Introduction

The long interval since the publication of a regular issue of IC means that our welcome to newcomers to the inter-nationalist proletarian camp is long overdue In particular, it is now over two years since political exiles from Iran - the comrades of Peyke Anternasionalisti [PA] - contacted us and sent us the first issue of their magazine, whose title translates as Internationalist Messenger.

We are publishing here our translation of the statement of Peyke's political positions which appeared in that first edition.

Together they show us a clear picture of class fighters who have struggled to make sense of their experiences inside Iran. In the process they have broken with the basic tenets of the capitalist ideology and embraced the internationalist tradition of communism which today has come down to us under the banner of the communist left Now, as the comrades continue to clarify their own ideas, they have to take into account the differences which exist inside the proletarian camp itself. Language barriers alone make this no easy task.

For our part, we should mention our criticisms regarding points 11 and 12 of Peyke's Aims and Positions. As we put it in a letter last October,

Briefly, we think that capitalism predominated in Iran long before the Shah’s agrarian reform, [even if most of the population still existed under procapitalist relations] and we don't think that the proletarian revolution has any democratic tasks to fulfil anywhere in the world.

We went onto add that their

summary of the fight of the Communist Left inside the Comintern doesn't mention the opposition of the Italian Left against the united front policy adopted at the Itch Congress... For us this is really the starting point for distinguishing today's internationalists from Trotskyism and all others who imagine that the revolutionary party can make deals with capitalist parties or that working class consciousness will be raised by the party postponing its revolutionary aims in favour of supposedly more realistic transitional demands.

We raise these issues, not in the manner of pedants and scholastics but because for Marxists the basis of revolutionary practice is a thorough understanding of the lessons of history. Judging from the effort the PA comrades are making to become familiar with all fractions of the Communist Left we know they are aware of the need to come to a shared understanding. We look forward to a fruitful dialogue and discussion in the weeks and months ahead!

PA's Aims and Positions

With the publication of the first issue of Internationalist Messenger a new era has opened for the promotion and defence of communist positions both within the various circles of the Iranian workers' movement and amongst individual militants. After the global triumph of the ideological counter-revolution and the dissolution of the first communist party (under the leadership of Sultanzadeh) this movement experienced a deep break in its historic existence. The history of the Left in Iran is the history of this historical discontinuity: a history of the weight of the leaden defeat over the working class and a history of the left of capitalism (Stalinism, Maoism, Trotskyism) which came on the scene with the defeat of the world proletarian revolution and the triumph of counter-revolution over the Bolshevik Patty. However, this historical break in the continuity of the life of the internationalist workers' movement did not bring the complete disappearance of the communist tendency in the class struggle. As soon as the first signs of degeneration appeared in the Bolshevik Party and in the Communist International a particular current of communist parries and groups fought back against the degeneration of the Bolshevik party and the Cormintern by forming the left factions of the Communist International.

This fight arose from the non-communist policies of the Comintern and centred on the national question, parliament and the unions, and the role of the party in the class struggle. It resulted in a split of the left-wing in the Communist International (Dutch, German and Italian) which was itself already in decline.

The weakness of the Dutch and German factions in continuing the struggle of the Communist Left meant that the historical task of defending the October Revolution's gains and summing up and drawing the lessons of the defeat was carried out by the other trends of this current. Thus the Communist Left continued to exist under very difficult conditions and became the bastion of defence for internationalist positions against imperialism and the political apparatus of the capitalist left.

Political events over the last half century have confirmed the validity of Communist Left positions. These positions have enabled the Communist left currents to learn the lessons and sum up the experience of previous struggles of the world proletariat and have thus established the possibility of further elaborating revolutionary Marxism. It is from this basis that the internationalist communists have already begun the process of forming the world international party via the theoretical/ problematic discussions which for some time have been underway. PA has set itself the task of outlining the positions of the various left communist tendencies to the Iranian workers' movement so that it will be possible for the militants of this section of the world proletariat to intervene in the above process.

At the same time, this attempt to introduce and depict the ideas and positions of the communist internationalists is an attempt to compensate for the break in historical continuity of the internationalist communist movement in Iran. It is also a step towards introducing the historical/ theoretical positions which PA defends. The main tenets of these positions can be summarised as follows:

1. The progressive development of the capitalist system lasted until the end of the 19th century and entered its decadent phase with the First World War. This was accompanied by changes in the operation of the system (form and manifestation of crisis) and in its superstructural make-up.
2. The process of the merging of state and social structures in order to alleviate the crisis of the system began after the 1st World War. With the rise of Fascism in Germany and Italy and Stalinism in Russia this process developed and the tendency of capital to adopt the form of state ownership became global (metropoles and periphery) and became fully established after the 2nd World War.
3. The First and Second World Wars were the only possible alternatives open to capitalism if it was to get out of its crisis. After the 2nd World War the continuation of the crisis in the Seventies inflamed the conflict for new markets between the imperialist powers (in the form of national and regional wars). It led to the collapse of the predominant left-wing of the ruling class and finally resulted in attacks on the material condition of the working class. As the sole revolutionary force in the present era the future of human society is now in the hands of the working class and its ability to fight on a world wide level.
4. The unions which in the ascendant and progressive period of capitalism were militant organizations of the working class, in the present era have become organs for controlling and misleading the working class and are used by the ruling class anti its various factions. The possibility of recapturing these organizations and converting them into independent organs of the working class has disappeared.
5. In the era of the decline and dissolution of capitalism participation in parliament and elections under the banner of “using the bourgeois platform” or the revolutionary destruction of parliament from within' ultimately ends up in confusing and reinforcing the illusions of the revolutionary class.
6. All national movements are an arena where the various factions of imperialism clash. Support or participation in these conflicts therefore means engagement in reactionary wars and are counter-revolutionary acts.
7. The various social conundrums such as sex and race problems are part and parcel of the existing system and are permanently reproduced by this system. The formation of specific societies and organizations in relation to these, which do not address the real cause of the problem (the capitalist system) not only do not serve to solve these problems but divide the working class into sex and race divisions and hence weaken the class struggle.
8. With the failure of the German Revolution and the isolation of the Soviet Union on the one hand and the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party via Stalinism and the elimination of the left oppositions on the other, the Russian October Revolution concluded in defeat, After the demise of the Bolshevik Patty and the Communist International, all the so-called communist and left parties served in the amalgamation of state and financial structures and formed the left of capitalism's political apparatus (Stalinism, Maoism and Trotskyism).
9. All the so-called socialist countries (China, North Korea, Albania, Cuba, etc.) which were formed either through mass or national movements are manifestations of the crisis and barbarism of capitalism and are counter-revolutionary.
10. In no epoch can the working class party be a substitute for the class in struggle. The task of the party is not to take power on behalf of the class but, by organized intervention in the workers' movement on a world scale, to extend class consciousness and ultimately to defend the communist programme until the abolition of all classes.
11. Capitalism became the dominant mode of production Iran following the agrarian reform and right from the outset it was state capitalism with the state as the main owner of capital and the forces of production After the February uprising and the creation of the Islamic Republic this structure was reinforced and, like state capitalism in all the other peripheral countries (Iraq Syria and Algeria... ) is the manifestation of capitalist barbarism in the decadent era.
12. The lack of homogeneity of the socio-economic structure of capitalism in Iran is manifested in terms of the incomplete development of capitalist organs and forces of production... the coexistence of pre-capitalist social relations in the midst of relations and the widespread existence of small workshops and an extensive petty bourgeois strata, i.e. the main characteristics of capitalism in the peripheral countries. These particularities do not mean that the democratic revolution has replaced the socialist one, but only indicate the democratic tasks of the proletarian revolution. Thus any programme which denies the necessity of social revolution in Iran (as part of the world revolution) is objectively defending the system of wage slavery.
13. Since the formation of the Communist Party (under Sultanzadeh's leadership) there has been no communist current in Iran. All the present parties and organizations - which go under the name of “communist” and “workers” - are part of the left of capitalism's political apparatus and are counter-revolutionary.