Nasser Paydar January 1, 2006
“Pseudo-communist” militant reformism has historically sought to conceal its thoroughly bourgeois-socialist reality from the working-class masses by resorting to high-flown slogans of overthrow. For the broad spectrum of bourgeois communism, overthrowing the ruling political regime has served as a gateway to the stale utopias of establishing a “people’s democratic republic,” “rule by the toilers,” “democracy,” “independent national industry,” “liberation from imperialist domination,” and the like. By trumpeting this brand of “overthrows” over a long historical period, bourgeois communism has succeeded in derailing the labour movement from the path of genuine, anti-capitalist overthrow. The working-class movement dedicated to opposing and abolishing wage labour must overcome this rupture. This article aims to examine and elucidate the fundamental difference between these two types of opposition to the regime, within the context of current social conditions and the prevailing landscape of class struggle.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president representing the Iranian bourgeoisie, briefly described the track record of his predecessor’s administration while presenting his third and subsequently rejected nominee for Minister of Petroleum to the Islamic parliament of capital. He stated: “In the first six months of this year alone, we faced a budget deficit exceeding 3,900 billion tomans; we owed over 40 billion dollars to foreign governments and institutions; we bore foreign obligations amounting to 30 billion dollars; our debt to domestic banks reached more than 16,000 billion tomans; and, finally, approximately 3 million people in society were without jobs, work, or income.”
The neoliberals aligned with former President Khatami, the holders of massive industrial and financial monopolies within the Rafsanjani camp, and other factions critical of Ahmadinejad—all situated within the state power of capital have likewise criticized him. They argue that his imprudence and ill-conceived policies have disrupted the stock market, left large-scale capital in limbo, undermined Iran’s economic and political standing internationally, and unravelled the fabric of the country’s diplomacy.
These are the broad contours of the ongoing discourse within the political power structure of capital; however, what the Iranian working class perceives or ought to perceive and make the basis of its struggle behind the unfolding daily events is a different matter entirely. Let us examine what is actually transpiring within the real, ongoing operations of Iran’s social capital and in the arena of the objective conflict between labour and capital within this capitalist hell.
The $40 billion debt owed by the bourgeois state to international banks and financial-industrial monopolies represents but a tiny fraction of the colossal mountain of capital that has flooded into Iran’s domestic accumulation market over the past two decades. For the Iranian capitalist class as a whole, the deployment of this capital in spheres ranging from the purchase and sale of labour power constitutes not an unfortunate debt, but a necessary and highly lucrative partnership with global capital; a partnership aimed at consolidating the position of Iran’s social capital and intensifying the exploitation of the vast masses of the Iranian working class to an ever-wider, more severe, and more horrific degree. This $40 billion debt is merely a minuscule part of the vast galaxy of global capital flowing into Iran’s domestic accumulation spheres through ongoing capital transfers and changes in ownership; the massive surplus value generated by workers within these spheres of capital deployment is subsequently distributed among the capitalist class both domestic and foreign in the form of profits, bank interest, and other returns.
In the absence of a powerful anti-capitalist challenge from the working class, the government’s budget deficit of 3,900 billion tomans is not a problem for the capitalists; rather, it is a link in the chain of their class’s conquests in the war against the working class. Within the framework of bourgeois political economy, the tangible implication of this deficit is that the capitalist state through its routine planning will once again seek to squeeze the impoverished living standards (fraught with suffering and death) of current and future generations of the working masses by another 3,900 billion tomans, all to boost capital profits. This is the standard practice and customary policy of the bourgeoisie a process that has never paused, not even for a minute. The $30 billion in foreign obligations represents but one facet of the internal capital accounting balance reflecting current exchanges among the various components of international capital the reporting of which serves the bourgeoisie solely to warn the working masses: they must be ever more prepared to be sacrificed on the altar of capital accumulation and the imperatives of maximizing profitability.
The 16,000-billion-toman debt owed to the national banking system is a bill issued by the capitalist state to the workers of Iran, demanding payment from the very last pennies of their subsistence to replenish the coffers of capital.
And finally, the three million unemployed are not a source of distress for the capitalists or the capitalist state; rather, they represent a measure of that class’s success in inflicting extreme hunger, death, and poverty upon the working masses all to forestall any decline in the rate of profit. Thus, what Ahmadinejad has articulated regarding the performance of the Khatami and Rafsanjani administrations viewed through the lens of bourgeois interests represents not an oversight of capital’s requirements and objectives, but rather the embodiment of a comprehensive effort to grapple with the intractable crisis of capitalism. This approach has entailed offloading the entire burden of the crisis onto the meagre, subsistence-level livelihoods of the working masses, thereby sustaining the process of capital reproduction and paving the way for private capitalists and pro-capital state officials to amass enormous profits and achieve the astronomical expansion of their capital. These policies and measures constitute links in the long chain of criminal schemes orchestrated by the Islamic capitalist state against workers from its inception to the present day. The bourgeoisie has sought to address the exigencies of social capital reproduction by implementing this entire array of measures, coupling them with the relentless and widespread suppression of every labour protest in a bid to prevent the vessel of capitalist exploitation and barbarism from sinking.
All the allegations voiced by the rival faction regarding the new pro-capital administration and Ahmadinejad’s inner circle are entirely baseless. Whatever Ahmadinejad’s team has done or is currently doing stems from the compelling necessity to manage the interests of capital; it is an unavoidable component of the bourgeoisie’s reactionary and anti-human campaign to impose the conditions required for the survival of wage slavery upon the working class. The rapid emergence of large monopolies and the unprecedented concentration of capital within the domestic market compounded by the pressures of the economic crisis that has persisted for three decades have inevitably resulted in mass unemployment affecting millions. When the capitalist system, driven by the imperative of capital vaporization, renders this vast multitude jobless, it must also devise a strategy to prevent this population from igniting the fires of uprising and revolution. Whether such measures prove effective acting as a cure, a source of further harm, or neither is a separate issue. Contrary to what some might imagine, Ahmadinejad’s schemes are not akin to the construction of *saqqa-khanehs* (public water shrines) during the reign of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar; rather, they represent the very solutions commonly employed by the global bourgeoisie in the twenty-first century. Ahmadinejad has promised marriage loans to a large segment of these unemployed individuals. This is precisely the sort of degenerate remedy that arises from the depths of the bourgeoisie’s contemporary political agenda. Under this scheme, approximately 15% of the government’s $40 billion Foreign Exchange Reserve Fund is to be allocated as loans to a relatively large population comprising both the unemployed and, in some cases, the employed.
Within the framework of bourgeois calculations, this figure represents a portion of the 77,000 billion tomans of “free” or “roaming” capital or what economists term “liquidity” circulating in society; through the implementation of Ahmadinejad’s plan, this capital is drawn out of its idle, stagnant state by an interest rate that, while lower than the general profit rate, aligns with standard bank interest rates. Simultaneously, through this scheme, the bourgeoisie demonstrates its attempt to douse the flames of anger and rebellion among the vast unemployed population and to avert the danger of an uprising. Furthermore, contrary to popular rumour or the notions of superficial analysts, the state of the stock market during this period bears no fundamental relation to whether Ahmadinejad’s government team was viewed unfavourably by Iranian or global capital. The stock market’s reaction to the composition of various bourgeois cabinets or to policies adopted by specific capitalist governments does not, in itself, indicate whether those governments or policies are capable of overcoming the dilemmas and constraints inherent to capitalism. More importantly and fundamentally, the question of whether government schemes effectively resolve capital’s problems is hardly a primary concern for the working masses. If we are to view the stock market’s reaction to daily economic and political events through the lens of the working class’s lives and struggles, we must first consider the role and significance of this phenomenon within the overall system of social capital reproduction whether at the national level or within global capital as a whole. The stock exchange and the sale of shares serve as potent levers for the centralized accumulation of capital and, simultaneously, as relatively effective mechanisms for capital to counter the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Major global stock exchanges routinely aggregate vast sums of capital drawn from a multitude of small and large assets and channel them directly into centralized international finance capital, thereby placing them at the disposal of the world’s colossal financial and industrial trusts. While these major international monopolies deploy these immense funds into the most profitable spheres of global accumulation, they pay out returns to small, individual shareholders that are far lower than the general rate of profit. The very process by which scattered, modest financial sums once under their control are transformed into vast, highly profitable capital, while the original owners receive returns below the general profit rate, serves as an effective mechanism for countering the falling rate of profit whether for a nation’s social capital or for global capital as a whole. Furthermore, at every turn and in response to even the most trivial economic or political shifts global stock exchanges effectively strip the scattered savings of millions of desperate, low-income individuals (who have pinned their hopes on these securities) of their value, transferring the entirety of these assets into the hands of major private and state capitalists. What has transpired in Iran’s stock market over the past few years is no exception to capital’s standard reliance on mechanisms and stratagems designed to ensure survival or manipulate its position against the ever-present threat of the labour movement. During the stock market index’s multi-year ascent, the Iranian bourgeoisie channelled vast sums representing the livelihood resources of low-income social strata into state and private monopoly capital; subsequently, as the index plummeted, it rapidly wrested these assets from their hands, converting them entirely into the capital of the capitalists themselves.
Debates regarding the policies, strategies, or diplomatic approaches of this or that capitalist government assessed based on whether or not they serve the interests of the bourgeoisie may be the concern of other classes and movements, but they are not the concern of the proletariat or the labour movement. The Ahmadinejad administration along with his plans and orientations is just as acceptable and desirable to capital as the policies and programs of his predecessors were essential and beneficial to the capitalist system. What appears here to be “backward” or steeped in archaic religious tradition actually stems from the very same mode of production and the same economic and social relations that gave rise to Khatami’s “civil society,” Rafsanjani’s “reconstruction” project, and Mousavi’s wartime economy. The factional divisions within the Iranian bourgeoisie and the political power structure of Iranian capitalism are not unique Iranian, Islamic, or Eastern phenomena nor do they fit into any such meaningless categories; rather, they represent a common, widespread characteristic of the capitalist class worldwide. The conflicts between various factions of the Iranian bourgeoisie are not distinct from the disputes typical of bourgeois political parties in other capitalist nations; instead, they are essentially a standard variation closely mirroring those very same struggles and rivalries.
The long-standing and ongoing conflicts within Iran’s capitalist state are not, at their core, a battle between differing Islamic interpretations regarding governance, the economy, the banking system, Sharia versus customary law, constitutionalism versus legitimacy, or civil versus Islamic society. In reality, these conflicts do not revolve around establishing a “state of capitalists” in place of a “capitalist state” or similar notions. All factions even the most backward and medieval among them speak the language of capital. Each one, vying in ruthlessness with the others, devises strategies to ensure the continued existence of the process of capital accumulation and value creation. Together, and each more savagely than the next, they plan the methods for imposing the most brutal levels of capitalist exploitation upon the workforce. They all deeply grasp the inner logic of capital and strive to realize its objectives. Every statement, strategy, plan, and act of posturing whether domestic or foreign by the Ahmadinejad administration serves, down to the last detail, as a complement to the policies, slogans, orientations, and diplomatic approaches of his predecessors. It is not Ahmadinejad’s specific formulations whether well-considered or ill-conceived that dictate the day-to-day functioning of his government regarding economic and social policy or the bourgeoisie’s confrontation with the working class; rather, it is capital itself that manipulates and coheres these statements and formulations to serve its own desired ends. During the parliamentary vote of confidence, all members of the new bourgeois government repeatedly and emphatically affirmed their unconditional commitment to the policies devised by their predecessors. All four ministerial nominees for the oil portfolio have frequently told journalists that they do not recognize the existence of an “oil mafia”! The term “oil mafia” is a colloquial expression referring to the massive trusts established by the private sector in the realms of contracting, as well as the production and sale of oil and petroleum products. Capitalists aligned with the Rafsanjani faction are among the principal owners of these colossal oil trusts.
Over the past two decades, hundreds of large industrial and financial monopolies have been established by private capitalists across various economic sectors. The majority of the owners of these monopolies are officials of the Islamic Republic regime and their associates. There is scarcely any sector of industry, mining, forestry, large-scale agriculture, commerce, or other areas of the economy that does not fall under the undisputed sway of these monopolies and massive investment conglomerates. A vast and often intricate network of joint, large-scale monopoly investments involving both domestic and international capitalists has emerged across various economic fields; in many instances, the workers in these sectors remain completely unaware of the identities of the companies’ owners. Recent trends in capital concentration have led to the formation of these new, large-scale private and state monopolies alongside the multitude of pre-existing ones. At every level of planning and in all its prospective approaches and projects, the Ahmadinejad administration has pledged unwavering loyalty to safeguarding the absolute interests of these massive industrial and financial conglomerates.
The new phase of capital concentration and monopolization a trend that has long characterized the reproduction of social capital in Iran has continued with undiminished momentum under the Ahmadinejad administration. The number of small workshops and production units forced to close in recent months due to the pressures of this trend is by no means lower than in the past; indeed, the continued unfolding of this process has been a key condition for Iran’s definitive accession to the World Trade Organization. In advancing this trend or, more precisely, in meeting the requirements for Iran’s final entry into the WTO the Ahmadinejad administration has even outpaced its predecessor.
While the “Justice Shares” scheme brings nothing but prosperity and benefit to Iran’s capitalist class in every respect, it also reveals, at its core, a key strategy employed by the bourgeoisie to navigate this process to its own advantage. Under a resolution passed by the Seventh Parliament, over 1,500 billion tomans’ worth of “participation bonds” are to be sold to various social strata by the end of the current solar year. The sale of these bonds representing approximately 8% of total existing liquidity or “free capital” constitutes a serious response to the imperative of increasingly concentrating social capital. The majority of the buyers will be small-scale capitalists whose modest production workshops are losing the conditions necessary for their own reproduction, driven by the inexorable logic of capital concentration. As he carries out this fundamental tenet of the “sharia of capital,” the bourgeoisie’s new president spreads out a heavy array of sorcery and wizardry before the dissatisfied public, conjuring up in the blink of an eye hundreds of “miracles of Islamic justice”!! from the hidden vaults of capital and the World Trade Organization.
All of this amounts to stating the obvious. The notion that the Ahmadinejad administration or any other capitalist government would act otherwise is deeply flawed and nonsensical; but we raise these points not out of an eagerness to reiterate self-evident truths. We are addressing those who striving to be “more Catholic than the Pope” devote their energies to proving that the Ahmadinejad administration is detrimental to the Iranian bourgeoisie! If this argument stems from concern for the bourgeoisie, the reality is that Iran’s capitalist class is fully convinced that this administration serves its interests just as well as any other; and if the discussion is actually about the proletariat, our friends would do well to accept that the very existence of capital and of any bourgeois state is a source of “grievous torment” for workers.
In Swedish society that most celebrated model of capitalist democracy and civility amidst the turbulent throes of an economic crisis, a coalition of more right-wing and aggressive bourgeois parties managed, after years in opposition, to relegate the Social Democrats and the Left to the opposition benches. At that juncture, while Swedish Social Democracy ostensibly lamented this major defeat, it actually viewed the outcome as a significant victory for itself. In this transition, the Social Democrats assessed the unfolding events not through the lens of narrow party interests, but precisely from the perspective of the collective interests of total social capital and the Swedish bourgeoisie as a whole or, more accurately, from the standpoint of capital itself. With the keen insight and foresight characteristic of a party committed to upholding the capitalist order, the Social Democrats recognized that, at that specific moment, only the most savage assaults on the working class’s livelihood and social welfare could rescue the reproduction of social capital from the threat of an imminent, critical disruption; furthermore, they understood that such measures would be more naturally executed by the right-wing capitalist bloc and would, in the long run, far better secure the interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole. A variation of this same scenario distinct in form yet entirely consistent and aligned in substance played out four years later in that very same Swedish society. This time, it was the more right-wing spectrum of the bourgeoisie that lost the election; yet, their defeat represented a significant victory for Swedish social capital as a whole, irrespective of internal factional divisions. Here, the resurgence of social democracy to a position of state dominance served to contain the flames of working-class rage fuelled by exasperation with the capitalist system that were sweeping through Sweden. Similarly, the rise and fall of various Iranian bourgeois factions vying for political dominance is not a phenomenon distinct from the natural trajectory of such shifts across the global capitalist landscape. Phenomena such as Khatami’s “civil society” versus Ahmadinejad’s antisemitic rhetoric, the “Dialogue of Civilizations” championed by the former against the “Islamic Civilization” slogan of the latter, the Reformist movement’s pro-Western stance versus the Princip lists’ pro-Eastern orientation along with dozens of other manifestations of these differences are all organically intertwined with the very fabric of the relationship between capital and the requisites for reproducing social capital. Khatami’s “civil society” represented the Iranian bourgeoisie’s alternative for an era when the domestic market for capital accumulation had a critical, pressing need for an influx of Western capital. The massive contracts concluded during this period each played a highly effective and decisive role in resolving the crises inherent in the process of capital reproduction and centralized accumulation. This situation has since undergone significant change. The US war in Iraq bestowed a tremendous windfall upon the Iranian bourgeoisie; Iraq has transformed into a sphere for Iranian capital accumulation far more than it has into one for American or European capital. Everything from everyday consumer goods to electricity and a host of other products is exported to the Iraqi market by Iranian capitalists. The US has suffered a humiliating defeat in Iraq, and the Iranian bourgeoisie stands as the sole force to have achieved a genuine victory in the American war against the Iraqi people. Another Islamic Republic is currently in the making in Iraq, with all factions involved in the country’s situation making massive concessions to the Iranian bourgeois state. In a state of utter desperation, the US is openly and covertly soliciting the Iranian bourgeoisie’s intervention in Iraq’s internal affairs to help quell the ongoing turmoil there. Driven by an acute need for the Islamic capitalist state’s multifaceted assistance, “Mam Jalal” a figure among Iranian Kurdish nationalists has shelved his ethnic support for Iranian Kurdish leftist and rightist movements. Beyond this, China a major global capital hub meets the accumulation needs of Iran’s domestic market far more cost-effectively than the Western bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the northern neighbour readily supplies any remaining requirements, including all necessary armaments.
India’s market of one billion people renders the Iranian bourgeoisie indifferent to the prospect of exporting food products, groceries, and other consumer goods to Europe. The United States which never posed a threat to the Islamic government now, under the strain of crushing economic and political burdens, multifaceted failure in the Iraq War, and a deepening economic crisis, poses even less of a threat to the Iranian bourgeoisie than before. Israel has repeatedly declared its widespread economic insolvency to the world and, in recent years, has sunk ever deeper into an abyss of economic and political crisis. In this context, the Iranian bourgeoisie sees a golden opportunity to extort concessions from other sectors of global capital specifically Europe and the United States for the benefit of Iranian capital; the president representing this class bellows threats against the West and Israel as part of this extortionist stance.
The exact same issue applies to the disputes between the Iranian bourgeoisie and the West regarding the nuclear program. Here, too, in the current juncture, it is not Western capitalism that is extorting the Iranian bourgeoisie through intimidation tactics. On the contrary, it is the Iranian bourgeoisie relying on its own considerable weight and pointing to the serious threat posed to Western bourgeois interests in the Iranian domestic market that seeks to persuade all Western governments to accept its demands and submit to its various forms of barbarism. In all these arenas, the statesmen of capital are true successors to one another; they are all spokespersons and theoreticians of capital in its purest form. The “Pure Muhammadan Islam” espoused by all of them is, without exception, the true Sharia of capital, and none of them falls short when put to the test of representing capitalism. For none of them does the real dilemma lie in the mechanics of transitioning from a “capitalist state” to a “state of capitalists.” Their *Saqqa-khanehs* (traditional water shrines) are the exact counterpart to their “civil society,” and the “Dialogue of Civilizations” proposed by one is a carbon copy of the other’s anti-Westernism and anti-Semitism. The “Justice Shares” scheme is merely a variation of the other’s “Reconstruction” era policies, and the plan to transfer oil revenues to the tables of the poor is a replica of Mosaddegh’s approach aimed, in reality, at the most effective utilization of oil revenues for the more concentrated accumulation of capital.
Everywhere and in every sphere, the dispute is purely and simply over trivialities (like the proverbial “quarrel over Mulla Nasreddin’s quilt”). One party claims that an initial outlay of 100 million Rials in fixed capital suffices to exploit a worker to the desired extent, while another deems any figure below 430 million Rials problematic. One worries about a surging wave of working-class protest threatening the capitalist system’s survival, warning against even the slightest wage increase; another, ensconced in the ivory tower of “bourgeois dialogue of civilizations,” banks on the decline of the international working class’s anti-capitalist movement relying on the devastation that their own class, alongside “social-bourgeois” elements, nationalists, and “populist-left” factions, have globally inflicted upon that movement. They downplay the danger, viewing the mere accumulation of greater capital as a sufficient countermeasure! Neither represents a state of affairs undesirable to capital; neither lag behind the other in scrutinizing the interests of concentrated capital accumulation or in addressing the requirements for its realization. All have striven and will continue to strive with equal zeal and savagery to integrate Iran’s social capital ever more successfully into international capital, to secure an ever-larger share of the global surplus value produced by the world proletariat for Iran’s social capital, and to impose the requisites of capital’s reproduction and existence upon the working class with ever-increasing brutality. Perhaps the words of one of the bourgeoisie’s intellectual representatives suffice to articulate the differences and distinctions within the class’s various factions. He writes: “Of course, the Fourth Development Plan, the 20-Year Vision, and the imperatives of globalization particularly following Iran’s admission as an observer member of the World Trade Organization have largely charted the course of the country’s economic trajectory. At the same time, however, challenges such as widespread poverty, high inflation, and mounting unemployment which threaten Iran’s heavily state-dominated economy have given rise to disagreements regarding how to address these issues; such differences have the potential to cause discord within any economic team.”
The *Communist Manifesto* posits that: “The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.” For the authors of the *Manifesto* whether within the Communist League or, specifically, within the First International this formulation held a thoroughly concrete and unambiguous meaning: Communists must exert every effort to organize the working masses into a class, so that this organized, independent class power might as a first step put an end to bourgeois rule and establish its own state power. The organization of the proletariat as a class carries a very explicit and specific significance. When a worker speaks of uniting and organizing their fellow workers into a class, they cannot simply dismiss the anti-capitalist nature and the goal of abolishing capitalism inherent in this movement! It is crystal clear that the authors of the *Manifesto* and the united labour movement of the First International in discussing the organization of workers envisioned an anti-capitalist organization of the working class; likewise, in speaking of the overthrow of the political regime, they aimed for the overthrow of the bourgeois state by this class’s anti-capitalist movement. The International Workingmen’s Association a working-class international dedicated to the struggle against and the abolition of the capitalist system emphasized the class unity of workers worldwide in the pursuit of political power as the labour movement’s immediate objective; this stance ensured that the anti-capitalist essence of this drive for overthrow could in no way be buried in the graveyard of the clamorous, supra-class rhetoric of mere regime opposition.
Such was the perspective held by the authors of the *Communist Manifesto* and the labour movement that issued it regarding the overthrow of the political regime. It was a vision that shone brilliantly but proved, unfortunately, to be short-lived; subsequent events within and beyond the international labour movement diverted the working class’s path of struggle away from that guiding light, leading it instead into the wilderness of alternative strategic formulations. The history of the global labour movement over the past century is not only a record of its rupture with clear-cut, communist anti-capitalism but also a chronicle of its descent into the quagmire of parliamentarism and syndicalism on the one hand, and in place of a class-based, anti-capitalist opposition to the regime a populist, supra-class opposition on the other.
I have previously raised points here and there, on specific occasions regarding the economic, social, and historical contexts in which this phenomenon was imposed upon the global labour movement; I do not intend to reiterate them here. Briefly, one can point to the fundamental outlines of this context: the emergence of imperialist conditions within capitalist production and their associated social and class consequences namely, the rise of national-bourgeois anti-imperialism in one part of the world and social democracy in another; the defeat of the October Revolution and the powerful ascent of a state-capitalist pole operating under the banner of working-class communism; the entirely homogeneous, united, and shared interests of the state-capitalist camp and the national-bourgeois Left; the centralized alliance of these two poles within an international institution like the Comintern flying the flag of communism and the proletariat! and other similar events. Just as the pressure of these developments tethered the Western European labour movement under the leadership of social democracy and the narrow confines of trade unionism to parliamentarism, imposing it as the sole vehicle for political expression, it simultaneously plunged the labour movements of Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the hegemony of the national-bourgeois Left into the abyss of a “people-oriented,” supra-class drive for the overthrow of the existing order.
For the parties, groups, and circles that inherit the legacy of the “Left-wing nationalists,” the starting point is not a stance of combat against capital and capitalism. Precisely for this reason and under the pressure of this specific perspective on class struggle they do not pursue the goal of overthrowing the regime from an anti-capitalist standpoint. For them, the fundamental objective is the overthrow of the existing state; as for anti-capitalism or communism to borrow a phrase from the author of *Kalila and Demna* these are treated as mere “straw and barley” that will supposedly follow as a natural byproduct!!! Or, more accurately, they assume this will come about later as a consequence! In their view, speaking of an anti-capitalist or anti-wage-labour movement prior to the overthrow of the current political regime is nothing but an unearthly, utopian notion!!! They explicitly declare that, before the fall of the existing state, it is neither intended nor expected for the working masses to wage a struggle against the reality of capitalism or against the various forms of capital’s domination over their working and living conditions!! They state in the starkest terms that the overthrow of the bourgeois state is not the task of an anti-capitalist movement (or of the working class acting to abolish capitalism), but rather the task of workers organized in pro-capitalist, reformist unions and of a supra-class movement!! We have explained on various occasions that this narrative regarding the overthrow of the existing state even in its best light and most “communist-seeming” guise amounts to nothing more than replacing the current form of capitalist labour and production planning with a centralized state version of that very same capitalist mode of production.
The Manifesto’s position was that the immediate goal of the Communists is the organization of the proletariat into a class against capitalism, the overthrow of bourgeois supremacy, and the conquest of political power; yet for the currents in question, the actual goal is neither organizing the proletariat as a class, nor ensuring the anti-capitalist nature of that class’s movement, nor overthrowing the existing state through the working class’s anti-capitalist struggle but rather merely overthrowing the bourgeois state in the hope of initiating an anti-capitalist struggle!!!
Bourgeois socialism refuses to acknowledge that workers are human beings driven to revolt by capitalist exploitation, oppression, and barbarism; like all people pushed to the limit by exploitation, crime, ruin, misery, and poverty, they can and must organize against the true source and foundation of all these calamities. In the view and ethos of this brand of socialism, the working masses are expected to convince themselves each morning and vow that they are utterly unworthy of anti-capitalist struggle, and that opposing capital lies beyond their aptitude and capacity, belonging solely to the realm of the elite and the learned. With the utmost obstinacy, insistence, and sophistry, they strive to shroud the very foundations of the working class’s anti-capitalist movement and its communism in a dark veil of secrets and mystifying metaphysical elements; all while completely ignoring the fact that opposition to capitalism is a natural avenue of struggle for the labour movement.
If the working masses themselves alongside the leaders and vanguard within their own class were to declare to the bourgeoisie and the world that they oppose the existence of capitalism and intend to organize for the system’s complete abolition, why should we not affirm their capacity to do so and mobilize all our strength to assist them? Why, when workers stand tall before the bourgeoisie and declare their opposition to capitalism, must they be told they are mistaken that their movement is not, and cannot be, anti-capitalist? Why, if the working masses rise up and declare as a class opposed to the existence of capitalism that they demand the immediate fulfilment of their fundamental demands and will employ the full force of their class struggle to compel the bourgeoisie to concede to them, must we still lecture them, saying, “No! You are mistaken! Threshing the harvest is no task for a mere goat!” implying that the struggle against capitalism is something else entirely and beyond their capabilities? Party elites must absolutely attend to this crucial matter! Why is it that when the working class alongside and united with its own leaders and vanguard warns the bourgeoisie of its intent to push the struggle forward until the complete eradication of capitalism (inevitably sweeping the capitalist state aside in the process), it is still told that this is all mere utopianisms? Why are they told that their movement is not truly anti-capitalist and that overthrowing the regime in this manner is undesirable? Why must all these points be denied, while workers are instead urged to pursue a class-neutral overthrow of the regime and to avoid organizing their own anti-capitalist movement? These questions are of immense importance, but the response offered by “bourgeois socialism” is equally significant and blunt. From their perspective, the class power and combative potential of the working class must be completely nullified; this ensures the perpetuation of the bourgeois philosophy of “sect-building” over the workers, while preserving the allure, brilliance, and captivating appeal of bourgeois and non-working-class forces maintaining their dominance and control over the working class.
Supra-class opposition to the regime is the organic strategy of bourgeois socialism in societies suffering under the pressure of the savage and naked dictatorship of capitalism. Whether it acknowledges this reality or not, bourgeois socialism strives to secure a place within political power, to take control of capitalist labour and production planning, and to impose a form of capitalist planning and order upon the working class. In one part of the world namely, Western societies bourgeois socialism pursues this goal through parliamentarism, whereas in other regions such as Iran it resorts to supra-class opposition to the regime. The history of the “social-bourgeois” Left is a history of supra-class opposition to the regime, and of promoting, propagating, and imposing this form of opposition upon the working class substituting it for an anti-capitalist movement and for the class-based, anti-capitalist opposition to the regime that is proper to that class. Historically, this version of socialism has to the extent of its influence instilled in the working class the notion that supra-class opposition to the regime is everything, while anti-capitalist opposition is a meaningless phenomenon! An end must be put to this entirely capitalist fabrication and indoctrination.
A hallmark of “bourgeois socialism” and a natural product of a brand of anti-regime sentiment that transcends class lines is that, whether discussing the incumbent government or agitating for the overthrow of regimes, these tendencies never address the organic link between a state’s policies, planning, and strategies (both short- and long-term) and the actual functioning of society or the capitalist mode of production. Their grievance lies not with the existence of the capitalist system itself, but rather with the absence of democracy and the presence of dictatorship obstacles that hinder the expression of their factional existence and the propagation of their group-specific agendas. The alpha and omega of their discourse is the regime’s undesirability, despotism, and barbarity; they argue that the regime must be overthrown due to its anti-popular nature, its dictatorial character, its suppression of individual freedoms, and its reliance on reactionary violence, kangaroo courts, torture chambers, and the brutal repression of social and revolutionary movements. Throughout the literature of the non-labour-oriented Left over the past century, any reference to the connection between state policies, strategies, reactionary violence, and inhumanity on the one hand, and the actual workings of society or the capitalist mode of production on the other, is either entirely absent or amounts to nothing more than perfunctory, ideological rhetoric. Phrases such as the “economic crisis of the capitalist system,” the pressure of that crisis on the regime, and the regime’s attempts to offload the burden of the crisis onto the working class along with similar expressions represent perhaps the extent of the “depth” found in the literature of these non-labour-oriented Leftist parties and organizations.
In these analyses even where detailed theoretical discussions are introduced “petty-bourgeois socialist” generalizations dominate everything, while there is a complete lack of analysis regarding the role of the existing state within the structures of Iranian social capital, or the mechanics of its planning, policies, and myriad strategies concerning societal operations and the capitalist mode of production. Arguments characterizing the Islamic Republic as a “state undesirable to the bourgeoisie”!! or a “capitalist state versus a state of capitalists”!! and the like are clear and vivid examples of such petty-bourgeois socialist generalizations. Throughout the last twenty-five years, the Islamic Republic in its overall governmental composition and independent of internal factionalism has resorted to every feasible approach across economic and political spheres, and employed every possible form of savagery and inhumanity, in its efforts to meet the exigencies of Iranian social capital in the face of the ongoing economic crisis, to shift the entire burden of this crisis onto the working class, and to seek ways to reconstruct a deeply crisis-ridden capitalist economy situated within the spillover zone of the global capitalist economic crisis. Yet, from the perspective of petty-bourgeois socialism, the Islamic regime still supposedly lacks the functions and characteristics of a state desirable to the bourgeoisie!! An even more misleading and baseless example of these analyses spawned by the subsequent thinking of the very same proponents and supporters of the initial theory is the outright dismissal of the fundamental reality that both the Islamic Republic and the Shah’s regime have represented the Iranian capitalist class throughout the last fifty years of class struggle in Iran, all under the guise of the “capitalist state versus state of capitalists” dichotomy. Consider this point from the book *Prospects and Tasks* by Iraj Azarin.
“The Iranian Revolution matured the Iranian bourgeoisie. It is worth noting that at the time of the Bahman Revolution, Iran’s young working class demonstrated that it was a class ‘for itself,’ whereas the bourgeoisie due to historical reasons appeared merely as a class ‘in itself’ and remained passive. However, the course of events from 1988–1989 onwards has been the reverse. (——-) On the other hand, the legacy of the 1979 Revolution for Iranian society has been an Islamic government that weighs upon society like a heavy tombstone. As society moved further away from the Bahman Revolution, the Islamic government could no longer sustain its survival based on the very revolution that had catapulted it to power; consequently, it was compelled to seek a *raison d’être* not in the society’s past, but in the society of the present.” (Page 40 of the book)
The author’s intent regarding the Iranian bourgeoisie in the passage above is entirely clear. In his view, the only forces representing the bourgeoisie both during the revolution and within the post-revolutionary political power structure were individuals from the Freedom Movement and the National Front; yet even they acted in a completely insular, obtuse manner, devoid of any capacity for bourgeois reasoning! According to this narrative, the Iranian bourgeoisie played no role in the political power of the day until the years 1367–1368 (1988–1989). The existing state served merely as a heavy slab a tombstone weighing down upon the entire society, and naturally, upon the bourgeoisie itself! Throughout this period, the state—a product of the revolution’s defeat derived its raison d’être and legitimacy from the revolution, rather than functioning as a mechanism or institution of capital’s power. Only after this date did it “come to its senses” and begin to seek its justification not in its own non-bourgeois, non-capitalist past, but in the future or in the imperative to transform into a capitalist state. In the author’s view, the wholesale slaughter, repression, and torching of the Iranian labour movement aimed at subduing it were not integral components of the Iranian bourgeoisie’s policy; nor were the state-capitalization process, the rationing and coupon systems for basic necessities during the reactionary war, or dozens of similar measures ever intended to resolve the crises of capitalism! These programs, plans, and policies were neither fundamental, inevitable prerequisites for the survival of Iranian capitalism under those specific historical conditions, nor the product of the bourgeoisie’s class wisdom, insight, or rationality; rather, they were merely the medieval actions of an otherworldly force devoid of any class roots or foundations hurled to the surface by the earthquake of the revolution, weighing down upon the bourgeoisie itself like a heavy tombstone! It is no coincidence that, with the departure of Khatami and the arrival of Ahmadinejad, the “Socialist Union” immediately concluded that:
“The rise to power of the new faction deeply alarms capital owners in Iran. Clearly, the very fact that the Ahmadinejad administration stands in opposition to the economic and political trends intended to secure a safe environment for Iranian capitalists inevitably triggers political resistance from the Iranian bourgeoisie and its various spokespersons. But capital owners in Iran lack the independent power to confront this politically; instead, their most potent weapon lies in the economic arena. It is not merely that Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric regarding the fight against corruption and ‘windfall wealth’ evokes memories of the confiscations that marked the early years of the revolution; the very implication of his ‘electoral victory’ signalling an expansion of the scope of extra-legal bodies and facilitating arbitrary actions compels capital owners to exercise extreme caution, effectively driving them toward a form of investment ‘strike’ and a slowdown in economic activity. Ultimately, the Ahmadinejad administration and the Islamic Republic regime as a whole will bear the brunt of the social and political consequences of such an economic stagnation far more so than the Iranian bourgeoisie itself.” (Source: Socialist Workers’ Union website). The author continues: “This time, the Iranian capitalist class is consciously turning toward powerful factions within the Islamic regime factions both willing and able to meet its fundamental economic and social needs: namely, securing the conditions for the safe operation of capital and the safety of the capitalists themselves, whether at the international or domestic level, and through either legal frameworks or practical guarantees. In this new era, the Iranian bourgeoisie’s detachment from democratic and secular aspirations is becoming a fully realized reality.” (Ibid.)
From the perspective of the “Socialist Workers’ Unity” and its theorists, the government of the Islamic Republic is not the government of Iran’s capitalists just as, in their view, the Shah’s regime did not play such a role either! The current regime is not a political and governmental superstructure derived from the societal labour process or the capitalist mode of production; this government is neither the embodiment of the rule and power of social capital, nor the executor of capital’s productive order, nor the institution that imposes capitalist social, civil, and legal order upon the working class; rather, it is merely a promiscuous, loose old hag a crone constantly passed from hand to hand, catering to the whims of one today and serving the desires of another tomorrow! With the arrival of Khatami, it adopts the path of a government for capitalists; yet midway through—with his departure and the advent of Ahmadinejad Iran’s capitalists are suddenly left bereft of a government, and the terrifying spectre of statelessness sends tremors through the very foundations of the capitalist class’s existence.
This analysis is not merely unrepresentative of the working class nor does it simply stand in fundamental opposition to the core tenets of Marx’s teachings and his theory of the state but at its very core, it reflects nothing more than the lamentations of those old-guard liberals who yearn for industrial growth in Iran. Every component of this analysis echoes the long-standing rhetoric of Iran’s industrial-liberal faction a group that viewed neither the Shah’s regime as the legitimate representative of the capitalist class as a whole, nor certain segments of the Islamic Republic as a competent government capable of fulfilling that role. The difference in perspective between the pundits of the “Socialist Union…” and the industrial-liberal wing of the bourgeoisie appears to lie in only one respect: the former viewing the current state of Iranian society through the lens of their class’s total interests pin their hopes on complete assimilation into neoliberalism (much as they once scrambled in every direction during the early 1960s and prior to participate in imperialist capital accumulation), whereas the “Socialist Union” pursues a different path. They talk about the working class and being communists, and in this regard, they use the liberal critique of neoliberalism as collateral to prove their claim. This is what these friends have been talking about for the last few years, and this is that the working class must stand up to its reformist demands, in front of the bourgeois reform movement, or the neoliberal movement of the bourgeoisie, and of course, not to forget that the formulation and follow-up of these demands and this liberal critique of neoliberalism is the embodiment of the socialist movement of its day!!!
Our discussion here is not concerned with examining the specific views or opinions of any particular leftist group regarding this matter; any such references serve merely as examples to clarify the central issue. The hostility toward the regime exhibited by the broad spectrum of the non-labour Left ranging from the most militant factions to all other variants bears no relation to the proletariat’s class struggle against capitalism and the bourgeois state. Merely stringing together a litany of repetitive, synonymous epithets labelling the Islamic Republic (or any other regime) as “capitalist, capitalist, and yet again capitalist” to demonstrate one’s ideological conviction regarding the regime’s nature solves nothing; it adds not an iota of genuine socialist or working-class substance to this spectrum’s calls for the regime’s overthrow. Absent a genuine connection to the anti-capitalist movement a movement dedicated to abolishing the working class’s wage-labour status and without an organic, conscious, class-based, and Marx’s grounding in that movement’s perspectives and demands, any opposition to the regime or slogan calling for its overthrow amounts to nothing more than a form of “paper radicalism” rooted in petty-bourgeois socialism and democratic aspirations.
The “overthrows” (regime change) of the non-working-class Left does not aim for the overthrow of the capitalist state in the true class-based and Marx’s sense of the term. It does not seek to topple the state that imposes the buying and selling of labour power and the resulting wage slavery upon the working class. The non-working-class Left does not struggle against governments on these grounds or because of this specific role and function. It does not find itself in conflict with regimes simply because they obstruct the organization of the working masses’ movement against wage labour. The “overthrow’s” characteristic of bourgeois socialism is merely an attempt to topple a state that fails to be a bourgeois-democratic state! If such a bourgeois state were to submit to democracy and guarantee freedom of political organization and activity, the very idea of overthrowing it would be off the table!
The analyses and stances of groups like the “Socialist Workers’ Alliance” serve as a prime and highly revealing example. Prior to the rise of the reformist movement, the group’s theorists had advocated for the overthrow of the regime while operating within their former parties; but they themselves have since explained at length that those parties had no actual connection to the working class. Their break from their last party coincided with the fanfare surrounding Khatami’s “civil society” agenda a phenomenon they interpreted as the rise of a politically conscious bourgeoisie acting “for itself” to seize state power. Proceeding from this interpretation and envisioning the establishment of a capitalist government (a prospect that was entirely novel to them!!) their book *Prospects and Tasks* admonished workers that the true foundation of the socialist labour movement lay in: participating in the bourgeoisie’s new economic model!!!; striving to garner support for this participation from certain strata of the class!!; demanding trade unions and wage increases for the entire workforce rather than just a segment; refraining from strikes at small production sites due to the risk of unemployment!!!; and pursuing other similar demands.
The “Socialist Workers’ Union” has perhaps always remained committed to the goal of overthrow and this is certainly a very good thing but any Iranian worker, or any worker anywhere else, has the right to ask them, and the entire spectrum of the Left that shares their views: what, precisely, is it that they have sought and continue to seek to overthrow? Is it the overthrow of a government that has never been a government of capitalists, and which for a long time weighed upon the bourgeoisie like a heavy tombstone? Is it the overthrow of a government that has posed and continues to pose nothing but loss and danger to capital accumulation?
The Socialist Union has proposed and advocated nothing regarding the labour movement other than reformism and syndicalism; in such a context, what tangible benefit is its call for regime overthrow supposed to bring the workers? And if workers were to overthrow the current regime from within a movement that is purely reformist and syndicalist, what would they gain beyond a repeat of the overthrow of the Shah’s regime? A radical, communist, and worker-led drive for regime overthrow is the prerogative solely of a movement that in every sphere of existence asserts itself in opposition to wage labour and presses forward toward the abolition of the wage-labour system.
The movement to abolish wage labour is the sole movement that pursues the overthrow of the political regime from the vantage point of the working class’s struggle against the very foundations of capitalism. Its point of departure is opposition to capitalism, and the aim of overthrowing the regime is an integral part of the process of struggling to eradicate wage labour. This is the only correct form of the drive for overthrow for the working class in Iran and anywhere else in the world. Here, the anti-capitalist struggle is not deferred until after the political regime has been overthrown; rather, the working class engaged in a war against capitalism across all spheres of social life simultaneously fights to overthrow the bourgeois state. This movement advances by mobilizing and organizing the working masses around a living, clear, and actively anti-capitalist manifesto a manifesto that pits the working class against the entire existing reality of the wage-slavery system, challenging the very fabric of that system across every domain. This manifesto examines the workings of the existing society and dissects the entire process of the production and reproduction of social capital. It places every detail of the labour process and social production along with the activities undertaken by the vast masses of the working class across all spheres of the labour-power exchange at the centre of a broad class struggle. It calls for the abolition of the labour-power exchange and the dismantling of the wage-labour system. It advocates for the planning of all social labour and production by councils composed of the working masses themselves. The manifesto of the movement to abolish wage labour fleshes out the social and material aspects of this planning using concrete data drawn from the actual labour and production processes of the working masses. The anti-capitalist movement is one in which activists and participating forces strive to organize and unite the entire proletariat around this manifesto. Within this movement, every simple demand regarding workers’ livelihoods and welfare holds paramount importance. Wage increases, reduced working hours, top-tier social security, high-quality free healthcare and education, a healthy environment, the realization of political freedoms and human rights, the definitive abolition of child labour, guaranteed welfare for the elderly, and all similar demands constitute a series of interconnected strongholds in a nationwide anti-capitalist campaign. Across all these arenas, it strives to function as a movement of a social class; this implies that it seeks to counter the bourgeoisie by establishing a nationwide, class-based organization opposed to the wage-labour system an organization comprising all forces within the class: productive and unproductive workers, men and women, the employed and the unemployed, and workers of both foreign and domestic origin. This element signifies that under any conditions or constraints, and with the aid of conscious elements and communist workers from within its own ranks it struggles to prepare the working masses to assert themselves collectively as a social class. This very element serves as a fundamental criterion for distinguishing an anti-capitalist orientation from the syndicalist and “bourgeois-socialist” approaches found within the labour movement. The issue is not whether workers are *always* in every situation or period actually capable of demonstrating their power as a unified class; it goes without saying that the savage onslaughts of capital and other factors work to strip the working class of this capacity and these possibilities. Rather, the discussion centres on the strategies and solutions that the labour movement adopts at each stage of the struggle. The point of contention is whether these strategies and measures actually steer the movement toward organized action against wage labour aimed at abolishing it or, conversely, trap it within the ruins of syndicalism, reformism, and sectarianism, consigning it to the dungeon of capitalist subjugation.
The stance of the anti-capitalist movement is explicit and straightforward. Throughout the ongoing daily struggles of the working class, this movement manifests as anti-capitalist; it speaks and acts in opposition to wage labour. In battles over wages, working conditions, and the like, its position is that the entirety of capital’s wealth is the product of its labour. It is the working class that has created capital and reproduces it day in and day out. Every increment of capital represents its surplus labour that has been wrested from its own control, planning, and human consumption. The movement rejects the fundamental basis of this situation, and its current acquiescence to the labour-power exchange relationship stems merely from its present lack of sufficient power. Its demands for higher wages or improved working and living conditions do not signify an acceptance of the system’s existence; rather, they are grounded in the mobilization of its existing strength against that very system.
Opponents of the anti-wage-labour movement typically raise an outcry at the suggestion that the broad masses of workers are capable of grasping these ideas claiming that workers are in no position to understand such matters, and that articulating these points and making such assertions is the exclusive province of intellectuals from other classes. Our response to them has always been that the worker masses themselves historically, using their own vernacular and natural instincts have raised these very issues with capitalists. It was you and your movement that detached them from the anti-capitalist stronghold and steered them into the “united anti-imperialist front” of one faction of the bourgeoisie or another. Our response is that, while experiencing exploitation and the savagery of capital and harbouring a deep hatred for them is a perfectly natural feeling for the worker, they are in dire need of Marx (and figures like him) and conscious anti-wage-labour activists from within their own ranks. They need this to unite around that natural anti-capitalist sentiment and hatred, to become increasingly conscious and organized, to gain strength, to sweep the bourgeois state aside, and to abolish the buying and selling of labour power. Our answer to the opponents of the anti-wage-labour movement is that you and your predecessors have, over a long historical period, done the exact opposite; you have filled history with the clamour that “workers are incapable of recognizing capitalist exploitation and crimes!” At every turn, you have sought to instil in workers the notion that they must submit to and execute the dictates of the elite; that they must first secure democracy alongside capitalists; that they must act as the vanguard for populist and nationalist movements; and that they must confine the scope of their protests and struggles to the dead-end of capitalist-oriented trade unionism along with hundreds of other such delusions that you have systematically injected into the very fabric of the workers’ consciousness. You have done your utmost to derail the labour movement from its anti-capitalist path, infusing it with every conceivable illusion. The entire endeavour of anti-capitalist activists, conversely, is to transform this situation and steer this deeply distorted, bourgeois perspective back onto the true course of labour and the struggle against the wage-labour system.
The working masses possess the capacity to advance the struggle for wages and improved working and living conditions within the framework of an anti-wage-labour manifesto. The task of anti-capitalist activists is to steer the movement onto this path, replacing the erroneous course it has taken one rooted in trade unionism and right- or left-wing reformism. The working class’s anti-wage-labour movement sees no reason to draw a line between economic and political struggles; on the contrary, it distinguishes both and the entire scope of both from trade-unionist reformism and cross-class democratic aspirations by applying the criterion of opposition to capital. When it speaks of political freedom, it aims for the freedom to intensify and deepen the struggle against wage labour; it demands freedom for anti-capitalist workers’ councils and makes freedom from the constraints of capitalist legality and the rule of law a central objective of its struggle. Just as, in demanding wages and economic well-being, it exerts all its might to constrict the very lifeline of capital’s value-accumulation process seeking to allocate an ever-larger share of its own labour and production to improving its livelihood, education, healthcare, and other needs, while simultaneously minimizing to the greatest extent possible the surplus labour it performs for capital and capitalists. In its drive toward organization, this movement strives to establish a body that advances its entire economic and political struggle cantered on confronting wage labour and linking every facet of its ongoing, day-to-day battles to the broader, nationwide anti-capitalist struggle aimed at the abolition of capitalism.
These are points that along with many others have been raised and discussed in numerous detailed articles over recent years regarding the movement to abolish wage labour. It is with these characteristics, and emerging from this process of all-out struggle against capitalism, that this movement approaches the issue of overthrowing the bourgeois state and prepares for its actualization. The distance between this approach and the anti-regime stance of the non-working-class Left is as vast as the gap between working-class communism and bourgeois communism.
The working-class movement against and for the abolition of wage labour pursues its class campaign with these specific characteristics and this particular vision of overthrowing the political regime. From the perspective of this movement, every action taken by the bourgeois state regardless of its form or composition is a response to the requirements of capital accumulation and reproduction. This state stands as an obstacle to the advance of the working class’s anti-capitalist movement and must be overthrown by it. Here, the path of the struggle against the regime is precisely, and step-by-step, the path of the struggle against the very foundation of capital and against all forms of capital’s domination over the lives of the working masses. In which step of advancing this struggle, the working class succeeds in smashing the state machine of capital, is a matter that is determined by the components related to the position of opposing forces of this movement against the capitalist system. The Islamic State of Capital, based on what we mentioned at the beginning of this article and in another article called “the course of economic and political events of the day and—“, has been able to achieve success in reducing the pressure of the crisis on social capital by taking advantage of the very weak position of the Iranian labour movement and by imposing the most terrible form of capitalist exploitation and brutality on the working masses in recent years. These successes, however, with all the importance they had and have for Iran’s capitalism, are very transitory and fragile. Every step of this success is the result of intensifying and deepening the exploitation of workers more and more brutally and expanding the scope of poverty, hunger and disenfranchisement of the working masses more and more painfully.
Nevertheless, all evidence plainly and starkly reveals the imminent arrival of a powerful, crushing wave of economic crisis that will strike the sphere of social capital reproduction in Iran. The accelerated concentration of capital in recent years and its ongoing momentum has convinced most bourgeois economists that the ranks of the unemployed will swell by millions. The unprecedented rise in oil prices a key driver of the recent boom and massive capital accumulation, as well as a crucial conduit for foreign capital entering the domestic market has begun to decline; in the near future, this downward trend will manifest its crisis-inducing nature by exerting immense pressure on the rate of profit for social capital. The economic conditions of nations whose capital plays a pivotal role in Iran’s domestic market and social capital reproduction process are set to shift in the coming years; the profit-rate trajectories of this capital whether directly or through the general global rate of profit will profoundly impact the position of Iranian capitalism. This latter factor, particularly when combined with falling oil prices and the reduced inflow of oil-derived surplus value into the sphere of value creation for Iran’s social capital, will intensify the speed and destructive force of the looming economic crisis.
Setting aside the aforementioned major economic factors, the relative rise of the Iranian labour movement and the prospect of its historic shift toward a stance opposing and seeking to abolish wage labour heralds the dawn of a new phase in the class struggle. All available data and evidence, however modest, signal an imperative to embrace this significant historical juncture. It is a situation in which the Iranian working class will not allow the slogan of overthrowing the bourgeois state to be subsumed by the delirious, death-rattle cries of the pro-democracy, non-labour Left and various strata of the bourgeoisie; instead, it will strive to project this slogan born of its own radical movement against wage labour with resounding force from the depths of that movement onto the very stage of the capitalist world.
All available data regarding the fundamental relations between social classes point to the onset of a new, explosive phase of economic crisis and a massive intensification of class struggle in the near future. This time, the labour movement must ensure that every step taken to confront the political regime is accompanied by the most effective and resolute measures to strengthen and consolidate its own anti-capitalist movement. Establishing and expanding a nationwide anti-capitalist organization and uniting workers from all sectors of labour and production within it is the prerequisite for taking subsequent effective steps. Only by successfully navigating this critical juncture can the path be paved for establishing councils and institutions of class power, for the seizure of workplaces and production centres by these councils, and for the subsequent actions that must follow.