1980: Revolution and Counterrevolution in Iran

Document of the Socialist Workers Party of Iran (HKS)

The fratricidal war between Iraq and Iran in 1980-1988
A tragedy for the working class of the Middle East, imposed by imperialism
and the native bourgeoisies

Presentation

We hereby present the document “Revolution and counterrevolution in Iran”, written by the Iranian Trotskyist current called Socialist Workers Party (HKS) in 1983, in the heat of the revolution opened in 1979 and developed during the ‘80s in that country. It is a historical document, written by revolutionaries who fought for the victory of that revolution in the very ground of the events and left a great contribution with the lessons they drew out of a process which was crucial for Maghreb and Middle East and the entire planet. The outcome of the events of the ‘80s largely defined the regime of domination of imperialism and the bourgeoisie in that area of the planet where the oil routes are.
The Iranian revolution shook the world. It was part of the revolutionary struggle of the workers and the oppressed, which had its vanguard in the Palestinian People fighting against the Zionist invasion. The revolution in Iran toppled the Shah, a Bonapartist autocracy which was a key domination device of imperialism over the Middle East. In this process, the masses set up Shoras (councils of workers, peasants and soldiers), the organs of self-determination
and direct democracy of the exploited for the struggle.
Counterrevolutionary blows and traps were raised against the great Iranian revolution. The Ayatollah arose as a counterrevolutionary force to crush the revolution from inside, and at the same time, imperialism organized a fratricidal war between Iraq and Iran. The war was unleashed in 1980 and lasted 8 years, leaving millions of dead. On this issue we are also publishing two documents: “On the war of Iran and Iraq” and “A war against the peoples of Iraq and Iran” written in 1983 and 1984.
So the Iranian revolution was defeated twice: not only power was not seized in Iran and a dictatorial counterrevolutionary blood-thirsty regime (the one of the Ayatollah) was settled there but also, the cleavage in the ranks of the exploited between Sunnis and Shiites was deepened in Middle East due to the fratricidal war, establishing a river of blood between them. This has given a key advantage for imperialism to be able to plunder the region better, with its oil companies, and to massacre the masses when they rise up. Today, with the Iranian Guard massacring in Syria and Saudi Arabia invading Yemen, this crisis for the division between Shiites and Sunnis is deepened. So imperialism, using the Iranian Guard, counted on a great agent not only to crush the revolution but also to deepen this division and separate the Sunni masses from the Shiite Iranian working class that rises today inside Iran. All types of subordination to the Sunnite bourgeoisie “to confront the Shiite” puts the Syrian masses away from their true ally, which is the Shiite exploited rebelling in southern Iraq, the Iranian workers fighting against the Ayatollah, the Yemeni masses resisting the Saudi invasion, etc. Only a program of the working class and its unity in the entire Middle East can settle accounts with this tragedy imposed by imperialism and the native bourgeoisies.

Facing this situation, we see today, it is necessary to draw revolutionary lessons from the events of the ‘80s. We consider the documents that we are presenting here contain lessons that are a great contribution for this need. They are a gain of revolutionary continuity, to which we should continue adding today, in the fight to conquer the setting up of a revolutionary party in Maghreb and Middle East. To give continuity to this fight is to give continuity to the struggle of one of the working classes that fought the most in the last period, as that of Middle East.
The lessons stated here are key to the new generation of revolutionaries that stood up in Maghreb and Middle East in different mass assaults since 2009-2011, where the most advanced process was maybe the Syrian revolution. These are lessons for the Iranian revolutionaries that are fighting today in a new revolutionary mass assault now against the Ayatollah and their theocratic regime, such as in 2009 and 2018. We present then these documents for the revolutionary vanguard of the Middle East and for all the revolutionary militants in the world who are seeking a way towards victory, as a contribution to recover the threads of revolutionary continuity of the program and the legacy of the Fourth International.

On the authors of the documents

The document “Revolution and Counterrevolution in Iran” was written in 1983 by the now dissolved Socialist Workers Party of Iran (HKS in its original language). This party, which stood up to 1990, in the moment of writing this document, was a sympathizer section of the Unified Secretary of the Fourth International (US-FI), the name of one of the international currents that claimed to be of the Fourth International, led by Ernest Mandel. The comrades of the HKS, the Iranian Trotskyists at that time, wrote this document as part of a political fight of tendencies within the Fourth International (even inside the US-FI itself) about the lessons and the program posed in the Iranian revolution, striving to regroup the Iranian revolutionaries with the perspective of setting up a party for the victory of the revolution.
Another tendency within the Fourth International, back then, the one led by Nahuel Moreno, the LIT, published this document in its magazine, “Correo Internacional” (International Mail) #22, August 1986, as part of this struggle for a revolutionary party, as they mention in the presentation (published in the aforementioned magazine) of the HKS document. In this presentation they pose the world situation which was developing when the Iranian revolution was underway in the ‘80s, as well as its genesis and includes a chronology with the most important events of those years and a glossary about the terms used. It also states the key points in which LIT agrees with the document of the HKS in the lessons of the Iranian revolution, which we also agree on. 
These key points are, in the first place, that Khomeini’s reaction eliminated all the democratic freedoms conquered by the revolution, and more important, even the revolutionary struggle organs of the masses, the dual power organs such as the Shoras. In the document “Revolution and counterrevolution in Iran” it is shown how Khomeini took charge of ending the organizations and the struggle of the workers, which questioned the power of the bourgeois state. It is also said how Khomeini used and sought to continue the fratricidal Iran-Iraq war in 1980-1988, mainly, to best dominate the workers and the people in Iran.
That’s why we publish not only the document “Revolution and counterrevolution in Iran” but also the aforementioned presentation written by LIT (including its chronology and glossary). This presentation is essential to read the document “Revolution and counterrevolution in Iran”, and is also part of the struggle of tendencies within the Fourth International to conquer a revolutionary program for the Iranian revolution and a party for its victory.
qaIn these struggles among tendencies of the Fourth International there are threads of continuity of the revolutionary program, which are significant for the current and future generations in their struggle to provide the working class with the revolutionary leadership it deserves. These documents we are here presenting are therefore a gain of this revolutionary continuity.

The international isolation of the HKS

As we said before, the comrades of the HKS waged a great battle to set up a revolutionary party. They confronted the fractions within Iran that were raising a critical support to Khomeini. They even confronted those who raised that class collaboration policy inside the US-4FI itself, of which HKS was a sympathizer until it split because of that point. HKS was isolated confronting the Ayatollah, under terrible conditions of counterrevolution inside Iran. They worked underground and also in exile while, with persecutions, murders and repression, the theocratic regime of the Ayatollah was getting settled and we see today this regime as a brutal dictatorship that has murdered thousands and thousands of workers and popular fighters in Iran and other countries such as Syria, while it keeps its jails populated with thousands of political prisoners. In 1990, with its militants persecuted, imprisoned, killed or in exile, isolated internationally, the HKS ended up dissolving as an organization.
However, many of their leaders and militants kept on operating. They set up organs in support of the Iranian working class, in defense of the political prisoners and against the Ayatollah’s regime crackdown, and even party nuclei, as the Iranian Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (IRMT).
The IRMT started a process towards getting closer to the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) led by Alan Woods. But at the beginning of 2010, IRMT split from IMT, due to the support the latter was giving to Chavez, who in turn unconditionally supported and was partner of the Iranian Ayatollah. Alan Woods took the Transitional Program to Chavez, while he was supporting the Ayatollah that repressed the Iranian workers and the very IRMT. We are also publishing the IRMT statement about the split with the IMT of Alan Woods, as well as the open letter written by the IRMT to the Venezuelan workers about the support of Chavez to the Ayatollah and also the letters we wrote back then from the FLTI about this split.

The lessons of the Iranian revolution of the ‘80s are crucial for the revolutionary processes of Maghreb and Middle East today

We therefore put these historical materials for consideration, as they contain revolutionary lessons which today are significant in the face of the events of revolution and counterrevolution in Maghreb and Middle East in the last decade. Once again it is indispensable to fight for the organs of dual power and to break with the class collaboration policy of support or subordination to sectors of the bourgeoisie.
The currents of the reformist left, who have reneged of Trotskyism for a long time, today keep on raising the same policy of class collaboration and are enemies of the soviet strategy. They supported the “democratic” ways out, like in Egypt or Tunisia, which were nothing more than a turn for the return of fascism. In Sudan there’s a class collaboration government to abort the revolutionary process that started to rise at the end of 2018. In Syria they support al-Assad, as well as the PKK which is with al-Assad and the US. In Iran they guise the Ayatollah as “anti-imperialist” and have written their regime is the outcome of 1979 revolution and not of its counterrevolutionary crushing.
We, from the FLTI, gave continuity to the struggle of the soviet organs of the masses for class Independence, to raise a revolutionary program, as the legacy of the Fourth International of 1938 and its lessons from the Spanish revolution.
The task today in Maghreb and Middle East keeps on being the same one posed by the comrades of the HKS: to set up a revolutionary party, capable of leading the revolution to victory, to the seizure of power, sweeping away all the leaderships that sold it out and betrayed in the Middle East and internationally. This is part of the struggle to recover the clean banners of the Fourth International from all these whom have renegaded from it and took them to the mud of the treason, especially in the Syrian revolution, and today are embraced to Stalinism.
Thus here we present, to all the Trotskyist militants of the planet, to all the vanguard youth and the revolutionary workers of Middle East and the world, the documents with the historical lessons of the Iranian revolution of the ‘80s.