Political Statement of Left and Communist Forces Bourgeois Alternatives Are Against the Interests of Workers and the People of Iran

Political Statement of Left and Communist Forces

Bourgeois Alternatives Are Against the Interests of Workers and the People of Iran

1. With the deepening crisis of the Islamic Republic and the escalation of tensions and war propaganda between the governments of the United States and the Islamic Republic, we are witnessing intensified activity on the part of the right-wing opposition, whose hopes for a military confrontation and war with the Islamic Republic translate into aspirations for a right-wing "alternative" solution through various channels. U.S. imperialism, in pursuit of its own interests and those of its allies in the Middle East, seeks to “domesticate” the Islamic Republic. Parallel to this policy, sections of the regime and its periphery who advocate immediate negotiations, relying on diplomacy and backroom deals, hope—with minimal and tightly controlled changes, and preferably without popular involvement—to realign themselves with the goals and policies of the United States and its partners. This roadmap has no horizon in the face of the growing struggles of workers and the masses against the Islamic Republic as a whole, and can and must be defeated.

Other forces, who openly defend “regime change” in various languages, having seen their previous projects collapse, now see only one path forward: the intensification of U.S. political, economic, and military pressure on the Islamic Republic, alongside support for a bourgeois force or coalition to serve as the so-called “transitional government”. Economic sanctions, war, and escalating crises in the form of limited or broader military confrontations have become their sole hope for approaching political power, and hence for becoming an “alternative.” For this camp, a right-wing “alternative” means the preservation of capitalism without the Islamic Republic. The Iranian capitalist class in all its factions has consistently demonstrated that it has never required political freedoms, and in fact thrives only under dictatorship, despotism, and the vast corruption that pervades the society, economy, and culture. It is a decayed and corrupt class and it is the principal obstacle to any progressive social, economic, and political transformation in favour of the working masses. Today, widening and deepening class divisions have more starkly than ever divided society into a tiny minority of exploiters and oppressors and an immense majority of the working class and the oppressed. This minority of exploiters and oppressors, which rules over the people, has seized all social wealth and resources through repression and coercion. The working class and toiling majority, exhausted after forty years of oppression, exploitation, and state violence, are rising through strikes and persistent protests to overthrow this order and reclaim their destiny.

2. In the battle over alternatives, bourgeois opposition forces—including the Mojahedin-E-Khalgh Organization (MEK), sections of Iranian nationalist currents, a broad spectrum of monarchists, and regional nationalist parties such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and Organisation of the Toilers of Kurdistan—have tied their political strategies to foreign intervention, especially that of U.S. imperialism, and thus advocate “regime change”. Some of the Kurdish nationalist forces, having lost faith in U.S. military intervention and the “regime change” they desired, have once again reverted to their traditional policy of bargaining with the Islamic Republic in pursuit of a share in political power with the reactionary central state. Certain republicans, by opposing revolution under the banner of “rejecting violence” and insisting on a “peaceful transition,” in effect serve the continuity of the Islamic Republic. On the other side, defenders of the regime invoke the threat of war and military confrontation to call on workers and the oppressed masses to stay calm and keep the “national unity” with the ruling order—an order that remains a paradise for exploiters and a burning hell for the working class and the oppressed majority. Opportunist reformist parties such as the Tudeh Party, their followers, and the marginal “anti-American” left, despite their claims to support a transition away from the Islamic Republic, in practice limit themselves to opposing the rule of the ‘Velayat Faqih’ [Supreme Leader] while, along with sections of the reformist movement, placing their hopes in minor constitutional change and acquiescing to the survival of capitalist exploitation and repression. For the bourgeois opposition, the “solution” to Iran’s economic crisis amounts at best to placing the country’s economy in the hands of technocratic managers, normalizing relations with the West, removing political and legal barriers to deeper integration of Iran’s capitalism into the global market, and perpetuating the exploitation of workers in the name of “rebuilding Iran.”

As communists, aligned with the radical workers’ movement and diverse progressive struggles—including the teachers’, retirees’, students’, women’s equality movements, left intellectuals, egalitarian currents, and oppressed peoples across Iran—we stand apart from both camps of reaction and imperialism. We declare unequivocally that we will resist every bourgeois bargain and every attempt to impose an alternative from above, and we will not submit to any bourgeois government, whose common essence is the perpetuation of exploitation and repression.

3. We once again affirm that, amid the political and class conflict in Iranian society, our struggle is to build and consolidate the social base of a workers’ and socialist alternative. We consider it our unceasing duty to shape this camp, to strengthen the socialist and working-class solution within social movements, and to fight for the revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the establishment of a workers’ council-based state. In today’s crisis, we aim to project the overthrow of the Islamic Republic not merely as a demand but as the horizon of the workers’ movement and revolutionary camp, as the banner of political struggle to topple both the regime and the capitalist system. We stress again: the various bourgeois opposition forces seek a transfer of power within the bourgeoisie with minimal involvement of the working masses. The strategies of state reformism, referendums, “national reconciliation,” and bourgeois “alternatives” all converge on the same goal: preserving the bourgeois state machinery and its organs of repression from the revolutionary action of the working class and socialist left.

4. Alongside the socialist workers’ movement and allied social movements, we fight for the revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the smashing of all institutions and structures that uphold the power of the ruling classes. For us, overthrow must mean a social revolution: the destruction of the state apparatus, the complete political and economic expropriation of the bourgeoisie, and the transition to a new socialist order. We therefore consider clear confrontation with all bourgeois “solutions” as an essential duty. For communists, the revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the defeat of imperialist schemes are inseparable dimensions of a single politics.

5. At present, the unrelenting efforts of right-wing opposition currents banking on foreign intervention have not succeeded in creating a political alternative that enjoys credibility or legitimacy in society as a substitute for the Islamic Republic. Conversely, the vast camp of workers, toilers, communists, and the left—due to severe repression, policing, and bans on mass organization—has not yet been able to make the socialist alternative the dominant horizon and the powerful banner for social struggles. Thus, the struggle over the future and its features continues from the standpoint of antagonistic classes. Our critique of the methods, nature, and class content of the bourgeois opposition is part of a broader critique by the working class of capitalist society itself, which in the realm of economics rests on exploitation and in politics on bourgeois dictatorship.

6. Communists maintain a clear platform regarding both the Islamic Republic and the capitalist system. This platform does not change in substance before or after the “nuclear crisis,” during escalated war rhetoric, or in times of military conflict. Rather, it continues to pursue the organization of social revolution under new conditions. We therefore will not deviate from our working-class and communist objectives after any coups, rearrangements of the regime, or the bourgeoise, or in the face of military conflicts in Iran or the middle east region. We will not, under the pretext of “defending the homeland” or the call that “the regime must go now,” invite the working class and oppressed masses to support nationalism, the Islamic Republic, or bourgeois coups or “regime change” solutions. Our communist, working-class, and internationalist policy rejects bourgeois domination and subjugation, opposes sanctions and U.S. imperialist warmongering, and organizes revolutionary struggle against the capitalist ruling class.

7. We view the major war propaganda campaigns and rising tensions between states as stemming from the incurable crises of the capitalist system, as attempts to sideline the working class and genuine social movements, to seize the initiative from the masses, and to militarize the political scene in favor of Islamic reaction and defenders of capitalist order. The Islamic Republic’s hollow “anti-Americanism” has nothing to do with the interests of the workers’ and socialist movement in Iran. This very regime was supported and installed by imperialists in 1979 out of fear of the radicalization of the revolutionary movement and the rise of the working class, the left, and communism—because it was a reliable defender of capitalist order. Our socialist solution is to negate capitalist rule in Iran in all its forms.

8. We, the undersigned six communist and left organizations, call on all revolutionary and workers’ forces to take the initiative in the political arena to intensify the struggle against the Islamic Republic. The revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic is the strongest response to U.S. imperialist threats and pressures and to all defenders of the status quo, whether within the government or in the opposition. In this struggle, we work to expand and strengthen the workers’ council and socialist solution, and to expose and defeat all politics that call on workers and the people to support one camp of reaction or another. Today, the slogan of “all together” from the 1979 revolution has no meaning; the lines of class division are increasingly sharp and polarized. We welcome this polarization, which reflects the intensification of political struggle and distinct class solutions, and we fight for the victory of the working-class alternative. We call on the forces of the working class, communists, and radical leaders of social movements to strengthen their independent class and revolutionary ranks, to raise the banner of the socialist workers’ alternative, and to fight for the revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the establishment of workers’ council power.

30 July 2019 – 8 Mordad 1398

Signatories:
Communist Fadaian Union, Communist Party of Iran, Worker-Communist Party – Hekmatist, Organization of Revolutionary Workers of Iran (Rahe Kargar), Organization of Iranian People’s Fadaian (Minority), Minority Core.