Imperialized Gold Digger
Imperialized Gold Digger
Iran; A Marxist History.
It is a fundamental misunderstanding to consider the Iranian Revolution as a purely religious revolution, which is why I understand the term „Islamic Revolution“ as polemical and misleading.
Therefore, I will use the term „Iranian Revolution“ in the following.
British Capitalists and the Shah
Since the 1906 Revolution, or at least since the end of World War I, Iran has been a place of self-enrichment for Western corporations, which profited from Iranian oil.
Notably, the „Anglo-Persian Oil Company“ (APOC), was the first company to extract oil in the Middle East – later renamed „British Petroleum“, or BP, one of the largest oil companies in the world with British headquarters.
As opposition to the extraction of Iran’s mineral resources within the parliament (Madjlis, Persian: „Assembly“) grew too strong since 1906, the oil company quickly helped with a dynastic change.
The chosen figure for this dynastic change was the young military commander Reza Khan, who previously had forced the resignation of Prime Minister Sepahdar through a (bloodless) coup, and rose to become Minister of Defense.
With substantial support from the British APOC, Khan reformed the army and fought separatists both in northern Persia (where the „Socialist Soviet Republic of Iran“ was proclaimed) and in the west (where an independent Kurdish state was declared).
The British funding and the prestige Khan gained through defeating the separatists (since an oil company cannot tolerate socialist separatists) helped him become Prime Minister in 1923.
As Prime Minister, Khan planned to transform Persia into a secular state similar to the still-young Turkey.
However, the religious figures in parliament annoyed him greatly and even demanded his resignation (or voted 94 to 5 for his resignation). The APOC, unwilling to hand over Iran’s mineral resources to someone who might not serve their interests as Khan did, simply poured more money into him and helped him rise to the de facto dictator of Iran.
The Qajar dynasty was dismissed, and Reza Khan (from then on Reza Shah) was appointed Shah (Persian: „King“).
After several years of (reactionary) successful state-building and the transformation of Persia into the national state „Iran“, during World War II, Reza Shah’s youngest son, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, was proclaimed Shah.
After WWII, Britain sought greater participation in Iran’s government, partly due to fears that Iran might (still) move closer to the USSR.
As part of this parliamentary reform, civil democratic voting rights were expanded and the Shah’s power was somewhat limited.
Mossadegh and “Death to America”
Benefiting from the opening of parliament was the Tudeh, the Marxist-Leninist Party of Iran.
The leader of the Tudeh, Mohammad Mossadegh, became Iran’s Prime Minister in 1951.
Under Comrade Mossadegh, the Iranian parliament opposed the profits of Western capital, especially the APOC.
Mossadegh recognized the necessity of nationalizing Iran’s oil reserves, partly to break the Shah’s power, which was supported by Western imperialists.
Moreover, Mossadegh discovered that nearly half of the Iranian parliament members were on the British payroll.
Since the Iranian parliament appeared to be merely a tool for British influence, Mossadegh decided, with the help of a referendum, to dissolve it.
After the nationalization of APOC, CIA Director Dulles allocated a multimillion-dollar budget to overthrow Mossadegh, which he dismissed with the famous words „in any way that would bring about the fall of Mossadegh.“
On August 17, 1953, professional provocateurs from the CIA began causing chaos on the streets of Tehran and organizing pro-Shah demonstrations.
As is typical for monopolistic capitalists, the secret services of the USA and Britain overthrew Mossadegh in the illegal Operation Ajax.
Comrade Mossadegh lived under house arrest at his estate near Tehran until the end of his life.
Since no more obstacle to capitalist interests stood in their way, the Shah was reinstated to his temporarily diminished position and continued to fiercely defend the profits of APOC, now called British Petroleum. [1]
The Shah’s second reign was characterized by extreme internal contradictions, fascist methods of rule, torture, and de facto dictatorship.
The Shah remained in power until 1979. [2]
The overthrow of Mossadegh is one of the most far-reaching coups of the 20th century.
With the fall of Mossadegh, Western capital, especially American, learned how to deal with foreign opposition to their profit interests.
The Mossadegh blueprint was repeated since then against anti-imperialists and freedom fighters worldwide – Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (1954), Patrice Lumumba in Congo (1961), Salvador Allende in Chile (1973), Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso (1987), Sukarno in Indonesia (1967) – among many others, following the same anti-communist blueprint that was established with Mossadegh’s fall.
The Iranian Revolution
As early as 1963, the Shah began with the „White Revolution“ an attempt to modernize society from above – at heart, he remained a great friend of the West.
The „White Revolution“ introduced progress such as women’s suffrage, but was driven primarily by rapidly worsening material conditions.
As is typical in capitalist boom phases with top-down modernization, there simply weren’t enough jobs.
By 1975, more people attended university than there were jobs available, and especially in Tehran, dissatisfaction grew regarding the contradiction between societal impoverishment and the enrichment of oil giants.
The corruption, visible in many parts of society under the Shah, combined with the knowledge that the Shah was a proxy of Western interests, led to hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets from 1978 onward.
One of the most famous critics of the „White Revolution“ and the Shah was Ruhollah Khomeini, one of the most important Shia Muslim clerics in the country and later the first Ayatollah of the Islamic Republic. Khomeini criticized, on the one hand, the modernization of Iran, i.e., women’s suffrage, etc., but also the widespread corruption and inequality, as well as the dictatorial position of the Shah, which was further consolidated by the deepening contradictions.
After repression against some Khomeini-aligned demonstrations, growing crowds began gathering in the streets of Iran, with each repression increasing the numbers.
Among the protesters, anti-American sentiments grew, partly through memories of Mossadegh’s coup and through the contradictions caused by the „White Revolution“, regarding the preservation of Persian culture versus the „Americanization“ promoted by the Shah.
However, a small part of the revolutionary movement was the Islam.
The Iranian Marxist Sy Landu wrote about this:
„Given the revolutionary and anti-imperialist sentiments of the masses, the Iranian bourgeoisie had to turn to Khomeini, and Khomeini often had to turn away from openly bourgeois figures like Bazargan and Bani-Sadr and towards religious “fanatics”. He uses religious ideas as opium to satisfy and control the masses, and Hezbollahs to discipline them. In fact, the fanatical thugs were even used against bourgeois elements themselves to prevent them from demanding an overtly bourgeois rule and risking the survival of their own system.“ (Iran: Revolution, War and Counterrevolution)
The material foundation of the revolution was the strikes of oil industry workers.
The labor struggles, which Iranian workers began in response to the growing contradictions between labor and capital, wages and work, from 1978 onwards, were undoubtedly at the core of the class struggle aspects of the revolution.
The oil strikes, led by the „National Front“, founded many years earlier by Mossadegh, forced the oil capital to withdraw crucial support from the Shah.
Michel Foucault described the workers’ struggles during his visit to Iran in 1978 as a „perfect collective will“.
While the moderate Marxist and somewhat social-democratic „National Front“ led the labor struggles, the banned Tudeh Party, which had adopted a Maoist spectrum, conducted an ambitious guerrilla war against the Shah regime (People’s Mujahedin).
Historians agree that the armed resistance of the Maoists significantly contributed to the Shah’s fall.
The guerrilla groups, which went far beyond the Maoists of the People’s Mujahedin, played a major role in the internal destabilization of the Shah regime (later they also opposed the Islamic Republic).
In conclusion; the Iranian Revolution was based on a series of contradictions, many of which stemmed from imperialist exploitation of Iran’s oil resources.
The main contradiction, between capital and labor, was intensified by the increasing inequality caused by the Shah’s top-down modernization policies, leading to labor struggles and the de facto paralysis of oil exports.
The imperialist, illegal coup against Mossadegh, in large parts of the population, led to disillusionment regarding the Shah’s role, exposing his position as a Western capitalist proxy, and normalizing anti-American sentiment through the Shah’s brutal dictatorship.
The second contradiction of the Shah’s rule was the religious one, which became especially apparent after the „White Revolution“, i.e., the Americanization and modernization of Iran.
The modernization process led many Shiite clerics and religious figures to oppose the Shah, as they saw the Shiite Islam being attacked in its traditions.
This contradiction was partly based on the necessity of further opening Iran to foreign capital.
The third contradiction was between the people and the regime.
The autocratic development of the Shah in his „second term“ (i.e., after Mossadegh’s fall) caused many parts of the population to oppose the Shah’s regime, which was confirmed by the open rejection of the Shah after the Iranian Revolution.
The three core contradictions that led to the Iranian Revolution were closely interconnected and continuously intensified in a dialectical manner.
[1] BP now has an annual turnover of over 210 billion and owns among others Aral and Castrol,
[2] It should be noted that particularly between 1962 and 1975 (during the oil price boom), significant investments were made in infrastructure and social programs, leading to a considerable increase in living standards (measured in income).