Capitalism and Revolution in Iran (Middle East series)

174 Pages·1981·11.106 MB·English

by  Bizhan Jazani

Capitalism and
Revolution in Iran
Bizhan Jazani
Capitalism and
Revolution in
Iran
Selected Writings of
Bizhan Jazani
Bizhan Jazani
Translated by the Iran
Committee
Zed Press, 57 Caledonian Road, London NI 9DN
Capitalism and Revolution in Iran was first published by
Zed Press, 57 Caledonian Road, London Nl 9DN in
October 1980.
Copyright © Bizhan J azani, 1980
Translation Copyright© Iran Committee, 1980
ISBN Hb 0 905762 82 7
Pb 0 905762 57 6
Designed by Mayblin/Shaw
Copyedited by Robert Molteno
Typeset by Lyn Caldwell and Margaret Cole
Proofread by Penelope Fryxell and Sue Stark
Cover illustration/photo by Michel Setboun
Cover design by Jacque Solomons
Printed by Redwood Burn Ltd., Trowbridge and Esher
All rights reserved
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Contents
Preface i
Foreword: The O.1.P.F.G./Fedaii e Khalq iv
History of the O.I.P.F.G.: An Overview iv
The Leadership
The Jazani Group (vi)
The Organisation Takes Shape (vi)
Hamid Ashraf, Leader of the 0.1.P.F. G. (vi)
1t Is History That Creates Heroes' (vii)
The Outlook of the O.I.P.F.G. viii
The Point of Departure (viii)
The Role of Bizhan Jazani (ix)
The Strategic Aim (ix)
What Was Achieved (xi}
The Concept of Armed Propaganda Operations xill
Operational Targets and the People's Demands (xiii)
Foreign Element or Native Lackeys? (xiv)
1. The History of Contemporary Iran 1
British and Russian Imperialism in Iran I
The Dictatorship of Reza Khan, 1921-41 11
The Failure of the Tudeh Party, 1941-53 19
The Triumph of the Comprador Bourgeoisie, 1953-63 33
2. Land Reform in Modern Iran 46
Introduction 46
The Rationale of the Land Reform 50
The Impact of Land Reform 53
The Transformation of the Feudalists ( 53)
The Comprador Bourgeoisie ( 55)
The Court of the Shah (56)
Confusion on the Left ( 57)
The Qergy - Popular Leaders by Default? (62)
The American Triumph ( 65)
A Summary (66)
3. Dependent Capitalism 70
The Nature of Dependent Capitalism Today 70
Dependent Capitalism in Iran 77
TI1e Comprador Bourgeoisie 78
The Commercial Bourgeoisie (78)
The Industrial Bourgeoisie ( 80)
The Financial Bourgeoisie ( 83)
The Agricultural Bourgeoisie ( 83)
The Bureaucratic Bourgeoisie ( 85)
Shifting Alignments Within the Ruling Class 87
External Economic Relations of the Comprador Bourgeoisie 90
Links With Imperialism ( 90)
Relations With the Socialist States (94)
Compradors: The Conveyor Belt of Dependence (96)
The Peasantry in Transition '18
Rural Production (99)
Rural faploitation ( 100)
Tiie Minority Consumer Society 103
TI1e Dictatorship of the Monarchy 106
Contradictions Within Iranian Capitalism 110
The Anti-Popular Front Ill 'JI
The People's Front ( 114)
The Principal Contradiction ( 115)
4. The Revolutionary Forces 123
Introduction 123
Tiie Role of the Working Class 125
Tiie Role of the Peasantry 131
The Composition of the Petty Bourgeoisie 133
The Oergy and Intelligentsia I 38
The National Bourgeoisie 140
The Lumpenproletariat and the Subproletariat 14 I
Postscript: Iran After the Fall of the Shah 145
Has Dependent Capitalism Been Defeated'! 145
What Sort of Government in Iran Does Imperialism Want? 150
Preface
That Iran is a crucial country in today's world needs little explanation.
Known to people throughout the West as the second largest supplier of
Middle East oil, it is equally important for other reasons. With by far the
largest population of any Middle East country (except Turkey), it lies at the
centre of a geographical nexus between the Soviet Union immediately to its
North, the giant Arab oil producers (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait) to its
West, and the Indian sub-continent to the East. Buffer of reaction or
conveyor belt of revolution - those have been the possible destinies of Iran
ever since the October Revolution of 1917. These mutually exclusive alter
natives have been all the more pregnant with impact for the Middle East
because-of Iran's ethnic composition, containing as it does major national
minorities who also live in the neighbouring states of Iraq, Turkey, the
U.S.S.R., Afghanistan and Pakistan. Little wonder, then, that first Britain
and subsequently the U.S.A. have been so assiduous ever since the present
Shah's father was foisted on the throne, to ensure that Iran remain a faithful
political client (or to use the more modern term, a dependent sub-imperialist
centre) pn behalf of Western capitalism in the region. Little wonder, too,
that the shock to the West of the Shah's overthrow in February 1979 has
been as much psychological and political as economic.
Through the long years of repression and autocracy that followed the
CIA's successful reinstallation of the Shah in 1953, it seemed to many that
a permanent political night had been established in Iran. The combination
of ferocious repression (the notorious SA VA K secret police), enormous
imperialist assistance to the Shah's regime at every level, and mounting oil
revenues seemed to be proving a successful formula for stable dictatorship
that could apparently torture or buy its way to permanence for an almost
indefinite period of time. The old Left, centred on the Tudeh Party, had
been shattered in the aftermath of the 1953 coup. It remained to a recon
stituted Left at the end of the 1960s to smash the myth of the Shah's
invincibility. And it was the groups and individuals who in 1971 came
together in the Organization of Iranian People's Fedaii Guerrillas
(O.1.P.F.G.) (alternatively known as the Fedaii e Khalq) who were at the
heart of this new opposition. It was they - amid a welter of their comrades
gaoled, tortured and butchered by the regime - who paved the way for the
Capitalism and Revolution in Iran
mass movement that, less than a decade later and under very different leader
ship, forced the ignominious flight of the 'King of Kings'.
No one was more influential in shaping the O.1.P.F.G.'s understanding of
Iranian society and conception of struggle than Bizhan Jazani, the author of
this book. Born in Tehran in 193 7, he became actively involved in politics
even in his childhood. At the age of sixteen, immediately after the 1953 coup,
he was imprisoned for the first time. In and out of gaol thereafter, he was
frequently tortured by the Shah's police. In 1963,he formed an independent
Marxist-Leninist group together with some others who were deeply critical
of what they saw as the treachery of the Tudeh Party leadership in the years
following the coup. It was this group that was the first to recognise the
necessity of armed struggle in Iran, and began the long years of preparation
for it. The group was discovered and attacked by the secret police in 1967.
Jazani and a few other members were detained. The remaining members
carried on with their preparations. Four years later, they started the armed
struggle against the Shah with the so-called Siahkal Resurgence of 1971. In
this incident, a group of guerrillas attacked a gendarmerie base at Siahkal in
the Elburz Mountains north of Tehran. It marked the beginning of serious
revolutionary struggle against the Shah's regime. And later in the same year,
they came together with other elements to found the O.I.P.F.G. or Fedaii e
Khalq.
As for J azani, he was condemned to 15 years imprisonment. But this did
not stop his political work. He wrote many important treatises while in gaol,
including those translated here into English and published in this book. While
in prison, he also persevered in his work as an artist; he produced some
remarkable pictures in a modern revolutionary tradition of painting, including
'The Prisoner' and 'The Siahkal'. Meanwhile the regime was growing increas
ingly fearful of him and his fellow revolutionaries, despite the fact that they
were behind bars. It now seems clear that the regime became determined to
murder them, and eventually it was announced that Jazani and eight other
comrades had been killed 'while attempting to escape'.
Jazani's writings on the history of Iran, its configuration of class forces,
and the appropriate forms of armed struggle played a leading, possibly
dominant, part in shaping the theory and practice of the O.I.P.F .G. And it
was the O.I.P.F.G. - through its pioneering attempts at armed struggle - that
broke through the pall of the people's political dejection and inactivity, and
by example rebuilt the foundations of anti-Shah resistance. The Iranian
people owe a great debt today both to Bizhan Jazani and to his fellow
comrades in the O.I.P.F.G.
This is the reason for Zed Press publishing this posthumous collection of
Jazani's most important writings. We must take this opportunity to thank the
Iran Committee in London for having suggested the conception of this book
to us, for having undertaken the translation out of Farsi, and for having
borne with us so patiently in the process of getting this book published.
But we would be failing in our duty as a socialist publisher if we did not at
the same time make clear that there is another, equally important reason why
ii
Preface
Bizhan Jazani's work should be made available to a wider audience than just
in Iran. Some historians, theorists and political activists disagree with Jazani's
analysis of Iranian society and with his views on the armed struggle. But it
remains incontrovertible that Bizhan Jazani is one of that growing band of
1bird World intellectuals who have sought to understand the particular and
distorted forms that capitalism takes in their own countries. Jazani has done
so for Iran without any mechanistic transplantation of a simplistic Marxism
from some other society. Instead he fought politically and intellectually to
use Marxism as a method which must be applied to the concrete realities of
each particular social formation in the Third World, if the impact of imperial
ism is to be properly understood and the working class, peasantry and
revolutionary intelligentsia are correctly to identify who is the enemy, and
what are the methods and goals of struggle. It is Bizhan Jazani's contribution
in this respect that makes his work important beyond the confines of Iran.
We offer it as a memorial to his laying down his life for the Iranian people in
their struggle for freedom and socialism, and in the hope that his writings
hold lessons for 1bird World revolutionaries elsewhere.
The Publishers
July 1980
Foreword:
The 0.1.P.F.G./Fedaii e
Khalq
Publisher's Note: What follows is a description of the Organisation of Iranian
People's Fedaii Guerrillas (0.I.P.F.G.), or Fedaii e Khalq as it is sometimes
known. The description has been written by the O.I.P.F.G. itself We include
it in this volume of Bizhan Jazani's writings because Jazani was not an intel
lectual labouring away in isolation. He was first and foremost a political
activist. He was the founder of a group which later took a leading part in
forming the O.I.P.F. G. in 19 71. And he not only helped to shape his comrades'
views but his own analysis was obviously influenced by the liberation move
ment of which he was a part. 111e text below has been compiled from two
O.I.P.F.G. documents: an editorial from the Organisation's journal, Nabard-e
Khalq, (No. 7, May 1976) and A Short Biographical Note on Comrade Hamid
Ashraf (leader of the O.I.P.F.G.).
History of the 0.1.P.F.G.: An Overview
The Organisation of the Iranian People's Fedaii Guerrillas (0 .I.P .F .G .) came
into being in April 1971 following the assault by a guerrilla unit on the
gendarmerie base at Siahkal in the Elburz Mountains north of Tehran. The
assault, subsequently known as the Siakhal Resurgence, heralded the start of
armed struggle in Iran. Yet, before they joined together to create the O.I.P.F.G.
the component parts of the Organisation had a history of struggle. Its eventual
establishment was the result of a Marxist-Leninist analysis of socio-economic
and political conditions in Iran as well as an assessment of the experiences and
forces of revolution and counter-revolution internationally. Armed struggle
was then adopted as a method because of its strategic and tactical value.
In the wake of the strategic defeats sustained by the proletariat and the
liberation movement in Iran, in the wake of defeatist and conciliationist
attitudes adopted by the opportunist leadership of both Left and Right, and
following years of underground 'political' activities - all of which had failed
seriously to shake the enemy - the start of armed struggle by the 0.1.P.F.G.
represented a turning point. It ended years of retreat by the movement and
the beginning of its advance.
In the years of tireless and determined activities since 1971, the 0.1.P.F.G.
has amply proved that it has a creative understanding of Marxism-Leninism