As the United States military and its Zionist proxy bombard Iran, murdering hundreds of civilians, we revolutionary socialists are neither pacifists nor neutral. We stand on the side of the country under attack by imperialism. A defeat of the U.S. and Israeli aggressors would give courage to oppressed and exploited people around the world.
Thomas Friedman’s claim that Iran is “the biggest imperialist power in the region since 1979” is absurd. Friedman, an advocate of the Iraq War and a friend of the House of Saud, has been responsible for far more carnage in the Middle East than any Iranian leader.
Yet while we support the resistance against imperialist attacks, as socialists we also fight for the political independence of the working class. This means we never give political support to capitalist governments — even those in the Pentagon’s crosshairs.
A handful of socialist groups in imperialist countries, such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) in the United States or the Kommunistische Organisation (KO) in Germany, go beyond the elementary need to stand with Iran’s resistance — they say the working class should give political support the Islamic Republic. This spreads illusions in a semi-colonial bourgeoisie and ultimately weakens the struggle against imperialism.
A Capitalist Theocracy
Iran, a dependent capitalist country, is not, as Western propaganda would put it, uniquely “evil.” Iran executes thousands of citizens each year and oppresses women with myriad patriarchal rules — but in this, the Islamic Republic is no different than Saudi Arabia. The latter is an ally of the self-proclaimed “free world” while the other must be “liberated” with cruise missiles. Imperialist policies have nothing to do with human rights.
As the Financial Times acknowledges, Ali Khamenei was more cultured than the illiterate buffoon Trump or the corrupt cynic Netanyahu, who do not seem to believe in anything. These two did not even pause their genocide in Gaza while accusing Khamenei of mass murder.
Yet even while we recognize that Khamenei was no more evil than his imperialist counterparts — and a lot less dangerous — we cannot ignore the fact that he headed a repressive state apparatus that banned unions and shot at protestors. This government draws its legitimacy from god, even though Iranians do not appear to be very religious.
Despite its rhetoric, the Islamic Republic is not an anti-imperialist force — it does not represent “a taking back of natural resources and a restoration of rights and dignity,” as the PSL puts it. Iran is a capitalist country in which the means of production are owned by billionaires. Iran’s government, like those of some other semi-colonial countries, does not question a world order based on plunder by the Great Powers — it simply wants a slightly larger piece of the pie. Even Iran’s support for anti-Zionist forces in the region has more to do with geopolitical calculation than anti-imperialist conviction.
It’s absolutely wrong to say that the Islamic Republic is the “product of the people’s revolution of 1979,” as the KO puts it. The truth is the opposite: there was a genuine people’s revolution, with the working class organizing itself in shoras (councils), showing the possibility of a socialist transformation. The clergy led a counterrevolution and massacred thousands of communists so that the bourgeoisie could remain in power. The Islamic Republic was reestablished to ensure that Iran’s workers could be exploted.
Back in 2009, the PSL did acknowledge that the Islamic Republic is “staunchly anti-communist” and had carried out a “bloody campaign of repression … against leftist forces.” They went so far as to recognize that the “Islamic Republic represents the capitalist class” — but they claim it represents the “nationalist sector” of the capitalist class, which workers should support against the “comprador sector” of their exploiters. This Stalinist class collaboration can only lead to defeat — support for “nationalist” capitalists does not lead to liberation.
PSL, KO, and other “campist” groups call for support for the Islamic Republic without being able to point to a single socialist group in Iran that shares their position. This is obvious: communists in Iran are subject to arrest and torture. PSL and KO are supporting a government that would throw them in jail if they tried to set up shop in Teheran.
A Working-Class Perspective
Modern campism is based on a terrible lack of imagination. While campism historically offered uncritical support to Stalinist states (where, at the very least, capital had been expropriated), today’s campists tend to serve as cheerleaders for any capitalist government in conflict with U.S. imperialism. This is based on a vision of the world where the dividing lines are between states and nations. If U.S. imperialism is the dominant power, then the only force that can oppose it are weaker states.
Yet the world’s real dividing lines are between classes. It is the working class, if it constitutes itself as an independent political force, that can lead all oppressed people in the struggle for liberation.
When the PSL, the KO, and other campists support the Islamic Republic, this logically implies that Iran’s working class should obey the authorities and cease all efforts to organize for a better life. Campists believe this powerful proletariat, which toppled a dictatorship in 1979 and shook the foundations of imperialist domination in the Middle East, has no role to play today.
A bourgeois government’s “resistance” to imperialism will always be partial. By defending private property, all capitalist states defend the economic foundations of imperialism. The only way to break with imperialism would be for a workers’ government to nationalize the means of production and the natural resources in Iran — but the Islamic Republic suppresses all unions and organizations with this perspective.
This is just one example of how an “anti-imperialist” bourgeois government represses and weakens the working class — holding down the one force that could actually defeat U.S. imperialism.
Permanent Revolution
Iran’s self-defense against U.S. and Israeli aggression is progressive — a U.S. victory would further subjugate the people of the region. Workers and leftists need to be part of that defense. But as part of an anti-imperialist struggle, we must question the strict limits placed by the Islamic Republic. This means, for example, mobilizing women, in spite of Khamenei’s obscurantist ideas about women’s role. It means calling for strikes in both the region and in the imperialist centers to stop the war machine.
The working class must aim to lead the struggle against imperialism. This is how an anti-imperialist defensive war can be transformed into a socialist revolution — this is the perspective of permanent revolution, a perspective that was becoming visible in 1979-80. It was the mullahs who crushed workers’ self-organization back then — and there is no reason that workers should trust them today.
Some left-wing supporters of Iran see themselves as “Marxist-Leninists.” But speaking at a congress of the Communist International, Lenin emphasized the “the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs, etc.” Instead, he thought communists should remain an independent force in the anti-imperialist struggle:
“The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form.”
That’s the Marxist and Leninist policy today — and it’s defended by Trotskyists.
Red Flag is a weekly opinion column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.
Reminder: Join the school strike against military service this Thursday at 11:00 at Potsdamer Platz!
