The Struggle Inside the Socialist Workers Party Index | Main Document Index | ETOL Home Page
[Resolution of the Fourth Internationalist Caucus in the National Committee, submitted to the February-March 1982 plenum]
No convention of the SWP or plenum of the National Committee has ever adopted a resolution on Iran. Nevertheless, a clear and increasingly incorrect line on this question has been revealed in our press coverage of events in that country. The view that the “framework” and “axis” of our approach to Iran should be the fight against imperialism, which is taken out of its correct context and separated artificially from all other aspects of the Iranian class struggle, must be firmly rejected by our party.
The correct Marxist view is that the framework and axis for an analysis of events in Iran can only be the need to mobilize the toilers to defend their rights and interests. Imperialist intervention against the revolution can only be understood, and effectively fought, from this point of view.
The primary consideration for proletarian revolutionists in Iran is the defense and extension of democratic rights that the masses won in the struggle against the shah. These rights are under merciless attack by the Islamic Republican Party (IRP) regime. The economic struggles of the workers, the fight for national self-determination of the Kurds and other oppressed nationalities, and the movement by the peasants for a genuine land reform, which has never been implemented, are also key. On the war with Iraq, a “clear and unequivocal position for a withdrawal by Baghdad and the victory of Iran must be taken. The defense against this direct attack on the Iranian revolutionary process must be seen as a task that rightfully devolves upon the independently organized workers and peasants themselves — the “army of 20 million.” No confidence whatsoever should be given to the war plans or efforts of the bourgeois government.
The evolution of the party’s line on Iran, highlighted by the articles by David Frankel in the October 5 and November 16, 1981, issue of IP, since reprinted as a pamphlet, reveals a serious departure from the approach of Lenin and Trotsky to the colonial revolution. The essential error of the expressed approach is the abstract elevation of .the anti-imperialist struggle, led today by the capitalist IRP regime, above the class struggle within Iran and above the pressing need to chart a course to carry the revolution forward to the creation of a workers’ government, in alliance with the poor peasantry. The coverage in our press — in its balance, its tone, where it directs its fire, and what it refuses to say — sharply separates the two essential elements of a revolutionary strategy in Iran which should be dialectically linked. The unconditional defense of the current government against imperialism and its domestic agents is in fact inextricably bound up with the unconditional defense of all sectors of the oppressed from the capitalist repression and the teaching of implacable class hatred of bourgeois rule.
The Militant and IP present as our primary task the defense of the Iranian revolution from imperialism; and this is, indeed, one of our tasks. But the way it is posed is incorrect, precisely because of the depth of the Iranian revolution and the internal class differentiations within it between proletarian and bourgeois forces. This poses in an extremely sharp way a higher task: the struggle for the political independence of the masses in the fight for their own demands, leading toward the socialist revolution. The Militant’s approach ignores the concrete reality of the present stage of the Iranian revolutionary process. It substitutes a propaganda emphasis that would be in the main correct in wholly different circumstances. For example, in our attitude toward the Vietnamese revolution we were able to limit our coverage largely to the anti-imperialist struggle because that struggle also, within Vietnam, already counterposed the whole of the capitalist class of Vietnam on the imperialist side to a revolution of the oppressed masses. It is also acceptable today in a case such as the clash between Libya and Washington, where there is no Libyan revolution at this time. Though even in cases such as these we must scrupulously avoid creating illusions in the bourgeois or petty-bourgeois leaderships of anti-imperialist struggles.
But for Iran, the current line risks two dangerous departures from a Marxist strategy: first, adaptation toward a formalistic anti-imperialist theory of revolution, that judges bourgeois regimes in the colonial world essentially on the basis of whether or not they fight imperialism, and places in a subordinate position their anti-working class character; and second, equally serious, the tendency to view ourselves as primarily American socialists concerned with combating the reactionary anti-Iranian propaganda of our own imperialist government, but downplaying our responsibility as part of a world movement to push forward the anticapitalist struggle in Iran.
Comrade Frankel correctly polemicizes against sectors of the American and international left that fail to come to the defense of the Khomeini government against imperialism. But he falls into an opposite error when he attempts to prioritize the dangers to the Iranian revolution on a greater-evil versus lesser-evil basis. He states that “many of the left... see Khomeini as the overriding threat to progress in Iran and ... ignore the far more reactionary role of imperialism” (Imperialism vs. the Iranian Revolution, p. 19). This is a completely sterile way of posing the problem. It smacks of the old Maoist idea of the “main contradiction” (imperialism) and the “secondary contradiction” (native capitalism).
But this thread runs all through Frankel’s presentation:
Since Iran is a country oppressed by imperialism, all the problems facing the Iranian masses are connected to and intertwined with the struggle against this foreign domination....
Thus, the struggle against imperialism is not only an integral part of the class struggle inside Iran, it also determines the framework of that struggle....
Any Marxist analysis of the Iranian government must begin with its origin and its actual relation to the working masses and imperialism. In this case, we are dealing with a government that came to power as a result of the revolutionary mobilization of the Iranian people in their millions....
Because of this history, the Iranian masses continue by and large to see the Khomeini government as one that will wage struggles against imperialism. And the imperialists also see it this way (Ibid., pp. 25-27).
What conclusion does Frankel draw from the framework he has established? It appears to be that, because of its roots in a mass revolutionary upheaval against the shah and its continued anti-imperialist policies, the threat of counterrevolution coming from the present capitalist government of Iran can be discounted, whatever partial repressive measures it undertakes at the moment. Frankel is quite explicit on this:
The rulers in Washington, Paris, and London ... know that the Khomeini government is not the instrument that can achieve their aims. This is a government that leans on the masses against imperialism, that calls the masses into the streets when the threats against it become too sharp. That is why the imperialists are working to overthrow Khomeini.
Those who talk about the Khomeini government as the representative of the counterrevolution in Iran only show that they have no conception of the real power of the Iranian revolution, nor of the kind of bloodbath that would be required to finally suppress it (Ibid., p. 31).
This analysis flies in the face of the whole experience of bourgeois-led anti-imperialist revolutions in the twentieth century and gravely underestimates the significance of the extensive anti-working class measures already taken by the Khomeini government. It implies a distinction between a genuinely anti-imperialist, though vacillating, national bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and on the other the real counterrevolutionary forces in Iran, which Frankel elsewhere locates in the officer corps of the army. (He also lumps in a number of other forces that do not properly belong in this latter category.)
Frankel goes to great lengths to prove that imperialism is seeking to topple the Khomeini government. That is not in dispute. He cites this as one of his principal proofs that the Khomeini forces have not moved onto a counter revolutionary course, along with the facts that the government continues to pursue a foreign policy that is generally in sharp contradiction with imperialism; and that it retains significant mass support. These points are also not in dispute, although Frankel exaggerates the present anti-imperialist character of the Iranian government.
But once we have agreed that we defend the Iranian regime against imperialism, these facts tell us nothing about this capitalist government’s relationship to counterrevolution. If the masses fail in time to overthrow Khomeini, his suppression of the revolution is inevitable. Frankel, in a scholastic and lifeless way, sees the danger of counterrevolution coming in only one variant: first the overthrow of Khomeini and the Islamic Republican Party regime, through an internal coup or foreign invasion; then the assault on the masses in a bloodbath. Even in that variant, the problem of problems is to break the masses from their trust in the IRP, which binds them hand and foot and readies them for the slaughter. That was the pattern in Chile under the Allende government, which had far cleaner hands than the present Iranian regime on the question of repression of the mass movement.
But there is another variant that Frankel ignores. Didn’t Chiang Kai-shek in China — who gave the Communist Party places in his government; who was an honorary member of the Communist International; and who had carried out considerably less repression than Khomeini — turn on the workers and peasants in the midst of an anti-imperialist war, massacre them, and destroy the Chinese revolution for a generation? Didn’t Sukarno in Indonesia, in the midst of an anti-imperialist revolution against the Dutch at the end of World War II, murder the Trotskyist opposition in the anti-imperialist movement and smash the Communist Party after its ill-timed Madiun uprising in 1948, crushing the proletarian component of the anti-imperialist struggle and defeating the prospect for socialist revolution in Indonesia? In these cases the imperialists were energetically seeking the overthrow and defeat of Chiang and Sukarno. And in neither case did the bourgeois counterrevolution halt its armed struggle against the imperialists before, or even immediately after, its turn against the working class.
It is necessary to review Trotsky’s writings on China and Spain to correctly restore the revolutionary Marxist approach in tone, attitude, and expectations toward the bourgeoisie, or sectors of it, that place themselves at the head of an anti-imperialist movement or an anti-fascist struggle.
In China and in Spain Trotsky flayed the Stalinist Comintern for its mistaken and fatal belief that the fundamental class antagonism between the bourgeoisie and proletariat could be held in check by the common struggle against the imperialist or fascist threat.
In the Chinese revolution of 1925-27 one thing Trotsky did not do was dwell on the anti-imperialist capacities of the bourgeois government of Chiang Kai-shek. That was not because Chiang did not mount a genuine mass military campaign against the pro-imperialist militarists of North and Central China. It was because Trotsky approached the revolution in a different framework. In his May 1927 article “The Chinese Revolution and the Theses of Comrade Stalin” he wrote:
The Bolshevik way... consists of an unconditional political and organizational demarcation from the bourgeoisie, of a relentless exposure of the bourgeoisie from the very first steps of the revolution, of a destruction of all petty-bourgeois illusions about the united front with the bourgeoisie, of tireless struggle with the bourgeoisie for the leadership of the masses, of the merciless expulsion from the Communist Party of all those elements who sow vain hopes in the bourgeoisie or idealize them (Leon Trotsky on China, pp. 168-69).
Comrade Frankel in his article of October 9 correctly states that there are three important political forces in Iran: the Khomeini government (i.e., the representative of the currently dominant section of the capitalist class), imperialism, and the Iranian working class. From here, however, he proceeds to list a series of gains of the Iranian workers, peasants, and minority nationalities, not to explore the actual relations between these three forces. Imperialism appears here as having no connection or potential connection with the capitalists grouped around Khomeini and the IRP. Frankel does offer an opinion on the relations between two of the primary forces, the working masses and the capitalist government. He writes:
Under pressure of the workers and peasants, the government was forced to nationalize major industries and to pass a land reform law. Gains such as these have not been reversed, although the Khomeini regime — like any capitalist government — has done its best to limit the implementation of reforms and undercut them.
But the Khomeini regime is not just “any capitalist government.” It is embroiled in the midst of a profound revolutionary movement with sharp internal class contradictions. In this dynamic process it is a potentially fatal illusion to present the capitalist government as captive to the pressure of the masses and ignore the potential pressure of imperialism on the Khomeini forces. Trotsky, in the article cited above, outlined his view of the relationship between the three principal forces in a similar situation in China:
The war of China for its national independence is a progressive war, because it flows from the necessities of the economic and cultural development of China itself....
But this by no means signifies that the imperialist yoke is a mechanical one, subjugating “all” the classes of China in the “same” way. The powerful role of foreign capital in the life of China has caused very strong sections of the Chinese bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy, and the military to join their destiny with that of imperialism. Without this tie, the enormous role of the so-called militarists in the life of modern China would be inconceivable.
It would further be profound naivete’ to believe that an abyss lies between the so-called comprador bourgeoisie, that is, the economic and political agency of foreign capital in China, and the so-called national bourgeoisie. No, these two sections stand incomparably closer to each other than the bourgeoisie and the masses of workers and peasants. The bourgeoisie participated in the national war as an internal brake, looking upon the worker and peasant masses with growing hostility and becoming even readier to conclude a compromise with imperialism.
Installed within the Kuomintang and its leadership, the national bourgeoisie has been essentially an instrument of the compradors and imperialism. It can remain in the camp of the national war only because of the weakness of the worker and peasant masses, the lack of development of the class struggle, the lack of independence of the Chinese Communist Party, and the docility of the Kuomintang in the hands of the bourgeoisie....
The revolutionary struggle against imperialism does not weaken, but rather strengthens the political differentiation of the classes. Imperialism is a highly powerful force in the internal relationships of China. The main source of this force is not the warships in the waters of the Yangtze Kiang—they are only auxiliaries —but the political bond between foreign capital and the native bourgeoisie. The struggle against imperialism, precisely because of its economic and military power, demands a powerful exertion of forces from the very depths of the Chinese people. Really to arouse the workers and peasants against imperialism is possible only by connecting their basic and most profound life interests with the cause of the country’s liberation.
A workers’ strike — small or large — an agrarian rebellion, an uprising of the oppressed sections in city and country against the usurer, against the bureaucracy, against the local military satraps, all that arouses the multitudes, that welds them together, that educates, steels, is a real step forward on the road to the revolutionary and social liberation of the Chinese people. Without that, the military successes and failures of the right, semiright or semileft generals will remain foam on the surface of the ocean. But everything that brings the oppressed and exploited masses of the toilers to their feet inevitably pushes the national bourgeoisie into an open bloc with the imperialists. The class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the masses of workers and peasants is not weakened, but, on the contrary, it is sharpened by imperialist oppression, to the point of bloody civil war at every serious conflict (Leon Trotsky on China, pp. 160-61).
The Spanish civil war of 1936-39 also had important similarities to Iran today. If viewed from an abstract “framework” of the struggle against imperialism a certain lineup was clear: On one side were the majority of the Spanish regular army, led by the Franco fascists, the majority of the Spanish capitalist class, troops of Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, and the diplomatic backing of all the Western imperialist “democracies,” including the United States. On the other side were all of the Spanish workers’ organizations, unions, and parties, and a small section of the liberal capitalists. There was no need to prove that imperialism was out to destroy the Spanish Republic. Nor did the Loyalist government fail to mount a concerted, three-year military resistance to the fascist onslaught.
We supported the Loyalist government against Franco. But our central concern was not the military contest per se; it was the victory of the socialist revolution within the Loyalist camp, which we considered essential to defend the revolution against its enemies on both sides of the battlefront. And we were not squeamish about incurring the charge that our attacks on the Popular Front government provided left cover for the imperialist propaganda barrage. To us, the danger of the failure of the Spanish revolution because of its alien class leadership was a higher consideration, and we held to that correct Bolshevik position in face of a concerted effort by the Stalinist and Social Democratic press to picture our opposition to the Popular Front as giving aid and comfort to the fascists.
In April 1937, in his article “Is Victory Possible in Spain?” Trotsky wrote:
The prolonged character of the war is the direct result of the conservative bourgeois program of the Popular Front, i .e., of the Stalinist bureaucracy.
The longer the politics of the Popular Front keep their hold over the country and the revolution, the greater the danger of the exhaustion and disillusionment of the masses and of the military victory of fascism....
Does this mean that, with the continuation of the present policies, the military victory of Largo Caballero over Franco is inconceivable? To calculate beforehand the material and moral resources of the two opposing camps is not possible. Only the course of the struggle itself can test out the actual relation of forces. But we are not interested in military victory in and of itself, but in the victory of the revolution, that is, the victory of one class over another. It is necessary to aid the republican troops with all one’s strength; but the victory of Largo Caballero’s army over Franco’s would still not mean, by far, the victory of the revolution....
It is necessary to openly and boldly mobilize the masses against the Popular Front government. It is necessary to expose, for the syndicalist and Anarchist workers to see, the betrayals of those gentlemen who call themselves Anarchists but in fact have turned out to be simple liberals. It is necessary to hammer away mercilessly at Stalinism as the worst agency of the bourgeoisie. It is necessary to feel yourselves leaders of the revolutionary masses, not advisers to the bourgeois government.
A purely military victory of the democratic army of the bourgeois Stalin-Caballero regime is, of course, possible. But what would be its immediate results?
The present acts of violence against the workers’ organizations, especially the left wing, in the name of “discipline” and “unity of the army” represent nothing less than a school of Bonapartism. What is involved is not the internal discipline of the proletarian army but the military subordination of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie (The Spanish Revolution, 1931-39, pp. 256-57 and 259).
Of course, there are many differences in the way basic class contradictions manifest themselves in different historical situations. Precise tactical prescriptions cannot be transferred from China or Spain to Iran. But only by looking at the Iranian revolution within the same overall framework used by Trotsky in these cases will we be able to arrive at a correct perspective.
In Iran today, as in Spain in 1937, the capitalist government is engaged in expanding acts of violence against the workers’ organizations and the left — in fact, on a scale considerably larger than in Spain at the time Trotsky wrote his article. This is passed over in our press as incidental and almost insignificant. Contrasted with this, a tortuous effort is made to present the Mujahedeen as simple agents of imperialist counterrevolution. Frankel writes:
It is certainly correct to point out the differences in origin, political history, and composition between the Mujahedeen and the monarchist organizations that oppose the Iranian government. The Militant has repeatedly done that.
But the fact remains that the politics of the Mujahedeen have led them into a bloc with the counterrevolutionary forces. The actions of the Mujahedeen are indistinguishable from those of the monarchists (Imperialism vs. the Iranian Revolution, p. 37).
On the basis of this gross oversimplification, our press has taken the stand that, while it deplores the mass executions that have taken place in Iran, it will not defend the members of the Mujahedeen killed by the IRP government — and, presumably by extension, since nothing is being said on the matter, no defense will be made of the hundreds of executed members of the Minority faction of the Fadayeen, Peykar, and other left groups, who did not take part in the bombings, did not engage in armed actions against the government, and opposed the Mujahedeen’s adventurism and their political bloc with the capitalist Bani-Sadr.
The line of the Militant and IP on this question is based on an abstract principle: in war, especially in civil war that breaks out during a revolution, it is necessary to take sides. But it is an overly simplistic view, to say the least, which sees Khomeini as representing the anti-imperialist side, and therefore assigns the role of pro-imperialist side to the Mujahedeen/Bani-Sadr bloc. The evidence and reasoning that are presented on this subject in our press are shaky in the extreme and miss a number of central features of the present Iranian situation.
One example is the argument that the Mujahedeen’s armed actions provided left cover for the imperialist destabilization campaign, in which other more dangerous forces felt free to carry out terrorist acts of their own. If the Militant had left the argument at this level, it would have been correct. But, as the quote above from Frankel’s article indicates, it went further and claimed a bloc with the pro-imperialist forces. But isn’t it true that most of those pro-imperialist forces — ex-SAVAK agents, etc. — who are actively engaged in trying to destabilize the revolution are, in fact, actually participants in the IRP government and the armed forces? And while it is true that the Mujahedeen’s campaign increases the latitude for SAVAK operatives in the Khomeini regime to carry out their own plans, it is hard to talk about a “bloc” between two groups who are trying to kill one another. It is also difficult to understand the logic of drawing a clear, black-and-white distinction between the counterrevolutionary camp, in which the Mujahedeen are enrolled, and the revolutionary camp, in which Khomeini is enrolled, when the principal crime of the Mujahedeen is that they stir up the conscious pro-imperialists, who are for the most part sitting in offices in various departments of the “revolutionary” government.
The Militant’s case — that the Council of National Resistance, headed by Bani-Sadr, is a counterrevolutionary, pro-imperialist organization—seems to rest on two or three pieces of evidence: that Bani-Sadr in September 1981 is said to have called on the imperialist powers to renew their economic boycott of Iran; that the Mujahedeen appeal to the army to intervene against Khomeini; and, most important, that the Mujahedeen have been waging “war,” in the form of their bombing campaign and armed guerrilla actions against the IRP and its private army, the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guardians). The first item is undoubtedly a reactionary stand and should be condemned, along with Bani-Sadr himself, as representative of the potentially pro-imperialist character of the Iranian capitalist class. But it does not yet constitute an alliance in the terms implied by the Militant. Khomeini also leans on some imperialist powers against the Iranian masses: the Iranian government is being supplied with arms by Israel, which it uses partially against the Iraqi invaders, but partially also against the oppressed national minorities of Iran. And it received aid from the U.S. at one crucial juncture of its war against the Kurds.
The Mujahedeen’s appeal to the armed forces, which they conceive as an alliance with “progressive” junior officers, is also reactionary and typical of the class collaborationism of these petty-bourgeois radicals. But it is difficult to make out that it is more reactionary to appeal to the counterrevolutionary armed forces than to already have them on your side and be using them against the masses, which is the case with the IRP regime. In any case, the army shows no sign of going over to the Mujahedeen. It is indeed the principal bastion of potential counterrevolution in Iran, but its course appears to be either to stick with Khomeini to use his prestige to demobilize and crush the masses, or to strike out on its own in a coup. (The June 22,1981, IP described Bani-Sadr, without citing any evidence, as having a base among the top officer corps of the army, but the Mujahedeen, at least, deny this.)
That leaves the “war” being waged by the Mujahedeen. But war is the continuation of politics by other means. The clashes and the terror campaign, like the repressive policies of the IRP side, can be understood only in the context of the previous political developments within the Iranian revolution, which did not involve a division between pro-imperialist and anti-imperialist political camps. What has actually happened in Iran is a split among the forces that took part in the anti-shah revolution into two rival, class-collaborationist blocs. The split is not along clear class lines, nor is it along the lines of pro- or anti-imperialism. The IRP, which is uncritically supported by the pro-Moscow Tudeh Party and the Fadayeen (Majority), retains the government. The Bani-Sadr/Mujahedeen/Kurdish Democratic Party bloc, also a class-collaborationist alliance, is seeking to replace that government with its own.
It is necessary to recall our own coverage of the final period of internal struggle within the government before Bani-Sadr’s ouster, which, although making some unsubstantiated assertions, presented both sides in this clash considerably more accurately than our recent reporting. An article by Janice Lynn in the June 22,1981, IP described the situation as follows:
The depth of the crisis within the Iranian ruling class has led to a new and more severe crackdown on democratic rights. The clergy-led Islamic Republican Party (IRP) is attempting to oust Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr from the presidency and at least six newspapers have been banned....
The Islamic Republican Party, faced with increasing discontent over its in ability to solve the country’s economic and social problems, is seeking to consolidate and strengthen its power and silence all opposition.
The economic problems in the country have been worsening, compounded by the Iraqi regime’s war against Iran. The capitalist government is not able to take the kinds of measures necessary to solve the problems of unemployment and inflation, the severe housing shortage, the unequal distribution of land, or the oppression of Iran’s non-Persian nationalities.
Nor has it been able or willing to take the kinds of measures necessary for driving the Iraqi invaders out of Iran — measures such as massive arming and mobilization of the population, and the replacement of the army officers who are sabotaging the war effort....
Under the impact of rising discontent among the masses, Bani-Sadr had begun to speak out on some of the workers’ concerns....
Demonstrations in support of Bani-Sadr have been broken up by right-wing reactionary gangs. They have roamed through the streets of Tehran in groups of 50 to 500, displaying posters of Bani-Sadr in the guise of the former shah....
If Bani-Sadr is removed from the presidency, through what is in effect a coup by forces who want to crack down further on democratic rights, it will be a blow to the right of the Iranian workers and peasants to choose their own government....
The IRP’s repressive moves are fundamentally aimed at blocking the formation of nationwide, mass organizations of the working class and peasantry. It is precisely these kinds of organizations that are needed to fight to solve the needs of the majority of people in the country.
The People’s Mujahedeen took part in the anti-shah underground and in the revolution that toppled the monarchy. They professed a populist ideology based on an eclectic fusion of elements from Islam and from Marxism. They supported the occupation of the American embassy in Tehran and fought in the front lines in Khuzestan during the war with Iraq, although the government continually tried to prevent them from participating in the war, eyen going so far as to arrest and execute their members. As part of their class-collaborationist conceptions, they attempted to function as a loyal opposition to the IRP government despite very extensive persecutions dating from the early days of the revolution in 1979. In the year prior to their decision to try to overthrow Khomeini, fifty of their members were killed and several hundred injured in attacks by the right-wing hezbollah, organized by the IRP. Some 1,100 of their members were imprisoned by the spring of 1981 (many of these political prisoners, who had no part in either the decision to confront the government or its implementation, were executed — many of them even before any overt action against the government had been taken by the Mujahedeen).
What should our attitude be toward the Mujahedeen? The working class must maintain its political independence from all wings of the Iranian capitalist class. It should not join in behind the Council of National Resistance any more than it should offer its political support to the IRP and Khomeini. It must seek to build its independent power through the shoras. For these reasons we must condemn the Mujahedeen’s participation in the CNR — as we should also condemn the Tudeh Party and the Fadayeen Majority’s support to the capitalist IRP government, which our press rarely does. We should also oppose the Mujahedeen’s bombing campaign and guerrilla operations, carried out in isolation from, and against the current will of, the Iranian masses.
But we should not trumpet the false accusations that the Mujahedeen are agents of imperialism, and we should defend them from the growing repression by the IRP government. This repression was directed at the Mujahedeen before they went into armed opposition precisely because they were a dangerous (to the Iranian capitalists) armed sector of the oppressed, despite their confused and inadequate program and their lack of a working class base. They were targeted because they were part of the plebeian revolutionary movement, and the repression of today has a far wider target than the increasingly isolated Mujahedeen.
According to official Iranian government figures, by the end of 1981 some 3,500 people had been executed (Inprecor, December 21, 1981). Many observers claim the actual figures are far higher.
Many of those shot by the government were not members of the Mujahedeen at all, and large numbers of the Mujahedeen members or sympathizers were rounded up at random and had not participated in any act against the government. However much we may condemn the Mujahedeen’s military campaign, the government’s response is plainly a calculated blow aimed at the Iranian masses. But that is not how it is presented in our press. In his year-end article in the December 28 IP, Fred Murphy writes:
This repression, a substitute for the anti-capitalist measures and working-class and peasant mobilizations that could effectively defend and advance the revolution, was not popular among the masses.
How can a Marxist write a sentence like this? “Repression ... was not popular among the masses.” Did anyone think that it might be? And is the murder of anti-imperialist militants by a capitalist government — even if we were to accept the frame-up judgment that the Mujahedeen have gone over to imperialism, they were not the only victims — nothing worse than a “substitute” for something better the government might have devoted its energies to? And since Murphy is speaking here of actions by a capitalist government, does he think that it might have embarked on a course of anticapitalist measures if it had not made this substitution?
There might have been some small plausibility to the claim that the executions were merely a necessary response to the Mujahedeen’s bombs if they were an isolated action by the regime. But they were not. In August in Kermanshah the Pasdaran intervened to force the peasants off of land they had occupied and return it to the big landowners. Most of the opposition press was forced to shut down. Hundreds of teachers were fired from their jobs. A major military offensive was launched in Kurdistan in November. And the state prosecutor, Hossein Moussavi, announced at the end of November that members of the Tudeh Party and Fadayeen Majority who were discovered to belong to the Pasdaran would be executed. The largest coordinating body of the shoras, the Polytechnic Council, ceased to meet, under government pressure, and its newspaper, Shora, stopped publication.
It is necessary to draw conclusions from this consistent pattern—and these are far from the only examples that could be cited. We must put an end to the persistent smoothing over in our press of the reactionary, anti-working class features of the Iranian capitalist government in the mistaken notion that this will advance the defense of the Iranian revolution against imperialism. Only the Iranian working class and its allies can guarantee the defense of Iran from imperialism, and to do that job they must first break free of their illusions in the IRP.
The recent tendency to try to impose schematic two-class distinctions on situations that involve divisions that do not break neatly along class lines can be seen in another aspect of the Iranian revolution, which does not fit comfortably into such an analysis. It is helpful in understanding the “war” between Khomeini and the Mujahedeen forces to look at another civil war taking place within the Iranian revolution: the government’s military campaign against the Kurds. This also, from such a schematic view, appears as a contradiction. The war of the Kurdish rebels is a progressive war, which we support, despite the fact that the Kurds are shooting at the soldiers of a government that is itself under attack by imperialism and is actually fighting a pro-imperialist invasion by Iraq on another front.
In the past we had no difficulty grasping this apparent contradiction, because we based our approach on the class struggle within Iran between the oppressed and the bourgeoisie and placed the anti-imperialist struggle in that framework. Since the shift to abstractly elevating the anti-imperialist side of the revolution, and the consequent tendency to avoid dwelling in our press on unpleasant things being done by the Iranian government that the imperialists are trying to use against it, our writers have adopted a gingerly attitude toward the Kurdish rebels. Janice Lynn handles it this way in her article in the July 6,1981, IP:
The government’s refusal to recognize the national rights of the oppressed Kurdish people and its repeated military attacks against Kurdistan was an obstacle to the kind of united mobilization necessary to win the war. It weakened the ability of the Kurdish nationality to participate fully [!] in the fighting against the Iraqi regime.
David Frankel in the Iran pamphlet writes:
Failure of the government to recognize the rights of the oppressed nationalities and in particular to stop its war against the Kurds can only create new openings for imperialism (p. 22).
Doesn’t it also indicate the antirevolutionary character of the Khomeini government itself? Especially since, as Frankel points out on this same page, “Roughly half of Iran’s population is composed of oppressed nationalities such as Kurds, Azerbaijanis, and Arabs.”
Hector Marroquín, writing in the November-December Young Socialist, limits himself to saying that under the “anti-imperialist” government, “The oppressed nationalities, with the Kurdish people in the forefront, gained strength in their fight to secure their rights.” The government’s war in Kurdistan is not even mentioned.
As it happens, there is a connection between the Kurdish struggle against the IRP and the Bani-Sadr/Mujahedeen bloc, which our press brands as a bloc with counterrevolutionary forces. The leading organization of the Kurdish resistance, the Kurdish Democratic Party, which has its roots in international Stalinism, has joined the same Council of National Resistance headed by Bani-Sadr and Massoud Rajavi of the Mujahedeen. Does this transform the Kurdish struggle also into an objectively counterrevolutionary operation? We must answer an unequivocal no to any such suggestion. Our press should boldly declare our continuing unconditional support to the struggle for self-determination of all of Iran’s oppressed nationalities, which will be one of the driving forces in the coming Iranian revolution.
Our press has begun to refer to the Iranian regime as an “anti-imperialist” government. In his letter to the November 20, 1981, Militant, Comrade David Keil places a minus where the Militant places a plus and calls the Khomeini government “pro-imperialist.” Neither definition is correct. David Frankel correctly argues against Comrade Keil that it is necessary to distinguish between a capitalist government in the colonial world, under attack by imperialism and attempting to resist, and an imperialist puppet. The term pro-imperialist fails to do that. It is necessary to speak a language that will be understood by the Iranian masses as we work to win them away from the bourgeoisie. The term pro-imperialist is also wrong for what we want to say in this country, because it can imply a private understanding between Khomeini and Washington and suggest that American workers should not take too seriously the attacks of our own imperialist government on Iran.
But the Iranian bourgeoisie is not an anti-imperialist class and it is a break with the terminology of Marxism to pin that honorific title on them. This adaptationist error is not rectified by appending a list of qualifications to the badge of honor that suggest it was undeserved in the first place.
In the Iran pamphlet, in the article by Janice Lynn, Khomeini is presented as not only “anti-imperialist,” but as having taken a “fiercely anti-imperialist stance.” She adds:
It is an advance that the Iranian government calls on the Iranian people to mobilize for an irreconcilable struggle to defend their gains rather than gunning them down by the thousands in the interests of imperialism, as the shah did (p. 7).
This can only be read with irony today. The mistake here is not in saying that the Iranian masses are in a more favorable position today than under the shah. That part is true. But there is an absolutely unwarranted attribution of “irreconcilable” support by the capitalist government for the interests of the masses. That is a lie. It should never have been said, however many disclaimers and criticisms are added elsewhere in the article.
Anti-imperialism as Marxists understand it is another name for the bourgeois-democratic revolution. The claim of a capitalist government to be anti-imperialist must be judged on its attitude toward the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution as a whole and not merely on its opposition to the previous, pro-imperialist dictatorship or its resistance to foreign imperialism. These tasks include land reform, the calling of a constituent assembly, protection of the rights of oppressed nationalities, freedom of the press and of organization by the masses. All of these tasks are, historically, of a purely capitalist nature. On every one of these tasks Khomeini and the Iranian government have taken a reactionary stand. The land reform exists mostly on paper. The parliament was formed in elections rigged by the IRP and is dominated by it. The oppressed national minorities are under brutal attack. The press is silenced or driven into semiunderground status. And the right of organization by the masses is severely abridged and under continual pressure from the government and ruling party.
That leaves one dissevered aspect of the anti-imperialist, bourgeois-democratic program: the stance taken toward foreign imperialism. By its actions on the other measures, the IRP regime makes it impossible to wage an effective struggle on this front as well. That is precisely why, even from the simplistic framework of the Militant, a class struggle opposition to Khomeini is essential. Moreover, there is a dynamic here over time which the writers for our press do not take into account. A bourgeois party in opposition is capable of a far broader collaboration with the masses and a more consistent struggle than a bourgeois party in power. The victorious revolution draws into itself the most developed class contradictions in the society and the new capitalist government is compelled to turn its attention from the united struggle against the dictatorship to its rivalry for power with the mobilized workers and peasants. That is precisely what has been happening in Iran over the last three years.
Comrade Frankel offers seven examples of the Khomeini government’s “extensive anti-imperialist measures.” Taken as a whole, they indicate just the opposite, the decided weakening of Khomeini’s anti-imperialism after the successful conclusion of his party’s joint struggle with the masses to topple the shah. Let us examine Frankel’s list.
1. Expulsion of U.S. military advisers and closing of bases. This was a significant move, but it came on the heels of the overturn of the hated shah, who was backed to the end by U.S. imperialism, and was part of the initial conquests of the Iranian revolution.
2. Cutoff of oil to Israel and South Africa and withdrawal of diplomatic recognition from Israel. Representatives of the Mujahedeen in the United States maintain that oil shipments to Israel and South Africa have not been cut off. They say that while the formal contracts were canceled and direct shipping from Iranian ports was stopped, the same cargoes are now taken to neutral ports where they are sold on a snip-by-ship basis on the spot market to Israeli and South African buyers. We cannot verify this claim, but it is documented that Israel is supplying arms to Iran for use in the war; with Iraq, which Israel considers a more immediate threat to its interests than Iran.
3. Nationalization of imperialist holdings. This was an act of elementary self-defense of the revolution and should be supported. But not all imperialist holdings were nationalized.
4. Repudiation of the Camp David accords. Every reactionary regime in the region with the exception of Egypt has also taken this step.
5. Refusal to back down during the hostage crisis. This was an important confrontation with imperialism and led to significant mass mobilizations. But it was also used by the regime to divert the masses’ attention from pressing social needs at home and to reinforce class-collaborationist illusions in the government. The resolution of the hostage crisis negotiated by the IRP regime in no way represented a substantial gain for the Iranian revolution.
6. Encouragement of opposition movements in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What kind of opposition movements? In Egypt, the Islamic Republic supports the Muslim Brotherhood, which has an ultrarightist and procolonialist record. In Iraq it backs the anticommunist ad-Dawah. In Southern Lebanon it supports al-Amal, which has been murdering left-wing members of the PLO and which puts the intrigues of the Islamic Republic above the struggles against Israeli aggression.
7. Identification with revolutionary struggles in Ireland and El Salvador. Throughout this century leaders of the neocolonial bourgeoisie have sought to strengthen their hold over their own people and to pressure the imperialists into making concessions by offering verbal support to revolutionary struggles somewhere other than in their own country and even cultivating ties with the governments of workers’ states. These statements are of some aid to the revolutionaries involved and to the workers’ states in breaking the imperialist encirclement. But serious Marxists should not make them into something they are not.
Left out of Frankel’s list is the most immediate and serious conflict between the Iranian regime and world imperialism. That is the current war with Iraq. But it is precisely here that the internal class conflicts in Iran have severely weakened Khomeini’s ostensible anti-imperialism. In the fight against the shah, Khomeini was not afraid to use the methods of mass mobilization. He has not done the same in the Iran-Iraq war. The government’s trust has been placed in the imperial army, whose officer corps Khomeini and the IRP bent every effort to preserve against the anger of the masses after the downfall of the shah. This officer corps knows very well that it has far more in common with the Iraqi ruling class than it does with the Iranian workers and it conducts the war in that spirit. The “army of 20 million,” that is, the arming of the people, has not been built. Revolutionary organizations have been excluded from the front. The war has become an excuse for capitalist enrichment combined with an austerity drive aimed at the workers and peasants. It has also been the excuse for the erosion of democratic rights and of working conditions in the factories. The initial response of the masses to the Iraqi invasion was a renewed mobilization, a readiness to make any sacrifices necessary to defend the revolution against its enemies. But that mood passed over into relative apathy in response to capitalist sabotage of both the war effort and the revolution itself.
In failing this test, the Khomeini clerical forces definitively revealed that their anti-imperialism is secondary and subordinate to their hostility to the Iranian working class. We should not hesitate to say just that.
The recent coverage on Iran reveals two important departures from our Marxist program: on the nature of the semicolonial bourgeoisie in conflict with imperialism, and on the priorities of and interrelationship between the anti-imperialist struggle and the struggle of the working class for socialism. In both cases, the new positions mark a divergence from Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution and his approach to the colonial revolution.
The impetus for this incorrect shift in positions arises from an overly uncritical effort to find common programmatic ground with the Cuban revolutionary leadership. There are many points of agreement that we have with the Castro team, and it is correct to seek closer relations with them and to set aside incidental differences or formulations. But there are also important programmatic differences with the Castroists that we cannot set aside, no matter how collaborative our approach may be. The most obvious of these, on which we are certain that all comrades will agree, is Castro’s estimate of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. But there are also differences on the relationship between the anti-imperialist and socialist revolutions. These were discussed by Joseph Hansen in the introduction to his book Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution, written in May 1978. Here is what Hansen said:
2. Guided by their desire to construct a common front against American imperialism, the Cubans failed to distinguish the components of this front according to program. Thus supporters of the capitalist system were hailed, provided that they were “progressive,” i.e., denounced imperialism or spoke well of the Cuban revolution. Confusion was thus sown among supporters of the Cuban revolution, with the consequence that many of them were diverted down false trails.
A case in point was the support given the Chilean regime headed by Salvador Allende. Although Castro may have sensed a coming showdown in Chile when he was there on tour — his parting gift to Allende was a submachine gun — the support he offered the regime appeared to be support for its adherence to capitalism. Allende’s failure to act against the plotters in the military forces cost him his life. More important, the seizure of power by Pinochet dealt a cruel blow to the cause of socialism in Latin America, and a deadly enemy was added to the roster of regimes hostile to the Cuban revolution.
3. Similar criticisms can be made of Cuban policy in Africa today. The program of the Neto regime in Angola and the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia have not been presented for what they are — commitments to maintain capitalist relations in those countries.
The Cubans seem to be primarily interested in bolstering the anti-imperialist aspects of the upheavals in these areas. But to overlook the struggle for socialist goals can only prove counterproductive. And it is dangerous to believe that an anti-imperialist struggle automatically reinforces the struggle for socialism. Such a view can lead to defeats for socialism, as was shown in Chile. In both Angola and Ethiopia we have already seen repressive measures taken against revolutionary socialists (p. 11).
Since this was written, the Cuban leadership has made explicit that it does believe that in the long run a socialist revolution is necessary in all countries to safeguard the gains of the anti-imperialist struggle. But the substance of Hansen’s criticism remains completely correct. The Cuban leadership does not discuss in its press the tactics and strategy of the working class as a distinct class force in countries that have a nominally anti-imperialist capitalist government. Castro often blurs such distinctions, as in his September 1978 speech in Ethiopia, where he declared:
We reaffirm today our close and indestructible alliance with the Ethiopian revolution, and our certainty that the Ethiopian leaders will be able to find revolutionary, just, and Marxist-Leninist solutions to their problems, and that they will be able to preserve not only the territorial integrity of Ethiopia, but also the union of all in a great revolutionary Ethiopia (Fidel Castro Speeches, Pathfinder, p. 133).
We do not believe that the anti-working class, capitalist, Mengistu regime will find Marxist-Leninist solutions to the problems of the Ethiopian revolution. It was wrong of Castro to have said this. It is an indication that while there are many points of convergence between revolutionary Marxism and Castroism, there remain many crucial differences. Our recent coverage on Iran does not go all the way over to Castro’s wrong approach to the “anti-imperialist” bourgeoisie, but it bends heavily in that direction. It is an overadaptation to Castroism.
If our collaboration with the Cuban revolutionists is to be fruitful and productive it must be carried out not only on the basis of unstinting support for the Cuban revolution and the search for all possible areas of agreement with our Cuban comrades; it must also involve the strictest political clarity on our own views. This will require correction of our coverage and analysis of the Iranian revolution.
Submitted February 16,1982
The Struggle Inside the Socialist Workers Party Index | Main Document Index | ETOL Home Page | Marxists’ Internet Archive