To: Detroit/Seattle
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November 3, 2022
Re: The Iranian struggle and the crisis in the American anti-war movement
by Joseph Green, Detroit Workers’ Voice
It’s been a month and a half since the Iranian regime arrested, tortured, and murdered Mahsa Amini (Jina) in mid-September for wearing a hijab too loosely. Since then protests have broken out all over Iran. The police and security forces have killed over 230 protesters; over 2,000 people have been arrested; but the movement is still going strong. The government has tried to silence news of the demonstrations, carried out internet blackouts, and arrested journalists, but the discontent has spread across the country. The regime’s “Revolutionary Guards” declared that October 29 would be the last day of protests, and the protests continued. Large numbers of women have taken to the streets; many men have supported them; students at universities and schools have protested; strikes have taken place, including some in the important oil industry; the slogan “death to the dictator” becomes ever more popular; and the people have displayed incredible courage and heroism.
Why has there been such a major outbreak over the issue of the compulsory wearing of the hijab? It is because this affects the freedom of women, their dignity and self-respect. It is not just important in itself, but is a symbol of all the restrictions on women. But also, there have been struggles on one issue after another in Iran, especially in the last five years. There is such wide discontent in Iran that any outrage can start a series of nationwide protests that, whatever their starting point, ends up with slogans denouncing the regime itself.
Thus there was a wave of protest between December 2017 and early 2018 against the economic policies of the regime, but also because Vida Movahed waved her hijab on a stick in the middle of Tehran, inspiring a wave of protests against the hijab that has continued on and off until now. Then a year of general strikes and protests lasted from mid-2018 to mid-2019, including actions by shopkeepers, teachers, truckers, and others. It was followed by Bloody Aban (November) 2019, which was sparked by major increases in fuel prices on November 15. Protests immediately broke out in 100 cities across Iran; 1,500 demonstrators were killed by the regime; hundreds of banks and government facilities were attacked; and symbols of the regime were burned. Although the main uprising was put down in several days, waves of protest in solidarity with the uprising kept breaking out in Iran until mid-2020.
Soon, however, in June and July 2021, another strike wave broke out in Iran, largely in the petrochemical industry. And most recently, since September 16 this year, there is the new round of protests which has again illustrated the widespread anger with the regime as a whole. Among the popular slogans are “Women, life, freedom” and “Iran has become a detention center”.
Year after year, again and again, these protests have been met by bloody repression, and the theocratic regime has sought to hide the news of what is going on. Again and again these protests, whatever their starting point, have led to slogans against the regime. It is a struggle for freedom that has persisted in incredibly difficult conditions. Its victory would a major step forward in the struggle of the Iranian masses for a better life, and would create conditions for the development of the political life and organization of the working class. And it would likely inspire struggles for democratic freedom and against theocracy elsewhere in the region and the world.
Solidarity with the heroic women and protesters in Iran! Death to the dictatorship! Freedom for the working masses of Iran! <>
by Joseph Green, Detroit Workers’ Voice
One would think that the sight of millions of people rising up to fight for democratic rights in country after country would inspire and invigorate the radical left. Yet, while major events are shaking one country after another, only some of these struggles receive support from the American left as a whole. The massive movement in Iran is one of the struggles that isn’t supported by the main anti-war coalitions and by a number of groups in the radical left. Instead of being inspired by the heroism of women and working people in the face of bloody repression, these groups are either embarrassed by this struggle or in opposition to it.
This and other struggles have been denounced as imperialist plots or “color revolutions” by some groups, as if democratic struggles were something bad. Other groups, like Code Pink, agonize over how to appear to support the women’s protests in Iran, while opposing the slogans against the dictatorship. As a result, it is mainly the Iranian community in the US, not the left, which has carried out solidarity actions.
The struggle against the Russian invasion of Ukraine has received an even more hostile reception from most of the anti-war coalitions. While millions of Ukrainians stand up for the continued existence of Ukraine as an independent country and resist one of the largest and most heavily armed militaries in the world, the Ukrainian resistance is denounced as a US proxy, and Russian government talking points against Ukraine are widely spread. As a result, it has been left largely to the Ukrainian community and a minority section of the left to stand up against the Russian invasion.
The struggle of people in Hong Kong for their democratic rights was similarly denounced by much of the main American anti-war coalitions. The struggle in Myanmar against the coup of Feb. 2021 has been disregarded, although it has continued and grown despite the atrocities of the military. The Ethiopian government’s war against the Tigrayan people also gets little attention. Indeed, sections of the left support this war, using incredible sophistry to present this as an anti-imperialist cause.
Why do these groups do such things? Some believe there is something socialist or at least anti-imperialist in Stalinist state-capitalist regimes, or even in some outright capitalist regimes, such as the Russian Federation. They judge the struggles not on the basis of whether people are rising up to fight for their rights, but on such international alignments. This is fake or non-class anti-imperialism, which uses the words of anti-imperialism, but opposes the essence of anti-imperialism.
The Trotskyist groups differ among themselves in their stands on
various struggles around the world, but the common theoretical
framework of Trotskyism has caused confusion. The theory that
state-capitalist regimes are “deformed workers’ states” has done a lot
of damage to the anti-imperialist movement. So does the theory of
“permanent revolution” which denigrates democratic struggles that
aren’t going to be followed by an immediate socialist revolution; this
view has spread beyond Trotskyist circles.
The working class movement is an international one, and thus the failure of the left to have vigorous support for the struggles of working people around the world weakens it immensely. It also weakens the support given by the left to those other struggles, such as the Palestinian struggle, which have escaped being condemned by the non-class anti-imperialists. It is important to both build up a powerful solidarity movement with the Iranian struggle and other struggles for democratic rights or for the right to self-determination, and to deal with the mistaken theoretical views that hinder that support. <>
Picture of student demonstrations <>
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