The WPI's translation of Koorosh Modaresi's text gives us
some more basis to make a judgement on the disputes among
the Iranian revolutionaries.
The issues are still not clear to us. We do not know what
clarifications and developments Koorosh Modaresi and his
comrades may have made over the last two years, since he
wrote the document now translated.
Sections of the document certainly give some colour to the
WPI's charge that Koorosh Modaresi has veered away from
independent working-class politics towards bourgeois
political manoeuvring.
After offering a minimum list of democratic demands, KM
writes that if "political forces... express their commitment
to the platform", the WPI should "announce that in case such
a platform is guaranteed, it will participate in the
government".
Towards the end of his text, he summarises: "In this period,
the party will declare a provisional government +
constitutional assembly + referendum as its plan". The WPI
should "enter the scene not just as an opposition force, but
also as one of the architects of this [provisional,
apparently coalition] government".
The text contradicts itself, or at least appears to
contradict itself. Before declaring a referendum should be
part of the WPI's three-point "plan", KM writes that: "The
referendum... is a plan to drive people out of the scene and
declare the end of revolution by putting forward phony
questions... It is exactly like the referendum [organised by
Khomeiny early in his regime] 'Islamic Republic: yes or no'.
WPIran.... must resolutely oppose this plan".
Before declaring that the WPI should be one of the
architects of, and given certain promises participate in, a
provisional government, KM writes: "What I mean by policy
towards the government is not to support the government. It
is a framework in which the WPIran will not demand the
violent overthrow of the government".
This is confusing. However, KM's text does raise some real
questions. It does point to some real problems with the
perspective of the WPI (Hamid Taghvaee): that the WPI should
orient completely towards "a mass protest movement and
revolutionary upheaval" against the Islamic Republic in
which the WPI takes power directly, instantly, as the
immediate replacement of the current dictatorship; and that
less favourable developments may be possible, but all we
need to say about them now is that they "should be dealt
with as the need arises".
KM suggests that the fall of the Islamic Republic will at
first take the form of a government of an Islamic Yeltsin -
a government headed by people who are from the top circles
of the existing regime, but have some oppositional status
within it. Mahmood Ketabchi of the WPI (Hamid Taghvaee)
dismisses this as "the least likely scenario. What would
stop people who overthrow the Islamic Republic from
attacking criminal elements like Hajjarian who now depicts
himself as a reformist?"
In fact it is usually elements like Prince Mikhail and then
Rodzianko in Russia in 1917, Spinola in Portugal in 1974,
who first emerge on top. Whether they stay there for more
than a few weeks or months is another matter. But what at
first "stops people who overthrow" the old regime from
rejecting such figures is the newness to politics, the
indecision, the bias towards hoping for the best from vague
revolutionary rhetoric, of people just emerging from
dictatorship.
KM also discusses the danger of a "dark scenario", where
reactionary militarist gangs take over large areas. In a
situation where Islamist and other rightist militias are
gaining power in neighbouring Iraq, this is not to be
dismissed.
KM's references to "a peaceful and civilised transition
process" or "a civilised, calm, and democratic transition"
read like reformism. But it is true that the perspective
"Islamic dictatorship or communist revolution" blocks off an
important dimension of politics.
In April 1917, just after the great political battle in the
Bolshevik Party in which Lenin had convinced that party to
reject its initial critical support to the Provisional
Government, and instead to oppose that government, Lenin
wrote:
"The slogan 'Down with the Provisional Government!' is an
incorrect one at the present moment because in the absence
of a solid (i.e. a class-conscious and organised majority of
the people on the side of the revolutionary proletariat,
such a slogan is either an empty phrase, or, objectively,
amounts to attempts of an adventurist character.
"We shall favour the transfer of power to the proletarians
and semi-proletarians only when the Soviets of Workers' and
Soldiers' Deputies adopt our policy and are willing to take
the power into their own hands". (CW vol.24 p.210-2).
Rosa Luxemburg wrote similarly in the Spartacus Programme
(December 1918):
"The Spartacus Union refuses to share government power with
the lackeys of the capitalist class, the Scheidemann-Ebert
element [the Social Democrats who led the Provisional
Government at that time] because it sees in such cooperation
an act of treason against the basic principles of socialism,
an act calculated to paralyse the revolution and strengthen
its enemies.
"The Spartacus Union will also refuse to take over the power
of government merely because the Scheidemann-Ebert element
have completely discredited themselves, and the Independent
Socialist Party [a large soft-leftish party formed by people
expelled by the Social Democrats during the war], through
cooperation with them, has reached a blind alley.
"The Spartacus Union will never take over the power of
government otherwise than by a clear manifestation of the
unquestionable will of the great majority of the proletarian
mass of Germany..."
Lenin and Luxemburg were not reformists. But they understood
that the self-emancipation of the working class can be won
only by the working class itself becoming fully organised
and aware, not by this or that party seizing a chance to
grab levers of power.
And in the process of the working class itself becoming
fully organised and aware, as Trotsky wrote, "it is
impossible merely to reject the democratic programme; it is
imperative that in the struggle the masses outgrow it".
Trotsky continued: "The slogan for a national (or
constituent) assembly preserves its full force for such
countries as China or India... As a primary step, the
workers must be armed with this democratic programme. Only
they will be able to summon and unite the farmers.
"On the basis of the revolutionary democratic programme, it
is necessary to oppose the workers to the 'national'
bourgeoisie.
"Then, at a certain stage in the mobilisation of the masses
under the slogans of revolutionary democracy, soviets can
and should arise... Sooner or later, the soviets should
overthrow bourgeois democracy. Only they are capable of
bringing the democratic revolution to a conclusion and
likewise opening an era of socialist revolution..."
Trotsky also wrote about the use of the constituent assembly
slogan in fascist countries.
"The Fourth International [does not] reject democratic
slogans as a means of mobilising the masses against fascism.
On the contrary, such slogans at certain moments can play a
serious role.
"But the formulas of democracy (freedom of press, the right
to unionise, etc.) mean for us only incidental or episodic
slogans in the independent movement of the proletariat, and
not a democratic noose fastened to the neck of the
proletariat by the bourgeoisie's agents (Spain!) [Trotsky
refers to the role of the Spanish Communist Party in telling
Spanish workers and peasants that they must remain at the
"democratic stage" of their revolution, and "first defeat
fascism", before mobilising on a socialist basis].
"As soon as the movement assumes something of a mass
character, the democratic slogans will be intertwined with
the transitional ones; factory committees, it may be
supposed, will appear before the old routinists rush from
their chancelleries to organise trade unions; soviets will
cover Germany before a new constituent assembly will gather
in Weimar".
The balance of Trotsky's comments is markedly different for
the countries like then-fascist Germany and Italy and for
countries like China and India which were then, much more so
even than now, predominantly peasant and suffering under
large pre-capitalist or colonial impositions.
Part of the difference was that Germany and Italy were more
urbanised, more industrialised, more purely capitalist
socially and economically. In those respects Iran today is
more like Germany and Italy then than like China or India.
Part of it was that in Germany and Italy the fascist
governments had been in power only a relatively short term
when Trotsky wrote (five years in Germany; about 13 years
since Mussolini imposed a fully fascist regime, though he
had become prime minister in 1922), and every worker older
than about 30 in those countries had a living memory of a
powerful revolutionary labour movement, factory committees
or workers' councils, etc.
In Iran, by contrast, the Islamic Republic has been in power
for 25 years, and the burst of open working-class
organisation in the movement against the Shah and before the
Islamic Republic consolidated itself was only a brief
episode.
The weight of democratic demands like that for a constituent
assembly - neither "provisional government" nor "referendum"
seem to have any plausible value as democratic demands - is
thus likely to be intermediary between what Trotsky
discussed for China and India, and what he discussed for
Germany and Italy.
On Koorosh Modaresi's text
The issues are still not clear to us. We do not know what clarifications and developments Koorosh Modaresi and his comrades may have made over the last two years, since he wrote the document now translated.
Sections of the document certainly give some colour to the WPI's charge that Koorosh Modaresi has veered away from independent working-class politics towards bourgeois political manoeuvring.
After offering a minimum list of democratic demands, KM writes that if "political forces... express their commitment to the platform", the WPI should "announce that in case such a platform is guaranteed, it will participate in the government".
Towards the end of his text, he summarises: "In this period, the party will declare a provisional government + constitutional assembly + referendum as its plan". The WPI should "enter the scene not just as an opposition force, but also as one of the architects of this [provisional, apparently coalition] government".
The text contradicts itself, or at least appears to contradict itself. Before declaring a referendum should be part of the WPI's three-point "plan", KM writes that: "The referendum... is a plan to drive people out of the scene and declare the end of revolution by putting forward phony questions... It is exactly like the referendum [organised by Khomeiny early in his regime] 'Islamic Republic: yes or no'. WPIran.... must resolutely oppose this plan".
Before declaring that the WPI should be one of the architects of, and given certain promises participate in, a provisional government, KM writes: "What I mean by policy towards the government is not to support the government. It is a framework in which the WPIran will not demand the violent overthrow of the government".
This is confusing. However, KM's text does raise some real questions. It does point to some real problems with the perspective of the WPI (Hamid Taghvaee): that the WPI should orient completely towards "a mass protest movement and revolutionary upheaval" against the Islamic Republic in which the WPI takes power directly, instantly, as the immediate replacement of the current dictatorship; and that less favourable developments may be possible, but all we need to say about them now is that they "should be dealt with as the need arises".
KM suggests that the fall of the Islamic Republic will at first take the form of a government of an Islamic Yeltsin - a government headed by people who are from the top circles of the existing regime, but have some oppositional status within it. Mahmood Ketabchi of the WPI (Hamid Taghvaee) dismisses this as "the least likely scenario. What would stop people who overthrow the Islamic Republic from attacking criminal elements like Hajjarian who now depicts himself as a reformist?"
In fact it is usually elements like Prince Mikhail and then Rodzianko in Russia in 1917, Spinola in Portugal in 1974, who first emerge on top. Whether they stay there for more than a few weeks or months is another matter. But what at first "stops people who overthrow" the old regime from rejecting such figures is the newness to politics, the indecision, the bias towards hoping for the best from vague revolutionary rhetoric, of people just emerging from dictatorship.
KM also discusses the danger of a "dark scenario", where reactionary militarist gangs take over large areas. In a situation where Islamist and other rightist militias are gaining power in neighbouring Iraq, this is not to be dismissed.
KM's references to "a peaceful and civilised transition process" or "a civilised, calm, and democratic transition" read like reformism. But it is true that the perspective "Islamic dictatorship or communist revolution" blocks off an important dimension of politics.
In April 1917, just after the great political battle in the Bolshevik Party in which Lenin had convinced that party to reject its initial critical support to the Provisional Government, and instead to oppose that government, Lenin wrote:
"The slogan 'Down with the Provisional Government!' is an incorrect one at the present moment because in the absence of a solid (i.e. a class-conscious and organised majority of the people on the side of the revolutionary proletariat, such a slogan is either an empty phrase, or, objectively, amounts to attempts of an adventurist character.
"We shall favour the transfer of power to the proletarians and semi-proletarians only when the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies adopt our policy and are willing to take the power into their own hands". (CW vol.24 p.210-2).
Rosa Luxemburg wrote similarly in the Spartacus Programme (December 1918):
"The Spartacus Union refuses to share government power with the lackeys of the capitalist class, the Scheidemann-Ebert element [the Social Democrats who led the Provisional Government at that time] because it sees in such cooperation an act of treason against the basic principles of socialism, an act calculated to paralyse the revolution and strengthen its enemies.
"The Spartacus Union will also refuse to take over the power of government merely because the Scheidemann-Ebert element have completely discredited themselves, and the Independent Socialist Party [a large soft-leftish party formed by people expelled by the Social Democrats during the war], through cooperation with them, has reached a blind alley.
"The Spartacus Union will never take over the power of government otherwise than by a clear manifestation of the unquestionable will of the great majority of the proletarian mass of Germany..."
Lenin and Luxemburg were not reformists. But they understood that the self-emancipation of the working class can be won only by the working class itself becoming fully organised and aware, not by this or that party seizing a chance to grab levers of power.
And in the process of the working class itself becoming fully organised and aware, as Trotsky wrote, "it is impossible merely to reject the democratic programme; it is imperative that in the struggle the masses outgrow it".
Trotsky continued: "The slogan for a national (or constituent) assembly preserves its full force for such countries as China or India... As a primary step, the workers must be armed with this democratic programme. Only they will be able to summon and unite the farmers.
"On the basis of the revolutionary democratic programme, it is necessary to oppose the workers to the 'national' bourgeoisie.
"Then, at a certain stage in the mobilisation of the masses under the slogans of revolutionary democracy, soviets can and should arise... Sooner or later, the soviets should overthrow bourgeois democracy. Only they are capable of bringing the democratic revolution to a conclusion and likewise opening an era of socialist revolution..."
Trotsky also wrote about the use of the constituent assembly slogan in fascist countries.
"The Fourth International [does not] reject democratic slogans as a means of mobilising the masses against fascism. On the contrary, such slogans at certain moments can play a serious role.
"But the formulas of democracy (freedom of press, the right to unionise, etc.) mean for us only incidental or episodic slogans in the independent movement of the proletariat, and not a democratic noose fastened to the neck of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie's agents (Spain!) [Trotsky refers to the role of the Spanish Communist Party in telling Spanish workers and peasants that they must remain at the "democratic stage" of their revolution, and "first defeat fascism", before mobilising on a socialist basis].
"As soon as the movement assumes something of a mass character, the democratic slogans will be intertwined with the transitional ones; factory committees, it may be supposed, will appear before the old routinists rush from their chancelleries to organise trade unions; soviets will cover Germany before a new constituent assembly will gather in Weimar".
The balance of Trotsky's comments is markedly different for the countries like then-fascist Germany and Italy and for countries like China and India which were then, much more so even than now, predominantly peasant and suffering under large pre-capitalist or colonial impositions.
Part of the difference was that Germany and Italy were more urbanised, more industrialised, more purely capitalist socially and economically. In those respects Iran today is more like Germany and Italy then than like China or India.
Part of it was that in Germany and Italy the fascist governments had been in power only a relatively short term when Trotsky wrote (five years in Germany; about 13 years since Mussolini imposed a fully fascist regime, though he had become prime minister in 1922), and every worker older than about 30 in those countries had a living memory of a powerful revolutionary labour movement, factory committees or workers' councils, etc.
In Iran, by contrast, the Islamic Republic has been in power for 25 years, and the burst of open working-class organisation in the movement against the Shah and before the Islamic Republic consolidated itself was only a brief episode.
The weight of democratic demands like that for a constituent assembly - neither "provisional government" nor "referendum" seem to have any plausible value as democratic demands - is thus likely to be intermediary between what Trotsky discussed for China and India, and what he discussed for Germany and Italy.