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A look at university student publications in Iran during the recent months, the slogans chanted in student protests as well as their blogs, etc. clearly demonstrate the trend with one of its notable characteristics as being the spread of Marxist thought within the university environment. Attraction towards communist thinkers amongst students presents itself, especially in their interest towards the thoughts and views of great revolutionaries such as Amir-parviez Pouyan and Massoud Ahmad-zadeh and the actions of dedicated combatants like Marziyeh A. Oskoee and Khosrou Goleh-sorkhi; in other words, towards the most radical tendency within the Iranian left, i.e., the Iranian People’s Fadaee Guerrillas.
An article titled “The spectre of Lenin over Iran” published in AdvarNews (the website of the Organization of the Students of Islamic Iran – Tahkim Vahdat’s Advar) best reveals the Islamic Republic regime’s growing fear of the above fact. The author of the article explains this fear by saying: “in the absence of a powerful liberal current, the “Left” has once again gained momentum. Of course, it was expected that… these newly emerged leftists would go through the same path that the western Marxists experienced in pursuing a liberalized social democracy. Thus, the renewed presence of the left at first caused no worries amongst the liberals and the supporters of democracy and human rights. There was hope that while reading Marx the young leftists would look into the views of some of his interpreters such as Lenin with suspicion and criticism. There was hope that they would read and learn from “Habermass” and “Giddens”. What happened, however, was quite unexpected and absurd. They did not even mention Kautsky and Bernestein let alone read Habermass and Giddens. It was the same old story: social revolution, proletariat revolution and the dream of destroying capitalism!”
The above confession is interesting from two points: first, it shows as to how interest in Marxism in Iran is intertwined with the youth’s tendency towards Lenin and his revolutionary theories and that in fact it is this that worries the Islamic Republic regime.
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Second, it also reveals the hideous objectives of the Islamic Republic’s propaganda apparatus in giving permission to print some of Marx’s writings in Iran. In fact, they had hoped that following the collapse of the former USSR (which deceitfully called itself a socialist country) together in the heat of bourgeois hellish propaganda especially over the so-called “death of communism”, reading Marxist literature would strengthen the bourgeois interpretation of Marxism. In real life, however, their hope was in vain: the old story of the bourgeoisie trying to empty Marxism from its revolutionary essence and turning it into a benign and merely academic issue… failed once more. The main point to focus here are the reasons for the growth of interest in communist radical thoughts in our society. What is indeed going on throughout society that even after three decades of systematic and ongoing suppression, after crushing all communist organizations and the political genocide of communists by the Islamic Republic as imperialist lackeys, the ruling regime still fearfully moans about the growth of Marxist views and The spectre of Lenin!?
The reason for this is to be found in the hard, cold facts of life; in the intensified class contradictions throughout society. The existing economic system in our country, i.e., the Iranian imperialist-dependent capitalist system is a system whose political superstructure consists of a massive and extreme dictatorship. Being an imperialist-dependent system, it must both provide the means to imperialist plunder and exploitation and at the same time brutally sacrifice the oppressed masses especially workers and toiling people in the interest of the their masters; the imperialists who constantly shift the burden of their own crisis to the dominated countries. Obviously, the ruling class and all those reactionaries who benefit from these rotten, anti-people relations are neither interested nor capable of answering the minimum economic or political demands of the deprived and subjugated classes. Therefore, they leave the oppressed masses with only one way out; to smash imperialist domination and expropriate the expropriators in order to build a truly democratic and humane system.
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The “old story” of “social revolution” and unruly flames of “destroying capitalism” come from within these conditions.
As long as there is oppression there will also be struggle to fight it. And throughout the suppressive history of capitalism wherever there has been discourse on decisive eradication of exploitation and oppression, wherever the hungry and the oppressed have risen to break down the shackles of enslavement and attain freedom and equality, the “spectre” of Marxism and communism has flown high upon the seas of the people’s movement. Marxism is but the discovery of the governing laws of class struggle and the explanation for the necessity of social revolution against the ruling exploitative system and the achievement of socialism. And since Leninism is the Marxism of the imperialist era and proletariat revolutions, wherever therefore revolution is more urgently on the agenda and the objective conditions for a radical, revolutionary change are pronounced there tendency towards Leninism too will potentially exist. In Iran, under the suffocating conditions of dictatorship imposed on society, no social thought can be fruitful unless it is radical and being radical is to uproot, to revolt rather than reform, to overthrow the criminal Islamic Republic and destroy the capitalist system rather than replace political faces or merely modifying some laws. As long as these are the conditions, the spectre of Marx and Lenin will fly over society and their revolutionary teachings will aid the masses even if the bourgeoisie claims their death a thousand times. This is the simple truth that bourgeois waged-writers such as the author of “The spectre of Lenin over Iran” are incapable of understanding, i.e., leaning towards Marxism-Leninism and the “dream” to destroy capitalism. The very same dream that since the 1971 Siahkal insurrection up to this day has given identity to the upholders of the Iranian New Communist Movement; a dream that contrary to the bourgeois propaganda is the only possibility for attaining freedom. |
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