Rebellion in Iran here ♦ Los Angeles protest here ♦ Istanbul protest here ♦
Istanbul, Turkey, October 1—Youth Protest murder of Mahsa Amini
Heroic Mass Rebellion Shows the Need For A Mass ICWP To Learn From History
October 1—Iranian “morality police” detained, beat, and killed Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman of 22, on September 13th for wearing her hijab “improperly.” They didn’t anticipate the storm they would unleash. Now the Iranian ruling class is shaking.
Night after night, in the largest protests since 1979, masses have turned the streets of over eighty Iranian cities into battlefields. They call for the overthrow of the Islamic regime, death to Khamenei and an end to the forced hijab and all oppression. Women are once again in the lead.
Fascist police have killed over fifty, wounded many more, and arrested hundreds. The government shut down social media sites and some cell phone service. Yet the masses continue to fight.
Outrage at Mahsa Amini’s death snowballed amidst economic crisis and political repression. A growing military budget drains resources to finance the second-largest army in the Middle East. Masses suffer from rising inflation and unemployment, worsened by government corruption. Some workers have not been paid for months. US sanctions (supposedly “humanitarian”) contributed significantly to a drop in Iran’s production and the loss of workers’ purchasing power (including for food and medicines).
Young people are increasingly desperate. Masses are enraged that the Iranian ruling class lives even more lavishly than the hated Shah they kicked out in 1979.
The US and other imperialists want to misdirect the masses into fighting for a pro-US government. The Biden administration hypocritically cheers Iranian women while supporting anti-women regimes in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and elsewhere. The US ruling class cynically promotes mass anti-Iran demonstrations to serve its own imperialist interests.
Down with the Islamic Republic and All Capitalists!
Masses want fundamental change, and it wouldn’t come from an independent Kurdistan. Nor from a secular capitalist democracy – look at the oppression of women in the US today!
Capitalist democracy is the dictatorship of capital. Capitalism cannot meet workers’ needs nor end exploitation. Its wage slavery is the material basis of capitalism’s poisonous sexism, racism,and xenophobia that keep us divided, exploited, enslaved.
The courageous masses need communist revolution: “from each according to commitment and ability, to each according to need.” In communist society, without money or exchange, we’ll work and share what we produce.
Communism can end imperialist wars and start to reverse environmental catastrophe. It can overcome divisions within the working class. No borders, no nations, no sexism or racism or religious hate!
When the masses – especially workers and soldiers – embrace communism, nothing can stop them.
Learning from Revolutionary History
Many people in this movement, especially youth, don’t want to be under anybody’s banners. Like many activists elsewhere, they are skeptical of older-generation revolutionaries. They believe that the 20th century movements screwed up.
They have a point. Leaders of the People’s Mujahadin Organization of Iran (PMOI) renounced armed struggle in favor of reform agitation. They negotiated secretly with the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic-fascist capitalist faction. They formed a “united front” against the pro-US Shah. This unprincipled strategy mobilized masses to overthrow the Shah in 1979.
Immediately the new Islamic Republic began arresting and killing leftists and restricting women. It smashed the far left— but isolated —Peykar. The reformist pro-Soviet Tudeh supported the new regime.
But we still need to raise the banners of communist revolution! Capitalists everywhere are few, weak, and – as in Iran – terrified of the masses. They rule over our huge powerful working class because they are organized, and we are not. Without an organized mass struggle for communism, they control us ideologically.
The International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) has learned crucial lessons from the workers’ heroic struggles, including those of the Iranian masses. We now fight directly for communism, not for reforms or “stages” (national liberation, socialism). There are no “lesser-evil” capitalists. We must not ally with any of them.
Instead of old-style parties of “professional revolutionaries,” ICWP aims to build a mass party. We welcome everyone who will help build communism. Our manifesto “Mobilize the Masses for Communism” (available at icwpredflag.org) explains more about this.
Let’s join and build communist ICWP collectives everywhere to mobilize the masses for revolution and communist society. Read, write for, and distribute our Red Flag newspaper! Help translate ICWP literature into Farsi and other languages if you can.
LOS ANGELES (USA), October 1— Thousands marched here against the hated Islamic Republic and in support of the continuing mass rebellion in Iran. Three ICWP comrades carried this sign while distributing Red Flag and our communist leaflet. Many marchers welcomed us, furious with the capitalists’ attacks and inspired by the mass struggle. When one anti-communist loudly refused our literature, another woman called out even more loudly, “Give that to me. I’m for revolution!”