Workers Left Unity: Khatami’s Trojan horse!

The political entity calling itself Workers’ Left Unity of Iran (Etehad Chap Kargari), and masquerading as a united front of the proletarian left of Iran, is in fact an empty pro-‘reformist’ shell that is dominated by Rahe Kargar! As an attempt to unite the scattered remains of the Iranian left it died over three years ago. While this situation has been clear to most serious activists within the Iranian left, Rahe Kargar and a few opportunist and mendacious individuals, have been using the name Workers’ Left Unity (WLU) for furthering their own pro-Khatami and pro-‘reformist’ aims within the international left.

Formally launched in June 1994, with the aim of creating “unity of the Iranian workers’ radical left”, the last non-opportunist group withdrew from the project two months ago. The Minority Cell, a splinter group from the Fedaiin Minority, finally left the WLU in December 2000. Their statement drawing the balance sheet of the WLU began with the following sentence: “As one of the founders of Workers’ Left Unity the Minority Cell is forced to announce its failure.” The WLU has certainly come a long way since the eight signatories, including Workers’ Socialist Notebooks, IRSL’s forerunner, agreed on what this project would involve.

Although inspired by Rahe Kargar as primarily a tool for solving its own problems, the fact that many other groups became involved, produced the possibility of creating a body that would be active in defending the struggles of Iranian workers and other exploited and oppressed layers (and the inevitably resulting refugees), as well as providing a forum for constructive debate on the serious problems facing the movement. Rahe Kargar, as the group with the most members and resources, was not seriously interested in forging such a united front! The Iranian Revolutionary Socialists’ League, having continuously made its criticisms of the lack of activity and debate, finally left the WLU in May 1997.

Since then the WLU has increasingly become a tool for furthering Rahe Kargar’s ambitions.[1] These include the rehabilitation of members of the Tudeh Party and Fedaiin Majority. Rahe Kargar has recruited many Tudeh-Majority people, including torturers and interrogators, without checking who they really were and what kind of role they played during the revolutionary period.

But Rahe Kargar’s ultimate aim, like any ‘honest’ reformist, is to serve in reforming capitalist society. There is just one big problem for Rahe Kargar: capitalism in Iran, as one that is dominated by imperialism, does not only not provide the material base for a reformist movement, but has to resort to the most brutal forms of bourgeois rule to perpetuate its existence. So although Rahe Kargar may be eyeing Tabarzadi’s ‘reform’ movement - as the representative of the most ‘radical’ wing of ‘reformers’ - it is in no way going to become a serious partner in the movement!

What does the WLU represent now?

Today’s WLU has nothing do with either workers, the left or any unity. Over the six and a half years of its existence it has failed to recruit a single militant or vanguard worker. It has become increasingly more right wing (as a consequence of Rahe Kargar’s ever-rightward shift). It has not only failed to produce any unity among the groups taking part in it but has produced much discord within the left. It just serves a useful purpose for doing Rahe Kargar’s dirty work[2] and donkey work[3]!

What is Rahe Kargar?

Rahe Kargar (Workers’ Path) is the result of a split within the Fedaiin inside the Shah’s jails. Its political perspective was that of a typical Stalinist group with all the trappings like the “people’s democratic republic”, a two-stage concept of the Iranian revolution, a rigid understanding of the concept of a Leninist party, and so on.

“Our organisation was formed during the revolution of 1979 and, under the name of Rahe Kargar, it officially announced its founding on 4 Tir 1358 [June 1979]. In 1982 it chose the name Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran (Rahe Kargar).” Thus begins Rahe Kargar’s introductory note about itself. It goes on to say that it demands: “The universal right to vote for constituting, managing and changing the system” (?!),“unconditional political freedoms” and “the banning of any kind of ideological or one-party rule”.[4] Of course the dictatorship of the proletariat has been deleted and what this note and the new programme say is far removed from Rahe Kargar’s ‘pure’ Stalinist days.

There are two main events that explain Rahe Kargar’s ‘development’: the collapse of the USSR (in 1992) and Khatami’s election (in 1997). But its ‘pragmatism’ goes back a long way. Ever since it was founded Rahe Kargar was squeezed between the collaborationists of the Tudeh-Fedaiin Majority one the one hand, and the Fedaiin Minority and other various Fedaiin groups[5] on the other. Rahe Kargar finally found its niche when the mollahs’ turned on the Tudeh-Fedaiin Majority.[6] Politically it had always been closer to the Tudeh and Fedaiin Majority than the other Fedaiin groups.[7] Once the leftovers of Tudeh and Fedaiin Majority were exiled, and the Tudeh started to fall apart (e.g., the split that gave rise to the People’s Democratic Party of Iran[8]), Rahe Kargar went to work. It even started differentiating between the so-called ‘left’ wing of Ali Keshtgar and the ‘right’ wing of Farrokh Negahdar within the Fedaiin Majority! Conveniently forgetting that as far as betraying workers and revolutionaries was concerned there was no ‘left’-‘right’ difference!

Rahe Kargar starts to grow

In the spring and summer of 1988 Rahe Kargar, buoyed by taking on its new recruits from the Tudeh-Fedaiin Majority milieu, provoked several confrontations with the sole purpose of blurring the stark difference between those who collaborated with the hezbollahis, Pasdaran (so-called ‘Revolutionary Guards’), basijis (and the Islamic regime as a whole) and those who did not. After letting in a large number of people, without checking who they were and what they had done during the revolutionary period, Rahe Kargar tried to impose these criminals and class traitors - people who has the blood of workers, revolutionaries, women, students, nationalities, and poor peasants on their hands - on the left opposition. First at the Cité in Paris, and then Speakers’ Corner in London, they brought well known Tudeh members into our midst - saying that they are Rahe Kargar members now! Or that they used to be PDPI members, or ‘left’ Fedaiin Majority and so on. They even resorted to physical violence to impose these people on us!

The result of recruiting all these police informers, torturers, interrogators and class traitors was that Rahe Kargar’s positions became more and more like the Tudeh-Majority line. This was especially so after the collapse of the USSR and the Tudeh party. Without any material support from the ‘socialist camp’ it veered more and more to the right.

This was followed by Khatami’s election and his rhetoric about a ‘civil society’ in Iran. Rahe Kargar’s positions changed: the dictatorship of the proletariat was dropped from their programme and in popped ‘citizens’ and their equal rights! Although it paints a heroic and revolutionary picture of itself today, under the testing conditions of the revolution, it showed up many cracks in its politics and general perspective - especially when it came to dealing with workers.

Today Rahe Kargar says: “During the many years that the Islamic Republic regime drew its legitimacy from the mass revolution and was supported by the majority of the people and parties and political tendencies of the country, and most communists, democrats and progressives of the world, our organisation swam against the tide and strove to raise the consciousness of workers and toilers and placed the relentless critique of the theories that try to justify their support for the Islamic Republic regime - whether they were invented by the right or by the dependents of the Soviet Union - at the top of its tasks.”[9]

But this is a group that called for a boost in production when Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime attacked Iran in September 1980! The following an example of how they “swam against the tide” (!!!) and “strove to raise the consciousness of workers and toilers” (?!) and engaged in the “relentless critique of the theories that try to justify their support for the Islamic Republic regime ... by the dependents of the Soviet Union”!

The section of Rahe Kargar’s programme entitled “Our Programme for Freedom, Democracy and Socialism in Iran” contains the following:

“Democracy, i.e., the rule of the majority of the people, can be established when all the country’s citizens, equally and without exception are endowed with full political rights.” Rahe Kargar’s new post-Soviet views are pure reformism - but without the favourable conditions of Britain or Germany for taking root. Rahe Kargar has now become a ‘water closet’ where class traitors can wash the blood off their hands and enter the movement as “citizens” who have “full political rights” as “equally and without exception” as their victims’ families and comrades (and the few surviving victims)!

Where is Rahe Kargar headed?

Rahe Kargar is constantly bending and yielding to the lowest common denominator within the left in exile and the mass of the people in Iran. The ultimate expression of the way it “swam against the tide” was adopting an updated version of the Tudeh’s three stage concept of revolution for how the Shah ought to have been overthrown. “Three main levels of struggle - i.e., the struggle against tyranny, the struggle for democracy and the struggle for socialism - must be differentiated.”[10] This viewpoint is behind their mantra-like repetition of the necessity of a referendum.[11]

We have now even seen - but we have not been that astonished by it - open support for Heshmatollah Tabarzadi.[12] Tabarzadi (and the other leaders of the Office for Consolidating Unity) are merely the most ‘radical’ section of the ‘reformers’ and supports ‘reforms’ on the basis of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. But Rahe Kargar is very ‘clever’ and it publishes the statements of the bourgeoisie - and a tendency that in international terms would definitely be part of the ultra-right - and say that although they publish it they are not endorsing it!? Or, they use the Workers’ News Bulletin of the WLU to publish the statement of Tabarzadi’s Iranian Workers’ Independent Movement (IWIM) and have the audacity to say that they do not know about “how it [IWIM] was formed or the political identity of its founders ... and we are only publishing the statement ... for the information of exiled Iranians on this tendency’s positions.” Unfortunately for Rahe Kargar, it is a liar with a very short memory! Paragraph two of the statement clearly states the connection between IWIM and Heshmatollah Tabarzadi![13] As this bulletin is supposed to be produced under the watchful eye of the Co-ordinating Committee of the WLU of Iran we would like to know what any of the these ‘groups’ did to stop Rahe Kargar publishing it and how they protested after it was imposed on them?

Recently Rahe Kargar has also taken part in organising pickets, meetings and other events together with the Tudeh-Majority milieu. They are trying to give the semblance of ordinary exiled opposition groups protesting against repression in Iran and organising other events around this type of activity. But in fact this represents only the relative success of Rahe Kargar’s tireless work over 13 years in making these people look acceptable to the movement. The important thing that we always have to remember about the Tudeh and Fedaiin Majority is that they took part in the repression. Within the Iranian left there is a long tradition of not doing any united or joint work with anyone who has the blood of workers and revolutionaries on their hands. So for two decades there have been two main groups with whom we have not been prepared to have joint pickets, demonstration, meetings and any other type of activity. These are the monarchists and the Tudeh-Majority bloc.

But recently Rahe Kargar and a few of its ‘fellow-travellers’ came up with a solution for making joint work with the criminals look respectable. “After two months of discussion and negotiation, five political organisations and a democratic committee in Holland have agreed on holding a picket in support of the struggles of the people of our country against more than two decades of continued torture, murder, plunder ...” Why did it take them two months to agree on something that takes only a few days to organise? Because the Iranian Political Prisoners’ Society, the Union of People’s Fedaiin, the Communist Fedaiin League, the Tudeh Party of Iran, the Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran (Rahe Kargar), the Organisation of Iranian People’s Fedaiin (Majority) had to agree that there will be no “Down with ...” or “Overthrow the ...” or similar slogans! After this very successful picket the groups gathered in a hall to hear the speakers about the problems that the ‘reform’ movement is facing.

It is clear that these people have chosen a path - not a workers’ path despite their name - that will take them closer to Tabarzadi, Khatami and the ‘reformers’ and away from the workers and other exploited and oppressed layers in Iran. Rahe Kargar (and all its appendages like the WLU) is the Trojan horse of the ‘reformers’! ‘Reformers’ who approve and support the shooting of students in the streets, imprisoning workers, flogging and executing anyone who questions this particularly backward and brutal form of bourgeois dictatorship.

We ask the international workers’ and communist movement not to give any moral or material support to these Trojan horse elements.

Morad Shirin

2 March 2001

Iranian Revolutionary Socialists’ League

Editor@kargar.org - www.kargar.org - BM KARGAR, London WC1N 3XX, UK.

For those who have forgotten what the Tudeh and Fedaiin Majority stand for we have put together a sample of quotes from the revolutionary period.

What did the Tudeh and Fedaiin Majority do?

Two decades of lies by the Tudeh-Majority constellation of groups, and loyal support from friends like Rahe Kargar, has faded many people’s memories about what these groups and particular individuals did during the revolutionary period. In fact, some people who fought against such elements just 10-12 years ago are themselves part of the rehabilitation programme.

These two groups believed that the ‘militant clergy’ were really revolutionary and anti-imperialist during the 1978-81 period and supported them to the hilt. They first of all betrayed many left-wing people and helped the hezbollahis, Pasdaran and basijis in identifying and arresting them. They then helped in torturing and interrogating these people who were supposed to be ‘counter-revolutionary’. Many of those betrayed were actually other Fedaiin supporters!

Against workers:

“Under the specific present situation the workers and peasants must, as far as possible, not use the weapon of strike and protest and choose other forms of struggle for realising their just demands.”

Documents and statements of the Tudeh Party of Iran, Shahrivar 1357-Esfand 1358, p 252.

Collaboration with Khomeini’s forces:

“In the great revolutionary struggle of Iranian people, the Tudeh Party of Iran, in line with supporting the anti-imperialist and popular line of Imam Khomeini and his followers in opposition to forces opposing the revolution and exposing the counter-revolutionary plots, has had an effective and active part.

Members of the party with all honesty and consistency have not, and will not, stop sacrificing anything, even their lives, along this path.

The plenum accepts the chosen position of the party, in support of the anti-imperialist and popular line of Imam Khomeini as a principled one, and regards the party's consistent opposition to imperialism, Zionism and counter-revolution, and also its struggle against liberalism and sectarianism, as a correct one.”

From the resolutions of the 17th Plenum of the Tudeh Party of Iran.

Against communists:

“From the very first onslaught of counter-revolutionary invaders, the People’s Fedaiin of Iran [Majority] and the Tudeh Party, participated courageously and actively, side by side with the forces of basij, Pasdaran and other law and order forces, to suppress and repel the attackers. Two of our comrades were injured in the stomach and the head by the counter-revolutionary attackers and are presently in hospital ...”

Fedaiin Majority’s account of their participation on the side of the Islamic government against the Union of Iranian Communists, in Amol on 14 Bahman 1360, February 1982.

“Kianouri [the First Secretary] and Amouii of the Tudeh Party came. They gave a report on the counter-revolutionary activities of a communist grouped named Union of Iranian Communists and supplying arms to Kurdish separatists ...”

Bypassing the Crisis: the record and memoirs of Hashemi Rafsanjani, Third Edition, 1999, p226.

Against women:

In this propaganda, counter-revolutionary forces, inline with the anti-popular aims of imperialism have given an ‘anti-women’ image to the Islamic Republic. Such a portrayal is essentially false. Therefore, contrary to this counter-revolutionary claims concerning the enslavement of women, the Islamic Republic has given our toiling women an identity and social value, allowing them to express their true personality.

Roghieh Daneshgari, Member of CC of Fedaiin Majority, Kar - Majority, No. 119.

Iran-Iraq War

“The Tudeh Party of Iran asks its members to:

*Notify the Islamic authorities of their readiness to defend the revolution and the Islamic Republic of Iran against the military invasion of the mercenary Baath regime and the American plot to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran.

*Be prepared to co-operate with the Pasdaran, to perform any duty set by the military commander according to the defensive and military needs of the area.

*To identify counter-revolutionary [i.e., oppositionists including other communists] forces everywhere and inform the authorities of their whereabouts.”

Central Committee of the Tudeh Party, October 1980.

The following is how Rahe Kargar criticised the right-wing faction of the Fedaiin Majority about the way they called for an increase in production.

“With the start of the Iran-Iraq war ... the right opportunism that from some time past has in theory and practice been putting down roots in the right-wing faction of the [Fedaiin] Majority, has appeared as the main characteristic of the politics of this force. Liquidationism has left its stamp on all aspects of the right-wing faction of the [Fedaiin] Majority’s being and showed itself at the general level of the class struggle by them in the slogan “Independence - Freedom - Islamic Republic”. This liquidationist content also appeared in particular aspects and fields of the struggle, how to participate in the war, treatment of the Kurdish people’s movement and in determining tactics of the workers’ movement.

“The liquidationism of the right-wing in the field of the workers’ movement in the first place in the slogan of raising production unconditionally as the first duty and is manifested in the general tactic of the proletariat in the present political situation. In reality this slogan is nothing but the negation of the identity and mission of the proletariat during this period of struggle and turning the proletariat into an appendage of the present government, and turning the historical mission of the proletariat into the mission of strengthening the pillars of the present government, the negation of control councils and their role in this stage of the struggle in theory and practice, approval of the rebuilding of the dependent system and, above all, to use the strength of the proletariat with the aim of this rebuilding and eventually suspending the class struggle and promoting class collaboration in its place.”

Rahe Kargar, No. 60, 6 Bahman 1359 [January 1981].

Of course, Rahe Kargar did not have too much of a problem with those who did not call for an unconditional increase in production but came up with some irrelevant conditions when calling for it!

Iranian Revolutionary Socialists’ League

Editor@kargar.org - www.kargar.org - BM KARGAR, London WC1N 3XX, UK.

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[1] Over two months since the Majority Cell’s exit the WLU’s website still claims that the following are part of it:

Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran (Rahe Kargar), Communist Fedaiin League, Minority Cell, Socialism and Revolution Tendency (Project for Revolutionary Socialist Debate), Solidarity Campaign with Iranian Workers, Activists of Fedaii Minority and Independent activists of the left.

[2] Like publishing statements by Heshmatollah Tabarzadi’s supporters without tarnishing the ‘good name’ of Rahe Kargar!

[3] Making use of miniscule ‘groups’ that have no perspective for the workers’ movement or ‘orphaned’ and naive individuals who want to appear as if they are part of something important!

[4] Introductory note, Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran (Rahe Kargar), pp 1-2.

[5] Despite their vacillations during the crucial points in the revolutionary period, the Minority and others opposed the Islamic regime.

[6] After the Tudeh and Majority had betrayed many left-wing people and helped the hezbollahis in identifying and arresting them they helped in torturing and interrogating these people who were supposed to be ‘counter-revolutionary’. Many of those betrayed were actually other Fedaiin people! Once the regime had used these people to crush the revolution it then turned on them as they were now surplus to requirement!

[7] Of course their contacts with Afghan diplomats (during Najibollah’s regime) and so on also meant getting close politically in exchange for material help! This was certainly the case with the Iraqi Baathist regime, where Saddam was sure of not being criticised!

[8] The PDPI includes many longstanding and experienced Tudeh Party members. When they ‘split’ from the Tudeh Rahe Kargar was at hand to help them mingle among us.

[9] Introductory note, p 1.

[10] Takbargi Rahe Kargar, No. 83, 7 August 2000, p 4. Although this document from the Fifth Congress goes on to say that the stages are “woven together” and affect each other, the “struggle of the Iranian people, at present mainly has an anti-tyrannical nature, meaning that it has still gone beyond confrontation against the ruling religious despotism”.

[11] Takbargi Rahe Kargar, No. 83, 7 August 2000, p 6 and Takbargi Rahe Kargar, No. 84, 15 August 2000, p 2.

[12] When Heshmatollah Tabarzadi was abducted on 6 October 2000 pro-‘reform’ circles, especially those in exile, became very worried. One of the sympathisers of “radical reform” even compared Tabarzadi’s abduction to the serial murders of the regime’s liberal critics and “warned” everyone of the consequences! (Rahe Kargar, communiqué 516)

[13] Workers’ News Bulletin, No. 2, September 2000, p 5.