I appreciate the Professor's efforts here to define the negative qualities of the PMOI (the Peoples' Mujahadeen of Iran). It should be noted that the reference to MEK is documented with it's own motivation: Monafiqeen-e-Khalq (MEK) - the Iranian government consistently refers to the People's Mujahedin with this name, meaning "traitors of the people".  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Mujahedin_of_Iran   Many of those who founded it did so after their opposition to the Shah was perverted into a theocratic, anti-democratic regime. The internal opposition to the Iranian regime may have qualities that "progressives" are uncomfortable with. It is indeed consistent that we require adherence to the recognition of human rights to be recognized by all resistance forces. That does not mean that there are not some urgent attention needed on behalf of the Iranian people currently residing within the Islamic Republic of Iran, or in exile.

Teachers in Iran are currently enduring repression for their willingness to speak and organize on behalf of their liberties. University students and professors have likewise been forced to endure this repression as well. If one looks at their website there is more included on the issue of women's rights that stand out. If one tracks their public statement they are consistent going back years. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_cr/h920428-terror-pmoi.htm

It should not be forgotten that many forces exist along with MEK and PMOI, that include Kurdish constituencies such as PJAK http://www.turks.us/article~story~20070301131112913.htm and others with a more revolutionary perspective, such as the WCP-I http://www.wpiran.org/English/english.htm .

There should always be a willingness to address issues of concern in establishing whether certain groups deserve international support. We do know how maligned Nelson Mandela was during his imprisonment. Despite the intentions to discredit the struggle against apartheid, these criticisms were not successful in that regard. We should be just as wary at the comments by some against the Iranian Resistance, if they prove to be false. The MEK has publicly opposed US military intervention in Iran while opposing the strategy of the current regime regarding denial of human rights and nuclear proliferation. On this they should be praised and lauded without any obfuscation regarding the implications of current Iranian actions and the threat they present to regional peace and nation-to-nation interactions based on mutual recognition.

Regarding the PMOI, there is not agreement regarding their intentions and their political character as a force for change. I for one would encourage continued investigation into the matter include Ron Jacob's piece in CounterPunch http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs04102004.html , as well as other sources that document the perspective regarding PMOI actions and history. http://en.allexperts.com/e/p/pe/people's_mujahedin_of_iran.htm

In regards to the accusation of PMOI being a cult of Maryam Rajavi that is something that those who are working with that organization can honestly answer. When she makes a presentation, it is brief and to the point without self-adulation. http://www.ncr-iran.org/content/view/3035/69/ Her leading role as a woman in the resistance struggle is worth acknowledging as a positive aspect of the movement in Iran for equality and democracy, not a negative one.

by Martin Zehr (38 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 77 comments) on Sunday, Mar 25, 2007 at 12:44:33 PM

My apologies for not editing out the references to "MEK" in my response to appropraitely be "PMOI".

by Martin Zehr (38 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 77 comments) on Sunday, Mar 25, 2007 at 12:48:03 PM

Paul Sheldon Foote

 

March 26, 2007

 

For more than a decade, the neoconservatives and the Rajavi Cult have been very successful in publishing lies and disinformation in the major American media.  Finally, the Federal government closed the MEK’s press office (National Council of Resistance of Iran) in the National Press Building in Washington, D.C.  Former Attorney General John Ashcroft arranged for a raid of the home of Alireza Jafarzadeh in order to confiscate his documents.  When will the American government post all of these documents for the world to see?  Alireza Jafarzadeh went on to become a foreign affairs analyst for the Fox News Channel.  In the eyes of the leaders of the Rajavi Cult, America is truly a land of opportunity.  Where else in the world can you find so many dupes?

 

The Rajavi Cult has experimented with sending its press releases and articles and with providing supporters for interviews across America’s entire political spectrum.  To their amazement, the Rajavi Cult has learned that there are dupes across the entire American political spectrum.

 

Their problems have come at Web sites permitting comments.

 

On March 24, 2007, OpEdNews.com published:

 

Detente or Appeasement?

by Jubin Afshar

click here

 

Jubin Afshar, is Director of the Near East Project at Near East Policy Research in Washington, D.C. http://www.neareastpolicy.com/

 

The Web site of Near East Policy Research lists their successes in placing articles and in securing interviews in America.

 

Unfortunately for supporters of the MEK, OpEdNews.com permits readers to post comments and rebuttal articles.

 

On March 25, 2007, OpEdNews.com published my rebuttal article, “Can the Rajavi Cult Dupe Progressives?”

 

click here

 

The same day, a reader posted support for the MEK (PMOI) under the title,

“Is it Right to Rebel Against Authoritarianism?”

 

Claims made by supporters of the MEK are easy to refute.  Americans should focus upon using Web sites, such as OpEdNews.com, that permit readers to comment.  Dupes can continue watching the Fox News Channel and the other major television networks or reading newspapers permitting only supportive comments.

 

The following are examples of easy refutations to the lies and disinformation campaign of the neoconservatives and of the Rajavi Cult.

 

1.       Iranian supporters of the MEK prefer to use PMOI.  As any search engine search will reveal that Western writers, including supporters of the PMOI, prefer to use MEK or MKO.  The U.S. government document cited used both PMOI and MEK.

2.       Religious leaders in Iran use Monafiqeen (two-faced) for good reason.  The Shah of Iran jailed both Massoud Rajavi (and other MEK leaders) with religious leaders.  In jail, they knew each other well.  The Muslim religious leaders understood quickly that Massoud Rajavi was using the liberation theology approach to gain supporters in Iran.  Rajavi was not a Muslim.

3.       The MEK started in 1965, not in 1979.  The MEK’s goal was to overthrow the Shah of Iran and to expel Western imperialists.  Today, Rajavi Cult supporters want to dupe others into believing that the MEK was started to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran.  In 1979, the MEK was a major force working with Islamic leaders to overthrow the Shah of Iran.  The MEK demanded the executions of America’s hostages in the American Embassy.  From 1979 to 1981, the MEK and the Islamic leaders fought with each other to determine who would govern Iran.  Even Maryam Rajavi discloses at her Web site that the Shah of Iran was responsible for the death of one of her sisters and the Islamic Republic of Iran was responsible for the death of a second sister. 

4.       There was repression in Iran during the reign of the Shah.  China has 20 million political prisoners and executes 10,000 prisoners per year.  Writers should express opposition to all repression everywhere.  Iran does not have a monopoly on political repression.  The West has rewarded China with tens of thousands of factories and massive foreign trade following the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

5.       Which Iranian revolutionary groups refused to join the MEK’s National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)?  Why?

 

Saeed Salehinia (salehinia@aol.com), a Workers-Communist Party of Iran activist, has criticized the MEK on his Persian-language television programs and in his writings.  The following is his March 25, 2007 email to me confirming his position:

 

“I agree with you about the strategy of wright wing to censor and fool the people.Also I agree with you about "Mojahedin". As I mentioned many times in my programs, Mojahedin are part of Political Islamic movement with the same fanatic foundations of Islamic regime.They are part of dark senario in future Iran and the U.S government is using them as tools to push Islamic Regime , the same way the so caled "Afghani Mojahedins"were used to fight against Taleban.

 

The movement in Iran is far ahead from Mojahedin. This movement is secular and for freedom and equality.These concepts are against the Islamic movements, including Mojahedin.

 

In workers communist movement we do our best to marginalize this sect.”

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/traitorsusa/message/19322

 

Please note the names of the initial signers of the Stop War on Iran petition:

Initial Signers (add your name)

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Detroit Archdiocese*, Founding President, Pax Christi*
The Most Rev. Filipe C Teixeira, OFSJC, Diocesan Bishop, Diocese of Saint Francis of Assisi, CCA
Michael Parenti, author
Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General
Howard Zinn, author, historian
George Galloway, MP, Britain
Tony Benn, MP, Britain
Denis J. Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary-General
Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature
Margarita Papandreou, former First Lady of Greece
Ardeshir Ommani, co-founder of American-Iranian Friendship Committee (AIFC)
Ervand Abrahamian, Prof. ME History, Author, Between Two Revolutions
David N. Rahni, Professor and scholar, NY
David Sole, President UAW, Local 2334*, Detroit
Steve Gillis, President, USWA Local 8751*
Fellowship of Reconciliation, Nyack, NY
Thomas Koppel and Annisette, of the Scandanavian Popular Music Band Savage Rose

Dirk Adriaensens, coordinator SOS Iraq, exec. committee Brussells Tribunal)
Fatemeh Abdollahzadeh, Professor, Central Conn State University*, New Britain, CT
Dirk Adriaensens, coordinator SOS Iraq, exec. committee Brussells Tribunal
Amir Hossein Afrassiabi, Architect/poet, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Moji Agha, Founder, Universal Coalition For Interfaith And Intercultural Knowledge And Action (UCIIKA)*, Tucson, AZ
Sima Aprahamian, Asst. Prof. & Fellow, Sociology-anthropology & Simone De Beauvoir Institute*, Montreal, Canada
Hani Y. Awadallah, President, Arab American Civic Organization
Axis of Logic
Dr. Barbara Nimri Aziz, Executive producer of RadioTahrir-WBAI-NY
Afshin Babazadeh, Poet, London, United Kingdom
Brian Barraza, AMAT, Association of Mexican American Workers
Sharon Black, All Peoples Congress
Hamid Bonyadi, Legal advisor/Advocate, Attorney At Law, Teheran, Iran
Jean Bricmont, Brussels Tribunal
Brookline PeaceWorks
John Catalinotto, Editor – Metal of Dishonor
Ed Childs, Chief Steward, Unite Here Local #26*
Michel Collon, writer, publicist, Stop USA
Gerry Condon, Vietnam war deserter/antiwar activist, Director, Soldier Say No / Project Safe Haven
Heather Cottin, Freeport Community Worklink Center*
Tiphaine Dickson, attorney
LeiLani Dowell, Queers for Peace & Justice
Gregory Elich, author, researcher
Elena Everett, Chair, NC Green Party*, Co-Chair, GPAX (Green Party Peace Action Committee)*
Leslie Feinberg, Nat'l Lgbt Caucus Co-chair, National Writers' Union/UAW*, Jersey City, NJ
Sara Flounders, International Action Center
Lenora Foerstel, Vice Pres. Women for Mutual Security*
John Bellamy Foster, Editor, Monthly Review*, Eugene, OR*
Tiokasin Ghosthorse, First Voices Indigenous Radio
Peter Gilbert, FIST – Fight Imperialism, Stand Together
Farrukh Sohail Goindi, Foundation for Democracy-Pakistan
Teresa Gutierrez, NY Committee to Free the Cuba 5
Samia Halaby, Defend Palestine, NYC
Bagher R. Harand, Upper Grandview, NY
Klaus Hartmann, Chairman, German Freethinkers Association
Jesse Lokahi Heiwa, QueerJustice.org
Imani Henry, Playwright/Performer
Nellie Hester Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council
Sherif Hetata, MD, novelist,International Coordinating Committee of the Mediterranean Social Forum*
Connie Hogarth, director, Connie Hogarth Center For Social Action, Manhattanville College*, Purchase, NY
Larry Holmes, Troops Out Now Coalition
Eric Hooglund, Editor, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Hamline University*, St. Paul MN
Yoomi Jeong, Korea Truth Commission
Berta Joubert-Ceci, Philadelphia International Action Center
Charlotte Kates, NJ Solidarity – Activists for the Liberation of Palestine
Khadouri al-Kaysi, Committee to Support the Iraqi People
Nada Khader, Director of WESPAC* Foundation
Beth Lamont, NY Humanist Society*
Dustin Langley, No We Wont Go counter-recruiting network
The Audre Lorde Project
Robert Merrill, Ph.D.,Professor, Maryland Institute College of Art*, Baltimore, MD
MLK, Jr. Bolivarian Circle, Boston
Morteza Mohit, Glendale, CA
Monica Moorehead, Millions for Mumia
Milan Neuberg, President, The Party of Democratic Socialism, Czech Republic
New England Human Rights for Haiti
Erik-Anders Nilsson, Jersey City Peace Movement
Eleanor Ommani, American-Iranian Friendship Committee (AIFC)
Goli Ostadiar, Stop War with Iran, Tehran, Iran
John Parker, LeftBooks.com
Pam Parker, shop steward, Washington/Baltimore Newspaper Guild(WBNG) #32035
Rostam Pourzal, Iranian Cultural Association*, Washington DC
Ralph Poynter, New Abolitionist Movement*
Minnie Bruce Pratt, Lesbian Author/activist, National Writers Union*, Jersey City, NJ
Anne Pruden, 1199 SEIU delegate*
Milos Raickovich, composer, New York
Sami Ramadani, Senior Lecturer, London Metropolitan University*, London, United Kingdom
Mohammad Reza Rasaei, PhD, Univerity Of Tehran*, Tehran, Iran
Gloria Rubac, Steward, Houston Federation of Teachers, Local 2415*
Nawal El Saadawi, Writer and Psychiatrist, President, Arab Women's Solidarity Association*,
Nader Sadeghi, Associate Professor of Surgery, George Washington University*, Washington, DC,
Roudabeh Shafie, Founder, Action Iran, London, United Kingdom
Njeri Shakur, Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement
Reza Shirazi, Radio Producer, Fairfax Public Access TV*, Fairfax, VA
Nana Soul, Artists and Activists United for Peace
Annie & Buddy Spell, Covington Peace Project, Covington LA
Lynne Stewart, attorney
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
Johnnie Stevens, Peoples Video Network
Brenda Stokely, New York City Labor Against the War
Kambiz Sur Esrafil Jahangir, Founder/Secretary General, Iranian Diaspora Against Defamation And Aggression, San Diego, CA
David Swanson, Co-Founder, After Downing Street, Charlottesville, VA
Mark Lewis Taylor, Professor of Religion & Culture, Princeton Theological Seminary*
Nadje Tesich, Author, Playwright, Poet
Usavior, Artists and Activists United for Peace
Tony Van Der Meer, Prof. Univ. of Massachusetts*, Boston, MA
Saeed Vaseghi, Professor, Brunel University*, London, United Kingdom
Klaus von Raussendorff, Association for International Solidarity*, Germany
Michael Tarif Warren, attorney
Dave Welsh, Delegate, San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO*
Walter Williams, People Judge Bush

http://stopwaroniran.org/statement.shtml style="color: blue">

The signers include a wide range from communists to Republicans who were not duped by the neo-conservatives and by the Rajavi Cult.

You will find my name among the thousands of additional signers:

Paul Foote, Professor, California State University, Fullerton*, Fullerton, CA

Can you find even one MEK organization or supporter on this petition?  The MEK lies continually.  The MEK supports the military invasion of Iran because the MEK’s leaders believe that the neo-conservatives will impose the MEK’s totalitarian rule on the people of Iran.  In June 2003, Elizabeth Rubin reported in the New York Times Magazine:

“This past winter in Iran, when such a popular outburst among students and others was still just a dream, if you mentioned the Mujahedeen, those who knew and remembered the group laughed at the notion of it spearheading a democracy movement. Instead, they said, the Rajavis, given the chance, would have been the Pol Pot of Iran. The Pentagon has seen the fatal flaw of hitching itself to volatile groups like the Islamists who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and, more recently, the Iraqi exile groups who had no popular base at home. It seems dangerously myopic that the U.S. is even considering resurrecting the Rajavis and their army of Stepford wives.”

 

--Elizabeth Rubin, “The Cult of Rajavi”, New York Times Magazine, July 13, 2003.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/magazine/13MUJAHADEEN.html?ei=5007&en=6b6a11b0fdb450b1&ex=1373428800&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=print&position=

 

6.       Massoud Banisadr’s 1992 representations placed in the Congressional Record are a poor choice for defending the MEK.

 

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_cr/h920428-terror-pmoi.htm

 

In 2004, Masoud Banisadr’s book revealed in great detail the bizarre practices of the Rajavi Cult:

Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel (Paperback)
by Masoud Banisadr

click here

You will find Masoud Banisadr’s book being promoted on a leading Web site opposed to the Rajavi Cult, Iran-Interlink.org:

 

• The Iranian Mojahedin (E.Ebrahimian,Yale University Press)
• Riekcross investigates
• Resistance in the rise (MKO publication)
• Mojahedin Terrorist Oporations
• Saddams Private Army Author: A. Singleton
• Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel by Masoud Banisadr
• Burned alive in the name of Marx and Mohammed byAlain Chevalierias
• A Shared Pain
• Autopsy of an Ideological Drift (By Antoine Gessler)
• Secret of Fire
• Books on Cults and Cult Culture
• Survivors Report

click here

7.       The viewers of the Fox News Channel and the voters for hundreds of Democrats and Republicans in Congress who support the Rajavi Cult are the biggest dupes in America.

   Biography: Alireza Jafarzadeh

Alireza Jafarzadeh is the president of Strategic Policy Consulting, Inc. He is also a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs Analyst. Alireza Jafarzadeh is the author of “The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis” (Palgrave Macmillan, January 2007).

 

click here

 

 

 

 

of the neoconservatives and of the Rajavi Cultto the MEK'sews.com which permit readers to comment.  Dupes can continue watching

by Paul Sheldon Foote (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 72 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Mar 26, 2007 at 8:14:38 PM

Opposing the PMOI and supporting the Islamic Republic of Iran is like supporting Turkey's plans against the Kurdistan Regional Government. It's a neo-con maneuver..

 Since the mid-1980s, the MEK has not mounted terrorist operations in Iran at a level similar to its activities in the 1970s.  Aside from the National Liberation Army's attacks into Iran toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war, and occasional NLA cross-border incursions since, the MEK's attacks on Iran have amounted to little more than harassment. The MEK has had more success in confronting Iranian representatives overseas through propaganda and street demonstrations.

http://www.iran-interlink.org/?mod=view&id=889

 

by Martin Zehr (38 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 77 comments) on Monday, Mar 26, 2007 at 9:04:42 PM

This list of neoconservatives supporting the Rajavi Cult is a very long list.

You can start with researching:

Congressman Tom Tancredo

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

Iran Policy Committee (former CIA and military employees)

This list of neoconservatives opposed to the Rajavi Cult is a short list:

Michael Rubin

Kenneth Timmerman

If you can identify other neoconservatives who oppose the Rajavi Cult, please post the list.

 

 

by Paul Sheldon Foote (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 72 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Mar 26, 2007 at 10:15:49 PM

 Iran-Interlink noted the source of the document posted at the cited link:

http://www.iran-interlink.org/?mod=view&id=889

It is:

click here should study Iran-Interlink's Web site for thorough documentation of the Rajavi Cult's terrorist acts updated to the current operations inside Iran.  Anyone who watches the Fox News Channel on a regular basis has heard military analysts bragging that America has "boots on the ground" operating inside Iran now.  

On January 15, 2003, supporters of the Rajavi Cult placed a full-page advertisement in the New York Times with the title:

"150 Members of U.S. Congress Declare Support for the People's Mojahedin (PMOI), Call for an End to Iran's Terrorist Regime"

Over a long period of time, the Rajavi Cult has enjoyed strong support from hundreds of members of Congress (both Democrats and Republicans). 

Under pressure from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the neo-conservatives (neo-Trotskyites) in the American government closed the office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in the National Press Building in Washington, D.C.  Alireza Jafarzadeh needed a new job.  He found one as a foreign affairs analyst for the Fox News Channel.

click here (Neo-Trotskyite) support for the Rajavi Cult is very strong. See, for example, the efforts of the Iran Policy Committee (former CIA employee, former military officers, and a professor) for the extent of resources being devoted by a single organization for promoting the Rajavi Cult in Congress and in the media.

http://www.iranpolicy.org/

Do real progressives support the positions expressed by Alireza Jafarzadeh on the Fox News Channel and by the positions posted by the Iran Policy Committee?

 

 

by Paul Sheldon Foote (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 72 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Mar 28, 2007 at 10:58:37 AM

An activist in the Workers-Communist Party of Iran has sent to me proof that the founder of the Workers-Communist Party of Iran did NOT support the PMOI (MEK, MKO, NCRI, Rajavi Cult, Pol Pot of Iran):

________________________________

From: salehinia@aol.com [mailto:salehinia@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 4:07 PM
To: pfoote@cox.net
Subject: Saeed to Paul# 5 (3/26)


Dear Paul,
 
Here is Mansor Hekmat(The Founder of Workers communist party)'s Article on "Mojahedin"in 1994.
Please read it carefully :
 

       Mujahed's Forbidden Dreams


Why a Mujahed Government stands no chance of Coming to Power



The People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (Mujahedeen) leadership seems peculiarly fascinated by governmental power and its rites, ceremonies and accessories. Obviously any serious political party strives after power as an instrument which allows it to put its goals and programme to practice. The Mujahedeen's interest in political power, however, is not of the same metal. It is not earthly or political. It is a semi-religious, semi-infantile obsession. It is as if attaining the state of power is the final stage of the exaltation of the organisation or the fulfilment of the destiny of its leaders, or that the presidential palace is the earthly equivalent of heaven itself. Governmental power for the Mujahedeen is an enchanting dream. In their midst, words such as president, leader, prime minister, cabinet, minister, commander, and so on have an extraordinary ring. And just like kids who arrange their dolls and play out their dreams, the Mujahedeen are usually engaged in a 'government game'; 'now I am president', 'now you are prime minister'. The end of the game is not known. The recent round, in which 'now Maryam' is the president with a number of dolls in the form of artists, poets, writers, and athletes, playing guests in Europe, will certainly not be the last. The way these people pay tribute to their own surname the whole thing would probably end up in Tehran or in an oasis somewhere in southern Arabia, with a declaration of monarchy and a private coronation ceremony.

If this was a simple game, if it was entirely childish, we would all become its audience and amuse ourselves at the players' gambols and stunts. But the stage is that of politics and a struggle for power, which in the world as it is has assumed horrendous undertones. It is serious, even if the Mujahedeen themselves are not. It has actual consequences for real people, even if the Mujahedeen themselves are rambling about in their dream world. The gist of the matter is that by virtue of the objective social and political conditions in Iran, by virtue of the characteristics of this specific period, and by nature of the attributes of the Mujahedeen organisation and its strategy for action, governmental power is a forbidden fruit for this organisation. Circumstances cancel out the possibility for the Mujahedeen and their 'National Resistance Council' to assume power. Let us see why.


After the Islamic Republic In Which Scenario can the Mujahedeen be the main Character?

Up until now, there has been a common and crucial assumption in the explications of all Iranian opposition forces concerning the future course of political events which must now unfortunately be questioned. All existing forces from Right to Left, irrespective of their policy and strategy in countering the Iranian regime, present the future course of events as one of a change of the central government in Iran, and the replacement of the Islamic regime with another government. One of them might regard this shift as the result of the people's revolution, and the other as the outcome of a military coup or a gradual change in the existing regime. One visualises the future government as Leftist and free and the other as Rightist and autocratic. One anticipates a modern and secular political system, and the other an ethnic or religious one. At any rate, however, in all these 'explications' one government gives place to another. According to this explication, crisis, conflict, revolution and coup d'etat would be a link between two 'non-critical' and 'ordinary' state of affairs. At the end of this process, society, the government, and economic life are firmly in position. The government, the people, and Iran are as ever. In light of the political and economic situation in Iran, and the important ongoing international events, this assumption is increasingly turning out to be unjustifiable. Another course is becoming feasible according to which the process of the disintegration of the Islamic Republic of Iran would result in an extended, almost permanent state of conflict, a complicated mixture of military squirearchy, foreign invasion, and geographical, and to some extent ethnic disintegration of the country. The course of political events in various countries in the post Cold War period from Yugoslavia and Afghanistan to Rwanda, Somalia and the previous Soviet states, display the unbelievable dimensions of the hardships imposed on millions of people by the alternative scenario. If we call the first scenario ordinary or 'white', the second scenario can, charitably, be labelled 'black'. This is a virtual nightmare which becomes more likely as time passes. The approach of various political forces to this second probability or more specifically, having a clear policy to prevent the black scenario in the course of the downfall of the Islamic Republic, is as important a criterion in judging various parties as their programmes and goals.

Moreover, a broad spectrum of political forces and currents, both in the government and among the opposition, each fit into one or the other scenario according to their political and organisational attributes, their social standing, their relation to social classes, and their strategy, goals, and methods - just as their existence and activities serve to fulfil one or the other scenario. Looked at carefully, the Mujahedeen can only become a personage, and a minor one at that, in the second, i.e. the black scenario.


The Mujahedeen's Strategy

The Mujahedeen's own strategy to obtain power and form government is infantile and illusory. This strategy is predominantly inspired by the model of the coming to power of Khomeini - the only problem being that it seems to ignore the crucial differences between nearly all the factors involved in the downfall of the monarchy in Iran and present day circumstances.

The key concept for the Mujahedeen is the word 'alternative'. The informing principle in the Mujahedeen's strategy is to establish themselves in whatever suitable organisational wrapping such as the National Resistance Council, etc. as the practical and political alternative of the existing regime. 'Alternative' thus turns into a term which is contrived to replace discarded concepts and formulae such as 'organisation and leadership of the Revolution', 'obtaining hegemony', 'military victory', and so on. The Mujahedeen do not aim at starting a revolt, uprising, coup, etc. against the Islamic regime, as the means of assuming power. Their assumption is that the people themselves will get their fill of the Islamic regime, that the economic and political crisis will in time paralyse the Islamic Republic and cause its downfall. The Mujahedeen's task in the interval is regarded as that of having to establish itself as the natural and obvious 'alternative' of the crumbling regime. The process of the downfall itself would put power at the disposal of the major opposition force. The Mujahedeen will not have to defeat anyone, but to become the first name in the list of candidates for the next government. This, of course, is similar to the process that brought Khomeini and the Islamic trend to power. The Muslims of the Khomeini faction were marginal to the entire anti-monarchic opposition up until a few months before the uprising. They did not play a substantial role in starting the 1979 revolution, and more specifically, in the political struggle in the previous period. But they managed, in a manner that we shall discuss a bit further down, to establish their slogans, personalities and political trend as the alternative to the Shah's regime and even to lay hands on the outcome of the uprising that they themselves had tried to forestall.

But how to become an alternative? Which office bestows the title? Who is the authority that underwrites one's credentials? The Mujahedeen's answer is modelled on the Khomeini trend. The main political Mecca is the West and Western governments. It is these powers that have the propaganda, material, political and diplomatic capabilities to represent and display their trend as a political alternative. The Khomeini regime was the product of the Guadeloupe meeting. They transferred a relatively obscure Mullah (obscure in comparison with the reputation of the Fedaii and Mujahedeen guerrilla groups, the Tudeh Party, the National Front, Left liberal intellectuals, etc.) from Iraq to France, and under their projectors, they represented the revolution as Islamic and the Iranian people in their entirety as the disciples and followers of His Holiness, the Ayatollah. They declared, tacitly and explicitly, that they consent to the reign of this trend and regard it as the real alternative to the Shah's government. They gave their self-concocted army and docile National Front to understand that they should fall in with them, and finally, they sent their people there to take power over from the Shah and hand it to the Islamists before the people's onslaught. The Mujahedeen has similar hopes and expectations. From their point of view, becoming an alternative means receiving this go ahead from Western governments.

This Mujahedeen strategy, however, also has a dimension aimed at inside the country. To begin with, from their point of view, the Iranian people and their image of the place of political parties and trends in the future structure of power, also play some role. Further and more importantly, establishing oneself in Europe and the US involves being able to present oneself as an active opposition force inside the country, with an actual base among the people, and some leverage for political intervention there. By virtue of this fact, however, this 'internal' activity will have to be resounding, propagandistic, theatrical, and to the taste of the media. What the Iranian people themselves think of this organisation and to what extent they come in contact with its activities are secondary to what these very people might hear about the Mujahedeen from the Western media. According to the Mujahedeen, again as the Khomeini experience has supposedly proven, the approval of the US, France, and Britain is itself the most effective means of attracting public opinion in Iran itself. The Iran-directed activity of the Mujahedeen should therefore have an orientation and content facing abroad. Khomeini could for instance show that he had a base inside the country; and that there were still religious prejudices, a certain strata that could be provoked by religion or the existence of the widespread network of mosques, mullahs, and Friday prayer sessions, which could be used as a machinery for political activity. Moreover, the West had for long recognised the potential of Islam and the religious hierarchy in Middle Eastern countries in stirring up reactionary and anti-communist movements.

To become an alternative, the Mujahedeen must also prepare its credentials from inside the country. The Mujahedeen activities inside Iraq and its various military gestures are supposed to serve this purpose. The Mujahedeen Organisation itself knows that a number of units made up of relatives and sympathisers dispatched from Europe, with 13 borrowed helicopters and 11 tanks which cannot even be serviced would, in today's world, not stand up to the forces loyal to the elder of the first village on the way. But the Mujahedeen also knows that this is the world of armed opposition at borders, and of the rhetoric of 'occupation', 'aggression', 'cease-fire', and so on, and such gestures are effective in obtaining appointments in European capitals and attracting scandal mongering and malleable journalists. This is the objective followed by the Mujahedeen in various periods resulting in the Rambo-like exclusion of Banisadr and its declaration of the Iranian army's support for it, pretending to have the support of the Kurds who fight for self-determination, or that of various opposition parties in Iran, or engaging in 'military operations', and so on. These activities are in essence propagandistic-theatrical, and their purpose is to gain recognition for the Mujahedeen as the main opposition force and a ruling alternative by Western governments and public opinion.

Contradictions and Discrepancies

The problems with the strategy of the Mujahedeen and its inconsistencies with objective reality are manifold. The fact is that this strategy is based on a schoolboy concept of politics. Let us list some of these contradictions:

1. The times have changed. Western governments that, maybe for the few middle decades of this century, had a relatively free hand in setting up political regimes in some dominated countries lack effective leverage in the political scene of even the most backward and dependant country at this moment in history. The very rise of the Islamic Republic and the Islamic trend in the Middle East and North Africa indicated the beginning of a change in the practical relations of superpowers with bourgeois states and trends on a local level. From the occupation of the American embassy in Iran to the recent events in Somalia, Iraq, and now Haiti, things point to the fact that Western powers do not command a considerable manoeuvring capability even as regards the chummiest, most dependant, and reactionary regimes in small countries. The post Cold War period maximised this trend. These days, particularly in the context of enormous convolutions and ambiguities, almost any governmental or non-governmental bourgeois centre and circle, is convinced that by applying pressure, persisting on one's position, not giving in, at times even through adventurism and resorting to force, it can demand a larger share from the superpowers in the division of political and economic power on the global scene. The Mujahedeen, still wandering in the heyday of neo-colonialism and the teachings of the National Front and the Freedom Movement, takes its idea of politics from this period. The world, however, has changed.

The Shah's regime was among the last US made to order, coup d'etat type governments in its area of influence, at least outside of Latin America. The very transfer of American support from the Shah to Khomeini sufficed to put an end to the monarchic regime. But the Islamic regime is not in that position and the people are not the same. Neither does the Islamic Republic fall into disarray by the Mujahedeen being hypothetically regarded as an alternative by the West, nor do the people nowadays regard the simple support of the US and the West for a party or trend as the basis for seeing it as an alternative. In particular, the experience of Nicaragua, Angola, Afghanistan, Iraq, and even Iran prove that the West is increasingly using this variety of 'armed' extra-territorial 'alternative' only to exert pressure, and draw reforms and modifications from existing situations and regimes. To put it in a nutshell, the Mujahedeen is a latecomer to the Western royal court. Even the recognition of the Mujahedeen as a Western alternative against the Islamic Republic, quite improbable as it is, does not bring them close enough to the formation of the next government.

2. The Mujahedeen lacks the qualities required for a political and governmental alternative. Even today (in distinction from the urban guerrilla days) the Mujahedeen is still purely a sect. It is not a trend with social roots, reflecting the protests, aspirations, and ideals of certain sectors and strata in society, even of archaic and marginal ones. Unlike religious splinter groups, for example, the doctrinal attributes of the Mujahedeen and reasons for its divergence from the official mainstream are not clear. The intellectual and political principles of this group are shifty and arbitrary, declared by its high priest in correspondence with the interests of the sect at each juncture. The Mujahedeen can appear on the scene as a religious trend with a portrait of Khomeini, or a liberal Islamic trend with a portrait of Mossadegh as needs be. The political and economic system, the cultural criteria and administrative regulations of a society run by the Mujahedeen is unpredictable for the Iranian people. They are not holding any specific banner, and do not represent a task, protest, or ideal within society itself. The only stable and observable dimensions of their political personality is that their leadership is fascinated by government power, and irrespective of how pale or colourful religion may be in their propaganda, they have Islamic origins and upbringing.

Even in the heyday of colonialism, it was impossible to put in power a sect devoid of political identity in a country of 60 million people. This is even more of an impossibility today. Only rooted social trends born in the context of a defined tradition of protest and struggle can appear as alternatives to society as a whole at historical turning points. Society is not a lunatic asylum; nor is it a boy scouts camp or a student dormitory. It has a historical memory; politics in it is linked to the class and economic foundations of society.

A comparison between the Khomeini and Mujahedeen currents can be telling. Khomeini rose within the matrix of rooted, though counterveiled, political traditions in Iran, such as Mashruism (demanding a return to Sharia or Islamic tradition) and pan-Islamism. That it found another historical chance to come to the fore was due to strategic global confrontations and Cold War equations. Khomeini's Islam was implemented in a new capacity as a newly discovered weapon in the confrontation of the West with the Eastern bloc, and the growth of Leftism and working class communism. The Khomeini trend rose on the shoulders of the anti-modernism and anti-Western sentiments of the desperate petty bourgeoisie of a country dominated by the US. The Islamic model actually posed a recognisable model in economics and politics vis-à-vis the previous model. This model had important components such as economic self-sufficiency and non-aligned foreign policy, the attack on modernism and Western culture as well as the pursuit of regional hegemony, in common with the political platform of the bourgeois opposition of the Shah, from the Aryanist Right to the populist Left. That was why it practically carried this whole opposition along with it. In the guise of the Islamic Republic, society for a period of time and out of illusions, desperation, and eventually force, allowed an old political tradition to act as a governmental alternative in different circumstances and in a transformed image.

The Mujahedeen, however, is long removed from all this. It is a rootless, unsocial, and theatrical organisation. It lacks, not only a defined political countenance, but also any provisional desirability for social classes.

3. The Mujahedeen lacks the necessary doctrinal and programmatic features required for attaining power. Nor does it stop at this, for it also positively has an unsuitable and obtrusive ideology. It was imaginable that the people should for one reason or another try the Islamic alternative against the autocratic and pro-Western monarchy. It is not clear, however, how the people who will pull down the Islamic government will install another Islamic alternative. This means that the Mujahedeen cannot come to power alongside the people or through their revolution. It must, provided that it can and will do so, assume power in opposition to the revolution. The Islamicism of the Freedom Movement, for instance, is an advantage for this trend, because it turns it into a real candidate for power under circumstances of gradual change of the Islamic regime from within. But the Islamicism of the Mujahedeen is a liability, because it wants to come to power at a time when the people have managed to pull the regime down. Society will concede a continuation of Islam in government only to the extent that the overthrow of the Islamic regime may be beyond reach, and the people seek an improvement in conditions with the transformation of the existing regime. But the uprising and overthrow of the Islamic regime would mean the condemnation and isolation of any trend related to Islam and Islamicism in Iran. The Mujahedeen as an Islamic organisation outside the present government would not be a noteworthy alternative for the people, either in conditions of the transformation of the regime or in conditions of uprising and overthrow.

4. The practical process of the Mujahedeen's coming to power and establishing itself is unclear. The Mujahedeen is completely silent on this issue. We do not know by which actual mechanism and as a result of which movements it would come to power and establish its legitimacy and legality in the country, given the considerable obstacles in the way. Suppose, for the sake of argument that the Mujahedeen has come to power and Mrs. Rajavi is now reigning in the presidential palace and Mr. Rajavi is reigning in the Mujahedeen headquarters a few blocks down the road. Let us pose a few simple questions:

- Through which specific process has the Mujahedeen assumed power - popular revolution, military coup, military occupation and the occupation of Tehran by external forces, or what? Considering the wide range of political forces, factions and parties, each of which would bid for their own power, it is difficult to see why each of these processes should favour the Mujahedeen in particular. Through which process have the people accepted the legitimacy of the Mujahedeen and the National Resistance Council? How have the leaders of strikes, street protests, sit ins and even mass uprising in a society which has already experienced the outcome of naïve optimism and the illusoriness of 'let's all stick together' of 1979, recognised the legitimacy of a Mujahedeen government?

- The overthrow of the Islamic regime, unlike that of the Shah's, would certainly not take place through its evaporation and a declaration of solidarity of its remnants with the new regime. The Islamic trend is alive in the region, and moreover, even in the European heartland today, it is a time for contending warlords. Various factions of the Islamic regime are already armed to the teeth, and operate as organised parties within a single government. The defeat of the Islamic Republic would leave behind a range of armed Islamic parties each of which should be neutralised and cancelled out. Even the weakest of these would far exceed the Mujahedeen forces in terms of numbers and armament. How has the Mujahedeen managed to abrogate these, prevail over them and spread the control of the Mujahedeen government or the National Resistance Council over the entire country?

- What has become of the Left, the communists, and all the trends which are already now saying that they will not succumb to an Islamic government, including that of the Mujahedeen? How have they been cancelled out or brought to accept the reign of Mr. and Mrs. Rajavi?

Ambiguities and contradictions are numerous in the Mujahedeen strategy for power. Some of these are felt by their leaders as well. They have, for instance, noticed that being Islamic is a serious drawback in Iranian politics and in society which is experiencing an immense wave of retreat from religion and religious government. The recent Mujahedeen manoeuvres to pose as modern and secular are meant to make up for this drawback. They have, for instance, guessed that it is not possible to lay claim to political power as a sect suspended in space, instead of being part of a protesting, struggling bedrock in society. The 'red Alavi Shiism', 'monotheistic classless society', and the economic and political ideals of the Tehran bazaar and its nationalist tradesmen definitely belong to the era previous to the historical flight and the transformation of the organisation. They cannot play a part in defining the current identity of the organisation, and even if they did, they certainly must be discarded. After extensive surveys and trials and errors they have come to the conclusion that they should present themselves as nationalist followers of Mossadegh. This is a rather naïve effort in which analysis has taken the place of reality. The Mujahedeen ethics and their view of the world, of society and of human beings, and even of themselves are distinctly religious. The organisation has had a religious origin, their activists and spokespersons have an Islamic appearance, and they still justify the behaviour of their leadership by referring to the 'Prophet's behaviour'. Up until a few days ago, they have had nothing to do with Mossadegh and the National Front. Society and the outside world would not mistake the Mujahedeen for Mossadegh and the National Front - which was secular, modernist, and imbedded in the liberal-nationalist tradition - simply because some woman in a headscarf poses for a picture under Mossadegh's portrait. Even if national liberalism has a chance to come to power in Iran - which we shall not discuss here - it would be represented by forces which in reality have been part of this tradition by virtue of historical background. The ministers and MPs in question would come from this trend. The people will not take a masquerade for real life.

The illusions and self-deceptions, and the substitution of theatrical effects for real political work proves, independent of any other reasoning, that the Mujahedeen do not have a chance in the political future of Iran after the Islamic Republic.


The Mujahedeen and the Black Scenario

If the Mujahedeen has no place in the first, 'white' scenario, how would it fare in the 'black' one? What are the possibilities of the Mujahedeen coming to power in the context of commotion, civil war, and the disintegration of Iran as a single political and administrative entity?

The truth is that it does not take much to have a place in the second scenario. Not only the Mujahedeen, and all political parties and groupings which exist today or can come out of the belly of the Islamic Republic in the event of its explosion, but any creature and adventurist who could afford to feed some one hundred mouths and fabricate a specific ethnic or religious identity for them, or simply intimidate them, could find themselves a place in the nightmare of the political future of Iran. In a country in crisis, in a defeated and deadlocked capitalism, under every stone, at the bottom of every slimy ditch, can be found a 'president', prime minister', 'leader' and 'Imam'.

The Mujahedeen has prepared some of the prerequisites for participating in the latter, the black scenario. It has learnt how to enlist the support of this or that government. It is familiar with the market for second hand arms. It is well versed in the art of sect-building. It enjoys a unique sectarianism and organisation-worship. It is a 'survivor' and has specifically shown that its capacity for flexibility and adaptability is immense. Nonetheless, even under such circumstances, the Mujahedeen will be a secondary player. At that time, the Mujahedeen can have its own president. Indeed, it is only under such conditions as part of the people's nightmare, that their dream of presidency could be fulfilled. But 'President Rajavi' will then be one of the several self-appointed presidents, prime ministers, and leaders in the country who would be aiming at each other with rockets and artillery, and destroying people's towns, homes, factories, hospitals and schools.

The Mujahedeen, even despite its conscious political preference, is an organisation that by nature belongs to this nightmare. One of the possibilities as a result of which this explosion can occur and this catastrophe can be set loose is if the West should try to put in power in Tehran the Mujahedeen or a similar group through pressure and political wheelings and dealing, and impose it on the people who have overthrown the Islamic regime. Society and its political forces would react vehemently to such a situation. From the point of view of progressivism in the country, any attempt to repeat the Khomeini scenario would be a call to continue the revolutionary struggle. From the viewpoint of the overthrown reactionary force and its various offshoots, the coming to power of a sectarian Mujahedeen government would signal the exhaustion of the people's movement and revolution and give a green light to stay on the competitive scene for power. The Mujahedeen strategy to form government, maybe despite their own wishes, is only one of the possible detonators for the situation to explode, and for the nightmare of civil war and chaos in Iran to be unleashed.


Which Future, Which Alternative?

Can the black scenario be avoided? Which forces can help society pass through this predicament, or in the event of civil war and turmoil, to put an end to it as quickly as possible? What is to be done? It is of paramount importance to draw the attention of all opposition political forces in Iran to this junction. Many things in the future Iran, including the very livelihood and survival of millions of people, depend upon how the serious trends in opposition regard this dilemma now, and to what extent their tactics hinge on avoiding the black scenario in the course of the downfall of the ominous Islamic regime. This should become the theme of an independent article in a later issue. Here, I would only like to make a few brief points:

1. The black scenario, even if quite probable given the present day realities, can still be avoided.

2. Any process through which ethnic, sectarian, religious, oppressive, non-secular, and non-modern forces get closer to power is a process leading to the enactment of the black scenario. The only guarantee against the nightmare that hangs over the Iranian people and Iranian society is a free, modern, secular government based on the recognition of the broadest social and welfare rights and against any form of discrimination in society, and committed to provide a free, legal, political framework for the contention between social movements and forces. Any streak of reaction and backwardness in the governmental alternative which is formed would directly contribute to the fulfilment of the black scenario.

3. Which forces can be the components of a 'normal' or 'white' process? The working class and the communists must be the pillar of such an alternative, but the social forces that benefit from such a process are far more. In fact, the real threat is from forces and parties which are not rooted in the political economy of the capitalism of present day Iran - fringe trends such as the Mujahedeen themselves which represent limited and often sectarian interests and have no roots in the social movement and the interests of the main working classes of a capitalist society. Real social trends that represent more lasting and basic issues and interests in the class struggle would all benefit from the course of events following a 'normal' process. Working class communism, liberalism, and Left reformism which include most traditional Leftist organisations are logically forces belonging to a 'normal' course of change. Moreover - and this is extremely important - a free, modern and secular political system is the demand of an extremely broad sector of the population. This is the most important lesson that the people have learnt from living under the Islamic Republic.

As I said, this should be discussed independently. As far as the Mujahedeen are concerned, I cannot say more than that they are irresponsible, immature, adventurists, and under-politicised. The gates of state and political power in Iran are not open to them. The people do not stand to gain from them. Like all similar trends, especially in the post Cold War period, they can cause serious damage. For someone who is even slightly concerned about the future, the show they are staging is definitely not amusing.

The above is a translation from Persian of the article originally published in International No. 15, September 1994.

by Paul Sheldon Foote (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 72 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Mar 26, 2007 at 10:08:08 PM

I'll research WCP-I website in the meantime. JANB. (Just Another Neo-con betrayal) Remember how Bushie I sold out the Kurds after telling them to rise up.

 

Try this post on wcp-i website for instance

http://www.wpiran.org/English/wb185%20Political%20Islam%20is%20the%20Problem%20on%2077%20london%20attack%20mn.htm

 

Or this one:

http://www.wpiran.org/English/WPI%20Briefing/190wpibriefing.pdf

 

Or this one:

 http://www.wpiran.org/English/WPI%20Briefing/194wpibriefing.pdf

 

or even:

Mansoor Hekmat: I think the Left's intellectual fatigue and the blows which radical and critical thought and social idealism took from the mid-70s onward, have also afflicted many Left and well-wishing intellectuals

 

 with a regrettable

 

tactical,

 

stage-ist,

 

gradualist

 

and evolutionist view

of the struggle for basic human ideals.

 A hundred years ago, the avant-garde humanity would have laughed at the proposition that human liberation could be achieved through

priests, moderation of religion and the emergence of new interpretations from within the church. Today, sadly, 'professional scholars' and academics can prescribe that the Iranian woman can for now take secularism to mean the addition of a lighter shade of black to the officially approved colours for the veil. In my opinion, this overlooks the dynamics of revolution and change in society. Up to now, the world has advanced through upheavals - spectacular and swift transformations in thought, technique and social relations.
In my opinion, what is utopian and impossible is moderation of Islam and a gradual transformation of Islamic regimes to secular governments. And what is real and probable, and in the case of Iran, now inevitable, is the realisation of secularism through a mass anti-religious uprising, against existing governments and all the different interpretations and readings of Islam.

by Martin Zehr (38 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 77 comments) on Monday, Mar 26, 2007 at 10:43:55 PM

Mansoor Hekmat died in 2002.  Updates on the Worker-communist Party of Iran will require the study of the writings of other party members.

Worker-communists reject all other forms of communism and other left-wing groups.  The first article you cited rejected by name a left-wing signer of the Stop War on Iran statement.

A good starting point for understanding why Mansoor Hekmat rejected Massoud Rajavi and the Left would be his biography posted at the party's Web site:

http://www.m-hekmat.com/biographyEn.html

Who was Mansoor Hekmat?

 

by Hamid Taghvaie

 

The life of Mansoor Hekmat (Zhoobin Razani), the great Marxist thinker and leader of the Worker- communist Party and worker-communist movement, was not separate from the history of this movement and party in any of its moments or ups and downs. This is both a biography and, at the same time, a history of Revolutionary Marxism and worker-communism in Iran.

Zhoobin Razani was born in 1951 in Tehran. He completed his primary and secondary education in Tehran and his higher education, in Economics, at the University of Shiraz. He arrived in London in 1973 to continue his postgraduate studies. It was at this time that he turned to reading Marx's Capital and other works. And it was in Marxism that his critical, vibrant and enquiring mind found the answers to his fundamental questions on the truth of the existing unjust and inhuman world and the way to change it. Young Zhoobin's profound and uncompromising humanism and love for freedom blended with Marx's radical critique of capitalism. Thus 'Mansoor Hekmat' and Mansoor Hekmat's Marxism were born. This Marxism had no kinship with the existing Marxism. Russian and Chinese Communism, the guerrilla warfare movement, Social Democracy and Trotskyism were all themselves subject of criticism by Mansoor Hekmat's communism. In contrast to these distorted accounts of Marxism, he began directly from Marx, and brought back to Marxism its humanism and radicalism. Hekmat's Marxism was a relentless critic of nationalism, religion, democracy, liberalism and reformism. Those left tendencies who were imbued with these views did not escape this sharp criticism. A left that had reduced Marxism to a prescription for reforming the existing system was, above all, criticised by this revived Marxism.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution and the advent of Revolutionary MarxismMansoor Hekmat's early writings, now considered among the classics of Marxism in Iran, deal with problems raised by the 1979 Iranian revolution. The revolution criticised and rejected the ideas of the traditional left on the streets. The theories of the guerrilla movement, Maoism, and Tudeh-ism were criticised and refuted in practice through social revolutionary practice. The workers' movement and the revolutionary left, however, needed to raise an independent theoretical banner. Hekmat's early writings were a response to this necessity, and thus quickly gained acceptance in the left movement as well as among labour leaders.

Different branches of the traditional left in Iran all represented what amounted to objections to different aspects of the underdevelopment of capitalism in Iran. Some of them even believed the Iranian economy to be feudal or semi-feudal, and therefore believed certain sections of the Iranian bourgeoisie to be progressive and revolutionary. In views put forward by organisations such as the People's Fedaii Guerrillas or the Tudeh Party, which believed Iran to be a capitalist country, certain sections of the bourgeoisie and the petty- bourgeoisie were assessed as progressive and revolutionary. All organisations of the traditional left, irrespective of their differences, in fact represented a movement that, at the very most, objected to the shortcomings of capitalism, and not capitalist exploitation itself. The force carrying the banner of Marxism at the time in Iran was, indeed, as Hekmat showed later in developing worker-communism, the left wing of the anti-Shah nationalist-religious movement and had nothing to do with the workers' movement or worker- communism's critique of capitalism. This fact was clearly observable not only in their irrelevance to communism and the communist critique of capitalist exploitation, but also in their attitudes towards all social and political issues raised daily by the revolutionary situation in society. This left had nothing to say with regard to such issues as workers' rights and demands, civil rights, women's liberation, active criticism of religion, active criticism of nationalism, and even urgent welfare demands of the people at large. Although the problem with this left was not its theory but its non-worker ideals and visions, Marxism in Iran had to first settle accounts with it in theory. It was necessary first to rescue Marxism from under the rubble of non-working-class policies and objectives in other to organise a true worker-socialist movement. This had turned into an immediate necessity as the Iranian working class had entered a great revolutionary battle. In the context of this revolution, the workers' movement required its own, independent theory and policy. Marxism and communism had to be returned to the workers' movement, and Hekmat fulfilled this historic necessity.

In his writings published during 1979-1982, Hekmat proved, with astonishing clarity, consistency and insight, that the so-called progressive nationalist bourgeoisie is a myth, and that the entire capitalist class in Iran had a vested interest in the Shah's dictatorial rule, whose very raison d'être was to exact super-profits from the Iranian working class. He showed that Iran was a capitalist society. He showed that the cause of freedom in Iran was inextricably bound with the workers' struggle against capitalism, and made it clear why the religious, liberal-religious and nationalist forces were not capable of promoting this cause. In his writings he explained the meaning of liberation, freedom, and equality, and showed the way to achieve them. All his writings in this period, especially the pamphlets 'The Myth of National and Progressive Bourgeoisie in Iran,' 'The Peasant Movement After the Imperialist Solution of the Agrarian Question in Iran', 'The Prospect of Destitution and the Marxist Theory of Crisis', and 'The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Populist Socialism', demolished the entire theoretical system of the non-worker left and laid the foundations of a coherent, radical Marxist system in Iran that came to be known as Revolutionary Marxism. His political essays in this period, such as 'Two Factions of the Bourgeois-Imperialist Counter-revolution', 'Fight over Realization of Populist Socialism', 'War, Theory, and the Theory of War', and 'Populism in Deadlock', are in fact the application of the theories of Revolutionary Marxism in analysing the new, Islamic regime and, at the same time, in criticising the inconsistent, compromising policies adopted by the traditional left towards it. These writings became the charter of claims, the banner of socialist workers in the context of a revolution snatched by other classes, by a newly established regime and its non-working-class, half-hearted opposition.

Hekmat's writings are clear, sharp, coherent and profound. His style of writing is lucid and lively. It remains intelligible even when his subject matter is the most abstract theoretical issue. His prose, like the content of his writings, is unprecedented in Iran's political literature.

During the revolutionary period, Iranian society was in turmoil, passing through sharp turning points one after the other. In every case the Islamic reactionary government that had come to power in the name of the revolution took a step further along the path of suppressing the workers and the people's revolutionary movement. The nationalist-religious forces left out of the government, as well as the traditional left, defended the new government to different degrees, or, at any rate, did not stand up to it. Under these circumstances, it was the Revolutionary Marxism of Mansoor Hekmat that represented, theoretically as well as politically, the revolution and the workers' movement. At such turning points as the Iran-Iraq war, the occupation of American Embassy in Tehran, the movement in Turkman Sahra, the movement in Kurdistan, the regime's assault on women, unemployed workers, universities, workers' councils, etc., and the faction fighting within the regime, it was Hekmat's Marxist analyses of them that laid bare the truth and guided the struggles of workers and other revolutionary forces. Revolutionary Marxism was the outcome of Marx's pounding criticism of capitalism, on the one hand, and the multifarious problems raised by the then-current revolution in Iran.

The significance of Revolutionary Marxism is, however, not limited to Iran alone. Hekmat's views contain originality and, indeed, run against the prevailing views among Marxist currents on a world scale. His critique of Populist Socialism demolished not only the theoretical system of its international poles, i.e. Russian communism, Chinese communism, and guerrilla warfare-ism, but also targeted, as far as it positively hinged on Marx's critique of capitalism and stressed socialism, tendencies such as Trotskyism and Social Democracy that were not represented in Iran. His Revolutionary Marxism had an international character in that it analysed social issues and the problems of the Iranian revolution from the perspective of a worker's critique of capital. He criticised capitalism not only in Iran, but also in its most advanced forms in Western Europe and the US. The ideals of liberation from exploitation and freedom and equality that he sought for the Iranian workers are the same as those of the working class across the globe. It was his standpoint and his method that lent his views, irrespective of their subject matter, an international character. Revolutionary Marxism was written in Persian and in relation to the Iranian revolution, but it brought Marx back to the contemporary world. Revolutionary Marxism in the Realm of Practical Struggle

Revolutionary Marxism was not merely a theoretical tendency. From the very beginning, and parallel with the publication of Hekmat's writings, he and his comrades engaged in the work of organising an active intervention in the current social revolutionary developments.

In 1979 Hekmat and a few comrades formed a communist circle called Sahand, and later on an organisation by the name of Union of Communist Militants (UCM). The latter initiated the publication of a paper, 'Towards Socialism'. The publication of 'Towards Socialism', which carried Hekmat's extensive writings, resulted in winning over a group of the most advanced communist revolutionaries and labour movement leaders to Revolutionary Marxism and to the ranks of UCM. Among the early practical activities of Revolutionary Marxism were: engagement in the current struggles of unemployed workers and the publication of an organising paper, 'Against Unemployment'; organizing protest actions against encroachments of the Islamist counter-revolution on civil rights and the simultaneous agitation for unconditional political and civil rights for all, vis-à-vis the traditional left's demand for such rights exclusively for 'the people'; defence of women's rights in opposition to the regime's imposition of the compulsory veil Hijab, as well as in opposition to those leftist forces who would not consider the protests of 'uptown women' worthy of defence; organising Capital reading groups among labour leaders; and agitation for Workers' Councils.

Drafting a communist programme and building the communist party was on UCM's agenda from its inception. A major aspect of its activity in this early period was to make other left organisations appreciate the significance of having a programme, as they neither wanted to nor were capable of declaring their objectives and policies within the framework of a programme. In 1980 Hekmat drafted the programme of UCM which was put to the membership's vote and subsequently published as the organisation's programme. It formulated the socialist objectives of the working class, characteristics of the state sought by it, and the immediate demands of the working class for itself and the people at large.

A characteristic feature of Hekmat's thought was the relation he forged between reform and revolution. He was an idealist, consistent, and uncompromising revolutionary who sought to revolutionize capitalist society and liberate humanity from the yoke of all its political, social, and economic aspects. He was, at the same time, a revolutionary practitioner, a practical leader, who appreciated the worth of, and fought for, the slightest improvement in the lives of people. In his system of thought, there were not only no contradictions between reform and revolution, but they were considered two inseparable aspects of one and the same struggle. He criticised those Marxists who, out of 'revolutionism', either view any change as impossible in a capitalist society and prefer not to 'soil' their hands with the day to day struggles of the working class, or those who, like the European social-reformists, wash their hands completely of socialism and limit all their ideals to partial reforms. Hekmat was a Marxist of a different kind. He sought both the abolition of capitalism and, at the same time, ever more improvements in the conditions of the working class and the people at large within that very system. This conception of the relation between reform and revolution is strikingly clear in all his writings and in the programme of UCM in particular. The programme declared, alongside the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of socialism as the immediate goal of the communists, scores of concrete, urgent demands aimed at improving the conditions of all sections of the population. It put the struggle for these demands on the immediate agenda, as they will both improve the lives of the people and facilitate the struggle of the working class for socialism. This runs like a thread through all party programmes he wrote, down to the present programme of the Worker-communist Party.

The publication of UCM's programme captured everyone's attention. Left organisations rejected it either as 'reformist' or 'too left' and 'Trotskyist'. However, it quickly gained popularity among their rank and file. A member of the Islamic parliament, referring to it as the programme of 'one of the counter-revolutionary small groups', labelled it dangerous, for it put forward 'illusory and impossible' demands that would raise the people's expectations. His worries were justified. Part of that 'dangerous' programme - that is such demands as the unconditional freedoms of expression, organisation, etc. and the separation of religion from the state - have become general, popular demands adopted even by many opposition organisations. Part of Hekmat's programme has now appeared on the people's banner in their struggles against the Islamic regime of Iran.

As the influence of the views of Revolutionary Marxism grew within society at large, there appeared, within the left organisations, fractions sympathising with UCM. The turning point in the growth of influence of Revolutionary Marxism, however, was when The Revolutionary Organisation of Working People of Kurdistan (Komala), a truly mass organisation leading the radical, armed struggle of the people in Kurdistan against the new Islamic regime, was drawn to it. Komala, a populist organisation, faced with daily, concrete problems raised by the mass struggles in Kurdistan, had come to a dead end. It realised the sterility of its populist views, and found the way to advance in Revolutionary Marxism. It seemed as if Hekmat had written his 'The Peasant Movement after the Imperialist Solution of the Agrarian Question in Iran' and 'The Myth of Nationalist and Progressive Bourgeoisie', in response to the problems facing the left revolutionaries in Kurdistan. Finally, Komala officially accepted the views and policies of UCM in its second congress in April 1981. A few months later a part of Komala's leadership met with the leaders of UCM in Tehran. During the summer of the same year Mansoor Hekmat, who had not yet picked this pen name and was known by the first name Nader within the organisation, went to Kurdistan and got involved in Komala's internal discussions. Komala's leadership and cadres soon realised that Nader, this sincere, humorous and modest young man, had original, shattering, guiding views not only in the realm of theory, but also in response to practical issues of the revolutionary movement in Kurdistan. That year he went to Kurdistan once more. Finally, in April 1982, at the time of the Islamic regime's massive assault on the left revolutionaries, Hekmat and the rest of UCM's leadership decided to retreat to the safety of the liberated regions of Kurdistan.

In recent Iranian history, June 20, 1981 marks a turning point in the course of political developments in general, and in the history of the left movement in particular. The new regime that had up to that point failed in its efforts to completely defeat the revolution launched a sweeping, bloody, suppressive onslaught unprecedented in recent history in its savagery and criminality. The spread of Revolutionary Marxism in the left movement was thus cut short. In the period between February 1979 and June 1981 there existed in society, thanks to the revolution, and despite the counter-revolutionary regime that had come to power in the name of revolution, a semi-democratic climate that provided Revolutionary Marxism, represented by Hekmat, with an opportunity to grow and gather force. In the same period the traditional left, on the other hand, began to crumble. The Tudeh Party, The Aksariyyat (Majority), the Three-worldist Maoists, and the Trotskyists joined either this or that faction of the regime, and the populist-socialist organisations such as Peykar and Razmandegan plunged into crisis and, like Komala, came to a dead end. Populist-socialism, in all its forms, revealed its sterility, and gave way to Revolutionary Marxism to grow within the Iranian revolutionary left movement in its entirety. The onslaught that began on June 20, 1981 brought this trend to a halt, and made the process of founding the communist party only harder and lengthier for Revolutionary Marxism, but did not succeed in thwarting it. The path to its completion was to pass through Kurdistan, where the revolution lived on.

During the same period UCM began the publication of its political paper, 'Communist Worker'. The name 'Mansoor Hekmat' appeared for the first time in its fourth issue, in an interview on the pre-requisites of the foundation of the communist party. Up until then, following the traditions prevailing within the Iranian left, his writings had been published anonymously. The publication of articles carrying the signature of the writer was one of the results of his critique of the practical methods of the Iranian traditional left whose leaders had, as a rule, remained faceless. In the editorial of 'Towards Socialism', no. 5 (first series), Feb. 1982, Mansoor Hekmat argued that this facelessness, customary in the Iranian left, could not be reckoned as a party method, a method in our movement. He said: the leaders, thinkers, and writers of our movement have to be recognizable within the organisation and in society so we can, in the first place, establish a specific line of thought and action that can then be criticized or accepted. He rejected the concept of leadership behind closed doors, and argued that the working class should be able to readily recognise its leaders as well as mis- leaders. This argument is, in fact, part of a more comprehensive discussion, i.e. that of 'The Party and Personages', which he expounded fifteen years later in the Worker-communist Party of Iran.

 

Founding the Communist Party of Iran The necessity of building a party occupied a top priority on Hekmat's mind and on UCM's agenda. In the frame of thought of the non-working-class left, organising the communist party had, like many other Marxist practical questions, turned into enigmatic, insoluble issues. It was basically reluctant towards party building. Its theories in this regard were nothing but a set of views put forward to justify why it was not possible, under any circumstances, to build the party and why one was, in effect, not even allowed to do so. For UCM, on the other hand, it was a vitally urgent task.

In the autumn of 1982 the first congress of UCM was convened in the liberated regions of Kurdistan. It was at this congress that Hekmat applied his critique of populist-socialism to practice, and positively determined the foundations of communist method of work. This was, in fact, UCM's first practical turn towards building the communist party. He subsequently wrote the first draft of the party programme. It was then put to vote and ratified by both UCM and Komala organisations.

In the winter of 1982, in a seminar in Kurdistan that later came to be known as the North Seminar, Hekmat proposed his theses on the theory of party and the concrete ways to establish it under the concrete circumstances of the Iranian left. In them he criticized such traditional leftist views as the 'theory of fusion'. He defined the communist party as the embodiment of working-class independence in theory, policy, and practice, and stated that Revolutionary Marxism could and should put the task of organising the party on its urgent agenda. This constituted the underlying vision for building the Communist Party of Iran.

In September 1983 UCM, Komala, Revolutionary Marxism fractions of other organisations, and independent revolutionary Marxists finally founded the Communist Party of Iran. This was a historic act, a decisive turning point in the history of the left movement in Iran. The Iranian working class was thus for the first time armed with a party representing its independent programme, declaring socialism as its immediate goal. Founding the communist party was a significant achievement for Revolutionary Marxism and the left movement in general, also because of the special circumstances in which it was done. While the brutal attacks on the revolution and revolutionaries had ceaselessly continued after June 1981, and while the communists found themselves increasingly cornered and their prospects ever darker in other parts of Iran, Revolutionary Marxism was not only not routed or silenced, but founded the party in Kurdistan and thus initiated the process of its counter-attack in a newly opened, immense front.

The foundation of the communist party per se, the mere news of it, initiated a strong wave of hope, encouragement, and self-confidence in the left movement. It reached the imprisoned communists and revolutionaries under the blade of executions, and invigorated them. They would congratulate each other on the occasion. With the foundation of the communist party, Revolutionary Marxism opened a new chapter in the history of the Iranian left movement and revitalised it.

In the Communist Party of Iran, Hekmat had original things to say in every respect, from armed struggle to political agitation and propaganda, to relations with nationalist parties and forces. He drafted resolutions and plans of action on scores of issues such as organising workers and advancing the struggle in cities, determining the stages and objectives of the armed struggle in the country, forms of organisation of Pishmarga forces, political and military tours (Gashts), improvement in the condition of village dwellers in the liberated regions, organising women as Pishmargas and insuring their equal rights in every respect within the organisation, and so on and so forth. In a declaration entitled 'Basic Rights of the Working People in Kurdistan' he stated their fundamental legal rights and welfare demands. The publication of this declaration was yet another step along the path of criticism of the nationalist traditions of struggle in practice – traditions that are devoid of any rights or demands for the people in any shape or form.

The prominent role Hekmat played in the field of armed struggle might not have been clear to the readers of his works. He produced a profound criticism of the nationalist traditions of armed struggle in Kurdistan, and formulated the strategy of revolutionary war alongside the organisation of workers' struggles in cities as part of the struggle of the whole party. He recognized the Pishmarga force as the military wing of the working class movement in Kurdistan, and made it known as such. In numerous cases where traditional methods of struggle had reached an impasse, his views were path-breaking and very effective. One such case was the guidelines he presented to the fifth congress of Komala in 1985. While the field of armed struggle had been severely constrained, and employing traditional methods led either to adventurism or pacifism, his guidelines armed Komala with a realistic, viable, and progressive military strategy.

Another dimension to Hekmat's character that remains unrecognisable from his writings was his deeply humane and progressive disposition. Open, non-clandestine conditions of struggle in Kurdistan gave a great number of Pishmargas and members of the party the chance to get to know him closely. He, who was still, after the adoption of the pseudonym Mansoor Hekmat, affectionately called Nader or Kaak (brother) Nader by everyone, was an approachable, humble, and sincere person. He abhorred hierarchy, formality, titles, flattery, and so forth. Despite his numerous exceptional capabilities, there was not an iota of vanity or smugness in him. He saw everyone as his equal, and treated them as such. He was humorous and witty, comfortably made friends with everyone, and joked with all his friends. In meetings and gatherings, he presented his arguments with utmost clarity and in a non-condescending way. He did not see himself as anyone's mentor or big brother. He did not patronize anyone in discussions and was, therefore, sharp and uncompromising; one had to either convince him or be convinced by him. He cared and was concerned about everyone - from the conditions of life of the people in such and such village to day-care centres for children in Komala camps, to the health and clothing of Pishmargas, to the women's situation in the organisation and so on were all his concerns. He thought about everything and came up with solutions for them. Respect for life and for humankind was a part of him, clearly visible in both his personal manners and characters and in his political views.

From the very beginning of the formation of the party, turning the party into a mass workers' party was a main preoccupation of Mansoor Hekmat. His writings over this period, the articles on agitation among workers, worker circles and practical labour leaders, our organisational policy among workers, and worker membership deal with the mechanisms of organisation and struggle of labour activists and their relationship with the party. These were in fact the precursors of the comprehensive discussions, which later Hekmat expounded as 'worker-communism', and which, ultimately, in their deeper and more developed forms, provided the theoretical basis for the foundation of the worker-communist party.

 

Worker-communism and Kurdish nationalismBefore the formation of the Communist Party of Iran, Komala not only was not critical of Kurdish nationalism, but basically operated in the tradition of Kurdish nationalism. Populist Komala was in fact the left wing of a movement, whose right wing was formed by the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI). It was heavily imbued with backward nationalist traditions in the armed struggle, in political activity, in work in the liberated areas of Kurdistan, in its attitude towards peasants, in its approach to religion and the question of women and even in organisational relationships. Right from the beginning, and even before the formation of the party, Mansoor Hekmat was a relentless critic of all this backwardness.

With the formation of the party, the struggle against backward and essentially nationalist traditions started in the Kurdistan Organisation of the party. Step by step the nationalist tendency retreated in the face of criticism of religion, backward mentalities, women's status, work among people, the party's publicity and the traditions of struggle of the Pishmarga force. But outside the party, the nationalist tendency could not tolerate such changes in a movement, which traditionally it considered to be its own. For the KDPI, Komala's communist agitation proved too hard-hitting and an 'insult to the sanctities'. Communist Komala's growing influence in Kurdistan posed a serious threat to the KDP. In the summer of 1984, the KDPI launched an attack on Komala Pishmargas in the Oraman region, setting off a three-year war.

The nationalists inside Komala saw this war as a conflict between two rival forces within the national movement. The truth, however, was that the KDPI could not tolerate Komala as the Kurdistan Organisation of the Communist Party and as the advocate of communist ideas among people. This was how Hekmat understood the war. He explained the war as a struggle between the Kurdish working class and bourgeoisie over freedom of communist expression and activity. Indeed, for the first time in Iranian history, communism had appeared with such clarity and so radically that even the bourgeoisie in opposition could not tolerate it. The war was brought to an end, unilaterally by Komala, on Hekmat's initiative and plan, after it became clear to the KDPI that it was unable to defeat Komala or even restrict its communist politics. In its first military encounter with the local bourgeoisie, the Kurdistan Organisation of the party had come out honourably.

Nevertheless, in the Revolutionary Marxist system of thought, criticism of nationalism could not go much beyond the criticism of ideas and policies or, at most, of methods of practice and style of work. For Komala's leadership, which had turned to Revolutionary Marxism following the dead-end of its populist views, even this much criticism of nationalism by Revolutionary Marxism was too much to take in; it was regarded as extreme and too excessive. For Hekmat, in contrast, this criticism was not deep, radical or comprehensive enough. It was with his discussion of 'worker-communism' that Hekmat brought this depth and comprehensiveness back to Marxist critique and analysis of social movements, including the criticism of nationalism. According to Hekmat, the differences and disputes were in fact differences between different social movements, having different class perspectives. Criticism of nationalism is not just a criticism of ideas and policies or even of traditions and methods of practice. Nationalism cannot be convinced of Marxism.

Naturally, these discussions were in no way palatable to the nationalist tendency in Komala, which, mainly in silence, had tolerated Revolutionary Marxism and the formation of the party. Now it began to speak out and put up a resistance. At that time, Hekmat, who along with the rest of the party leadership, was in Europe, published his views in the party, both in writing and verbally.

Some of Komala's cadres and leaders started attacking Hekmat with the most unprincipled methods. Heated discussions flared up in the party. Although the nationalists were in a minority, Hekmat, who did not want his organisational position and authority to impact the presentation of his views, left the central committee to form the Worker-communist Centre and Worker-communist Fraction. He wrote his views at length and elaborated them at special seminars. The nationalists tried to put up a resistance with the most backward methods. A large majority of party cadres and members joined the Worker-communist Fraction. In the end, at the 16th plenary meeting of the Central Committee in 1989, the leadership of the nationalist tendency conceded defeat and accepted the criticisms. Hekmat was unanimously elected as a member of the Political Bureau and Chairperson of the Central Committee.

Organisationally, the dispute had been settled to the advantage of worker-communism, but Hekmat knew that politically and socially the problem remained. He wanted the Communist Party of Iran to be the organised section of the worker-communist movement, or, as he put it, a 'single-stranded' worker-communist party, but he knew that his party was not such a party. The nationalist tendency had thrown in the towel and gone quiet again, but it lived on in the party. The Gulf War in 1991 set the scene for the resurgence of nationalism. With the attack by the USA and its allies on Iraq, the Kurdish nationalist forces saw an opportunity to draw closer to the USA against the Iraqi regime. Nationalists in Komala were also stirred. Abdullah Mohtadi, from the Central Committee, put forward a draft resolution to the Political Bureau calling for solidarity with the Iraqi Kurdish nationalists and, specifically, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In an article, Hekmat showed the nationalist and anti-working class nature of the resolution. Once again debates flared up between the nationalists and worker-communists – this time on the issue of the Gulf War.

The documents of the discussions of this period, published as a collection on the Gulf War, and in particular Hekmat's lengthy article entitled 'Only Two Steps Back', give a clear picture of the debates of that time. They reveal Hekmat's clarity and coherence of thought, his political insight and high moral principles in political debates with opponents in the party. In the course of these debates, it became clear to Hekmat that the existing party was not a homogeneous workers' party; that the existence of a strong Kurdish nationalist tendency in it, even if it had conceded to himself and to the communist tendency in the party, was a serious barrier to basing the party squarely on worker-communism. Faced with this situation, Hekmat took a daring, imaginative and unprecedented decision: he resigned from the party, a party in which the majority of the Central Committee, cadres and members supported his views and regarded him as their leader, where even the nationalists opposing him had acquiesced organisationally. The future would show that this resignation, from a position of strength, which seemed odd and inexplicable even to his closest comrades, was the most principled and trouble-free route to strengthening and pushing forward worker-communism.

 

Formation of the Worker-communist PartyAlong with Mansoor Hekmat's resignation, the majority of the party's leadership, cadres and members, who supported his views, also resigned from the party, and joined the worker-communist party, which, he and other members of Worker-communist Centre had called.

Hekmat left a party in which he was the leader, taking, as he put it, 'only his pen', leaving behind the party's name and resources for those who remained. By any political or constitutional standard or principle, the worker-communist tendency had every right to remain in the party and exclude the nationalists. Hekmat gave up this right so as to frustrate in advance any attempts by the Kurdish nationalists to take advantage and make a scene. He saw beyond organisational rights and principles. He knew that in a post-Soviet world and with nationalism on the rise, both in the region and around the world, having worker-communism's intellectual and political supremacy and the support of the majority in the party was not enough. He knew that while communism was under attack by the world's reactionary forces, worker-communism was not in position to rid itself of nationalism without a confrontation with its nationalist opponents, which in an armed organisation could easily lead to an armed conflict. He simply resigned and did not even call on his supporters to resign. His supporters followed suit by resigning individually from the party and joining the Worker-communist Party. This was the most civilised and the most trouble-free way of detaching worker- communism from Kurdish nationalism. The remaining cadres in the leadership of the Communist Party told Mansoor Hekmat that they would continue his line, and he wished them well. Such a split was unprecedented in the history of the left and, generally, in the history of parties around the world.

Two years after the formation of the Worker-communist Party of Iran, the Worker-communist Party of Iraq was founded. Hekmat's writings had been translated into Arabic and Kurdish long before then, influencing the Iraqi left. Hundreds of left activists and leaders in Iraqi Kurdistan had started learning Farsi so that they could read his writings. In particular, Hekmat's analysis of the Gulf War and his stand against it was well received in the Iraqi left. The Worker-communist Party of Iraq was the product of the growth and social influence of Hekmat's views in Iraqi Kurdistan. This was the only party that stood up to the reactionary Kurdish nationalist parties, which had come to power following the extension of the Gulf War to Kurdistan, challenging the hold of religion and backward mentalities. Hekmat was in regular contact with the leadership of this party. Members from either party's leadership joined each other's central committees.

The worker-communist party was formed following a period of political and theoretical struggle against Kurdish nationalism. Worker-communism was not, however, the antithesis of nationalism. The significance of the formation of the party did not lie, either, in its triumph over Kurdish nationalism. Worker-communism arose in opposition to existing communisms around the world. It was, in its essence, a different movement. Hekmat represented Marx's communism as distinct from the movements of other classes, who also laid claim to Marx. This was a turning point in the history of contemporary communism around the world.

 

Worker-communism as Distinct from other Communisms Worker-communism is based on the fundamental notion that communism is not merely a system of thought, or even a party or party struggle. It is, above all, a social movement. It is the movement of the working class against capitalism that has existed independently of, and prior to, Marxism and party politics.

In its assessment and its criticism of theories or organisations, worker-communism refers to the social movements to which these theories and organisations belong. It explains their differences and disputes on that basis. Thus, what from the point of view of Revolutionary Marxism was regarded as 'deviation from Marx's theory' or 'revision in Marxism' was seen by worker-communism as the appropriation of Marx by other social movements. It is not a question of theoretical misunderstanding, confusion or disputes within a 'Marxist camp', but, rather, of differences between totally different social movements and socio-political perspectives. The worker-communist standpoint, elaborated in Our Differences, one of Hekmat's deepest and most comprehensive writings, identified as a non-working class social movement what traditionally the left would see as 'deviation in Marxism', such as Maoism, Russian Communism, Social Democracy and the European New Left. Iranian populism was regarded not as 'deviations in the workers' movement', but as the left wing of the Iranian national reformist movement. In the article Anatomy of Left Liberalism, a brilliant analysis of revolution and the Marxist theory of revolution, Hekmat criticised the views of the Organisation of Communist Unity as the left wing of the Iranian National Front [the bourgeois nationalist reformist party]. He used the same method later in his analysis of the political forces in Iran.

But the brilliant application of the theories of worker-communism are to be found in the analysis of the experience of workers' revolution in the Soviet Union, published as a series of debates in several issues of the bulletin Marxism and the Question of the Soviet Union, from 1986 to 1988. Revolutionary Marxism did not, and could not, offer a theoretical solution to this basic problem of the international left; nor did or could the other tendencies, on the international scale, which were critical of the Soviet Union, such as Trotskyism, Maoism and the New Left. In his profound discussions in the bulletins, Mansoor Hekmat explained the cause of the defeat of the October 1917 revolution, in the final analysis, as the defeat of the workers' movement and the Bolsheviks by the Russian national reformist movement, which strived for the industrialisation of Russia. Russian nationalism, which also was critical of Tsarism because of the backwardness of Russian capitalism, was finally able, in the late 1920s, to triumph over Bolshevism. It was able to take hold of the party and the newly formed state of the Russian working class and organise state capitalism in the name of socialism. Hekmat's analysis of the October Revolution and the Soviet Union present the deepest, the clearest, and the most consistent criticism of the Soviet experience ever presented in the world's left movement. It was by relying on this criticism that worker-communism could stand honourably and challenge the unipolar world following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Hekmat himself said that worker-communism was nothing but the communism of Marx in the conditions of today. The theoretician and champion of the Marxism of our age had a whole world before him to criticise and change.

 

The International Significance of the Formation of the Worker-communist PartyThe Worker-communist Party of Iran was founded in autumn 1991, following Hekmat's detailed polemics and discussions expounding the ideas of worker-communism and after his and his supporters' resignation from the Communist Party. The formation of the party was an answer to the needs of an independent workers' movement, and the need to give to this movement an organisational dimension, distinct from existing communist and left parties, parties that in fact represent other social movements. The circumstances and the time in which the party was formed are a reflection of this reality: the existing Communist forces around the world were in retreat; along with the Berlin Wall, the non-worker left had collapsed; the bourgeoisie was celebrating what it perceived to be the end of Marxism; pro-Soviet Communist parties, and those critical of it, were either dissolving themselves or changing their names; market economy and capitalist savagery were having a field day; and, along with Lenin's statues, any humanist or egalitarian idea and cause was being knocked to the ground.

Under these conditions, Mansoor Hekmat founded a party that not only had not given up the socialist cause and Marx's humanist ideas, but which reaffirmed and emphasized the correctness of Marxism and its relevance with such clarity and purity that was unprecedented in the history of the contemporary left. The Communist Party of Iran was Hekmat's answer to the onslaught of the Islamic Republic; the Worker- communist Party was his answer to the anti-communist onslaught of world capitalism.

The attacks on Marx and communism had started in fact long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, by Thatcherism and Reaganism in the 1980s. Thatcherism attacked every sign of humanism, egalitarianism and freedom, replacing it, in all fields, from politics to art and culture, with free market capitalism's naked savagery. As if the bourgeoisie in the West was taking revenge on the leftist world of the 1960s. The existing communisms, the Russian and Chinese left, Social Democracy, Trotskyism and the New Left, were unable to stand up to this enormous attack by world reaction. In fact these tendencies' alienation from, and irrelevance to, Marx's communism was one of the factors which facilitated the rise of the most right wing and reactionary factions and representatives of the bourgeoisie in the West and internationally. Thatcherism brought to the surface, along with itself, all the slime and dirt of history. Religion, nationalism, racism and ethnicism were all thrown up. They cast their ominous shadow not only on politics, but also on culture, art and philosophy. The collapse of the Soviet Union hastened this process of regression. With the end of the Cold War, the unipolar world became a stage for the intoxicated sallies of the Western bourgeoisie.

Mansoor Hekmat went to war against this dark world, with his writings, his profoundly humanist and radical ideas, and with his party. His writings in this period, The Gory Dawn of the New World Order, written originally in English and which deals with the Gulf War and its place in consolidating the New World Order; the series of articles in the paper International in critique of democracy, nationalism and political Islam, and, finally, his analysis and standpoint on September 11 and its aftermath – all of these were the declaration and indictment of worker-communism on the grim world after the Cold War. In Our Differences, Hekmat pointed out that communism should give up polemicizing with itself, and fight bourgeois ideas in society; that, like Marx, we should demolish bourgeois thinkers upon their contradictions. He himself did just that. The articles Democracy: Interpretations and Realities and Nation, Nationality and the Programme of the Worker-communist Party are brilliant examples of this return to Marx in the field of theoretical struggles. This was not just a reiteration and revival of Marx, but, rather, its expansion and deepening in addressing the various problems of the world of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Hekmat's last writings, a series of articles on September 11 that were published in four issues of the International, were in fact the manifesto of the civilised world against both Islamic terrorism and the West's state terrorism. On September 11, NATO and its homebred, political Islam came face to face. In the attitude towards this event, it was only Hekmat's line, which had always been relentlessly critical of both the New World Order and political Islam that could be the cry of a humanity caught between these reactionary camps. Without this third banner, the world after September 11 would be a darker place.

The Worker-communist Party started a massive campaign internationally around these views. The active force of this struggle was the organisation abroad of the Worker-communist Party and the numerous campaigns and projects organised directly or indirectly by the party in various countries. Defending the rights of women and refugees, standing up to racism, defending children's rights in the heart of Western Europe at a time when these states had started a massive attack on rights of immigrants and refugees, standing up to political Islam and the growing influence of religion in Western societies, standing up to the idea of cultural relativism and revealing its inhuman and reactionary nature, in one word, opening up a battlefront in every field where the New World Order was encroaching on people's rights and dignity – all these were part of a struggle waged by the Worker-communist Party without letup. A struggle on this scale is unprecedented in the history of the left, not only in Iran but internationally. In whichever country that it has members and organisation, the Worker-communist Party is an active and interventionist party in society. This is totally in contrast to the traditions of the existing left, both in Iran and throughout the world, whose maximum radicalism has been to struggle in exile against their own governments; the kind of struggle carried out, for example, by the Confederation of Iranian Students in Shah's time, or the South African left and or the ANC against the regime of Apartheid, or, today, the methods of struggle by the Iranian opposition organisations, even those who are aiming to overthrow the Iranian regime.

These are not worker-communism's traditions. Hekmat's worker-communist movement is not just a force in exile that struggles against its own government. It is a movement that challenges whatever is reactionary and backward, and wherever it can, fights to improve people's living conditions. Worker-communism, even in opposition and in exile, is a party effecting changes in society, in the people's lives. This is a unique quality given to the party by its unique leader.

 

Worker-communism in Iranian politicsMansoor Hekmat stood against the Islamic Republic and its factions, as well as its supporters in the opposition, as the representative and epitome of freedom and emancipation. His sharp and radical criticism of political Islam and the Islamic Republic and his deep analysis of the nature of the '2nd Khordad' (i.e. pro- Khatami) forces in the opposition, not only threw light on the struggle of the party and party activists, but also turned into the hope of all those whose hearts were beating for humanism and emancipation. His political writings of the period, published in the International, articles such as The Final Crisis; Mujahedeen's Forbidden Dreams; Rah-e-Kargar's Hejab-Gate; The History of the Undefeated; Plastic Al- Ahmads; and scores of other articles, turned the Worker-communist Party into the sole champion of secularism, modernism, humanism and freedom and the genuine representative of the movement that aims to overthrow the Islamic regime.

At the party's Second Congress, Hekmat introduced new, path-breaking discussions on the relation between party and political power and the place of the party in society. He wanted to make the party approachable, known and accessible to people. He wanted the cadres and leaders to become well-known figures in Iranian politics. He wanted to put the party at the centre of Iranian politics and at the head of the movement aiming to bring down the Islamic Republic. In his speech at the Third Party Congress, he said, to make lasting changes in people's lives, one should seize political power. His efforts throughout this time were geared to preparing the party for political power. His discussions on Party and Society and Party and Political Power were innovative, unprecedented and liberating. His ingenuity and creativity knew no bounds.

Over this period, the party opened numerous fronts in the struggle against the Islamic Republic. Hekmat was directly involved in the planning and implementation of many of them. They included preventing the Islamic Republic regime from establishing itself abroad with the public opinion and governments in the West. The height of this was the party's successful campaign against the conference in Berlin by the 2nd Khordad Movement. They included the campaign against stoning, against compulsory veil and sexual apartheid in Iran, the campaign in support of the oil workers, the successful campaign for the release of labour activist Mahmoud Salehi, the founding of the organisation Children First, the building of the Communist Youth Organisation and the campaign to replace the Farsi script with Eurofarsi – a script designed and developed by Hekmat himself - in what was directly his own project. These have been part of the relentless struggle of Hekmat's party and movement against the Islamic Republic and, in general, reaction and backwardness in the Iranian society. Opposition to Khatami and the 2nd Khordad faction from the very outset and standing up to the politics of the pro-Khatami forces in the opposition have been a continuous area of struggle for the party during this period. In the resolution Khatami's Election and the Resurgence of the Pro-regime Opposition and the series of articles entitled The Final Act, Hekmat identified three social movements in Iranian politics today: the monarchist movement, or the pro-West Iranian nationalism, the national-religious movement, whose mainstream at the moment is 2nd Khordad, and the left and communist movement, which is represented by the Worker-communist Party. Here, political parties and organisations are assessed with respect to their social position and the movement to which they belong. In this brilliant application of the worker-communist outlook to the current political situation in Iran, Hekmat shows that organisations and personalities such as the Tudeh Party, Aksariyyat, the Freedom Front, the Mojahedin Organisation of Islamic Revolution, Khatami, Soroush, Khalkhali and Hajjarian all belong to the same political movement and perspective, and must be critically assessed and identified as such. The significance of this social criticism of political parties goes beyond a mere assessment of the current political situation and sheds light on Iran's past 25-year history and the history of parties and politics in contemporary Iran. Hekmat's The Final Act and The History of the Undefeated, written using the same method, provide a deep and vivid picture of the political alignments in Iran in the past two decades. Without Mansoor Hekmat and the Worker-communist Party, the left, humanism and love for freedom would not be represented in Iranian politics, and the initiative would totally fall to the supporters of the present regime or those of the previous regime of monarchy. Mansoor Hekmat's party is today a main force on the political stage of Iran and in the movement to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

 

Mansoor Hekmat's LegacyTwenty five years of untiring struggle in the theoretical field, and the political organisation and leadership of a movement that sprang up around these ideas, produced hundreds of theoretical articles and essays, political commentaries, tactical resolutions and organisational action plans, the Programme of the Worker-communist Party, A Better World, hundreds of speeches and seminars, numerous organisations, projects and publications in various fields, and, above all, the two parties of Worker-communist Party of Iran and Iraq. This immense organised struggle, which in its practical breadth and diversity, as well as its theoretical depth and clarity, is unparalleled in the history of the Left in Iran and the contemporary world, is his dear and invaluable legacy for all those who fight for human freedom and happiness.

Zhoobin Razani's biography ends with his untimely death on July 4, 2002, but the life of Mansoor Hekmat has not ended. The story of our party and movement will always remain as the story of Mansoor Hekmat. The impact of the immense legacy that he has left for us will not remain confined to our time and our generation. As long as there is injustice, inequality, poverty and exploitation in the world, Mansoor Hekmat and the worker-communist movement, whose banner he raised, will live on.

 

 

 

by Paul Sheldon Foote (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 72 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Mar 29, 2007 at 1:41:11 AM