Martin Suchanek, Infomail 1231, 15 September 2023
On 16 September 2022, the Iranian Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini died as a result of injuries inflicted on her by the so-called morality police during her arrest and in detention through brutal mistreatment. But she was not to remain another victim of a criminal, despotic regime whose murder by the state organs was followed by a second death through public oblivion. It did not go unpunished, nor did it remain inconsequential.
It sparked a wave of mass protest and resistance the like of which Iran had not seen since 2009, the so-called Green Revolution against massive electoral fraud by the regime. After Jina Mahsa Amini’s death became public, thousands upon thousands took to the streets in Tehran and many other cities.
Spread of the movement
In the first two months, the movement spread throughout the country and to large sections of the population. In the Kurdish regions, a temporary general strike even paralysed public life. In many cities, the universities formed centres of resistance with which the mass of the population, especially the working class, showed solidarity. From the beginning, women and youth were at the centre of the movement, formed its driving force, revealing the deep-seated hatred against the regime. Millions joined the protests – defying massive repression by police, special forces and the paramilitary henchmen of the regime.
Despite extreme brutality, thousands of arrests, detentions and the murder of numerous demonstrators even in the first weeks of the protest movement, the masses were not intimidated. The mullahs were clearly on the defensive. Too late and hesitantly, a dissolution and “reform” of the hated morality police was brought into play. Counter-rallies staged by the regime to the protests remained much smaller than the mass actions of the opposition, revealing how small the social base, how hated the mullah dictatorship and the political and social order it defends by all means were and are.
The movement shook the ruling class and its Iranian variety of capitalism. But it failed to topple the regime despite incredible heroism. The state apparatus and the organs of repression were shaken, but their internal cohesion and their ability to be used against the movement were not broken. This affected not only the direct, professional internal organs of repression and paramilitary props of the regime, but above all the army and its 220,000 conscripts.
Reaction strikes back
This enabled the regime to take increasingly massive and targeted action against the movement from the end of 2022. It virtually drowned it in blood and violence. Well over 500 demonstrators were killed last year. A total of around 20,000 people are said to have been arrested. In addition, dozens were sentenced to death and executed in show trials and summary trials for their involvement in the movement or as alleged ringleaders. In total, around 500 executions have been carried out since September 2022. The so-called morality police remained in office.
Even though the movement was pushed back and the regime was consolidated again, the old order has not been fully restored to this day. Women still take to the streets with their hair down and publicly break the regime’s reactionary dress codes – despite increased repression and draconian punishments. Although these heroines represent the spearhead of determined opposition, they are not a marginal phenomenon, especially in the cities, and their deeds are more or less openly supported by many in the population. This will to resist has remained unbroken, despite the decline of the movement.
But what are the reasons for this?
Firstly, the people themselves have changed. This is not only true of the protest movement since September 2022, which in part took on pre-revolutionary features. Basically, the Iranian regime and the economic elite have been facing ever new mobilisations since 2019, the beginning of an economic and anti-regime movement based mainly on the working class. These were driven by wage earners, by urban and rural poverty, and even by large sections of the middle classes and the petty bourgeoisie. In 2022, women played a central role, but also the youth and the oppressed nations and nationalities. Many activists from the movement report that awareness of various forms of social oppression has increased significantly in the opposition movement.
In addition, however, the strikes from 2019 as well as the mass protests since 2022, did not only shake the regime with mobilisations. They also created a layer of trade union and political activists and leaders, of semi-legal and illegal organisation, which gave the movement a certain continuity, even under repression.
Secondly, the regime’s basis of rule became thinner. Undoubtedly, the mullahs could, and still can, rely on a bloated and parasitic state and repressive apparatus. They also have a large monopoly over the media and, with the clergy, an additional central ideological apparatus. Moreover, despite the economic crisis, they continue to rely on a majority of the ruling capitalist class, which in turn is not only favoured by the regime, but whose parasitic special interests are ultimately the focus of Tehran’s economic policy.
Nonetheless, the alliance of bourgeoisie and theocracy, as well as their state functionaries and the petty-bourgeois strata closely linked to the state, defends its own privileges against a background of chronic stagnation and crisis, of massive inflation, unemployment and mass impoverishment. Even if Tehran is able to break its international isolation to some extent through ties with China, Russia and the agreement with Saudi Arabia, this does little to change the economic and social misery. Unlike in the first decade of this century, the regime has long since been unable to pacify the exploited and oppressed classes through economic successes and improvements in consumption levels.
On the contrary. Even daily, “normal” life is becoming more and more difficult, more and more unbearable. Many now fear the bad life more than repression and the danger of death. That is why so many are holding on to their resistance, or at least their sympathy for it, despite the brutality of the regime. For only this promises hope for a better, humane life.
This chronic crisis, even impasse, in which the overall political-economic system of Iran is stuck, has led to an extreme alienation of the majority of the population, of all those who are not connected to the regime through privileges, profits and clientelism. Its rule has to rely more and more on violence and repression. This also means that the next revolt, the next social onslaught is pre-programmed. On the anniversary of the protests that Jina Mahsa Amini’s death sparked, there will certainly be actions and demonstrations all over the country again. While it is unfortunately unlikely that these will reignite the movement, we should not forget that there were only three years between the mass mobilisations of 2019 and 2022. While we must not be over-optimistic and expect that it will take some time for the 2022 activists and movement to re-form, possibly around a new focus, a sustained political, social and economic consolidation of the regime is almost impossible.
This makes it all the more important to draw lessons from why the 2022 movement was unable to topple the regime and achieve its goals. This is essential if we are to prepare ourselves to succeed in the next onslaught.
The movement had put the regime on the defensive politically in September and November. More and more sectors of society joined in. There were nationwide work stoppages in some sectors, and temporary general strikes in the Kurdish regions. But, even though there were links between individual social sectors, the universities, workplaces, cities and regions, no centralising structures of struggle were formed to unite the movement.
General strike and armament
However, these would have been absolutely necessary in order to concentrate the spontaneous élan of the masses, in the common nationwide action against the regime – in short, in an indefinite general strike to overthrow it. Such a general strike should have been accompanied by the convening of regular mass meetings and the election of action councils to coordinate and lead the struggle. At the same time, it would have required the establishment of its own protection units. Without self-defence units, without militias of the workers and popular masses, without winning over the rank-and-file soldiers of the army and the formation of soldiers’ committees and councils, the centralised armed power of the regime could not have been broken.
Such a policy has to be prepared politically and ideologically in order to be taken up by the masses. In decisive situations, they cannot be created spontaneously. On the contrary, it needs a political force, a party, that fights and organises for this perspective and gives it a political goal.
Such a force did not exist. Even if a general strike and councils had developed out of the dynamics of the struggle, creating a dual power situation, that would not have solved the whole problem.
What revolution?
A general strike would have raised the question: Who rules in Iran, which social force, which class is to hold power?
The movement would thus have been faced with the question of what kind revolution is necessary to achieve its democratic demands and resolve the class contradictions that gave rise to them. Should the revolution be limited to a purely bourgeois one, that is, to the introduction of legal equality for women and parliamentary-democratic conditions? Or should it not rather have to combine democratic and socialist tasks, making the revolution permanent?
The experience of the Iranian revolution (and, in fact, of all revolutions of the 20th and 21st centuries) shows that democratic demands – in Iran especially those for equality and freedom for women – are inextricably linked to the class question.
Real liberation is ultimately impossible for women and oppressed nationalities under capitalism in Iran. Their oppression may at best take more elastic forms under a different bourgeois form of rule or a different elite (and even that is by no means certain).
Improving the condition of the masses – and especially women and oppressed nations – is impossible without addressing the profits, wealth, privileges, private property of the ruling class in Iran. Conversely, the working class itself can only rise to become the real leading force of a revolution if it links the crucial social questions to those of its own liberation, the expropriation of capital and the establishment of a democratically planned economy. Otherwise, the proletariat – regardless of gender – will remain a class of wage slaves.
The clarification of this question is absolutely necessary because bourgeois and directly reactionary, monarchist forces are also active in the Iranian opposition movement (including Western “democratic” imperialism). Their programme is basically to replace the current Islamist slaveholders with new bourgeois and pro-Western ones (if necessary, in alliance with parts of the current regime).
A political force that consistently expresses the interests of the working class, on the other hand, must break with all oppressive classes and their parties. And this means first of all that it must not limit its aims to purely democratic, purely bourgeois, ones.
The question of victory or defeat is not only one of survival for the Iranian masses, but also of central importance for the liberation struggle in the whole Middle East, especially in those countries where the Iranian regime exerts a direct counter-revolutionary influence.
Revolutionary Party
Such a perspective and a revolutionary programme that combines democratic and social demands with socialist measures, culminating in the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ government, do not arise by themselves. They require a force that consciously fights for them in the working class, in the universities and schools, among the youth, women and oppressed nationalities.
Only in this way can the steady advance of counterrevolution be stopped here and now – and those who fight most persistently for such demands, drawing the lessons not only of the last four months but of the last four decades, are those who can begin to build this force, a revolutionary party. Only such a party will be able to lead the struggle in all conditions, to operate underground when necessary, and to intervene in strikes, trade unions and, above all, mass movements, in the upsurge of the next struggles.