[The Militant, No 427, 13 October 1978, p. 10-11]
The recent demonstration of 250,000 in Jaleh Square, Teheran, in defiance of martial law, leading to the massacre of anything up to 3,000 people, is of the biggest a measure wave of opposition since the Shah was brought back to power in 1953 with the backing of the CIA.
Since hundreds were shot dead last January in a demonstration in the holy city of Qom, despite severe· repression,. general strikes and demonstrations have spread to all the major cities including Teheran, Isfahan, Shiraz and the shrine city of Mashad.
The Shah’s policy of concessions to the religious leaders contrasts sharply with the brutal suppression of workers‘ strikes which is failing to intimidate the young Iranian working class.
The ruling class in Iran and internationally try• to portray these events as a fight between a „progressive“ Shah committed to liberalisation and industrialisation, and a reactionary clergy. It is widely believed that the recent horrific cinema fire in Abadan, in which 400 people died, for which religious fanatics were blamed, was caused by agents of the dreaded secret police, SAVAK, in a vain attempt to justify this view.
People are asking why the cinema’s doors and windows were apparently locked from the outside, and why, despite the fact that the nearest fire station was three minutes away, the fire was allowed to rage for four hours. Whether or not these. suspicions are justified, they are testimony to the general hatred for SAVAK and the Shah.
In reality, the Church [Mosque] is playing only a secondary role in mass resistance to the Shah’s tyranny. Banned literature is distributed in the mosques during prayers. As in Latin American today or the last year’s of Franco’s Spain, the Church as the only semi-autonomous institution in society cannot help but articulate in a muted and distorted way the fury of the masses. But the working class and the youth are not prepared to be restrained by the religious hierarchy.
It is the social demands of the masses not religious rantings which have shaken the Shah
An article in the American journal ‚Newsweek‘ commented: „The crowd, led by teenagers and veiled women, swarmed through Jaleh Square … Angered over the imposition of martial law several hours before, they shouted down Ayatollah Noori (the religious leader) who urged them to disperse, and then they began pelting soldiers with rocks and bricks. Slowly choking back tear-gas fumes, the mob edged closer to the ranks of the troops. Finally the troops raised their sub-machine guns, firing bursts into the air. They lowered their sights and when the crowd kept coming, sprayed the demonstrators with round after round.“
Demonstrators have carried placards demanding vengeance against „the brutal Shah and his American imperialist friends“ and called for „a Socialist republic based on Islam“ (‚Newsweek‘ 18 September). Although these are confused slogans. they show that it is the social demands and not religious rantings that trouble the ruling class. No wonder the Shah was „visibly shaken“ (‚Newsweek‘) at the demonstrations.
The rapid expansion of the Iranian economy, based mainly on oil, has greatly increased the strength of the working class. In 1947 Iran had only 175 large enterprises employing a total of 100,000 workers. By 1972 these figures were 6,000 and 1,800,000 respectively. The ‚Financial Times‘ ( 12 September) estimates the present size of the working class at three million.
Between 1972 and 1975, oil revenue jumped from $1.50 a barrel to $10.20. This led to a boom in which Gross National Product rose by 34% (1973-4) and 42% (1974-5). Inflation also rose sharply to 60% and 34% respectively.
The Western monopolies, attracted to Iran by cheap labour and repression of trade union rights, faced a fresh young working class strengthened by labour shortages and provoked into heroic strikes by intolerable conditions and rising prices. Due to mass pressure and the decay of feudalism, a nominal land reform and literacy programme was announced by the Shah. The workers won a national minimum wage (also largely only nominal) which kept pace with inflation.
Wages and conditions are nevertheless atrocious. In some areas workers are paid only 79 pence for a working day lasting from 5 am to 8 pm! Many workers earn only £40 a year, while rents are now two-thirds of rents in Paris! In reality 73 % of workers earn less than the official „minimum wage“!
In Hamadam; 50% of workers are unemployed and the employers have been able to arbitrarily cut wages and lengthen the working day to 18 hours! In Mash’had, two-thirds of carpet workers are children between 6 and 10 years old, although it is officially „illegal“ to employ children below 12. Even the capital city, Teheran, has no sewage system. Tuberculosis and rickets are widespread and working women suffer such destructive conditions that in Kashan and Aaran most women give Caesarian births.
The peasantry have benefitted from the Shah’s measures of „progress“ no more than the workers. 1,200,000 have had their land taken away from them, and 500,000 have been pushed off the land completely. This has led to food shortages and starvation.
The Shah is probably the richest man in the world. In Iran the top IO% spend 40% of the money
Meanwhile. the ruling class has done very well. The top 10% of the population spend 40% of the money. The Shah is said to be the richest man in the world. The ‚Financial Times· (28 July) expresses the position very simply: „UK business can only become interested in the opportunities for investment in Iran where profits can be made and workers are not allowed to strike.“
By 1976 the boom was over. It led to a shortage of skilled labour. wastage, corruption, and an oil surplus. The balance of payments surplus is falling, despite oil, from $5,084 million in 1976-7, to $3,553m in 1977-8, to a projected 600 million in 1978-9. Trade barriers have limited expansion abroad and EEC textile restrictions above all have hit Iran hard. Among the home market of 34 million there is no money to finance a consumer boom.
The result is that industry works at a fraction of capacity, businessmen are pulling out and investment is low. The recent ‚Financial Times‘ supplement on Iran abounds with headlines like „Economy Slows Down“, „Industrial Aims Set Too High“, „Agricultural Depression“, „Oil Dependence Still Too High“, „Acute Shortage of Manpower“, „Petrochemicals Failing to Meet Targets“ and „Untapped Wealth in Minerals“.
More and more, the resources of wealth and manpower are being invested in means of repressing the working class, the only force· that can take Iranian society forward. The army is 190,000 strong, the navy and air force are another 12,000 and the SA V AK has 65,000 agents and millions of pounds‘ worth of arms. It uses such fiendish and sophisticated techniques of repression that even Pinochet’s torturers were sent to school in Iran.
These forces reflect the Shah’s justified fear of the working class, especially now that he plans to introduce a new „bonus“ system to cut wages by 20%. In Aryameh steel mill along, there are 50 SAVAK agents working in a labour force of 3,000.
## Since 1972 the working class has mounted a series of heroic strikes, starting with the Azmayesh factory where the Minister of Labour faced hostile demonstrations when he personally came to appeal for a return to work.
But among the middle class too the Shah is losing any support he had-among the peasants, the intelligentsia, the students, the youth, the
priests and-most ominously of all the army.
Once again we can quote the American capitalist journal ‚Newsweek‘.
„Howling ‚Death to the Shah!‘ an angry mob of 1,500 mourners descended on a lone armoured car at the gates of Teheran’s Besheste-Zahra cemetery last week. The armoured car held its ground, and the young major in command grabbed a bullhorn. ‚We have no intention of killing you,‘ he shouted. ‚You are our brothers.‘ Unholstering his pistol. He offered it to the crowd. ‚Here, take my gun and kill me if you wish, ‚ he shouted. The mourners cheered and began pelting the major and his men with flowers.“
The army is „unreliable“ … all the objective conditions for a revolutionary change exist
Several conscripts shot their officers or committed suicide on being ordered to open fire on demonstrators, and many deserters and mutineers have been executed in recent weeks.
A US army officer interviewed in ‚Newsweek‘ (25 September) said of the Iranian army: „I would not put a lot of faith in their reliability. We don’t know where the breaking point would be.“ An Iranian official was also quoted: „The longer the Shah keeps his army on the streets, the greater the danger of contamination.“
Tanks were stationed outside the Palace for the first time in 25 years. The Shah himself told ‚Newsweek‘: „We were, I think, in a very grave situation last Thursday and it was very close. People were not abiding by the law. They were not paying the slightest attention to the government’s warning. As a matter of fact, they could have occupied everything they wanted.“
All the objective factors for a revolutionary change in society existed.
The working class was not prepared any longer to tolerate the old order; it was prepared to suffer death by the hundreds and thousands rather than submit. The millions of non-proletarian masses in town and country were sympathetic to the workers and hostile to the regime.
The ruling class itself was split between policies of concession or coercion, with open hostilities between the monarchy, the church, the army and big business, and a rapid succession of governments.
The crucial factor which remains to be created is a revolutionary party which could harness the masses‘ energies and give conscious expression in action to their common hatred for the existing order.
Iran’s Communist Party, the Tudeh, has clearly failed the test of these events
The savage irony of the situation is that neither wing of the so-called „Communist“ movement was prepared to struggle against the Shah’s clique – neither the Moscow bureaucracy which cynically financed and propped up its Southern neighbour the Shah over the last twenty years, or the equally cynical Chinese bureaucracy which sent Hua on a friendship mission to the Shah right in the middle of the massacre of workers in Teheran.
In particular, the main workers‘ party. the Tudeh (Communist Party), has failed the test of these events. Formed in 1941. it gained tremendous support after the Soviet occupation of Azerbaijan in Northern Iran (while Britain occupied the South). This gave a great spur to the Iranian working class hoping for social liberation from the North.
In 1946 Tudeh militants led massive strikes. Including that of 50.000 oil workers around Khuristan (South West Iran) demanding oil nationalisation. This forced the capitalists to bring the Tudeh into the cabinet. To compromise and discredit it and then throw it out again.
During the revolutionary events of 1951. the Tudeh regained massive support on a programme of oil nationalisation. and political liberties. Street battles took place between unemployed textile workers and police in Isfahan, and the Oil Company had to raise. wages by 35%. Mass pressure brought the bourgeois nationalist Mosaddegh to power, and the present Shah had to flee into exile.
Such was the extent of the social crisis that the Parliament voted unanimously (with one sole abstention) to nationalise oil! The Mosaddegh government ushered in big reforms and balanced between the classes.
If the opportunity had been grasped then to organise committees of soldiers to undermine the Generals, to arm the workers against the threat of reaction, to give the land to the peasants and industry to the working class organised in councils, then the counter-revolution of 1953 when the Shah was brought back, would have been impossible. It has taken 25 years for a new generation to grow up unaffected by the disappointment and hopelessness of their parents.
The Tudeh, however, has continued to dream only of the return of another Mosaddegh. It arbitrarily limited its goal to abstract schema of „bourgeois democracy“, proclaiming as early as 1947 its models as „the UK, the USA and Sweden“!
Iranian society can only go forward on a socialist basis
But Iranian society can only develop further on a socialist basis. Even the recent years of feverish growth have only further intensified the social and economic contradictions of Iranian society. In the context of world economic capitalist stagnation, the only relief from unending misery and bloody repression in Iran is the expropriation of the landlords, multinational corporations and Iranian capital, and the development of a planned economy.
Such is the intensity of the social crisis and the pressure on the army that an officers‘ coup cannot be ruled out in the pattern of Syria and other countries. Such a military government would then impose such a solution on society from above, establishing a quasi-Stalinist Bonapartist system resting on state ownership of the economy, but with a privileged bureaucratic elite in control from the start.
But Iran is not a Syria, Ethiopia or Afghanistan! With a working class of at least three million – nearly 10% of the population – Iran could take the path of Russia in 1917, provided only that a conscious revolutionary party is created.
The lessons of recent events must be the subject of countless discussions in the factories and the workers‘ suburbs today. The lessons of 1947 and 1951-3 too must be in the minds of a· layer of militants. There are uncanny parallels to the period before the Russian Revolution.
As with Tsarist Russia, the Shah’s Iran has had an influx of foreign capital over the last two or three decades, which has created a powerful working class and broken up for all time the traditions of feudalism. The best elements within the opposition are turning away from romantic dreams of overthrowing the Shah by terrorist or guerrilla methods and have focus sed their attention on the working class.
A new working class, fresh to the realities of capitalist exploitation, tied by family links to the countryside, disciplined on the mass production conveyor belts, and untainted by liberal or reformist illusions, has exploded on the scene in a burst of heroic struggle. The militants in the factories must be reflecting on the role of those so-called „Socialists“ and „Marxists“ who wait in vain for a liberal saviour.
The role of British and US imperialism has been to prop up the Shah in order to protect their interests in Iran. British imperialism exports £325 million of goods to Iran, and has substantial investments.
The British labour movement must end arms supplies to Iran and put a stop to SAVAK activities in Britain, as well as giving full support in all forms to the struggle of the workers in Iran for political liberties, above all the right to organise and strike.
The struggle against the Shah must also be a struggle against capitalism and for the nationalisation of Iran’s resources under workers‘ control and management
But the Iranian ruling class survives only by ruthless super-exploitation of the workers. and will not provide basic democratic rights except as a short-term trick to disarm the workers when it has its back to the wall, as in 1947 and 1951. The struggle against the Shah must be also a struggle against capitalism and for the nationalisation of Iran’s resources under workers‘ control and management.
A socialist plan of production would develop Iran’s industrial. mineral and agricultural potential to heights undreamed of today. The workers organised under a clear socialist leadership could effectively appeal to the troops, so that their selfless and courageous acts of sympathy with the people would not merely lead to martyrdom, as today, but would be linked to a force offering a real and tangible hope of establishing a new society, cleansing Iran of the rottenness and filth of the present regime.
A call for support to the workers and peasants of neighbouring countries for a workers‘ democracy in Iran would break the grip of imperialism in the Middle East, and undermine the diseased bureaucracy in the deformed workers‘ states of Russia and Eastern Europe. It would be a giant stride forward towards a Socialist Middle East which would guarantee full rights for all nationalities (including Kurds. Palestinians, Jews, etc.) and towards a Socialist World Federation.
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