realm of 
wages.

However, this spring of the Iranian labor movement has opened up new 
possibilities with which the contending factions of the Iranian left 
will have to negotiate. According to one narrative, the left's strategic 
mistakes lay in the failure of the communists who were instrumental in 
the early development of the councils to formulate any common program 
with the IRP around Khomeini. The main communist party, Tudeh, once on 
the verge of seizing power in the 1950s, inherited from Stalin his 
vision of national liberation as the precursor to eventual social 
revolution and embraced the view that the clergy was a "progressive 
bourgeoisie" that could pave the way for eventual socialism in Iran 
through modernization. The Iranian New Left, a blend of Marxist-Leninist 
and Third Worldist theory and new strains of radical Islam, shared with 
the Stalinists a developmentalist vision with a primary emphasis on 
anti-imperial struggle, a terrain easily usurped by the clergy and their 
bazaari allies.

Although Tudeh members found themselves in the shoras, as a party they 
advocated instead for the establishment of a national trade union 
council, like the CGT in France. But newer left groups were less 
hesitant about the participation of the shoras in the revolution. Among 
these new left groups, Fedaiyan was the largest Marxist-Leninist 
organization and played a central role in the peak stages of the 
uprising in the cities. They were instrumental in establishing rural 
shoras, such as the Turkmen Sahara Peasant Council, which was 
established when wage workers at a large agricultural enterprise in 
northeastern Iran took over the business after the owners left in early 
1979. The new government attacked the peasant council and the Fedaiyan 
were drawn into the conflict on the side of the peasants, forcing some 
within the organization to break away from the government.

From the first days of the revolution, the mosque was the center of 
neighborhood organization that was largely suppressed everywhere else. 
This situation gave an advantage to those who controlled the mosque 
network, namely the committees. The committees gradually became the 
bases of the Khomeinist movement. The committees' revolutionary 
tribunals dispensed swift justice, but as long as they executed members 
of the old regime and its secret police, no one complained. But they 
soon began arresting Marxists and other "counter-revolutionaries," 
forcing a minority within the Fadayan to leave the group and join 
smaller left-wing groups such as the radical Islamic Mujahideen, which 
opposed Khomeini's new government. But it was too little, too late - the 
decisive moment of opportunity for the councils had passed.

Anti-Imperialism
All groups were united in opposition to the Shah's regime and especially 
to US power over Iran. The Shah was established following the Allied 
invasion of Iran during World War II and later restored to power in a 
1953 coup in a brazen display of the CIA's new state-building powers. 
This coup was carried out not only to undermine the nationalist 
government of Mohammed Mossadegh, who nationalized the Anglo-Persian Oil 
Company, but also to prevent the possibility of the Stalinist Tudeh 
party seizing power.

The Shah combined the worst excesses of hated monarchical power with 
crony capitalism, accepted US and British control of the Iranian oil 
industry, and embarked on a process of modernization with a decidedly 
American character. This meant that when the revolution occurred, it 
would increasingly turn to these issues of Westernization and 
geopolitical power, a backdrop from which the demands of the working 
class in the councils receded. This was the basis for the alliance of 
the Tudeh and Fedaiyan majority with the IRP, whose revolutionary 
originality was proven by its anti-US stance. It is worth noting this 
narrative today, as a new, crude anti-imperialism seeks to neatly divide 
the world's nations into camps, claiming the working masses for its 
crude, mechanical view of socialism.

In this context, Khomeini's March 7 statement that women should wear 
Islamic dress when entering government buildings became intertwined with 
questions about the Iranian economy's relationship with the West. 
Coincidentally, the next day, March 8, was International Women's Day, 
and many women took to the streets to demonstrate against this decision. 
Women took part in all levels of the revolutionary movements of the 
period, in guerrilla groups, councils and strike committees, and much of 
the revolutionary organizing, especially around daily needs, took place 
through women's networks. Khomeini's command to women was not a call for 
them to remain passive, but a call to their strength as revolutionaries, 
and described the headscarf as part of a rebellion against the Shah's 
society and everything it stood for. The Tudeh and Fedayan parties were 
hesitant to challenge what they considered to be a popular narrative.

They had good reason. In a referendum held in April 1979, the public 
voted overwhelmingly to establish an "Islamic Republic," but the term 
itself was vague and meant different things to different people. Not 
everyone thought of this as clerical rule and the imposition of a strict 
interpretation of Islamic Law. For some, this meant a liberal democratic 
government with Islam as the guiding cultural principle. For others it 
meant a radical merging of Islam and socialism.

These different visions of the role of Islam must be understood in the 
context of the background of the revolution and, in particular, its 
origins in the Shah's "White Revolution," a series of reforms aimed at 
modernizing Iranian society and breaking the power of the clergy and 
large landowners. These included plans for rapid industrialization and 
land reform, as well as literacy programs, women's concessions, and a 
profit-sharing scheme for workers. The Shah's plan to modernize the 
country was quite successful in some respects, and by the early 1970s 
Iran was in a position that would have been unimaginable two decades 
earlier. The oil boom swelled the state's coffers and enabled it to 
easily finance its own projects. But development never comes without 
contradictions. Land reforms had caused millions of now-homeless workers 
to flock to cities, especially Tehran, and swell slums.

Land reforms had radical and undesirable effects on Iranian society. The 
main aim of land reform was to extend capitalist relations to the 
countryside by creating title deeds to land over which peasants often 
had only customary rights. But the agricultural revolution requires not 
only a change in the ownership structure. New, higher-efficiency 
techniques must be introduced to displace millions. Some entered the 
manufacturing and industrial sector, but many more, when they could find 
any work, worked in the ever-expanding construction industry, building 
skyscrapers and apartments for the wealthy, or as manual laborers in the 
service sector. By 1971, millions of new residents had arrived in 
Tehran. Disconnected from traditional networks, many of these new 
workers connected with each other through the mosque.

While some segments of society opposed the Shah's reforms-particularly 
the clergy and some of the landlords who had the most to lose-Khomeini 
positioned himself at the forefront of resistance. A highly respected 
cleric, Khomeini rose to a prominent position among the clergy as marja' 
(position of authority, but literally "model to be emulated"). Khomeini 
first appeared on the scene as an opposition figure during this period. 
He used his sermons to attack the regime. He has been particularly vocal 
about the presence of US soldiers and advisors who have recently gained 
diplomatic immunity, and indeed his example has been emulated. Following 
Khomeini's arrest in June 1963, mass riots broke out in the religious 
capital Qom, lasting for days. The government crackdown was harsh and 
hundreds of people died.

Many of the Iranian New Left forces emerged in the period following 
these events. Inspired by the anti-imperialist guerrilla movements in 
Cuba, Vietnam and Algeria, this generation saw armed struggle as the 
main tool for revolution. Here, along with the Fedaiyan, the 
left-Islamist Mujahideen-e Khalq, whose ideology was a synthesis of 
Marxist Third Worldism and a radical interpretation of Islam, was 
particularly important. The main ideologue of the Mujahideen was Ali 
Shariati, the theorist responsible for translating the works of Frantz 
Fanon into Persian.

Given the requirements of clandestine activity, the guerrillas were 
unable to establish a social base in workplaces, even though some of 
their members worked in factories. Instead, their urban base consisted 
largely of student circles and the middle class. Under the conditions of 
extreme repression that existed in Iran in the late 1960s and early 
seventies, they viewed working class self-action as largely impossible 
and instead focused almost exclusively on guerrilla actions against the 
state. In the words of Amir Parviz Pouyan, one of the important 
theorists of the guerrilla movement, they faced "the absolute power of 
the state and the absolute weakness of the working class." The 
guerrillas eventually became trapped in a tit-for-tat war with the state.

Students were an important part of the revolution. In the sixties and 
seventies, Iranian students increasingly went abroad for higher 
education, encouraged by the Shah's regime to obtain technical education 
considered essential for economic development. This formed the basis for 
a strong and militant student movement both within the country and 
abroad. The sixties and seventies were, of course, a time of intense 
conflict and unrest on campuses in the West, and radical Iranian 
students began to organize rapidly. The Confederation of Iranian 
Students Abroad became the main base of opposition to the regime, its 
newsletter disseminating information about strikes and guerrilla 
activities. The Confederation was also involved in militant student 
movements in international students' host countries and supported 
demonstrations against the Vietnam War and other imperialist 
aggressions. By the 1970s, the Confederation was so dominated by 
communist organizations that many of the key Islamist members broke away 
and formed the Muslim Students Union. Both associations served as 
sources of information for their counterparts in their respective countries.

The only thing they could agree on was the intolerable power of the 
United States. Whatever happened, the Khomeinists' actions forced them 
to this ground. On November 4, 1979, the US Embassy in Tehran was seized 
by "Faith Line Students". The hostage crisis attracted the attention of 
the whole country and the world and lasted for 444 days. The seizure of 
the embassy and President Carter's botched attempt to rescue the 
hostages allowed the Islamic right to seize the initiative, positioning 
itself as the victorious vanguard of the anti-imperialist struggle and 
at the same time pushing the liberals aside. In the face of the crisis, 
the interim government resigned and a new constitution was approved, 
filled with Third Worldist and anti-imperialist language but also based 
on the concept of velayat-i faqih (custody of the jurist) and 
establishing the "leader principle" in Iran. According to this 
constitution, Khomeini, as the "supreme leader of the revolution", was 
given the authority to veto any decision contrary to Islam. However, a 
presidential election was also held and the overwhelming majority voted 
for Abolhassan Bani-Sadr. Although Bani-Sadr had long been one of 
Khomeini's favorite advisors, he represented the technocratic "liberal 
Islamist" wing of the revolution and was a threat to the IRP's 
consolidation of power.

Counter-Revolution
In April 1980, the government of the Islamic Republic, with the 
authority it received from its new constitution, initiated the Cultural 
Revolution and began the process of Islamization of universities, 
workplaces and cultural institutions. The Cultural Revolution aimed to 
anchor the state's power over society in schools and the media. Schools 
and universities were closed for three years, during which time leftist 
cadres were completely purged and strict religious rules were imposed.

In the labor arena, there was a war between the Khomeinist right 
organized around the IRP and Beni-Sadr. By using the councils against 
Beni-Sadr's state-appointed rulers, Khomeinists effectively brushed 
aside workers' demands from the previous year and undermined the 
independent shoras. Revolutionary guards attacked the last few remaining 
independent councils.

However, before this conflict could progress on its own course and the 
hostage crisis could be resolved, Iraq invaded Iran on September 22, 
1980, hoping to benefit from the chaos. The mobilization drew millions 
to the regime's side and allowed it to wage war against Iraq and its 
supporters in the United States, using the language of anti-imperialism. 
Martial law and the austerity of the war economy created fertile ground 
for counter-revolution. All strikes and demonstrations were considered 
imperialist sabotage by the new regime, and the Khomeinist right was 
allowed to maintain order in the streets with gangs of thugs.

The IRP used this opportunity to launch a new campaign against Beni-Sadr 
and his liberal supporters. With Khomeini's approval, the IRP-dominated 
Iranian parliament voted to remove Beni-Sadr. Making a last move to save 
himself, Beni-Sadr formed an alliance with the Mujahideen, whose 
conflict with the new regime turned into open armed conflict. The 
Mujahideen launched a terror campaign against the regime, killing dozens 
of IRP officials and ministers. With the Iraqi army at the forefront, 
the regime had all the cover it needed to destroy the last remnants of 
the left, closing down newspapers, disbanding associations, and 
arresting and executing anyone who resisted.

It may be tempting to place the blame entirely on Khomeini and the IRP, 
as these parties certainly had the upper hand over their counterparts. 
However, the conditions in which the Iranian left had to operate were 
extremely difficult. While workers' councils were making great strides 
in democratizing workplaces, the capitalist division of labor itself was 
an incredible obstacle to the emancipatory thrust of the proletarian 
movement. There were deep conflicts between the established working 
class and the newcomers in terms of skills and education among workers. 
Most production in Iran continued to be organized in workshops too small 
for councils. Although councils were spread throughout society, there 
was no vision of organizing them as an alternative to the state. State 
power itself has never been questioned, only the people who occupy it. 
The councils were seen not only by the official left, but also by many 
of the workers who populated the councils, as pressure groups through 
which they could mobilize against the state. Even the most radical 
demands issued by the councils fell short of a clear call for the 
abolition of capitalism. This was a power that many gave up too easily, 
as councils rushed into the void to perform basic social functions. 
Blinded by decades of Stalinism, most of the current left had neither a 
vision of self-organization nor an idea of what the economy could be 
beyond the nationalization of industry. The places where such a vision 
took root were often outside the heart of the revolution.

Still, the Iranian Revolution may have the honor of being the period in 
which workers' councils emerged for the last time in their classical 
form. More precisely, it shares this honor with Poland, where around the 
same time the Solidarnosc movement also emerged, despite the development 
of councils during a period of political and economic instability. But 
this late flourishing of workers' councils took place during a period of 
decline in the labor movement, when deindustrialization and a series of 
neoliberal projects were spreading across the planet, destroying much of 
the resistance. However, in the last decade, protests and rebellions 
have revived in Iran and the Middle East, ushering in a new era of class 
conflict on a global scale. In each of these cases, the United States, 
Russia and other world powers stood, as always, with their weapons at 
the ready, ready to intervene at any time if their interests required 
it. In such a situation, a revival of class struggle in Iran and its 
neighbors is the only hope of avoiding another four decades of war.

Source: The Iranian Revolution At The Twilight Of The Worker's Council

Translation: heimatloskultu / Konzept

https://www.yeryuzupostasi.org/2024/03/22/isci-konseyinin-alacakaranliginda-iran-devrimi-arya-zahedi/
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