Tail-ending Khomeini Gulf War

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What kind of government is there in Iran-a capitalist government or a workers' The question appears so ridiculous that it seems pointless to ask. Khomeini's Islamic republic has done everything in its power to block the forward movement of the working class, attack the organisations of the lett, intensity the oppression of women, gays and national minorities, and thus defend the continuity of capitalist exploitation.

While a few imperialist banks and holdings have been nationalised, the remainder of Iranian industry remains-as before the fall of the Shah-in the hands of the capitalists and the capitalist state.

The task of Trotskyists in Iran is to construct the necessary proletarian leadership and elaborate a programme of transitional and democratic demands that can create conditions for the overthrow of the Khomeini regime and the establishment of a workers' and peasants' government.

Difference

It is wrong to give any political credibility whatever to a capitalist government.

But in the eyes of the leadership of the American Socialist Workers Party, and the leadership of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (of which the SWP. is the US sympathising section) the Khomeini regime is a capitalist regime with a difference: it is one which they believe it is correct to Nor is their support restricted to "critical" support in the present Iran/Iraq border war.

It dates back before the conflict-and, to judge from statements by the Iranian USFI section the HKE, now approvingly published in the USFI and SWP press) goes back virtually to the time of the February 1979 revolution which overthrew the Shah.

The SWP's weekly Militant of October 10 reprints the whole of an HKE editorial article published before the Iraqi invasion.

In tones of ringing social patriotism, the HKE unfavourably contrasts the Iraqi "right wing regime of Saddam Hussein" with "our revolution".

It warns that:

"The experience of our revolution up to now has clearly shown that imperialism's aim is to exhaust, break down and demobilise the masses and to destroy and sabotage production and the organisation of the nation's economy through both its indigenous and external agents".

Not a word here against the attempts by Khomeini, BaniSadr and their gangs of Islamic fanatics to "exhaust, break down and demobilisie the masses"!

On the agenda Instead the HKE tell us that: "on the agenda of the Iranian revolution is: achieving total and genuine independence from imperialism; solving the land problem, emancipating the masses of peasants and farmers from poverty and oppression; and expropriating power and wealth from landowners, millionaire capitalists, the rich and other indigenous agents of imperialism"

The HKE significantly leave off the agenda the liberation of Iran's oppressed national minorities, women and gays. Women, they claim later, "are also taking steps toward winning equal rights": the steps of course are against Khomeini and the Islamic bigots!

The HKE leave wide open the question of exactly who is to carry out the expropriations of what they admit is an extensive ruling class in Iran.

This is significant because, in the same paragraph, the article goes on to declare the HKE's commitment to enhancing the profits of the capitalists-in the populist form of the "jihad [holy war] for reconstruction"

Forgetting that the Iranian "'nation" comprises both millionaires and unemployed, landlords and poor peasants, the HKE calls for a "national programme" of struggle to "defend the revolution" not against Khomeini but simply against the Iraqis!

Of course the HKE ritual warning that:

"to collaborate with the imperialists and their indigenous agents-the capitalists and millionaire landownersweakens the active participation of the masses of people"

But rather than spell out an independent class line for the working masses, they go on instead to deplore the fact that:

"the [Iranian] ( state, although dajoying the support of the overwhelming majority of the population in the past as well as in the present, has been incapable of fulfilling its most immediate tasks-uprooting the counter-revolution [:] -because it is based on the bureaucracy inherited from the monarchy."

Here the HKE-with the backing of the SWP/USFI emerge with a complete revision of the Marxist theory of the state.

'Uproot capitalism' Far from providing the machinery and armed force to defend capitalist property and exploitation against the masses, the state is supposediv allotted the "task" of overthrowing such property relations!

"In the entire period since the February insurrection, the immediate task of the state has been and still is to uproot the counter-revolution,..1.e.,, 1o uproot capitalism [!] and the profit-mongering order."

But after 18 months of disappointment, even the HKE Is now beginning to wonder it Khomeini's Islamic republic is really going to expropriate capital:

"The experience of our own country's history during the Mossadegh era, as well as the expenence of revolutions around the world, have shown that government bureaucracies are less than effective [!] in combatting the extension of counter-revolution."

Abandoned

Experience since the Paris Commune has actually taught Communists that the working class-let alone the slamic clergy -cannot simply lay hands on the capitalist state machine and wield it for its own objectives: it is necessary to destroy, smash, the apparatus of capitalist rule, in order to establish the basis for the expropriation of capitalist property and the power of the working class.

The USFI has already abandoned this position in their stance of support for the Sandinista popular front regime in Nicaragua. Now in Iran they are tailing behind the self evidently reactionary Islamic republic-awaiting the moment that it decides to "uproot the counter-revolution"!

Meanwhile, the HKE declares its unambiguous support for the government, its 'battle for production' , and its chauvinist hysteria against the Iraqis. Even before the first Iraqi tank moved across the border, the HKE was urging on Iranian workers to support their own capitalists and Islamic leaders in a war against the Iraqi regime.

*Now, for the defence of the revolution, it is necessary for the toling masses of Iran to mobilise for wat against imperialsm [Iraq] as one united family [!] to close ranks, and to strike as one fist"

Unfortunately for the HKE the message that Iranian capitalists and workers are all one happy "family" in the war against the Iraqi masses has not yet sunk in with the Khomeini regime-who keep on persecuting Trotskyists, leftists and anti-aircraft gun in mobilisation militants, raiding left wing bookshops, etc.

Only the week before, the HKE's paper had published an extensive appeal for the release of one of their leading militants, Nematollah Jazayeri, arrested by Khomeini's Central Revolutionary Committee on September 8, and not heard of since.

Collaborationist

Even this HKE appeal illustrates their long-standing adaptation to the Islamic regime -Nematollah was a keen advocate of the organisation Muslim Students Following the Iman's Line-and to the class collaborationist line put forward by the regime-in June he received the dubious distinction of a letter of commendation from the management at his factory!

Indeed the HKE reports without comment the fact that after his arrest:

"one of the workers who share Jazayeri's socialist views explained how some of the outraged workers proposed a strike, sit-in, and hostage taking to force Nemat's release.

"It was patiently explained that this was not the correct way to fight on this issue and that it was possible to get Nemat released by discussing with the workers and winning their support without disrupting The HKE's obvious concern for the productivity of Iranian against Iraqi regime.'s attacks capitalism and opposition to strike action to free their own imprisoned comrade is underlined by the fact that they quote another worker who argues that Nemat should be released "and be put back to work. One of the machines is not working, and his help is very much needed".

The mealy-mouthed HKE appeal concludes by pleading that:

"The All-Iran Prosecutor's Office should consider his impressive record of struggle outside the country in defence of the political prisoners jailed y the vile Pahlavi regime. !! should consider the real contribution he had made to the work of rebuilding the country and to the anti-imperialist struggle.

It should release him as soon as possible [!] so that he can return to the trenches of the struggle against US imperialism Method is not easy to tell whether the HKE's grotesque adaptations have simply been endorsed by the USFI leadership and the SWP, or whether their tail-ending of the Khomeini regime is the reflection of the opportunist method so vividly exhibited in the USFI support for the bourgeois "Government of National Reconstruction" in

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ALIST PRESS, Wednesday 29 October 1980 IN