Dear friends:
Last November you distributed a two-page leaflet after a Socialist Challenge meeting 1 had spoken at in Birmingham.
The leaflet was headed: "On the Question of the Iranian Struggle: Islamic Revolution or waterialist Hypocrisy?" presented a critique Marxist position on Iran and devoted itself to answering the points I had made in my speech.
You argue that:
(a) the iranian revolution is due to the love of the Iranian people for Islam (b) 'the teachings of Lenin and Trotsky are based on class-hatred and materialist belief and thus alien to the Iranian people*;
(c) it is in the teachings of the ayatollahs and mullahs that the Iranian people's aspirations for Islamic revolution Islamic state will be fulfilled.
You speak in the name of "Islamic revolution' ane ceclare your open hostility to socialists who are also involved in the Iranian struggle. claim, somewhat arrogantly, "misled people" who are not interested in what the people desire. The people of Iran desire Islam."
dealing points in detail, it is worth re-stating what, in our opinion, the Iranian struggle is all about. What is its dynamic and its ultimate goal?
Over the last twenty years the social weight of the urban working class has increased dramatically in comparison with neighbouring states. Class divisions and class contradictions have become ACULC.
How can you doubt that Iran is a society divided by class? How do you explain existence of parasites who live unbelievably luxurious conditions in Tehran while a few hundreds yards away there are people who live in the most abject poverty?
They are all Iranians. are mainly Muslims. Many capitalists regularly prostrate themselves before Mecca in the hope that their god will protect their privileges.
You could say that this latter breed are not true Muslims, they are imposters. But on what basis will you decide? teachings of Islam (especially the Shiite version) are full of ambiguities which can be interpreted to justify both resistance and collaboration with authority The poverty-stricken masses retain their religious beliefs to escape from the horrors and rich remain religious the better safeguard their interests.
Religion performed a different function hundreds of years ago, but in our century it has become UNIC DaCKDOne reaction. Today we have before us many examples of Islamic states'.
have the fundamentalists who Saudi Arabia in the name of Islam. Is that barbarism to be reborn in Iran? Or there is the *enlightened despotism' Libya.
The struggle in Iran began as struggle for rights. This united overwhelming majority of the pcopic In this struggle we all fight Shah. You shout Death to the and Shah' holding the banners of Islam. chant slogan with the red flag in our. hands.
But ask yourselves why it is that US imperialism supports You the Shah. Is it because he is 'anti-Islamic'? Is it they fear the rise of Islam? If that how of the oldest allies of the United your States in the Middle East?
No, the reason the Americans fear the fall of the Shah is because they establishing political structures to keep Iran safe for capitalism is not going to process.
The awakening and radicalisation of the working masses has created tremendous expectations. If the government that more follows the Shah cannot satisfy the people then there will be more upheavals.
The ayatollahs represent a coherent political The bourgeois Talled precisely alternative opposition made the religious leaders the They only major focus of dissent.
The struggle in Iran is thus motivated not so much by "love of Islam' (even though the majority of Iranians Muslims) as by a hatred of the Shah and all that he represents. In that sense the teachings of Lenin and Trotsky The relevant. For their followers itself say to the working masses: only you and your class are capable of liberating Iran from stranglehold of capitalism and imperialism. Only the victory of your class will ensure the real independence of Iran.
That is why the construction of a revolutionary miseries of everyday life. The | party is an important priority.
material Wahabbi govern of democratic the down the because do you The teachings ayatollahs and mullahs, which be an easy you claim are the real answer, offer no practical solutions in fact to the real needs of the Wat is be mic tie?
would character? Who would own the do would decide, basis, the discredited liances which Iran would need?
have Let us take one question to •Was illustrate your dilemma. Islam of all eschews merest on oars.
that are Iranian banks going to be forbidden the right to charge interest?
If they are, then they cannot function of answer would be to nationalise them immediately. You would call that 'communism' There are are very consistent political or theoretical positions that can be derived from Islam. The logic of capital will force even the most ardent the Islamic sides in the struggle that will develop after the Shah.
The Islamic movement itself will suffer further political rifts workers and divisions, precisely because La belief in Islam does not lead of the automatically political conclusions.
be its discredit the socialism. producaon and on what alTrotskyists.
years.
•Well, financial you!
capital. Our in reality, no and more barbaric. nationalists to take and socialism fall of the but the same masses.
Islam, ou are quite correer to poli Christianity out the disgusting role of China Soviet Union 10S9U800 supporting the Shah over the last decade. You then use this to very idea of It is true that these states and their cynical manoeuvres have refusing antagonised and disillusioned millions of people. But we are Our political this current has tought against these policies now for more than fifty So throwing Brezhnev and Mao at us is the equivalent of us the Shah 1s a Muslim', and hurling him at fade.
believe that the interests of workers throughout the world are one slogans, and indivisible. We argue that character. unless the workers seize state power over the next decades, clear. capitalism will become more 2.
You claim that capitalism are Western ideologies'. This is false. They are both international ideolo. difference. One represents the crucial Trotsky. interests of the ruling classes very and the other the oppressed no more than or Judaism Hinduism or Buddhism, offers We do not deny for a single moment the role of the Islamic opposition, and Khomeini in particular, in fuelling the mass upsurge against the Shah and to accept any compromise which retains the monarchy. It is what follows which will decide the immediate future of Iran.
And as we are approaching the 21st century, it would be somewhat foolish to attempt to derive our future from a distant past whose echoes continue to To summarise believe that the struggle in iran, despite the predominance of democratic has clear class The recent strike wave has made this abundantly We believe that the future of the Iranian masses does rest on the ability of their most advanced sections to construct a party that will be based on the Trothings of Mare, Lenin and are trying construct such a party at this moment: • Iranian section of the Fourth International.
3. The ayatollahs and mullahs have been able to play an important role because the repression, the collapse of the bourgeois oppositions, and the bankruptcy of pro-Moscow and pro-Peking groups made them and their mosques the only centres of opposition.
But already this is beginning to change. The fall of the Shal will shift polities further away from the mosques. This is not just desirable. It is virtually inevitable.
In conclusion we can do little more than paraphrase Lenin's remarks to Indonesian communists in 1919. The latter had explained that the peasants were loyal to Sarekat-i-Islam, a progressive Muslim organisation. They were loyal to God Lenin advised Indonesian communists to work Sarekat, but said: "Tell them they should he loyal the that when they There earth the International Executive Com mittee of the Communist futerational is more powerYours comradely, Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 5
Indian, was murdered by white racists in Hackney, only was called for
----- pull-quotes -----
in the pastes the past.