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The Islamic Shoras
In Iran there is only one official labor union known as the House of Labor. It is controlled by Iran’s theocratic government. The only other official labor bodies in Iran are the Islamic Shoras: government installed worker-management mediation committees that most often side with management. These committees were created by the government to co-opt and smash the real Shoras which were created by the workers themselves during the 1979 revolution against the Shah, as they were deposing the capitalist management and putting factories under the self-management of the workers.
The new Islamic government found this to be as much of a threat as the Shah did, and replaced them with “Islamic Shoras” that answered to the government and the factory management. There is a good deal of similarity with this and the way Bolsheviks suppressed and co-opted the Soviets and workers councils after the Russian Revolution in 1917.
Post-revolution politics
After the 1979 revolution, the new Islamist government nationalized most of the major industries, which had been owned by foreign western corporations under the Shah. However, this did not last after the death of the first Ayatollah (Ruhollah Khomeini). A more moderate and clever politician named Akbar Rufshanjani came into power as president.
He and his Executives of Construction (ECs) political party set Iran on a neoliberal course for privatization, foreign investment, and corporate downsizing. This agenda did not leave room for any reforms regarding state controlled labor unions and labor councils. As a result, a grassroots movement among the working class began to form against privatization. This movement began to form alliances with professional middle class and student groups who already despised the clerical regime.
The leftist tradition among the workers had already been marginalized both because of enormous repression by both the Shah and the clerical regime and because of widespread disillusionment with Marxist-Leninism following the fall of the Soviet Union. This gave way to a somewhat more horizontal rather than a vanguard approach, in part leading to reform-minded president Mohamed Khatami and his Iran Islamic Participation Front/Party (IIPF) to be “elected” to power. This president was slightly more to the political left than previous Ayatollah’s and presidents. He loosened censorship and repression against political dissidents, and restrictions on the rights of women were relaxed. Unlike Rafsanjani, Khatami did this without wholeheartedly embracing the neo-liberal agenda. He also attempted to appear more like an advocate for an “Islamic democracy.”
But many leftist, labor and student groups viewed him as a usurper and as fake reformer. The grassroots movement of labor, women and student groups only grew larger. And the antics of both grassroots movements and the reform minded politicians alarmed the new Ayatollah (Ali Khamenei) and the other clerics. As a result the clerics banned Khatami and his IIPF party from running for reelection (a power afforded to them under Iran’s theocratic constitution). Instead, the only candidates allowed to run for president were Rafsanjani EC party and Mahmoud Ahmadinijad’s more populist (but rigidly fundamentalist) Islamic Society Coalition (ISC). Amudinijad and the ISC won in a landslide victory.
In the western press this was seen as a victory of fundamentalism over reformism with the Iranian masses, and it might appear so to us at first glance too. However, consider the fact that only two parties were allowed to run: Amudinijad and the ISC versus Rafsanjani and his ECs. The few people who voted preferred Ahmadinejad and his populist rhetoric for the poor and peasant classes to Rafsanjani and his neo-liberal agenda and corrupt politics. In many ways Bush himself was responsible for this occurrence. After his infamous “War on Terror” and his labeling Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil” the clerics in Iran knew they could stir up nationalist and religious sentiment against the United States as a way of distracting from issues at home.
Amudinijad shows his true stripes
Amudinijad is credited for being from a working class background and for redistributing some land to poor peasants. However, his labor record shows a different story: Since his ascension to power, repression of labor rights has risen to new levels. Workers who have attempted to strike have been arrested, fired, and bullied by armed thugs. Bus workers, who tried to form an independent labor union known as the Workers Syndicate of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (Syndeket Vahed), were all fired and the leaders were arrested by Iranian authorities. These workers were most likely clamped down upon because they did not go through the state-controlled House of Labor or the Islamic Shoras.
Only recently has the primary leader of the union, Monsour Oslanoo, been released from jail after much international outcry. There have also been multiple attempts to strike this last year. Workers who went on strike at a tire factory formed a barricade of burning tires to prevent armed thugs from assaulting them. In December 2006, carpet workers gathered in front of government buildings to protest non-payment of their wages. Many of these workers were beaten or arrested.
Recently on January 30, workers at Iran’s largest ship building company (Iran Sadra) went on a spontaneous strike to protest the sacking of 38 of their colleagues. About 150 workers were arrested on February 2 after the Sadra management complained to the government that the public order had been disturbed because of their protest. There are countless other stories of Iranian workers not being paid by corporations or getting fired for union actively and beaten or arrested by police or armed thugs for picket line activity.
President Amudinijad has made repeated statements denying the Holocaust. This President made a mockery of anti-Zionism and anti-imperialism by holding a conference at a university in Tehran where some of the world’s worst right wing bigots came to this conference including former US Ku Klux Klan member David Duke. Students protested outside of the conference, calling for humanist socialism and an end to war and “Sexual Apartheid”. Despite its antioccupation rhetoric, the Iranian government has ties to Shi’a Muslim political parties that support and participate in the occupied government of Iraq. The invasion and occupation of its neighbor has increased the Iranian government’s influence in Iraq.
Solidarity, not war
Activists often forget that when defending a country against the immediate threat of nuclear war and invasion, they can still support that country’s workers against oppression by their government.
If this element of solidarity is ignored, it leaves wide open the chances for right-leaning imperialists to co-opt any seemingly progressive movement in that country. It is also important that the Western Left keep up its opposition to any neo-conservative plans to attack or bomb Iran. Imperialist powers will often exploit the oppressiveness of an anti-western regime in order to vilify the country. Already British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been quick to point out the suppression of Iranian workers when his own record of labor rights is poor.
They claim to support workers rights against Islamists. But for the Iranian workers, Islamism is not the issue. The issue is the corporate global attack on workers rights, whether that oppression comes from Islamists, Christians or neo-liberals. Iranian progressive, labor, women and student groups have denounced Bush and his attempt at an attack on Iran. It is definitely possible to show solidarity with the people of Iran without supporting the Iranian government.
Progressives in the West must take a stand against Bush, Amudinijad and any other dictator or imperialist oppressor.
For more information, visit www.etehadchap. org/antiwar-sanctions.html
[Article above is from here: http://www.iww.org/en/node/3330]