'DON'T play at insurrection', Engels used to warn impatient and isolated revolutionaries. The Iranian masses demonstrated last weekend that they were in deadly earnest.
They resisted army attempts to impose aw and order, arsenals, seized arms and inflicted defeat after defeat on troops loyal to the Shah.
Humiliated and concerned lest the masses follow through their victories by smashing the entire structure of the army, the military leaders sounded the retreat. They ordered the troops to return to the barracks.
Others preferred insurrectionaries.
The generals issued a pathetic statement: *The army will remain neutral.' The masses laughed in their face. For the last year this 'neutral' army has been massacring thousands of Iranians.
The Shah's flight was the masses' first victory. The removal of his last appointed Prime Minister, Bakhtar, marks the end of any hope the Shah may have had of saving his throne.
What makes the fall of Bakhtiar all the more important is that he did not withdraw "gracefully' after negotiations. manere was transition. He was overthrown by a mass insurrection.
insurrection achieved its immediaté Even HOIC importantly aim because the masses were armed.
The guerrilla organisations now came into their own and took the initiative at several key moments.
The masses were poutically armco by months of struggles. This armoury was restricted to the overthrow of the autocracy, but this in itself gave their struggle a revolutonary aname.
At the crucial moment political strength enabled them take up real weapons and defeat the military offensive. The result was the fall of Bakhtiar and the storming of the Shah's fake parliament. Eleven thousand prisoners liberated themselves.
The radio and television stations were taken over by the workers and news of what was happening broadcast to the rest of the country and the world.
retreat the once powerful autocrat heard Radio Tehran announcing the end of the monarchy.
Dual power now exists. But dual power does not automatically lead to the seizure of power by the oppressed masses. For the very term denotes that there are two powers in the land.
On the one hand is the Shah's army.
It has suffered a serious blow, but it is far from being smashed. It is still under the control of the same officers If you agree with these principles and want to be involved in activities by Challenge supporters in your area, fill in the form below and send it to us.
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Socialist Challenge. 15 February 1979 page 2 raided Some did.
the peaceful the SECONDARY picketing have continuous repression.
ensure. their motion. They But the was In his Moroccan does army. It Khomeini.
willingness to revolution from within.
- Tehran-style organised large-scale But it could be crushed if the struggle continues and that is what Iranian revolutionaries will seek to bears On the other side are the masses in are triumphant and proud of their successes. Rightly so. Their struggle offers hope to the victims of dictatorships throughout the world, starting with neighbouring dual power which undoubtedly exists in Iran. has yet to be institutionalised. Its political voice TACE emerge as yet discussions and debates in popular institutions or the base of a popular comes from If this old man's obduracy and insistence on no compromises with the Shah has proved a major strength for the mass movement, it is his negotiate the generals and his eagerness to disarm the masses which now threatens the The BBC TV news a few weeks ago referred to Bakhtiar as a Kerensky. The Economist last week compared Khomeini to the fifteenth century Florentine religious demagogue Savanarola.
Both are wrong. If anything he closer resemblance Kerensky, though analogies by their nature are never exact. That is why Lenin's insistence on analysis of the concrete remains a far superior method.
Dual power will not last for ever. Sooner or later there will be a final test of strength. The mass movement is in an extremely advantageous situation at the moment. Its weakness lies in the that revolutionary parties - indeed all working class ponucal and trade umon organisa tions - are very weak.
In our editorial statement on Iran last November we wrote:
*Even far-reaching bourgeois democracy is unlikely to satisfy the needs of the masses, have spent months increasing their experience of independent organisation and independent political action.
"The Shah will fall because he was pushed, not because of any vague death wish. In other words,
Iran
CASES insurrectionary situation there is the possibility of the masses developing their own organisations of workers power to of their present ruler, but to seize their own destiny once and for all.
concrete None of this is certain of course. situation' The only thing we can predict with scientific accuracy is that everything is possible!
'One major obstacle still stands between the masses and power: an armoury CHO HOUS furnished and workers' Events have tended to confirm our analysis. What is needed now is the generalisation and tion of the existing dual power. This will involve a struggle by the masses to retain their arms, soldiers committees who establishment of militias to defend the masses against TOPICSSIOn At the same time there should be no delay in elections to a sovereign assembly. It is only such a body which above is acceptable.
If workers composed the contradictions Such are disarmed and religious fight women, nationalities, today in which alliances.
- not simply to get rid enemies.
States strategy in the CDCSS OLI maintained They need institutionalisathe election of presently and the armed workers be immediate consitutent makes in the eyes of the millions of workers throughout the world, We are opposed i them and will offer full support to all those fighting for socialist democracy can decide who forms a government. No administration appointed from institutions existed which represented the masses more directly, institutions of a soviet type, and peasants' parties majority, then would argue for these parties to form a government based on soviet power.
But this power has yet to be created. Given the weakness of working class organisation it will develop out of the inbuilt into the struggle for a constituent assembly and democratic rights for the masses.
an assembly would be defended by armed sections of the masses. The trial of all generals and officers who participated in the massacres and their replacement by officers elected by the soldiery are both urgent But they can only be carried through if the workers militias strengthened rather than If elections for an assembly are organised the workers and peasants will need to form their own parties, trade unions and peasants associa tions independent of all bourgeois forces. These would stand opposed to all varieties of mysticism, political A revolutionary workers' party will for thoroughgoing land reforms, political and social rights for self-determination for nationalisation of all big capitalist firms workers' control, and an end to all imperialist That Iranian Trotskyists are fighting for today. It is in the course of these struggles that a revolutionary party will be built.
The Iranian revolution will need to guard itself not just from its internal latter have been sustained and backed by the United and Britain Imperialist viete sas suffered a serious setback with the fal of the Shah (see page 4) and the not give up Iran without a fight.
Their problem is that their only instrument in Iran is now the army.
politicians and political parties. A concordat with Khomeini cannot be excluded, though the latter must realise that his mass support will diminish if he makes any deals.
Iranian revolutionary Marxists are engaged in building section of the Fourth International. They and other revolutionaries must aided in developing political instruments that will prevent any regression in the coming months.
Although the fall of the monarchy OUE political tasks more complex, everything is still possible.
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Our socialism will be infinitels more democratic than what exist in "socialism' in the USSR and Eastern Kurope have discredited sucialism