3 February
2014. A World to Win News Service. Never have the events in the wake of the
Iranian revolution of 1979 and their lessons been more relevant than they are
today. In that year an enormous, prolonged mass upsurge led to the overthrow of
the Iranian monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi, whose regime was a cornerstone of U.S.
domination in the Middle East. But in 1981, the ecstasy of the revolutionary
period gave way to a counter-revolutionary coup led by Ayatollah Khomeini.
This new
regime was not able to consolidate its hold on the country all at once. After a
period in which it was able to repress the mass movement and spread
demoralization, revolutionary ferment aimed against Islamic rule began to come
to a boil again in the winter of 1981. In the summer of 1982, the Union of
Communists of Iran, the predecessor to today's Communist Party of Iran
(Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), began preparing for an armed insurrection, which took
place in January 1982 in the northern city of Amol.
A small
body of armed men and women revolutionaries who called themselves Sarbedaran
were able to seize the city, to the joy of an increasing number of ordinary
masses. The regime was forced to deploy ground and air forces from all over the
country. It retook the city after several days of fighting. The attempt to hunt
down people who had helped plan the uprising or who had come to its aid went on
for a long time afterwards. Later in that decade the regime executed tens of
thousands of communists and revolutionaries and plunged the country into a long
period of darkness. The communist-led revolution failed, but it represented the
only way out, and Iranian communists are determined that its lessons lead to a
successful revolution.
The
following statement entitled "History has proven who are the real imperialist
lackeys" was issued on the occasion of the 32nd anniversary of the Amol uprising
by the CPI(MLM).
About 30
years ago, comrade Behrooz Fathi – a leader of the Union of Iranian Communists
(Sarbedaran) and one of the Amol insurrectionists – while under arrest and
savage torture by the Islamic rulers – shot back at his interrogators who
accused the Union of Communists of Iran and the armed insurrection of Sarbedaran
in Amol of being an "American" project: "History will prove who are the real
imperialist lackeys!"
For the
revolutionary communists who had organized and led the Sarbedaran insurrection,
it was clear that the "anti-imperialism" of the Islamic reactionary ruling
regime in Iran was nothing but the imposition of a more horrendous version of
the same system of oppression and exploitation that existed under the Shah,
while adding to it religious obscurantism and religious tyranny.
Over the
last 34 years the Islamic Republic of Iran has proven that its rulers
never ventured outside the capitalist-imperialist system. The
IRI's ideological roots and social programme go back as far as 1,400 years in
history, but nevertheless this regime brought the totality of economic life of
Iran into the world network of the capitalist-imperialist system even more fully
than the Shah. By carrying out super-exploitation of the lives of more than 70
million people, this regime has delivered unimaginable wealth to the imperialist
system. While trumpeting its "anti imperialism" it has been tightening its links
with the world system and today it has prepared to enter into unity and
solidarity with the imperialist powers more openly in order to maintain its
lifeline which is dependent on the world capitalist system.
Indeed
history has proven who are the real lackeys of imperialism!
The Islamic
Republic's "anti-imperialism" was on the one hand a bargaining process with the
imperialist powers in order to consolidate the position of the Islamist strata
of the comprador-feudal class of Iran and on the other hand its aim was to
impose outmoded Islamic ideology, morality, culture and values in opposition to
the equally outmoded ideology and values that the Shah's regime had imposed on
the society with the help of the imperialists. This opposition was thoroughly
and totally reactionary, and the rule of the theocratic regime in Iran, a regime
which has mixed state and religion, has been among the main sources of
unprecedented degeneration and backwardness in the social relations among the
people, including the intensification of the oppression of women and the spread
of old culture and values, ignorance and superstition by leaps and
bounds.
The Islamic
Republic inaugurated its system with a crackdown on a rising of women against
imposition of Islamic morality and traditions; with the suppression of the just
struggles of the oppressed nations in Khuzestan, Kurdistan and Turkmen-Sahara;
by attacking freedom of thought and artistic creation and the revolutionary
movements of the workers and toiling masses of Iran; and it consolidated its
regime with the massacre of the enlightened vanguards of the people whom it had
captured – the political prisoners. It was against this regime that the Union of
Communists of Iran called upon the people in 1981 to rise up and join the
insurrection. The October 1981 statement of Sarbedaran
called:
"Oh People of Iran! … The Islamic Republic, Khomeini and his cohorts, are
nothing but an ensemble of clerical filth, tyranny and bullying. The fraudulent
Khomeini has restored the despotic monarchy in its religious version and upon
the tortured and mutilated bodies of our young revolutionaries. The regime of
the whip and the gallows of Khomeini and company sheds the blood of hundreds of
youth and teens, men and women and even the children of our people every day.
The sounds of the gunning down of people in the Islamic Republic's countless
prisons and detention centres are often and all over...
"The monstrosity and crimes of Khomeini and his band have made the whole
nation mournful and pushed the country towards complete decadence and collapse.
The regime of ignorance, arrogance and back-biting of this swindler old fox has
brought stagnation and destruction to industry, agriculture, science and
national culture and destroyed individual and social security and well-being in
our country...
"Oh worker comrades! Toiling brothers and sisters of every city and the
countryside!… Let us stand up with one heart and united! Fear not the hollow
browbeating and empty artillery and gunfire of this bunch of wicked hoodlums. We
must burn down throne and courts of this rude bunch that have in their brainless
heads a dream of monarchical rule."
The defeat
of the Sarbedaran insurrection and revolutionary struggles in other parts of the
country, especially in Kurdistan, meant consolidation of the Islamic regime.
Despite the 32 years that have passed since the defeat of the Sarbedaran
insurrection, its memory, lessons and historical call still resonates. This
means that the only road to liberation is through the overthrow of the Islamic
Republic system in its totality and the establishment of a radically different
and new political power and state – a state that not only does not belong to the
capitalist class and its servants and is not based on any of the
ideological-cultural institutions, values and traditions of this class, but aims
to uproot all this and has a completely opposite class character to the ruling
reaction. The name of this state is the dictatorship of the proletariat and it
aims to rely on the conscious masses of people and annihilate and uproot all
forms of oppression, discrimination, exploitation, ignorance and
suppression.
Thirty-two
years after the Sarbedaran insurrection, the necessity of a revolutionary
movement for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the establishment of a
proletarian state continues – a challenge before the society, especially its
communist forces. That lesson is that without seizing political power, all is
illusion, and that seizing political power is impossible without the leadership
of a revolutionary communist party with a correct political and ideological
line.
The lessons
of the defeat of the revolution of 1979 as well as the Sarbedaran insurrection
clearly demonstrate that without the intervention of the revolutionary communist
forces, forces with a revolutionary vision and programme, there will never be a
change in the situation that will bring the emancipation of the people, and the
situation of society will go from bad to worse. If we, the
revolutionary communists, fail to play our role in the intense and increasing
crisis in this society and in the world, again and again the reactionary forces
of one kind or another will occupy the scene and become the main players.
In order to
carry out this urgent historic task today, more than ever we need a solid core
of revolutionary communists equipped with the highest achievements and levels of
understanding of the international communist movement, who can become, in Iran
as well as the region, the principal players on the political
stage.
In the
1980s a just war for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic was initiated by
Sarbedaran, which represented the interests of the majority of the people of
Iran against the reactionaries – capitalism-imperialism and Islamism. The
realization of those goals and political tasks continues to be the only way for
the emancipation of the majority of the people of this society. That
emancipation depends on the forces that have a new understanding and awareness
of the liberatory character of the future society and are preparing the
revolution – a revolution of the kind of the socialist revolutions of the 20th
century in Russia and China but at the same time very different from them and
unprecedented in the human history.
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