IN ALL THE PREVIOUS upsurges before 1979, the leadership of the workers ment failed to offer a political line that would make it possible for the movement to grow and to advance. Instead orienting the toward achieving social and political independence, these leaderships subordinated it to bourgeois politicians, undermining it and preparing the way for its liquidation. As a result, the Iranian workers movement lacks organisational continuity and a political tradition. Before the start of the revolutionary process that led to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, there was no independent mass workers movement in Iran.
What we have seen since the rise of the present workers movement is a characteristic pattern of empirical advances, sometimes very rapid which have been continually undermined by the lack of a leadership that could offer a perspective and an effective strategy for building a movement independent of the control of bourgeois forces.
It is particularly clarity the lessons ot these setbacks now, since the revolutionary crisis in Iran is not over and there is still time to achieve a historic breakthrough in building a mass workers movement. In fact, if that is not done the Iranian masses face the danger of a very grave defeat. Strike By late 1978, what might be called a creeping political general strike began to emerge. It involved over 1.5 million industrial, white-collar workers (bank government employees). phenomenon continued to widen with ups and downs but in a more or less continuous wav. up to the Februarv 1979 insurrection. It was what really broke the back of the Shah's regime.
The impact of the strikes grew, in particular, after the mass demonstrations reached an impasse in the wake September massacres, since they could not actually overthrow the Shah. It was the militancy of the workers that revived the mass movement and gave it new strength and effectiveness.
Thus, after being absent from the political scene for almost decades and despite its lack of class struggle tradition and organisation, the Iranian working demonstrated that it is the leading revolutionary force in the country.
The workers began to form strike committees (bypassing porative union structures), and found that extending and maintaining the bodies. Thus several was in Khuzistan, moveregion. It was a committee of dustries by the strike committees movement thereby the plants. dynamic of workers control. A peculiar both CVCH TolneSne Wing class.
the ONES The vanguard workers of bourgeois important to bourgeois established over surge:
leadership said.
crease production.
considered agricultural and such.
and fered "Islamic society*.
The began. street raised by any 1978 They demanded for a constituent assembly.
class dividual plant the corIslamic wing. strikes required forming coordinating cooramaung committees developed. The strongest the oil producing joint coordinating the oil and stee inThe demands raised most broadly were for rehiring of the workers fired for their Dartc bauo tic sueec dealisl whose the Shah, for the payment of their unpaid wages, and for ousting of the pro-Shah and Savak clements from The struggle created a situation arose. The ment mosques and the bazaar merchants were partially financing some of the major strike committees (including industry). The bourgeois opposition to the Shah general sunike to be powerful lever for forcing the transfer of power to the mullah-merchant and liberal bourgeois factions of the rulThe result of this situation was that even the most advanced layers within the working class were very much under the political influence of bourgeois-mullah-merchant leadership of the mass movement.
layers of the movement did therefore, rally around the left but remained under the political leadership Orie Hu ass due eee g03e C02E0! Shora.
and petty-bourgeois Torces in opposition to the snan..
government was CHECN heads .ot thr masses, and was able to present itself as the culmination of the mass up*The revolution has been victorious, what we have to do now is rebuild the economy, the bourgeois Khomeini himself called on the workers to end their strikes and inThose who refused to do this, he threatened, would be counter-revolutionary saboteurs' and would be dealt with as To replace the strike committees, the mullah-bourgeois leadership ofShoras Wn1en were supposed to be the means for assuring the participation of the mostazafeen (the humble) in building a new Islamic political counter-revolution The only voice of opposition major force in inc movement was that of the leaders of the oil industry's strike committee.
that WOrKe organisations be 'represented' on the Islamic Revolutionary Council (IRC) set up bv Khomeinı as the governing body. They did not demand elections The political role of the working class was pushed back below what it had been before the insurection, and the class struggle became even more confined within the limits of the inFor concern. Furthermore, the working class, or at least its vanguard, was now split between an wing and a class-struggle The ruling bourgeois-mullah coalition adopted two basic strategies for dealing with this radicalisation The first was a major programme of nationalisations to make it easier for the state to intervene in those plants owners had fled and where production was almost totally controlled by the shoras. The government had already achieved a certain success in the state-owned industries.
The second strategy the governadopted was to coopt the shoras more directly into the state ap paratus. In April 1979, a united centre of Islamic shoras was set up. In this. the Islamic Societies at the major universities, especially the one at the Tehran Polytechnic (from which the Students Who Follow the Imam's Line later emerged) played an important role.
centre then drew up and adopted a constitution for the shoras. It set up an armed unit of Pasdars on the basis of the 'Special Force' law. And then, with the backing and direct involvement of the office of Revolutionary Islamic Public Prosecutor, it began to 'reorganise' and 'unite' the Islamic shoras, starting in the newly nationalised industries. In June started publishing a journal called NCOrC C Lauye Polytechnic Centre would go to the factories (with a group of Pasdars), their papers from the Public Prosecutor's office, Islamic Society and certain members of the shora. Then they would draw up a new list for the leadership, force new elections, and set up "new shoras' which would then affiliate to the centre. If they met with any resistance, they would call the nearest Imam's Committee to arrest troublemakers.
Purge In this way, in many industries, the Polytechnic Centre organised purge of the leit. It was initiated in Ju ly and August 1979, and became particularly extensive in September 1979. This was the same period in which the regime launched its first full-scale oftensive against the Kurds. Polytechnic Centre helped to recruit workers to go to fight against the Kurdish people Gradually the traditional mercantile sectors of Iranian capital, closer to the masses but also more parasitic, obscurantist, and despotic — both in their mentality and ideology and in the social relations bound up with their economic activity - gathered around the IRP. This backward merchant class was also closely linked to the mosques. They saw the IRP as the plank for getting to the state trough and sinking their snouts in it.
The IRP could appeal to the urban and rural poor because the sector of capital it represented was marginal to the modern economy and had nothing rhetoric 2 DOLLE capitalists and landlords who fear not ReSOrOeZineWaE themselves'. That is, they had nothing to lose so long as the workers could be kept from organising independently and raising their demands. were certainly no less inclined to use strongarm methods Bazargan government Despite the WOEKCES in action, weakness of the left and the workers vanguard disarmed movement in the face of this offensive. There was no strong force in the movement putting forward the line of fighting for political from the regime and for consistent defence of the There was no strong force putting forward a realistic political perspective for the workers movement as an alternative to the regime.
Banned Ayandegan was first banned in May, for example. But at that time the regime was torced to retreat by mass demonstrations. banned again at the end of July, in the context of the beginning of the first the Kurdish war. tional Front organised a demonstra tion to protest. The major left groups. the Mujahedeen and the Fedayeen, refused to participate on the grounds -LIC that the NDF was a bourgeois group The demonstration heavy attack from the hezbollahis. The following day, Khomeini called for outlawing the NDF and insisted that Ayandegan must be destroyed. It never reopened. the On the same day about 40 left and revolutionary papers were banned. The political headquarters of the major left groups, such as the Mujadeen and the Fedayeen, Then Khomeini War' against the Kurdish people, and this offensive proceeded under the cover of almost total press censorship.
The regime's democratic rights had a profound effect on the mass consciousness. Opposition to the mullahs grew rapidly in this period. So, the repression was gradually running out Moreover, the government suffered a major military and political defeat in Kurdistan.
It was in this context that the occupation of the U.S place. It was designed by the IRP to divert the mass movement.
In the first place, imperialist demagogy course to take to divert the real anticapitalist dynamic that was developing. The workers and peasants who in their daily struggles were striking at the real bases ot imperialism now called on to come to the front of the U.S. Embassy to hail 'the Imam's Anti-Imperialist Line' 'these later the Imam himself called on the everything for Satan'.
Of OWI concrete And to assure this they contradictory than the demonstrate advances of the the political the workers auRese natives, independence workers interests. vantage demands.
Then it was The Democratic NaIslamic Shoras.
Calle Calle Wave WCrC OCCuOCa of repression. declared a •Holy on SELLZIGK than In over steam.
to this day.
Embassy took by a major empty anti-WCS -4OOE abolished.
that disobeyed were A few weeks managemicnl. masses to stop all strikes and sit-ins *while the second and greater revolution is going on against the Great COUISC the mobilisations around the embassy had initially a erect encouraging large sections of the population to their hatred of perialism and their aspirations for a different Iran. But in the absence of forces strong enough, united enough, and politically clear enough to present masses with concrete alterthe demonstrations SOOR became purely the demagogic show that they were designed to be, burning themselves out harmlessly The working class tried to take adof the sharpening of anti-imperialist feeling among the masses to push its own social and economic The workers" shoras everywhere were calling for a purge of all the capitalist and pro-imperialist managers and owners in industry. That is, they were trying to fight a real struggle against imperialism In February 1980, the regime launched a new operation designed to curb and destroy the shoras' movement. After Friday prayers, a group of hezbollahi thugs, members of the Islamic Societies, supported by the Tudeh Party, attacked the Workers House, drove out all the workers that were there, and on the spot set up a new Centre for the Coordination Societies and Workers' This was a regime-controlled umbrella organisation for coordinating the pro-Khomeini elements within the Islamic Societies and shoras.
It was in this atmosphere that the Khomeini regime began a new wave Having successfully gotten through the rigged elections for the Islamic Consultative Parlia ment, it launched a new general offensive against the Kurds in March, a much more ruthless and large-scale the offensive of the preceding summer.
April, the Student Islamic Societies and hezbollahi thugs took the universities, physically ejected the left groups, and shut the campuses down. They remain closed These repressive attacks on the workers movement were reinforced offensive against the workers standard of living, and were in fact a concomitant of it. The right of workers to share in the profits was increases were declared illegal, and any management this decree Was threatened with imprisonment.
A new code of conduct for th shoras was passed by the IRC, which basically put an end to any independent election of the shoras and excluded them from any involvement in Socialist Challenge 21 January 1983 page 9
response to the increasingThey use this time either to his parents threatened by