Workers Need Revolution—Communist Revolution
Steel and Sugar Cane Workers March, November 2018
Jan. 6 — A workers’ uprising is spreading in Iran, where poverty, inequality, and corruption are making life unbearable for the masses. Farmers are also protesting.
The spark was a strike organized by women and men workers at the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane factory. They have gained mass support from other workers for their strike and for the release of their jailed leaders.
So far the workers seem to be fighting mainly for reforms. We invite them – and you — to build the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) to fight for communist revolution. In a communist society, workers will lead all aspects of society.
On the 13th day of their strike, the workers marched with their families to the office of the governor of the state of Khuzestan. A woman worker spoke and asked all the workers in Iran to join them. More women joined them on the spot.
The strikers were supported by teachers, steel workers, bus drivers, retired workers and other people from nearby towns. This is one of Iran’s richest states. But the workers are among the poorest in the country. Steel workers there haven’t been paid in months. They have also struck. Teachers organized their own massive strike.
Two strike leaders were arrested and tortured after the demonstration at the governor’s office. They were only released due to the massive outpouring of support from the sugar refinery workers and their allies.
Neither the government’s clerical fascist attacks nor their religious ideology have been able to break the workers’ militant fight.
Workers Need to Take Control of the Whole World!
The refinery strikers have taken over the factory, demanding their pay and government prosecution of management. They and other striking workers are demanding workers’ councils to run the factories. Their slogans include “We don’t trust the capitalists!” “The workers will not accept exploitation and will fight to the death!”
But, at the same time they raise the illusory threat that if the government won’t hold the capitalists responsible, they would prosecute the government. The government – its laws and its courts as well as its officials – only serves the capitalist rulers.
Building workers’ councils sounds radical, but it won’t end exploitation. It won’t change capitalist relations of production. It won’t overthrow the capitalists’ state power or end their robbery of the surplus value that workers produce. “Success” would only mean changing the faces of those who manage capitalist exploitation.
On the other hand, communist workers in factories, schools, and neighborhoods would mobilize the masses for communist workers’ power. They would organize party clubs whose main job would be to recruit more workers to join the party to mobilize for communism.
This would change the nature of the struggle to a revolutionary fight to bury the capitalists and their wage slavery system. Once workers hold power, they would build a collective communist society. The masses of liberated workers would plan, produce and share the products of their labor according to everyone’s need. Workers would run all aspects of society.
Only communist revolution can do away with all the capitalists, their banks, money, borders and nations. We need communist workers’ power through a mass International Communist Workers’ Party of workers, youth, soldiers and others.
Is this a revolutionary situation?
The Iranian “Constitutional Revolution” (1905-11) and the Islamic Revolution (1979) show that not every revolution benefits the working class.
A revolutionary situation for the working class means masses mobilizing for communist workers’ power.
To forge the workers’ unity to destroy capitalism and build communism worldwide we need to fight relentlessly against poisonous ideologies like racism, sexism, xenophobia and religion that the capitalists use to divide us while they super-exploit part of our working-class family.
Iranian government spending on wars in Yemen, Lebanon and Syria, capitalist crisis and US sanctions have deepened the attacks on Iranian workers. War and fascism are built-in to capitalism-imperialism. We can only end them by ending the capitalist system.
Workers will come to realize that making demands on the capitalist bosses or their state will not end exploitation or imperialist wars. They will decide to mobilize masses to get rid of capitalism itself. This will unleash our tremendous potential to build a world where our needs are met collectively and where no one profits from anyone else’s labor.
That requires a mass communist party, ICWP. Join us!
Red Flag needs to be spread to masses everywhere. If you can translate into Farsi, Arabic, or another language, please translate our manifesto, Mobilize the Masses for Communism and Red Flag articles from our website www.icwpredflag.org.
Families of Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Workers March, December
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