MARXISM & LEFT-WING POLITICS in Europe and Iran Yadullah Shahibzadeh Marxism and Left-Wing Politics in Europe and Iran Yadullah Shahibzadeh Marxism and Left-Wing Politics in Europe and Iran Yadullah Shahibzadeh Oslo, Norway ISBN 978-3-319-92521-9 ISBN 978-3-319-92522-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92522-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952228 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Cover image: © gmalandra Cover design: Tjaša Krivec This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Roya, Omid, and Giti PREFACE Forty years ago, in the summer of 1978, I read The Communist Manifesto for the first time. I found the proclamation, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” on the first page to be the most insightful statement I had ever read. The year 1978 was for Iran the time of free expression of every subversive speech and the time of the prac- tice of politics and democracy, as the expression of the rights of a people with no qualifications to govern. Michel Foucault gave a name to this experience of politics and democracy: political spirituality. It was this experience of politics and democracy in 1978 which created the intellec- tual condition for the Iranian youth to think of their “place and mission” in the history of humanity and search for a form of political experience which corresponded to their “historical mission” and went beyond what they were really experiencing. The big and small leftist organizations, Marxist and “Islamist,” which were making their activities public or emerged during this period, had the perfect response to the youth’s search for new knowledge and political experience. These organizations claimed that they could provide the Iranian youth with the knowledge they needed to find their historical “place and mission” and to generate the new politi- cal experience they had been seeking. The knowledge that these leftist organizations provided indicated the universality of class struggle formu- lated by The Communist Manifesto and enacted in a series of proletarian and mass revolutions from the Paris Commune through the twentieth-­ century socialist revolutions and the revolutions for national liberations to the ongoing Iranian Revolution. These leftist organizations promised their young supporters the political experience they had been seeking. But vii viii PREFACE this promise did not last long. From the day that the old regime was over- thrown in February 1979, the leftist organizations faced a revolutionary government which shared their conception of world history as class strug- gle between the oppressors and the oppressed and ascribed a historical mission to itself and the Iranian people to lead the oppressed of the world against their oppressors. As the revolutionary government was ideologi- cally superior, politically more determined, and was controlling the repres- sive state apparatuses, it succeeded in eliminating every internal political obstacle, which prevented the exercise of its authority internally as a pre- condition for realization of its universal and historical mission. This book is an attempt to understand how Marxism both constituted the Iranian youth in the late 1970s as subjects of a truly democratic political experi- ence and promised them a radically new political experience, while as a theory of social revolution it was subjected to regression and decomposi- tion. I wish to express my deep gratitude for Editor Alina Yurova and Editorial Assistant Mary Fata at Palgrave Macmillan for bringing this book to production. Oslo, Norway Yadullah Shahibzadeh CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 From True Democracy to Communism 13 3 The Vanguard Party and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat 27 4 The Crisis of Marxism: Ideology and Class Consciousness 47 5 Iran as Part of Global Communism 61 6 Ideological Formation of Stalinist Marxism in Iran and France 83 7 The Crisis of Stalinism After 1953 107 8 French Marxism: Ideology and the Question of Power 125 9 The New Left in Iran: A Discourse on Gun and Politics 141 10 The Educator Must Be Educated 171 11 From Communism to Democracy 193 ix x Contents 12 Toward a Communist Democracy 215 13 Conclusion 241 Bibliography 247 Index 255 CHAPTER 1 Introduction Since the 1970s, in the name of democracy, various post-Marxist tenden- cies in the academic and public discourses have criticized Marxism for its reluctance to distance itself from totalitarianism, and for its negligence of the horror of colonialism, racism, oppression of women, and the human rights of the victims of the dictatorial regimes. But the post-Marxist pres- sure on Marxism generated, since the 1990s, two opposite forms of Marxism and left-wing politics in Europe. In the past few years, we have been witnessing that one leftist tendency demands that the other tendency remains true to the meaning of the left and Marxism. One segment of the left defends the “Syrian revolutionaries” against the dictatorial regime of Bashar Assad. This same segment of the left is well aware that the “Syrian revolutionaries” are financed and organized by “Western imperialism” and the Arab dictators. The other segment of the left supports the “Syrian people and their government” against the “imperialist-terrorist interven- tion.” Whereas one segment of the left is preoccupied with the Chinese and Russian “undemocratic capitalism,” the other segment rejects this preoccupation as an imperialistic obsession. Whereas the former segment of the left is worried about European racism and Islamophobia, the latter’s concern is the danger that Muslims and immigrants present to the future of freedom of expression, secularism, social peace, and communal solidari- ties in Europe. Regarding their disagreements on their governments’ for- eign policies and handling of the question of refugees, immigrants, and Muslims, the European left, Marxist or post-Marxist, are divided into two © The Author(s) 2019 1 Y. Shahibzadeh, Marxism and Left-Wing Politics in Europe and Iran, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92522-6_1 2 Y. SHAHIBZADEH major sections. One section of the left opposes the Western government’s imperialist policies in the Muslim world because these policies produce refugee crises and the “excessive immigration” of Africans and Muslims into Europe threatening social peace, prosperity, and the welfare state of European societies. While defending these same foreign policies as useful for spreading democracy and humanitarian assistance, the other section of the left takes a “humane” approach toward “the refugee crises,” immi- grants, and Muslim citizens. The “anti-imperialist” left argues that the seemingly humane handling of the question of refugees and immigration by the European governments is their way of escaping their responsibilities in creating imperialist wars and destruction as the main causes of mass immigration. According to the “anti-imperialist” left, as a result of accept- ing refugees with Islamic and patriarchal cultural backgrounds, with no human capital, there emerged marginalized citizens, oppressed women and children, growing delinquency, and Islamist extremism in Europe. The pro-democracy and pro-humanitarian intervention left responds by claiming that regardless of the imperfections these people display and the danger they represent to the social fabric of European societies, Europe can- not reject these people. Firstly, European societies desperately need the practical assistance of these people to maintain the existing degree of material productivity. Secondly, the absolute majority of these people are European citizens. However, according to the pro-­democracy and pro- human rights left, these people’s practical assistance does not mean that society should disregard their undemocratic attitudes. On the contrary, the education system, scholars, and intellectuals must educate these new citizens in Western values and democratic culture to overcome their imper- fections and live a democratic life. The main result of the debates of the two sections of the left since the 1990s has been