(The following article appeared in the August 5 issue of the French-language fortnightly Inprecor. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The Third Iranian Revolution unfolded against the backdrop of the bankruptcy of the shah's "White Revolution," which aimed to make Iran the Japan of the Near East before the end of the century, and the insurmountable economic and social contradictions caused by an industrialization based on the investment of oil income and growing dependence on the imperialist countries.
As they went into the streets against bullets from the Pahlavi monarchy's soldiers, the Iranian masses did not simply want to bring down a shameful regime, one that they saw as implicated with imperialism. They also wanted to change the material conditions of their daily existence.
Depth of the economic crisis
In the two years since it came to power, the Islamic Republic has been unable to solve any of the big problems posed by the country's underdevelopment and dependence and the worsening economic crisis resulting from the imperialist blockade and later the war with Iraq. This has fed the growing dissatisfaction of the masses toward a regime that they see as less and less able to "change their lives."
According to figures provided by the Iranian Central Bank, inflation has been 56 percent in the last three years, with a clearly upward tendency. Dr. Mohsen Nourbaksh, who replaced Bani-Sadr ally Ali Reza Nowbari as head of the Central Bank, acknowledged that inflation would reach 30 percent for the current year! In fact, inflation is hitting especially hard at food and basic necessities. These have in some cases doubled or tripled in the course of recent months.
In the agricultural sector, despite a rise in crop prices, production has declined since the beginning of the revolution. Wheat imports have gone from 426,000 tons in 1978-79 to 2,000,000 tons in 1980-81.3 Food imports represented half the $11.4 billion spent on all imports during the last year, according to the
Iranian customs service.*
The situation is no better in the industrial section. Despite the war effort, industry is not operating at much more than 40 percent of its productive capacity before the revolution. While construction of small private homes, primarily in the provincial towns, has undergone a slight improvement, most of the large projects that provided a big percentage of construction jobs have come to a 'halt.
In sum, the gross national product has fallen some 30 percent since the start of the revolution. Unemployment, according to official estimates, affects between 2.5 and 4 million people-not counting more than 1 million refugees from the war.
Is the crisis solely due to the impact of the war? War expenditures—including allocations for refugees as well as the cost of the fighting in Kurdistan-run about $1 billion per month, of which $400 million goes to purchase arms and spare parts (from North Korea, Libya, and also West Germany). Those imports that have been affected by the imperialist boycott, and which must now be rerouted through Dubai and the Persian Gulf emirates or other third world countries, have risen in price by 25 percent.®
According to the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Party (IRP), the economic crisis is largely due to the decline in oil income and its consequences, given the Iranian state's weight in the country's economy.? Just before the revolution, the Iranian state itself directly carried out nearly 50 percent of the industrial invest-
Today the Iranian state also has conments.
trol over several hundred enterprises that were nationalized or placed under state control after the departure of foreign investors or the flight of Iranian taghoutis [idol worshipers, the term often used to describe opponents of the Islamic Republic].º About 1.5 million people are employed in one way or another in the public sector, out of an economically active nonagricultural population of 7.5 million workers.
Regime's economic measures
But the argument cuts both ways. Granted the Iranian state has such a degree of economic importance. Moreover the state is led by a single party that simultaneously controls the government and has a large majority in parliament. In addition, through the people it places in charge, it has direct control over the big foundations-like the Foundation for the Dispossessed—and the nationalized banks and industries. With this much concentrated power, we can concretely determine what orientation guides economic policy.
It is one thing to recognize the objective difficulties, arising either from the past or from the present situation. But we must also look at the general direction of the political and economic measures that have been taken, for which the leaders of the Islamic Republic are solely responsible. An examination of these measures is quite revealing.
• While the agrarian troubles and the land occupations have been spreading for a year and a half, the IRP in parliament and in the government refuses to apply the famous Article 3 of the Agrarian Reform Law, which makes provisions for the possibility of dividing the land.
• It is the same with a decree, under consideration since January 1980, that would establish a monopoly of foreign trade. The fierce opposition of the bazaar and its representatives within the IRP is keeping the wraps on a plan that would grant a monopoly of foreign trade to nine central purchasing agencies.
• A corollary to this decision not to nationalize foreign trade is the decision to maintain the exchange rate of Iranian rials at 75 rials to US$1, although the inflation in Iran means that a rate of 100 rials to the dollar would be more accurate.
The Iranian state would in fact benefit from this change in the exchange rate. The state is the main exporter (particularly because last year oil represented 95 percent of the foreign currency earnings). The state budget, which is figured in rials, basically depends on oil income, which is paid for in dollars or on the basis of a "basket" of strong currencies. Therefore, each dollar earned from oil sales would provide more rials for the state budget. Furthermore, the rise in the rial price of certain imported products due to devaluation would encourage their eventual replacement through the development of Iranian industry.
But although this devaluation would appear to be reasonable and make good sense to any
"developmentalist" bourgeois economist, it still seems too daring for the present leaders of the Islamic Republic. The truth is that devaluation would hurt the big import-export elements in the bazaar who derive big benefits from the overvalued rial! Even the engineer Sahabi, who is close to the "liberal" Bazargan, has attacked the exorbitant profits of the bazaaris. These totalled 1,200 billion rials last year, which is three times higher than in the best year under the shah. These profits amount to nearly half of last year's state budget.
By contrast, the government and parliament have taken recent economic measures that have a very specific thrust. That thrust is not toward greater independence from imperialism nor toward satisfying the needs of the Iranian masses.
The first aspect of these measures concerns relations with imperialism. To get the Iranian economy back on its feet, the present government is counting on stepping up oil production again and is trying to normalize its relations with certain foreign investors whose property had been nationalized.
For a long time the quantity of oil exported was viewed in Iran as a barometer indicating the extent of the country's foreign dependence. In addition, governmental plans to increase production from a daily level of 0.7-1 million barrels of oil to 2.5 million barrels has given rise to legitimate concerns regarding the regime's economic policy, given the absence of any real plan to struggle against economic dependence. These concerns have been heightened since there have been a number of agreements or commercial negotiations with the former imperialist partners and others.
For example, the Iranian government announced in July 1981 that it was ready to engage in negotiations regarding compensation with the Western banks whose holdings had
1° It also took steps to combeen nationalized.
pensate the German pharmaceutical trusts like Hoechst and Bayer that had joint-venture plants in Iran.
This attempt to partially normalize economic relations with some imperialist powers
Britain—whose trade with Iran (France, doubled in 1980-81 compared to the previous year-West Germany, and Japan) allowed "liberals," especially Bani-Sadr, to attack the IRP for being economically inconsistent in its "anti-imperialism."
The debate over increasing oil exports and signing contracts with foreign firms was one of the biggest sources of polemics between the IRP and Bani-Sadr.
Offensive against gains of workers
The second level of this economic policy is a vigorous austerity offensive aimed especially against the gains of the Iranian workers. Today, at a time when repression in Iran is getting stronger, the new governor of the Central Bank Mohsen Nourbaksh tells that pillar of the bourgeois establishment the Financial Times that
"while not being an out and out monetarist. the struggle against inflation is carried out by reducing and controlling the mass of money.
Under the present conditions of the Iranian economy this means above all drastically reducing the budgetary deficit. The deficit reached $11.4 billion last year (and the expenditures caused by the war with Irag were only reflected in the second half of the Iranian fiscal year, which runs from March 1980 to March 1981). But the government is projecting a balanced budget for 1981-82.
One way the government plans to balance this budget is by increasing the present export of oil by 400 percent (since it is unlikely that there will be any major new rise in oil prices, given the international recession and the dumping by Saudi Arabia).
The other aspect of the Iranian government's plan to achieve a balanced budget is through sharply cutting expenditures for development, significantly increasing duties and taxes, and increasing the profitability of the public and nationalized sector, which involves such measures as freezing wages and even carrying out layoffs.
Putting these economic plans into effect would quite obviously mean growing confrontations with the Iranian working class, which has not yet suffered big defeats. For several months the Iranian capitalists and government have been stepping up their skirmishing and their probes. This has been especially clear since Iraq began its war against Iran. The Iraqi aggression, which the workers saw as an attempt to overthrow the Islamic Republic, led to a widespread militant and political mobilization in the plants. In many factories the workers mobilized and organized themselves to control production in order to confront the war of aggression and the threats of counterrevolution. They demanded military training in the workplaces. In some instances they tried to control the price of rationed goods in the neighborhoods.
Faced with this political mobilization, the government conceded a little (regarding the organization of military training) in order to avoid the basic question: the workers were spontaneously demanding the massive arming of the population to defend "their revolution."
But at the same time, the bosses and the government (and this included Bani-Sadr's policies as well as those of the IRP) used the war-created climate of patriotism and national unity to try to challenge the economic gains the workers had won. In some factories the workday increased, rising from ten to twelve hours. In many instances the half-day off on Thursday (the Muslim sabbath is Friday) was eliminated. Not only were wages frozen, but "donations"
for the fighters at the front or for the refugees were automatically deducted from wages.
Growing disaffection
It must be said that initially the working class was quite willing to accept these economic sacrifices.
But very quickly the workers realized that they were the ones paying the cost of the war and the economic crisis. Despite official declarations, the black market continued to flourish. The agrarian reform remained blocked. There was no national plan of industrial reconversion to concretize the hope that this war could be the means to definitively break with imperialism.
And above all the government refused to take the measures to conclude the war. Quite the contrary, the fighting in Kurdistan was pushed forward with greater force, although the Kurdish resistance movement had proposed that it fight the Iraqi invaders alongside the Tehran regime as long as that regime recognized the Kurds* right to autonomy and to keep their weapons.
Both Bani-Sadr and the IRP refused to massively arm the workers. Each tried in every way to use the war to strengthen their own position within the state apparatus. Bani-Sadr based himself on the military hierarchy of the ex-Imperial Army. The IRP based itself on strengthening the Pasdaran corps.
The growing disaffection toward the regime was evident from December 1980. It was seen in early 1981 in a number of social movements, including strikes, especially when parliament decided to cancel the distribution of bonuses for the Iranian New Year (March 21). These bonuses had been instituted during the time of the shah, under the guise of workers participation in the profits of the companies. They often represent more than one month's wages.
There were other strikes for wage increases or for recognition of bodies representing the workers (shoras, delegates councils). Among such strikes were those at the Pars paper company, the Isfahan bus drivers, the Tehran electric company, the Kafch Melli shoe factory, and the Iran National auto plant.
But these struggles within the working class remained partial and limited. There is the pressure of the war, the argument that you cannot strike without threatening to weaken the front," an argument that was particularly effective among oil workers, who work a few kilometers from the Iraqi big guns. There are the regime's intimidating maneuvers. And the workers have also been hindered by the slowness in building a united, nationally organized workers movement, as well as the Iranian proletariat's weak traditions of economic struggles, and the absence of a clear political alternative.
Meanwhile the government and the bosses used a whole range of methods to contain, limit, or stifle this reemergence of workers' agitation. They used layoffs and even selective arrests of the most visible vanguard workers. They used the war and unemployment as a means of pressure. They increased the powers of the Anjoman Eslami (Islamic associations) in the factories at the expense of the shoras. They systematically tried to divide the shoras along ideological lines and sometimes used gangs of thugs (hezbollah or Pasdars) to prevent strikes.
All this explains why the growing disaffection toward the regime has not yet led to broad social struggles and has been partially capitalized upon by the Mujahedeen, or turned to his profit by Bani-Sadr.
The strength of the Mujahedeen
In December 1980, and again in March 1981, Bani-Sadr was able to assemble hundreds of thousands of people at his meetings in Tehran and in the provinces. And his popularity stemmed less from the questionable, and questioned, role that he was playing in the war, than from the fact that he was increasingly open in criticizing the regime's inconsistent economic policies and especially the attacks on civil liberties (the prohibition of parties, the reestablishment of the "eye for an eye" lex talionis legal code, the closing of newspapers, the IRP's monopoly over the media, etc.).
But is has been the Islamic-progressive People's Mujahedeen movement above all that has capitalized on the growing discontent, especially among the youth. Already in 1980, the size of the meetings for Massoud Rajavi's presidential campaign had given an indication of the impact of this organization, which enjoyed a large degree of support as a result of its heroic past resistance to the shah and its avowal of Islam. The Mujahedeen also benefited from the Stalinist Tudeh Party's unquestioning support to the regime as well as the split in the Fedayeen (Majority) behind the leaders of the IRP.
The Mujahedeen have had contradictory relations with the regime. On the one hand they had important ties with a minority within the Shi'ite hierarchy (Ayatollah Taleghani and Sheik Ali Tehrani). Nonetheless, after the February 1979 insurrection they refused to turn in the enormous quantities of weapons they possessed. They supported the occupation of the American embassy. But their support to the movement of the oppressed nationalities, especially the Kurds, was a prime factor in the disqualification of their presidential candidate and then in the attacks to which they were subjected, especially at the time of the closing of the universities.
During the war against Iraq they participated valiantly in organizing the defense of the cities of Khuzestan during the Iraqi advance. At that time their newspaper Mujahid, which is not legal, had a distribution of 200,000 copies. In early 1981 they concluded an agreement for united activity with the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP).
The popularity of the Mujahedeen also has to do with the fact that, with the exception of the movement of the oppressed nationalities, they have been the principal target of the repression, and especially since the closing of the universities.
The attacks carried out by the IRP-organized hezbollah, often with the direct complicity and consent of the Pasdaran, against Mujahedeen offices and meetings, the individual attacks against their known members and sympathizers caused more than fifty deaths and several hundred injuries in the Mujahedeen ranks in 19e year prior to the confrontations of June the year prior to the confrontations of June
In a May 2, 1981, letter addressed to Khomeini, the Mujahedeen protested against what was being done to them, explaining:
We take this occasion to note that our misfortunes are fundamentally the same as those of very vast layers of the "Nation." A nation that, more each day, feels that it lacks the most elementary things, as well as the principles and ideas it at least expected from the revolution that it made. The people are aware that the lands, as well as the riches and privileges, remain as they were, not divided. Freedoms are nonexistent, and regarding the struggle against imperialism, to the degree that the state is concerned it has not accomplished its task.
This situation stems first and foremost from this bitter truth: although in your own words everyone" made the revolution, its fruits have gone to a single group which is attempting to control nearly the whole media and means of communication to justify its actions by a propaganda onslaught.
The letter goes on to mention the high cost of living, the unemployment, the attacks against civil liberties, the 1,200 billion rials in profits for the bazaar, the billions of dollars *that are taken from the dispossessed and go to the supposed creditors, the corrupt of the former regime, or to the Americans," and then asks for an interview with Khomeini to "lead to solutions, develop national understanding, rebuild the hope of a peaceful understanding, and in this way eliminate the internal troubles. "14
This is the general context of the faction fight that has been taking place in the summits of the Islamic Republic.
There is, of course, good reason to criticize the support that the Mujahedeen have given to bourgeois groupings and figures, especially Bani-Sadr, who are put forward as a "lesser evil." There is also reason to fear that their ideological background and especially their populist outlook, as well as their tradition of activity, which has led them to underestimate the specific tasks of rebuilding a united, centralized, organized workers movement, could now push them to forms of armed confrontation with the regime in which they try to substitute themselves for the masses. All this, of course, weighs heavily on the future of the Iranian revolution.
This was explained in the resolution adopted by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International in July 1980:
In the coming struggles over questions that relate to their direct interest, the laboring masses will on many occasions go beyond the Khomeini leadership, will oppose it more or less directly, and will develop their own instruments of battle (shoras, committees, militias, etc.).
In the course of such developments and through the growing discontent among the people, forces like the Mujahedeen and Fedayeen have seen their audience and their strength grow.
However, without the existence of an alternative proletarian leadership, the masses will, despite everything, remain politically trapped in solutions that in the final analysis do not break with class collaboration.
Stalinist betrayal
But the analysis made by the Stalinists of the Tudeh Party and their Fedayeen (Majority) cothinkers of the present confrontations is a pure and simple falsification. They claim that we are seeing a confrontation between a "radical," "anti-imperialist" wing (the IRP and Khomeini) and the "liberal,"
proimperialist sectors of the Iranian bourgeoisie, embodied by Bani- Sadr. Loyal to the Stalinist-Menshevik concept of the revolution by stages and the Bukharinite theory of the "bloc of four classes," the Tudeh Party and the Fedayeen (Majority) argue that in Iran the struggle against imperialism is the current priority and that the rest (oppression of the nationalities, attacks against freedoms, blocking of the agrarian reform, anti-workingclass repression) are only "secondary contradictions."
It is no coincidence that last January, in criticizing the Mujahedeen's activity, the Tudeh Party's paper Mardom wrote that their activities were similar to those of the Chilean far-leftists "who in that way contributed to the overthrow of the people's regime of Allende."16
And the general secretary of the Tudeh Party, Nurideen Kianuri has already explained, after the recent banning of Mardom, how far the Iranian Stalinists were ready to take their policy. "Even if our formation were to be outlawed and our members persecuted,
," Kianuri said, "we would continue to defend the line of Imam Khomeini, which is to battle imperialism and its local agents, the liberals' and 'Maoists.' Our position in this regard is not based either on partisan considerations or on tactical maneuvers. Our support to the revolution is of a strategic order. *17
This declaration merits inclusion in an anthology of Stalinist betrayal, alongside similar declarations made in their time by the Iraqi,
Egyptian, or Sudanese CPs. And we would bet that this "support. of a strategic order" has something to do with the interests of Soviet diplomacy in the region.
Kianuri has gone even further since the present wave of executions began. In a statement made to Agence France-Presse, the leader of the Stalinist party, having expressed satisfaction at the "progress [achieved by the regime] of a tendency to normalize relations with the socialist countries," explained (in a bureaucratic slip of the tongue?) that Bani-Sadr and Mujahedeen leader Massoud Rajavi should be "locked up together in a psychiatric hospital." Approving the executions, Kianuri declared: "The leaders of the counterrevolutionary groups are murderers and they deserve the death penalty." Regarding the "young people mixed up by the Mujahedeen propaganda... they should be reeducated in labor camps.
Revolutionary Marxists distinguish between the bourgeoisie of an oppressed country and the bourgeoisie of an oppressor country, even when the first is more concretely involved in the path of counterrevolution. Even today we would not take a neutralist, pacifist, or defeatist attitude in the event of aggression by some imperialist power against the regime of the Islamic Republic.
But from this we do not conclude that the national bourgeoisie, or one of its wings, would be more progressive and more revolutionary than the bourgeoisie of a noncolonial country in the period of the democratic revolution. The neocolonial yoke does not give a revolutionary character to the national bourgeoisie, to one of its components, or to its political representatives.
mperialism, the bourgeoisie ind counterrevolute
As the previously cited resolution of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International explained regarding the Iranian situation:
The Khomeini leadership fulfills the function of a bourgeois leadership, whatever the struggles it led against the shah, whatever its present positions in the conflicts with American imperialism, and whatever confrontations take place between factions of the Shi'ite hierarchy and sectors of the bourgeoisie. The Khomeini leadership fulfills a bourgeois function through its very longstanding links with factions of the national capitalists (the great bazaar), through the Shi'ite hierarchy's economic resources, which includes the waqf religous endowment properties, through its economic, social and political program, through the ties it maintained with one or another sector of imperialism (European, Japanese), and through its role in maintaining the state apparatus. '
The lesson of all the colonial revolutions, starting with the victorious colonial revolutions (China, Vietnam, Cuba), is that no national bourgeoisie stands "equidistant" between imperialism and the exploited and oppressed masses of its own country, much less is closer to "its" own workers and "its" own poor peasants than to the imperialist powers.
Therefore, as Trotsky explained:
The question of the nature and the policy of the bourgeoisie is settled by the entire internal class structure of a nation waging the revolutionary struggle; by the historical epoch in which that struggle develops; by the degree of economic, political, and military dependence of the national bourgeoisie upon world imperialism as a whole or a particular section of it; finally, and this is most important, by the degree of class activity of the native proletariat, and by the state of its connections with the international revolutionary movement.
A democratic or national liberation movement may offer the bourgeoisie an opportunity to deepen and broaden its possibilities for exploitation. Independent intervention of the proletariat on the revolutionary arena threatens to deprive the bourgeoisie of the possibility to exploit altogether. '°
The IRP did not get involved in the battle against Bani-Sadr in order to be better able to struggle against imperialism (we have seen in detail what its economic policy was). Nor was it out of a pure "ideological" desire to concretely build a theocratic state (although it uses Islam as the moral argument to cover its activities and repressive legislation).
The confrontations within the bourgeoisie that have taken place in Iran reflect in a distorted manner the clash of basic class interests at play.
Lenin wrote in the theses on the national and colonial question adopted at the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920 that in the oppressed countries two movements can be discerned which are growing further and further apart with every day that passes. One of them is the bourgeois-democratic nationalist movement, which pursues the programme of political liberation with the conservation of the capitalist order; the other is the struggle of the propertyless peasants for their liberation from every kind of exploitation. The first movement attempts, often with success, to control the second; the Communist International must fight against such control and [seek] the development of the class consciousness of the working masses of the colonies...
The IRP has moved with such brutality against Bani-Sadr as well as its left opponents in order to provide a capitalist solution to the economic crisis and get capitalist accumulation going again. It is trying to wipe out the movement of the oppressed nationalities, to contain and break the thrust of the workers, poor peasants, and youth. As popular opposition to the IRP increases, it becomes increasingly vital for the IRP to control the whole state apparatus.
This does not exclude the possibility that the regime may make new tactical "turns" regarding Iraq or imperialism. But we must understand that the general room for maneuvering by the leaders of the Islamic Republic has shrunk, which in turn restricts the maneuvers they can try.
Khomeini's personal involvement
Two events illustrate the shrinking room for maneuver. The "consensus," the "national unity" that the leaders of the Islamic Republic benefited from after the war with Iraq broke out was, in the final analysis, of very short duration compared to what happened after the occupation of the American embassy in Tehran.
This also explains why the IRP required the direct and personal involvement of Khomeini to be able to win its strong arm operation against Bani-Sadr, which was not the case when the Democratic National Front of Matin Daftari was outlawed in August 1979 or Bazargan was eliminated in November 1979.
Khomeini's continuing prestige among broad sectors of the people, or the deterent that his prestige constitutes for certain sectors of the bourgeoisie and state apparatus, definitively tipped the scales in favor of the IRP. This will have important ramifications in the future since it marks a change in Khomeini's ability to play a Bonapartist role like the one he played between different wings of the clergy, between the various bourgeois factions, or even his partial ability to stand above the fundamental classes in Iranian society.
This is all the more so since the center of gravity within the IRP has shifted toward the most "fundamentalist" tendencies, symbolized by men like Ghaffari and Hassan Ayat (organizers of the attack against the universities last year) and Nabavi, who is close to the Mujahedeen-e Islam, a paramilitary group that is comparable to the Muslim Brotherhood.
However much the meaning of the latest developments have been masked by the people who support one side or the alliances developed by the other side, the latest developments bring nearer the time of an open head-on collision, in the most ruthless forms, between the revolution and counterrevolution in Iran.
Notes
1. Financial Times, July 22, 1981.
2. Le Monde, July 22, 1981.
3. "Iran's Economy: Between Crisis and Collapse," by Patrick Clawson, in Merip Reports, July-August, 1981.
4. Afrique-Asie, July 6, 1981.
5. Clawson, Merip Reports.
6. "Economic Sanctions and Iranian Trade," by Philip Shehadi, Merip Reports, July-August, 1981.
7. Interview with Ali Rajai, Middle East, July 1981.
8. Cf. Behrang, Iran, le maillon faible, Maspero.
9. Fifty-one industrial complexes were expropriated, 600 enterprises were nationalized, and about 100,000 apartment buildings, houses, apartments, most hotels, and halls were confiscated and turned over to the Foundation for the Dispossessed (mustazafin), according to Le Monde, July 24, 1981.
10. Financial Times, July 27, 1981.
11. Ibid.
12. Direct or indirect layoffs since the state could now refuse to "nationalize" companies declared bankrupt by their owners, as it had done up to now
13. See interview with Abdul-Rahman Qassemiu. general secretary of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Iran, published in Merip Reports, July-August 1981. He repeats the points made in an interview with Marc Kravetz. in Libération in January.
14. French-language Modjahed, May-June 1981.
15. Published in Intercontinental Press, December 1, 1980, page 1262.
16. Quoted by Eric Rouleau, Le Monde, July 23, 1981.
17. Ibid.
18. Intercontinental Press, December 1, 1980, page 1261.
19. Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, Pathfinder p. 172.
20. The Second Congress of the Communist International. Vol. 1, New Park, pp. 117-118.