WeeklyWorker

25.07.2007

Storms of a new revolution

Torab Saleth examines the origins and class nature of the Iranian regime

The current Iranian regime, in power in the so-called 'islamic republic' of Iran since the 1979 revolution against the shah, continues to confuse many observers as to its true nature.

The confusion lies precisely in the fact that it is considered as a post-revolutionary regime. You constantly hear the argument that, whatever it is, and however bad and vicious it may be, it is nevertheless a regime which came out of a revolution against the shah's dictatorship. Somehow this mechanistic logic is then used to bestow a certain air of progressiveness upon a regime which for any observer with a little political sense is nothing but a semi-fascistic theocracy defending capitalism. Its apologists, since 1979 itself, have constantly resorted to such simplistic devices to gloss over the brutal and backward character of this capitalist regime, the like of which has not been seen in modern history.

What all the apologists fail to mention is the fact that, yes, this regime did indeed come out of a revolution - but as the counterrevolution defeating that revolution, as a force which crushed the mass movement against the shah's regime by establishing an order even more reactionary than what it replaced. The very same force which is now, in front of the whole world, collaborating in the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq with the very same president Bush who is threatening to send the entire Iranian society back to the middle ages.

So this so-called post-revolutionary regime is simply a kind of counterrevolution that got rid of both the revolution and the shah. It is now a well documented fact that by the middle of 1979, at the top levels of international and Iranian bourgeois circles, the powers that mattered had reached a simple compromise: you get rid of the revolution; we get rid of the shah!

1979 revolution

Let us also not forget, the Iranian revolution of 1977-79, given the degree of participation by the masses, was one of the most important revolutions of the 20th century. During the four months leading to the insurrection in February 1979 there was a general strike involving over four million workers. Strike committees had sprung up everywhere and neighbourhood committees were controlling most urban areas. On the night of the insurrection, in Tehran alone it was estimated that more than 300,000 revolvers and machine guns were ransacked from various military arsenals and distributed amongst the population. No wonder the counterrevolution which defeated it was also one of the most vicious seen in recent history.

The last shah was justly called the "butcher of the Middle East". In almost 40 years of his rule around 500 political prisoners were executed. The new regime, in its first 10 years alone, and at the most conservative estimate, had already executed over 20,000 political prisoners - all leaders and activists of the 1979 revolution.

The historical results of this counterrevolution are also obvious for all to see. If during the last decade of the shah's rule a group of around 100 families used state power to monopolise the entire Iranian economy, this has now been reduced to less than 60 families. If the shah at least allowed some degree of docile yellow unionism to operate in his kingdom, this regime cannot even tolerate worker representation in its tripartite system. Only islamic associations controlled by the local mosque or the local paramilitary group are allowed.

The majority of the population in Iran is now officially below the poverty line. This is a country rich in natural resources, which has almost quadrupled its foreign exchange receipts over the last 10 years. With over 10 million unemployed, wages have been pushed so far down that those who do find work have to do more than one job just to survive. Selling kidneys or the whole body is now the largest source of income for the urban poor. Right now, there are tens of thousands of workers whose wages have not been paid for well over a year. There is absolutely no protection under the law for almost 85% of the workforce. The rate of suicide among the Iranian working class is now higher than Britain during the industrial revolution.

As for its anti-imperialism, suffice to say that at least the father of the current US president knows this to be a sham. The islamic regime had absolutely no problem in negotiating a deal with US imperialism and Israel via George Bush senior. Forget the anti-terrorist rhetoric repeated daily on the international media: everyone knows that without Iranian backing the USA could not have stayed in Afghanistan or Iraq so easily.

George Bush junior can blame Iran for his failure in Iraq, just as the Iranian regime can blame the threat of war for its suppression of all opposition at home. Just see how the nuclear crisis has helped both the Iranian regime to redeem itself in the islamic world after its collaboration with US imperialism in the occupation of two neighbouring countries, and also helped US imperialism itself in not only justifying its military occupation of the whole region, but even increasing its presence and intensifying its threats.

But even these truths do not resolve the difficulty for our apologists. Especially when you consider the odd fact that this very same counterrevolutionary force actually participated in the revolutionary movement itself in 1979. In a way you could even say it took over the leadership of that revolution. But how can that be?

There is, of course, the obvious answer that in order to control it and later crush it they had to lead it; and there is more than an element of truth in this. By channelling the mass anger against US imperialism and the new capitalist ruling class around the shah into the blind alley of an anti-western and anti-infidel ideology, they were able to hide their own true reactionary class nature from the masses. But the real reason for this apparent contradiction lies in the specific character of the Iranian ruling class and the changes it underwent after the shah's white revolution.

Two mass forces

It can be said that the revolts of the urban poor in 1976 and their many clashes with the military forces were the first signs of the onset of the revolutionary crisis in Iran. The fundamental feature of the Iranian revolution which makes it distinct from any other is the fact that less than a year after these first signs - say as early as 1977 - in contradistinction to the progressive revolutionary masses combining workers, poor peasants, shanty town dwellers, students, young women and major sections of the national minorities, all demanding justice, freedom and independence in various combinations and degrees, there also appeared other, 'islamic' masses, well organised and led by a faction within the shi'ite hierarchy, in coalition with a powerful group of the bazaari merchants. This bloc, consisting of a loose coalition of various religious bourgeois political currents, from liberal islamic to fundamentalist, had mass support within the traditional sections of the numerically significant urban and rural petty bourgeoisie and through its various religious networks and charity foundations linked to the local mosque could also mobilise support amongst the poor and the lumpenproletariat.

Soon this second force proved to be more powerful than the revolutionary masses. Indeed, if the leadership of this faction could have had its own way, there would not have been any revolution at all. It had already set up the secret Council of the Islamic Revolution, which had successfully negotiated a transition of power from above with both the US masters of the shah and the shah's royal army and security forces. The insurrection took place because the commanders of the royal guard did not abide by this agreement and mobilised his units to crush the pro-revolution air force barracks in the capital Tehran.

In reaction to this attack, air force technicians opened up the arsenals to the population, which led to an armed insurrection few hours later. The bloc which took power the next morning not only saved the bourgeois state from almost certain destruction, but also hugely strengthened the reactionary forces by the addition of a multitude of new and permanently mobilised paramilitary groups like the Guardian Army of the Islamic Revolution (pasdaran) or the Mobilisation Corps (bassij). It soon disarmed and crushed the revolutionary mass movement and beheaded its leadership. At first it collaborated with the liberal sections of the anti-shah bourgeois opposition, but as soon as it had consolidated its own base it pushed all other factions out of positions of power and openly established a theocratic islamic regime. This same bloc still rules Iran today.

Clergy

The reactionary content of its opposition to the shah becomes clear when you briefly look back into the history of this conflict. Let us start with the clergy. The so-called shi'ite hierarchy has historically been a well-established part of the traditional despotic Asiatic state in Iran since the 17th century. It controlled amongst other things education and the judiciary and it had its own extensive land holdings and its own source of taxation of the population, enforced by armed gangs of collectors. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a powerful faction within this hierarchy began to openly engage in politics and oppose bourgeois reforms of the state. You could say they were the ideological grandparents of Khomeini.

Amongst them were some of the most reactionary mullahs of the period. Some were openly associated with both Russian and British imperialism. This group became very agitated against Mozaffaredin Shah (1853-1907) and vehemently opposed the constitutional revol-ution of 1905-06. Their now famous slogan was 'No to constitutional legitimacy! Yes to islamic legitimacy!' In a way very similar to what happened in the 1979 revolution.

They opposed the revolution because they were reactionaries and they opposed the ruling reaction because they were that part of the old reaction which was being threatened with replacement by a new, more modern, or more bourgeois-looking, reaction. Just as factions within the catholic church divided into those opposing and those aligning with the new capitalist relations, a similar break-up was taking place inside the shi'ite hierarchy. Alongside mullahs supporting constitutional reforms there were the fundamentalists who wanted more islamic rule. Typically enough, British imperialism had agents in both camps.

Thus, the ideological forbearers of Khomeini were against the whole concept of citizenship or the right to vote and considered democracy to be a western corruption designed by infidels to destroy islam. Although after the victory of the constitutional revolution the leaders of this faction were hanged in front of the new parliament, the defeat of that revolution a few years later strengthened it at the expense of the more progressive section.

After the Russian Revolution, the interests of British imperialism were better served by a centralised nation-state built from above, which could stand up to the Bolshevik threat. The establishment of Reza Shah and his state reforms brought this faction into direct conflict with the state. The fact that both Reza Shah and his son were western-backed gave this reactionary faction a new lease of political life. It was aided by the fact that the progressive faction had either disappeared or been tainted, having become part of the new western state. This gave the reactionary faction enough muscle to threaten the whole hierarchy.

White revolution

The last blow for this institute of the Asiatic state was the shah's so-called 'white revolution', which drastically undermined its role and prestige in Iranian society. The reactionary faction became so vocal that the leadership of the entire shi'ite hierarchy had to pay it lip service. In particular, it opposed the shah's land reform, as leaders of the faction were themselves among the biggest landowners in Iran. It opposed the local government reforms, as they undermined its local power base in the provinces. And it was against the vote for women because that undermined its ideological authority.

Khomeini, who led the revolt against the shah's reforms, was already a well known figure within the islamic circles before the CIA coup of 1952 which overthrew Mossadegh's government and brought back the shah. He was already airing opposition to the 'western infidels' and had already published his essay, The islamic government. Simply because the hierarchy as a whole betrayed Mosaddegh and swung in defence of the coup, he remained quiet. The white revolution gave him the chance to swing the hierarchy in favour of his own faction.

The second part of the bloc, the big bazari merchants, were also part of the ruling class for well over a century. At the time of the shah's white revolution they had a complete stranglehold over the Iranian private economy. And do not think for a minute that this somehow represented the Iranian version of the so-called national bourgeoisie. You could not get more comprador than them. This layer, which traditionally had very close ties with the shi'ite hierarchy, willingly supported the 1952 coup. It was, however, fundamentally threatened by the shah's proposed reforms.

At the core of the shah's 'revolution' was the attempt at limited industrialisation based on the production of consumer goods for the home market under licence from foreign companies. This directly attacked the interests of the merchant layers. The government had already introduced import tariffs to curtail their activities. The new group of 'industrial' capitalists which grew around the royal court gradually pushed the traditional section out of the ruling class and established its own hegemony over the Iranian economy. Although the bazari merchants still had access to enormous wealth and capital, they had been turned into second-class citizens within their 'own' bourgeois state. From then on they acted as bankers for the reactionary faction inside the shi'ite hierarchy.

As mentioned above, we had already seen this coalition in action against the shah 17 years before the 1979 revolution, when they mobilised their base against his reforms. This movement was crushed by the shah and its leaders (including Khomeini) were forced into exile. When in 1976 the first signs of the structural crisis of Iranian capitalism became apparent, this coalition once again moved into action. In the absence of any other organised opposition during the shah's dictatorship and in a situation in which both bourgeois nationalist forces under the National Front umbrella and the pro-Soviet left led by the Tudeh Party had already proven their bankruptcy, the shi'ite hierarchy, backed by a huge network of mosques and well financed by the bazaari merchants, soon took over the leadership of the protest movement and declared its own slogans and aspirations to be the demands of the revolution itself.

Revolutionary logic

The capitalist class, both nationally and internationally, immediately recognised and has since supported this counterrevolution, in so far as it had no other alternative means of saving the bourgeois state. But this is in no way a normal capitalist regime. In a normal capitalist regime you would expect two capitalists with an equal amount of capital at their disposal to get the same average rate of return. In the islamic republic, however, one may lose his head while the other gets 10 times the average without even risking any capital!

In the long run this regime has to change in accordance with the needs of the bourgeois state it is protecting. It is a paradox that probably only the US neocons can appreciate how far the Iranian regime has carried its privatisation policy. The only difference is that it is doing it in its own 'islamic' way: ie, as a means of retaining power. And the mafia-like groups which have divided the national kitty among themselves are clinging to power at all costs - as the Iranian saying goes, you never get back anything from a mullah.

The shi'ite hierarchy is not like a military junta which may one day realise its time has passed and that it has to hand over to a more normal form of rule. We have already seen three waves of reforms from within the regime, which have all ended up with the reformers getting a slap across the face. The logic of all these reforms is for the withdrawal of the mullahs from positions of political power. As soon as this becomes clear a new backlash is organised by the more fundamentalist wing of the regime. And as this gets repeated the necessity for its revolutionary overthrow becomes more evident and support for it more popular.

Both Khamenei and Bush know, as the storms of a new revolution are gathering strength, the 'nuclear crisis' can provide them with the cover for plunging Iranian society into a state of permanent military curfew.