It is indeed a tragedy that it should have taken the murder of untold numbers of Iranian revolutionaries for Socialist Challenge to take a critical position towards the Khomeini regime (editorial statement, 8 October). Even now it hesitates to call things by their right name — the Khomeini regime is condemned because it 'has proved chronically incapable of stabilising the economy since the overthrow of the Shah'.
What needs saying, and saying very clearly, is that it is a counter-revolutionary regime and has been so since it came to power after the overthrow of the Shah.
The CIA would, undoubtedly, like to have a government in power which is more compliant to American imperialism but they would find it difficult to get a more right-wing government. To Khomeini, even capitalism is the work of the Great Satan but he does not want to go forward to socialism but backward to a medieaval Islamic state.
That is counter-revolution by whatever name you want to call it. And, whatever the subjective desires of the Mullahs, objectively they are preparing the way for renewed imperialist intervention.
Instead of calling, as the editorial now does, for an independent class line, 'the creation of organisations which mobilise the workers, but which break with bourgeois politicians of every stripe....', the USEC Resolution of 28 July, 1980 stated, 'large numbers of Persian (sic) masses view Khomeini as a political leader who symbolise their hatred for the Shah and his dictatorship ... Through this Shi-ite Islam became and remains the vehicle for the movements and struggles for all their social and economic demands.'
Should we not, as Marxists, have known what the editorial now states, that this regime would be incapable of fulfilling the historic needs of the Iranian masses. Should we not, as Lenin did in his April Thesis after the February Revolution in Russia, have made it clear to the Iranian workers and peasants that this was not their revolution and set about to build a party which could give the political lead which the task of preparing this revolution required?
'The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny' (Trotsky, Preface to History of the Russian Revolution). This ABC of revolutionary Marxism was completely forgotten in previous SC analysis of the Iranian Revolution.
Instead of mobilising the Iranian masses for the overthrow of the regime of Khomeini/Bani-Sadr; instead of supporting the Kurds in their struggle for self-determination, the sections of the FI called for the defence of this monstrous regime against the equally obnoxious Hussein dictatorship of Iraq.
Khomeini, however, knew where the real threat to his regime came from and it was not from Baghdad or even Washington. A large section of his army — and it is largely the same army which served the Shah — has been engaged in genocidal war against the people of Kurdistan. His 'revolutionary guards' have killed more Iranian, Kurdish and other revolutionaries than they have Iraqui soldiers!
It is the elementary duty of Marxists now to seek the greatest unity of all the revolutionary forces in Iran, and especially with the Kurdish freedom fighters and the Mujahadin, even where we do not agree with the methods they employ.
Individual acts of terrorism are not our weapons but we are on the same side as the terrorists. We must win them to proletarian revolutionary politics through united front actions against the terrorism of the regime and for its overthrow.
We must convince the Mujahadin that they must break with the Bani-Sadrs but we must support the demand for a constituent assembly, chosen through free elections, while at the same time strengthening the potential organs of workers' and peasants' power, the Shorahs.
Our programme must include the immediate and unconditional right to self determination for all the oppressed nationalities in Iran; no support for the war between the two Bonapartist states Iran and Iraq; fraternisation on the front; turn the war on both sides of the border into a civil war!
CHARLIE VAN GELDEREN, NW LONDON
We reply: We strongly disagree with Charlie's letter which totally underestimates the anti-imperialist dynamic opened up by the Iranian revolution. Further, no section of the FI ever gave political support to the Khomeini regime.