The latest Defeated

 Abbas Goya

Note: What follows is an excerpt from a discussion among socialist activists regarding the January uprising.

If we analyze the wage earners who rose up in the January uprising solely through a narrow, interest-based lens within the workers' socialist framework, their presumed long-term objective would be the establishment of a socialist state through the political expropriation of capitalism. Yet when we examine the actual composition of the population, the slogans raised, and the immediate unfolding of events, this claim appears excessively imaginative and far removed from reality. And indeed, it is.

What bridges the gap between imagination and reality is not spontaneity but the subjective political factor: political activists, both as individuals and as organized forces. Politics is their terrain — and it is not the exclusive domain of socialists. It is no secret that Western ruling classes, through coercion, and manipulation, attempt to install their preferred alternatives and pawns by engineering “reform” as a legitimate option — whether through figures like Reza Pahlavi or even the so-called moderate Islamists. Socialist activists, by contrast, intervene in political struggle on the basis of truth and organization. The decisive question, then, is: what is the balance of forces?

The worker-socialist orientation within protests against the Islamic Republic is as old as the regime itself. For nearly half a century, socialist activists — many politicized from childhood — have participated in the 1979 revolution; carried socialist banner into neighborhoods, factories, and schools; fought simultaneously within mass movements and against repression; witnessed the emergence of a communist party amid the crushed hopes of the 1980s; organized workers; endured imprisonment; went to Kurdistan; engaged in armed struggle against both the Islamic Republic and bourgeois Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan forces; transformed Kurdistan from a nationalist stronghold into a terrain of socialist labor activity; survived the collapse of the Eastern Bloc without losing legitimacy; armed themselves with worker-communist theory; and became uncompromising critics of democracy, nationalism, and reformism.

Throughout their lives — in Iran and later in exile — they defended workers’ struggles with theory, practice, organization, and the pen. These activists — at least those who do not consider themselves failures — possess enough political self-respect to value their own history, their struggles, and the labor movement they helped build. They understand the objective weight of five decades of political activity. They do not imagine society as a spiritual theater that can be reshaped by passing the loudspeaker from one savior to another. Nor are they intimidated by pressure from Western media, which has openly declared its role as an engineer of ruling-class ideology. They do not declare themselves defeated.

There are, however, others who, for political reasons, have chosen to declare half a century of struggle as nothing. From the streets of Tehran to workers’ councils, from the prisons of the Islamic Republic to the mountains of Kurdistan, and from there to Paris, London, and Stockholm — all of it, they now say, amounted to nothing. They reduce the entire historical labor and socialist movement to zero.

And then they ask, astonished, how a deposed king — whose closest physical proximity to Iran is his patron Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem — could suddenly dominate the Iranian right through the magic of social and mass media. Apparently, all socialist theories pale in the face of the immense influence of the BBC and CNN, which imply that you can only become a credible alternative if the mainstream media supports you; when they don't, you're left high and dry. This defeated crowd is now warning that a “black scenario” is on the way, that society is “on the verge of collapse,” that the Holocaust is not an adjective to describe a brutal and unparalleled massacre but rather a victorious strategy against the poor oppressed who, as if in a herd, have surrendered with their hands tied, presenting their necks to be cut off.

These friends joined the ranks of the defeated of the 1979 revolution — albeit belatedly. Decades ago, the Tudehists -a reformist party that used to be affiliated with the soviet union- declared defeat; today, these activists echo them. Using language eerily similar to Islamist discourse, they preach “civil and peaceful struggle,” warn against provoking the Islamic monster, and threaten that resistance will turn Iran into Syria, i.e. into scorched earth, into a second Holocaust. They insist the US is the primary enemy.

Even if we momentarily grant their assessment — which is profoundly incorrect — a more fundamental question remains: On what basis would anyone follow them? Who bets on a horse that has already declared itself a loser? Why would politically active forces listen to individuals who have publicly invalidated their own fifty-year history, declared their theory, organization, strategy, and practice bankrupt, and confessed political meaninglessness in the face of a prince’s media campaign?

The political environment has become intensely polarized. Tendencies that once regarded themselves as centrist—hiding in the fissures of the regime—can no longer remain in the middle. Objective conditions, and the current phase of confrontation with the Islamic Republic, have eliminated that possibility. From Farrokh Negahdar to both former and current Hekmatist-rasmi currents, and to the anti-Western, “anti-imperialist” left, all have lined up to preach restraint: “Keep calm,” “Your hatred is justified, but America is worse than the Islamic Republic,” and “Raise the ‘Woe-Woe’ flag—the second Holocaust is coming.” 

From a class perspective, this posture is nothing but an empty shell of social democracy—one of the many ideological shells of the capitalist ruling apparatus. It is no coincidence that our friends fail to acknowledge that the American ruling class—regardless of which president has been in office, from Carter and Reagan to the Bushes, Clinton, Obama, Biden, or Trump—has played a decisive role both in the rise of the Islamic Republic and in its continued survival. Nor do they recognize that any action taken by Trump today serves only to strengthen Iran’s ruling apparatus in its confrontation with the socialist tendency within the labor movement. This tendency, forged through half a century of militant activity, has deep roots in society. Its achievements in pushing back the Islamic Republic have been substantial—the most recent example being the establishment of the right not to wear the hijab. 

Any political, legal, or military posture adopted by various states toward “Iran” can be understood only through an objective analysis of the position and strength of the socialist labor movement.

***